Tag: Becoming

The Scope of Reflection in Hegel

It now seems to me that reflection turns out to be the driving concept in Hegel’s Logic, and indeed perhaps in Hegel overall. This is fairly amazing, given the prevalence of accounts that do not even mention reflection, or do so only incidentally. True, the ambivalence with which Hegel treats most of his key terms is strongly in evidence here, insofar as he also makes many remarks about the limits of merely “external” reflection. But reflection seems to be a central orienting concept that says many of the same things as Hegelian “mediation” or “dialectic”, says them a bit more clearly, and thus expresses more.

What has particularly captured my interest is the reflection Hegel specifies as “general” or “absolute”. Merely external reflection correlates with the way that he characterizes mere “Consciousness” in the Phenomenology, in which subject and object are mutually exclusive terms, each defined in opposition to the other. But what he calls “general” reflection seems to precisely name a perspective that is at home in what the Phenomenology‘s Preface calls “otherness”, and in which the polarity of subject and object things is replaced by a continuum of relational distinctions. And indirectly, reflection names that otherness itself.

As the last couple of posts have begun to evidence, reflection plays an explicitly central role in the “logic of essence” that Hegel develops in book II of his Logic, which in contrast to the results of the logic of being in book I is said to represent a permanent acquisition. And although the term “reflection” is no longer literally at center stage in book III’s “logic of the concept”, the work done with it in book II is incorporated into the very “concept of the concept” at the beginning of book III.

“[T]he concept is at first to be regarded simply as the third to being and essence, to the immediate and to reflection” (Logic, di Giovanni trans., opening of book III, p. 508, emphasis in original).

He had begun book II by saying essence is the “truth” of being. In just the same way, then, Hegel is saying here that reflection is the “truth” of the immediate.

“Hence the objective logic, which treats of being and essence, constitutes in truth the genetic exposition of the concept…. The dialectical movement of substance through causality and reciprocal affection is thus the immediate genesis of the concept by virtue of which its becoming is displayed. But the meaning of its becoming, like that of all becoming, is that it is the reflection of something which passes over into its ground, and that the at first apparent other into which this something has passed over constitutes the truth of the latter” (p. 509, emphasis in original).

For immediacy, then, reflection is this other that Hegel calls its truth. Immediacy itself is untrue, but it “has” a truth in reflection. Mere being or immediacy by itself is sterile, but reflection makes it fruitful.

I haven’t yet treated Hegel’s discussion of substance and causality within the logic of essence. For now, what I want to draw attention to is his more general point that the logic of essence — which could equally be termed the logic of reflection — already shows, and indeed primarily deals with, the genesis and becoming of the concept. By contrast, what he calls the logic of the concept treats the concept of the concept as already achieved, and focuses on a suitably expansive treatment of its use in judgment and inference.

“The concept is now this absolute unity of being and reflection whereby being-in-and-for-itself only is by being equally reflection or positedness, and positedness only is by being equally in-and-for-itself” (ibid).

Previously, we left simple being, subjects and objects, and existence claims behind, but now being returns, as relatedness and in the content of what we affirm.

For Kant and Fichte, any unqualified reference to being or to what “is” can only be dogmatic. All that we can undogmatically talk about are judgments about what is, and all judgments are subject to questioning about their reasons. (Fichte characteristically speaks of judgments that we affirm as “posited”.)

Hegel regards Kant and Fichte’s effective ban on direct talk about what is as making an extremely important point, but also as overly fastidious. In effect, he wants to suggest that the deeper meaning of “is” coincides with what can reasonably be judged to be the case, and I think Plato and Aristotle would agree.

At the level of what Hegel calls the concept, we have achieved a kind of indifference with respect to talk about being or the immediate. What this means is that what a truly universal community of rational beings would reflectively judge to be the case is constitutive of what we should say “is”.

Perhaps surprisingly, Hegel defers all consideration of normativity and teleology to the logic of the concept in book III, whereas the more explicit discussion of reflection is in the logic of essence in book II. But Hegel’s Logic is ordered as a successive uncovering of presuppositions: in order to successfully claim this apparently simple and straightforward thing, we discover that we must also presuppose that more subtle thing. So the true order of dependency he means to affirm is the opposite of his order of presentation. He also saves his discussion of the “tedious” traditional-logical topics of forms of judgment and syllogisms for book III, but this is with the intent of radically transforming them.

What he really wants to advocate in this last context is a view of judgment and inference — simultaneously very Aristotelian and very nontraditional — as fundamentally reflective and normative, rather than fundamentally formal and quasi-mechanical in nature. The apparent textual separation of reflection from normativity is thus only an appearance. (See also Apperceptive Judgment; Hegel on Reflection; Reflection and Dialectic.)

Ousia Energeia

Aristotle’s Metaphysics is arguably the single most important text in the history of philosophy, but even though on one level Aristotle’s writing is extremely clear and lucid, its deeper implications have been highly disputed. The great Iranian philosopher Avicenna is reported to have said that he read the Arabic translation of the Metaphysics 40 times without understanding it, and only began to understand after reading the commentary by Alfarabi. We are nearing the end of a long journey following what I think is a brilliantly innovative 21st century reading by Gwenaëlle Aubry. Here I’m covering the first half of her discussion of book Lambda chapter 7.

The title of this post is a phrase used by Aristotle to characterize the first cause. He distinguishes it as the ousia [“substance”] that, unlike other substances, simply “is” energeia [“act”]. The latter Greek term was coined by Aristotle, and the former was “substantially” redefined by him. I find it is best to put aside ordinary connotations of the English words for key philosophical terms like this (including “first cause”) — and to focus instead on the ways the philosopher himself uses them, along with what he says about them.

“Chapter 7 of book Lambda responds to the question, left in suspense, of the mode of relation of the first mover to the moved, and of the nature of its action. At the same time it exploits and deploys the ontological signification of energeia, designating in act the mode of being of the separate, and identifying it with the good and the end” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 184, emphasis added, my translation throughout).

“In so doing, it implies at the same time a distinction, absent from book Theta, between kinesis [motion] and energeia, the last being designated as the mode of being of the unmoved, even while maintaining a broad sense of energeia, understood not only as act and as a mode of being, but also as a certain activity (contemplation)” (ibid).

Aubry previously noted that Aristotle’s earliest use of energeia seems to have been in an ethical context. Here she points out that Aristotle is distinguishing between its better known physical sense (which already has a teleological element) and what she calls its ontological sense.

“The first lines of Lambda 7 mark a progress in relation to chapter 6, since they demonstrate not only the necessity of posing a principle that is act and not power in order to give an account of eternal motion, but also of that of thinking the first mover as unmoved” (ibid, emphasis added).

Within the context of Greek philosophy, the very idea of an unmoved mover is another extremely important Aristotelian invention. Plato speaks instead of a self-moving thing, thus postulating motion as an unexplained primitive attributed to something as a whole. He is not bothered by the unexplained primitive, because he sees becoming as fundamentally lacking intelligibility. For Aristotle on the other hand, motion ought to be explainable, and every explanation of motion also involves a passivity. To move in the colloquial English sense is always to be moved in Aristotle’s sense, by something, and we can give an account of this. It will turn out that the primary examples he gives of “movers” are the unmoved intelligible and desired things that serve to activate internal principles of motion in other things. But living beings such as animals also function as “moved movers”.

