Gadamer on History of Philosophy

Gadamer’s preface to The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy (German ed. 1978, English tr. 1986) provides valuable perspective on the history of 20th-century readings of Plato and Aristotle, as well as the nonexistent or negative relation of those readings to Hegel. I’ll excerpt a few dense paragraphs and then comment.

“Hegel, it cannot be denied, did indeed grasp the speculative tendency in both Plato’s doctrine of ideas and Aristotle’s substance ontology, since his thinking was so congenial to theirs. And to that extent he is the first in modern times to break through the schema of interpretation of Plato’s doctrine of the ideas shaped by Aristotle and further developed in Neoplatonism and the Christian tradition. Nor can one say that Hegel has remained without any lasting influence on scholarship in the history of philosophy. Such good Aristotelians as Trendelenburg and Eduard Zeller owe him a great deal. Above all, Hegel was the first to make the philosophical significance of Plato’s ‘esoteric’, ‘dialectical’ dialogues accessible. However, the unitary effect connecting Plato’s and Aristotle’s logos philosophy — which did not remain hidden from Hegel — was underestimated, it seems to me, in the period following him and continues to be until this day.”

“There are various reasons why. To be sure, there was a concealed, unacknowledged Hegelianism behind the neo-Kantian interpretations of Plato in Cohen and Natorp and in their successors Cassirer, N. Hartmann, Hönigswald, and Stenzel. But given their particular mentality, it was exclusively Plato, and not in the least Aristotle, who could sustain this generation of scholars, in their critical-idealistic purposes. A complete elaboration of Hegel’s insights was totally obstructed, on the one hand, by the dogmatic overlay superimposed on Aristotle by the neo-Thomism prevailing in the Catholic camp, and on the other, by the hereditary feud between modern natural science and the Aristotelian teleological understanding of nature or, in fact, any idealistic philosophy of nature. Furthermore, when it interpreted the ‘idea’ as the ‘natural law’, thereby bringing together Plato and Galileo, the neo-Kantian interpretation of Plato, especially that of Natorp, proceeded all too provocatively with the Greek text while remaining insensitive to historical differences. If one starts from this idealistic neo-Kantian interpretation of Plato, then Aristotle’s critique of Plato can only appear as an absurd misunderstanding. This fact further contributed to the failure to recognize the unitary effect in Plato and Aristotle, thereby blocking a full incorporation of the Greek heritage into our own philosophical thought. Such naive and trivial juxtapositions as ‘Plato, the idealist’, versus ‘Aristotle, the realist’, gained universal currency, although they actually only confirmed the truly abysmal depth of prejudice in any idealism of consciousness. In addition, the schema for which Hegel provided the inspiration which construed Greek thought as not yet able to conceive of the absolute as spirit, life, and self-consciousness, did not promote a proper evaluation of the fundamental significance of Greek thought for modern philosophy.”

“Nicolai Hartmann’s dissociation of himself from neo-Kantian idealism stimulated me to try to penetrate Aristotle’s thought, and the French and English research — of Robin, Taylor, Ross, Hardie, and, above all, the incomparable Hicks — proved most helpful in my endeavors. At the time, however, I fell far short of seeing the unity in the logos philosophy, which started with Socrates’ questioning and then quickly deteriorated in the post-Aristotelian period, but which, nevertheless, permanently determined the entire conceptual apparatus of Western thought. Encountering Heidegger turned out to be decisive for me at this stage. Heidegger had worked his way through both the Catholic-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian traditions, and in appropriating Husserl’s minutely detailed art of conceptualization, he had steeled the endurance and power of intuition, which are indispensable for doing philosophy with Aristotle. Here, then, was an advocate of Aristotle who, in his directness and the freshness of his phenomenological insights, far surpassed all the traditional shadings of Aristotelianism, who surpassed Thomism and, yes, even Hegelianism. To this day hardly anything has been made public of this event, but it has had its effect on academic teaching, and my own path was defined beginning there. By the time I published my first book in 1931 (Platos dialektische Ethik), the convergence, at least in the area of practical philosophy, of the aim of Plato’s thinking with Aristotle’s conceptual distinctions had become evident to me” (pp.1-4).

In this context, Gadamer contrasts “a phenomenological exposition of their subject matter itself” (p. 5, emphasis in original) to textual analysis.

“Decades of teaching were devoted to elaborating and testing what is called here the Platonic-Aristotelian unitary effect. But in the background was the continuous challenge posed for me by the path Heidegger’s own thought took, and especially by his interpretation of Plato as the decisive step toward ‘metaphysical thought’s’ obliviousness to being (Sein)…. The following studies too, it is hoped, will serve to keep alive both Platonic dialogue and the speculative dimension common to Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel” (ibid).

Gadamer points out that common German readings of Plato and Aristotle in part reflect Hegel’s interpretations. The reference to Aristotle’s “substance ontology” reflects a common reading of the Metaphysics that I reject. Gadamer is right though to point out that Aristotle’s explicit criticisms of Plato are not the last word on Plato. He is very right that after Aristotle, there was a breakdown in continuity of understanding.

Gadamer particularly points out the role of neo-Kantian interpretation of Plato and Aristotle in promoting a shallow opposition between the two. He helps to explain how it was that Heidegger came to be regarded as dramatically advancing the study of Plato and Aristotle, which seems quite preposterous to me.

Apparently in early 20th-century Germany, neo-Kantian and neo-Thomist accounts of Plato and Aristotle were the main available alternatives. As Gadamer presents it, each of these two had its own dogmatism and shallowness.

Heidegger was doing something clearly different from either, while appealing to an audience sympathetic to Romanticism, and to the vitalist Lebensphilosophie or “philosophy of life”. He offered an approach very different from that of neo-Kantianism or neo-Thomism. He was already famous in Germany as a charismatic lecturer, before the publication of Being and Time. Gadamer principally notes Heidegger’s “directness and freshness”, but seems to make no claim at all about Heidegger’s historical scholarship. Heidegger’s vigorous assertiveness must have impressed people. Gadamer is polite and circumspect, but the “continuous challenge” due to Heidegger that he says he felt must have been to defend Plato against Heidegger’s claims about the forgetting of Being.

