Fichte’s Ethics

Fichte’s System of Ethics (1798) has been called the most important work of moral philosophy between Kant and Hegel. Unavailable in English till 2005, it is apparently a source for some key themes in Hegel’s Phenomenology. It also shows the more nuanced side of Fichte that impressed Paul Ricoeur. Fichte was an unusually powerful speaker, reportedly electrifying audiences with his intensity and bold rhetorical strokes. His thought greatly influenced German Romanticism.

Fichte begins by asking, “how can something objective ever become something subjective; how can a being for itself ever become something represented (vorgestellt)?” (p. 7). He continues, “No one will ever explain how this remarkable transformation takes place without finding a point where the objective and the subjective are not at all distinct from one another…. The point in question is ‘I-hood’ [Ichheit], intelligence, reason, or whatever one wishes to call it.”

“This absolute identity of the subject and the object in the I can only be inferred; it cannot be demonstrated, so to speak, ‘immediately’, as a fact of actual consciousness. As soon as any actual consciousness occurs, even if it is only the consciousness of ourselves, the separation [between subject and object] ensues…. The entire mechanism of consciousness rests on the various aspects of this separation of what is subjective from what is objective, and, in turn, on the unification of the two” (ibid; brackets and emphasis in original).

Fichte revives an explicit appeal to “intellectual intuition” that Kant had proscribed and I find untenable, but carefully limits its scope, mainly using it for the existence of “the I”. Importantly, as the above quote shows, he does not claim to have a direct intuition of the identity of subject and object.

Next he asks, “how we ever come to take some of our representations to be the ground of a being” (p. 8), and answers, “I find myself to be acting efficaciously in the world of sense” (ibid).

This seems like a good pragmatist insight. Here and above, he asks questions about the status of representation and how it comes to be that anticipate aspects of Brandom’s work in this area.

“Insofar as I know anything at all I know that I am active” (p. 9). “I posit myself as active” (p. 10). Hegel criticized Fichte’s reliance on “positing” or postulation of various key notions.

Fichte goes on to specify that “I ascribe to myself a determinate activity, precisely this one and not another” (p. 11), and determinate activity implies resistance. “Wherever and whenever you see activity, you see resistance as well, for otherwise you see no activity” (p. 12). “[F]reedom can never be posited as able to do anything whatsoever about this situation, since otherwise freedom itself, along with all consciousness and all being, would fall away” (p. 13).

Throughout his career, while picking up and intensifying Kant’s occasional voluntarist rhetoric and even aiming to build a system around it, Fichte made things more interesting and complicated by emphasizing that objectivity always involves a resistance to free action. Fichte goes on to specify that activity involves a kind of agility — i.e., ways of acting successfully in spite of the the object’s or the world’s resistance. Here we find ourselves on the threshold at least of the territory more fully explored by Ricoeur in Freedom and Nature (see Ricoeurian Choice; Voluntary Action).

“I posit myself as free insofar as I explain a sensible acting, or being, as arising from my concept, which is then called the ‘concept of an end'” (p. 14). “[T]he concept of an end, as it is called, is not itself determined in turn by something objective but is determined absolutely by itself” (p. 15).

Freedom here is acting in accordance with concepts or ends. While Kant and Fichte both tended to identify this with a kind of exemption from the natural order, this second move is separable from the first. The need to treat freedom as an exemption presupposes a view of natural causality as completely rigid. But more fluid “tendencies” also exhibit the resistance that Fichte makes characteristic of objectivity.

He then claims in effect that the resistance we encounter in the world of sense is actually nothing but an appearance. “[N]othing is absolute but pure activity…. Nothing is purely true but my self-sufficiency” (p. 17). I think Hegel and Ricoeur would each in their own way regard formulations like this as one-sided, and as a step back from his previous acknowledgement of resistance to our action as a basic fact of life, but that is in part because Hegel and Ricoeur both in a sense vindicate appearance itself as being something more than mere appearance.

Fichte is not actually contradicting himself or going back on a promise here, but moving to a different level. I think his point is that objects as separate are ultimately always a matter of appearance. I would agree as far as strictly separate objects are concerned, but I see objectivity in the first instance as a resistant but non-rigid sea of non-separate relations, tendencies, and currents that is not just an appearance, and is only secondarily divided into separate objects that insofar as they are separate are just appearances.

