Reflection, Apperception, Narrative Identity

Robert Pippin recounts how in writing what became the Critique of Judgment, Kant developed a new notion of reflection, which transformed his whole philosophy from the inside:

“In early 1789 Kant began to formulate the new problem of reflective judgment, as well as a new a priori principle for such a faculty, the purposiveness of nature. What is important to notice for our purposes is that with that development, the shape of the entire critical project began to change dramatically” (Hegel’s Realm of Shadows, p. 290).

“Kant had realized that something like the deep structure of judgments like ‘this rose is beautiful’ actually contravened its own surface structure, that the predicate ‘beautiful’ was not really functioning as a standard predicate, as it appeared to. It referred to no objective property or mere secondary quality. Instead, he concluded, it involved a nonconceptually guided reflective activity on the part of the subject of the experience, whose novel logic required notions like a free play of the faculties, purposiveness without a purpose, disinterested pleasure, a commonsense and universal subjective validity” (pp. 290-291).

“The realization of the distinct features of this reflective activity was only the beginning of a series of more strikingly novel claims of interest to us…. [T]he reflective judging that resulted in aesthetic judgments, also constituted the basic structure of teleological judgments, and so could account for the unique intelligibility of organic beings” (p. 291).

“And then a number of other issues seem to be thrown into the same reflective judgment pot. The formulation of scientific theories not fixed or determined by empirical generalizations involved this activity and its logic, as did the systematizing of empirical laws necessary for genuine scientific knowledge. Finally, even the determination of ordinary empirical concepts now seemed to require this newly formulated reflective capacity…. So reflective judging and its a priori principle were now necessary not only for explaining the possibility and validity of aesthetic judgments, but in accounting for the necessary distinction between organic and nonorganic nature, the formation of empirical concepts, the proper integration of genera and species, the general unification of empirical laws into systems of scientific law, theory formation itself, and the right way to understand the attribution of a kind of necessity to all such principles, judgments, concepts, laws, and systems” (ibid).

Much of the discussion of judgment in the Critique of Pure Reason sounds like it is a simple matter of “applying” pre-existing concepts to things. But in reality, applying even pre-existing concepts is not a simple matter at all, if we care about the soundness of the application (as Kant certainly did), or about how anyone preliminarily judges what concepts might be applicable in a given case. This is what Kant began to consider in more detail with his new notions of reflection and reflective judgment.

Reflection is characterized above by Pippin as “nonconceptually guided”. I don’t think this means at all that reflection is nonconceptual, but rather only that it is fundamentally guided by something other than the kind of pre-existing concepts that Hegel would call “fixed”. Reflection involves the formation and interpretation of concepts that are not treated as already fixed. That is why it does not presuppose particular fixed concepts.

I want to relate this back to the Aristotelian deliberation and practical judgment (phronesis) that are concerned with particulars as such. The significance of addressing particulars as such is that we do not assume in advance what universals (i.e., Kantian concepts) apply to them, but rather let the particulars “speak” for themselves, and thoughtfully consider what they might mean or be in their own right. By particulars I mean in an Aristotelian way independent or non-independent “things”, not putative raw phenomena.

Aristotelian deliberation and practical judgment, I want to say, involve a “free play of the faculties” of the sort that Kant associates with reflection. Aristotle’s commonly cited conclusion that practical judgment is inferior to contemplative wisdom is entirely tied to the fact that he considers practical judgment’s outcome to be an action. I think the term practical judgment ought to apply just as much or more to the activity of interpreting particulars, without prejudice as to how the interpretation is used.

Kantian reflection seems to me to have the great virtue of uniting Aristotelian theoria (contemplation) and sophia (contemplative wisdom) with deliberation, thinking things through (dianoia), and practical judgment (phronesis). Kant also explicitly argues for the primacy of practical reason, which ultimately involves the reflective normative evaluation of particulars, even though he foregrounds a separate effort to articulate ethical universals. An Aristotelian sense for the Kantian primacy of practical reason would start from the interpretation of particulars mentioned above.

Kantian reflection also has an important relation to the Critique of Pure Reason‘s key term of apperception. The term “apperception” was coined by Leibniz, originally to imply a kind of “higher order” perception — a perception of perception. Kant gives it a more explicitly discursive character. If we add a Hegelian dimension, the dialectical character of discourse makes discourse inherently reflective in Kant’s sense. By virtue of their common reflective, discursive character, apperception in Kant is closely related to what is called “self-consciousness” in Hegel.

Kant famously speaks of the effort to maintain a unity of apperception. Here is where I think phronesis comes to the aid of theoria and sophia. Contrary to what both Kant and Aristotle sometimes suggest, it seems to me that the interpretation of particulars is actually prior to and more governing than the articulation of universals, although there is much interplay between the two. It is the interpretation of particulars that mainly provides occasions for the articulation of pertinent universals. This comes back to Aristotle’s other point that universals do not have independent reality in their own right, and to Kant’s other point about the primacy of practical reason.

The effort to maintain a unity of apperception is the effort to maintain a unity of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not simple “consciousness” of a pre-existing “self”, as if the latter were a discrete, pre-existing object. Rather, self-consciousness is grounded in reflection that has potentially indefinite extent. I think a similar grounding in reflection is what makes intellect “something divine in us” — and more than just a part of the soul — in Aristotle.

Aristotle speaks of thought thinking itself as contemplation. He tends to emphasize that thought thinking itself is an identity. But with any kind of identity, we must consider the way in which it is said.

What then could constitute any persistent identity for a unity of apperception? Here we come to the problems that Paul Ricoeur discussed under the more general rubric of narrative identity. Strictly speaking, any particular unity of apperception is a concrete constellation of what Aristotle would call particular relations that hold at a given moment. It is something like the totality of what we are currently committed to. Insofar as we speak of it as existing in fact, its unity and coherence are relative. Only as a kind of ideal or ethical goal can its unity be considered to be unqualified.

Insofar as we want to speak of the relative persistent identity of a unity of apperception — or anything like the unity of a person — we also need the Aristotelian concept of entelechy. The narrative identity of a unity of apperception is a kind of entelechy in which the thing whose identity is maintained is itself a work in progress, as all living beings are. We only have the final form of a life when it is over (see Happiness).

The narrative identity of a unity of apperception, then, is a kind of entelechy of apperception. More generally, Aristotelian entelechy is the narrative identity of a unity, or just is a kind of narrative identity. An entelechy of apperception is the entelechy of a process of reflection. (See also More on Contemplation; Hegel on Reflection; Apperceptive Judgment.)

The Goal of Human Life

Book X of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is concerned with the ultimate goal of human life. Things said here about the key undefined terms of “intellect” and “contemplation” provide important background for what is said about them in book Lambda of the Metaphysics.

He begins with a discussion of pleasure. “For some people say that pleasure is the good, while others at the opposite extreme say it is completely base, some of them perhaps being convinced that it is that way, but others believing that it is better for our life to make pleasure appear to be something base, even if it is not, on the grounds that most people are heavily inclined toward it and are enslaved to their pleasures” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 181).

First, he suggests that it is not pleasure in its own right that is base, but a kind of enslavement to its pursuit.

Still referring to those who say pleasure is base, he continues, “But it may well be that this is not a good thing to say. For words that concern things in the realm of feelings and actions are less believable than deeds are…. For if someone who condemns pleasure is seen sometimes going after it, he seems to incline toward it because all of it is good, since making distinctions is not something that most people do. So true statements seem to be the most useful ones, not only for knowing but also for life; for since they are in tune with one’s deeds they are believed, and they encourage those who understand them to live by them” (ibid).

Saying that words are less believable than deeds expresses in very simple language the same point for which I have repeatedly cited Robert Pippin’s account of the ethical consequences of the Aristotelian priority of actuality in Hegel.

In passing, Aristotle observes that most humans over-generalize, whereas the philosopher is careful to make distinctions.

“Now Eudoxus believed that pleasure is the good, because one sees that all beings, both rational and irrational, aim at it, while in all things what is choiceworthy is good and what is most choiceworthy is best; so the fact that all things are carried to the same goal reveals that this is the best thing for them all (for each thing discovers what is good for itself, just as it discovers its food), and what is good for all things, and at which all things aim, is the good. His arguments were convincing on account of the virtue of his character, more than on their own account, since he seemed to be an exceptionally temperate man, so that he seemed to be saying these things not as a lover of pleasure but because that is the way things are in truth” (ch. 2, p. 181).

Here Aristotle again concretely applies the priority of actuality or being-at-work. In disputed ethical matters, the character of the speaker as observable by others in her deeds often has even greater importance than the quality of the speaker’s arguments.

“But what is most choiceworthy is what we choose neither on account of anything else nor for the sake of anything else; and such, by general agreement, is pleasure, since no one asks for what purpose one feels pleasure, because pleasure is chosen for itself. And when pleasure is added to any good thing whatever, such as acting justly or being temperate, it makes it more choiceworthy, but it is by itself that the good is augmented.”

It is always a key distinction for Aristotle whether something is chosen for its own sake or for the sake of something else.

“But surely the latter argument, at any rate, seems to show that pleasure is among the things that are good, but no more so than any other, since every one of them is more choiceworthy along with another good thing than when it is alone. Indeed, Plato argues in rebuttal by that sort of argument that pleasure is not the good, since a pleasant life is more choiceworthy along with intelligence than apart from it, but if the mixture is better, then pleasure is not the good, for the good does not become more choiceworthy when something is added to it. And it is clear that nothing else that becomes more choiceworthy along with any of the things that are good in themselves would be the good either” (pp. 181-182).

With the help of Plato, he leads us through a dialectical reversal of the apparent endorsement of Eudoxus’ position above. This last argument about pleasure holds true for any particular good, and therefore does not suffice to establish that pleasure is the good in an unqualified sense. We need to distinguish between any particular end that may be sought and the good in its own right, which he also calls beautiful.

He continues, “But what is of that sort, that we have any share in? For that is the sort of thing being sought. On the other hand, those who argue in opposition that what all things aim at is not good are not saying anything; for those things that seem so to all people, we declare to be so, and someone who destroys that trust will not very likely say anything that is more to be trusted” (p. 182).

Those who argue that what all things aim at is not the good are “not saying anything”. Here he seems to make two separate points. First, by calling this “not saying anything”, he implies that a denial that all things aim at the good ought to be considered as leading to debilitating incoherence. Such a denial does not just contradict the contrary view shared by Eudoxus and Plato, that the good (whatever else it may be) is that at which all things aim. What supports the view of Eudoxus and Plato is the possibility of mutual articulation and clarification between the what-it-is of the good and the what-it-is of the aims of things. The contrary view rejects that correlation, and offers nothing in its place to support articulation and clarification. In that way, it undermines intelligibility and discourse. This is not a proof that all things aim at the good, only a rationally persuasive argument.