Gadamer on Plato and Aristotle

Some of Gadamer’s most interesting work is on Plato and Aristotle. More so than many modern commentators, he sees their work as closely connected. He is especially fond of Plato. In the introduction to Gadamer’s The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, (German ed. 1978, English tr. 1986), translator P. Christopher Smith offers useful comments.

For Gadamer, “Plato and Aristotle both belong to the unified tradition of logos philosophy. In the Phaedo Plato’s Socrates turns away from naturalistic accounts of things to the logoi, our ways of speaking; similarly, Aristotle founds his investigations on ‘pos legetai’, how something is spoken of” (Smith, p. xiv).

At least in this work, the term “logos philosophy” is not explicitly defined. But in the passage above, it clearly indicates a linguistic character. It is nice to see a recognition that Plato’s — and even more so Aristotle’s — work has a substantial linguistic dimension.

Smith recalls that the Ionian pre-Socratics had “only two kinds of explanation at their disposal — from what, and by the agency of what — [and so they] could not properly grasp the cosmos, in which things occur for the sake of (heneka) what is good” (p. xv).

The moderns on the whole don’t really do much better than the pre-Socratics at recognizing what Aristotle calls “for the sake of” and the role it plays in the constitution of things. This involves not providential intervention, or even a reified indwelling ontological principle that could simply unfold. It is also not just a fact, but something that motivates without necessitating.

In Plato, “To begin with there are the refutational, or elenchtic, dialogues, in which Socrates confronts the great sophists of his time — Protagoras, Gorgias, Callicles, Thrasymachus — and displays the emptiness of their claims to be able to teach virtue. In truth theirs is a technical mentality, and what they teach is only a techne of succeeding. The conclusion to be drawn from these dialogues — at times explicit, but more often implied negatively or indirectly — is that knowledge in virtue is somehow different from knowledge in techne. This shows up above all in the fact that virtue cannot be taught. And there is a further truth that emerges here, again largely unsaid, that the traditional ideas of arete upon which the sophists rely and which might be learned by imitating a paragon have become groundless and susceptible of sophistic dissimulation. Therefore, to withstand seduction by self-interest and by otherwise insatiable desires for sensuous gratification and power, to which sophism panders, one must now be able to give justification for what is good, that is, justification for one’s choices of what is right as opposed to what is wrong. But nobody seems to know how to do that, least of all those sophists who claim that they do” (pp. xv-xvi).

This concern with justification is something Gadamer shares with Habermas and Brandom. But Gadamer traces it all the way back to Plato, whereas Habermas and Brandom are modernists. It seems to me that Plato and Aristotle’s outrage at the Sophists has to do with the Sophists’ subversion of justification.

“The primary concern in these elenchtic dialogues, then, is a practical one, and that makes the Phaedo and the Republic, in which concern seems to shift to epistemological and ontological matters, appear to mark a definite transition in Plato’s thought. For in these next works the ‘ideas’ are introduced, and in the Republic even the ‘idea of ideas’, the idea of the good which would seem to serve as a first principle of both true knowledge and true reality. In the twentieth-century traditions of Plato interpretation — particularly the neo-Kantian, which found support for its theory of science in this ‘stage’ of Plato — would have it that the question Plato is addressing here is a new, theoretical one no longer related to the Socratic question concerning arete. But Gadamer sees a serious oversight here. A careful reading, he argues, shows that Plato is still dealing with the same issue” (p. xvi).

“Gadamer maintains … that if one asks what question is actually being addressed in the allegory of the cave, one sees that the concern is not just, or even primarily, a theoretical, scientific one, but in fact an existential-practical question of holding steadfastly to the truth in the face of tests or refutations (elenchoi) much as a soldier holds his ground in battle or a wrestler stands firm against attempts to throw him — this is the language Plato uses here. And what are these tests of mettle? The guardians will find themselves in a conflict between honest execution of the duties of their office for the public weal and the ‘pursuit of power after power’, as we in the English-speaking world might put it, using the words of Thomas Hobbes. The guardians, in other words, will be tested by the flattery of both their own desires for gratification and sophistic sycophants, flattery that might seduce them into sacrificing their integrity” (p. xvii).

“In short, it turns out that the theory of dialectic in which they are to be trained is a way of distinguishing and, above all, of distinguishing practically between right and wrong, good and bad. To do that, the guardians must know the idea of the good, for that idea is exactly what those in the cave do not know. The cave-dwellers’ technai (arts) give them the knowledge ‘how to’ do something, knowledge of the means to an end, but not knowledge of the end itself, the hou heneka, the ‘what for’…. Thus, knowledge of the good turns out to be not just a theoretical insight, not just a matter of logos (reasoning). It is a principle on ergon (deed), and makes possible constancy in the choice of the life that one leads (Aristotle: prohairesis tou biou)” (p. xviii).

The sense in which he says the guardians “must know” the idea of the good seems to me to be of necessity quite different from the way in which we may be said, e.g., to know the Pythagorean Theorem. I would rather say something like, the guardians “must have wisdom” about the good.

“And now the real meaning of the hypothesis of the eidos in the Phaedo becomes evident. As opposed to what the neo-Kantian school might have seen in it, the hypothesis of the eidos is not at all the ‘scientific’ postulation of a universal idea that is to be verified by the facts. As in the Republic, the issue in the Phaedo is how to head off whatever might mislead us, how to head off sophistic talk…. Hypothesizing the eidos thus has nothing to do with empirical verification but, instead, with making precisely these eidetic distinctions…. The paradigm for steadfastness … remains Socrates, who was not to be dissuaded from what he saw to be right, no matter what arguments concerning his own ‘advantage’ might be advanced. His arete was such that he would not even accept the escape from death offered to him by his friends” (pp.xviii-xix).

At first I was confused by the reference to verification by facts. To speak of empirical verification of an eidos would be a category mistake. But I think “the hypothesis of the eidos” refers not to any particular eidos, but to the general “hypothesis” that there are eidei.

The important point here is the Socratic “steadfastness”, where steadfastness means not being lured and fooled by the verbal tricks of the clever sophists, who aim at success and at victory in argument, rather than at truth and shared understanding. It seems very relevant today.

“[The Philebus] too begins with an ethical issue — whether the good life is one of pleasure or of intellect or of some third thing — and it also involves its interlocutors in the task of giving justification for their contentions concerning the good life, justification that will make their arguments invulnerable to the sophistic arts of confusing and confounding people with sleights of hand that interchange the one and the many” (p. xix).

