Ethical Roots of Aristotelian Dynamis

“The notion of dunamis is present from the earliest writings of Aristotle, associated each time with an ethical context” (Aubry, Dieu san la puissance, 2nd ed., ch. 4, p. 100, my translation throughout). She cites studies of this issue by D. W. Graham and E. Berti.

The Protrepicus is an Aristotelian dialogue, famous in antiquity as an exhortation for people to learn philosophy, but surviving only in fragments quoted by other authors. According to Aubry, it discusses dynamis in terms still based on those of Plato’s Theaetetus — a kind of having, as distinct from use — but it already introduces Aristotle’s neologisms of energeia and entelecheia, or act and the closely related notion of entelechy. Significations according to act are already treated as focal, relative to significations according to dynamis.

“Finally, the distinction also shows a normative and teleological sense” (ibid).

“The notion of energeia is found associated not only with that of usage, but also with that of good usage and that of end, and by the latter ultimately with that of ergon [a completed work] — the text having ultimately for objective the determination of the ergon of the soul, not only its function but the act in which its end properly resides” (p. 101).

We saw recently that Plato already used ergon in a sense like this. Aristotelian energeia is the fulfilling activity from which the Platonic ergon emerges.

“It is with a normative and teleological sense that the notion of ergon intervenes again in fragment 6: the accomplishment of the ergon in effect is that in virtue of which a thing can be called good, agathos, that in which also resides its virtue, arete. For in the case of a composite being, this work cannot be immediately determined: constituted of different parts, such a being is also constituted of multiple acts and multiple powers. Its end resides in the accomplishment of its best work, its most proper dunamis, indeed that of that part of it in which its identity most resides. For the human, her end and her happiness reside in the accomplishment of the power of thinking, phronesis, which is at the same time her divine part and her most proper identity. The notion of dunamis is thus articulated to those of ergon and of energeia, which themselves are articulated to that of end, telos” (ibid).

Much of Aristotle’s most characteristic thought is expressed here. (On a side note, I am especially intrigued that phronesis or practical judgment is here explicitly assigned the same ultimate role that theoria or contemplation plays in the Nicomachean Ethics. I have long been skeptical of any sharp contrast between these two. See Aristotelian “Wisdom”.)

“The Protrepicus strongly associates notions that were present but disjoint in Plato: that of effective usage, of ergon and end, which are conjoined in Aristotle’s invented terms of energeia and entelecheia” (ibid).

She also points out a discussion of dynamis in book IV of the Topics, where it is opposed to choice based on deliberation. No one should be blamed for a dynamis. “One does not say of a human who is capable of acting badly that she is bad…. The bad is the one who is not only capable of evil, but chooses it…. Contrary to what Platonic aristocratism affirms, there are no naturally good or bad [rational beings]; in particular, it makes no sense to speak of someone as naturally virtuous: because virtue, the Nicomachean Ethics says, is not a dunamis, a native power, an innate quality, any more than vice is. It is a hexis, a disposition acquired… by means of repetition of one same act, and of which the actualization, in its turn, is suspended from prohairesis [choice grounded in deliberation]” (p. 102).

Next in this series: Potentiality for Interaction

Pure Act

I just received the 2nd French edition of Gwenaëlle Aubry’s God Without Power: Dunamis and Energeia in Aristotle and Plotinus (2020), which is now also labeled Archaeology of Power volume 1, reflecting publication of her second volume, Genesis of the Sovereign God (French ed. 2018).

“But the notion of act (energeia or entelekheia) says something else that that of form does not: not only substance, but also the good. Of Aristotelian invention, contrary to that of form which belongs entirely to Platonism, it appears first in ethical contexts; and if its axiological significance is not explicitly formulated in [book Theta of the Metaphysics], but only suggested via the identification of energeia with telos [end] and with ergon [work], it is on the other hand clearly readable in book Lambda. Furthermore, the project formulated in book capital Alpha of a ‘wisdom’ (sophia) capable of determining the good and the end, like that, defined in [book Gamma], of a science of ‘being qua being’, are both accomplished in the knowledge of a single object: act.”

“For such a project, Aristotle claims originality. He underlines that he is the first to have posed the good as a principle, and to have dissociated principle and power. Reading the history of philosophy reversed in relation to the one familiar to us, he considers thus that position of the good as principle is not a Platonic gesture. But if the Platonists have failed to think the status of the good as principle, that is in part because they did not identify its proper mode of causality. The double Aristotelian decision thus bears a unique formula: the principle is act. For to designate it thus, is to say at once that it is an essentially good substance, and that it acts not as power, but as the end of that which is in potentiality.”

“It is however also, and in conformity always with the project of Metaphysics [capital Alpha], to leave a place for the diversity of goods and of ends. For, like being, the good is said in many ways. And if the Ethics identify the good according to substance with god and with intellect, this is not the essence of all that could be called ‘good’, any more than it is the act of the other substances. So here again, Aristotle succeeds where Plato had failed: he succeeds at the same time in thinking the good’s status as a principle and the causality of the good, as well as taking into account the plurality of goods (which also says: the good is neither a power nor an Idea). However, a relation of foundation holds between the essentially good substance and the goods of the diverse substances. And this relation doubles itself, for the substance that is the human, in a relation of resemblance and a relation of knowledge, if theoria [contemplation], in which ethics finds its energeia and its supreme end, at the same time is similar to the divine act, and can have the latter as its object” (introduction, pp. 15-16, my translation).

The mode of causality of the good as first principle is as the end or that-for-the-sake-of-which, as a kind of attractor for potentialities. I’ve presented most of these ideas before, but this provides a very nice overview. Aubry gives a bit more weight to book Gamma’s proposed knowledge of being as such than I do, but the content that she ultimately gives to it is very close to what I end up with in reading book Lambda as a teleological meta-ethics (she calls it “axiology” or theory of values, but the concept is similar). In upcoming posts, I’ll take a look at her detailed analysis of the text of the Metaphysics. (See also The Four Causes Revisited; On the Good as a Cause; Aubry on Aristotle; Properly Human, More Than Human?.)

Aristotle’s main historical influence began only centuries after his death. His manuscripts were claimed by a relative and left to deteriorate in an attic. They were only edited around the 1st century BCE. Even then, they attracted only limited interest. Stoicism had meanwhile become dominant in Greek philosophy. The great early commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias did not flourish until late 2nd/early 3rd century CE, and was influential mainly via Plotinus and the neoplatonic schools. It was only with the late Platonic school of Alexandria in Egypt under Ammonius (late 5th/early 6th century CE) that Aristotle’s works became central to the teaching curriculum, and then they were read with a heavy neoplatonic slant. (See Fortunes of Aristotle.)

Next in this series: Distinguishing Act and Form

The Four Causes Revisited

Previously I abbreviated my account of book capital Alpha of the Metaphysics, focusing mainly on Aristotle’s own remarks about the “knowledge being sought”. The other main content of this book is a discussion of what his predecessors had to say about this question. The bulk of it concerns the pre-Socratics, with mention of the poets who preceded them.

I tend to regard serious philosophy as starting with Plato. By comparison, even though they have interesting things to say, the pre-Socratics seem mostly to just make dogmatic pronouncements in a simplistic way. As Aristotle says, “[W]hile in a certain way all the causes have been spoken of before, in another way they have not been spoken of at all. For the earliest philosophy about everything is like someone who lisps [sic], since it is young and just starting out” (ch. 10, Sachs tr., p. 28).