He comes a bit closer to Hegel again when he says “it is the character of the I that the acting subject and that upon which it acts are one and the same” (p. 28; emphasis in original).

But a few pages later he concludes that “all willing is absolute” and that the will is “absolute indeterminability through anything outside itself” (p. 33). “As an absolute force with consciousness, the I tears itself away — away from the I as a given absolute, lacking force and consciousness” (p. 37). One of Hegel’s main concerns in the Phenomenology was to show the inadequacy and undesirability of this ideal of total “independence”. I take “absolute force” as a kind of poetic language in Fichte’s rhetorical style that I would not adopt.

He repeats Kant’s claim that the will has “the power of causality by means of mere concepts” (p. 41). I agree that concepts can have a kind of efficacy in the world, though I would not call it causality in the narrow modern sense. On the other hand, I think talk about will as if it were a separate power not encompassed by the union of feeling and reason is misguided. I don’t think there is any will-talk that doesn’t have a better analogue in feeling-and-reason talk. So the question of the will’s causality does not even come up for me.

“According to Kant, freedom is the power to begin a state [Zustand] (a being and subsistence) absolutely” (p. 41). I don’t consider formulations like this to be typical of Kant’s thought as a whole. It rhetorically recalls voluntarist views in the Latin medieval tradition that saw human freedom as a sort of microcosmic analogue of creation from nothing. The notion of literal creation from nothing, though it achieved wide circulation in the monotheistic traditions, is actually an extreme view in theology whose main use has been to support radically supernaturalist claims of all sorts that are entirely separable from the broader spiritual purport of the world’s religions. Scholars have pointed out that creation from nothing is not inherent to the Old Testament text, and only emerged as an interpretation in the Hellenistic period with figures like Philo of Alexandria. One of Kant’s great contributions was actually to have developed other ways of talking about freedom that do not presuppose any of this kind of strong supernaturalism. (I adhere to the view commonly attributed to Aristotle in the Latin tradition that nothing comes from nothing in any literal sense.) Fichte of course was not at all a supernaturalist like Philo; but like Kant and even more so, in relation to freedom he nonetheless used some of the same rhetorical strategies originally developed to “rationalize” supernaturalism. (And if nature already participates in divinity, supernaturalism is superfluous.)

Fichte improves things by specifying, “It is not the case that the state that is begun absolutely is simply connected to nothing at all, for a finite rational being thinks only by means of mediation and connections. The connection in question, however, is not a connection to another being, but to a thinking” (ibid).

Much as I welcome this emphasis on mediation and connections, it is important to mention that he earlier strongly relied on the claim of a limited kind of direct intellectual self-intuition (pp. 25ff). Fichte was honest enough to acknowledge that he did not have inferential grounds for his strong notion of “I-hood”. The texture of his thought is a unique hybrid of a sort of inferentialism about things in general with an intuitionism about self. The points at which he relies on intuition are the same places where he applies the bold rhetorical strokes for which he initially became famous and popular with the Romantics. But in the long run, it is his emphasis on mediation — both in the form of inference and in the form of resistance to our projects — that holds the greatest value.

In a somewhat Kantian style that seems both more abstract and more simple and direct than that of Kant himself, Fichte sets out to “deduce” first the principle of morality, then the reality and applicability of the principle. For Fichte, the single principle of morality is the “absolute autonomy of reason” (p. 60). Reason is finite, but depends on nothing outside itself. Consciousness is always limited and in that sense determined by the objects it “finds”, but in conscience there is a pure identity of subject and object. Here again we can see how Hegel was in part taking up Fichtean ways of speaking.

Unlike Hegel, though, for Fichte “Conscience never errs and cannot err, for it is the immediate consciousness of our pure, original I, over and above which there is no other kind of consciousness. Conscience is itself the judge of all convictions and acknowledges no higher judge above itself. It has final jurisdiction and is subject to no appeal. To want to go beyond conscience means to want to go beyond oneself and to separate oneself from oneself” (p. 165).