Second, he claims that people in general — or what we might call common sense — in fact presuppose the correlation between the good and aims posited by Eudoxus and Plato. Again, this is only a rationally persuasive argument, not a proof.

He continues, “For if it were only things without intelligence that desire pleasant things, there would be something in what they say, but if beings with judgment desire them as well, how could they be saying anything? And perhaps even in the lower animals there is something naturally good that is stronger than they themselves are, that aims at their proper good” (ibid).

Here he tacitly equates intelligence with good judgment. Most things in life cannot be adequately dealt with using only logical reasoning from what can be known in a strict sense. In animals that do not have the ability to deliberate and make judgments of what ought to be done, he suggests that their nature as their indwelling source of motion takes the place of judgment.

“Nor is it the case that, if pleasure is not classed among the qualities, it is for that reason not among good things either; for the ways of being-at-work that belong to virtue are not qualities, and neither is happiness” (ch. 3, p. 182).

Pleasure, virtue, and happiness are not simple qualities. As was said more generally about states of things in the Physics, they involve complex relations.

“To those who bring up pleasures that are matters of reproach, one might say that these are not pleasant (for just because they are pleasurable to people who are in a bad condition, one ought not to suppose that they would also be pleasant to anyone except these…), … or else pleasures differ in kind, for the ones that come from beautiful things are different from the ones that come from shameful things, for it is not possible to feel the pleasure that comes from something just without being a just person, or the pleasure that comes from something musical without being a musical person, and similarly in the other cases. And the fact that a friend is different from a flatterer seems to make it clear that pleasure is either not good or varies in kind” (p. 184).

He concludes, “It seems to be clear, then, that pleasure is not the good and that not every pleasure is choiceworthy, and that there are some pleasures that are choiceworthy in themselves, differing in kind or in the things they come from” (ibid).

Pleasure is not the good, but pleasures associated with that he calls “beautiful” things, which are those that are good in their own right, are nonetheless choiceworthy in their own right.

“Now the activity of seeing seems to be complete over any time whatever, for there is nothing it lacks which would complete its form by coming about at a later time; pleasure too is like something of this sort. For it is something whole, and there is no time at which one could take a pleasure, the form of which would become complete after it went on for a longer time. Hence pleasure is not a motion…. But all the motions that are in parts of time are incomplete, and are different in form from the whole and from one another. For setting stones together is different from making grooves in a column, and these motions differ from the making of a temple; the making of the temple is something complete (for it is lacking in nothing in relation to what was intended), but the making of the foundation or of a decorative tablet is incomplete, since each of these is the making of a part. They are different in form, then, and it is not possible to find a motion complete in its form in any time whatever except in the whole” (ch. 4, pp. 184-185).

“But the form of a pleasure is complete in any time whatever…. [I]t is not possible to be in motion except in a stretch of time, but it is possible to feel pleasure, for what is in the now is something whole” (p. 185).

Pleasure, like seeing, is its own entelechy (something complete in itself), and not a motion. In the Physics, he treats the continuity of any given motion as itself a kind of imperfect entelechy, but here he emphasizes the contrast between motion and any more perfect entelechy.

“Now since every one of the senses is at work in relation to something perceptible, and is completely at work when it is in its best condition and directed toward the most beautiful of the things perceptible by that sense (for it seems that its complete being-at-work is of this sort most of all, and let it make no difference to speak of the sense itself, or of the organ in which it is present, as being-at-work), for each sense, that way of being-at-work is best that belongs to what is in its best condition, directed toward the best of what is perceptible by it. This would be most complete and most pleasant” (p. 186).

It is common to hear claims that perception for Aristotle is unequivocally passive. It does have a passive aspect that he emphasizes in On the Soul. But here he emphasizes that all perception is a being-at-work or actuality, and thus also an entelechy, by way of his identification of actuality with entelechy.

“[F]or there is a pleasure that goes with each of the senses, and similarly with thinking and contemplation, and its most complete activity is most pleasant, and it is most complete when it belongs to a power that is in good condition directed toward that which is of most serious worth among the things apprehended by it, and the pleasure brings the activity to completion” (ibid).

The greatest pleasure accompanies the most complete entelechy. This also applies to the first cause, which he conceives as an entelechy that is complete in an unqualified sense.

“When the thing perceiving and the thing perceived are at their best, there will always be pleasure when what acts and what is acted upon are present to one another. But the pleasure brings the activity to completion not as an active condition present within it all along, but as something that comes over it, like the bloom of well-being in people who are at the peak of their powers” (ibid).

Pleasure follows from the fulfillment of nature. But it is something that supervenes on that fulfillment.

“So as long as the intelligible or perceptible thing, and the power that discerns or contemplates it, are such as they ought to be, there will be pleasure in their being-at-work, for while the thing acted upon and the thing acting remain as they are and have the same relation to one another, the same thing comes about…. [But] it is impossible for anything belonging to human beings to be at-work continuously” (p. 187).

Being-at-work and entelechy inherently generate pleasure.

“But one might assume that all beings reach out for pleasure because they all desire to live. Life is a certain kind of being-at-work…. The pleasure brings the activities to completion and hence brings living to completion, which is what they all strive for…. For without being-at-work, no pleasure comes about, and pleasure brings every way of being-at-work to completion” (ibid).

All life is being-at-work and entelechy. There is no genuine pleasure apart from these.

“[W]ays of being-at-work that are different in kind are brought to completion by means that differ in kind…. [E]ach of the pleasures is bound up with the activity it completes, since the appropriate pleasure contributes to the growth of the activity. For those who are at-work with pleasure discern each sort of thing better and are more precise about it” (pp. 187-188).

To be at-work and to feel pleasure in it makes us better at whatever we are doing.

“Now since ways of being-at-work differ in decency and baseness, and since some are to be chosen, others are to be avoided, and still others are neutral, their pleasures also differ similarly, since a special pleasure goes with each activity. The special pleasure in an activity of serious worth is decent, and the special pleasure in a base activity is corrupt” (p. 188).

Here he distinguishes what I above called “genuine” pleasure from spurious apparent pleasure associated with a corrupt nature.

“Decency” (epieikeia) means ethical sensitivity. More specifically, for Aristotle it is an attitude that tempers the strict application of rules or laws with kindness and charitable interpretation. Leibniz also emphasized this in his philosophy of jurisprudence. Ethics answers to a higher calling than mere rules or law. This doesn’t mean that all rules and law should be thrown out. It does mean that within reason, kindness and charity and attention to particulars should take precedence over the rigid application of rules.

“But in all such matters, it seems that a thing is what it shows itself to be to a person of serious moral stature. And if this is beautifully said, as it seems to be, then the measure of each thing is virtue, or a good person, insofar as he is good, and what appear to be pleasures to this person would be pleasures, and the things he enjoys will be pleasant. And if some things that are hard for this person to endure appear pleasant to someone, that is nothing to be wondered at, since many kinds of corruption and damage happen to human beings” (p. 189).

In the Metaphysics, Aristotle interprets Protagoras’ “Man is the measure of all things” as a subjectivism that undermines any possibility of discourse. Here is Aristotle’s positive alternative: the virtue of a good person is the measure of all things. Intelligibility depends on normativity.

“[B]ut among the pleasures that seem to be decent, which sort or which one ought one to say is that of a human being? Or is this clear from the ways of being-at-work, since the pleasures follow upon these? So if there is one or more than one activity belonging to the man who is fulfilled and blessed, the pleasures that bring them to completion should be spoken of, in the governing sense, as the pleasures of a human being, while the rest are pleasures in a secondary and greatly diminished sense, corresponding to their activities” (pp. 189-190).

The highest pleasure of a human being will turn out to come from the entelechy of contemplative intellect.

“Now that the things having to do with the virtues, with friendships, and with pleasures have been discussed, what remains is to go through in outline what has to do with happiness, since we set this down as the end at which human beings aim. And the account of it would be shorter for those who take up again what has been said before” (ch. 6, p. 190).

The virtues and friendship are discussed in earlier books of the Ethics. Now he turns from pleasure to eudaimonia or “happiness”, which for Aristotle is a condition to be judged objectively, and not a subjective feeling.

“[O]ne ought… to place happiness in some form of being-at-work…. [O]ne ought to place happiness among those that are chosen for their own sake and not among those that are for the sake of something else, since happiness stands in need of nothing but is self-sufficient. And those activities are chosen for their own sake from which nothing is sought beyond the being-at-work; and actions in accord with virtue seem to be of this sort, since performing actions that are beautiful and serious is something chosen for its own sake” (ch. 6, p. 190).

Happiness comes from a substantial engagement in activities chosen for their own sake. No human gets to do this exclusively, but we do have the ability to choose some things only for their own sake.

“Even children believe that the things valued by themselves are the best things. So it is reasonable that, just as different things appear worthwhile to children and to men, so too do different things appear worthwhile to people of a low sort and to decent people…. [T]o each person, the way of being-at-work that results from his own active condition is the most choiceworthy, and to a person of serious worth that is the activity that results from virtue” (pp. 190-191).

At a certain level, we cannot avoid dealing with apparent goods. The way he approaches these is to focus on what seems good to fundamentally kind, reasonable people who take ethics seriously.

“But to be earnest and to labor for the sake of play seems foolish and too childish. But to play in order to be serious… seems to be right, since play seems like relaxation, and since people are incapable of laboring continuously, they need relaxation. So relaxation is not the end, since it comes about for the sake of being-at-work. And the happy life seems to be in accord with virtue, and this involves seriousness and does not consist in play” (p. 191).

He argues against the shallow association of happiness with play. Seriousness means not a dour attitude, but caring about what is reasonable and ethical.

“But if happiness is being-at-work in accord with virtue, it is reasonable that it would be in accord with the most powerful virtue, and this would belong to the best part. Now whether this is intellect or some other part that seems by nature to rule and lead and have a conception about things that are beautiful and divine, and to be either divine itself or the most divine of the things that are in us, the being-at-work of this part in accord with its own proper virtue would be complete happiness. That this way of being-at-work is contemplative has been said. And this would seem to be in agreement with the things said before and with the truth. For this way of being-at-work is the most powerful (since the intellect is the most powerful of the things in us, and the things with which the intellect is concerned are the most powerful of the things that can be known); it is also the most continuous, for we are more able to contemplate continuously than to act in any way whatever” (ch. 7, pp. 191-192).

This helps fill out what is said about the nature of the first cause in book Lambda of the Metaphysics. I think it tends to support the identification of contemplation with thought thinking itself.

