Entelechy and Hylomorphism

The remainder of Aubry’s third chapter analyzes book Eta of the Metaphysics, following on her analysis of book Zeta.

In Zeta, matter had been dismissed as a candidate for ousia or “substance” taken simply. But Eta chapter 1 “allows matter to be characterized not simply as ousia, but as ousia in potentiality. And in its turn, it invites us to consider not simply ousia but ousia as act” (Dieu sans la puissance, 2nd ed., p. 89, my translation throughout).

“In the text that follows, the term energeia [act] is found systematically associated with that of eidos [form]” (ibid). “Energeia thus inherits, in Eta, all the characteristics of eidos brought to light in Zeta” (ibid).

“What Eta 3 shows, nonetheless, is that it is not always easy to distinguish the act from the composite: for example, does the term ‘house’ designate ‘a shelter made of bricks and stones in such and such a way’, or only a shelter? The term ‘animal’, a soul in a body or a soul? It appears that the distinction between material element and formal element has something artificial about it; form is not only that which makes the stones erected into walls, the wood made into a roof, into a house: it is the very organization of the stones into walls, of the wood into a roof (and in the same way, the soul is not superimposed on a body that would be already provided with organs, already able to grow, to be nourished, to move, etc.: it is that very organization and those very capacities. Thus, the composite substance is a unity, the unity of the material element and the formal element — and in such a way that it can be called an entelechy, and a certain nature” (ibid).

(I would say it is really the entelechy of a composite substance — its embodied, realized, and continuing purpose — that gives it unity, and makes it a substance in the Aristotelian sense at all. Any ousia involves stronger unity than a mere coexistence of elements. Entelechy is a higher-order persistence of purpose and its realization that explains the unity of a substance. The stronger degrees of unity that we see in living things and artifacts don’t just happen, and knowledge of them isn’t just somehow immediately given. Entelechy expresses the intelligible cause or reason for there being a unity strong enough to be called a substance. Perhaps we might even say that entelechy is a final cause in act. Every Aristotelian substance would in this way be an end unto itself. Kant explained respect for others in terms of regarding the other as an end in herself. Thus I think Kantian respect ought to apply to all Aristotelian substances.)

“To this, Eta 4 adds that just any thing cannot have just any matter” (p. 90). “It thus appears that, considered as potentiality, matter is an element of substance, and that if it is determined by form, it is a determiner also” (ibid).

So here we have a clear expression of reciprocal determination between form and matter. (Aristotle’s biological works contain many other examples of this.) She quotes from Eta 6 that “the most proximate matter of a thing and its form are one and the same thing” (p. 91). The mutual determination noted above is why that is true.

“Adopting the language of in potentiality and in act is indeed to think the unity of what the Platonic and abstract language of matter and form invites us to distinguish” (p. 91).

“Potentiality is the unity of the matter and the form seen from the side of the matter, act the unity of the matter and the form seen from the side of the form. Matter and form are nothing but abstract points of view adopted toward the concrete individual” (ibid, emphasis in original).

The superficial clarity of quasi-syntactic distinctions between matter and form is belied by the reality of mutual determination that underlies the Aristotelian thesis of hylomorphism.

“Eta does not just repeat the analysis of Zeta while modifying the terms: in substituting the etiological point of view for the logical one, … it offers a solution, which will again be completed in Theta, and will only acquire its full meaning in Lambda, to the problem of ousia” (ibid).

What she calls the etiological point of view consists in explanation in terms of Aristotelian causes or “reasons why” — especially final causes, or internal teleology — and may include an aspect of process. What she calls the logical point of view consists in what I called quasi-syntactic distinctions between matter and form, which are purely static.

“Ousia is neither the matter nor the form, it is the composite, but it is also the matter as potentiality for the form, the form as in-act in a matter — the two constituting the unity of an individual at the same time determinate and separable. Act responds in fact to all the criteria of ousia: insofar as it inherits the characteristics of form, it says determination and permanence; insofar as it names the form as linked to a matter, it says also the individual and the separate. Act indeed says ousia at the same time as substance and as essence…. Through the notion of act, the conflict with which Zeta ended, between the Platonic criterion and the Aristotelian criterion for ousia, between ousia prote and ousia malista, and also between the candidate of form and the candidate of the composite, is indeed found to be resolved” (pp. 91-92).

Although my own readings here of Zeta and Eta did not catch the nuance of the prote/malista distinction that Aubry makes a good case for based on the Greek text, my general sense of the respective results of Zeta and Eta is quite similar to hers. The long development of Zeta ends — and Eta begins — with an unresolved tension between the requirements of knowledge, and what I would call an ultimately ethical focus on independent things as concrete wholes. Eta ends up much more optimistically suggesting that we can respect independent things and have knowledge.

