The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (3 page)

BOOK: The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)
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The most credible view of these writings is that they are lecture notes written or dictated by Aristotle himself and not intended for publication. Their organization into treatises and the internal organization of the treatises into books and chapters may, however, not be his. No doubt this accounts for some, though not all, of their legendary and manifest difficulty.

The Aristotelian World

Of the various things that exist in the world described in Aristotle’s writings, “some exist by nature, some from other causes” (
Physics
192
b
8–9). Those that exist by nature have a nature of their own, an internal source of movement, growth, and alteration (192
b
13–15). Thus, for example, a feline embryo has within it a source that explains why it grows into a cat, why that cat moves and alters in the ways it does, and why it eventually decays and dies. A house or any other artifact, by contrast, has no such source within it;
instead, the source is “in something else external to the thing,” namely, the craftsman who manufactures it (
Physics
192
b
30–31; also
Metaphysics
1032
a
32–
b
10).

A thing’s nature is the same as its essence or function, which is the same as its end, or that for the sake of which it exists. For its end just is to actualize its nature by performing its function (
Nicomachean Ethics
1168
a
6–9), and something that cannot perform its function ceases to be what it is except in name (
On the Parts of Animals
640
b
33–641
a
6,
Politics
1253
a
23–25). Aristotle’s view of natural beings is therefore teleological: He sees them as being defined by an end (
telos
) for which they are striving, and as needing to have their behavior explained by reference to it. It is this end, essence, or function that fixes what the good for that being consists in, and what its virtues or excellences are (
Nicomachean Ethics
1098
a
7–20,
Physics
195
a
23–25).

Most natural things, as well as the products of art or craft, are hylomorphic compounds, compounds of matter (
hulě
) and form (
morphě
). Statues are examples: Their matter is the stone or metal from which they are made; their form is their shape. Human beings are also examples: Their matter is (roughly speaking) their body; their soul is their form. Thus a person’s soul is not something separable from his body, but is more like the structural organization responsible for his body’s being alive and functioning appropriately.

While the natures of such compounds owe something to their matter and something to their form, what they owe to form is more important (
Metaphysics
1025
b
26–1026
a
6,
Physics
193
b
6–7). For example, a human being can survive through change in his matter (we are constantly metabolizing), but if his form is changed, he ceases to exist (
Politics
1276
b
1–13). That is why the sort of investigation into human beings we find in
De Anima
and in ethical and political treatises focuses on souls rather than bodies.

These souls consist of distinct, hierarchically organized constituents (
Nicomachean Ethics,
bk. I, ch. 13). The lowest rung in the hierarchy is the vegetative soul, which is responsible for nutrition and growth, and which is also found in plants and other animals. At the next rung up, we find appetitive soul, which is responsible for perception, imagination, and movement, and so is present in other animals too, but not in plants. This sort of soul lacks reason but, unlike the vegetative, can be influenced by it. The third element in the human soul is reason. It is divided into the scientific element, which enables us to contemplate or engage in theoretical activity, and the calculative or deliberative element, which enables us to engage in practical and political activity (
Nicomachean Ethics
1097
b
33–1098
a
8, 1139
a
3–
b
5).

Because the human soul contains these different elements, the human good might be defined by properties exemplified by all three of them or by properties exemplified by only some of them. In the famous function argument
from the
Nicomachean Ethics,
bk. I, ch. 7, Aristotle argues for the latter alternative: The human good is happiness, which is “an active life of the element that has a rational principle” (1098
a
3–4). The problem is that the scientific and the deliberative element both fit this description. Human happiness might, therefore, consist in practical political activity, or in contemplative theorizing, or in a mixture of both. Even a brief glance at
Nicomachean Ethics,
bk. X, chs. 6–8 will reveal how hard it is to determine which of these Aristotle has in mind.

Aristotelian Sciences

The Aristotelian sciences provide us with knowledge of the world, how to live successfully in it, and how to produce what we need to do so. Hence they fall into three distinct types:

   I.    
Theoretical sciences:
theology, philosophy, mathematics, natural sciences.

  II.    
Practical sciences:
ethics, household management, statesmanship, which is divided into legislation and politics, with politics being further divided into deliberative science and judicial science (
Nicomachean Ethics
1141
b
29–32).

III.    
Productive sciences
(crafts, arts): medicine, building, etc.

Of these, the theoretical ones are the Aristotelian paradigm, since they provide us with knowledge of universal necessary truths. The extent to which ethics or statesmanship fit the paradigm, however, is less clear. One reason for this is that a huge part of these sciences has to do not with universal principles of the sort one finds in physics, but with particular cases, whose near infinite variety cannot easily be summed up in a formula (
Nicomachean Ethics
1109
b
21,
Rhetoric
1374
a
18–
b
23). The knowledge of what justice is may well be scientific knowledge, but to know what justice requires in a particular case one also needs equity, which is a combination of virtue and a trained eye (
Nicomachean Ethics,
bk. V, ch. 10). Perhaps, then, we should think of practical sciences as having something like a theoretically scientific core, but as not being reducible to it.

Theoretical Science

Each Aristotelian theoretical science deals with a genus—a natural class of beings that have forms or essences (
Posterior Analytics
87
a
38–39,
Metaphysics
1003
b
19–21). When appropriately regimented, it may be set out as a structure of demonstrations, the indemonstrable first principles of which are
definitions of those essences. More precisely, the first principles special to biology, or to some other science that applies to only a part of reality, are like this. Others that are common to all sciences—such as the principle of non-contradiction and other logical principles—have a somewhat different character. Since all these first principles are necessary truths, and demonstration is a type of deductive inference, scientific theorems are also necessary.