But Aristotle’s remarks on his predecessors here — including a brief mention of Plato — also give insight into his perspective on what was most original in his own thought.

These remarks are superficially structured around Aristotle’s claim that no one before him made use of all four causes. But implicitly, this historical critique is preparing the way for a much more fundamental point about the overall leading role of that for the sake of which, which parallels his more developed argument about the nature of explanation in Parts of Animals. The treatment here could also be seen as an anticipation of related conclusions about the nature of the first cause, which will not be made explicit until book Lambda.

The very way in which he briefly introduces the four causes here at the beginning of the Metaphysics already has several important nuances:

“[One cause] is thinghood [ousia or “substance”], or what it is for something to be [what it is] (since the why leads back to the ultimate reasoned account, and the first why is a cause and source), another is the material or underlying thing, a third is that from which the source of motion is, and the fourth is the cause opposite to that one, that for the sake of which or the good (since it is the completion of every coming-into-being and motion” (ch. 3, p. 6).

“Causes” are reasons why. The what-it-is (ti esti) of things is their form, but notably he does not use the word “form” here. The word that Plato had used for form (eidos) had a more common usage for the “look” or visible form of a thing, which is nearly opposite to the sense of essence and deeper truth that Plato and Aristotle give to it.

(Hegel’s remarks on the intangibility of truth suggest a relation between this more ordinary usage of eidos and a weakness of the specifically Platonic notion of form, in which the open-ended nature of essence that Plato so well represents in his depictions of Socratic inquiry is compromised by Plato’s conflicting tendency to sometimes suggest that the form of a thing is something that could be simply known once and for all.)

The material or “underlying thing” answers to the superficial sense of “substance” (ousia) as a logical “sub-ject” of properties in the Categories. But Aristotle has already here associated ousia with the form rather than the material. This could be seen as anticipating the argument of book Zeta on the what-it-is of things, in which the “underlying thing” sense of ousia is eventually superseded by that of the what-it-is.

Pre-Socratic philosophy arose in the relatively cosmopolitan environment of the thriving trade centers of Ionia in Turkey. The Ionians formulated various theories positing a material first principle (water for Thales, air for Anaximenes, fire for Heraclitus, “the Unlimited” for Anaximander).

“Of those who first engaged in philosophy, most thought that the only sources of all things were of the species of material” (ibid). “[B]ut as people went forward in this way, their object of concern itself opened a road for them, and contributed to forcing them to inquire along it. For no matter how much every coming-into-being and destruction is out of some one or more kinds of material, why does this happen and what is its cause? … [But since sources of this kind] were not sufficient to generate the nature of things, again by the truth itself, as we say, people were forced to look for the next kind of source. For that some beings are in a beautiful or good condition, or come into being well or beautifully, it is perhaps not likely that fire or earth or any other such thing is responsible…. So when someone said an intellect was present, just as in animals, also in nature as the cause of the cosmos and of all order, he looked like a sober man next to people who had been speaking incoherently beforehand…. Those, then, who took things up in this way set down a source which is at the same time the cause of the beautiful among things and the sort of cause from which motion belongs to things” (pp. 7-9).

This may seem like a very “Hegelian” kind of argument: “their object of concern itself opened a road for them”. But in reality it is Hegel who is being Aristotelian.

“So these people, as we are saying, evidently got this far with two causes out of those we distinguished in the writings about nature, the material and that from which the motion is, but did so dimly and without clarity, rather in the way nonathletes do in fights; for while dancing around they often land good punches, but they do not do so out of knowledge, nor do these people seem to know what they are saying. For it is obvious that they use these causes scarcely ever, and only to a tiny extent. For Anaxagoras uses the intellect as a makeshift contrivance for cosmos production, and whenever he comes to an impasse about why something is necessarily a certain way, he drags it in, but in the other cases he assigns as the causes of what happens everything but the intellect” (ch. 4, p. 9).

He applauds Anaxagoras for bringing intellect into the discussion, but criticizes him for using it mainly as what Brandom would call an “unexplained explainer”. To the extent that Anaxagoras has an implicit theory of the way in which intellect affects other things, Aristotle regards him as treating it as a “source of motion”. But Aristotle notes that it is completely unclear in Anaxagoras how intellect is supposed to be a source of motion. The same goes for Empedocles’ principles of love and strife.

Aristotle will retain an important role for intellect (and love too) as well as the notion of sources of motion, but he decouples these, and develops a different account of each. In both the Physics and the Metaphysics, he ends up tracing sources of motion to potentiality. But meanwhile, the source of motion is also what the Latin scholastics and early moderns called the efficient cause.

It is again vitally important to recognize the order of explanation that Aristotle employs. He explains the operative aspects of “efficient causality” in terms of the more fundamental notion of developed potentiality. He does not explain “potentiality” in terms of efficient causality, and he most especially does not explain potentiality in terms of some passive role in what the scholastics and early moderns understood by efficient causality. Once again, when he is being careful, Aristotle makes it clear that the primary model for this kind of cause is something like the art of building as a developed potentiality, not something immediate like the hammer’s blow or the carpenter’s arm.

Chapter 5 is devoted to the Pythagorean school’s teaching that mathematical things are the sources of all things. This chapter also incorporates remarks on the Eleatic school’s teaching that the One or Being is the source of all things. He treats both of these as partial anticipations of Plato, grouping them together as “the Italians”, since both of these schools were centered in the Greek colonies in Italy.

“After these philosophic speculations that have been mentioned came the careful work of Plato, which in many ways followed the lead of these people, but also had separate features that went beyond the philosophy of the Italians. For having become acquainted from youth at first with Cratylus and the Heraclitean teachings that all sensible things are always in flux and that there is no knowledge of them, he also conceived these things that way later on. And since Socrates exerted himself about ethical matters and not at all about the whole of nature, but in the former sought the universal and was the first to be skilled at thinking about definitions, Plato, when he adopted this, took it up as applying to other things and not to sensible ones, because of this: it was impossible that there be any common definition of any of the perceptible things since they were always changing. So he called this other sort of beings forms, and said the perceptible things were apart from these and all spoken of derivatively from these” (ch. 6, pp. 14-15).

“In a curtailed way, then, and hitting the high spots, we have gotten hold of who happens to have spoken about origins and truth, and in what way” (ch. 7, p. 16). “But about what it is for something to be, and thinghood, no one has delivered up a clear account, but those who posit the forms speak of it most” (p. 17).

Aristotle thinks that Plato came closer to what is needed than any of his predecessors.

“That for the sake of which actions and changes and motions are, they speak of as a cause in a certain way, but they do not say it that way, nor speak of what is so by its very nature. For those who speak of intellect or friendship as good set these up as causes, but do not speak as though anything that is either has its being or comes into being for the sake of these, but as though motions arose from these” (ibid, emphasis added).

We saw that Aristotle understands Anaxagoras as claiming that intellect is a source of motion, in some direct but unexplained way. Aristotle maintains on the contrary that intellect is a cause in what he above called the “opposite” sense of that for the sake of which.

He continues, “And in the same way too, those who speak of the one or being as such a nature do say that it is the cause of thinghood [i.e., of things being what they are], but not that it either is or comes about for the sake of this; so it turns out that they both say and do not say that the good is a cause, since they say it is so not simply but incidentally” (ibid, emphasis added).