Next in this series: Dynamis Before Aristotle

Foucault on Power

“Power’s condition of possibility… must not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate; it is the moving substrate of force relations which, by virtue of their inequality, constantly engender states of power, but the latter are always local and unstable. The omnipresence of power: not because it has the privilege of consolidating everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced from one moment to the next, at every point, or rather in every relation from one point to another. Power is everywhere, not because it embraces everything; but because it comes from everywhere…. One needs to be nominalistic, no doubt: power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society” (Foucault, History of Sexuality vol. 1, p. 93).

“I’d like to mention only two ‘pathological forms’ — those two ‘diseases of power’ — fascism and Stalinism. One of the numerous reasons why they are, for us, so puzzling is that in spite of their historical uniqueness they are not quite original. They used and extended mechanisms already present in most other societies. More than that: in spite of their own internal madness, they used to a large extent the ideas and the devices of our political rationality” (Foucault, “The Subject and Power”).

Foucault in his earlier “archaeological” stage made an enormous impression on me in my youth. He began by questioning the tendency to assimilate similar or similarly named concepts from different times and places in history, as if the “same” concepts were always continuously at work. The metaphor of “archaeology” emphasizes a patient analysis of concrete raw materials of historical evidence as a kind of artifacts, with an emphasis on highlighting their diversity, over traditional history writing’s rush to construct simple, continuous, and uniform historical narratives. Larger historical unities — either the alleged uniformity of culture and attitudes at a given time and place, or alleged continuities of identical concepts persisting across time and space — should be established by evidence, and not simply assumed based on conventional wisdom or uses of the same words.

Later he turned to a series of works more concerned with power and the constitution of human subjectivity. First he emphasized that power is not a matter of formal or institutional authority. Power for Foucault is not something that could be a possession; it exists only in its exercise. Next he criticized the reduction of power to its overtly repressive aspects, recommending instead a “microphysics” that focuses on what in popular discourse is sometimes called “power to” as opposed to “power over” — a positive rather than a negative notion of power. Finally he began to say that there is really no such thing as power, and what matters is the way subjects are constituted through “technologies of the self”. The primary way that social control is effected, particularly in modern Western societies, has less to do with symbolic spectacles of extreme violence than with the very formation of our personal identities. (See also Ethos, Hexis.)

One way these developments might be summarized is to say that power for Foucault is something emergent and not something originary: “power”, whatever it is, is a result, and not a cause. Power is not a magical power emanating from a source that somehow directly affects things, but a way of describing aspects of concrete relational situations.

Aristotle too tells us that power is not a cause in a primary or ultimate sense. It may provide a relative “reason why” in particular cases, but ultimately it is something to be explained, rather than being an ultimate explainer.

One, Many, Same, Different

Book Iota (X) of Aristotle’s Metaphysics extends the discussion in book Delta (V) of things said in many ways, going into detail on what makes things one, many, the same, or different. These are extremely important matters for any sound reasoning, though somewhat technical in nature. It also contains Aristotle’s sharp critique of the saying of Protagoras, “Man is the measure of all things”.

“[T]here are four senses in which something is said to be one primarily and in its own right, rather than incidentally” (ch.1, p. 185).

As to the first, “oneness belongs to what is continuous, either simply or, especially, by nature, and not by contact or a binding cord (and of these that is more so one and is more primary of which the motion is more indivisible and simple)” (ibid).

Continuity in a material is the lowest degree of something being one in its own right. That which is materially united by contact or by any artificial means would not be one in its own right.

As to the second, “[oneness] belongs still more to what is whole and has some form and look, especially if something is of that sort by nature and not by force, as those things are that are so by means of glue or bolts or being tied with a cord, but rather has in itself that which is responsible for its being continuous. And something is of this sort if its motion is one and indivisible in place and time; and so it is clear that, if something that has a source of motion that moves it in the primary kind of the primary class of motions (by which I mean a circular type of change of place), this is one magnitude in the primary sense” (ibid).

Being a whole is a higher degree of unity than being materially continuous. The association of circular motion with a strong unity is relevant to the upcoming argument in book Lambda (XII) about the first cause.

“So some things are one in this way, insofar as they are continuous or whole, but others are one because the articulation of them is one, and of this sort are those things of which the thinking is one, and this in turn is of this sort if it is indivisible, and an act of thinking is indivisible if it is of something indivisible in form or in number” (ibid, emphasis added).

As to the third, “a particular thing is one by being indivisible in number” (ibid, emphasis added).

These would include all the independent and non-independent things that were extensively discussed in book Zeta (VII).

