Principles of Substance

“Chapter 5 of book Lambda constitutes a veritable pivot, not in the sense that, as the traditional reading would have it, it would bring to a close a hypothetical first part, or a treatise on sensible substances, in order to introduce a second part, or a treatise on separate substance, but because on the contrary it enunciates the principle of their continuity” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 173, my translation throughout).

“It is indeed in Lambda 5 that it is necessary to seek the key to the unity of book Lambda, and thereby of metaphysics, understood, according to the minimal definition suggested by Lambda 1, as a science distinct from both physics and theology; but equally, and this time against the onto-theological understanding of it, as a science that is not scissionable between a science of common being and a science of the first being — or this time between ontology and theology” (pp. 173-174).

“Lambda 5 in effect contains responses to two of the fundamental questions of Lambda 1, that is to say that of the nature of what is separate, and that of the unity of the principles of sensible substance. These responses are made possible by the results, both positive and negative, of the inquiries conducted in Lambda 2 through 4: the extension of dunamis to the eternal sensibles (Lambda 2); the exclusion of separate Forms (Lambda 3); the distinction between principle and element (Lambda 4). And they have one same term in common: that of energeia. Lambda 5 states in effect at the same time that dunamis and energeia are the common principles of all substances by analogy, and that the separate must be conceived as energeia and not as form. Proceeding from this, it remains for the following chapters, Lambda 6 through 10, to elucidate the nature of separate substance understood as ousia energeia, insofar as it at the same time is principle and cause of the other substances, and has a or some principle(s) in common with them — an elucidation which ultimately amounts to a deepening of the notion of the analogy” (p. 174, emphasis in original).

“As was already the case in Lambda 1, separation is here invoked as a criterion of substantiality, or according to the signification established in books Zeta and Eta, which substitutes for the Platonic idea of existence apart from sensibles that of the capacity for independent existence. This criterion allows us to recall the primacy of substance over the other categories, equally posed in Lambda 1, and thereby to affirm that the causes of substance are their causes as well” (ibid).

“For the term cause (aitia), we will proceed to substitute that of principle (arkhe), in order to declare that ‘it is in another manner again that the principles are the same by analogy, that is to say act and in-potentiality'” (ibid).

Aristotle’s four causes — originally introduced in the Physics — are extremely famous. But the above already suggests that in first philosophy, his “two principles” of act and potentiality will ultimately supersede them. In a simple way, act is the end, and that-for-the-sake-of-which; potentiality is the principle of motion. Form and matter provide overlapping specifications from a more static point of view, for which act and potentiality will again tend to be substituted. Such an overlap among the causes should be no surprise, since they are intended as complementary explanations. We have already seen, for example, that Aristotle’s hylomorphism leads him to ultimately assert the identity of an embodied form with its proximate matter. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

She refers to a passage that “in associating the couple of in-potentiality and act with that of matter and form, enunciates not an equivalence, but the rules of a substitution” (p. 175). Aristotle says “In effect, in act are the form, if it is separate, as well as the composite and privation (for example, obscurity or sickness), while the matter is in-potentiality, since it is capable of becoming the two contraries” (ibid). “Act indeed serves here to express form insofar as it is capable by itself, and not only in its articulation to matter, of an independent existence. This is a great novelty in relation to Zeta and Eta, where act served to name the composite as ousia malista [ousia most of all], as alone capable of independent existence, unlike form and matter taken in themselves. Far from being a simple equivalent, act expresses form insofar as it subsists” (pp. 175-176).

This is a somewhat subtle point, but clear enough. Things that are truly equivalent are bidirectionally interchangeable, without qualification. Here she is saying act expresses form only with additional qualification, which does not license a bidirectional substitution. In effect, we have a one-directional arrow between the two terms, rather than a two-directional one.

“In these lines, the notion of act reveals the ontological sense already distinguished in Theta. On the other hand, it does not have the axiological sense with which Theta 8 charged it, in establishing its equivalence with the notions of telos [end] and of ergon [completed work]. As in Theta 9, it applies also to privation, or to the negative contrary by which matter, like form, can be said to be in-potentiality. Applied to privation, the notion of act expresses again, and paradoxically, the mode of being and this non-being. As for the notion of in-potentiality, it expresses the mode of being of matter insofar as it is precisely capable of a double becoming, — toward form, or toward privation” (p. 176).

“To the notions of matter and form, those of in-potentiality and act thus bring an ontological supplement. There is something distinctive in them, allowing them to express beings where the matter and the form are not the same. It is not only a matter of illustrating the notion of analogy, as we did earlier, in pointing out that the relation between distinct matters and forms can be the same, but more of pointing out that the notions of in-potentiality and act apply not only in the context of a single substance, but between distinct substances, and more particularly between substances where one is the cause and the other the effect (we will see later, but Theta 8 has already apprised us that they also indicate, from the one to the other, a specific relation of causality, that is to say final causality)” (ibid, emphasis in original).