From this it seems clear that Fichte recognizes no standpoint higher than that of Conscience. He identifies morality with good will (p. 149). Hegel on the other hand regards mutual recognition as a higher standpoint than that of the autonomy of Conscience. Although Fichte briefly refers to the concept of mutual recognition he had developed in Foundations of Natural Right (1797), the System of Ethics revolves mainly around a version of Kantian autonomy: “the formal law of morals [Sitten] is…. do what you can now regard with conviction as a duty, and do it solely because you have convinced yourself that it is a duty” (p. 155).

Surprisingly, he says “all free actions are predestined through reason for all eternity” (p. 216), and claims to have reconciled freedom with predestination. This provides a noteworthy additional perspective on his earlier love-hate relation with Spinoza.

“The world must become for me what my body is. This goal is of course unreachable; but I am nevertheless supposed to draw constantly nearer to it,…. This process of drawing nearer to my final end is my finite end.”

“The fact that nature placed me at one point or another and that nature instead of me took the first step, as it were, on this path to infinity does not infringe upon my freedom” (pp. 217-218). This theme of “drawing nearer” and the “path to infinity” was sharply criticized by Hegel, but I rather like it.

I worry a bit when he says “The necessary goal of all virtuous people is therefore unanimous agreement [and] uniformity of acting” (p. 224). He did however also say that “anyone who acts on authority necessarily acts unconscionably” (p. 167; emphasis in original).

“I possess absolute freedom of thought… freedom before my own conscience…. [I]t is unconscionable for me to make the way in which I tend to the preservation of my body dependent on the opinions of others” (p. 225).

“What lies outside my body, and hence the entire sensible world, is a common good or possession” (ibid). “[I]n communal matters, I ought to act only in accordance with the presumptive general will” (p. 228). “I should… act in such a way that things have to become better. This is purely and simply a duty” (ibid). “As a means for bringing about the rational state, I have to take into account the present condition of the makeshift state” (ibid). In the case of unjust tyranny and oppression, “every honorable person could then in good conscience endeavor to overthrow this [makeshift] state entirely, but only if he has ascertained the common will” (ibid; emphasis in original).

“How then can one become aware of that upon which everyone agrees? This is not something one could learn simply by asking around; hence it must be possible to presuppose something that can be viewed as the creed of the community or as its symbol.”

“It is implicit in the concept of such a symbol or creed that it presents something not in a very precise or determinate manner, but only in a general way…. Moreover,… the symbol is supposed to be appropriate for everyone…. [T]he symbol does not consist in abstract propositions but rather in sensory presentations of the latter. The sensible presentation is merely the costume; what is properly symbolic is the concept. That precisely this presentation had to be chosen is something that was dictated by need… because they were not yet capable of distinguishing the costume that the concept had received by chance from the essence of the concept” (p. 230).

“[W]hat is most essential about every possible symbol or creed is expressed in the proposition, ‘there is something or other that is supersensible and elevated above all nature’…. What this supersensible something may be, the identity of this truly holy and sanctifying spirit, the character of the truly moral way of thinking: it is precisely concerning these points that the community seeks to determine and to unify itself more and more, by mutual interaction” (pp. 230-231).

Here we see some anticipation of Hegel’s account of religion in the Phenomenology.

“Not only am I permitted to have my own private conviction concerning the constitution of the state and the system of the church, I am even obliged by my conscience to develop this same conviction just as self-sufficiently and as broadly as I can.”

“Such development… is possible, however, only by means of reciprocal communication with others.” (p. 233).

Like Hegel, he makes mutual recognition a foundation of religion.

“The distinguishing and characteristic feature of the learned public is absolute freedom and independence of thinking” (p. 238). “Since scholarly inquiry is absolutely free, so must access to it be open to everyone” (p. 239).

“No earthly power has the right to issue commands regarding matters of conscience…. The state and the church must tolerate scholars” (ibid).

“All of a person’s efficacious acting within society has the following goal: all human beings are supposed to be in agreement; but the only matters that all human beings can agree on are those that are purely rational, for this is all they have in common” (p. 241).

“Kant has asserted that every human being is himself an end, and this assertion has received universal assent” (p. 244).