Though we cannot grasp a
first
principle by demonstrating it from yet more primitive principles, it must—if we are to have any unqualified scientific knowledge at all—be “better known” to us than any of the science’s theorems (
Nicomachean Ethics
1139
b
33–34). This better knowledge is provided by intuition (
nous
), and the process by which principles come within intuition’s ken is induction (1139
b
28–29, 1141
a
7–8).

Induction begins with perception of particulars, which gives rise to retention of perceptual contents, or memories (
Posterior Analytics
100
a
1–3). From a unified set of such memories experience arises (100
a
3–6), “when, from many notions gained by experience, one universal supposition about similar objects is produced” (
Metaphysics
981
a
1–7). Getting from particulars to universals, therefore, is a largely noninferential process. If we simply attend to particular cases—perhaps to all, perhaps to just one—and have some acumen, we will get there (
Prior Analytics
68
b
15–29,
Posterior Analytics
88
a
12–17, 89
b
10–13). When these universals are appropriately analyzed into their “elements (
stoicheia
) and first principles,” they become intrinsically clear and unqualifiedly known (
Physics
184
a
16–21).

A universal essence is something out there in the world. Its analogue in a scientific theory, however, is a definition similar in structure to it (
Metaphysics
1034
b
20–22). That is why the first principles of the sciences are not essences, but definitions of them.

The inductive path to first principles and scientific knowledge begins with perception of particulars and of perceptually accessible, unanalyzed universals, and leads eventually to analyzed universal essences (first principles) and definitions of them. At this point, induction gives way to deduction, as we descend from these essences to other principles. Perception alone cannot reach the end of this journey, but without perception it cannot so much as begin. Perception, elaborated in theory, is the soul’s window on the Aristotelian world (
Prior Analytics
46
a
17–18,
On the Soul
432
a
7–9).

Dialectic

The first principles proper to a science cannot be demonstrated within that science. If they could, they would not be genuine
first
principles. They can, however, be defended by dialectic. For, since it “examines,” and does so by appeal not to scientific principles but to common or generally accepted
opinions (
endoxa
), “dialectic is a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the [first] principles of all inquiries” (
Topics
101
a
36–
b
4).

Now opinions are endoxa when they are accepted without demurral “by every one or by the majority or by the wise, either by all of them, or by most or by the most notable and illustrious of them” (
Topics
100
b
21–23), so that the majority do not disagree with the wise about them, nor do either group disagree among themselves (104
a
8–11). Generally accepted opinions, therefore, are beliefs to which there is simply no worthwhile opposition. Apparent endoxa, by contrast, are beliefs that mistakenly appear to have this uncontested status (100
b
23–25, 104
a
15–33).

Defending first principles on the basis of endoxa is a matter of going through the difficulties (
aporiai
) “on both sides of a subject” until they are solved (
Topics
101
a
35). Suppose, then, that the topic to be dialectically investigated is this: Is being a single unchanging thing, or not? A competent dialectician will, first, follow out the consequences of each alternative to see what difficulties they face. Second, he will go through the difficulties he has uncovered to determine which can be solved and which cannot. As a result, he will be well placed to attack or defend either alternative in the strongest possible way.

Aporematic, which is the part of philosophy that deals with such difficulties, is like dialectic in its methods, but differs from it in important respects. In a dialectical argument, for example, the opponent may refuse to accept a proposition that a philosopher would accept: “The premises of the philosopher’s deductions or those of the one investigating by himself, though true and familiar, may be refused by … [an opponent] because they lie too near to the original proposition, and so he sees what will happen if he grants them. But the philosopher is unconcerned about this. Indeed, he will presumably be eager that his axioms should be as familiar and as near to the question at hand as possible, since it is from premises of this sort that scientific deductions proceed” (
Topics
155
b
10–16). Since the truth may well hinge on propositions whose status is just like these premises, there is no guarantee that what a dialectician considers most defensible will be true.

Drawing on this new class of endoxa, then, the philosopher examines both the claim that being is a single unchanging thing, and the claim that it is not, in just the way that the dialectician does. As a result, he determines, let us suppose, that the most defensible, or least problematic, conclusion is that in some senses of the terms, being is one and unchanging, in others, not. To reach this conclusion, however, he will have to disambiguate and reformulate endoxa on both sides, partly accepting and partly rejecting them. Others, he may well have to reject outright, so that beliefs that initially seemed to be endoxa—that seemed to be unproblematic—will have emerged as only apparently such (
Topics
100
b
23–25). These he will have to
explain away: “We should state not only the truth, but also the cause of error—for this contributes towards producing conviction, since when a reasonable explanation is given of why the false view appears true, this tends to produce belief in the true view” (
Nicomachean Ethics
1154
a
22–25). If, at the end of this process, the difficulties are solved and most of the most-authoritative endoxa are left, that, Aristotle claims, will be a sufficient proof of the philosopher’s conclusion (1145
b
6–7).

But in that claim lies a problem. For while dialectic treats things “only with an eye to general opinion,” philosophy must treat them “according to their truth” (
Topics
105
b
30–31). Endoxa, however, are just generally accepted and unobjectionable opinions. Since even such unopposed opinions may nevertheless be false, how can an argument that relies on them be guaranteed to reach the truth? The answer lies in aporematic philosophy’s dialectical capacity to criticize or examine (101
b
3).

BOOK: The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)
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