Aubry quotes Aristotle’s characterization of an unmoved mover as “being at the same time ousia and energeia” (p. 185). Aristotle makes a very compressed reference to his critique of Platonic “self-moving” in Physics book VIII. Anything we broadly call a “self” mover must be a moved mover, because it is implicitly moved by what it understands and desires. Any moved mover — and hence any self-mover — must be only an intermediary cause, and not an ultimate principle. Aristotle wants to very emphatically insist that the first cause is in the strict sense an unmoved mover, and not a self-mover in the broad sense that an animal is a self-mover. For him, any holistic “self-motion” necessarily involves the kind of mixture of activity and passivity that we attribute to an animal. Such a mixture is incompatible with the nature of the first cause.

“[I]t is because energeia is conceived here as ousia, and no longer as kinesis, that the first mover is unmoved” (ibid).

“This poses the question of how the unmoved can be the principle of movement. The demonstration this time proceeds in an indirect way: it consists in the premise according to which the desirable and the intelligible move [other things] without being moved, then in successive identifications, first of the real good with the desirable, then of simple and actual substance with the first intelligible, and finally of the first intelligible with the good. We then ought to conclude that the actual substance, itself already identified with the first mover, is identical with the intelligible and the good, and as such can move [other things] without being moved” (ibid).

She goes on to note that what allows these terms to be unified is really once again energeia, although at first it seems to be substance. This makes perfect sense, given the conclusions of book Eta.

“The unifying term of these identifications seems here to be that of substance. It is so nonetheless by the mediation of a double relation of anteriority: of substance itself, first of all, in the series of positive contraries; then, within substance, of substance that is simple and in act, haplo kai kat’energeian — or, more precisely, of substance that is simple insofar as it is said according to act. For it is this position of the preeminence of substance in the context of the series of intelligibles that justifies its identification not only with the good and the desirable, but with the better or that which is analogous to it. Thus it is once again the notion of energeia more than that of substance that appears as the conceptual mover of the demonstration, and as that from which the attributes of the principle can be deduced” (pp. 185-186, emphasis in original).

Just as Aristotle uses ousia or substance to explain our talk about being, he uses energeia or act to explain our talk about substance. And sometimes he even uses entelekheia or entelechy to explain our talk about act.

“Up to this point, Lambda 7 has established that the unmoved can be a mover, but not how it moves something else. Here again, the demonstration proceeds in an indirect way: it begins by establishing that there is also a final cause among unmoved things. In order to do this, we have to make precise what we mean by ‘final cause'” (p. 186).

“The text at this point poses a problem. Since antiquity, it has been reconstructed so as to coincide with parallel passages in Physics II and On the Soul II which, also relying on a pronominal distinction, distinguish between two senses of the final cause, that is to say to ou and to o, that which is envisaged and that for which something is — or, according to the traditional interpretation, the end of an action and its beneficiary. But neither of the senses thus distinguished can apply to the first mover: the latter cannot be conceived as the beneficiary of action, which would imply that it did not have its end in itself, and would thus be incompatible with its status as pure energeia. But it is equally difficult to conceive it as the end envisaged by action, since this would imply that the movement ends in it, or finds in it its term: the first mover would thus be the act and the end of eternal motion, and indeed of every moved being; thus conceived, the divine would be in sum the act of the world, or at least of the moved substances that make it up, whose separate existence would be explained only by the failure of their fusion with it” (pp. 186-187).

“The context of the distinction in On the Soul is nonetheless very close to that of the distinction of Lambda 7, since the text opposes on the one hand living things (plants and animals) considered as substances subject to the cycle of generation and corruption, and on the other hand the eternal and the divine…. Nonetheless, it does not aim to distinguish between an unmoved end and an end presupposing movement, but rather between an immediate and immanent end and a mediate and transcendent end. The first is identified with the soul, designated as being at the same time cause of motion, essence, and final cause…. The second is identified not with the divine itself, but with participation and community (koinonia) with it, and a community envisaged as continuous. Thus is explained the process of generation, which compensates for that of corruption: not being able to [persist indefinitely] as individuals, living things [persist] not in their numerical unity, but in the unity of their species. The object of their desire is thus not to be god but to participate in the divine, or in the mode of being that characterizes continuity and eternity. Or again, it is not to assimilate themselves to the divine form or the divine act, but rather to perpetuate their own form and act, in the way that the divine continually maintains its own” (p. 187, emphasis in original).

“But if read this way, as a distinction not between the end of action and its beneficiary, but between two kinds of end, the distinction in On the Soul seems reconcilable with that of Lambda 7, and to apply to the first unmoved mover: the latter should be understood neither as the immediate end of action nor as the one who attains that end, but as that which the moved substances aim at through their own proper ends” (pp. 187-188, emphasis added).

“The latter aim at no other end than themselves, and attain this immanent end by means of the different movements to which they are submitted, but through this end they aim also at the eternity and the necessity characteristic of the unmoved substance. As result, we can say that they are also moved by the unmoved, and again by the desire for unmovedness. We see that this interpretation agrees with the end of Lambda 7, as well as with Lambda 10’s reflection on the final cause and the good” (p. 188, emphasis added).

“The remainder of [Lambda 7] goes on precisely to mark the relation between unmovedness and necessity, at the same time as that between motion (even local) and contingency. This last point is the same that Theta 8 already underlined, but the demonstration relies no longer on the notion of dunamis understood as the power of contradiction, and indeed as the power to be or not-be, but on the notion of energeia. Unmovedness is deduced from this, and necessity in its turn from unmovedness. Here indeed, and for the first time, the ontological sense of energeia… excludes kinesis” (ibid).

She notes that Aristotle uses the grammatically dative from of energeia in the text here, which she has argued he consistently uses to distinguish what she calls the ontological sense of dynamis and energeia from their physical sense that is involved in the ordinary explanation of motion.

(I would add that this philosophical primacy of the dative form over the nominative in Aristotle is closely related to a perspective that puts adverbial phrases and relations ahead of nouns and verbs in the order of explanation. In fact, every noun or verb taken by itself is just a simple linguistic token that still has to be given an interpretation. No mere linguistic token by itself explains anything at all. By contrast, it is the non-simple character of relations — the fact that they already intrinsically “say something” about something — that gives them their fundamental role in interpretation and explanation.)

“If it is thus established that the unmoved can be an end…, it remains to know how it is, or to identify its proper mode of action, which is presented as valid for all final causes that exclude motion. Two words suffice to name this mode of action: hos eromenon [as being loved]. The hos does not introduce a metaphor, … but must be understood in the sense of ‘insofar as’: the unmoved mover moves without being moved, but ‘insofar as it is loved’. In its turn, the theme of eros has been prepared by the earlier reflection on the identity of the intelligible and the desirable, where it was said already that they move [other things] without being moved” (ibid).

“For the technical register that distinguishes between different species of desire, rational and irrational, is here substituted a broader term, eromenon. This term also has Platonic resonances: it evokes the amorous ascension of the Symposium, and recalls the figure of Eros, the daimon child of Penia and Poros, in whom are conjoined lack and abundance, absence and presence. Evoking Eros, nonetheless, Plato in the Symposium speaks of dunamis. Here, inversely, the erotic ascension has for its principle energeia. We see again in this point the rupture underlined in book capital Alpha, as in Lambda 6: to conceive the causality proper to the good, it is necessary to think it as a final cause, acting not as power but as act, and as the end of in-potentiality” (p. 189).