He continues, “but that which is one by means of intelligibility and knowledge is indivisible in form, so [fourth] what is responsible for the oneness of independent things would be one in the primary sense” (ibid, emphasis added).

I expect that this last kind will turn out to be the first cause.

“But it is necessary to notice that one must not take the sorts of things that are spoken of as one as being meant in the same way as what it is to be one, or what the articulation of it is” (p. 186).

This is analogous to the distinction between saying something about something in general, and saying what something is, also discussed in book Zeta. He illustrates this below, with the example of fire.

“The same thing would also be the case with ‘element’ and ’cause’, if one had to speak about them, distinguishing the things to which the words are applied, and giving a definition of the words. For there is a sense in which fire is an element… and a sense in which it is not; for being fire is not the same thing as being an element…. And it is that way also with ’cause’ and ‘one’ and all such things, and this is why being one is being indivisible, just exactly what it is to be a this, separate on its own in either place or form or thinking, or to be both whole and indivisible, but especially to be the primary measure of each class of things, and, in the most governing sense, of the class of things with quantity, for it has come from there to apply to other things” (ibid).

Being one in the third sense above (being a particular thing) is now said to be “just exactly what it is to be a this“. This foreshadows an extensive one-to-one mapping he will develop below, between all the ways of the saying of being he elaborates in book Delta (V), and the ways of the saying of oneness.

He goes on to speak at some length about measures, which we would call units of measurement.

The most important point is that “a measure is always the same kind of thing as what it measures, for the measure of magnitudes is a magnitude, and in particular, that of length is a length, of breadth a breadth, of spoken sounds a spoken sound, of weight a weight, and of numerical units a numerical unit” (p. 188, emphasis added).

The distinction he makes here tracks perfectly with the way that different types, dimensions, and variables are handled separately in the operations defined by modern mathematics.

“And we speak of knowledge or sense perception as a measure of things for the same reason, because we recognize something by means of them, although they are measured more than they measure” (ibid).

The simultaneously humorous and serious caveat that “they are measured more than they measure” means that knowledge and perception are constrained by reality. More precisely, they are involved in mutual dependencies with the realities of things that they at once measure and are measured by.

“And Protagoras says a human being is the measure of all things, as if he were saying that a knower or perceiver were the measure, and these because the one has knowledge and the other perception, which we say are the measures of their objects. So while saying nothing, these people appear to be saying something extraordinary” (ibid).

Aristotle, at the end of his discussion of measure (longer and more detailed than included here), refers to Protagoras’ famous saying, commonly quoted as “Man is the measure of all things”. With uncharacteristic sharpness, he calls this “saying nothing”. Why? This seems worthy of a short digression.

Protagoras was a prominent Sophist, who appears in Plato’s dialogue of the same name. He wrote a controversial treatise entitled Truth, which began with the sentence, “Of all things the measure is man: of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not”. Plato and Aristotle both took Protagoras to be asserting a kind of individualist relativism. Reportedly, the skeptic Sextus Empiricus also read him this way. Plato took him to deny any objective reality. Aristotle in book Gamma (IV) shows rare outrage at his other reported claim that “it is not possible to contradict”. I didn’t mention him by name in my account, but Aristotle names him there as well.

Aristotle implies it is a bit more plausible to much more specifically say that knowledge and perception are measures of things, but even that only with the caveat that really “they are measured more than they measure”.

But why go on to add with such sharpness that Protagoras is “saying nothing”? I suspect the answer may lie with the other part of Aristotle’s interpretation: “as if he were saying that a knower or perceiver were the measure, and these because the one has knowledge and the other perception”.

I’m inclined to think Aristotle would regard it as outrageous to transfer what may (ambiguously) be said of specific knowledge and perception, to an unqualified saying about one who is said to possess knowledge and perception in general.

Aristotle has just given an account of what a measure is, that it must be of the same kind as the things that it measures. How could one thing (“man”) possibly be the measure of countless things that have no common measure? That does sound like nonsense. Any measure has to be of one kind or another. Modern mathematics agrees that kinds, dimensions, variables can only be collapsed together if very specific criteria are met.

What Aristotle emphasizes here about knowledge and perception — that they have a remarkable involvement with things that also measure them — seems very consistent with his general views. But the way Protagoras implicitly presents “man” as their possessor makes the possessor stand apart from the mutual involvement with things that Aristotle emphasizes, in which knowledge and perception and things measure one another. In splendid isolation from all constraints of real measure, the possessor seems to have arbitrary freedom to claim whatever she wishes.