Parts of this remark apply to the Pythagoreans (the one) and the Eleatics (the one or being). All of it, including the part about the good, applies to the Platonists. For Aristotle, neither “the one” nor “being” is in its own right a true cause, because neither gives us a specific why for anything. Aristotle’s own notion of the first cause is to be identified neither with Thomistic Being nor with the neoplatonic One. On the other hand, the good is a true cause, because it does give us specific reasons why. These are expressible in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which. But he also delicately implies that even Plato treats the Good more like a source of motions than a grounding for explanations in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which. Elsewhere, he says that Plato treats the Good as a formal cause, rather than as that-for-the-sake-of-which. In any case, he clearly thinks that Plato treats the Good as affecting things in some other way than as that-for-the-sake-of-which. The neoplatonists explicitly represent the One or the Good as producing all things. But at this level, the specificity of reasons why things turn out some particular way is completely left behind.

Without a reason why things turn out as they do, for Aristotle there is no true cause. That-for-the-sake-of-which is more preeminently and properly a why than any of the other causes, and for Aristotle this makes it more preeminently and properly a cause than any of the other causes. That is why it seems reasonable to him that the first cause of all should be purely a cause in the sense of that for the sake of which.

The scholastics and the moderns tend to reduce all causes to the notion of efficient cause that they put in the place of Aristotle’s “source of motion”. But for Aristotle, a source of motion is principally a means to the realization of an end, to which it is subordinated. Aristotle ultimately subordinates all other causes to the operation of the good as that for the sake of which. The result is not a total determination or absolute necessity, but rather various hypothetical necessities that can each be realized in more than one way, and that therefore still allow room for genuine contributions to the outcome from secondary causes.

Aristotle’s association of that-for-the-sake-of-which with completion in the earlier quote recalls the way that he elsewhere associates it with actuality, which in the Barnes-edited Collected Works edition of the Physics is translated as “fulfillment”, and which Aristotle closely identifies with entelechy, which also implies completion. Thus, although I don’t recall him ever explicitly saying it, both potentiality and actuality are represented among the four causes, which we could now alternatively list as form, material, potentiality, and actuality. This particular conclusion is new to me, but based on the argument sketched here it seems pretty solid. This has a number of interesting consequences.

For example, with these identifications in hand, we can apply the priority of actuality over potentiality in Aristotle as an alternate reason why that-for-the-sake-of-which is prior to the source of motion.

We can also see another reason why although there is a kind of analogy between the actuality/potentiality and form/material relations, the distinction between actuality and potentiality cannot be reduced to that between form and material. Otherwise, there would be only two distinct kinds of causes, and not the four on which Aristotle insists. This distinction between the two distinctions fits perfectly with Aristotle’s other insistence that nonsensible as well as sensible things can have being in potentiality, whereas only sensible things are properly said to have material.

Next in this series: Infinity, Finitude, and the Good

On the Good as a Cause

Having recently prototyped a modest textual commentary of my own on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, I feel in a somewhat better position to begin examining the more detailed arguments of Gwenaëlle Aubry on what exactly the Metaphysics aims to do. Her very important 2006 work Dieu sans la puissance: dunamis et energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin highlights Aristotle’s own neglected statements on what his most distinctive contributions in first philosophy were, and argues that they make Aristotle very relevant today.

This leads to a very distinctive reading of the intent of the Metaphysics, which differs greatly from both the “ontological” view of Avicenna and the Latin scholastic mainstream, and the “forgetting of Being”, “metaphysics of presence” view promoted by Heidegger in the 20th century. Here I’ll just provide a top-level introduction.

Aubry sees the Metaphysics primarily as a very innovative work of philosophical theology, centered on what I would call a kind of teleological meta-ethics.

Aristotle’s first cause is the highest good, which works by attraction and motivation, not by creating, or by directly intervening in events. (This makes what Kant calls internal teleology Aristotle’s most fundamental explanatory principle, as is also made especially clear in Aristotle’s biological works, but also even in the Physics.)

Aristotle’s first philosophy treats the world as most fundamentally governed by the values that are at work in it. The logistical working out of means and ends is also essential to how things play out in the world, but Aristotle insists that orienting values come first in the order of explanation. The highest good is a kind of ultimate moral compass for those values. (And from a Kantian standpoint, the resolution of empirical questions of fact depends on the resolution of normative, ultimately ethical or meta-ethical questions of interpretation.)

Next in this series: Pure Act

Presence

The “presence” for which I would like to recover a positive meaning is not so much a presence of things to us as our presence to things, situations, and other people. Looked at from this perspective, it seems to me that presence is really all about relatedness and engagement.

This makes presence not at all a simple matter of immediately “being there”, but rather something more subtle, that comes in many degrees. For example, when I am tired, I am much less “present”. My responsiveness is narrower and shallower. I think we become more present through more active participation in a wider and deeper range of relations.

In the Husserlian phenomenological tradition, there is a related notion of attention that I have always found somewhat troublesome, because it seemed to reduce to a subjective act of will. Aristotle and Hegel instead dwell on human character as something constituted over time by deeds, rather than on any constitutive role of instantaneous willings.

On the side of a dogmatic “presence” of things to us, discussion for the past century has been dominated by Martin Heidegger’s famous claim that Western metaphysics is fundamentally a “metaphysics of presence” in the sense of what he calls presence-at-hand. He largely blames this on Aristotle’s account of time, which he takes as privileging present time over past and future time. Heidegger claims that Aristotle fails to adequately recognize the properly temporal and not just “present” dimensions of human existence.

As I understand it from afar, the basis for this claim that Aristotle unduly privileges presence is supposed to be none other than Aristotle’s notion of entelechy, or what Kant calls internal teleology. Robert Pippin provocatively connects the latter to what Hegel calls “logical movement”. I say that the things like Aristotelian ousia (“what it was to have been” something or someone) that are subject to internal teleology and logical movement also have what Paul Ricoeur calls narrative identity. This means they do not have identity in a strict formal sense, like mathematical objects do.

A dogmatic presence-at-hand like Heidegger imputes to Aristotle seem to me to presuppose a strict notion of the identity of whatever is supposed to be present. By contrast, a fundamental emphasis on internal teleology like Aristotle’s implicitly calls for notions like logical movement and narrative identity, which make strict identity impossible for whatever they are applied to. This seems to me to be about as far from a privileging of presence-at-hand as could be.

The Heideggerian critique of a “metaphysics of presence” is related to Heidegger’s other famous critique of so-called Aristotelian “ontotheology”. Aristotle’s Metaphysics does most certainly have a theological dimension, but my recent walk-through found little support for the most common reading that it is first of all supposed to be an “ontology”. Aristotle’s theology is better understood not in terms of a general account of being, but rather in terms of the explanatory priority of “that for the sake of which”. (See also Pure Entelechy; The Goal of Human Life.)

Kantian “Contemplation”?

Since what Aristotle says about theoria or “contemplation” in the Nicomachean Ethics and the Metaphysics seems highly important but still rather minimal, I wanted to consider what other historical resources there are for its interpretation.

On this score, the version of theoria in Plotinus yielded less than I had hoped. I had expected that in Plotinus, contemplation would look like what Kant calls an intellectual intuition, but hoped there would at least be a significant tie-in to the key Aristotelian notion of entelechy. But on closer examination, it seemed like the delicately nuanced Aristotelian framework of teleological explanation gets drowned out first by Plotinus’ emphasis on the One as the source of all, and then by his explicit reversal of Aristotle’s innovation of asserting the priority of actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment, which is critical to the way that Aristotle’s teleology works.