Aubry has consistently maintained that acting in the sense of having an effect is not reducible to the “action” of a power. All ordinary “action” is in reality a mixed form — an interaction — that includes an element of passivity. Pure act on the other hand is supposed to have an effect and to move other things, but without itself being involved in passivity. There is still an element of passivity in this case, but it is entirely on the side of the other things that are moved by what they understand and desire. Pure act for Aristotle is situated beyond the correlation of activity and passivity. Only where in-potentiality is also involved is there the ordinary interaction of activity and passivity that we experience in earthly happenings.

Rather than aiming to think pure presence, in the context of a human being even Plato is far more interested in mixed forms, as Paul Ricoeur has pointed out. Aristotle here takes up the Platonic theme of eros, while recasting it as an ascent toward pure act. But pure act is precisely not ever purely present to us. In the next post, we’ll see how Aristotle contrasts human life with the ideal life he attributes to the first cause.

Next in this series: Ideal Life and Ours

Eternal Motion

Chapter 6 of book Lambda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics takes chapter 5’s unification of eternal and corruptible sensible substance as a starting point, and now inquires into the relation between sensible, movable substance as a whole and unmoved substance. We’ve been following the detailed development of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s provocative non-traditional interpretation of the distinctive features of Aristotle’s account.

“The simple and necessary substance is not needed in order to give an account of the substances that, insofar as they are mixed from act and in-potentiality, can either be or not be, but in order to give an account of movement insofar as it cannot not be. The first question for Aristotle is not ‘why is there being?’ but ‘why is there movement?’, or, more precisely, ‘why is there always movement?'” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 178, emphasis added, my translation throughout).

“Whereas the theology of omnipotence is a response to the question of the emergence of being, the theology of pure act in effect is a response to the question of the eternity of movement. The god of Aristotle thus provides a reason for the most manifest, for the most evident. It is not the ground — or the bottomlessness — of the mystery of being, more mysterious than the being it serves to explain, but the reason of the most immediate, most apparent phenomenon. Movement, in effect, is the first given” (ibid).

“[A]mong the different species of movement, the priority comes back to local movement. The latter is indeed anterior to genesis: ‘It is impossible that generation should be first’. Generation is only first in the order of the individual, since the latter must exist in order to move. But in order for it to come into being, it is necessary for another being to have preexisted it which was in movement, and the same for this last. Thus it is not movement that comes to be, but coming to be that presupposes an antecedent movement and being” (pp. 178-179, emphasis in original).

She quotes from Generation and Corruption book II chapter 10, “For it is far more reasonable that what is should cause the coming-to-be of what is not, than that what is not should cause the being of what is. Now that which is being moved is, but that which is coming-to-be is not: hence motion is prior to coming-to-be” (Collected Works, Barnes ed., vol. 1, p. 550, emphasis in original).

“There is no first instant of movement. Movement cannot not have always been” (Aubry, p. 179). She notes that the Metaphysics does not contain the demonstration of this. Aristotle’s actual demonstration of the eternity of movement occurs in book VIII of the Physics, and basically consists in adding an indefinite regress to arguments like those we have just seen.

“Lambda 6 in effect establishes that the principle of such a movement must be not power but act. We have already seen Aristotle’s insistence here on underlining, as in book capital Alpha, the originality of such a thought of the principle. The argument works in a regressive way, establishing successively that the principle of eternal movement cannot be conceived as a power (dunamis), not even as an active or acting power, but must be such that its very substance is act, he ousia energeia. Its stages, let us recall, are the following:”

“–to give an account of movement, it is not sufficient to assert a moving or efficient (kinetikon e poietikon) capacity, if it does not act (me energoun); for it is possible to have a power without acting (endekhetai gar to dunamin ekhon me energein)”

“–nonetheless, even supposing that the principle acts (ei energesei), we cannot give an account of eternal movement if its ousia is dunamis. In effect, if that which has a power has the possibility of not acting, that which is in-potentiality has the possibility of not being (endekhetai gar to dunamei on me einai)”

“–it follows therefore that there is a principle such that its ousia is act, he ousia energeia” (p. 180).

She notes the striking parallelism of Aristotle’s phrases, but also finds a progression between the two formulae, corresponding to a transition between the “kinetic” and “ontological” senses of dynamis that she has often remarked upon.

“As with that from power to in-potentiality, the transition is thus effectuated from action to act: the principle of eternal movement must be conceived not only as an always active and acting power, but as an act. The argument relies only on the ontological sense of [pure] energeia, understood as that mode of being which is subtracted from the possibility of non-being” (p. 181).

“Ultimately we find posed as the condition of eternal movement, a being of which the ousia is energeia. But to say this is also to say, as the two moments of the demonstration underline, that from this substance is excluded every form of power: as much active power as in-potentiality. Thus — and it is again necessary to underline the force, and the paradox, of such a thesis: the very condition of the efficacity of the principle resides in its absence of power. It is not because it is all-powerful or fully active, but indeed because it is fully act that it is maximally efficacious, since it is the principle of eternal movement” (ibid, emphasis in original).

“That the principle (or principles) of eternal movement are act is deduced again from two necessary properties: eternity and immateriality. We verify equally the claim of Lambda 5: act serves to name not only (as Theta 8 established) the mode of being of the necessary and the eternal, but also that of form or the immaterial” (p. 183).

She goes on to contrast this argument with the more limited concerns of Aristotle’s demonstration of the need for an unmoved mover in the Physics.

“Decisive for the demonstration of Lambda 6, the ontological sense is on the other hand absent from that of Physics VIII. The latter utilizes not the schema of finality and the correlation of in-potentiality and act, but that of efficiency and of the correlation of powers…. [T]he text of Physics VIII considers at length the Platonic hypothesis according to which the first principle can be a self-mover. It is concerned to demonstrate that even a self-mover must have a mover and a moved, and finally to establish that at the origin of change there must be an unmoved mover. But the relation of the unmoved mover to that which it moves is thought on the model of efficiency…. The hypothesis, foundational for Lambda 6, of an unactualized power, or a power that is able to not act, is not envisaged. The action of the mover on the moved is described [in Physics VIII] as that of a mechanical force, working by contact with the first moved thing” (ibid).

In Physics VIII, Aristotle even speaks of a temporally infinite power (dynamis apeiros) behind what is commonly translated as “eternal” movement. In Aubry’ s paraphrase, “But an infinite power cannot reside in a finite body, so the first mover must be thought as being indivisible, without parts, and without magnitude” (p. 184).

Physics VIII is after all concerned with the roots of ordinary physical motion, so it is reasonable that it focuses on the “kinetic” sense of dynamis. It does seem that Metaphysics Lambda refers to Physics VIII’s demonstration of the need for an unmoved mover, so it is reasonable to assume that Lambda represents a later development.

It should not be surprising that Lambda, from a different and later point of view, makes new arguments about the first cause that are not in Physics VIII, and corrects some statements of the latter on its nature. Aubry does not comment on this discrepancy, but is content to do her due diligence in pointing it out. We saw earlier, however, that in Physics III Aristotle does also subordinate the kinetic sense of dynamis to what she calls the ontological one of in-potentiality.

