Physics and Theology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next in this series: Potentiality in the Stars

Associative Synthesis

We have reached the heart of Husserl’s passive synthesis lectures, a long subdivision on associative synthesis. This is Husserl’s re-visioning of the classic notion of association that empirical psychology ultimately derived from Locke and Hume. For Husserl, it will provide the key to the constitution of subjectivity overall.

Rather than treating association in terms of a notion of psycho-physical causality, he wants to explain it as as a product of synthesis. As Husserl now reminds us, he has been implicitly working under the phenomenological reduction, which puts “in brackets” all questions of external existence and natural causality. He focuses on what to my Aristotelian eye look like questions of form and of a kind of teleology immanent to the subject matter.

Here he again refers to Kant’s discussion of synthesis in the Critique of Pure Reason (see Capacity to Judge; Figurative Synthesis). Husserl claims that he will go further than Kant in explicitly discussing synthesis of immanent contents of consciousness, as well as apprehensions of objects of external perception. For both Husserl and Kant, all this is closely bound up with the constitution of our experience of time. Memory and expectation will again play a key role.

“[T]he path is cleared from here toward a universal theory of the genesis of a pure subjectivity, and in particular, initially in relation to its lower level of pure passivity. Phenomenological eidetic [form-oriented] analyses of consciousness constituting a temporal objectlike formation already led to the beginnings of a lawful regularity of genesis prevailing in subjective life. We see very quickly that the phenomenology of association is, so to speak, a higher continuation of the doctrine of original time-constitution. Through association, the constitutive accomplishment is extended to all levels of apperception” (Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, p. 163).

“The doctrine of the genesis of reproductions and of their formations is the doctrine of association in the first and more genuine sense. But inseparably connected to this, or rather, grounded upon this is a higher level of association and doctrine of association, namely, a doctrine of the genesis of expectations, and closely related to it, the genesis of apperceptions to which belong the horizons of actual and possible expectations. All in all, it concerns the genesis of the phenomena of expectation, that is, of those specific intentions that are anticipatory” (p. 164).

Association, as Husserl analyzes it, is constituted from memories of things similar to the present object. In turn, it is from particular associations that particular expectations are constituted. Now we see memory and expectation linked together in a larger process that is precisely one of association.

“But it is precisely the analysis of associative phenomena that draws our attention to the fact that consciousness must not necessarily be a consciousness of a single object for itself, and accordingly, we touch on a new problem here: how a consciousness of something particular and how a consciousness of explicit particulars becomes possible as a consciousness of a multiplicity and a consciousness of wholeness; namely, a comparative analysis also shows the opposing possibility of many [elements], indeed, a multiplicity being continually fused into a unity within one consciousness, [implicitly], such that consciousness is not a consciousness of a multiplicity, a consciousness that becomes aware of separated particulars in a unitary and yet separate manner” (p. 165).

Here he is leading up to the central role of the experience of time, simultaneity, and streaming in the constitution of subjectivity and in turn of external experience, already foreshadowed above.

“We realize, then, that it really concerns nothing else than clarifying the fundamental problem, the basic, essential conditions of the possibility of a subjectivity itself. What must belong to it so that a subjectivity can have the essential sense without which it could not be subjectivity, [namely,] the sense of an existing subjectivity being for itself, and precisely thereby of a subjectivity constituting itself as being for itself? Certainly, a complete phenomenology of reproductive awakening concerns and exhausts this problem only with respect to the one side, namely, with respect to the constitution of one’s past, or rather, the constitution of the self-having-been in endless immanent time. But we will see that the supplementary part, the other half of the problem, is the realm of the phenomenology of inductive, anticipatory association. Here we will make clear the essential conditions of the possibility of a subjectivity that can know itself as identically one, having its inherent endless future life” (p. 169).

“Awakening” seems to be Husserl’s preferred term for the activation of memory that is somehow relevant to what is present. This may relate to a distinction I have found obscure so far, between memory as “empty” intention and “intuitive” memory. My difficulty has been that no memory, insofar as it is of the past, concerns a present object, so it seems to me as though all memory then would be what he calls empty intention. But perhaps the “intuitive” memory is a memory of a past object insofar as it is related to an intuited present object.