I intuitively associate Protagoras with the attitude that what’s true for you is true for you, but what’s true for me is true for me, so don’t tell me I’m wrong, and I won’t tell you you’re wrong! Then and now, such sentiments had and have a superficial appeal, because they seem to express a live-and-let-live attitude, which seems to be a good thing. But the way it is expressed, in fact it completely undermines any possibility of meaningful dialogue, which undermines reason itself, which undermines the very thing that makes us human.

Back to the text, Aristotle turns to illustrating the one-to-one mapping I mentioned between sayings about being and sayings about oneness.

“[S]ince not even being itself is an independent thing as though it were some one thing capable of having being apart from the many beings (since it is common to them), other than solely as a thing attributed to them, it is clear that oneness is not a universal either” (ch. 2, p. 189).

For Aristotle, neither Being nor the One is an independent thing in its own right. He will nonetheless argue in book Lambda (XII) that there is a first cause for all things.

“What’s more, what is true about oneness must hold true in a similar way for all things; and being and oneness are meant in equally many ways” (ibid).

“And the same account applies also to the other classes of things, … and [if] in all instances it is the case both that the number is a number of something and that oneness is some particular one thing, and oneness itself is not the thinghood of it, then it must also be the same way with independent things” (p. 190).

“[S]o too in thinghood, one independent thing is oneness itself; and that oneness in a certain way means the same thing as being, is clear from the fact that it follows along equally through the ways being is attributed, and is not any one of them (for instance, it is not what anything is, nor of-what-sort anything is, but stands similarly toward them just as being does), and from the fact that no other thing is predicated in ‘one human being’ over and above what is predicated in ‘human being’ (just as being is not something over and above what and of-what-sort and how-much a thing is), or in ‘being one’ over and above being any particular thing” (ibid).

Saying something is one human being is the same as saying it is a human being. In book Zeta, he analogously said that “good” and “being good” are the same.

Things are often one in one respect, but many in another. The one and the many are “contraries, and not opposed as contradictories or as what are called relative terms” (ch. 3, p. 190). Next he turns to the meanings of same, other, and different.

“Since the same is meant in more than one way, in one way we sometimes speak of what is the same in number, but we say it in another sense if things are one in meaning as well as in number, as you are one with yourself in both form and material, and in another again if the articulation of the primary thinghood of things is one, for instance in the way equal straight lines are the same, … but in these equality is oneness” (p. 191).

In Fregean terms, things are what Aristotle calls one in number when they have the same reference. They are what Aristotle calls one in meaning when they have the same sense. Frege illustrates how they differ by saying that the morning star and the evening star have the same reference, but different sense.

“Things are alike if, not being simply the same, nor without difference in their composite thinghood, they are the same in form, just as a larger square is like a smaller one…. Other things are alike if they have the same form, and have it in them to be more and less, but are neither more nor less than one another. Other things, if they are the same attribute, and one in form, say white, more and less intensely, people say are alike because their form is one. Other things are alike if they have more things the same than different, either simply or superficially, as tin is like silver insofar as it is white, and gold is like fire insofar as it is yellow and fiery-red” (ibid).

“So it is clear also that other and unlike are meant in more than one way” (ibid).

“[B]ut difference is something other than otherness…. [W]hat is different from something is different in some particular respect, so it must necessarily be the same in some respect as that with which it differs” (p. 192).

For Aristotle, calling two things different presupposes that they can be meaningfully compared in the first place. This is not the case for things that are just “other” than one another. Black is different from white; they are both colors. But an apostrophe is just other than an aardvark.

This is followed by a ten-page discussion of technical details of contrariety, which I will mostly skip. Contrariety supports a definitive ruling out of some things based on other things. This has great importance for reasoning.

Incidentally, Aristotle explains why there is no essential difference between human beings with different colorings.

“And since one sort of thing is articulation while another is material, those contrarieties that are in the articulation make a difference in species, but those that are in what is conceived together with the material do not make such a difference. This is the reason that whiteness of a human being, and blackness, do not make such a difference…. For there is a difference between a white human being and a black horse, but that is not insofar as the one is white and the other is black” (ch. 9, pp. 201-202).

Finally, he argues that destructibility and indestructibility inhere in things by necessity. Whether a thing is destructible or not depends strictly on what genus of things its species belongs to.

“[A] destructible thing and an indestructible thing must be different in genus…. Therefore it is necessary that destructibility either be the thinghood or be present in the thinghood of each destructible thing; and the same argument also concerns the indestructible, since both are among things present by necessity” (ch. 10, p. 202).

Next in this series: Toward a First Cause

Toward Potentiality and Actuality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This again was a major conclusion of the previous book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next in this series: The Innovation of Potentiality-Actuality

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.)