I already hinted at a connection of Aristotelian contemplation first with the Kantian notion of reflection, and then with the closely related notion of apperception. This is what I will explore next.

Reflections on Book Lambda

It turns out that Aristotle’s way of arguing for a first cause in book Lambda of the Metaphysics depends almost entirely on his unusual thesis of the priority of actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment over potentiality. His justification of the priority of actuality there also seems unexpectedly Kant-like, which means that so does his argument for a first cause.

We don’t positively know that actuality is prior, or that there is a first cause. Rather, Aristotle makes the indirect argument that a priority of actuality is a necessary condition for the kind of intelligibility that we need to have in order to be able to explain things at all. The pure actuality he attributes to the first cause is part of his affirmation that the priority of actuality is not an optional feature of his account.

I have been very impressed by Robert Pippin’s account of how Hegel’s rediscovery of the Aristotelian priority of actuality affects ethics and the theory of agency. Gwenaëlle Aubry increased my sensitivity to the normative, end-like character of Aristotelian actuality itself, and to his repeated associations of the first cause with the good and the beautiful. I’ve always read Aristotle’s first cause in terms of that-for-the-sake-of-which — as a sort of ultimate end — so this was a welcome perspective. This much seems to tightly cohere, and all to be nicely confirmed by the somewhat more disciplined reading of the Metaphysics I’ve just finished.

But I’ve been neglecting another strand from the Physics, which defines motion in terms of actuality and potentiality, and which ultimately traces every motion to the realization of an end, and to the actualization of a potential. Given my own interest in the idea of interpretation in an ethical spirit as first philosophy, this suggestion that material motion as such is in some minimal way ends-governed — even when no living plant or animal is involved — is something I find very appealing, albeit in need of clarification.

On the other hand, the arguments about a first motion and a first moved thing associated with the sphere of the fixed stars presuppose the non-relative status of a geocentric point of view in astronomy, and I don’t see any way to sustain that. The first cause of all things can no longer be conceived as having a special, more direct relation to the motion of the stars as viewed from earth, such as Aristotle suggests.

But we can still say that the pursuit and partial realization of the good and the beautiful are in a way involved in motions in general. This can be defined in a way that depends only on observable patterns of how various kinds of material things tend to seek completion in one way rather than another in different situations.

The good and the beautiful will be a “prime mover” only in this more diffuse sense, not as also having a special relation to the motion of the fixed stars. But we can still have entelechy from top to bottom, and we can still be moved by the beauty of the stars.

Next in this series: More on the First Cause

New State Not a Change?

“Of all cases it would be most natural to suppose that there is alteration in figures and shapes, and in states and in the process of acquiring and losing these; but as a matter of fact in neither of these two cases is there alteration” (Aristotle, Physics book VII ch. 3, Collected Works, Barnes ed., vol. 1, p. 412).

What the translator calls a matter of fact, I would call a matter of terminology. All specialties tend to develop their own terminology, and philosophers do likewise. Aristotle uses many Greek terms with meanings that were already specialized in his day. Modern disciplines and common speech have evolved their own choices using different criteria.

“[T]here is alteration only in things that are said to be affected in their own right by sensible things…. For when anything has been completely shaped or structured, we do not call it by the name of its material: e.g. we do not call the statue bronze or the candle wax or the bed wood, but we use a paronymous expression and call them brazen, waxen, and wooden respectively. But when a thing has been affected or altered in any way we still call it by the original name: thus we speak of the bronze or the wax being fluid or hard or hot…, giving the matter the same name as the affection” (ibid).

Aristotle makes his usual semantic distinction between the matter, the form, and the composite of both. He wants to specialize the term that is translated as “change” or “alteration” to apply only to the matter, and to use different locutions with regard to the form and the composite.

“Again, states, whether of the body or of the soul, are not alterations. For some are excellences and some are defects, and neither excellence nor defect is an alteration: excellence is a perfection (… since it is then really in its natural state: e.g. a circle is perfect when it becomes really a circle and when it is best), while defect is a perishing of or departure from this condition. So just as when speaking of a house we do not call its arrival at perfection an alteration…, the same holds good in the case of excellences and defects and of the things that possess or acquire them” (ibid).

As we might also anticipate, he strongly emphasizes a teleological and normative perspective on these matters.

“Further, we say that all excellences depend on particular relations. Thus bodily excellences such as health and fitness we regard as consisting in a blending of… elements in due proportion, in relation either to one another within the body or to the surrounding; and in like manner we regard beauty, strength, and all other excellences and defects. Each of them exists in virtue of a particular relation and puts that which possesses it in a good or bad condition with regard to its proper affections” (pp. 412-413).

Most fascinating of all is this emphasis on particular relations. Good and bad conditions are explained in terms of these.

“Since, then, relatives are neither themselves alterations nor the subjects of alterations or of becoming or in fact of any change whatever, it is evident that neither states nor the process of losing and acquiring states are alterations, though it may be true that their becoming or perishing, like that of form and shape, necessarily involves the alteration of certain other things…. For each defect or excellence involves a relation with those things from which the possessor is naturally subject to alteration: thus excellence disposes its possessor to be unaffected or to be affected thus and so, while defect disposes its possessor to be affected or unaffected in a contrary way” (p. 413).

Relations in themselves are static abstractions of conditions. But some of the things involved in these relations are subject to change or alteration. This is a sophisticated way of approaching the matter.

“And the case is similar in regard to the states of the soul, all of which too exist in virtue of particular relations…. Consequently these cannot be alterations either, nor can the process of losing and acquiring them be so, though their becoming is necessarily the result of an alteration of the sensitive part of the soul, and this is altered by sensible objects…. Consequently, although their becoming is accompanied by an alteration, they are not themselves alterations” (ibid).

States of the soul are to be viewed in this relational way. Their becoming is said to be accompanied by an alteration, not itself to be an alteration.

“And again, the states of the intellectual part of the soul are not alterations; nor is there any becoming of them. For the possession of knowledge most especially depends on a particular relation” (ibid).

Knowledge also “most especially” involves being in a particular relation. It is not just the possession of some content.

“It is evident, then, from the preceding argument that alteration and being altered occur in sensible things and in the sensitive part of the soul and, except accidentally, in nothing else” (p. 414).

Pure Entelechy

Book Lambda (XII) of the Metaphysics sketches Aristotle’s brilliant and beautiful solution to the problems that have been under investigation in this work. The text of book Lambda itself, however, seems more like a series of fragments than the kind of tight, continuous development that characterizes the so-called “central books” Zeta (VII), Eta (VIII), and Theta (IX), or the books of Aristotle’s Physics.

He now clearly affirms that there is a first cause of all things — not only of their being what they are, but also of their motion. As a result, book Lambda presents a mix of philosophical theology and Aristotelian physics.

Aristotle has a very distinctive notion of what the first cause is. I would call this pure entelechy. I’m not aware that he literally uses that phrase, but he definitely says that the first cause is pure energeia (actuality, being-at-work, or fulfillment), and he very strongly identifies energeia with entelecheia (a new Greek word coined by Aristotle, meaning literally “in [it] end having”, or “being-at-work-staying-itself” in Sachs’ translation), for which I am using the English “entelechy”.

