Tag: What It Is

Mixing Up Plato and Aristotle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next in this series: Form and Entelechy

Being as Such?

Aristotle begins book Gamma (IV) of the Metaphysics by saying that after all, “There is a kind of knowledge that contemplates what is insofar as it is, and what belongs to it in its own right” (ch. 1, Sachs tr., p. 53).

To understand what this really means, we need to consider book Gamma as a whole, also taking into account in advance Aristotle’s disambiguation of “being” and “is” in book Delta (V). (There is another enumeration of the meanings of being in book Epsilon (VI), but it is does not really add anything to the one in book Delta.)

Here in book Gamma, he adds the new element that “Being is meant in more than one way, but pointing toward one meaning and some one nature rather than ambiguously…. just as every healthful thing points toward health…. For some things are called beings because they are independent things, others because they are attributes of independent things, others because they are ways into thinghood, or destructions or deprivations or qualities of thinghood, or are productive or generative of independent things, or of things spoken of in relation to independent things, or negations of any of these or of thinghood, on account of which we say even nonbeing is nonbeing. So just as there is one kind of knowledge of healthful things, this is similarly the case with the other things as well” (ch. 2, pp. 53-54).

Classically, “said in many ways” means said homonymously, like “flies” in “Time flies like an arrow” and “Fruit flies like bananas”. The same sound and spelling are used for different meanings that have no discernible relation to one another.

The comparison to health gives a pretty clear indication of what he wants to say here. But the “one thing” that is pointed to in the same way that health is pointed to is not “being”, but rather the concept of what Sachs calls independent things (“substances”).

In the disambiguation in book Delta, Aristotle says “just as many things are said to be in their own right as are meant by the modes of predication”. This is an allusion to the various ways in which things are said, which are enumerated and discussed in an elementary way in the Categories. Ousia (“substance”, or what Sachs calls “independent thinghood”) has a somewhat privileged place in this enumeration — we might say, just because it is the one that the others “point” to. Ousia will later turn out to be the “what it is” or “what it was to have been” of a thing.

The uses of “is” that he mentions are exclusively the transitive ones. He does not even mention any case like “Socrates is, full stop”. There is absolutely no mention of an “is” of existence, as opposed to the “is” of saying something about something. Saying something about something is the only role of “is” here, and this is strongly borne out by the remainder of the text of book Gamma.

Saying the what-it-is of something of that thing is for Aristotle the central, focal way of saying something about something in general. The other ways of saying something about something form what linguists might call a family of metonymies clustered around the saying of what-it-is. Metonymy involves indirectly referring to a thing by referring to one of its attributes. By contrast, Aristotle takes the what-it-is to refer directly to the thing (which is probably why Sachs calls the what-it-is the “thinghood” of the thing).

All the ways of saying something about something have in common that they are ways of saying something about something. In Sachs’ language, they are “modes of predication”. But the saying of what-it-is serves as a kind of paradigm for the rest.

The main body of book Gamma is actually a long polemic against the Sophists and the friends of Cratylus. It is about the conditions of rational discourse.

A number of the Sophists outraged Aristotle by making flagrantly self-contradictory assertions, and claiming a right to do so. Very uncharacteristically, Aristotle seems to lose his cool over this. He goes on and on about it, beating the dead horse into the ground. He does so because for him this is a violation of fundamental ethics.

To deliberately assert something and its contrary, or to claim a right to do so, is not just to talk nonsense. Aristotle implies it is deeply immoral — the deepest possible violation of intellectual integrity and the integrity of thought. As he says, it is completely impossible to have dialogue with someone who insists on this, and dialogue is the foundation of reason. For Aristotle, such a person hardly even qualifies as human.

Kant and Hegel treat unity of apperception not as something that spontaneously happens, but as the fulfillment of an ethical norm. When we commit ourselves to something by asserting it, we are then also morally committed to the assertion of what follows from it, and even more so to the denial of what is contrary to it. Aristotle’s outrage shows how strongly he shares this point of view.

The friends of Cratylus were radical Heracliteans. Heraclitus famously said that all things flow, and you cannot step in the same river twice. Cratylus claimed it would be more correct to say you cannot step in the same river once. Effectively, this means there is no such thing as being the same at all, so “same” has no real meaning. But if there is no sameness, there can be no contradiction, because contradiction is saying contrary things about the same thing. So the friends of Cratylus too ended up justifying what we would regard as self-contradictory statements.

So when Aristotle is concerned to assert that there is after all a knowledge of being as such and that it is the business of the philosopher to have it, all the evidence in book IV leads to the conclusion that what he is really saying is that the philosopher doesn’t just believe but knows that contraries are not true of the same thing in the same respect at the same time. This is simultaneously a genuine knowledge and a condition of any possible dialogue, a moral imperative as Kant would say.

The only other thing besides the principle of non-contradiction that Aristotle mentions in book IV as applying to being as such is mathematical axioms, which are similarly supposed to be true of all things whatsoever (he does not enumerate them).

Famously, Aquinas read Aristotle’s notion of “pointing toward one meaning” as a kind of analogy. The notion of an analogy of being is better considered as original to Aquinas. Analogy is a symmetrical relationship. If A is analogous to B, we should be able to conclude that B is similarly analogous to A.

But Aristotle’s example of the relation of health to healthful things is not symmetrical; health has a kind of logical primacy over healthful things, and Aristotle very explicitly gives the saying of what-it-is a similar primacy over its metonymic relatives corresponding to the other categories. That is the very means by which he gets from the non-univocity of being to a single concept. That concept is ousia — i.e., “substance”, “essence”, what Sachs calls “thinghood”, or the what-it-is of a thing.

Some commentators have argued that the subject of the Metaphysics is “ousiology”. That seems more accurate than the conventional “ontology”. In any case, Aristotle’s focus is on the conditions of meaningful saying, and especially on saying of what-it-is — not at all on being in the sense of existence.

In the big picture, existence as such is just not an important philosophical concept for Aristotle. What something is and why it is that way are what he is concerned with.

There will be a further level beyond this, in which we will further distinguish the saying of what something is by looking at it in potential and in act, where these terms are understood in a way that is independent of motion, and instead is oriented toward that-for-the-sake-of-which and the good.

Next in this series: Causes and Sources