Intention and Intuition

Husserl continues his passive synthesis lectures with more discussion of intuition as a confirmation of the concordance of intentions. It now seems pretty clear that intuition for Husserl is all about the “presentness” of presentations, and unlike the common usage does not involve any leaps. He distinguishes between intuitions that are “self-giving” (principally, external perceptions), and those that are not self-giving, but instead involve a “presentification”, like memories and expectations. He discusses at some length the question whether it is possible in advance to know which of our general intentions and presentations can potentially be confirmed in intuition.

He speaks of intentions “wanting” and “striving” to be fulfilled in present intuition, but contrasts this with a wish or will. Instead, it seems to be a more elemental directedness toward filling in the metaphorical hole in what he calls the “empty” intentions that are not correlated to a present object in intuition from external perception. Preconscious beliefs about an external object are subject to a kind of preconscious corroboration by comparison to direct impressions from sense perception.

I like the quasi-personification of intentions and intuitions here, as “wanting” or “giving themselves” (see Ideas Are Not Inert). Plato in the Republic compared the soul to a city or community of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, thus suggesting that the kind of unity the soul has is comparable to the kind of unity a concrete community has. All our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions thus need not be attributed monolithically to a single, central agent; rather, our agency as individuals is the combined effect of numerous specialized, more or less cooperating but somewhat decentralized agencies.

All our intentions “want” to coalesce into the unity of a world.

“That we have a consciousness of our own life as a life endlessly streaming along; that we continually have an experiencing consciousness in this life, but in connection to this in the widest parameters, an emptily presenting consciousness of an environing-world — this is the accomplishment of unity out of manifold, multifariously changing intentions, intuitive and non-intuitive intentions that are nonetheless concordant with one another: intentions that in their particularity coalesce to form concrete syntheses again and again. But these complex syntheses cannot remain isolated. All particular syntheses, through which things in perception, in memory, etc., are given, are surrounded by a general milieu of empty intentions being ever newly awakened; and they do not float there in an isolated manner, but rather, are themselves synthetically intertwined with one another. For us the universal synthesis of harmonizing intentional syntheses corresponds to ‘the’ world, and belonging to it is a universal belief-certainty.”

“Yet as we already mentioned, there are breaks here and there, discordances; many a partial belief is crossed out and becomes a disbelief, many a doubt arises and remains unsolved for a time, and so forth. But ultimately, proper to every disbelief is a positive belief of a new materially relevant sense, to every doubt a materially relevant solution; and now if the world gets an altered sense through many particular changes, there is a unity of synthesis in spite of such alterations running through the successive sequence of universal intendings of a world — it is one and the same world, an enduring world, only, as we say, corrected in its particular details, which is to say, freed from ‘false apprehensions’; it is in itself the same world. All of this seems very simple, and yet it is full of marvelous enigmas and gives rise to profound considerations” (Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, pp. 145-146).

Husserl on Perception

“External perception is a constant pretension to accomplish something that, by its very nature, it is not in a position to accomplish. Thus, it harbors an essential contradiction, as it were. My meaning will soon become clear to you once you intuitively grasp how the objective sense exhibits itself as a unity in the unending manifolds of possible appearances; and seen upon closer inspection, how the continual synthesis, as a unity of coinciding, allows the same sense to appear, and how a consciousness of ever new possibilities of appearance constantly persists over against the factual, limited courses of appearance, transcending them.”

“Let us begin by noting that the aspect, the perspectival adumbration through which every spatial object invariably appears, only manifests the spatial object from one side. No matter how completely we may perceive a thing, it is never given in perception with the characteristics that qualify it and make it up as a sensible thing from all sides at once. We cannot avoid speaking of such and such sides of the object that are actually perceived. Every aspect, every continuity of single adumbrations, regardless how far this continuity may extend, offers us only sides. And to our mind this is not just a statement of fact: it is inconceivable that external perception would exhaust the sensible-material content of its perceived object; it is inconceivable that a perceptual object could be given in the entirety of its sensibly intuitive features, literally, from all sides at once in a self-contained perception” (Husserl, Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, pp. 39-40).

Adumbration is something like foreshadowing.

While many of his contemporaries were caught up in the logical empiricist enthusiasm for literal “sense data” as the supposedly rock-solid foundation for knowledge, Husserl was taking an extremely original approach to a more classical view of the inherent limiting and “transcending” features of sense perception, explicitly bringing out implicit characteristics of any possible seeing of physical objects that seem clear as soon as we bring them into focus and reflect on them.

We need not take something like Plato’s refusal to treat sensation as a source of knowledge as a case of repugnance toward physicality. With Husserl’s help we can “see” a more specific grounding of Plato’s view in reasons inherent to the subject matter. Husserl’s exceptionally clear examples in the realm of visual perception also provide a kind of model for understanding something like Hegel’s frequent complaints against “one-sided” points of view.