“And we believe that pleasure must be mixed in with happiness, and by general agreement the most pleasant of the ways of being-at-work in accord with virtue is that which goes along with wisdom; at any rate, philosophy seems to have pleasures that are wonderful in their purity and stability…. And what is referred to as self-sufficiency would be present most of all in the contemplative life, for… the wise person is able to contemplate even when he is by himself, and more so to the extent that he is more wise. He will contemplate better, no doubt, when he has people to work with, but he is still the most self-sufficient person” (p. 192).

The highest pleasure is being-at-work in accordance with wisdom. Contemplation is more complete in itself (more of an entelechy) than anything else.

“And contemplation seems to be the only activity that is loved for its own sake, for nothing comes to be from it beyond the contemplating, while from things involving action we gain something for ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent, beyond the action” (ibid).

Contemplating is distinguished from the kind of acting that is the official concern of practical judgment (phronesis), as well as from any kind of making. For Aristotle, it is a more pure example of being-at-work than acting or making.

“So if, among actions in accord with the virtues, those that pertain to politics and war are pre-eminent in beauty and magnitude, but they are unleisured and aim at some end and are chosen not for their own sake, while the being-at-work of the intellect seems to excel in seriousness, and to be contemplative and aim at no end beyond itself, and to have its own pleasure (which increases its activity), so that what is as self-sufficient, leisured, and unwearied as possible for a human being, and all the other things that are attributed to a blessed person, show themselves as the things that result from this way of being-at-work, then this would be the complete happiness of a human being, if it takes in a complete span of life, for none of the things that belong to happiness is incomplete” (pp. 192-193).

For Aristotle, happiness or its absence is a characteristic of a whole life viewed in its completion.

“But such a life would be greater than what accords with a human being, for it is not insofar as one is a human being that he will live in this way, but insofar as something divine is present in him, and to the extent that this surpasses the compound being, to that extent also the being-at-work of it surpasses that which results from the rest of virtue” (p. 193).

Intellect “surpasses the compound being”. Once again, this suggests that for Aristotle, intellect is more than just a part of the soul that is a constituent of that compound.

“So if intellect is something divine as compared with a human being, the life that is in accord with intellect is divine as compared with a human life. But one should not follow those who advise us to think human thoughts, since we are human, and mortal thoughts, since we are mortal, but as far as possible one ought to be immortal and to do all things with a view toward living in accord with the most powerful thing in oneself, for even if it is small in bulk, it rises much more above everything else in power and worth. And each person would even seem to be this part, if it is the governing and better part” (ibid).

For Aristotle, intellect is immortal, although memory depends on the body. He is suggesting that we identify as much as we can with the immortal thing that both is within us and surpasses us. (See also Properly Human, More Than Human?.)

“[W]hat is appropriate by nature to each being is best and most pleasant for each, and so, for a human being, this is the life in accord with the intellect, if that most of all is a human being. Therefore this life is also the happiest” (ibid).

The same thing — intellect — that was said to be greater than what accords with an empirical human being, is now said to be “most of all” a human being in a non-empirical, normative sense.

“The life in accord with the rest of virtue is happy in a secondary way, since the activities that result from it are human ones…. Some of them even seem to derive from the body, and in many respects virtue of character is bound up together with our feelings. And practical judgment is linked together with virtue of character, and it with practical judgment, if the sources of practical judgment are dependent on virtues of character, while the right thing belonging to virtues of character is dependent upon practical judgment” (ch. 8, p. 193).

Here we have the source of claims that Aristotle regards practical judgment (phronesis) as distinctly inferior to contemplative intellect. This ought to be considered carefully.

It is true that practical judgement is inseparable from how we deal with our emotions, whereas he wants to say that intellect is not. But being inseparable from how we deal with our emotions need not at all imply being compulsively driven by the raw emotions we are dealing with. In passing, we feel all sorts of things that we do not act upon, because we judge that it would not really be appropriate to do so. We can have various degrees of detachment from things that we feel, even though we still feel them.

I want to say that there is a kind of contemplative, reflective, deliberative, interpretive judgment that is like practical judgment in that it is primarily concerned with particulars, but different in that its primary outcome is interpretation rather than action. I think that practical judgment about the right action could not function without relying on many interpretive judgments about relevant details, and indeed that such interpretive judgment is what does all the deliberative work in practical judgment, independent of whether that work results in action or not.

“But the happiness that belongs to the intellect is separate…. And it would seem to have little need of external props, or less than virtue of character has…. For the generous person will need money for performing generous acts…, and a courageous person will need strength, … and a temperate person will need opportunity” (p. 194).

He points out that the outcome of actions depends on circumstances. Contemplation has some minimal conditions too, but once those are met, its outcome does not depend on circumstances. But it is only the actions that have these additional dependencies on circumstance, not interpretive judgments as such.

“It is also a matter of dispute whether the choice or the actions are more determining of virtue, since it is present in both; it is clear that the completeness of it would consist in both together” (ibid).

Both intentions and outcomes are important for any normative appraisal of actions. Good intentions may warrant forgiveness for bad outcomes. But at the same time, deeds count more than words in the assessment of what someone’s intentions and values really were.

“[B]ut for the actions many things are needed, and more of them to the extent that the actions are of greater magnitude and more beautiful. But for someone who contemplates there is no need of such things for his being-at-work; rather, one might say that they get in the way of his contemplating. But insofar as he is a human being and lives in company with a number of people, he chooses to do the things that have to do with virtue, and thus will have need of such things in order to live a human life” (ibid).

A contemplative human being will almost always also be involved in non-contemplative actions and social interactions. For Aristotle, involvement in social relations is an essential aspect of what it is to be human.

“That complete happiness is a contemplative activity would also be made clear by the following consideration: we assume that the gods are most of all blessed and happy, but what sort of actions will it be right to attribute to them?… And for someone who goes through them all, it would be obvious that the things involved in actions are small and unworthy of the gods. But surely everyone supposes that they are alive at any rate, and are therefore at work…. But when someone who is living is deprived of acting, and still more of making anything, what remains except contemplation? So the being-at-work of a god, surpassing in blessedness, would be contemplative, and so among human activities, the one the most akin to this would be the most happy” (pp. 194-195).

Here he says that the being-at-work of a god is contemplation, and cites this as an additional reason why contemplation is the happiest human activity.

“For the gods, the whole of life is blessed, and for human beings it is so to the extent that there is in it some likeness to such a way of being-at-work…. But there will also be a need of external prosperity for one who is a human being, since nature is not self-sufficient for contemplating, but there is also a need for the body to be healthy and for food and other attentions to be present. But one certainly ought not to suppose that someone who is going to be happy will need many things or grand ones…; for self-sufficiency does not consist in excess any more than action does, and it is possible for one who is not a ruler of land and sea to perform beautiful actions. For one would be capable of acting in accord with virtue from moderate means (and it is possible to see this plainly, since private people seem to perform decent actions not less than powerful people but even more), and it is sufficient if that much is present, since the life of someone who is at-work in accord with virtue will be happy” (p. 195).

The happiness of a human life also has material prerequisites, but they are relatively modest. He suggests that the rich and powerful may be less virtuous and therefore less happy than others.

“And Anaxagoras, too, seems to have believed that the happy person is neither rich nor powerful, when he said it would be nothing to wonder at if such a person would appear strange to most people, since they judge by externals, perceiving these alone. So the opinions of the wise seem to be in harmony with our arguments” (ibid).

A person living a life that would ultimately be judged to be happy in the Aristotelian sense will have priorities that will appear strange to people who have no serious involvement with contemplation.

“Now such things have some trustworthiness, but the truth in matters of action is discerned from deeds and from life…. So we ought to examine the things that have been said by applying them to deeds and to life, and if they are in harmony with the deeds one ought to accept them, while if they are out of tune one ought to consider them just words” (pp. 195-196).

Having just cited the authority of a reputedly wise man for additional persuasion, he again points out that deeds observable by others are more trustworthy than anyone’s mere words, including those of an authority we respect.

“But the person who is at-work with intellect and takes care of this and is disposed in the best way toward it seems also to be most dear to the gods. For if some care for human beings comes from the gods, as is believed, then it would be most reasonable for them to delight in what is best and most akin to them (and this would be the intellect), and to do good in return to those who love and honor this most, since such people care for the things that are dear to them, and also act rightly and beautifully” (p. 196).

Here he argues that intellect and contemplation are what is most dear to the gods — even more dear, that is, than virtuous actions. This need not imply that particular virtuous actions are not dear to them also, only that the intellect, contemplation, and wisdom that among other things guide virtuous action are even more so.

“Now if what has to do with happiness as well as with the virtues, and also with friendship and pleasure, has been sufficiently discussed in outline, ought one to assume that our chosen task has its end? Or, as has been said, is the end in matters of action not contemplating and knowing each of them but rather doing them? Then it is not sufficient to know about virtue, but one must try to have it and use it” (ch. 9, p. 196).

Once again, he balances the emphasis on contemplation with an emphasis on complete ethical doing. This kind of careful concern for a balanced, multi-dimensional view of things is why I keep coming back to Aristotle.

“[A]s things are, discourses appear to have the power to encourage and stimulate open-natured young people, … but they are unable to encourage most people toward what is beautiful and good…. For it is not possible, or not easy, to change by words things that have been bound up in people’s characters since long ago…. [I]t is necessary for the soul of the listener to have been worked on beforehand by means of habits, with a view to enjoying and hating in a beautiful way, like ground that is going to nourish the seed” (pp. 196-197).

Here he repeats a point made in an earlier book about the extreme ethical importance of people’s emotional dispositions, and consequently of the way children are raised. Insofar as people have acquired a disposition for disordered emotions, it can be nearly impossible to have dialogue with them at the times when it matters most.

I don’t think it is ever acceptable to hate people as people. But someone who loves the good may legitimately hate actions and circumstances that are truly bad, just because they are bad. And those who stubbornly refuse to recognize others deserve to be harshly dealt with.

“For someone who lives by feeling could not hear the words that would turn him away, nor could he even understand them; when someone is in that condition, how is it possible to change his mind? And in general, feeling seems to yield not to reasoned speech but to force. So it is necessary for a character to be present in advance that is in some way appropriate for virtue, loving what is beautiful and scorning what is shameful” (ibid).

I prefer to use the English word “feeling” in a more positive way, and would substitute “disordered emotion” for it in the above. (See also Virtue Not a Potential.)

Potentiality and Actuality

Here I will treat what Aristotle says about potentiality and actuality in Metaphysics book Theta (IX). On this closer reading, I was initially disappointed that he did not say more about how potentiality and actuality provide the detailed basis for the “internal” teleology that is at the core of his thinking. But on further reflection, perhaps this is another case of what I have elsewhere appreciated as a kind of careful minimalism.