“Here the techniques of Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology can be put to good use, for the task is to display the phenomenon that Plato is getting at. In the Philebus Plato speaks of the good as the structure of a ‘mixture’ someone might brew, the ‘potion’ as it were, which is our human life. The various ‘ingredients’, the kinds of pleasure and intellect, are not to be mixed indiscriminately, but well…. A ‘good’ mixture is thus one that has limits to it, and the good itself is limitedness (measuredness, or metriotes) in the midst of constantly threatening indeterminacy and limitlessness…. As measuredness, the good in the Philebus, we now see, is precisely Aristotle’s mean between the extremes” (pp. xx-xxi).

Paul Ricoeur also points out the importance of a notion of mixture in Plato. This undoes many old stereotypes about Platonism.

I am rather unclear on what Husserlian phenomenology is supposed to specifically contribute to the history of philosophy here. I imagine Husserl might question this claim himself. He wanted phenomenology to be a precise “science”, grounded in the phenomenological and eidetic reductions. Here instead we have a thoughtful examination of Plato’s metaphorical language.

“In anticipating Aristotle’s criticisms, it should be noted that, as measuredness, the good in Plato must be distinguished, or ‘separated’ intellectually, from the mixture itself. But if one abstracts from this metaphor, one finds that, as measuredness, the good is what Hegel calls ein Moment, namely, an aspect of something which does not exist separately from it. In short, it is in the thing of which it is the structure. Thus, when we say that it is choriston (separate), we are not denying that it is in the thing. We are saying only that it must be distinguished from the thing in our thinking” (p. xxi).

For Aristotle, a thing that is called “separate” is simply a thing that is conceptually distinct, whereas for Plato, separateness involves independence from matter. This means a thing that Aristotle calls “separate” may nonetheless never exist apart from the whole to which it belongs. This has been discussed in detail by Gwenaëlle Aubry.

“These striking convergences of Plato’s thought with Aristotle’s leave us puzzled about Aristotle’s critique of Plato. Why would he criticize Plato if in fact he and Plato are saying the same thing? “(ibid).

We should be careful about saying things are “the same”. I have sympathy for Leibniz’s argument that no two things are the same. Then there is the question, at what level of blurriness can we no longer distinguish two things? But again the important point is rather the relative one that it is on the whole a lot less false to say Plato and Aristotle thought the same, than it is to present them as if they were opposites, as has also been done at times.

“At the core of the argument in all three [of Aristotle’s surviving ethical works] is the contention that Plato improperly fuses the ontological and the practical in his applications of the idea of the good” (p. xxii).

“Aristotle, of course, is a consummate phenomenologist who wishes above all to avoid running distinct things together. But is it just his ‘descriptive caution’ that leads him to try to keep ontological and practical theory separate? Gadamer suggests that there is something else fundamental in Aristotle’s way of inquiring that leads him to put things as he does, namely, his orientation toward life science. Mathematically oriented thinking such as Plato’s would indeed lead to inquiry about the idea of the good as an abstract structure of good things…. But that is not the orientation of Aristotle’s questioning, which gives primacy to the concrete living thing” (p. xxiv).

“The relationship of moral theory to practice is not at all the modern relation of theory to practice in which an objective, neutral theory can be applied generally to particular problems. In distinction to producing something (techne, poiesis), doing the right thing is not simply an application of general rules” (p. xxvi).

Even Kant has qualification and subtlety in his rule-orientedness.

“In the first place, as Aristotle recognizes, we need an ‘appropriate principle’ (oikeia arche) for moral reasoning, which is not to be confused with mathematical deductive reasoning. For in moral reasoning I always find myself in a particular situation, and the task is not to subsume this particular case under a universal rule which I could know apart from the situation I am in, but to define from within my situation what the general rule is of which this situation is an instance. The particular virtues and virtue in general, as finding the ‘mean between extremes’ are not universal principles that I apply to a situation, but universalizations of what I am doing when I do what is right. Hence it should be noted carefully that, although Aristotle does indeed speak of the ‘practical syllogism’, he in fact uses this syllogistic reasoning only to exemplify the technical choice of the right means to an end” (p. xxviii).

This is an interesting hybrid view on the universality issue. It is certainly true that Aristotle does not treat ethical conclusions as a matter of deduction (instead, they are matters of interpretation).

“[Cleverness] deals with means to an end, and for just that reason, he says, it is to be distinguished from [moral reasonableness]” (ibid).

“Moral reasonableness” is how Smith translates Aristotelian ethical phronesis. This is a kind of reason, which I have called ethical reason.

“As both the Philebus and Aristotle’s ethical treatises make clear, human beings are not gods, and thus the life that is best for them has to be a life that combines theoria and praxis…. The point that both wish to make — which is the fundamental point of agreement between them concerning the good — is that, in distinction to gods, human beings are always under way toward the divine, or, as Gadamer puts it, their best life is philosophia, not sophia, that is, striving for wisdom, not wisdom itself. Human beings are finite, not absolute — never absolved from the ‘remnant of earth’ (Goethe) in them that inevitably involves them in the task of living well here in the practical world” (pp. xxviii-xix).

Finitism and infinitism are both said in many ways. The very sharp distinction being made here between humans and gods seems rather one-sided in relation to Aristotle.

Gadamer is apparently a pretty strong finitist, and strongly opposed to the infinitism he sees in Hegel. What infinity means in the more “deflationary” views of Hegel I have sympathy for is quite different from this. Meanwhile Aristotle literally says that the world is finite, but allows for an expansive notion of human being.

“Thus, in both Plato and Aristotle, the good emerges as that toward which we are striving, that for the sake of which (hou heneka), that at which we aim (to telos). But not only we. The whole universe is to be understood as striving for perfection…. [T]he universe, and not only human experience, is to be thought of in relation to the good ” (p. xix).

Separate Form?

“Lambda 3 goes on to show that form cannot be separate” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 5, p. 168, my translation throughout).

I have always been rather baffled by interpretations of book Lambda that claimed to find evidence there that Aristotle finally revives the notion of separate form he so thoroughly refutes elsewhere.