“The last lines of Lambda 5 contain a first response to the question of the unification of the principles of substance. Three kinds of unity are successively indicated, which nonetheless are conjoined:”

“–at the outset, a unity of a focal kind, which consists in the primacy of substance over the other categories, which has the effect that the causes of substance are aloso the causes of all otherr things;”

“–then a unity of an analogic kind, which constitutes the principal object of Lambda 4 and 5, and in virtue of which all beings, even if constituted from different elements, nevertheless have the same principles, that is to say matter, form, and the cause of motion;”

“–and finally, a direct or transitive causal unity, in virtue of which all things have for their cause ‘that which is first in entelechy'” (p. 177).

“This enumeration, we can see, mixes transitive principles and immanent principles. If it recalls the categories of matter and form, and not those of dunamis and energeia that the preceding developments have nonetheless substituted for them, it nonetheless makes the notion of entelekheia intervene, and applies it to the first cause. The latter is no longer mentioned only, as was the case at the end of Lambda 4, as ‘that which, as first of all, moves all things’, but as ‘that which is first in entelechy’. Act, designated this time by the term entelekheia and no longer that of energeia, taken indeed in its normative and axiological sense, which is no longer only ontological, appears from this point as the notion adequate to the designation of the first cause. We find thus suggested the possibility of its extension, which the remainder of Lambda accomplishes, from the corruptible and eternal movable substances to the unmoved substance — and, on this basis, of uncovering a principle common not only to the sensible substances as a whole, but to sensible substances and to the separate substance” (ibid, emphasis in original).

Next in this series: Eternal Motion

Book Lambda: Introduction

“Book Lambda of the Metaphysics responds to the exigencies defined in book capital Alpha: to pose the good as a principle; and to determine its proper mode of causality as being that of a final cause, and not an efficient or formal cause. These two exigencies are resolved in a single proposition: the principle is act, and is without power. Act here receives its full signification: it is act and not form that is the mode of being of separate substance; but act also serves to name the good as a principle” (Gwenaëlle Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 153, my translation throughout).

We saw last time that pure act (energeia) for Aristotle — unlike any being in subcelestial nature — has the character of unmixed necessity. This is true because pure act is the only thing that fully is what it is. It is the admixture of power (dynamis) and in-potentiality (dynamei) in other things that is the source of their contingency, as not being pure act.

“If the concepts of dunamis and energeia simultaneously unify ousiology and integrate theology into it, they also bear all the singularity of the Aristotelian thought of being, and within it of the first being, insofar as the latter is conceived not as an excess of power, but as the reality of the good” (p. 154).

Ousiology would be an account of ousia, or what we call “substance” from the Latin. Again, the first cause is not first in the sense of time, but first in the sense that all other things depend on it. The whole point of calling it pure act is to separate it from the contingency of the dependent things that have power and potentiality.

The very idea of an “excess of power” is utterly alien to Aristotle. We saw before that he understands power as always being power for something definite. Only those things that also have a dependency on something outside of themselves have this kind of “power” at all, corresponding to an unrealized in-potentiality. This “power” and potentiality are the mark of their contingency, not of implacable might.

It is Plato and Plotinus who on the other hand associate superlative power with the Good or the One. But Aristotle criticizes Plato for failing to explain how the Good acts as a cause. Then Plotinus later attempts to answer Aristotle’s criticism by adapting and dwelling upon the novel theme of the excessive character of the One’s power that first emerges in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

“To read book Lambda in a unitary manner, and to find this unity in ontology, that is to say in the sense of being that dunamis and energeia express, is not at all to deny or to minimize its theological content. It is on the contrary to affirm the unity of metaphysics, against the onto-theological readings that scission it between a science of common being and a science of the first being. It is also to recognize a continuity among the different treatises that have come down to us under the name of the Metaphysics” (p. 156).

“The date of composition of book Lambda is debated by commentators. But it is necessary in any case to distinguish between the historical question of its editorial status and that of its conceptual relation to the other books of the Metaphysics, with regard to the problems to which responds to, displaces, or resolves, the analyses that it deepens” (ibid).

“The problems treated in the central books [Zeta–Eta–Theta], and most especially in book Theta, seem to us to be decisive. In Lambda, the elucidation of [1] the ontological sense of dunamis and energeia that orients Theta in its entirety; [2] the analogical relation between them in Theta 6; and [3] the anteriority of act over in-potentiality subsequently developed in Theta 8, furnish the conceptual basis as much for the analogical unification of the principles of substance, as for the principal position of ousia energeia” (ibid).

“Massively mobilized in Lambda 6 and 7, [the notions of dunamis and energeia] are absent from the introductory chapter that constitutes Lambda 1, as from the analyses of Lambda 3, and little present in Lambda 8 and 10. Nonetheless, the successive and modulated interventions of dunamis–energeia (or — and it is necessary for us to ask ourselves about this variation, of their dative form dunamei–energeia) over the course of Lambda serve each time to respond to the different questions raised in Lambda 1, which serve as the program for the book in its entirety: what is a principle (notably in its difference from an element, stoicheion, or a cause, aitia)? What are the principles common to sensible substances? What is the nature of separate substance (is it a form or not)? Finally, and these two questions are intrinsically linked, in what way is separate substance a cause, and are there principles common to all substances, sensible or separate?” (p. 157).