“[L]et us make distinctions also about potency [aka potentiality] and complete being-at-work [aka actuality], and first about potency in the sense in which it is meant most properly, although it is not the sense that is most useful for what we now want. For potency and being-at-work apply to more than just things spoken of in reference to motion. But when we have discussed them in this sense, we will make clear their other senses in the distinctions that concern being-at-work” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 167).

This most elementary sense of what I prefer to guardedly call potentiality was originally developed in the Physics, in connection with the theory of what he broadly calls “motion”. Here, he will ultimately extend it to cases that do not involve motion in this sense. I tend to think of the latter cases as primary.

“[A]s many [senses of potency] as point to the same form are all certain kinds of sources… of change in some other thing or in the same thing as other. For one kind is a power of being acted upon, which is a source in the acted-upon thing itself of passive change by the action of something else or of itself as other; another is an active condition of being unaffected for the worse…. And these potencies are in turn spoken of as only acting or being acted upon, or as acting and being acted upon” (pp. 167-168).

This is a thin, elementary definition, like that of substance in the Categories, with no mention of potentiality’s important role in Aristotle’s teleology. Until recently, working mostly from memory, I had not been thinking about what he calls “sources” (something strictly broader than “causes”) at all, or about this Physics sense of potentiality that is specifically a “source” of motion.

In the Physics, motion is in fact defined in terms of elementary versions of potentiality and actuality. Aristotle says “thus the fulfillment [actuality, being-at-work] of what is potentially, as such, is motion — e.g., the fulfillment of what is alterable, as alterable, is alteration; of what is increasable and its opposite, decreasable… increase and decrease; of what can come to be and pass away, coming to be and passing away; of what can be carried along, locomotion” (book III ch. 1, Collected Works, Barnes ed., vol. 1, p. 343).

I rather like the Collected Works translators’ choice of “fulfillment” as an English alternative to “actuality” or “being-at-work”. Grounded more in what Aristotle says about energeia than in the etymology of the new Greek word he coined for it, it does nicely capture the teleological role of actuality. Translation is often not a simple affair.

The Physics definition of motion, though, is a tricky thought: the actuality of something that as such is a potentiality. This illustrates that there can be a kind of layering with respect to these terms.

“And it is clear that there is a sense in which the potency of acting and being acted upon is one (since something is potential both by means of its own potency to be acted upon and by something else’s potency to be acted upon by it), but there is a sense in which they are different” (p. 168).

The way in which these potentialities of acting and being acted upon are said to be “one” is structurally similar to what he says in On the Soul and Metaphysics book Lambda about thought and the thing thought being one. It seems like Aristotle might consider that to be one case of this.

“[A]ll the arts and productive kinds of knowledge are potencies” (ch. 2, p. 169).

This sort of case is very important to remember when considering the meanings of “potentiality” or “source of motion”. When he is speaking the most carefully, Aristotle says the art of building is the primary “source of motion” for the building of a house.

“And all potencies that include reason are capable of contrary effects, but with the irrational ones, one potency is for one effect, as something hot has a potency only for heating, while the medical art is capable of causing disease or health” (ibid).

He treats this thesis about rational potentialities producing “contrary” effects as important. The sense seems to be that because the actualization of rational potentialities involves practical judgment about what is appropriate in a given situation, the judgment can go wrong, leading to the production of the “opposite” of the intended effect. Heat and similar things can’t “go wrong” in this way,

“And it is clear that, with the potency of doing something well, the potency of merely doing or suffering it follows along, while the former does not always follow along with the latter, since the one doing something well necessarily also does it, but the one merely doing it does not necessarily also do it well” (ibid).

This is a nice incidental mention of the normative dimension involved in all practical doing, though the technical point is about what cases include what other cases.

“There are some people, such as the Megarians, who say that something is potential only when it is active, but when it is not active it is not potential…. The absurd consequences of this opinion are not difficult to see…. [T]hese assertions abolish both motion and becoming. For what is standing will always be standing and what is sitting always sitting, since it will not stand up if it is sitting” (ch. 3, p. 170).

The Megarian logicians claimed that potentiality has no reality of its own — that everything that is, is actual. This position results in paradoxes similar to those following from the claims of Parmenides about non-being and being.

“What is capable is that which would be in no way incapable if it so happened that the being-at-work of which it is said to have the potency were present” (p. 171).

This is another specification I had lost track of working mainly from memory. I’m not sure how it would apply to his example of arts and productive knowledge, which comes closest to the extensions of Aristotelian potentiality that I have suggested (to characterize recent notions of both the “space of reasons” and “structure” as belonging to potentiality).

“And the phrase being-at-work, which is designed to converge in meaning with being-at-work-staying-complete [entelechy], comes to apply to other things from belonging especially to motions” (ibid).

This seems to be an application of Aristotle’s frequent distinction between how things are “for us” and how they are “in themselves”. The appeal to motion as a basis for understanding being-at-work or actuality is an appeal to common experience. But further below, he will contrast motion with being-at-work in a fuller sense.

He goes on to make a number of logical distinctions.

“[I]t cannot be true to say that such-and-such is possible, but will not be the case” (ibid).

(When we say something will not be the case, we are also implicitly saying there is no possibility that it will be the case. Therefore, it cannot be possible, and the statement contradicts itself.)

Potentiality is a more specific notion than possibility, but it seems that whatever is potential must also be possible, and therefore the generalization about possibility applies to all cases of potentiality.

“For the false and the impossible are not the same thing; for that you are now standing is false, but not impossible” (ch. 4, p. 172).

Similarly, generalizations about impossibility also apply to the more specific notion of potentiality.

“[I]t is also clear that, if it is necessary for B to be the case when A is, it is also necessary for B to be capable of being the case when A is capable of being the case” (ibid).

If there is a relation of necessity between actual things, then logically there must be a corresponding relation of necessity between the corresponding potential things. Possibility and necessity are the two most basic modalities in modern modal logic.

“Of all potencies, since some are innate, such as the senses, while others come by habit, such as that of flute playing, and others by learning, such as the arts, some, those that are by habit and reasoning need to have previous activity, while others that are not of that kind, and apply to being acted upon, do not need it” (ch. 5, p. 172).

For Aristotle, a sense like vision is to be understood first of all as a potentiality for the complete act of actually seeing. All other details — of optics, of physiology, of the operations of imagination, of what modern people might call the consciousness of seeing — that are conditions of the complete act, are subordinate to the complete act itself as a realized end. This is a good example of how Aristotle uses teleology to organize and coordinate other sorts of explanation.

The distinction between by “habit” (hexis, or acquired disposition) and by learning does not seem to be strict. Further below, he mentions practicing in order to play the harp as a form of learning, rather than habit. I think he is speaking casually both times. One might even say that all habits are learned; at the very least, they are acquired. (This broader term related to “second nature” seems to have been particularly important for al-Farabi, who uses it in his classic neoplatonizing elaboration of the Aristotelian theory of intellect.)

“[With irrational potencies] it is necessary, whenever a thing that is active and a thing that is passive in the sense that they are potential come near each other, that the one act and the other be acted upon” (pp. 172-173).

This formulation is surprising. I don’t understand why the qualification he applies immediately below for the case of rational potentialities (“not in every situation but when things are in certain conditions”) would not also apply to irrational potentialities. The distinction between the “rational” and “irrational” cases is based on presence or absence of a dimension of desire or choice, which seems not to affect the relevance of situations and conditions.

“[B]ut with [rational potencies] this is not necessary…. It is necessary, therefore, that there be something else that is governing; by this I mean desire or choice. For whatever something chiefly desires is what it will do whenever what it is capable of is present and it approaches its passive object…. not in every situation but when things are in certain conditions” (p. 173).

“Since what concerns the kind of potency that corresponds to motion has been discussed, let us make distinctions about being-at-work, to mark out both what it is and what sort of thing it is. For that which is potential will also be clear at the same time to those who make distinctions, since we speak of the potential not only as that which is of such a nature as to move some other thing or be moved by something else, … but also in another way, and it is because we are inquiring after that other meaning that we went through this one” (ch. 6, p. 173).

He explicitly says he will not define actuality or being-at-work, but instead suggests that we infer a pattern from a series of examples. Actually, it turns out that the more abstract pattern he is thinking of includes two distinct variants.

“The other way these things are present is in activity. And what we mean to say is clear by looking directly at particular examples, nor is it necessary to look for a definition of everything, but one can see at a glance, by means of analogy, that which is as the one building is to the one who can build, and the awake to the asleep, and the one seeing to the one whose eyes are shut but who has sight, and what has been formed out of material to the material, and what is perfected to what is incomplete…. But not all things that are said to be in activity are alike, except by analogy…. For some of them are related in the manner of a motion to a potency, others in the manner of thinghood to a material” (pp. 173-174).

At the end, he is now saying that motion and substance-essence-thinghood are the two alternate kinds of actuality or being-at-work. Motion is the “imperfect” kind that is still in process of realization, and substance-essence-thinghood is the “perfect” or “complete” kind that is an entelechy.

“And since, of the actions that do have limits, none of them is itself an end, but it is among things that approach an end, (such as losing weight, for the thing that is losing weight, when it is doing so, is in motion that way, although that for the sake of which the motion takes place is not present), this is not an action, or at any rate not a complete one; but that in which the end is present is an action. For instance, one sees and is at the same time in a state of having seen, understands and is at the same time in a state of having understood, or thinks contemplatively and is at the same time in a state of having thought contemplatively, but one does not learn while one is at the same time in a state of having learned, or get well while in a state of having gotten well. One does live well at the same time one is in a state of having lived well, and one is happy at the same time one is in a state of having been happy” (p. 174).

“And it is appropriate to call the one sort of action motion, and the other being-at-work. For every motion is incomplete: losing weight, learning, walking, house-building…; but one has seen and is at the same time seeing the same thing, and is contemplating and has contemplated the same thing. And I call this sort of action a being-at-work, and that sort a motion. So that which is by way of being-at-work, both what it is and of what sort, let it be evident to us from these examples” (pp. 174-175).

Motion and being-at-work are both said to be forms of “action”. Anything broad enough to comprehend both of these will not fit common connotations of the English word “action”, so we need to recognize that it is being used in a special sense closer to “activity”, which seems better suited to something that includes both.

“Now when each thing is in potency and when not must be distinguished, since it is not the case at just any time whatever…. Then it would be just as not everything can be healed, by either medical skill or chance, but there is something that is potential, and this is what is healthy in potency” (ch. 7, p. 175).

The reference to time does not seem to be essential. What seems decisive for these distinctions are the possibly blocking circumstances or “conditions” mentioned earlier.