Entelechy is the theme that unifies Aristotle’s account of motion with the inquiry about why things are what they are. Motion is a kind of incomplete entelechy. The first cause, both of motion and of things being what they are — which he identifies with the good, that-for-the-sake-of-which, thought thinking itself, and what I would call a kind of pure delight — is a complete and pure entelechy. The concept of entelechy thus binds Aristotle’s physics together with his theology.

Apart from considerations related to the first cause, Aristotle normally distinguishes that-for-the-sake-of-which from the potentiality that is an internal source of motion in things. But he also says that every motion is for the sake of that toward which the potentiality inclines. And the first cause of all motion affects things purely as that-for-the-sake-of-which.

The kind of motion that best exemplifies entelechy is circular motion. Circularity is also a kind of figurative image or metaphor for entelechy. Continuous motion in a circle is in a sense always complete in the sense of unchangingly accomplishing its goal, and yet it is always ongoing. But not even the first motion is itself unconditionally complete as an entelechy, since it is still moving. Only the first cause is that.

For Aristotle, there is one thing that is directly moved by the first cause, and that is the sphere of the fixed stars, which also demarcates the most comprehensive whole of things that occupy space. Other motions are indirect consequences of this, which follow only in a conditional way.

The first cause is not just pure entelechy in the generic sense of a logical universal. It is a particular independent thing that turns out to be the unique exemplar of its kind.

In virtue of its unique relation to all other things, it plays the role of what Hegel would later call a concrete universal. Further, the unique character of that relation of “firstness” makes it an unconditioned concrete universal. This is the kind of unconditioned thing that Kant says reason is always reaching for, but that cannot be strictly known. It is also the kind of unconditioned thing that Hegel treats as the ultimate ground of intelligibility and value.

He begins by recalling that the path of the inquiry has approached “all things” by focusing on those sources and causes that make concrete independent things be what they are. Independent things turn out to be those that have some entelechy of their own, which exhibits greater self-determination than the minimal kind that applies to all motions. These include plants, animals, and the stars.

“Our study concerns thinghood, for it is the sources and causes of independent things that are being sought” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 231).

“[E]verything changes from something that has being in potency to something that has being at-work” (ch. 2, p. 232).

All change for Aristotle is from something being potentially something to its being that same something in actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment. This is narrower than common English usage. In Physics book VII he says that “states, whether of the body or of the soul, are not alterations” (Collected Works, Barnes ed., vol. 1, p. 412).

“Now if something has being in potency, still this is not a potency to be any random thing, but a different thing comes to be from a different potency” (ibid).

Although one thing may have many potentialities, each of which may or may not be realized, each of these is a specific potentiality to be actual or at-work or fulfilled in some definite way.

“The kinds of thinghood are three, since the material is a this by coming forth into appearance (for whatever has being by way of contact, and not by having grown together, is material and underlies something else), while the nature of a thing is a this and an active condition into which it comes; and then the third kind is the particular thing that consists of these, such as Socrates or Callias” (ch. 3, p. 233).

He reminds us that when we speak of particular things, to avoid confusion we need to attend to whether we mean their matter, their form, or the composite consisting of both.

“Now things that cause motion are causes as being previously present, but things that are causes in the sense of rational patterns are simultaneous with what they produce” (p. 234).

Causes that are not of motion as such, but rather simply of being in a certain way, like form and that-for-the-sake-of-which, are not like more direct causes of motion in their mode of operation with respect to time. Their operation as causes does not involve a distinct externality related to a before and after, but rather unfolds immanently in their effects.

“Now there is a sense in which the causes and sources of different things are different, but there is a sense in which, if one speaks universally by way of analogy, they are the same for all things…. [B]ut the elements are different in different things, and the first cause that sets them in motion is also different in different things…. [B]ut still, over and above these, is the cause which, as the first of all things, sets all things in motion” (ch. 4, p. 234-236).

For Aristotle, everything has both a particular cause or causes, and a dependency on the first cause of all. The first cause of all operates through particular causes. This is the first time he has unambiguously implied that there is a first cause of all things. (In the middle above, when he speaks of “the first cause that sets them in motion”, this is not the first cause of all, but the first more specific cause of the motion in question.)

“Now since some things are separate while others are not separate, the former are independent things. And it is on account of this that all things have the same causes, because without independent things, attributes and motions are not possible. So then these causes will be, presumably, soul and body, or intellect, desire, and body. And in yet another way the sources of things are the same by analogy, namely being-at-work and potency, though these are both different and present in different ways in different things” (ch. 5, p. 236).

Once again, he recalls both the strategy of deriving the saying of being in the other categories from the saying of what independent things are, and the analogy by which the meanings of actuality and potentiality were illustrated. Again he emphasizes actuality and potentiality as sources of all things.

In passing, he seems to suggest thinking about human being in more specific terms of intellect and desire, rather than an undifferentiated soul. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he specifies that choice is grounded in a fusion of intellect and desire.

“Further, it is necessary to see that some things are possible to state universally, but others not. Now the primary sources of all things are a this that is first at work and something else which is in potency. So these are not the universal causes, since the source of particular things is particular; for a human being is the source of a human being universally, but no one is this universal, but rather Peleus is the source of Achilles and your father of you, and this particular B is the source of this particular BA, but B in general is the source of BA simply. And then, if the causes and elements of independent things are the sources of all things (but different ones of different ones), then as was said, of things not in the same class (colors and sounds, or independent things and quantity) they are different except by analogy; of things that are in the same kind they are also different, but not in kind, but because they are different for particular things, your material and form and mover from mine, though they are the same in their universal statement” (p. 237).

Again he emphasizes that particulars have particular causes. The kind of universality and operation that will be attributed to the first cause of all will be of a sort that respects this. He also again emphasizes that the primary sources of all things are particular actualities and potentialities.

“So as for seeking out what are the sources or elements of independent things and of relations and the of-what-sorts of things, and whether they are the same or different, it is clear that, since they are meant in more than one way, they do belong to everything, but when they have been distinguished they are not the same but different, except in one sense. And the causes of all things are the same in this sense — by analogy — because they are material, form, deprivation, and a mover, and the causes of independent things are the causes of all things in this sense — because when they are taken away everything is taken away; and further, the primary thing that is completely at work is the cause of all things. But the causes are different in this sense — they are as many as the primary contraries, described neither generically nor ambiguously, and as there are kinds of material as well. So what the sources are of perceptible things, and how many there are, and in what way they are the same and in what way different, have been said” (pp. 237-238).

At long last, we come to the argument that there really is a first cause of all things. Again he emphasizes that everything also has particular sources and causes.

“Now since there are three kinds of thinghood, two of them natural and one motionless, about the latter one must explain that it is necessary for there to be some everlasting motionless independent thing” (ch. 6, p. 238).

“For independent things are primary among beings, and if they were all destructible, everything would be destructible; but it is impossible for motion either to come into being or to be destroyed (since it always is), and impossible too for time” (ibid).

For Aristotle there is no first motion, or first moment in time. Instead, there must be an everlasting cause of motion.

“For if there were no time, there could be no before and after; and motion is continuous in just the way that time is; since time is either the same as or some attribute of motion” (ibid).

He points out that to speak of anything “before” there was any time is incoherent, since before and after presuppose time.

“But there is no continuous motion other than in place, and among these, other than in a circle” (ibid).

Only motion in a circle could continue forever. Space is vast, but Aristotle does not believe in infinite distances, so for him there could not be motion continuing forever in a straight line.