“When we view the table, we view it from some particular side…. Yet the table has still other sides” (p. 40). “It is clear that a non-intuitive pointing beyond or indicating is what characterizes the side actually seen as a mere side” (p. 41). “In every moment of perceiving, the perceived is what it is in its mode of appearance [as] a system of referential implications…. And it calls out to us, as it were, in these referential implications: ‘There is still more to see here, turn me so you can see all my sides, let your gaze run through me, draw closer to me, divide me up; keep on looking at me over again and again…'” (ibid).

“These indications are at the same time tendencies that push us toward the appearances not given…. They are pointers into an emptiness since the non-actualized appearances are neither consciously intended nor presentified. In other words, everything that genuinely appears is an appearing thing only by virtue of being intertwined and permeated with an intentional empty horizon, that is, by virtue of being surrounded by a halo of emptiness with respect to appearance. It is an emptiness that is not a nothingness, but an emptiness to be filled-out; it is a determinable indeterminacy” (p. 42).

“In spite of its emptiness, the sense of this halo of consciousness is a prefiguring that prescribes a rule for the transition to new actualizing appearances…. This holds time and again for every perceptual phase of the streaming process of perceiving…. There is a constant process of anticipation, of preunderstanding” (pp. 42-43).

“[A]s soon as a new side becomes visible, a side that has just been visible disappears from sight….But what has become non-visible is not cognitively lost for us…. Having already once seen the back side of an unfamiliar object and, turning back to perceive the front side, the empty premonition of the back side now has a determinate prefiguring that it did not have previously” (pp. 45-46).

“The fact that a re-perception, a renewed perception of the same thing, is possible for transcendence characterizes the fundamental trait of transcendent perception, alone through which an abiding world is there for us, a reality that can be pregiven for us and can be freely at our disposal” (p. 47).

Here “transcendence” just refers to the various characteristics of the incomplete perception of spatial objects he is pointing out.

“[W]e see that every perception [implicitly] invokes an entire perceptual system; every appearance that arises in it implies an entire system of appearances” (p. 48). “What is already given to consciousness in a primordial-impressional manner points to new modes of appearance through its halo which, when occurring, emerge as partly confirming, partly determining more closely…. Advancing along this line, the empty intentions are transformed respectively into expectations” (p. 49).

Perception gives us the very opposite of isolated sense data. Every perception is connected to other perceptions.

“If we ask, finally, what gives unity within every temporal point of the momentary appearance… we will also come across reciprocal intentions that are fulfilled simultaneously and reciprocally” (p. 50).

Substance in the elementary sense of something persisting through change emerges from networks of mutually reinforcing cross-references.

“We can never think the given object without empty horizons in any phase of perception and, what amounts to the same thing, without apperceptive adumbration. With adumbration there is simultaneously a pointing beyond what is exhibiting itself in a genuine sense. Genuine exhibition is itself, again, not a pure and simple possession on the model of immanence with its esse = percipi [to be = to be perceived]; instead, it is a partially fulfilled intention that contains unfulfilled indications that point beyond” (p. 56).

“[I]n the process of perceiving, the sense itself is continually cultivated so in steady transformation, constantly leaving open the possibility of new transformations” (p. 57).

Everything we perceive reaches beyond itself, raising new questions.

“We always have the external object in the flesh (we see it, grasp, seize it), and yet it is always at an infinite distance mentally. What we do grasp of it pretends to be its essence; and it is it too, but it remains so only in an incomplete approximation, an approximation that grasps something of it, but in doing so also constantly grasps into emptiness that cries out for fulfillment” (pp. 58-59).

I suggested above that what Husserl illustrates so clearly about visual perception can serve as a model for other things. In particular, I think both facts and beliefs share the perspectival character of visual perception of spatial objects, because they revolve around analogous issues of correspondence with something external.

The very best and most complete facts about anything at best resemble a collection of still views of a tree from different angles, like the sides of the table in Husserl’s example. The virtue of facts is that they are supposed to be individually self-contained, and individually verifiable by correspondence to states of affairs. Even leaving aside all questions of interpretation that tend to unravel this putative self-containedness, by virtue of their isolation all individual facts still remain “one-sided” or perspectival, like individual still views of the tree.

Even the most complete collection or sequence of still views fails to capture the simultaneous many-sided unity-in-diversity of the concrete tree. The real concrete unity of the tree is not factual but teleological and “transcendental”, forever out of reach of a merely factual approach.