Next in this series: Ousia Energeia

Physics and Theology

Returning to Gwenaëlle Aubry’s landmark new reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, last time I covered her preliminary roadmap of book Lambda, in which Aristotle discusses the first cause and its relation to the world. Here I will focus on her discussion of chapter 1.

As is common in Aristotelian treatises, Lambda begins with a survey of the opinions Aristotle deems most important and relevant in this area — namely the “physical” approach of the Ionian philosophers of nature, and the “logical” one he attributes to the Platonists. Aristotle will borrow from both, and criticize both.

At the same time, Chapter 1 outlines a program of investigation that will be pursued over the course of the book. This consists of four questions:

1) How are cause (aitia), principle (arkhe), and element (stoikheion) distinguished, and how are they related?

2) Are there principles common to both eternal (astronomical) and corruptible (earthly) sensible substances?

3) How are we to understand the meaning of unmoved substance?

4) Are there principles common to unmoved substance and to eternal and corruptible sensible substances?

The Ionians and the Platonists agree, each in their own way, that it is principally of “substance” (ousia) that we investigate the principles and causes, though they interpret substance differently. Aristotle retrospectively interprets both the Ionians and the Platonists as reaching toward his own notion of substance and its role — i.e., as dwelling on questions about what things are, and about why things are the way they are.

It is the “things” in life that are of primary interest, because to a greater or lesser degree they all have persistence, and therefore also have recurring relevance in their own right. Mere transient events only have relevance to meaning and deeper truth insofar as they may be claimed to show something about recurringly relevant things.

Aubry points out that in book Lambda, it will not be a question of demonstrating the primacy of substance and of independent things over those other “things” that are attributed to them. Something like book Gamma’s argument for the methodological priority of inquiry into relatively independent things seems to be presupposed. Nor does Lambda ask what substance is, as book Zeta does. The specifically Aristotelian sense of substance’s defining criterion of “separateness” — embodied in the relative independence of some but not all of what we call “things” in the broadest sense — which was a major result of Zeta, is recalled in the opening lines of the chapter here, and is thus integrated into Lambda’s inquiry from the beginning. But Zeta’s investigations are also deepened here by a new connection with book Epsilon’s emphasis on causes and principles, so that we now also ask, what are the causes and principles of substance? Moreover, questions raised but unanswered at the end of Zeta about unmoved substance will eventually be addressed here.

Aristotle contrasts the Ionian view of the world of becoming as a certain (material) whole with that of the Platonists, who treat it as a pure succession of phenomenal instantiations of immaterial Forms. The Ionians recognize as principles only the elements of bodies, thus putting all intelligibility on the side of matter. The Platonists recognize only immaterial Forms as principles, and hold becoming as such to fundamentally lack intelligibility.

“Going forward, the opposition between holists and episodics does not outline the alternative according to which the arguments of Lambda will be deployed, but rather, conversely, that which it will be necessary to overcome” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 161, my translation throughout).

In a second contrast between the Ionians and the Platonists, the Platonists associate substance exclusively with what is logically universal (katholou; literally “according to the whole”), but the Ionians associate it exclusively with concrete individual things (kath ekasta; literally “according to each”). Aristotle will bridge this gap too, by posing the first cause as not itself a logical universal, but rather as a unique thing, to which all other things universally have a broadly similar constitutive relation.

Finally, Aubry refers to the passage, “And the former kind belongs to the study of nature (since they include motion), but this kind belongs to a different study, if [ei] there is no source [principle] common to them” (Metaphysics, Sachs tr., p. 231). Scholars have debated the significance of Aristotle’s ei here.

“The translation [of the ei] adopted here [and independently by Sachs] results in a hypothetical meaning, ‘if’, but another reading gives it a causal meaning, ‘since’. Such a divergence is far from being minor. The traditional causal reading of the ei in effect founds a scissionist interpretation of metaphysics, which will be divided between the science of sensible substances, or physics, and ‘another science’, having for its object the unique substance that is separate [in the Platonic sense of separation from matter], which going forward will be identified with theology…. As well as a scissionist reading of metaphysics, these lines invite a hybrid reading of Lambda according to which it is necessary to distinguish between a treatise on sensible substances, and a treatise on substance that is separate [again in the Platonic sense]. Such an interpretation amounts to abandoning any project for a general ontology — eventually only leaving place for a unification from above, that is to say by theology, applied to [the emphasis on causes and principles from] book Epsilon chapter 1″ (Aubry, p. 163).

She cites a survey of this issue by David Lefebvre, but does not directly identify sources for the traditional interpretation. Since the dispute is about a detail of the Greek text though, I would presume that these are traditionally minded modern scholars, and not medieval writers.

“On the other hand, the hypothetical reading of ei leaves open the possibility that there exists a common principle [of sensible and Platonically “separate” substance], and, going forward, also a common science of all the substances, sensible and separate. Nonetheless, this hypothetical reading admits in its turn of two distinct interpretations: one could understand that the common science of all the substances is to be identified with physics; or again that it is the alternative ‘physics’/’different science’ that is itself conditioned by the [presumed] eventual absence of common principles, but that under the hypothesis that such principles exist, this partition can be superseded, to the profit of a unique science of substances — a unique science that can be reduced neither to physics nor to theology” (p. 163-164).

The key point that should be emphasized is that Lambda aims to sketch the basis of a unified account of all substance.

I would go somewhat beyond the scope of Aubry’s argument here, to also question the traditional talk about “sciences” in this context. Aristotle himself simply speaks of knowledge (which we could gloss, following the broader of his usages, as an interpretive account grounded in reasoned explanation). This presupposes rather less than either the ideal of foundational demonstrative science bequeathed to later traditions by Alfarabi, or the whole elaborated apparatus of empirical science, with which “science” is identified in most modern contexts.

I also question the identification of Aristotle’s more specific “ousiology” or account of substance with “ontology”, or the alleged science of being. Properly speaking, we owe the latter to successive post-Aristotelian elaborations, principally by Avicenna, Duns Scotus, and Christian Wolff — however often these elaborations get retrospectively read back into the Aristotelian text. Aristotle does indeed refer without prejudice to the question whether knowledge of being “full stop” is possible, but his eventual answer is the more limited one that a general reasoned account of ousia is possible. I think it shows the original naive question about being to have been badly posed. That way of posing it leads to other nonsensical, non-Aristotelian questions that imply category mistakes, like “why is there being?”

Finally, I give more weight to the fact that the term “metaphysics” is never used by Aristotle, and was only first applied to the collection of treatises we know by that name by an editor, long after Aristotle’s death. I prefer Aristotle’s own term “first philosophy”.

But I do very strongly agree with Aubry that book Lambda is intended to develop what could reasonably be called a general ousiology, embracing both sensible and Platonically “separate” substance; and moreover, that this ousiology has a fundamentally axiological or value-oriented character.

Next in this series: Potentiality in the Stars

Critique of the Megarians

Euclid of Megara (not to be confused with the geometer) was a student of Socrates who combined Socratic and Eleatic ideas. He reportedly claimed that virtue is knowledge of the Parmenidean One Being, which he also identified with the Good, God, reason, and mind. At a time when Megarians were banned from Athens for some reason, he is said to have entered the city disguised as a woman in order to listen to Socrates. He was present at Socrates’ death, and afterwards offered refuge to Plato and others in Megara. Socrates reputedly rebuked him for arguing more for the sake of winning than for the truth, but Euclid was said to have been very concerned with moral virtue. Plato credits him with having written down an actual conversation between Socrates and Theaetetus, which became the basis of Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus.