He seems to imply that the most fundamental motion of all — that of the fixed stars — provides a uniform measure for time. In modern terms, this is the earth’s rotation on its axis, as observed from a point on the earth. In the absence of evidence refuting what we see to be the case, he assumes that the stars forever rotate around the earth, and that the apparent motion of what is apparently the outermost sphere of the fixed stars is therefore a primary motion that spatially surrounds all things. If we take earth as the point of reference for whatever relativistic motions we see in the sky, this fits all the observational facts.

“But surely if there is something capable of moving and producing things, but not at work in any way, there will not be motion; for what has a potency admits of not being at work” (ibid).

Here he returns to the Physics sense of potentiality and actuality, and to the priority of the actual. Every potentiality is a source of motion that requires something external that is already an actuality of the same sort, in order for the potentiality to be actualized. The child requires a parent, the artifact a Platonic model.

“Therefore, there is no benefit even if we adopt everlasting independent things, as do those who bring in the forms, unless there is in them some source capable of producing change; moreover, even this is not enough, not even if there is another independent thing besides the forms, since if it is not going to be at work, there will not be motion” (ibid).

A pure form or logical universal that is not “actual” cannot explain motion. Once again, motion as the actualization of a potential depends on a pre-existing actuality.

“What’s more, it is not enough even if it will be at work, if the thinghood of it is potency, for there would not be everlasting motion, since what has being in potency admits of not being” (ibid).

Further, any first cause of motion must be everlasting, continuous, and unchanging in its action. That is to say, it must itself be purely actual, with no admixture of potentiality. It would not be sufficient to explain everlasting, continuous motion if the first cause just happened to be actual for some period of time.

“Therefore it is necessary that there be a source of such a kind that the thinghood of it is being-at-work. On top of that, it is necessary that these independent things be without material, for they must be everlasting, if indeed anything else is everlasting. Therefore they are being-at-work” (ibid).

As he just suggested, any first cause of all must therefore be a pure actuality with no potentiality. What Aristotle calls matter is kind of potentiality, so the first cause must have no matter either.

“For how will things have been set in motion, if there were not some responsible thing at work? For material itself, at any rate, will not set itself in motion” (p. 239).

“And this is why some people, such as Leucippus and Plato, bring in an everlasting activity, for they say there is always motion. But why there is this motion, and what it is, they do not say, nor the cause of its being in a certain way or some other way. For nothing moves at random, but always something must be present to it, just as now something moves in a certain way by nature, but in some other way by force or by action of intelligence or something else” (ibid).

It is not enough to simply posit motion. This does not explain anything.

“And then, what sort of motion is primary? For this makes so much difference one can hardly conceive it. But surely it is not possible for Plato to say what he sometimes thinks the source of motion is, which sets itself in motion; for the soul is derivative, and on the same level as the heavens, as he says” (ibid).

The thought here seems to be that if there is a first cause of motion, there must be a primary sort of motion that it primarily causes. For Aristotle, this is the movement of the fixed stars.

“Anaxagoras testifies that being-at-work takes precedence (since intellect is a being-at-work), as does Empedocles with love and strife, and so do those who say there is always motion, such as Leucippus; therefore there was not chaos or night for an infinite time, but the same things have always been so, either in a cycle or in some other way, if being-at-work takes precedence over potency. So if the same thing is always so in a cycle, it is necessary for something to persist always at work in the same way” (pp. 239-240).

If all things did not come from something that is an actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment, then they could only come from what the poets called “chaos and night”. But if all things came from chaos and night, there would be no hope of understanding anything. Aristotle suggests that several of his predecessors ought to have recognized the priority of actuality, as an implicit presupposition of what they did say.

“But since it is possible for it to be this way, and if it is not this way things will come from night and from ‘all things together’ and from not-being, these questions could be resolved; and there is a certain ceaseless motion that is always moving, and it is in a circle (and this is evident not only to reason but in fact), so that the first heaven will be everlasting” (ch. 7, p. 240).

He does not claim to positively know that actuality is necessarily prior to potentiality. He claims that the account is plausible, and that any alternative must lead back to sheer chaos, which would make it impossible for anything to be truly intelligible at all.

“Accordingly, there is also something that moves it. And since what is in motion and causes motion is intermediate, there is also something that causes motion without being in motion, which is everlasting, an independent thing, and a being-at-work” (ibid).

Behind each independent celestial motion, there must be some actual everlasting independent thing. Behind these, there must be something that is completely unmoved, and that is a pure actuality or being-at-work or fulfillment.

“But what is desired and what is thought cause motion in that way: not being in motion, they cause motion” (ibid).

For Aristotle, desire and thought are unmoved movers.

“But the primary instances of these are the same things, for what is yearned for is what seems beautiful, while what is wished for primarily is what is beautiful; but we desire something because of the way it seems, rather than its seeming so because we desire it, for the act of thinking is the beginning” (pp. 240-241).

Desire and thought both aim at what is good or beautiful. The way things seem — and consequently, the act of thinking or judging — drives wishing and willing, not vice versa. Further below, he will again emphasize the active rather than merely receptive role of thought.

“But the power of thinking is set in motion by the action of the thing thought, and what is thought in its own right belongs to an array of affirmative objects of which thinghood is primary, and of this the primary kind is that which is simple and at work” (p. 241).

Thinking itself is driven by the actuality of what it thinks. This does not negate his emphasis on thinking as act.

“But what is one and what is simple are not the same, for oneness indicates a measure, but what is simple is itself a certain way” (ibid).

The simplicity he attributes to the first cause is a stronger criterion than being one.

“But surely the beautiful and what is chosen in virtue of itself are also in that same array, and what is primary is always best, or analogous to it” (ibid).

First things are good and beautiful, and the first thing of all can be identified with the good and the beautiful.

“And that-for-the-sake-of-which is possible among motionless things, as the [following] distinction makes evident; for that-for-the-sake-of-which is either for something or belonging to something, of which the former is and the latter is not present among motionless things” (ibid).

Here he explicitly says that that-for-the-sake-of-which has a broader scope than any source of motion. Alone among the four kinds of causes, it provides ultimate reasons why things are what they are. Form may be identified with what things are, but that-for-the-sake of which is the cause of form and the reason why it is what it is.

“And it causes motion in the manner of something loved, and by means of what is moved moves other things” (ibid).

The highest kind of cause, that-for-the-sake-of-which, involves no force or compulsion or unconditional necessity. Other things are moved because they love it or are attracted by it, but they could not be so moved if they did not have their own sources of motion. They are not moved by some active power emanating from the first cause.

“But since there is something that causes motion while being itself motionless, this does not admit of being otherwise than it is in any respect at all” (ibid).

“For among changes, the primary one is change of place, and of this the primary kind is a circle, but this is what this mover causes” (ibid).

“Therefore [the first cause] is something that has being necessarily…. On such a source, therefore, the cosmos and nature depend” (pp. 241-242).

“And the course of its life is of such a kind as the best we have for a short time. This is so because it is always the same way (which for us is impossible), and because its being-at-work is also pleasure (which is what makes being awake, perceiving, and thinking the most pleasant things, while hopes and memories are pleasant on account of these)” (p. 242).

If we speak in terms of pleasure here, it would be of the highest possible sort. I think “pure delight” captures the meaning more clearly.

“And the thinking that is just thinking by itself is a thinking of what is best just as itself, and especially so with what is so most of all” (ibid).”