“And since the various ways in which something is said to take precedence have been distinguished, it is clear that being-at-work takes precedence over potency. And I mean that it takes precedence not only over potency as defined, … but over every source of motion or rest in general. For nature too is in the same general class as potency, since it is a source of motion, though not in something else but in a thing itself as itself” (ch. 8, p. 177).

This is the first of several iterations on the precedence of actuality or being-at-work over potentiality. The way that he respectively defines potentiality and nature as sources of motion, they are strict logical complements of one another, so he is implying that all sources of motion are either natures or potentialities.

“And this is why it seems to be impossible to be a house-builder if one has not built any houses, or a harpist if one has not played the harp at all; for the one learning to play the harp learns to play the harp by playing the harp, and similarly with others who learn things…. But since something of what comes into being has always already come into being, and in general something of what is in motion has always already been moved…, presumably the one who is learning must also already have something of knowledge” (p. 178).

Aristotle’s account of the precedence of actuality over potentiality might be the origin of the “always already” theme. This is also the root of many interesting things that Hegel says about Wirklichkeit (commonly translated as “actuality”, with Aristotle in mind).

“But surely [being-at-work] takes precedence in thinghood too, first because things that are later in coming into being take precedence in form and in thinghood (as a man does over a boy, or a human being over the germinal fluid, since the one already has the form, and the other does not), and also because everything that comes into being goes up to a source and an end (since that for the sake of which something is is a source, and coming to be is for the sake of an end), but the being-at-work is an end, and it is for the enjoyment of this that the potency is taken on. For it is not in order to have the power of sight that animals see, but they have sight in order to see, and similarly too, people have the house-building power in order that they may build houses, and the contemplative power in order that they may contemplate; but they do not contemplate in order that they may have the contemplative power, unless they are practicing, and these people are not contemplating other than in a qualified sense, or else they would have no need to be practicing contemplating” (ibid).

Here he implicitly mentions the teleological aspect, referring to ends and that-for-the-sake-of-which.

Sachs aptly comments, “How does nature display that a squirrel has reached the completion for the sake of which it exists? In the spectacle of the squirrel at work being a squirrel…. Aristotle is arguing that the very thinghood of a thing is not what may be hidden inside of it, but a definite way of being unceasingly at-work, that makes it a thing at all and the kind of thing it is” (p. 179n).

(I would say “is what it is” instead of “exists” in the part about the squirrel.) The other part, that thinghood is not hidden inside things, but rather manifest in their ways of being at work, makes me think of what Hegel says about essence.

“[T]he putting to use of some things is ultimate (as seeing is in the case of sight…), but from some things something comes into being….[O]f those things from which there is something else apart from the putting-to-use that comes into being, the being-at-work is in the thing that is made…; but of those things which have no other work besides their being-at-work, the being-at-work of them is present in themselves (as seeing is in the one seeing and contemplation in the one contemplating, and life is in the soul, and hence happiness too, since it is a certain sort of life). And so it is clear that thinghood and form are being-at-work” (p. 179).

The last sentence is a principal new conclusion of book Theta: substance-essence-thinghood and form are both said to be cases of actuality or being-at-work.

Since actuality or being-at-work has already been identified with entelechy, this means that both independent things and (some) forms are now also being said to be entelechies. In the case of independent things, this is not surprising, given everything that was said about them in book Zeta. In the case of forms, I suspect he means that those forms that are souls are entelechies.

“But being-at-work takes precedence in an even more governing way; for everlasting things take precedence in thinghood over destructible ones, and nothing that is in potency is everlasting…. Therefore nothing that is simply indestructible is simply in potency (though nothing prevents it from being potentially in some particular respect, such as of a certain sort or at a certain place), and so all of them are at work. And none of the things that are by necessity is in potency (and yet these are primary, since if they were not, nothing would be), nor is motion, if there is any everlasting one; … and this is why the sun and moon and the whole heaven are always at work” (p. 180).

Aristotle generously calls everything “everlasting” that is apparently so, and for which he has no evidence to the contrary.

“And things that undergo change, such as earth and fire, mimic the indestructible things, since they too are always at work, for they have motion in virtue of themselves and in themselves” (p. 181).

What Aristotle calls matter is not itself alive, but nonetheless he says it has intrinsic motion. Motion, as we saw above, is defined in implicitly teleological terms in the Physics, using both potentiality and actuality. This is how the behavior of inanimate matter for Aristotle ends up having teleological characteristics.

“And that being-at-work is a better and more honorable thing than a potency for something worth choosing, is clear from these considerations. For whatever is spoken of as being potential is itself capable of opposite effects…. And in the case of bad things, it is necessary that the completion and being-at-work be worse than the potency…. Therefore it is clear that there is nothing bad apart from particular things, since the bad is by nature secondary to potency. Therefore among things that are from the beginning and are everlasting, there is nothing bad, erring, or corruptible” (ch. 9, pp. 181-182).

Things that don’t measure up to what they are supposed to be are “bad” examples of the kind of things that they are. I am surprised that he speaks of any “completion and being-at-work” of bad things at all.

“And geometrical constructions are discovered by means of activity, since it is by dividing up the figures that people discover them…. And so it is clear that the things that are in the figures in potency are discovered by being drawn into activity, … and for this reason it is only those who make a construction who know it” (p. 182).

Aristotle seems to anticipate the attitude of mathematical constructivism.

“[B]ut the most governing sense [of being and not being] is the true or the false…. For it is necessary to examine in what way we mean this. For you are not pale because we think truly that you are pale, but rather it is because you are pale that we who say so speak the truth” (ch. 10, p. 183).

I was a bit surprised when he earlier ruled out further discussion of being in the sense of the true and false attributed to the “is” or “is not” used to form propositions. But here, he goes on to speak of a different notion of truth, which seems to be more like metaphorically “grasping” an essence.

“But now for things that are not compound, what is being or not being, and the true and the false? For the thing is not a compound, so that it would be when it is combined and not be if it is separated, like the white on a block of wood or the incommensurability of the diagonal; and the true and false will not still be present in a way similar to those things. Rather, just as the true is not the same thing for these things, so too being is not the same for them, but the true or false is this: touching and affirming something uncompounded is the true (for affirming is not the same thing as asserting a predication), while not touching is being ignorant (for it is not possible to be deceived about what it is, except incidentally). And it is similar with independent things that are not compound, since it is not possible to be deceived about them; and they are all at work, not in potency, for otherwise they would be coming into being and passing away, but the very thing that is does not come to be or pass away, since it would have to come from something. So it is not possible to be deceived about anything the very being of which is being-at-work, but one either grasps it or does not grasp it in contemplative thinking; about them, inquiring after what they are is asking whether they are of certain kinds or not” (p. 184).

What is meant to be included under “independent things that are not compound” and “anything the very being of which is being-at-work” — about both of which it is said to be impossible to be deceived — has yet to be specified.

The “grasping” and “touching” metaphors here need not be taken as literally implying a kind of immediate experiencing. The next book will be explore at length the ways in which things are one, and thus form wholes. I think the implicit emphasis here is on a grasping of things as integral wholes. When we think of an essence as an integral whole, either we get it or we don’t, just as he says here. How we are able to do this is another question, not addressed here, but I think that for rational animals, the immediacy of grasping an essence can only be what Hegel would call a “mediated” immediacy.

“The true is the contemplative knowing of these things, and there is no falsity, nor deception, only ignorance, and not the same sort of thing as blindness; for blindness would be as if someone were not to have the contemplative power at all” (ibid).

Toward Potentiality and Actuality

With the discussion of independent things, the saying of what they are, and the provision for deriving sayings in the other categories from this, we have taken simple saying in the various senses of Aristotle’s Categories about as far as it can go. Although higher dialectical aspects will emerge in what is yet to come, I think the main results of Metaphysics book Zeta (VII) are qualified well enough to be counted by Aristotle as a permanent acquisition that will still be enhanced, but never rolled back.

Aristotelian saying is far from exhausted by saying in the syntactic senses of the Categories, however. We have yet to touch upon its all-important normative aspect, and the corresponding saying of things with an additional modal dimension of potentiality or actuality. This will be intimately involved with that-for-the-sake-of-which (see also Aristotle on Explanation). Book Eta (VIII), treated here, serves as a transition to the main discussion of potentiality and actuality that lies ahead in book Theta (IX).

For Aristotle (and Hegel as well), to say that something is actually X is to judge that it has achieved and is stably continuing to achieve a full expression of what it is to be X, which means it is actively fulfilling that for the sake of which X’s do what they characteristically do (see also Entelechy). In thinking about this, it is important not to set the bar too high — Aristotle thinks it is true of many things.

Then for something to be potentially X, at least within itself it has to be fully “ready” to undergo whatever is required by the process of becoming an actual X, though its becoming an actual X in fact will usually depend on conditions external to it, and in particular on the activity of some other actual X — parents in the case of offspring, and something like a Platonic “model” of the thing in the case of artificial things.

Book Eta begins with a summary of book Zeta, so here it is evident from the text itself that the two are intended to develop one continuous argument. Then book Theta will begin with a very short summary of both Zeta and Eta.

“Now one ought to reckon up the results of what has been said, and, putting them all together, to set out the final point to which they come. And it has been said that the causes, sources, and elements of independent things are being looked for” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 155).

Here again we have a more refined statement of the goal of the inquiry. He then cheerfully points out what is in fact the big new impasse reached in the previous book, concerning the impossibility of defining independent things:

“But in one way it follows from the discussions that what it is for something to be, and what underlies something, are kinds of thinghood, and in another way that thinghood is the general class, more than the specific one, and the universal more than the particulars; and the forms are also connected with the universal and the general class (since it is by the same argument that they seem to be independent things). And since what it is for something to be is thinghood, and the articulation of that is a definition, for that reason distinctions were made about definition and about what something is in virtue of itself; and since a definition is a statement, and a statement has parts, it was also necessary to know about the parts — which sort are parts of an independent thing and which not, and if these are the same ones that are parts of the definition. And further, in the course of this, it turned out that neither the universal nor the general class is thinghood” (ibid).

He highlights the discussion of definition, saving till the end the major issue that the independent thing itself is a particular that cannot be the direct subject of a definition. The subtle cue that there will be something problematic in what is said is his “in one way it follows”.

It is typical of both Aristotle and Hegel to appear to endorse an argument for a while, only to eventually overturn it. This can be seen as preliminarily giving each current argument the benefit of the doubt, rather than attempting to anticipate its future refutation. Both Aristotle and Hegel consider it essential for learning to go through the process of an argument’s dialectical development, and not just anticipate ultimate conclusions, as if out of nowhere.

The last statement — that universals do not directly characterize substance-essence-thinghood, which is always particular — is one of the most important conclusions of the Metaphysics. It means that for Aristotle, knowledge (episteme) also will not apply to independent things, since independent things are particulars. This implies that for independent things, we have to rely on something like the practical judgment cultivated for ethical practice, which is directed at particulars.