Euclid’s students were mainly interested in logic and argument. Some of them apparently founded a separate school, known as the Dialecticians, which developed a form of propositional logic. This latter group is considered to have been the major source for Stoic logic.

In chapter 3 of book Theta of the Metaphysics, Aristotle criticizes Megarian arguments that there is no distinction between power and act. Aubry quotes Aristotle’s restatement of the Megarian claim, “It is when a thing acts that it can act, but when it does not act, it cannot act” (Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 122, my translation throughout).

Independent of Aristotle’s development of a normative and teleological dimension of act that plausibly extends even to physical motion, he is also very concerned to carefully distinguish between power and its exercise. Thus he had to confront the Megarians, who argued that there is no such distinction.

Later writers of quite varying persuasions have wittingly or unwittingly developed variants of this Megarian position. Nietzsche, for instance, explicitly denied the reality of anything that is not actual. Any kind of argument for complete determinism has a similar effect, as does theological occasionalism, which subsumes all becoming under the model of creation.

“Against this thesis, it is necessary to affirm not only the distinction of act and power but, more precisely, that with a given act can coexist not only the power of which it is the effect, but the power for another, opposed, act” (ibid).

Aubry noted a bit earlier that the emphasis on contraries in the discussion of rational powers is rather accidental. The more general point — expressed at the level of potentiality rather than power — is that potentiality includes multiple alternate possibilities concretely grounded in the same state of actuality. The more specific notion of contrariety only comes into play because — due to the fact power is consistently understood by Aristotle as power to do or undergo something definite — related deliberation may be conceived as about exercising a power or not.

She quotes Aristotle, “It is possible for a thing to be capable of being and nonetheless not be, or capable of not being and nonetheless be” (ibid).

This, it seems to me, is an unavoidable presupposition of any coherent account of becoming. It is again also the foundation of Aristotle’s account of human freedom. This way of approaching freedom is greatly to be recommended, because it avoids both the dubious and dangerous concept of a separate faculty of will distinct from reason, and the worse concepts of arbitrary will, or will as “superior” to reason.

“The critique of the Megarians indeed carries a double, and paradoxical, positivity: it invites us to think at the same time becoming in relation with dunamis, and energeia in relation with being. In doing this, it indicates also the double stakes of the inquiry: to think becoming and being at the same time; to determine the mode of their articulation.”

The dynamis–energeia pair is what uniquely enables Aristotle to think of being and becoming in a non-opposed way, though this is far from exhausting its significance.

“The extension from the kinetic sense of energeia to the ontological sense is presented as a deepening: otherwise said, and in conformity to what Theta 1 noted already, it is the ontological sense that is primary. In effect, if we have a tendency to consider that energeia is manifested above all in movement, this is insofar as we take it as an index of being” (p. 123, emphasis in original).

“For not to be in act but to be capable of being so, is also a mode of being: that which in-potentiality names. Of certain things that are not, but are nonetheless capable of being, one says thus that they are dunamei” (pp. 123-124).

Here we have a good example of the explicitly dative grammatical form of dynamis (dynamei) that she finds to be associated with Aristotle’s distinctive notion of being in potentiality. These are things that have being potentially, or are potentially thus-and-such. Here the emphasis is all on “things” in a state of potentiality, or potential “states of affairs”. Potentiality (as distinct from actuality) is the modality in which these have being and are said. This is indeed clearly different from a power to do, cause, or undergo.

“That which is in-potentiality, nonetheless, is not, ‘because it is not an entelechy‘” (p. 124).

We do not say of that which is in-potentiality that it “is” simply, or in an unqualified sense.

At the link above, I suggested that entelechy is probably the most important guiding concept of the Metaphysics. I have also suggested that entelechy serves as a kind of explanation for how ousia or (substance or essence, or what Sachs calls “thinghood”) works. In turn, Aristotle uses ousia to help disambiguate and organize what is meant by the various ways in which we say something is something. In the quote above, he directly uses entelechy as the criterion for what we do and do not say “is”. It is vitally important that he appeals to this much more nuanced concept, instead of referring back to the blunt instrument of a common-sense notion of existence or reality. For Aristotle, being, existence, or reality is not an explainer; instead, it needs to be explained.

Nonetheless, Aubry points out that here, Aristotle does not explicitly invoke the normative aspect of entelechy. We are still primarily investigating the more common “kinetic” sense of dynamis and energeia that accounts for physical motion. The aspect of entelechy that is to the fore is therefore that of the continuing activity that constitutes a substance as something persisting, or a motion as ongoing.

Next in this series: Potentiality and Possibility

Being and Becoming

“Our hypothesis is the following: the division of being into [being] in potentiality and [being] in act has a greater extension than that according to the categories. If the latter only determine the mobile and composed substances, act is said also of the immobile, and its priority over potentiality allows the relation of the immobile substance to the mobile substances to be thought”  (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 2, p. 51, my translation throughout).

“Dunamis [potentiality] and energeia [act] are the foundation of an anti-Parmenidean ontology, which articulates movement with being. They respond thus to the requirement defined in [book capital Alpha] for a science capable of giving account of both being and movement, both the one and the multiple. Since book Gamma, the notion of dunamis serves to resolve the dilemma of becoming: the posing of being in potentiality allows overcoming the impasse of emergence (that it is from non-being that being comes) as well as that of coexistence (that it is from contraries pre-existing in act that all being comes)” (pp. 51-52).

As Aristotle well recognizes, these impasses related to becoming imply that pre-Socratic notions of “being” were severely flawed.

“Invoked to think not only becoming, but the being of becoming, sensible and mobile substance, the notions of potentiality and act serve, over books Zeta and Eta, to replace those of matter and form. It is in book Theta, in backwards order, that the process finds its justification: the ontological pertinence of the two notions is there underlined, and their transfer from the field of movement to that of being, elucidated. At the end of book Theta, finally, are formulated the conditions for an extension of dunamis and energeia from the field of corruptible substances to that of eternal substances” (p. 52).

Again, for Aristotle, “eternal” means not radically outside of time as it does in Augustine, but simply persisting forever.

Aubry wants to recover a sense for Aristotelian being-as-such that is not the “absolutist” one of a first Being, argued for by excellent Thomist scholars like Joseph Owens. In passing, she cites Aristotle’s aversion to pursuing ultimate explanation in terms of “numbers, lines, or fire” (p. 53). As Aristotle says in book Gamma, “for us too it is the first causes of being as being that must be gotten hold of” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., coincidentally also p. 53). Aubry notes that this also takes us beyond any consideration of being as a genus or species.

But in spite of the fact that being is not a genus, the first causes for Aristotle are common to all beings. She refers to the “focal” meaning of being as ousia, while arguing that ontology is not reduced to the study of substance. She alludes to Aristotle’s inclusion of the knowledge of axioms and the principle of non-contradiction in the knowledge of being, while pointing out that the principle of non-contradiction is not a cause. She notes how Aristotle first mentions then dismisses incidental sayings of being, and the saying of being in the sense of true and false.