Here Aubry notes that while still maintaining his own preferred sense of “separate” ousia (separate as subsisting with relative independence with respect to other things) as distinct from that of Plato (separate as independent of matter subject to becoming), Aristotle nonetheless in this part of the text turns to ask questions about substance that is separate in both of these senses.

“Going forward, we will be able to extract a unitary principle for all substances, sensible or separate, that is not reducible to the unity of the material composite; and at the same time to maintain, under the auspices of this unity, a hierarchy that is not episodic or disjunctive” (p. 158).

What makes the hierarchy of substance not episodic or disjunctive in Aristotle is the explanation he provides for the mode of causality of the end and the good as that for the sake of which.

“Lambda 2 will thus substitute the notion of in-potentiality for that of matter, in order to extend it, beyond the corruptible sensible substances, to the eternal sensible substances. This positive result is followed in Lambda 3 by a negative, but decisive, result, since we will establish, against Plato, that form cannot be separate. In Lambda 4, it is this time against its reduction to an element [i.e., a constituent in the material sense] by those who wrote about nature, that the notion of principle will be redefined” (ibid).

For Aristotle, a principle of something is never reducible to a constituent part of it, and what any given thing “is” is always more than a mere sum of its parts.

“The veritable pivot of book Lambda, chapter 5 goes on to integrate these various results, negative as well as positive: the extension of dunamis to the eternal sensibles; the exclusion of form from consideration as the mode of the being of the separate; the distinction between principle and element; and going forward, [chapter 5] brings two fundamental responses to the questions posed in the introductory chapter: separate substance must be conceived as act and not as form; and dunamis and energeia are, by analogy, the principles common to all sensible substances” (ibid).

“On this basis, the central concern of chapters 6-10 will consist in determining and exploring the mode(s) of relation between separate substance and the other substances. Lambda 6 having demonstrated that separate substance as ousia energeia is the condition of the movement of the other substances, it remains to identify its mode of causality as being that of the end (Lambda 7) and of the good (Lambda 9), but also the way in which this causality operates in the case of the eternal sensibles (Lambda 8), and, finally, the whole universe (Lambda 10)” (ibid).

The whole universe coheres intelligibly, both insofar as it realizes the good, and insofar there are also explanations when things fall short or go wrong. The world we live in is not a mere whole made up of discrete parts, as the pre-Socratic writers on nature tended to assume. Neither is it the mere sequence of disconnected episodes that follows from the Platonic sole emphasis on what Aristotle calls formal causes.

Next in this series: Physics and Theology

Being and Representation

In L’Être et représentation (1999), Olivier Boulnois documents the emergence of “metaphysics” in its distinctively non-Aristotelian modern sense among various 13th century authors, including Roger Bacon, Henry of Ghent, and Siger of Brabant, leading to its decisive formulation by the Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus in the 14th century. Avicenna had already claimed that metaphysics is about “being in general”, whereas Aristotle himself had emphasized that “being is said in many ways”, which implies that there is no “being in general”.

Boulnois suggests that the 13th century authors just mentioned paved the way for Scotus’ innovations by already treating being as a concept. We are so used to that, that it is hard for us to grasp what Aristotle means in suggesting that “being in general” is not a proper concept at all.

Scotus argued against Aristotle that there is a unifying, logically minimal criterion of being, and it is representability. To be representable is to be “not nothing”. Unicorns and other imaginary creatures are representable, whereas Aristotle would not have called them beings. Scotus’ concept of representation seems to be purely logical; to have a representation of something is not necessarily to have understanding of it. For Scotus, God and creatures are equally representable, even though creatures, as finite, can be properly understood by the human mind and God, as infinite, cannot. Whereas Aristotle never speaks of an infinite being — only of a perfect one — Scotus’ generic concept of being is very explicitly indifferent to distinctions between finite and infinite.

It is one thing to acknowledge representation as a logical concept among others, and quite another to give it the kind of special first place status that Scotus does in his ontology, and that Locke does in his epistemology.

Boulnois says it is with Scotus that metaphysics became linked to what Kant later called ontotheology. While separating metaphysics as the account of being from theology as the separate account of God, Scotus also made God indifferently one of the objects of metaphysics, along with all the other beings. The combination of these changes actually brought metaphysics closer to revealed theology, and helped it to be perceived as the safe handmaiden of the later Latin tradition, rather than as independent philosophical theology that some found threatening.

If one speaks of a subject of representation, it could be — in a sense of “subject” closer to that of Aristotle — that in which something stands for something, or it could be — in a modern sense — the one who represents. “In the context of representation, the soul is not the content of its thought, but rather has a representation, distinct from itself” (Boulnois, op. cit., p. 152, my translation).

It seems that for both Scotus and Locke, the mind has representations. The soul in Aristotle is thoughts and feelings and capabilities, not something standing behind them. (See also Repraesentatio; Ontology; Being, Existence; Being and Representation Revisited.)