“The first object of Lambda 3 is to examine the well-foundedness of the Platonic arguments in favor of the separation of form — or its pretension to the status of ousia [“substance”]. The permanence of form in generation can be invoked in support of such a thesis” (ibid).

“[F]orm, even if it well fits the Platonic criterion of ousia that is permanence, does not meet the specifically Aristotelian criteria. Here the appeal will be to that of tode ti, of being a ‘this'” (ibid).

“[T]he text opens with a new formula of change, which, contrary to the previous ones, takes into account its cause” (ibid).

As Sachs renders the full passage that she cites in part, “For with everything, something changes, by the action of something, and into something: that by the action of which it changes is the first thing that sets it in motion, that which changes is the material, and that into which it changes is the form. For it comes into being either by art or by nature, or else by fortune or chance. And next after this is the fact that each independent thing comes into being from something that has the same name (for this is true both of natural independent things and of the rest). Now art is a source that is something else, but nature is a source that is in the thing itself (since a human being begets a human being), while the rest of the causes are deprivations of these” (Metaphysics, p. 233).

Aubry notes that this language appears to be a bit of a regression, since matter has already been superseded by potentiality in Lambda chapter 2. But she explains that chapters 2 and 3 constitute a pair concerned respectively with matter and form, and chapter 2 did not yet address form.

She points out that Aristotle goes on to mention three kinds of substance, among which form is conspicuously not included. “What are enumerated are matter, which is only in appearance a tode ti; phusis [nature], which is at the same time a tode ti and a hexis [acquired disposition]; and finally, the composite, or individual realities, the kath ekasta like Socrates and Callias. Where we might expect the term form, we instead find that of phusis, which will be qualified again as hexis. For phusis is precisely a form realized in a matter, stabilized as hexis at the end of a process. Such an enumeration already signals that form as such cannot be counted as ousia, and cannot be separate, in the sense that it does not exist apart from the composite” (p. 169).

“In Zeta 8, it was already the intervention of the criterion of tode ti that allowed it to be established that form does not exist apart from (para) the composite, and thus to reject as superfluous the hypothesis of the Platonic Forms, since, at least in the case of natural beings, it is indeed an individual — and a concrete composite — that engenders another. But besides Zeta 8, it is necessary to refer equally to Eta 1…. Eta 1 makes intervene, in addition to the criterion of tode ti, the criterion of khoriston, which, as we have underlined, is equally present in Lambda 1. The examination established that matter is only a tode ti in-potentiality, dunamei; while form is only [a tode ti] insofar as it is to logo khoriston [separate according to the formula, or in speech]; and only the composite is khoriston haplos [separate simply]” (pp. 169-170).

“Like the criterion of khoriston and even dissociated from it, the criterion of individuality indeed leads to only counting the composite of matter and form as ousia” (p. 170).

“[I]n the case of art, there can be form without matter, but the form thus considered is nothing but tekhne [art] itself, that is to say in fact the form such as it is conceived and envisioned by the artisan. In the case of phusis, the principle of synonymy, the permanence of one same form transmitted from one individual to another, is sufficient to explain how we are led, as Plato did, to assert that there exist distinct forms of natural substances. But we can conclude from this neither that they are separate, nor that their character is that of tode ti and of ousia.”

“This would presuppose that the forms exist apart from and independent of composites, and in particular that they are capable of pre-existing as well as perhaps surviving them. But in truth, the existence of the formal cause is simultaneous with that of the composite. Certainly health is distinct from the healthy, and sphericity from the bronze sphere, but health and sphericity do not have full existence, that is to say do not exist as ousia except as instantiated in the cured patient, the completed sphere” (ibid).

“At the end of the whole formed by Lambda 2 and 3, we are indeed in possession of a positive result: matter, conceived kata dunamei, can be extended from the corruptible sensibles to the eternal sensibles; but also a negative result: form cannot be separate. Each of these results already contains elements of a response to the guiding questions posed in Lambda 1: whether or not it is possible to unify the principles of substance; and the nature of the separate. One term is still missing: that of energeia, in which will reside the definitive response to these two questions” (p. 171).

In discussing Lambda 2, she emphasized the substitution of potentiality for matter. Here in passing she suggests that alternatively, we could consider that matter has been redefined along with potentiality. But which alternative we endorse is really just a question of the optimal use of words. The old understanding of both matter and potentiality has been left behind.

Next in this series: Explanation by Constituents?

Substance, Essence, Form

Here I will partially translate and briefly comment on Gwenaëlle Aubry’s analysis of the argument of book Zeta of Aristotle’s Metaphysics in chapter 3 of her Dieu sans la puissance. I think it is important to carefully capture a fair amount of the technical detail, especially because she is in part arguing against the most widely accepted traditional interpretation of a key point in the interpretation of Aristotle, which has to do with Aristotle’s ultimate attitude toward form.

(For the sake of the general reader, I have elided her precise citations, which use the standard Becker numbers for lines in the Greek text. English for much of book Zeta is reproduced in my own initial commentary on it. I have also omitted numerous accent marks that are sometimes used in romanization of Greek words.)

Aubry notes that whereas Aristotle uses the same word ousia for both primary and secondary substance in the senses of the Categories (a “this” and a universal, respectively), medieval Latin translations used substantia for primary substance and essentia for secondary substance. One important question raised in the discussion has to do with whether there are any cases where the “substance” and the “essence” of a thing are the same.

At the beginning of Zeta chapter 3, ousia is defined in terms very close to those of the Categories, as something that is not said of an underlying thing, but rather is the underlying thing of which other things are said.

“Matter being that which remains, it seems to be a substrate in the physical sense of the term…. But it also seems to satisfy the logical signification of the criterion of hypokeimenon [underlying thing]” (2nd ed., p. 77).

“But it is precisely the adequation of matter to the criterion of hypokeimenon, in its double acceptance logical and physical, that manifests the insufficiency of this criterion — and by that also the necessity of completing the analysis of the Categories” (ibid). She quotes Aristotle: “But this is impossible, for also to be separate and a this seem to belong to an independent thing most of all” (Sachs tr., p. 120). “No more than it suffices to respond to the question ‘what is ousia‘ that it is the substrate, does it suffice to respond… that ousia is matter” (Aubry, p. 77).