Those who have wanted to treat “metaphysics” as a “science of being” are going in the opposite of Aristotle’s direction. First he characterizes “being” as having to do with what things are and what can properly be said about them. Then he says the inquiry is really about the causes of independent things. Then he eventually concludes that knowledge does not apply to independent things, because they are particulars. What he is after here is a kind of practical wisdom, not scholastic “science”.

“But now let us go over what concerns the acknowledged independent things. And these are the perceptible ones. And all perceptible independent things have material. And what underlies something is its thinghood, and in one sense this is the material (and by material I mean that which, while not being actively a this, is a this potentially), but in another sense what underlies something is its articulation and form, which, being a this, is separate in articulation; and a third sort of underlying thing is what is composed of these, of which alone there is coming into being and destruction, and which is separate simply. For of the independent things in the sense that corresponds to the articulation, some are separate simply, while others are not” (pp. 155-156).

Here he explicitly generalizes the notion of an “underlying thing”. In the previous book, he started with the accepted view that this must be some kind of material. Then he adopted a Platonic lesson that the form or articulation of things better characterizes what they are. Then he diverged from the Platonists and concluded that independent things are even more important than form.

He certainly discussed all three cases, but my reading of the previous book was that only the composite of both form and matter ended up fully and properly qualifying as an independent thing. In part, he is being extra generous here to his former colleagues in the Platonic Academy, as well as to common-sense views of material. But he is also setting the stage for a new conclusion we will see shortly.

At this point, I am a little mystified by the implication that both all composites and some forms (presumably, some forms of non-perceptible things, which have been mentioned in passing but not discussed yet) will turn out to be in the same way “separate simply”. His only developed argument about the applicability of “separateness” to forms so far has been against the separateness of the Platonic forms, at least in any context involving perceptible things.

However, it is also true that the previous book does in passing seem to defer discussion of the possibility that there are non-perceptible independent things. To anticipate, it does seem true that any first cause of all, analogous to the first cause of motion he argues for in the Physics, must also be independent, for by definition, “first” means having no dependencies.

“[I]t remains to say what the thinghood of perceptible things is in the sense of being-at-work. And Democritus seems to think there are three ways things differ (for he thinks that the underlying body, the material, is one and the same, while what differ are design, which is shape, twist, which is position, and grouping, which is order). But it is obvious that there are many differences; for instance, some things are spoken of by reference to the composition of their material, as are all those made by mixing, such as milk blended with honey; others by way of a binding-cord, such as a bundle, others by means of glue, such as a book, others by means of bolts, such as a box, others by more than one of these, others by position, such as a threshold and a capstone (since these differ by being placed in a certain way), others by time, such as dinner and breakfast, others by place, such as the winds, and others by the attributes of perceptible things such as hardness and softness, density and rarity, or dryness and fluidity, some things differing by some of these, some by all of them” (ch. 2, pp. 156-157).

As this passage makes clear for non-independent perceptible things, in no case does what he calls the “being-at-work” or “actuality” of things involve what we ordinarily think of as work (which is why I still guardedly use “actuality”). In the case of non-independent perceptible things, the “being-at-work” has to do with whatever makes a unified thing out of material components.

“So one must grasp the kinds of differences (since these will be the source of being)…. So it is clear from these considerations that if thinghood is the cause of each thing’s being, it is among these differences that one must look for what is responsible for the being of each of these things. None of these examples is an independent thing, but still there is an analogous structure in each of them” (p. 157).

As we saw in the previous book, Aristotle sees definitions not in the modern formalist sense of characterizations we simply posit in isolation, but as built up from an ordered series of essential differences that progressively distinguish something from other things. To define something for Aristotle is to clarify its relation to classifying distinctions from other things.

“Now it is clear from these examples that the being-at-work and the articulation are different for different materials” (p. 158).

Kinds of materials are a sort of universals, so we do expect their distinctions to be fully articulable. From his examples above, what is responsible for the unity of material things that are not independent living things is itself something material. What kind of thing this source of material unity will be varies according to the case.

“One must not ignore the fact that it sometimes escapes notice whether a name indicates a composite independent thing or its being-at-work and form” (ch.3, p. 158).

“[W]hat it is for something to be belongs to the form and the being-at-work” (p. 159).

Form establishes a what, though it is a universal what and not a particular what. So far we have only seen examples of the somewhat non-intuitive being-at-work of material, non-independent things, which I just called the “source” in Aristotle’s sense for their material unity.

“Now it is obvious to those who inquire about it that a syllable is not made of its letters plus combination, nor a house out of bricks plus combination…. Nor indeed is humanness animalness plus two-footedness, but there has to be something which is apart from these, since these are its material, and that something is neither an element nor derived from an element, but since people leave this out, they describe its material” (ibid).

Here he continues his dispute with Plato’s other students. Combination is not a material ingredient of anything, even in the sense of purely logical or “intelligible” material.

“But whether those things that are the thinghood of destructible things have being separately is not at all clear yet, except that it is clear for certain things at least that this is not possible, as many as are not capable of being apart from the particulars, such as a house or a piece of furniture. So presumably these things themselves are not independent things, nor is any of the other things that are not composed by nature, for one may posit that nature alone is the thinghood in destructible things” (ibid).

I find the above a bit perplexing. The previous book clearly seemed to assume that there are perceptible independent things, and that at least all earthly perceptible things are destructible, though he seems to assume the stars and planets are indestructible, since he sees no evidence to the contrary. But it seemed that animals and plants were implied to be independent things, and to have their own distinctive substance-essence-thinghood. He definitely said that “the soul of an animal… is its thinghood disclosed in speech”. Isn’t an animal a destructible thing?

“[I]t does not belong to an independent thing to be capable of a definition” (p. 160).

This again was a major conclusion of the previous book.

“[E]ach independent thing is a complete being-at-work-staying-itself [entelechy], and a particular nature” (pp. 160-161).

Here he explicitly associates the independence of independent things with the teleological notion of entelechy.

“[W]henever one is inquiring after what is responsible for something, one must state all the causes the thing admits of” (ch. 4, p. 162).

I silently passed over his discussion of his predecessors in book I, but his main argument there was that none of them took all the causes into account. In particular, even Plato resorted to treating the Good as a formal or efficient cause. Aristotle regards interpretation by that-for-the-sake-of-which as his own major innovation.

“And what is the cause in the sense of form? What it keeps on being in order to be. And what is the cause for the sake of which it is? Its end, though presumably both of the last two causes are the same. And one must state the nearest causes: What is the material? Not fire or earth but the material peculiar to the thing” (ibid).

I just pointed out that Aristotle regards the distinction of that-for-the-sake-of-which from a formal cause as of major importance. His identification of the two here therefore must be intended as less than fully general. Form has senses that do not primarily emphasize any normative component, such as the form of triangularity. But as we have seen, Aristotle also speaks of the souls of animals as forms.

One might say that the soul is the entelechy (literally, “in [it] end having”) of a living body. Entelechies may come in layers. More precisely, the soul would be a name for the “first entelechy” of the body, or its achieved and continuing organic functioning. For Aristotle, this is intrinsically a normative concept. To speak of the entelechy of a body implies that it is not only functioning, but functioning well in relation to its intrinsic ends. Higher ongoing functions — just insofar as they are well realized — involve higher entelechies.

He makes an important point about material. What is usually most relevant is “not fire or earth but the material peculiar to the thing“, such as an organic body or a particular mineral. The more specific a material is, the more form-like it is. We will see shortly that Aristotle takes this to the point of identity between the most specific material and the form of a material thing.

“[T]here will not be material in those things that are or are not without changing” (ch. 5, p. 163).

In the Physics, the material cause was originally developed as part of the explanation of change.

“[A]ll things that have more than one part, and of which the sum is not like a heap, but a whole that is something over and above the parts, have something responsible for them…. But a definition is one statement not by being bundled together like the Iliad, but by being of one thing” (ch. 6, pp. 163-164).

A form is normally treated as an integral whole. A definition implicitly refers to an integral whole.

“Now it is clear that, for those who approach defining and explaining in this way that they are accustomed to [crudely adding specifications together, as in “animal plus two-footed”], it is not possible to give an account of it and resolve the impasse. But if, as we say, there is one thing that is material and one that is form, and the former has being as potency and the latter as being-at-work, the thing sought after would no longer seem to be an impasse” (p. 164).

I think what he is saying here is that the definition applies to the form only, not to the composite. That is probably why he earlier mentioned the ambiguity between a name’s referring to the form, and its referring to the composite. This does resolve some of the earlier puzzles about the applicability of definitions (a definition applies to a form). It is important to recall, though, that he just said again that there is still no direct applicability of definitions — which are expressed in universal terms — to independent things, which are particulars.

“But as many things as do not have either intelligible or perceptible material, are each of them some very thing that is one, just as also some very thing that is, a this, an of-this-sort, a so-much (and this is why neither being nor one is included in definitions), and what it is for something to be is immediately a particular one and a particular being. Hence there is no other thing responsible for the being-one of any of these, nor of the being-a-being of each, since each is immediately a certain being and a certain one, not in the sense of being in a class of beings or ones, nor of being among things that have being apart from particulars” (pp. 164-165).

Now he begins to speak in general about things that have no material. What this will apply to is as yet unspecified.

“But as was said, the highest level of material and the form are one and the same thing; the former potentially, the latter actively, so that looking for what is responsible for their being one is like looking for a cause of one thing; for each of them is a certain one, and what is in potency and what is in activity are in a certain way one thing. Therefore there is nothing else responsible, unless in the case of something that moves it from potency to being-at-work, but everything that does not have material is simply something that is itself one” (p. 165).

Back again to things that do have material, here he makes a point I alluded to earlier. One aspect of Aristotle’s hylomorphism is this identity of the most specific material with the form (for things that have material). Each independent thing has its own entelechy that is the primary cause of its being what it is.

Finally, he reiterates that things without material do not require anything external to give them unity.

Practical Wisdom

Practical “wisdom”, as I would use the term, would be an excellence in practical judgment. Aristotle says that practical judgment is neither knowledge nor opinion, but something grounded in deliberation that has an outcome in action. Such deliberation is a kind of doing that uses the the best resources available to it to determine the best action in concrete circumstances. Aristotle uses the Greek phronesis for both practical judgment and what I am distinguishing as practical wisdom.

Joe Sachs says in his glossary to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics that phronesis is “The active condition by which someone discerns the right means to the right end in particular circumstances. Hence the intellectual virtue of practical judgment and the whole of virtue of character are mutually dependent and must develop together, since the right end is apparent only to someone of good character, while the formation of good character requires the repeated choice of the right action, which is impossible without practical judgment” (p. 209).