“Clearly, what is presupposed is the synthesis that is continually accomplished in original time-consciousness. In the concretely full, streaming living present we have present, past, and future life already united in a certain mode of givenness. But this manner in which subjectivity becomes conscious of its past and future life along with its inherent intentional contents is an incomplete one. The aforementioned manner would be meaningless for the ego if there were no awakening, for the retentions are empty and even sink into the undifferentiated retentional background. Our consciousness of the protentional future is especially empty. On the other hand, there would be no progress at all without this beginning. In the ABCs of the constitution of all objectivity given to consciousness and of subjectivity as existing for itself, here is the ‘A’. It consists, we might say, in a universal, formal framework, in a synthetically constituted form in which all other possible syntheses must participate.”

As in Kant, the experience of time for Husserl is a synthetic construct that anchors things like identities of objects, as well as the overall shape of consciousness.

“Still many other types of syntheses are transcendental in the special sense, as apodictically [demonstrably] necessary for the genesis of a subjectivity (which is indeed only conceivable in genesis). As we said, these syntheses run their course together with the synthesis constituting the temporal form of all objects, and thus must co-relate to the temporal content, the temporally formed content of the object” (pp. 170-171).

“Since the spatial world is constituted through consciousness, since it can only be there for us as existing and can only be conceived at all by virtue of certain syntheses carried out in immanence, it is clear that the constitutive problems of the world presuppose the doctrine of the necessary, most general structures and the synthetic shapes of immanence that are possible in general” (p. 171).

Working under the phenomenological reduction, he is not concerned with the transcendent existence of external objects, but only with the more particular ways in which they are immanently determined or determinable as meanings for us.

“What is constituted universally through these syntheses is known under the rubric of coexistence and succession of all immanent objects in relation to one another” (p. 172).

The universality here has to do with the generality of the form of the experience of the flow of time.

“Accordingly, corresponding to every Now is a universal synthesis. Through this synthesis, a universal concrete present is constituted, a present into which all particulars that are set off from one another are integrated. Further, the fact that the Now streams in and through temporal orientations implies at the same time another universal synthesis in constituting life whereby we are conscious of the presents coursing as a sequential unity” (p. 173).

The integral Now and the streaming sequence of Nows are in effect the outermost frames in which all concrete experience is constituted as coherent.

“This is the most general and the most primary synthesis that necessarily connects all particular objects of which we become conscious…. But naturally, the synthesis of time-consciousness also contains (and already as a presupposition for possible coexistences and succession) that synthesis in which one object is constituted as identically one or (what amounts to the same thing) as enduringly one in streaming manifolds…. [T]ime-consciousness is the primordial place of the constitution of the unity of identity or of an objectlike formation, and then of the forms of connection of coexistence and succession of all objectlike formations” (ibid).

“But what gives unity to the particular object with respect to content, what makes up the differences between each of them with respect to content…, what makes division possible and the relation between parts in consciousness, and so forth — the analysis of time alone cannot tell us, for it abstracts precisely from content. Thus, it does not give us any idea of the necessary synthetic structures of the steaming present and of the unitary stream of the presents — which in some way concerns the particularity of content” (p. 174).

The implicit distinction between the constitution of identities of objects in the quotation before last, on the one hand, and that of their unities with respect to content in the quotation immediately above, on the other, is not yet clear to me. It makes sense that the general forms of time, coexistence, and succession do not tell us the whole story about particular concrete objects. I do not see, however, how it would be possible to constitute the identities of concrete objects — in Aristotelian terms, their surface status as “substances” in the sense of things persisting through change — without taking into account their content, or their deeper substantiality in the sense of “what it was to have been” the things in question. I expect that he will have more to say about the content in what follows, so hopefully this will be clarified.

The very idea of treating subjectivity as something constituted opens up a huge new territory that later authors like Foucault, Ricoeur, and de Libera have substantially developed, and in which I have been tremendously interested. The works that Husserl published in his lifetime seemed to me mainly to focus on the constitution of objects by a subjectivity that was somewhat taken for granted. That Husserl in fact went beyond this is important to recognize. (See also Passive Synthesis: Conclusion.)