“The moral law, which extends to infinity, absolutely commands us to treat human beings as if they were forever capable of being perfected and remaining so, and this same law absolutely prohibits us from treating human beings in the opposite manner” (p. 229). Fichte argues at some length that this last point would be true no matter how dismal we might judge actual history to be.

Unfortunately, Fichte retained some of the prejudices of his time and place. He thought women should be subordinate to men, and his contribution to early German nationalism was not without a chauvinistic side.

Ricoeur on Historiography

The overarching objective of part 2 of the first volume of Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative is to show that it is indeed plausible to apply a literature-based notion of narrative to the writing of history. This has to be distinguished, however, from a naive notion of “narrative history”.

With his usual honesty, he dwells at length on two major trends in historiography that are typically understood to be completely opposed to a narrative approach — the French Annales school, and work derived from logical positivism. He then builds a case that in spite of everything, there is an essential narrative aspect to history, even if it is only indirect.

Ricoeur sagely observes that debates on historiography often end up in the same philosophical territory as the Latin medieval debates on nominalism and realism. He says he will apply the later Husserl’s concept of “questioning back”, concerned more with the genesis of meaning than with epistemology, to uncover the intentionality of historical knowledge.

The French Annales school is famous for emphasizing long periods in history rather than episodic events, and economics, “mentalities”, and cultural practices over the superficial drama of politics and actions of individuals. Even though he ultimately wants to push this meta-level interpretation in a different direction, Ricoeur dwells at length on his admiration for their achievements. I am myself quite sympathetic to an approach to history broadly of this sort.

From the seemingly unpromising ground of the approach to history that developed from the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, he extracts the idea of what he calls, following Bachelard, an epistemological break between simple narrative and historical explanation. Historical explanation has goals of objective truth that do not apply to literature. Ricoeur says the break opened up by an emphasis on explanation is real and should be maintained, even if we end up deploying a very different kind of explanation from what those influenced by logical positivism had in mind.

He also discusses the work of Max Weber, Raymond Aron, and Hayden White.

Weber propounded a notion of what Ricoeur calls singular causal imputation in history that is worlds apart from the positivist “covering law” approach of Hempel, which looked for something analogous to mathematical-physical laws in sociology to explain history. Looking for the “adequate” cause of a singular development requires an extensive interpretive effort (Weber’s famous Verstehen method for the human sciences). Weber’s analysis of the relation between Protestantism and capitalism developed a large-scale singular causal chain that involved roles, attitudes, and institutions rather than individuals. Such imputations of cause for large-scale singular things must necessarily consider many dimensions, and many contingent developments. This reminds me of my own characterization of Aristotelian causality.

Raymond Aron famously applied to history what I would call the Kantian point that, as Ricoeur puts it, “Understanding — even the understanding of another person in everyday life — is never a direct intuition but always a reconstruction” (p. 97). No such thing as a historical reality exists ready-made. Historical explanation involves real work.

Ricoeur calls Hayden White’s Metahistory a “poetics” of historiography. White wrote at length about historical “explanation by emplotment”.

Ricoeur refers to the historian’s credo of objectivity as “a secret dream of emulating the cartographer or the diamond cutter” (p. 176) “[T]he facts dealt with in historical works, when they are taken one at a time, interlock with one another in the manner of geographical maps, if the same rules of projection and scale are respected, or, yet again, like the different facets of the same precious stone…. The final corollary is that, precisely because history has objectivity as a project, it can pose the limits of objectivity as a specific problem. This question is foreign to the innocence and naivete of the narrator” (ibid).

“[H]istory replaces the subject of action with entities that are anonymous, in the strict sense of the term…. This new history thus seems to lack characters. And without characters, it could not continue to be narrative…. It no longer seems to refer to the living present of a subjective consciousness…. [The] ‘times of history’, to use Braudel’s expression, seem to be without any apparent relation to the time of action…. [This heightens] the necessity for a new type of dialectic between historical inquiry and narrative competence” (p. 177).

However, criticism of the “covering law” model has already led to a “diversification of explanation that makes it less foreign to narrative understanding, without thereby denying the explanatory vocation” (p. 178). Meanwhile, “to narrate is already to explain…. [and] narrative is in no way bound to the confused and limited perspective of the agents and the eye-witnesses of the events” (ibid).