“This new criterion, that of khoriston kai tode ti [separate and a ‘this’], nonetheless conserves a trait of ousia as defined in the Categories: the capacity for independent existence. The initial analysis of Zeta thus has the effect at the same time of accentuating this trait, and of distinguishing the notion of a capacity for independent existence, or that of subsistence, from those of substrate and subject” (ibid).

“[T]here where one would expect to see the examination of form as a candidate developed, it is an analysis of to ti en einai [the what it was to have been] that is deployed, with respect to both the essence and the object of a definition (Zeta [chapters] 4-6). Of form, eidos, there is no question before Zeta 6″ (p. 78).

“This approach is qualified as logikos [logical]…. The logical approach to ousia will be governed by two questions: first, is there no essence but that of substance (Zeta 4-5)? Then, in what cases is essence identical to substance (Zeta 6)?” (ibid).

“One begins from the logical definition of essence as that which is said in accord with itself (kath auto). In the Posterior Analytics, the first sense of ‘in accord with itself’ names precisely what is mentioned in the definition of a given being and constitutes its ousia” (ibid).

“One goes on to conclude that there is an essence for everything for which one can give an account in a definition…. One does not affirm, nonetheless, that to ti en einai is the ousia, but only that it pertains to it first. According to the steps characteristic of Zeta, one goes on to establish not an exclusivity, but an order of priority: thus, essence belongs first and absolutely, protos kai haplos, to ousia. To the other categories, it belongs only secondarily…, in a certain way…, not absolutely” (pp. 78-79).

“Thus associating essence and definition, one remains in a Platonic logic…, even if Zeta 5 establishes that definition can give account not only of simple substances, but also of composite substances insofar as they are composite, on the condition that the composition is not accidental” (p. 79).

“The question thus arises to know whether there exist substances identical to their essence: for these are the sort of beings that the Platonists call ‘Ideas’…. Formulating this point, Aristotle clearly designates to ti en einai [what it was to have been], or the essence, as principle of intelligibility, and ousia as principle of being: if they were separated the one from the other, he writes, there would be no knowledge of the one, and the other would not exist” (ibid).

If being and intelligibility were not inseparable, there would be no knowledge of the one, and the other would not exist. But they don’t exactly coincide, either. Something similar could be said about being and value.

“Otherwise said, the guiding question is to know in what measure substance is identical to its essence, or to measure the division between a being and its principle of intelligibility: it is not again to know whether the essence can itself be considered a substance, that is to say capable of a separate existence” (ibid, emphasis in original).

(This relation of substance to essence bears some structural resemblance to the relation between existence and essence discussed by Aquinas. The criteria currently under discussion for ousia or “substance” (“separateness”, and being a “this”) indeed seem to have something to do with common notions of existence. But the ousia or substance is said to be the independent thing, whereas existence is commonly treated as an abstract property that can be said of things. And for Aquinas, God gives existence to an essence. But Aristotle starts by recognizing independent things that implicitly already exist.)

“But it is necessary, before arriving there, to establish the equivalence between essence and form, or between to ti en einai and the eidos. This is what the following chapters (Zeta 7-12), where the term eidos reappears, are concerned with” (p. 80).

The earlier “logical” approach is succeeded by a more physical approach in Zeta 7-9. “Form is the physical equivalent of essence…. Form is the essence that is found really instantiated in particular indviduals” (ibid).

“One indeed finds in form two traits characteristic of ousia, and more precisely of ousia as Plato had defined it” (ibid).

“Form can indeed pretend to the title of primary ousia. But (and this is essential), the text of Zeta itself distinguishes between ousia prote [primary substance] and ousia malista [what is substance most of all]. In the Categories, on the other hand, these terms are associated…. But while the denomination ousia prote is applied in Zeta to the form, that of ousia malista is applied to the composite, sunolon: that which is ousia malista is a human, a plant — not the ungenerated principle of generation that is form, but the concrete thing that is generated, mixed of form and matter” (p. 81).

“Ousia prote must be distinguished as much from ousia malista as from ousia said simply, or haplos, which is not the form [as such] but the immanent [instantiation of] form, associated with the matter together with which it constitutes the composite. This distinction is explicitly formulated in the preceding lines, in relation to the problem of definition: the definition does not include the matter” (ibid, emphasis in original).

“Form and ousia prote are nothing else than essence [to ti en einai, what it was to have been a thing]” (p. 82).

“If ousia prote is not the same in Zeta and in the Categories, it is because prote [primary] does not have the same sense in the two texts” (ibid). She has already noted that Zeta 1 explicitly recalls that “primary” or “first” is said in more than one way.

On the other hand, “The ousia malista of Zeta does correspond to the ousia prote of the Categories: it designates the individual.”

“From this, the form is clearly distinguished: the form signifies toionde, ‘of what species’; it is not a tode kai horismenon, an individual being subject to definition, but it produces and generates a being of that species in the individual…. No more than the matter does it correspond to the criterion of tode ti [being a ‘this’]” (ibid).

“The eidos is not fully ousia; it is only primary ousia, its anteriority being at once epistemological, as the logical analysis showed, and chronological, as the physical analysis showed. The form is only ousia in a Platonic sense, as the object of a definition, principle of intelligibility and of permanence, in short insofar as it is nothing other than essence comprising identity at the level of a species, and transmitted, by art or by generation, from one individual to another” (pp. 82-83).

“There is indeed a tension between ousia prote and ousia malista…. If the analysis of Zeta 7 manifests this, it indicates also, and already, the means to resolve it, in introducing, in the context of the study of generation, the notions of dunamis [potentiality] and entelecheia [entelechy]. Their substitution, in Eta, for those of matter and form, authorizes the reconciliation of the candidates, the criteria, and does so for both series of ousia, prote and malista: and it is at the end of Theta that the initial reflection of Zeta on this anteriority finds its culmination, since act is there said to be anterior both to to logo and te ousia, both from the point of view of the formula and from that of substance…. It will thus be possible to think the ousiai proterai not, in the manner of Plato, as forms-essences abusively separated from the matter they determine and the individual they define, but as acts having both an autonomous subsistence and a full intelligibility” (p. 83).

“Nonetheless, if we have on the one hand confirmed the identity between form, essence, and the object of definition and, on the other hand, qualified that between these three terms and ousia, we have up to now left aside another term fundamental to the Platonic equation: the universal” (p. 84).