“But by partaking in what it thinks, the intellect thinks itself, for it becomes what it thinks by touching and contemplating it, so that the intellect and what it thinks are the same thing” (ibid).

And this, I say, is pure delight.

“For what is receptive of the intelligible and of thinghood is the intellect, and it is at work when it has them; therefore it is the being-at-work rather than the receptivity the intellect has that seems godlike, and its contemplation is pleasantest and best” (ibid, emphasis added).

He is saying that it is by virtue of the more perfect entelechy of intellect, which goes beyond the limited entelechy associated with motion — rather than intellect’s incidental touching or contemplation of something else — that intellect seems godlike. Here again he emphasizes the primarily active rather than receptive character of thought.

“So if the divine being is in this good condition that we are sometimes in, that is to be wondered at; and if it is in it to a greater degree than we are, that is to be wondered at still more. And that is the way it is” (ibid).

For Aristotle, the divine is not incommensurable with the human. Albeit in a very partial manner, we also partake of it, and the more so the more that we are moved by our highest values.

“But life belongs to it too, for the being-at-work of intellect is life, and that being is being-at-work, and its being-at-work is in itself the best life and is everlasting. And we say it is a god who everlastingly lives the best life, so that life and continuous and everlasting duration belong to a god; for this being is god” (ibid).

“That, then, there is an independent thing that is everlasting, motionless, and separate from perceptible things, is clear from what has been said. And it has also been demonstrated that this independent thing can have no magnitude, but is without parts and indivisible (for it causes motion for an infinite time, while no finite thing has an infinite power, and since every magnitude must be either finite or infinite, it cannot have magnitude, either finite, for the reason given, or infinite, because there is no infinite magnitude at all). But surely it has also been demonstrated that it cannot be affected or altered” (p. 243).

Sachs says in a note that the reference to a demonstration that the first cause is not involved with magnitude effectively incorporates the entire argument of the Physics by reference. Book VIII of the Physics has a far more thorough argument that there must be a first unmoved mover corresponding to the primary observable motion of the circling of the fixed stars, but that account does not address the what-it-is of things.

“But since… we see in addition to the motion of the whole heaven, other everlasting motions which belong to the planets…, it is necessary that each of these motions also be caused by something that is itself motionless and an everlasting independent thing. For the nature of the stars is for each to be an everlasting independent thing, while the mover is everlasting and takes precedence over the thing moved, and what takes precedence over an independent thing must be an independent thing” (ch. 8, p. 244).

The terrestrial independent things are mainly plants and animals. These have the richest entelechies among terrestrial perceptible things.

Aristotle also acknowledges each star participating in the motion of the heaven as an entelechy of its own. At least in a way, it is superior to ours, in that to all appearances it lasts forever.

The stars he calls planets are those that stand out by having observable independent motions of their own, different from the primary motion that they share with all the stars that are called “fixed” by contrast.

“[B]ut the number of motions is already something one must examine from that kind of mathematical knowledge that is the nearest kin to philosophy, namely from astronomy. For this kind makes its study about perceptible, everlasting thinghood, while the others, such as those concerned with numbers and with geometry, are not about thinghood at all” (ibid).

“[A]s for how many [independent motions] there happen to be, we now state what some of the mathematicians say, for the sake of a conception of it, … and as for what remains, it is necessary to inquire into some things ourselves, while listening to what other inquirers say about others. If something should seem to those who busy themselves with these matters to be contrary to what has just now been said, it is necessary to welcome both accounts, but trust the more precise one” (pp. 244-245).

“[F]or let the number that is necessary be left for more relentless people to say” (p. 246).

Apparently he made an arithmetic error counting the motions (“either 55 or 47”, where the 47 should have been 48, according the details I have not reproduced), then made a joke of it. I don’t believe Aristotle is very attached to specific enumerations of any sort. It is the principles upon which distinctions are based that matter.

“There has been handed down from people of ancient and earliest times a heritage, in the form of myth, to those of later times, that these original beings are gods, and that the divine embraces the whole of nature. The rest of it was presently introduced in mythical guise for the persuasion of the masses and into laws for use and benefit” (p. 247).

The divine embraces the whole of nature. We still name the planets by the Roman names for the Greek gods that were associated with them in antiquity.

Next he seems to respond to, or perhaps anticipate, doubts about what he said earlier about intellect.

“Now concerning the intellect there are certain impasses, for it seems to be the most divine of things that are manifest to us, but the way it is if it is to be of that sort contains some things that are hard to digest. For if it thinks nothing, what would be solemn about that? Rather, it would be just like someone sleeping. But if it does think, but something else has power over it, then, since it is not thinking but potency that is the thinghood of it, it could not be the best independent thing, for it is on account of its act of thinking that its place of honor belongs to it. And still, whether the thinghood of it is a power of thinking or an activity of thinking, what does it think?” (ch. 9, p. 247).

“For [what intellect thinks] is either itself or something else, and if it is something else, either always the same one or different ones. And then does it make any difference, or none, whether its thinking is of what is beautiful or of some random thing? Isn’t it even absurd for its thinking to be about some things? Surely it is obvious that it thinks the most divine and honorable things, and does not change, since its change would be for the worse, and such a thing would already be a motion” (p. 248).

Intellect will prefer the beautiful and the good over any random thing. Physics book VII much better explains why certain things that we are used to calling “changes” are not considered changes in his way of speaking.

“First, then, if it is not an activity of thinking but a potency, … it is clear that something else would be more honorable than the intellect, namely what it thinks…. Therefore what it thinks is itself, if it is the most excellent thing, and its thinking is a thinking of thinking” (ibid).

For a third time, he insists that intellect is primarily active, rather than receptive. Its main concern seems to be with whatever is most good and beautiful and honorable. It is a thinking of thinking — true higher-order thinking, rather than a first-order “thinking” of something external.

“But [the human soul’s] knowledge and perception and opinion and step-by-step thinking seem always to be about something else, and about themselves only as something secondary” (ibid).

The above seems to be in implicit contrast with the active thinking about which he was speaking just before. In this way, intellect in its own right is unlike the human soul.

“What’s more, if the thinking and the being thought are different, then in virtue of which of them does what is good belong to it? For to be an act of thinking and to be something thought are not the same” (ibid).

They are the same and yet not the same. Of course, this is in different respects. This is the model for many similar formulations in Hegel.

“Or is it rather that in some cases the knowledge is the thing it is concerned with, so that in the case of the kinds of knowing that make something, the thinghood without material and what it is for something to be, or in the case of the contemplative kinds of knowing, the articulation, is both the thing the knowledge is concerned with and the activity of thinking it? So since what is thought and what is thinking are not different with as many things as have no material, they will be the same, and the act of thinking will be one with what is thought” (ibid).

Here he suggests that we may after all be able to see instances of this identity by reflecting on our experiences of productive and contemplative knowing. Insofar as we actually know anything, we partially escape the inherent limitations of the human soul.

“But there is still an impasse left as to whether what is thought is composite, for then thinking would be changing among the parts of the whole. Or is it the case that everything that has no material is indivisible?” (pp. 248-249).

Implicitly, he seems to favor the latter alternative. Then twice more he speaks of intellect’s predilection for what is good and best.

“So the condition the human intellect, or that of any composite being, is in at some period of time (for it does not have hold of what is good at this or that time, but in some whole stretch of time it has hold of what is best, since that is something other than itself), is the condition the thinking that thinks itself is in over the whole of time” (p. 249).