Ricoeur says that narrative cannot replace an explanatory approach to history. “This question must be unreservedly answered in the negative. A gap remains between narrative explanation and historical explanation, a gap that is inquiry as such. This gap prevents us from treating history… as a species of the genus ‘story'” (p. 179). History has its own explanatory procedures, its own “first order entities”, and its own time, or rather plurality of times.

He argues, however, that “the paradox of historical knowledge… transposes onto a higher level of complexity the paradox constitutive of the operation of narrative configuration” (p. 180). The first-order entities of history will turn out to be quasi-characters that “bear the indelible mark of concrete agents’ participatory belonging to the sphere of praxis and narrative” (p. 181). Weber’s notion of adequate singular causal imputation, he suggests, “constitutes the requisite mediation between the opposing poles of explanation and understanding” (ibid). The kind of contingency built into what Ricoeur now calls “historical causality” would prevent any historical determinism. Historical causality will mediate between narrative explanation and explanation by law.

Ricoeur thinks apparently non-narrative history nonetheless has an indirect narrativity. He tests this through an examination of several works of the Annales school, especially Braudel’s The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. He finds Braudel’s entire work to be organized by a “quasi-plot”. Braudel has “invented a new kind of plot” (p. 216) that “teaches us to unite structures, cycles, and events by joining together heterogeneous temporalities and contradictory chronicles” (ibid).

Ricoeur finds a kind of quasi-events at the level of long duration. “For me, the event is not necessarily something brief and nervous, like some sort of explosion. It is a variable of the plot…. For the historian, the event continually appears in the very midst of structures” (p. 217). Ricoeur argues that people and politics thus remain effectively important for Braudel and the other Annales historians, even though they overtly focus on structures. Looking to several treatments of the French revolution, Ricoeur concludes that their brilliant and convincing analyses of mentality and ideology do not eliminate the role of an event of taking power. “[A]ll change enters the field of history as a quasi-event” (p. 224; emphasis in original).

Earlier, while discussing the work of Raymond Aron, he says the historian in pursuing the work of explanation is concerned with a vast field of “what ifs”. In effect, this invokes something like Aristotelian potentiality, the importance of which Ricoeur has elsewhere explicitly recognized. I would definitely include the historical structures analyzed by the Annales school and others in my previous generalization that structuralist concepts of structure should be understood as defining fields of multiple potentiality, not some kind of univocal determination. Although deeper understanding requires a lengthy detour through the mode of potentiality, it never reduces away the ultimate dependence of potentiality on actuality. I see Ricoeur’s quasi-events as occurring on a plane of actuality correlative to the potentiality of structure. (See also Combining Time and Narrative).

Next in this series: Literary Narrative

Ascription of Actions

After the disappointing result from traditional analytic semantic approaches to action, Ricoeur turns to the pragmatics of action, and to applying Strawson’s notion of ascription to persons.

He discusses Aristotle’s distinctions of willing and unwilling actions and choice at some length. Unlike Donald Davidson, who only had a modern notion of (physical) cause to work with, Aristotle had a neutral concept of arche or “principle” that applies equally well to ethical and physical instances, like his broad notion of “cause” as a reason why. According to Ricoeur, Aristotle ascribes actions to a principle that is a “self”. Ricoeur also notes that Aristotle speaks of us as synaition (co-responsible for, or co-causing in Aristotle’s broader sense) our dispositions and character.

Aristotle himself did not actually use a word like “self” in this context, but attributed choice to “either intellect fused with desire, or desire fused with thinking, and such a source is a human being” (Nicomachean Ethics, Sachs translation, p. 104). Even the term “fused with” turns out to be an interpolation by the translator here — the Greek just has “intellect and desire”, and says nothing about how they are related. I agree there is a kind of reflexivity within the thought and desire involved here, but I’ve been taking it to be of the adverbial sort. I have so far used the term “self” either adverbially, or for a matter-of-fact emotional constitution inter-articulated with an intimate but anonymous transcendental but historical ethos. (Later note — in an earlier work, Ricoeur had proposed a notion of ethical Self as an aim, which I am now adding into my own view. Such an interpolation seems at least compatible with the broad spirit of Aristotle, despite its anachronistic character at a literal level.)