“The universal meets neither the criterion of [full] determination, since it is common to many things, nor the criterion of being a substrate, since it is always affirmed of a subject…. Thus the universal cannot be called ousia in the qualified and reduced sense that essence is” (ibid).

“Once the pretention of the universal to the title of ousia has been eliminated, it remains to examine the question of its equivalence to form and essence. This is more complex, since form and essence are indeed a certain type of universal, a determinate one. But the fundamental point does not lie in this: the break with Platonism does not come, as maintained by the traditional reading, by way of the distinction between universal and form, and the affirmation that only the form would be ousia; it lies above all in the affirmation according to which form or essence itself is not fully ousia, the idea indeed according to which it does not suffice to be ousia kata ton logon [ousia according to what is said] to be ousia malista [ousia most of all]” (pp. 84-85, emphasis in original).

Aristotle in general does greatly emphasize the importance of what is said. Plato goes further, in making definition the very criterion of ousia. But for Aristotle, concrete things are not reducible to their definitions alone, and it is the concrete things that come first.

“The Platonic solution having been eliminated, we are brought back to the problem from which it was born (and which Beta calls the most difficult of all: how to think the relation between the individual and its principle of intelligibility” (p. 85).

“This problem is related to another…, how to think eternal and intelligible substances” (p. 86).

“Zeta 17 introduces a new point of departure… the point of view of principles and causes…. [I]n investigating the cause, it is first of all to ti en einai [what it was to have been a thing] that is researched” (ibid).

“But what is found there brought to light is not the nature of separate substance, as we might have hoped, but on the contrary the correlation of form and matter in the context of the composite substance” (ibid).

“These lines are generally read as the conclusion of Zeta, and as an ultimate affirmation of the identity between form and ousia. But it seems that they mark much more the insufficiency of this result” (ibid).

“Considered in its etiological, and not only logical, function, and taken as end, the form, in effect, is act. For the notion of act, insofar as it is substituted for that of form, but by way of completion, permits the reconciliation of the different criteria of ousia, as well as resolving the tension between ousia prote and ousia malista” (p. 87, emphasis in original).

“Act is ousia, absolutely, and in the full sense, from the logical and epistemological points of view as well as the ontological and etiological. If act allows ousia to be thought according to the double criterion of separation and intelligibility, it also allows the intelligible and separate substances to be thought, as Lambda will show. As for the notion of dunamis, its correlate, it serves to allow the reintegration of the candidate that Zeta has discarded: matter.”

“The notions of dunamis and energeia have something remarkable about them that allows a maximal extension of the notion of ousia to be given, without falling into equivocation, but on the contrary resolving the conflict between substance and essence, as well as that between simple and composite substances” (ibid).

Next in this series: Entelechy and Hylomorphism

Mixing Up Plato and Aristotle

Chapter 3 of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s Dieu sans la puissance analyzes Aristotle’s discussion of ousia (“substance”) in book Zeta of the Metaphysics, and the transition toward potentiality and act in book Eta. The discussion is very dense, and will merit at least one further post. The whole chapter elaborates her argument for an important distinction between form and act. Here I will focus on her introductory remarks.

The key Aristotelian term ousia already had established usages in Plato, some of which conflict with the meanings Aristotle gave to it. According to Aubry, the traditional interpretations that attribute to Aristotle a notion of separate form independent of the composite depend on reading distinctly Platonic (and non-Aristotelian) meanings of ousia into Aristotle’s text. I won’t get to the full justification of this here, but it is coming. The term “separate” is also used differently by Plato and Aristotle. In Plato, it means apart from sensible things, but in Aristotle it means able to subsist independently.

“Contrary to that of potentiality and act, the couple of matter and form is never counted by Aristotle among the senses of being. It nonetheless became one of the fundamental motifs of scholastic Aristotelianism, to the point where the notions of dunamis and energeia are happily identified the one with matter, the other with form. This had the effect, in particular, that one could affirm generally that the unmoved First Mover is a ‘pure form’, even though Aristotle only designated it as act, and never used terms for which the translation could be ‘pure form’. This indistinction of act and form is also at the origin of the affirmation, also very widespread, according to which Aristotle would accept the existence of ‘separate forms'” (2nd ed., p. 67, my translation throughout).

She notes that many esteemed modern commentators, including Werner Jaeger and W. D. Ross, have followed this scholastic interpolation. For the absence in Aristotle of any terms translatable as “pure form”, she cites a 1973 article by E. E. Ryan, “Pure Form in Aristotle”.

“[I]t is hard to see what would lead Aristotle to forge two neologisms [energeia and entelecheia, or act and entelechy] to designate what a concept in the repertoire [eidos, or form] already sufficed to name. But what is more surprising is that in identifying act and form, and attributing to Aristotle the assertion of separate forms, one thereby attributes to him a doctrine he had himself combated in Plato, only in the end to reproach him for finally remaining a Platonist” (p. 68).

Modern criticisms of Aristotle have often targeted his alleged reliance on a notion of pure or separate form.

“The indistinction of form and act appears to us in effect to be at the source of numerous criticisms addressed to the Aristotelian metaphysics: thus one demands to know how it can at the same time admit the existence of separate forms, and affirm that the form is never given without the matter; one asks oneself about the coherence of an ontology having for its object both substances composed of matter and form and pure forms; one deplores the abstract character, the intellectualism, of a theology of pure form. But nevertheless, the reduction of act to form is also the basis of the traditional (‘onto-theological’) reading of the Metaphysics” (ibid).

According to Aubry, there are two principal differences between act and form.

First, “Only act implies subsistence; or again, only act is fully ousia — that which says also ‘separate entelechy’…. Form, on the contrary, is not [simple substance], because it does not exist in a separated state. If it is separable, it is only in a very limited sense, [according to the logos], writes Aristotle, or ‘according to the formula’; in the sense, certainly, where it can be thought and defined without the matter, but not in the sense where it could subsist by itself, independent of any material instantiation” (pp. 68-69).

Again, Aristotelian separateness is not Platonic separation from sensible being, but rather the capacity of a thing to subsist on its own.