She discusses Pierre Aubenque’s argument that being in the senses of the Categories is more fundamental than potentiality and act, commenting that it encounters a difficulty in Aristotle’s explicit development of a sense for potentiality and act that goes beyond their use in the explanation of motion. She notes that Franz Brentano among others argues the opposite: potentiality and act are not reducible to the categories. She doesn’t think Aristotle addresses this question of priority explicitly; any answer will be based on analysis of what Aristotle does with the respective terms.

Both the categories and potentiality and act are at the basis of a non-Parmenidean ontology. The pair of potentiality and act in particular allows for the articulation of “a certain non-being” within being. Saying according to the categories, too, generates affirmations that from a Parmenidean point of view would be paradoxical. Every predication says that something “is” something other than just what it is.

“Potentiality is in effect the place where contraries can coexist” (p. 61). “It allows becoming to be thought without violating the founding principle of being and of discourse [non-contradiction]” (p. 62). “In opposition to the Eleatics, the distinction of potentiality and act plays the same role as that of substance and accident against the Sophists: it founds the possibility of predication. The accent is nonetheless inverse: if it serves, in Gamma 3, to reconnect the diversity of predicates to the unity and the identity of a subject, it serves here to relate one same subject to the possible plurality of predicates” (ibid).

“There is nonetheless one thing that dunamis and energeia say that the categories do not say: the becoming other of the same, the becoming multiple of the one” (ibid). Here she recalls Aristotle’s polemic against the Megarians in book Theta. The Megarian denial of the difference between act and potentiality makes becoming unintelligible, because it eliminates all continuity within change. This makes the explanation of change impossible.

“Dunamis thus appears as the very instrument of the thought of becoming” (p. 66). And “not only becoming, but being in becoming” (ibid).

Next in this series: Mixing Up Plato and Aristotle

Distinguishing Act and Form

“In fact, the notions of form (eidos) and of act (energeia or entelecheia) are not equivalent; and if the first belongs to a Platonic vocabulary, the second is an Aristotelian invention. It belongs, as such, to an anti-Platonic project: there is no sense, for Aristotle, in posing ‘pure’ or ‘separated’ forms, that is to say forms subsisting outside of and independent of the composites that they define. Form is not separable except ‘by logos‘, ‘according to the formula’, which signifies also that form is not fully ousia, fully substance” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., part 1, introduction, p. 23, my translation throughout).

For Aristotle, form is only separable from the embodied composite analytically, in speech or in thought. Though he was Plato’s star pupil for 20 years and continued to be influenced by Plato in other ways, his project is “anti-Platonic” in the sense that he specifically criticizes the notion of separate form, with which Plato is famously associated.

“It goes otherwise for act, which implies separation, understood as autonomous subsistence, and therefore has the value of another name for ousia. Act, nonetheless, is not only another name for substance. Identified with the end, it is also [identified] with the good. Being in act is not only to subsist, it is to subsist as adequate to its form and to a form that, posed as end, is also posed as good…. Act thus is not only another name for being, but also for the good: or more, insofar as it says the good as real, or as realized, [it] names the identity of being and the good” (p. 24).

Here it is important to recall once again that all the senses of “being” Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics involve being as a transitive verb (i.e., being this or that), not being as a noun. Being in the sense of existence simply has no place in this account. The identity of the senses of being as a transitive verb with those of the good tells us that the saying of transitive being for Aristotle has a normative character. Talking about the being or essence of things is talking about value, and making value judgments.

“Certainly, [the idea of] the unmoved First Mover does not come in response to the question of the emergence of being, but to that of the eternity of movement — both the continuity of the movement of the stars, and the perpetuity of the cycle of generation and corruption. This is why [book] Lambda [chapter] 10 [of the Metaphysics] can also designate the good as the cause of taxis [order], associated both with the movement of the eternal sensibles and that of the corruptible sensibles. If it is not an efficient cause, the First Mover nonetheless has an efficacity, or an influence on the world, which follows from the very fact that it has no power. For the purely actual substance, indeed excluding power as much as movement, is required as the condition of movement (Lambda 6 and 7). Again, it is necessary to determine the way in which it is [required]; Lambda 7 invokes the notion of final cause, which it is nonetheless necessary to understand in a particular sense: not in a sense in which the unmoved substance is itself the act and the end of the other substances, but in the sense in which, aiming at their proper act, the latter aim at the same time at its characteristic necessity. To understand this, it is not necessary to have recourse to the notion of imitation: the relation of the pure act to the substances mixed of act and potentiality is determined by the different relations of the anteriority of act to potentiality distinguished in Theta 8.” (p. 25).

Aristotle is saying that the good in general or value in general is a condition for the possibility of all movement, both celestial and terrestrial. Every being is moved by some good or other. Aubry is here explaining the difference between Aristotle’s own view and the “ontotheology” that Heidegger and others have attributed to him.

“[The pure act’s] efficacy could be called non-efficient; its strength merges with the desire it arouses. Designating god as act, Aristotle identifies his mode of being; determining the mode of relation of act to potentiality, he identifies his mode of action….”

“But by this, Aristotle also identifies the mode of being and the mode of action proper to the good. It is perhaps thus that it is necessary to understand his insistence in affirming that he is, of all the philosophers, the first and the only to have posed the good as a principle….”

“The singularity of the Aristotelian theology as a theology of the good, and of the power proper to the good, can nonetheless not be known except on the condition of taking seriously the designation of the First Mover as pure act. This supposes in particular that the Aristotelian inventions that are act and potentiality are not reduced to form and power. The Aristotelian theology, that is to say the science of unmoving and separate substance, appears only in effect as one of the areas of application of an ontology or, at least, a general ousiology, which has for its foundation the notions of act and potentiality” (p. 26).

In contrast to the ways being is said in the senses of the Categories, which are “inadequate for speaking about the first unmoving being, [act and potentiality] allow both the difference and the relation of moved and unmoved substances to be thought. In a more general way, act and potentiality are at the foundation of an anti-Parmenidean ontology, …allowing being, movement, and their correlation equally well to be thought” (p. 27).

Aubry points out that the notions of act and potentiality first arise in the discussion of motion. But book Theta of the Metaphysics is dedicated to reshaping them in a way that applies to “being” as well as to motion. It is more particularly through act and potentiality that beings are constituted as the beings they are.

“Movement, in effect, should not be understood only in the order of interaction, but also in that of actualization. Or again: movement should not be understood only in the order of the correlation of an active dynamis and a passive dynamis, partitioning the field of efficiency into an agent and a patient, but in that of the correlation of dynamis and energeia” (ibid).

“But the dynamis found thus to be correlated to act, and which designates a state of being, is therefore irreducible to power: being in potentiality, coordinated with and determined by act, is neither passive nor efficient. Or again, potentiality is reducible neither to active power nor to passive power. The notion of potentiality serves to name the very possibility of the interaction of an agent and a patient in view of a change determined and finalized by act.”

“The correlation of potentiality to act nonetheless does not exclude that of passive power to active power: but it subsumes it, or subordinates it, insofar as it carries a greater intelligibility. It invites us to consider that which, in an impact, a meeting, or an interaction, is the occasion of an accomplishment. It is a point of view taken on that which, in movement, makes itself, that is to say not only makes itself but perfects itself…. Aristotle’s universe is not exempt from impacts and meeting: the substances that populate it are not Leibnizian monads…. The order of efficiency is a real order, but subordinate to that of finality” (pp. 28-29; see also The Four Causes Revisited).