We might notice that this sort of pattern of mutual dependence between good judgment and good character is exactly the same as that of several mutual dependencies that are emphasized by Hegel in his discussions of what intelligibility in general requires. Of course this is no accident; Aristotle is Hegel’s inspiration for this kind of idea.

“Apart from virtue of character, the capacity to reason from ends to means is mere cleverness; practical judgment involves skill in making distinctions and seeing connections, but if one does not recognize that such thinking imposes upon oneself an obligation to act, that skill is merely astuteness” (ibid).

“The translation ‘practical judgment’ is chosen here as the best way of conveying Aristotle’s central understanding that ethical choices can never be deductions from any rules, principles, or general duties, but always require a weighing of particular circumstances and balancing of conflicting principles in a direct recognition of the mean” (p. 210).

Phronesis is a weighing, and not a deduction. This is extremely important, though I would use some other words than “direct recognition” in regard to the mean.

Aristotle is not qualifying a more general, pre-existing notion of “judgment” by calling it “practical”. We should not take literally this implication of the grammar of the English phrase “practical judgment”, which diverges from the Greek, in which phronesis is a single noun. As far as I can tell, phronesis just is Aristotle’s notion of what I have been calling “judgment”. Sachs also calls it “practical”, using the ethical connotations of that word from Kant. That is consonant with Aristotle’s meaning, though not literally present in the Greek.

I am fascinated by the possibility of a mutual inter-articulation of Aristotelian phronesis and the “reflective judgment” extensively dwelt upon by Kant and Hegel. It seems to me that the kind of weighing Aristotle emphasizes is inherently reflective in Kant and Hegel’s sense. (See also Reflective Grounding; Life: A Necessary Concept?; Reflection and Higher-Order Things; Reflection and Dialectic; Hegel on Reflection; Apperceptive Judgment.)

“Practical judgment is acquired primarily by experience of particulars, but also involves a knowledge of things that are universal” (p. 209).

This last qualification is important. Phronesis is directed at particulars first, but Aristotle never considers particulars in complete abstraction from applicable universals. The emphasis on particulars tells us that practical judgment will require open-ended interpretation, not a mechanical application of rules. But the reflective “knowledge of things that are universal” that contributes to practical wisdom includes not just classifications, but potentially, for example, all the lessons of Hegel’s Logic about interpretation and intelligibility in general, as well as any Kantian ethical universals that may be applicable.

(Most of the Logic’s development is an articulation of higher-order concepts, but the final stage of “the idea” explicitly involves a return to the concrete world, in which reflective judgment weighs particulars and higher-order concepts together. I want to suggest that this is Hegel’s own development of genuinely Aristotelian practical judgment. Properly understood, Hegel’s “absolute knowing” is nothing more than a making explicit of general conditions for practical “wisdom” in the sense above, fully compatible with the free play of Aristotelian phronesis in relation to particulars.)

Practical Knowledge?

Granted that there is such a thing as practical wisdom (phronesis) and deliberating well about actions, should it be called “knowledge” in the sense of episteme as used by Plato and Aristotle?

Episteme is generally associated with reason rather than with experience. It is supposed to have a kind of permanence. I have previously argued that the empirical “knowledge” associated with so-called justified true belief should instead be called a kind of well-founded belief, because it is subject to revision.

Aristotle distinguishes phronesis from episteme by saying that the former is concerned with (contingent) particulars, whereas the latter is concerned with universals (subject to necessity). He calls something a universal if it is said in the same way of multiple things, and necessary if there are no counter-examples. He is very careful to point out that wise ethical judgment is not characterized by the kind of “precision” or univocal interpretation that would characterize, say, a geometrical proof.

Kant makes a provocative counter-case for the possibility of unconditional universals in ethics, which could be said to potentially constitute ethical knowledge after all. But something like Aristotelian practical wisdom is still required to close the gap between those universals and real-world cases, and so if “practical” has to do with actions, this ethical knowledge would still not be practical in Aristotle’s sense.

Hegel points out that nothing in human experience is a pure particular, that some form of non-empirical judgment about the applicability of some universals is always mixed in. But it seems very doubtful that anything in experience would for Hegel qualify as purely universal, either. We come back again to the Platonic theme of the irreducibility of mixture and mixed things.

Pippin seems to imply that Hegel claims there is such a thing as practical knowing. But Pippin says “Practical knowing consists both in acknowledging the ‘reality of the good’ and in participating in the world’s own constant realization of its ‘purpose’ by acting”. If that is what that means, that is fine. But it does not remotely sound like knowledge in the sense of episteme. Rather, it captures some aspects of a good ethical stance.

The Logic’s Ending

We’ve reached the very end of a walk-through of Robert Pippin’s Hegel’s Realm of Shadows, discussing Hegel’s Science of Logic. I have particularly valued the way Pippin brings to the fore Hegel’s close ongoing dialogue with Kant and Aristotle.

It now seems to me there is more hope of giving an ethical meaning to the specifically “logical” part of Hegel’s work than I had realized. My suspicion that Hegel ought to have something interesting to say about his removal of the qualifications in Kant’s recovery of Aristotelian teleology has certainly been confirmed. I also appreciated learning about Hegel’s specific use of the Kantian vocabulary of “reflection”, which plays a significant role in the admirable work of Paul Ricoeur.

I very much like Pippin’s idea that the Logic fundamentally develops a rich and multi-layered notion of judgment. His recognition of the normative character of Aristotelian and Hegelian actuality is salutary. Finally, I appreciate his foregrounding of the effectively hermeneutic rather than “given” notion of being that Hegel adopts from Aristotle.

He quotes Hegel’s ironic remark near the end of the Encyclopedia Logic, “When one speaks of the absolute idea, one can think that here finally the substantive must come to the fore, that here everything must become clear” (p. 317). I think Pippin also stole some of his own thunder for the climax by front-loading his detailed discussion of apperceptive judgment and related matters, rather than treating these in-line in his account of the Logic‘s major transitions.

Hegel’s fusion of the meta-level hermeneutics of Aristotle’s Metaphysics with Kantian “transcendental” logic — concerned with questions of the constitution of meaning — is a very different enterprise from scholastic and classical early modern “metaphysics”, which was supposed to give us “Being” and entities and general truths about the world.

Hegel nonetheless wants to insist that knowing can and does get at the real truth of things. But that truth is higher-order, not any kind of simple correspondence of statements and facts. Hegel insists that it is actually the lower-order, ordinary “truths” that should be called abstract, because they fail to make explicit what they depend on.

“[A] pure concept is not a class concept under which instances fall, but the ‘truth’ of any object” (p. 301).

In the final section of the logic of the concept, Hegel introduces “the idea”, which results from one more reflective turn beyond the preliminary identification of subject and object in the concept. In this final turn, we look back again at the things in experience and recognize how they fall short of what the concept tells us they ought to be. For Hegel, this means they fall short of Aristotelian actuality — as presented, they can’t be “really real” or true in a philosophical sense.

At the same time, Hegel resists the Fichtean idea of an infinite progress, which implies that the actual can never be fully achieved in knowledge. He seems to suggest that the fault is not with the inherent capabilities of philosophical knowledge, but rather with the world, and that it is up to us to do something about that.

Pippin quotes, “But since the result now is that the idea is the unity of the concept and objectivity, the true, we must not regard it as a goal which is to be approximated but itself remains a kind of beyond; we must rather regard everything as actual only to the extent that it has the idea in it and expresses it. It is not just that the subject matter, the objective and the subjective world, ought to be in principle congruent with the idea; the two are themselves rather the congruence of concept and reality; a reality that does not correspond to the concept is mere appearance, something subjective, accidental, arbitrary, something in which there is not the truth” (p. 300).

Pippin comments, “[T]his last non-correspondence of concept and reality takes in all of the finite world, the world we want to know and on which, in which, we act” (ibid).

“[W]hat specifies the realization of [a living being’s] life is always other than such an individual life — it must always work, strive to live — and in so being a manifestation of the idea at work becoming itself and already having become itself, being a living being, it introduces us to the structure of knowing, a striving self-realization that does not achieve what would be the end of such striving — complete wisdom — and that focuses self-conscious attention on this logical structure of knowing, and how one comes to know it by working through the opposition of the subject-object relation in its finitude. (This characteristic is what we know in knowing the Absolute Idea, not the completed knowledge of content. The ‘realm of shadows’ metaphor is relevant again.) Life is presented as the model for understanding the object-concept relationship at the heart of knowing” (p. 302).

He quotes Hegel, “The identity of the idea with itself is one with the process; the thought that liberates actuality from the seeming of purposeless mutability and transfigures it into idea must not represent this truth of actuality as dead repose, as a mere picture, numb, without impulse and movement, … or as an abstract thought; the idea, because of the freedom which the concept has attained in it, also has the most stubborn opposition within it” (ibid).

“Said in a more Aristotelian way, a living being’s form, its principle of intelligibility, is its norm, not just a means of classification. This norm can be realized poorly or well. This is the way we understand the relation between objects in general and the Concept. (This does not amount to any suggestion that Hegel thinks we should view everything as alive, because every being’s truth is its concept. The domain of relevance implied [is] the nonempirical attempt to say what is, for those objects about which we can nonempirically say what they are: Geist [spirit], the state, friendship, art, religion.) Or, said in a Kantian way, pure concepts are constitutive of objecthood itself, not empirical classifications. In knowing this constitutive relationship, we acknowledge both the identity of conceptuality with determinate being, and the speculative nature of this identity, that is, the difference or ‘opposition’ remaining within this identity. Any finite thing can be known to be what it is only by knowing its concept, even though as finite, it is not, never will be, fully its concept, and the full articulation of its concept is not possible. That is what it means to say it is finite. And in just this sense, knowing can genuinely be knowing” (p. 303).

“More properly, in the appropriate philosophical register, we should say that what we want is to understand, not to know in the modern scientific sense, that is, to explain. When we understand something, we understand its cause, but in the Aristotelian sense, we mean we know why it is what it is, its mode of being. And this knowledge does not then ground explanation; it is self-standing. (Hegel is not leading us to: ‘Why does it rain?’ ‘Because it is in the nature of rain to water the crops’.)” (ibid).

Here Pippin is using “explanation” in the limited sense of accounting for empirical events, and “understanding” for something broader and more hermeneutic, taking into account form and ends. I use “explanation” in a more Aristotelian way, as what promotes what Pippin here calls “understanding”.

“Thinking can either overcome any opposition of being to knowing, by transforming itself… or transform the world in order to overcome the one-sidedness of subjectivity. The semblance of objectivity — that some being is the ‘actuality’ it presents itself as — can be penetrated, understood not to be such an actuality, and transformed by ‘the drive of the good to bring itself about'” (p. 305, emphasis in original).