If this is true of the best possible facts, I would say it must also be true of the best possible beliefs, because both revolve around a kind of correspondence to states of affairs. The difference is that beliefs are just assertions of correspondence between what we say and what “is”. But to qualify as a fact, an assertion must also be verifiable by correspondence.

But verification by correspondence can only apply to what appears, not to what “is”, so facts only apply to what appears about states of affairs. Facts in effect just are verifiable appearances. They are an instance of what Plato called “true opinion”. They are objects of justified true belief, and potentially of a kind of subjective “certainty”.

Beliefs on the other hand usually reach beyond appearances toward what is, so although they assert a kind of correspondence, they cannot in general be verified by correspondence. Their well-foundedness in the general case has to do with a goodness of reasons. Well-foundedness by reasons falls short of certainty in one way, but it reaches deeper. It is potentially less subject to perturbation, because it does not directly depend on appearances or correspondence.

I think knowledge is something stronger than well-founded belief. Unlike facts and beliefs, I want to say that knowledge in the proper sense has nothing to do with correspondence to something outside itself. Also, well-founded beliefs may depend on assumptions that could eventually be refuted, but “knowledge” in the sense I want to give it does not depend on any assumptions either.

Contrary to common usage, then, I want to say that facts are not knowledge, and even certainty about appearances is not knowledge.

Judgments of correspondence — including beliefs and facts and certainties about appearance — seem to me to be inherently perspectival in the way that Husserl talks about. On the other hand, that rare thing called knowledge, in the way I am using the term, would be immune to perspectival limitations, because it does not depend on correspondence at all. (See also Husserl on Passive Synthesis; Opinion, Belief, Knowledge?; Sense Certainty?; Taking “Things” as True; Berkeley on Perception; Platonic Truth; Everyday Belief; A Criterion for Knowledge?; McDowell on the Space of Reasons; The Non-Primacy of Perception.)

Figurative Synthesis

I wanted to extract a few more key points from Beatrice Longuenesse’s landmark study Kant and the Capacity to Judge. She strongly emphasizes that judgment for Kant refers to a complex activity, not a simple reaching of conclusions. She especially stresses the role of a capacity to judge that precedes any particular judgment and is grounded in a synthesis of imagination. (See Capacity to Judge; Imagination: Aristotle, Kant; Kantian Synthesis.)

At issue here is the very capacity for discursive thought, as well as “the manner in which things are given to us” (p. 225, emphasis in original), which for Kant involves what he called intuition. (See also Beauty and Discursivity).

Through careful textual analysis, Longuenesse argues that Kant’s claim to derive logical categories from forms of judgment makes far more sense than most previous commentators had recognized. For Kant, she argues, the “forms of judgment” are not just logical abstractions but essential cognitive acts that reflect “universal rules of discursive thought” (p. 5).

She recalls Kant’s insistence that the early modern tradition was wrong to take categorical judgments (simple predications like “A is B“) as the model for judgments in general. For Kant, hypothetical and disjunctive judgments (“if A then B” and “not both A and B“, respectively) are more primitive. These correspond to the judgments of material consequence and material incompatibility that Brandom argues form the basis of real-world reasoning.

Another distinctive Kantian thesis is that space and time are neither objective realities nor discursive concepts that we apply. Rather, they are intuitions and necessary forms of all sensibility. Kantian intuitions are produced by the synthesis of imagination according to definite rules.

“[I]ntuition is a species of cognition (Erkenntnis), that is, a conscious representation related to an object. As such it is distinguished from mere sensation, which is a mere state of the subject, by itself unrelated to any object…. One might say that, in intuition, the object is represented even if it is not recognized (under a concept).” (pp. 219-220, emphasis in original).

Before we apply any concepts or judgments, “Representational receptivity, the capacity to process affections into sensations (conscious representations), must also be able to present these sensations in an intuition of space and an intuition of time. This occurs when the affection from outside is the occasion for the affection from inside — the figurative synthesis. The form of the receptive capacity is thus a merely potential form, a form that is actualized only by the figurative synthesis” (p. 221, emphasis in original).

“[A]ccording to Locke, in this receptivity to its own acts the mind mirrors itself, just as in sensation it mirrors outer objects…. Kant shares with Locke the conception of inner sense as receptivity, but he no longer considers the mind as a mirror, either in relation to itself or in relation to objects…. Just as the thing in itself that affects me from outside is forever unknowable to me, I who affect myself from within by my own representative act am forever unknowable to me” (p. 239, emphasis added).

The point that the mind is not a mirror — either of itself or of the world — is extremely important. The mirror analogy Kant is rejecting is a product of early modern representationalism. We can still have well-founded beliefs about things of which we have no knowledge in a strict sense.