Again, for Aristotle we have a little bit of the divine within us insofar as we have intellect, so there is no radical incommensurability between the divine and the human.

“One must also consider in which of two ways the nature of the whole contains what is good and best, whether as something separate, itself by itself, or as the order of the whole of things. Or is it present in both ways…?” (ch.10, p. 249).

Book Lambda’s final chapter ends with a quote from a speech by Odysseus in Homer’s Iliad. The whole chapter is oriented toward this literary image. At this point in the Iliad, the Greeks had been in complete disarray, a confused mass, but Odysseus’ words restore their morale and disciplined unity. (Notably, Odysseus was not the high king or commander-in-chief, though he was a leader. It was what he said that mattered.) Aristotle wants us to see this as a metaphorical answer to the question just posed. What is good and best must indeed be present in both ways — both as from the first cause, and as distributed and embodied throughout the whole — but he wants to emphasize that the “for the sake of which” of the first cause plays a real leading role, even though it does not govern by force.

“But beings do not present the aspect of being badly governed” (pp. 251-252).

As we have seen, this does not mean that all the facts of the world are as they ought to be. It does mean that life and the world are essentially good.

Next in this series: Reflections on Book Lambda

The Knowledge Sought

Following the emphasis of al-Farabi on demonstrative “science”, the Latin scholastic tradition treated “metaphysics” as a completed science. Some writers attributed such a completed science to Aristotle, while others, following in the wake of Avicenna, put forward their own improvements.

With respect to being, Aristotle himself speaks of knowledge sought rather than possessed. In inquiring about being “as such”, he is exploring a question given prominence by others. Far from claiming to have final knowledge of being as such, he highlights the ambiguity of “being”. There can be no “as such” — and hence no final knowledge — of an ambiguous thing.

This is not the end of the story, however. The very first sentence of the Metaphysics is “All human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing. A sign of this is our love of the senses; for even apart from their use, they are loved on their own account (book capital Alpha (I), ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 1).

We are after knowledge of something. It is just not clear that that something would be accurately characterized as “being”, full stop.

“[A] sign of the one who knows and the one who does not is being able to teach, and for this reason we regard the art, more than the experience, to be knowledge” (p. 2).

“Further, we consider none of the senses to be wisdom, even though they are the most authoritative ways of knowing particulars; but they do not pick out the why of anything” (ibid).

“[T]he person with experience seems wiser than those who have any perception whatever, the artisan wiser than those with experience, the master craftsman wiser than the manual laborer, and the contemplative arts more so than the productive ones. It is apparent, then, that wisdom is a knowledge concerned with certain sources and causes” (p. 3).

This concern with sources and causes, with the why, is the true subject matter of the Metaphysics. This is emphasized again at length in book Epsilon (VI).

“Since we are seeking this knowledge, this should be examined: about what sort of causes and what sort of sources wisdom is the knowledge. Now if one takes the accepted opinions we have about the wise man, perhaps from this it will become more clear. We assume first that the wise man knows all things, in the way that is possible, though he does not have knowledge of them as particulars. Next, we assume that the one who is able to know things that are difficult, and not easy for a human being to know, is wise; for perceiving is common to everyone, for which reason it is an easy thing and nothing wise. Further, we assume the one who has more precision and is more able to teach the causes is wiser concerning each kind of knowledge. And among the kinds of knowledge, we assume the one that is for its own sake and chosen for the sake of knowing more to be wisdom than the one chosen for the sake of results” (ch. 2, p. 3).

“Now of these, the knowing of all things must belong to the one who has most of all the universal knowledge, since he knows in a certain way all the things that come under it; and these are just about the most difficult things for human beings to know, those that are most universal, since they are farthest away from the senses. And the most precise kinds of knowledge are the ones that are most directed at first things, since those that reason from fewer things are more precise than those that reason from extra ones” (p. 4).

For long I struggled with this last statement. How could a knowledge of first things be the most precise of all? In the Topics, he says that first principles can only be investigated by dialectic: “[T]his task belongs properly, or most appropriately, to dialectic; for dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principles of all inquiries” (Collected Works, Barnes ed., p. 168).

Some commentators — influenced by al-Farabi and the subsequent tradition’s overwhelming emphasis on the place of demonstration as opposed to dialectic in Aristotle — have considered it a puzzle or a defect that the Metaphysics and other Aristotelian texts do not seem to consist in demonstrations as described in the Prior Analytics. The answer is that the Metaphysics and the others generally do follow the model of dialectic articulated in the Topics, as the Topics itself says they ought to.

Returning to the Metaphysics, Aristotle has already stressed that the most universal knowledge is also the most difficult. Also, he standardly distinguishes between how things are “in themselves” and how they are “for us”. The knowledge of first things would be most precise in itself, not necessarily for us in our relative achievement of it.

To anticipate, I think the final conclusion of the Metaphysics will be something like “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”. The qualification “ultimately” is essential to making sense of this.

(For Aristotle himself, all becoming and terrestrial motion are grounded in — though not in detail determined by — the entelechy or entelechies of circular celestial motion. The stars are a kind of everlasting living beings endowed with superior intellect, and are directly moved by love of the first cause. This might seem quaint to modern people. I find the love part beautiful in a poetic sort of way, but think Aristotle’s theoretical astronomy in general and his views of the special status of celestial objects have relatively little impact on interpretation of the rest of his work — particularly with respect to the teleology affecting earthly things and the discussions here in the Metaphysics.)

Plato says that the Good surpasses all things in ancientness and power. He represents Socrates as provocatively arguing that all beings desire the good, regardless of how confused they may be about what the good really is. No one deliberately and self-consciously desires what they recognize as evil. That is impossible, because it is logically self-contradictory. For the same reason, there also could not be a “principle” of evil. This is a tremendously powerful thought, of unparalleled importance for ethics. It sets a fundamental tone of charitable interpretation, in diametrical contrast to the kind of point of view that says those people over there are just evil.

Aristotle, however, says that Plato does not clearly explain the mode of activity of the Good, or how it acts as a cause. According to Aristotle, when Plato does gesture in this direction, he lapses into treating the Good as either a formal cause or an efficient cause, or both. But speaking in terms of formal or efficient causality loses what is most essential about the good — what many contemporary philosophers would call its normative character.

Aristotle considered his own contribution in this area to be a thorough account of how all things are ultimately moved by that for the sake of which, and of how the Good indirectly influences things just as that for the sake of which. This, once again, is what Kant called “internal teleology”.

After the horrors of the 20th century, many people have lost faith in the fundamental goodness of life. This is basically an emotional response. The indubitable factuality of horrendous evil in the world is not an Aristotelian or Hegelian actuality, and does not touch actuality. The factuality of evil does pose a roadblock for common interpretations of particular providence or “external” teleology, but not for Aristotelian or Hegelian teleology.

But how could a knowledge of first things be exact? We certainly don’t have knowledge of the first cause in itself. But coming back to my formulation “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”, this does meet Aristotle’s criterion of simplicity: all things are said to be ultimately moved by one thing (even though more directly, they are moved by their own love of whatever they do love, which seems good to them within the limits of their understanding).

We have exact knowledge neither of the first cause in itself nor of the particulars we encounter in life, but perhaps we can after all have exact, certain knowledge that “All things are ultimately moved by love of the good”. This is the kind of thing I think Aristotle is suggesting. (See also Aristotle on Explanation.)

Next in this series: The Four Causes Revisited