Thinking transforming the world means us as thinking beings transforming the world.

“[I]n practical knowing, the subject does not face the world as an alien element that must be transformed on the basis of a subjective demand descending wholly from pure practical reason. Practical knowing consists both in acknowledging the ‘reality of the good’ and in participating in the world’s own constant realization of its ‘purpose’ by acting” (ibid, emphasis in original).

Hegelian practical “knowing” or practical judgment has the attitude of what I have called being “at home in otherness”.

“Material assumptions… must be and are present, are usually hidden, and reflect a specific historical context. We need to know something material about human beings to make any progress, and human beings being historical, some sort of practical knowledge is necessary to determine any rightful relation to others, a knowledge of practical reality inseparable from an assessment of what is to be done” (p. 306).

The Logic aims among other things to help us find the reflectively grounded wisdom to be able to formulate this kind of practical judgment of what ought to be in concrete cases.

He quotes Hegel, “The unsatisfied striving disappears if we know that the final purpose of the world has been brought about and to the same degree eternally brings itself about” (p. 307).

“It is this last phrase, ‘eternally brings itself about’… that makes it impossible to ascribe to Hegel the claim that with the arrival of representative institutions, a market economy, the bourgeois family, romantic art, and Protestant Christianity, the ‘world’s purpose’ simply has been achieved and may now only be contemplated in full reconciliation, or even that there is an ‘end of history'” (ibid).

“It is at least clear that Hegel is making an implicit distinction between, on the one hand, distinctly practical reasoning, as it is understood in Aristotle — that is, reasoning that concludes in an action, not in a judgment about what is to be done — and practical knowledge of the situation in which action is called for. (Something close to what the practically wise person, the phronimos as Aristotle understands her, would understand.) The assumption is that any such reasoning always relies on some knowledge of what we would call ‘practical actuality’, the ability to rightly distinguish between the ‘surface’ actuality, ‘vacuous and vanishing’, and ‘the genuine essence of the world’. We know from our discussion of the logic of essence that this is not a strictly either/or picture; such an essence is manifest in, and has to be seen in, such a surface or Schein. And Hegel is insisting that any exercise of action-oriented practical rationality is inseparable from such an attempt at practical knowledge, a knowledge that will have the speculative form we have been investigating” (p. 309).

Again there is a terminological difference from Sachs’ translation of Aristotle that I have been using for these terms, but the inseparability of what Sachs calls deliberation and what he calls practical judgment (which for Aristotle results in action) is the same in Hegel and Aristotle.

“Hegel’s position on the historicity of reason is quite complicated, and can sometimes seem like a moving target, at times making conceptual, a priori claims about what it is to be spirit (i.e., free, in the sense of self-realizing), and at times linking any understanding of spirit to an account of concrete historical actuality” (pp. 313-314).

In a way, this is Hegel’s whole point. He is neither simply a “historicist” affirming the relativity of circumstances, nor a Kantian/Fichtean moralist aiming to make universal prescriptions of what ought to be, but rather commends an Aristotelian mean that avoids the one-sidedness of both.

“The absolute idea, or ‘the logical idea’, is also called, revealingly for our interests, ‘the idea of thinking itself’…. Pure thinking, in determining what could be the object of a true self-conscious judgment, has turned to itself as the object of speculative judgment, since it has discovered, in detail, that the ‘truth’ of objects is the relevant pure ‘concept’, that conceptual determination without which no empirical determination would be possible, that is: qualitative and quantitative predication, a determination based on an essence-appearance distinction, the right understanding of substance, causality, and now the right understanding of the ‘thoughts’ that have made up the account thus far. Pure thinking is now in a position to ‘recollect’ what it ‘was’ to have been thinking purely. (We don’t thereby know any qualities or essences or attributes of modes of substance. We know the logic of substance-attribute, essence-appearance, and so forth…)” (p. 316).

At this final stage of the Logic, we are recollectively turning back to survey the whole “long detour” that was necessary for Hegel to be able to say what intelligibility is, and consequently, according to Hegel, for us to be able to judge what is actually true and good and right in concrete situations.

Pippin quotes, “Each of the stages considered up to this point is an image of the absolute, albeit in a limited manner at first, and so it drives itself on to the whole, the unfolding of which is precisely what we have designated the method” (p. 317).

“[T]his last characterization of method as the culmination of the entire book, as the absolute idea, is crucial” (ibid).

He quotes, “[The absolute idea] has shown itself to amount to this, namely that determinateness does not have the shape of a content, but that it is simply as form…. What is left to be considered here, therefore, is thus not a content as such, but the universal character of its form — that is, method” (p. 318).

Hegel is here telling us that what he has been discussing has been intended to clarify the “method” he implicitly follows throughout his work. Conversely, a fuller justification of that method will come from the concrete results of its use.

For Hegel, “truth, … the absolute idea, just is self-conscious conceptuality, or the right understanding of the implications of the logical structure of apperception, or purely logical knowledge, and in this purity the manifestation of absolute freedom” (p. 319; see also The True and the Good).

Reflective Grounding

In Essence and Explanation, I introduced Hegel’s generalization from essence to “ground”, which is anything that explains something else and could be said to metaphorically “underlie” it.

Essence and ground in Hegel’s sense are not simply definable once and for all. Instead, he emphasizes dynamic relations of “grounding”, in accordance with his unusual notion of truth as a process. These dynamic relations correlate with movements of the reflective judgment that Kant discusses in the Critique of Judgment.

Kant distinguishes “determinative” judgment — corresponding to ordinary predicative assertions like “S is P“, and to the subsumption of individuals under universal concepts — from “reflective” judgment, which open-endedly looks for universals appropriate to the individual. Pippin suggests there is a kind of reciprocal dependency involved in the actual working of these two kinds of judgment.

It seems to me that reflective judgment has a great deal in common with the deliberation that lies behind Aristotelian practical judgment, even though Aristotle speaks of these as concluding in action rather than knowledge or opinion. Perhaps we might also say with Brandom that undertaking a commitment about how things are is a kind of action.

Hegel argues that even determinative judgments presuppose a reflective component, and speaks at length of “reflective determination”.

This use of “reflective” has nothing to do with the immediate inspection or direct consciousness of some content, or even with any single stage of reflection, or indeed any kind of move that could be completed all at once.

Paul Ricoeur’s works make a similar point, in tying the term “reflective” closely to his other notion of the “long detour” needed for philosophical understanding, which is itself very Hegelian in spirit. This is anything but a rabbit-out-of-hat “reflexivity at a glance”.

If there is a metaphor here, it is not gazing in a mirror to see something, but finding an orientation within the potentially infinite reflections of a hall of mirrors. Note also that we see the potentially infinite reflections in an “immediate” representation, even though each layer of reflection is an additional mediation when we interpret what we are seeing.

At the level of nature, similar potentially infinite reflection occurs in biological and ecological processes that achieve stability through feedback cycles.

Saying as Ethical Doing

Saying is a distinctive kind of doing. This goes way beyond the physical uttering of words, and beyond the immediate social aspects of speech acts. It involves the much broader process of the ongoing constitution of shared meaning in which we talking animals participate.

Before we are empirical beings, we are ethical beings. Meaning is deeply, essentially involved with valuations. The constitution of values is also an ongoing, shared process that in principle involves all rational beings past, present, and future. Our sayings — both extraordinary and everyday — contribute to the ongoing constitution of the space of reasons of which all rational beings are co-stewards. We are constantly implicitly adjudicating what is a good reason for what.

If immediate speech acts have ethical significance, this is all the more true of our implicit contributions to these ongoing, interrelated processes of constitution of meanings, valuations, and reasons. Everything we say becomes a good or bad precedent for the future.

Aristotle consistently treated “said of” relations in a normative rather than a merely empirical, factual, representational or referential way. Brandom has developed a “normative pragmatics” to systematically address related concerns. Numerous analytic philosophers have recognized the key point that to say anything at all is implicitly to commit oneself to it. As Brandom has emphasized, this typically entails other commitments as well. I would add that every commitment has meaning not only in terms of the pragmatic “force” of what is said, but also as a commitment in the ethical sense.

It is through our practices of commitment and follow-through that our ethical character is also constituted. As Robert Pippin has pointed out that Hegel emphasized in a very Aristotelian way, what we really wanted is best understood starting from what we actually did. In contrasting all this with the much narrower concept of speech acts, I want to return to an emphasis on what is said, but at the same time to take the “said” in as expansive a sense as possible. This is deeply interwoven with all our practical doings, and to be considered from the point of view of its actualization into a kind of objectivity as shared meaning that is no longer just “my” intention.

Imagination, Emotion, Opinion

In humans, the ethos associated with cultural, ethical, and spiritual life comes interwoven with what I have called “animal imagination”, tied to our organic being. The kind of imagination at issue here is not the modern, post-Romantic notion associated with artistic creativity, but part of the basic functioning of many animals. Aristotle associates it with what he calls the “common” sense, which again is not what we call common sense, but rather something fundamental to all perception, that also comes into play in the formation (what Kant would call synthesis) of perceptual wholes from the input of multiple senses. Aristotelian “imagination” involves activations of the common sense in the absence of inputs from external sense. It plays an essential role in memory and dreams. Like much in Aristotle, this is not really an explanatory theory, just an interpretive description of things we experience in ordinary life.

Aristotle is concerned to distinguish imagination from opinion, precisely because there is a close connection between the two. Much later, Spinoza essentially identified opinion with imagination. Aristotle emphasizes that opinion involves an additional element of belief that is not inherent to all imagination. He says there are animals that have imagination but no belief.

Opinion is closely related to Aristotelian practical judgment, although the latter classically refers to a deliberative process whose outcome is action rather than belief, whereas opinion is a kind of belief that is not knowledge. Opinion may be a result of past deliberation or reflection, but very often it is more or less spontaneous. I think Spinoza means to suggest that our less reflective opinions arise from a kind of imagination. Like practical judgment, imagination is concerned with particulars.

Spinoza especially brings out the connection of imagination with emotion. It seems to me these are strongly interdependent. Our emotions both shape our imaginings and are shaped by them. These are what mainly guide our initial responses to things, and we have this in common with other animals.

Even after we have more developed, reflective views of things, there is still an element of spontaneous imagination in any application of those views to new particulars.

Emotion is strongly connected with our apprehensions of value. Again, there are dependencies in both directions. Emotion is a source of many valuations, especially initial ones; but valuations also help shape emotion.

Being a rational animal is mainly a matter of potential. Degrees of actual reasonableness have to do mainly with our emotional constitution, not how much we know.