“Potentiality is indeed for a being the real possibility, inscribed in the very qualities that give it its essence, of realizing that essence. Potentiality is the index and the principle of the becoming that leads a being to its accomplishment. It bears at the same time the distance between a being and what it has to be, and the possibility of crossing that distance. If act names the identity, real or realized, of being and the good, potentiality names this identity as to be realized. It inscribes into being at the same time as the concreteness of mediation, the possibility of perfection” (p. 29).

“The ontology of potentiality bears with it at the same time the thought of a possible perfection, realizable here and now, and that of failures, of accidents, of bad encounters, of unsuccessful mediations that could counter it” (ibid).

For Aristotle there is no “problem of evil”. Things are at one and the same time both imperfect and perfectible.

Again, I prefer to drop the term “ontology” altogether, because it is strongly associated with a (non-Aristotelian) approach to first philosophy that focuses on being as a noun, and in the sense of existence. Aubry retains the traditional term, but gives it a different meaning that is less prejudicial.

Far be it from me to claim to have the one true interpretation of these sharply contested points about Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but the key features of Aubry’s account seem to fit very well with my own examination of the text.

Aubry has emphasized the role of Plotinus in the historic re-interpretation of Aristotelian act and potentiality. I would note that the later neoplatonic school at Alexandria under Ammonius (5th/6th century CE) — especially Ammonius’ students Simplicius and John Philoponus — also produced extensive commentaries on Aristotle with a neoplatonic slant, which helped shape the way Aristotle was read in medieval times.

Ammonius argued that Aristotle’s first cause is after all also an efficient cause. Simplicius, who is also a major source for quotes from lost works in the history of Greek philosophy, added two more distinctly neoplatonic kinds of causes to Aristotle’s four. Philoponus was a Christian Aristotelian who defended creation from nothing, and was cited by Galileo as an inspiration for the impulse theory of motion. The impulse theory decouples physical motion from any teleology, paving the way for early modern mechanism.

Next in thus series: Aristotle on the Platonic Good

More On the First Cause

Referring to Odysseus’ speech that inspires, unifies, and invigorates the Greeks in Homer’s Iliad, from which Aristotle quotes in the final sentence of book Lambda, translator Joe Sachs says in a footnote, “Similarly, the divine intellect described by Aristotle does not create things or the world, but confers upon them their worldhood and thinghood” (Metaphysics, p. 252n). It is that which the what-it-is of every other thing presupposes. For Aristotle, the thought thinking itself identified with the first cause is the condition of their intelligibility, and the condition of the possibility of there being any intelligibility at all. Otherwise, everything would be in “chaos and night”.

For Aristotle, there could be no such thing as a beginning of time, nor could there be anything “before” time, since before and after presuppose time. The first cause and the stars persist forever, but to my knowledge he never clearly refers to anything being strictly eternal or outside of time altogether, as is true of God for Augustine.

Platonic forms might be outside of time, but Aristotle does not recognize forms of the Platonic sort. However, he says that the hylomorphic kind of form he does recognize is not itself subject to becoming or change. What becomes or changes is the composite of form and matter.

The first cause is also said to be exempt from becoming and change. We have recently seen, though, that Aristotle has a very specific concept of becoming and change. Any kind of new state — whether of body, soul, intellect, or knowledge — does not count for it as a becoming or a change.

The intuition behind this seems to be that becoming and change apply to processes that are continuous, whereas a new state may be considered to be something discrete. With composite things, he says that a new state may also be accompanied by a change or becoming in something else that is related to it.

The first cause, though, would be unaffected by anything else, so this would probably prevent its having a new state. Also, as a pure entelechy, it should always be in a state of completion or fulfillment, which would probably also rule out its having any new state. So while not technically eternal in the Augustinian sense of outside of time altogether, according to Aristotle it persists forever inside of time, without becoming or change, and it seems not to have any new states either.

The “firstness” of the first cause, then, does not refer to any kind of firstness in time. It is first in the sense that everything else has a dependency on it, while it has no dependency on anything else.

A puzzle related to the first cause is that it seems it is supposed to be both a pure that-for-the-sake-of-which, and a non-perceptible independent particular thing that persists forever. In general, we would not expect any particular thing to be a pure that-for-the-sake-of-which. But perhaps the thought thinking itself that he says characterizes the first cause is in fact a bridging term that could meet the conditions for both.

Thought thinking itself seems as if it may be the same as pure contemplation (theoria). In the Nicomachean Ethics, he says that contemplation seems more divine than human, and seems to feel a need to justify his claim that it applies to humans at all, but he associates it with what he considers to be the highest possible human virtue. As the highest possible virtue, it would qualify as an unconditional that-for-the-sake-of-which. If it is not just the idea of thought thinking itself but an actual thought thinking itself, then it is also a particular thing.

He also identifies it with the good and the beautiful, but this does not mean the Platonic idea of the Good as a logical universal that is supposed to have a univocal meaning. What gives it universal import is not logical universality, but its unique concrete relation to all other things. The concrete particular thing that is pure thought thinking itself is superlatively good and beautiful, just because it is a pure entelechy. A pure entelechy for Aristotle is itself the highest conceivable perfection, and is thus easily equated with the good and the beautiful in an unqualified sense.

Last post in this series: Mathematical Things and Forms

Aporias

“Aporia” is Aristotle’s Greek technical term used by many philosophers in English for what Sachs in his glossary to the Metaphysics calls an “impasse” or “logical stalemate that seems to make a question unanswerable. In fact, it is the impasses that reveal what the genuine questions are” (p. lv).

Book Beta (III) of the Metaphysics develops many such impasses. I take this as evidence of Aristotle’s extraordinary intellectual honesty and depth of insight.

Aristotle writes, “[T]hose who inquire without first coming to an impasse are like people who are ignorant of which way they need to walk, and on top of these things, …one never knows whether one has found the thing sought for or not. For the end is not apparent to this one, but to the one who has first been at an impasse it is clear. And further, one must be better off for judging if one has heard all the disputing arguments as if they were opponents in a lawsuit” (ch. 1, p. 35).

“About all these things it is not only difficult to find a way to the truth, but it is not even an easy thing to articulate the difficulties well” (p. 37).

For anyone who has been following recent posts a little, we have seen abundant examples of such challenging but fruitful impasses in the development of Hegel’s Logic. Those were not just some weird things that Hegel cooked up, but yet more evidence of Hegel’s profoundly Aristotelian approach.

Aristotle mentions a long series of such impasses related to the subject matter of the Metaphysics, including those about the nature and number of causes; whether causes are universal or particular; whether there are things beyond perceptible things; the status of mathematical objects; and whether there are causes that are independent of what he calls matter (or “material”, as Sachs calls it to help disambiguate Aristotle’s more “logical” distinction from modern physicalistic concepts).

“Furthermore, the most difficult question of all, that has in it the greatest impasse, is whether one and being, as the Pythagoreans and Plato said, are not anything different, but are the thinghood of things — or whether this is not so, but the underlying thing is something different” (p. 36).

“And there is a question whether the sources of things are universal or like particular things, and whether they have being potentially or at work, and in turn whether they are at work in some other way or by way of motion” (p. 37).