Second, “Act nonetheless does not say being solely as separate, capable of subsisting by itself, but also as identical to the end and the good. This axiological significance only appears, before being confirmed in Lambda, in book Theta, at the end of the course by which the notion of act is substituted for that of form” (p. 69).

What she here calls the axiological significance of act — its essential involvement with valuations and ends — stands in contrast to its traditional “onto-theological” interpretation. Also, there now seems to be a question whether some of my own expansive remarks about form should perhaps be applied to act alone.

“[The substitution of act for form] explains the possible confusion between the two notions, but at the same time it indicates the procedure and the conditions which mark well that they are not simple synonyms. The principal operator for these appears to us to be the central notion of books Zeta and Eta and, to a lesser degree, of book Theta: the notion of ousia, as well as that of separation, which is strongly correlated with it. One of the great difficulties of book Zeta comes in effect from a partial conservation of the Platonic sense of the notions of ousia and of separation, which leads to a conservation of the primacy of form. Aristotle nonetheless also elaborates his own concept of ousia, which he associates with separation not in the sense of existence outside of sensibles, but as a capacity for independent existence. Thus redefined, ousia excludes form” (ibid).

That is to say, what Aristotle calls ousia malista [what is substance above all] excludes form. As we will see, she says that ousia in a broader sense subsumes form in the way that energeia and entelecheia subsume form, but this relation is not convertible — ousia, energeia, and entelecheia for Aristotle all cover more cases than eidos [form] does.

“This tension between two senses of ousia is reflected by the distinction, in Zeta, between ousia malista [what is substance above all] and ousia prote [primary substance], and by the correlative promotion of two candidates to the status of ousia: the composite of matter and form, and form. It is the intervention, in book Eta, of the notion of act that allows this tension to be resolved: act in effect satisfies at the same time both the Platonic criteria and the Aristotelian criteria for ousia, making it possible as a result to think both intelligibility and permanence, both essence and substance” (ibid).

“In Plato, the term ousia indifferently designates the reality, the existence, or the essence, the ‘what-it-is’ (the ti esti); it applies equally well to being in opposition to becoming, as to the totality of the real, or inversely to its terms in composition” (p. 70).

“Plato nonetheless also calls intelligible being, the Ideas and the Forms, ousia. Its distinctive characteristics are thus, along with intelligibility, permanence, immutability, eternity. On the other hand, Plato never makes separation, understood in its Aristotelian sense as capacity for independent existence, a distinctive criterion of ousia” (ibid, emphasis in original).

Whether Plato really must be read as asserting that the Forms are separate in an Aristotelian sense is a separate question, but there is no doubt that Aristotle and most others have attributed such a view to him.

For Aristotle, “Platonism consists in distinguishing from the sensible its principle of intelligibility (the universal and the definition), and giving to the latter an autonomous existence” (ibid). But for Aristotle, “That which is, is not walking, or good health, or a seated position, but the thing that walks, has good health, and is seated” (p. 71).

“Nonetheless, like being, primacy is said in many ways” (ibid).

“Among the traits characteristic of ousia, Aristotle preserves, alongside the criterion of separation, those which, in Plato, justify the primacy of form, such as permanence or intelligibility. These allow it to be well said that form is ousia, but in a qualified sense. Book Zeta is thus presented as a combinatory hierarchy of criteria that in turn serves to determine a hierarchization of different beings pretending to the title of ousia, but also a distinction of different degrees of ousia” (p. 72).

“[I]f form cannot be called ousia absolutely, it nonetheless retains a primacy from the point of view of the formula and of knowledge” (p. 73).

“It is precisely this conflict that is resolved in Eta by substitution of the notion of act for that of form…. [Act] thus names the unity of the subsistent or separate individual, … as well as its principle of permanence and intelligibility. Thus only the notion of act satisfies all the criteria of ousia, in that it permits the reconciliation of the Aristotelian requirement of autonomous subsistence and individuality with the Platonic one of permanence and intelligibility” (ibid).

“For the combinatory hierarchy of Zeta is thus substituted an integrative synthesis [in book Eta]” (ibid).

“Considering form as act is in effect considering that in it which acts as an end, that is to say the principle of a becoming at the end of which matter is fully determined by form, and the form realized in a matter” (pp. 73-74).

“[I]f there can be no form without matter, there can on the other hand be an act without potentiality” (p. 74, emphasis added).

In an upcoming post(s), I’ll treat Aubry’s substantiating analysis of books Zeta and Eta.

Next in this series: Form and Entelechy

Mathematical Things and Forms

We’ve reached the end of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, though there are in fact two more books, Mu (XIII) and Nu (XIV).

Aristotle’s main point of contention with his former colleagues of the Platonic Academy is whether or not mathematical objects and forms understood as universals are independent things in their own right. Both books Mu and Nu (XIV) are concerned with this, and have a somewhat polemical character. I think Aristotle’s own distinctive views on form are better expressed in what has been said already, so I will mostly focus on the other remarks he makes in book Mu, and will skip book Nu entirely.

Book Mu does not clearly refer to the preceding book Lambda (XII), but does refer to previous discussion of “the thinghood that has being as being-at-work” (Sachs tr., ch. 1, p. 253) as well as to discussion on aporias.

“Now it is necessary, if mathematical things are, that they be either in the perceptible things, as some people say, or separate from the perceptible things (and some people also speak of them that way); or if they are not present in either way, then they do not have being or they have it in some other manner. So for us the dispute will not be about whether they have being, but about the manner of their being” (pp. 253-254).

I take especial note of the last sentence above. This could also serve as a comment on what is at stake in the Metaphysics in general — questions not really about being as if it were one thing, but about what things are, and the ways they are.

He goes on to argue that mathematical things are neither “in” perceptible things, nor are they separate things in their own right. “In” for Aristotle suggests a material constituent.

“It has been said sufficiently, then, that mathematical things are not independent things more than bodies are, nor are they prior in being to perceptible things, but only in articulation, nor are they capable of being somewhere as separate; but since they are not capable of being in perceptible things either, it is clear that either they have no being at all, or that they have being in a certain manner and for this reason do not have being simply, for we speak of being in a number of ways” (ch. 2, p. 257).

For those who insist that the whole Metaphysics is a single linear development and not just generally coherent with itself, and also that being finally acquires an unequivocal sense, it seems inconvenient that now, after book Lambda, he continues to emphasize that being is said in many ways.