I’m awaiting further clarification of how Ricoeur’s ipse identity is supposed to work in a positive sense (through a sort of continuity of development?); how that would apply to the combination that is mentioned but not elaborated on by Aristotle; and whether the application of ipse identity — which I suspect would be warmly welcomed in a Thomistic context — is intended to be understood as historically Aristotelian, or as a post-Aristotelian original thought. The novel semantic category of ipse identity seems well suited to capture intuitions uniting self with responsibility, and potentially to solve some difficulties with which I have struggled. But so far, its application here is not fully explained. (For the beginning of a resolution, see Narrative Identity. For an actual resolution, see Self, Infinity.)

Turning to Strawson, Ricoeur argues that ascription of actions to persons is different from logical attribution of properties to objects, and that it implicitly involves the kind of reflexivity found in self-designating utterance. (I can grant the difference between ascription and attribution, but it is as yet unclear to me in what way he wants us to see that ascription necessarily involves reflexivity, since ascription does not involve self-designation.) He says we first ascribe actions to persons, and only then do we ask about their intentions. Motives, he says, are mainly relevant in hindsight when we ask about an action that has occurred. Also, the “who” behind an action is expected to have a definite answer, whereas motives depend on other motives, and so on indefinitely. The notion of an agent as the “who”, Ricoeur says, is this time successfully reached. Its actual meaning depends on the whole related network of the “what”, “why”, and “how” of the action.

Ricoeur nonetheless finds a difficulty in Strawson’s approach as well. The “who” again turns out to be subordinated to an ontology that reduces away its specificity — this time, an ontology of generalized “somethings”. Ricoeur had argued previously that the reflexivity of a self makes it not properly analyzable as a thing at all, because “things” are understood as having the simple idem kind of identity, but selves have the reflexive, ipse kind of identity. He makes the further point that ascription of an action to a self differs from ordinary description, in that it implies an attribution of responsibility.

He notes that for Aristotle, ascriptions of actions have ethical or juridical significance from the start. He also notes that ascription of an action implicitly involves a judgment that the action is within the agent’s power. Then, there are questions of how we assess responsibility for the whole chain of effects of an action, and how we apportion shared responsibility among multiple agents. He concludes that we still have work to do to understand the thinking initiation of actions, and that the framework of simple ascription of actions to selves is still too abstract to do the job.

Next in this series: Narrative Identity

Values, Causality

I’ve said that normativity consists of derived ends in a space of multiple potentialities. Meanwhile, on the side of actuality, when we interact with the order of efficient causes, we become subject to the constraints of structural causality. In between come our finite choices. (See also Potentiality, Actuality; Fragility of the Good.)

Taking responsibility is a profound act that can have a kind of indirect efficacy of its own. Independent of the direct operation of our actual power and the order of efficient causes, taking responsibility can partially rewrite what would have been, at the broader level of meaning. Since we are so much creatures of meaning, this more circuitous route through the much larger space of potentiality can end up affecting an otherwise stubborn actuality, by changing the order of potentialities experienced by others, and thus affecting their choices.

One person alone may have no impact on the actuality, but for many together influencing one another’s choices, the story may turn out quite differently. At times, in this way even one person can end up initiating a much larger process far beyond that person’s individual power, and the total effect of many can be more than additive. In this way, what seems completely impossible can become possible, and the face of reality can be changed.

Aristotelian Causes

I’ve explained each of the four classic Aristotelian “causes” as playing what Brandom would call an expressive role, helping to explain other meaning, and pointed out how different this is from standard modern notions of what I’ve been calling univocal causality. An Aristotelian cause (aitia) is much more like a nonexclusive reason than it is like anything expressed by mechanical metaphors.

There is another very important modern way of thinking about these matters, inspired by Hume’s critique of realism about causes in the modern sense. Hume pointed out that modern-style talk about cause and effect involves a kind of inferential extrapolation from observed regular patterns of succession. Implicitly influenced by this, much work in the sciences relies directly on statistical correlations observed in data from controlled experiments. What particular causes are said to be at work then becomes a matter of optional statistical inference, subject to possible debate.

Then, too, from the side of subject matter, in fields concerned with complex dynamical systems that can only be modeled in a very tentative way — like ecology, economics, and medicine — it has come to be widely recognized that many causes combine to produce the results we see.