“Kant’s explanation is roughly this: our receptivity is constituted in such a way that objects are intuited as outer objects only in the form of space. But the form of space is itself intuited only insofar as an act, by which the ‘manifold of a given cognition is brought to the objective unity of apperception’, affects inner sense. Thanks to this act the manifold becomes consciously perceived, and this occurs only in the form of time” (p. 240, emphasis in original).

She develops Kant’s idea that mathematics is grounded in this kind of intuition, ultimately derived from the conditions governing imaginative synthesis. In particular, for Kant our apprehensions of unities and any kind of identification of units are consequences of imaginative synthesis.

“Extension and figure belong to the ‘pure intuition’ of space, which is ‘that in which the manifold of appearances can be ordered’, that is, that by limitation of which the extension and figure of a given object are delineated. Therefore, space and time provide the form of appearances only insofar as they are themselves an intuition: a pure intuition, that is, an intuition preceding and conditioning all empirical intuition; and an undivided intuition, that is, an intuition that is presupposed by other intuitions rather than resulting from their combinations” (p. 219, emphasis in original).

“According to Locke, the idea of unity naturally accompanies every object of our senses, and the idea of number arises from repeating the idea of unity and associating a sign with each collection thus generated by addition of units…. But for Kant, the idea (the concept) of a unit is not given with each sensory object. It presupposes an act of constituting a homogeneous multiplicity…. Thus the idea of number is not the idea of a collection of given units to which we associate a sign, but the reflected representation of a rule for synthesis, that is, for the act of constituting a homogeneous multiplicity. When such an act is presented a priori in intuition, a concept of number is constructed.” (p. 260, emphasis in original).

“Mathematics has no principles in the absolute sense required by reason. Axioms are not universal propositions cognized by means of pure concepts. They may be universally and apodeictically true, but their truth is based on the pure intuition of space, not derived from pure concepts according to the principle of contradiction” (p. 287).

Incidentally, Longuenesse thinks it does not follow from Kant’s account that space is necessarily Euclidean, as many commentators have believed and Kant himself suggested.

Neoplatonic Critique of Identity?

A common theme of much 20th century continental philosophy was criticism of presumed identities of people and things. Writers like Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault, to name but two, systematically questioned the role of identity in our understanding of the world. Edmund Husserl had recommended suspending judgments of existence in favor of the concrete description of essences; starting especially from a historiographical point of view, Foucault recommended suspension of judgments of pre-existing unity in favor of a concrete description of differences.

Later neoplatonism like that of Proclus (412-485 CE) is commonly associated with an extreme “realist” multiplication of metaphysical entities that implicitly had their own presupposed identities. The positive side of this is a rich view of differentiation metaphysically underpinning the diversity of concrete being. But the neoplatonic technical term hypostasis is the etymological source of our verb “to hypostasize”, which basically means to attempt to artificially impose more unity on something than it really has.

But especially if we go back to Plotinus (204/5 – 270 CE), and also in later authors, there is a strong strand of what might be called “negative henology” in neoplatonism. Plotinus was the main originator of so-called negative theology in the West. Negative theology indirectly gives meaning to the notion of transcendence by pointing out how every definite description falls short of adequately characterizing God. Hen is Greek for “one”, so by analogy with negative theology, a negative henology would be an account of how everything falls short of the pure unity of the One — in other words, how things that we think of as pre-existing unities are less unified than we suppose.

Hand in hand with this perspective comes the recognition that unity has many degrees. There are a few strong unities and many weak ones, and many degrees in between. As Plotinus recognized, nothing real has the pure unity of the One. (See also Power of the One?; Plotinus Against the Gnostics; Subjectivity in Plotinus.)

Droplets of Sentience?

One somewhat speculative theme I’ve been developing here is the suggestion that our basic sentience or awareness has only a very loose unity, like that of a liquid. The idea is that sentience attaches primarily to our concrete thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, which can then flow together like droplets of water. Consciousness is not a matter of being a spectator of some internal theater. It attaches directly to the action of the play, so to speak. (See Ideas Are Not Inert; Imagination: Aristotle, Kant).

William James famously spoke of the “stream” of consciousness. I take this to be quite different from the unity of apperception that Kant talked about. The unity of a stream of consciousness is very loose and constantly changing, but that loose unity is a matter of fact. The unity of a unity of apperception on the other hand is quite strong, but it is a teleological tendency or a moral imperative, and not a matter of fact.

When we say “I”, that refers primarily to a unity of apperception — our constellation of commitments. This has much greater relative stability than our stream of consciousness. It is also what I think Aquinas was reaching for in claiming a strong moral unity of personal “intellect”. By contrast, one of the great modern errors is the equation “I am my consciousness”.