I think the Metaphysics is very much coherent with itself, but is not a single linear development pointing toward Being, and that he never wavers on the emphasis that being is said in many ways, although he does sometimes use the word equivocally himself. If the whole thing points toward something, that something is the good and the beautiful, and not Being.

He goes on to make some positive remarks about mathematics.

“Now just as the things that are universal within mathematics are not about things that are separate from magnitudes and numbers, but are about these, but not insofar as they are of such a sort as to have magnitude or to be discrete, it is clear that it is also possible for there to be both articulations and demonstrations about perceptible magnitudes, not insofar as they are perceptible but insofar as they are of certain sorts” (ch. 3, p. 257).

He is saying that insofar as there is mathematical knowledge, it is not about magnitude or number as such, but about more specific things such as right triangles or even numbers. Similarly, the meaning of articulations and demonstrations about perceptible magnitudes does not depend on their perceptibility as such.

“[S]ince it is true to say simply that there are not only separate things but also things that are not separate…, it is also true to say simply that there are mathematical things and that they are of such a sort as people say….If it is about things which incidentally are perceptible, but is not concerned with them insofar as they are perceptible, mathematical knowledge will not be about perceptible things; however, it will not be about other separate beings besides these either” (p. 258).

Mathematical things are bona fide things in the broad sense, but not all things are separate or independent. Some are attributed to others.

“[I]f someone examines anything concerning these attributes, insofar as they are such, positing them to be separate, he will not on this account cause anything to be false, any more than when one draws a line on the ground that is not a foot long, and says it is a foot long, for the false assumption is not in the proposition…. [F]or this reason the geometers speak rightly” (pp. 258-259).

Mistaken belief about the independence of mathematical things is incidental to the doing of mathematics. It is irrelevant to the results of constructions or calculations.

“And since the good and the beautiful are different (for the former is always involved in action but the beautiful is also present in motionless things), those who claim that the mathematical kinds of knowledge say nothing about what is beautiful and good are wrong…. The greatest forms of the beautiful are order and symmetry and determinateness, which the mathematical kinds of knowledge most of all display. And since these make their appearance as causes of many things…, it is clear that these kinds of knowledge would also speak about what has responsibility in the manner of the beautiful as a cause in some manner” (p. 259).

Here he not only recognizes mathematical beauty, but relates it to the beauty associated with that-for-the-sake-of-which as a cause.

“The opinion about the forms came to those who spoke about them as a result of being persuaded by the Heraclitean writings that it is true that all perceptible things are always in flux, so that, if knowledge and thought are to be about anything, there must be, besides the perceptible things, some other enduring natures, since there can be no knowledge of things in flux. And then Socrates made it his business to be concerned with the moral virtues, and on account of them first sought to define things in a universal way. For among those who studied nature, only to a small extent did Democritus attain to this… and before that the Pythagoreans did about some few things…. But it is reasonable that Socrates sought after what something is…. But Socrates did not make the universals or the definitions separate, while those who came next did, and called beings of this sort forms” (ch. 4, p. 260).

Aristotle rejects the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux that influenced Plato. He says Plato was driven to assert separate forms because he wanted to assert that there is knowledge, in spite of his Heracliteanism about perceptible things. Aristotle says that driven by a concern for ethics, Socrates — and not any of those we know as the pre-Socratics — was the first to seriously inquire about what things are. Aristotle has been inquiring about the what-it-is of things and its causes and sources, and we have seen in abundance his concern for the good and the beautiful. Aristotle is claiming a Socratic heritage, and claiming to be truer to it than the Platonists: “Socrates did not make the universals or the definitions separate”.

There follows a long argument against Platonic views about the forms, at the end of which he observes:

“[K]nowledge, like knowing, has two senses, the one as in potency, the other as at-work. The potency, being, like material, universal and indeterminate, is of what is universal and indeterminate, but the being-at-work is determinate and of something determinate; being a this it is of a this, but incidentally sight sees a universal color because this color that it sees is a color, and this A that the grammarian contemplates is an A” (ch. 10, p. 279).

If I am reading this right, he is saying here that being as universal and indeterminate is to being-at-work as potentiality is to being-at-work. If that is so, then the priority of actuality over potentiality would also seem to be a priority of actuality over being. Once again, it just doesn’t seem that being is the principal term.

In any case, he returns to the ultimately ethical theme of the priority of actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment over potentiality, and of particular concrete things over universals in the ordinary logical sense. This still has to be carefully balanced with his other view that there is no knowledge of particulars; knowledge is of universals only.

Positive concern for the priority of actuality is in my opinion the primary thing that underlies his sharp critique of the Platonists. The second — evidenced in the part I skipped over — was the popularity within the Academy of a kind of Pythagorean mystique of numbers that also identified the forms with numbers, in sometimes baffling ways. Plato himself was apparently not immune to this.

Many think Aristotle claims to have knowledge of non-perceptible particular independent everlasting things. I think this interpretation relies on ambiguous use of Aristotle’s saying of “knowledge” in different ways in different contexts. Sometimes he means it very strictly, other times much more loosely. Some translations add confusion by using the same English “knowledge” for other Greek words like gnosis, which I think for Aristotle means personal acquaintance with things nearer to us, whereas episteme is supposed to be about things in their own right.

I do not think that Aristotle means to claim knowledge in the strong sense about ultimate things, but rather that his attitude was in a way closer to that of Kant, who held them to have the highest importance but not to be knowable in the strict sense. This means we do not have to equivocate about what knowledge is.

The wisdom that is called sophia in book capital Alpha initially seems to be concerned with universals in the ordinary sense, as true episteme or knowledge genuinely is. It turns out in book Lambda that sophia‘s primary concern is not with universals in the ordinary sense at all, but with analogous relations that a uniquely positioned particular or particulars has or have to all other things.

In any case, my own view is that the wisdom or sophia concerning these highest things ought to be understood as aligned not so much with knowledge or episteme, as with the ethical or “practical” wisdom (phronesis) that is explicitly said to be a wisdom about particulars. A wisdom about particulars is not prevented from making — and indeed presumably would make — use of knowledge of any universals that genuinely apply. Nonetheless it is the wisdom about particulars that judges which universals should apply in a particular case.