Both the statistical approach and what I’m gesturing at as a “complex systems” approach to causality avoid reliance on mechanical metaphors. Neither of these perspectives rules out underdetermination or overdetermination, or the simultaneous presence of both.

Aristotelian “causality” is simultaneously underdetermining and overdetermining. That is to say, in advance it leaves room for varying outcomes, but in hindsight it provides multiple rationales for a given outcome. Its purpose is to provide not certain prediction, but intelligibility and reasonableness.

In principle, nothing would stop us from combining this with statistical or complex-systems views, but these are still very different approaches. The statistical approach is quantitative and relies on counting minimally interpreted facts, where the Aristotelian approach is qualitative and puts the whole emphasis on rational interpretation. The complex-systems view relativizes causes in the modern event-based sense, without making them like any of the Aristotelian ones, none of which corresponds to an event. It is also not interpretive in the sense developed here.

One might consider mathematical-physical law as a kind of formal cause. Statistics and things like dynamic models could be taken as modern, quantitatively oriented descriptions of what I have called material tendencies. (See also Secondary Causes; Form; Aristotelian Matter; Efficient Cause; Ends; Natural Ends; Aristotelian Identity; Aristotelian Demonstration.)

Free Will and Determinism

Free will and determinism both represent overly strong claims when applied in an unqualified way. I’ve already written a bit about the evils of voluntarism.

Aristotle’s “cause” or aitia can be any kind of reason why something is the way it is, and a way that something is typically has multiple reasons of different kinds. The modern notion of cause, by contrast, is intended to provide a single, complete explanation of why an event does or does not occur. The modern notion, unlike the Aristotelian one, is univocal. (See also Equivocal Determination.)

In the reception of Aristotle, historically too much attention was paid to the identity of the underlying “something”, as contrasted to the way something is, emphasized by Aristotle himself — to the point where the standard Latin translation for ousia (Aristotle’s main word for a way of being) came to be substantia or “substance” (something standing under). By contrast, the central books of Aristotle’s Metaphysics start from the notion of something persisting through a change and ask what that is, but in addressing that question eventually reverse the order of explanation, and argue that what can best be said to be underlying just is a way that something is actively what it is. An ousia may be expressed in speech as a simple noun, but this is only a kind of shorthand that can always be unpacked into something like an adverbial expression.

In general, Aristotle suggests that we should value ends more than origins. How something turns out is much more important than where it came from.

Already in Neoplatonism, there was a decidedly non-Aristotelian turn toward putting higher value on origins than results, based on the idea that the One was the origin of everything, and nobler than everything. For monotheistic theologians, it was obvious that God as origin was superior to creation.

Aristotle ends up suggesting that what he calls efficient causes — the direct means by which change is triggered or effectuated, which would include mechanical cases like the classic bumping billiard balls — are not what is most fundamental in making things the way they are. By contrast, the Latin medievals made the efficient cause the root of all others, also applying it to God’s activity of creation from nothing.

Common early modern notions of causality started from this medieval reversal of Aristotle, assuming that efficient causes of the billiard-ball variety came first in the order of explanation. This was related to a widespread anti-Aristotelian privileging of immediacy. Kant and Hegel later developed strong critiques of the privileging of immediacy, but this aspect of their thought was not adequately understood and highlighted until recently. A reduction of all causes to allegedly immediate causes is an error common to both voluntarism and determinism.

Descartes developed a bottom-up explanatory model, starting from simple mechanical causes. This was good for science at a certain stage of development, but bad for philosophy. I would not wish to say that bottom-up explanations have no use (in delimited contexts, they most certainly do). I mean only that it is a delusion to think that nothing else is required, or that they can provide an absolute starting point.

In ethics, Aristotle’s notion of character is a nice relief from the seesaw of free will and determinism. Character is an acquired disposition to act in certain ways. The character of an individual resembles the culture of a community, and the same word (ethos) is used for both. We acquire it gradually over time, from an accumulation of our actions and things that have happened to us. Due to the contributing role of our actions in successive layers of character formation, we are in a broad way accountable for our disposition. On the other hand, it makes little sense to blame someone for acting in accordance with their disposition.