“But now if there are a number of kinds of knowledge of the causes, and a different one for a different source, which of these ought one to say is the one… being sought?” (ch. 2, p. 36).

“And in general, is there one or more than one kind of knowledge about all beings? And if there is not one, with what sort of beings ought one to place this kind of knowledge? But that there is one about them all is not reasonable; for then there would also be one kind of demonstrative knowledge about all attributes” (p. 39).

“But it is not possible for either oneness or being to be a single genus of things…. [I]f oneness or being is a genus, no differentia would either be or be one…. And on top of these things, the differentia are sources still more than are the genera” (ch. 3, p. 43).

“So from these things, it seems that the predicates applied directly to the individual things are sources more than are the general classes; but then in turn, in what way one ought to understand these to be sources is not easy to say” (p. 44).

“For if there is nothing apart from particular things, while the particulars are infinite, how is it possible to get a hold of a knowledge of infinitely many things? For insofar as something is one and the same, and insofar as it is present as a universal, in this way we know everything. But if this is necessary, and there has to be something apart from particulars, the general classes of things would have to have being apart from the particulars…. But we just went through an argument that this is impossible” (ch. 4, p. 44).

“Now if there is nothing apart from the particulars, there could be nothing intelligible, but everything would be perceptible and of nothing could there be knowledge, unless someone claims that perception is knowledge. What’s more, neither could there be anything everlasting or motionless (since all perceptible things pass away and are in motion). But surely if there is nothing everlasting, neither could there be coming-into-being. For there must be something that comes into being and something out of which it comes into being” (pp. 44-45).

“And an impasse no lesser than any has been neglected by both present and earlier thinkers, as to whether the sources of destructible and indestructible things are the same or different. For if they are the same, in what way and through what cause are some things destructible and others indestructible?…. But about mythological subtleties it is not worthwhile to inquire seriously; but on the part of those who speak by means of demonstrations, one must learn by persistent questioning why in the world, when things come from the same sources, some of the things have an everlasting nature but others pass away. But since they neither state any cause, nor is it reasonable that it be so, it is clear that there could not be the same sources or causes of them” (p. 46).

“[B]ut if there are different sources, one impasse is whether they themselves would be destructible or indestructible…. Furthermore, no one has even tried to speak about different sources, but all say that the same sources belong to all things. But they gulp down the thing first stated as an impasse as though taking it to be something small.”

“But the most difficult thing of all to examine, as well as the most necessary for knowing the truth, is whether being and oneness are the thinghood of things…. But surely if there should be some being-itself and one-itself, there is a considerable impasse about how there would be anything besides these — I mean how things will be more than one” (pp. 47-48).

“So it is necessary to raise both these impasses about the sources, and one as to whether they are universal or what we call particular. For if they are universals, they will not be independent things. (For none of the common predicates signifies a this but rather an of-this-sort, while an independent thing is a this….) So if the sources are universal, these things follow; but if they are not universal but are in the same way as particulars, there will be no knowledge, since of all things the knowledge is universal” (ch. 6, pp. 51-52).

Next in this series: Being as Such?

Parmenides

The late 6th or early 5th century BCE poet Parmenides of Elea was commonly regarded in the Greek tradition as a philosopher. Apparently his only work was a poem of 800 or so verses in epic hexameter form, of which about 160 are known from quotations in later authors, principally the commentary by the neoplatonist Simplicius on Aristotle’s Physics.

Parmenides may have been the first person to make strong claims purportedly grounded in nothing but pure reason. At the same time, he drew a sharp distinction between appearance and reality. He achieved notoriety among his fellow Greeks because his claims contradicted all experience. His disciple Zeno used Parmenidean principles to “prove” that arrows cannot fly, and that the speedy Achilles could never overtake a tortoise that had a head start.

According to Parmenides, we can “neither know, or attain to, or express, non-being”. He concluded from this that all distinction, becoming, and motion were mere appearances of “the way of error in which the ignorant and double-minded mortals wander. Perplexity of mind sways the erring sense. Those who believe Being and non-being to be the same, and then again not the same, are like deaf and blind men surprised, like hordes confusedly driven”.

“But the truth is only the ‘is’; this is neither begotten of anything else, nor transient, entire, alone in its class, unmoved and without end; it neither was, nor will be, but is at once the all. For what birth wouldst thou seek for it? How and whence should it be augmented? That it should be from that which is not, I shall allow thee neither to say nor to think, for neither can it be said or thought that the ‘is’ is not. What necessity had either later or earlier made it begin from the nothing? Thus must it throughout only be or not be; nor will any force of conviction ever make something else arise out of that which is not. Thus origination has disappeared, and decease is incredible. Being is not separable, for it is entirely like itself; it is nowhere more, else would it not hold together, nor is it less, for everything is full of Being. The all is one coherent whole, for Being flows into unison with Being: it is unchangeable and rests securely in itself; the force of necessity holds it within the bounds of limitation. It cannot hence be said that it is imperfect; for it is without defect, while non-existence is wanting in all” (quoted in Hegel, History of Philosophy vol. 1, Haldane trans., pp. 252-253).

Plato treats Parmenides with considerable respect, but fundamentally rejects his blunt teaching about being and non-being, replacing it with far subtler views, e.g., in The Sophist.

Aristotle says that Plato (and the atomist Democritus, whose writings are lost) were the first practitioners of extended philosophical argument, and I consider that the true beginning of philosophy; it seems to me Parmenides only made assertions and claimed they were grounded in pure reason. In his poem, the key claims are presented as revelations from a goddess. Much later, Kant would argue that nothing follows from pure reason alone.

According to Hegel’s History of Philosophy lectures, “This beginning is certainly still dim and indefinite, and we cannot say much of what it involves; but to take up this position certainly is to develop Philosophy proper, which has not hitherto existed”. Hegel says Spinoza tells us correctly that all determination is based on negation, but “Parmenides says, whatever form the negation may take, it does not exist at all” (p. 254). Spinoza scholars have criticized the claim about Spinoza, but in this context that is a side issue.

Hegel’s association of Parmenides with the beginning of philosophy needs to be understood in terms of his insistence on the inherent defectiveness of beginnings and the positive, provocative role of failures of thought. In differing degrees, Hegel also actually recognizes two other beginnings of philosophy as well — in the figurative thought of the world’s various religious traditions before Parmenides (who appears only halfway through volume 1 of Hegel’s History), and in the dialogues of Plato, with whom Hegel’s second volume begins. For Hegel, Parmenides’ bare thought of Being and denial of the basis of all determination represent an absolute failure of thought and an impossibility, but he nonetheless credits that failure and impossibility as having defined a problem that provoked all later development.

I consider it quite possible that Aristotle’s brief remarks about “being qua being” in two books of the Metaphysics were a kind of response to the Parmenidean problem. Traditionally, this has been claimed to be the subject matter of the Metaphysics, but both times Aristotle raises the problem explicitly, his discussion is limited to arguing for the moral necessity of the principle of noncontradiction, against the Sophists. In effect, he says that serious people must by definition take their commitments seriously, and therefore they do not contradict their own commitments.

Noncontradiction has a great importance for integrity in ethics, which was to be taken up anew by Kant and Hegel, with their emphasis on unity of apperception. But as Hegel points out explicitly in the Logic, pure being by itself is logically empty and sterile. In first philosophy, nothing follows from being qua being. (See also Hegel on Being.)