Aristotle

 

Metaphysics

In his work called Metaphysics Aristotle develops what is called the science of first philosophy. Throughout his Metaphysics he is concerned with a type of knowledge that he thought could be most rightly called wisdom. This work begins with the statement that "All men by nature desire to know." This innate desire, says Aristotle, is not only a desire to know in order to do or make something. In addition to these pragmatic motives, there is in a person a desire to know certain kinds of things simply for the sake of knowing. An indication of this, says Aristotle, is "the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves" because as our seeing "makes us know and brings to light many differences between things."  

There are different levels of knowledge. Some people know only what they experience through their senses, as, for example, when they know that fire is hot. But, says Aristotle, we do not regard what we know through the senses as wisdom. To be sure, our most authoritative knowledge of particular things is acquired through our senses. Still, this kind of knowledge tells us only the "that" of anything and not the "why"; it tells us, for example, that fire is hot but not why. Similarly, in medicine, some men know only that medicine heals certain illnesses. This knowledge, based upon specific experiences, is, according to Aristotle, on a lower level than the knowledge of the medical scientist who knows not only "that" a medicine will heal but also know the reason "why." In the various crafts, the master craftsmen "know in a truer sense and are wiser than the manual workers, because they know the causes of the things that are done."  

Wisdom is, therefore, more than that kind of knowledge obtained from sensing objects and their qualities. It is even more than knowledge acquired from repeated experiences of the same kinds of things. Wisdom is similar to the knowledge possessed by the scientists who begin by looking at something, then repeat these sense experiences, and finally go beyond sense experience by thinking about the causes of the objects of their experiences. There are as many sciences as there are definable areas of investigation, and Aristotle deals with many of them including physics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. In each case, the respective science is concerned with discovering the causes or reasons or principles underlying the activity of its special subject matter; thus, for example, in physics one asks what causes material bodies to move, in ethics what causes the good life, in politics what causes the good state, and in aesthetics what causes a good poem. Sciences differ not only in their subject matter but also in their relation to each other. Some sciences depend upon others, as when the physicist must rely upon the science of mathematics. In the hierarchy of sciences, Aristotle says that "the science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary science." In addition to the specific sciences, then, there is another science, first philosophy, or what we now call metaphysics, which goes beyond the subject matter of the other sciences and is concerned with "first principles and causes." These "first principles and causes" are the true foundation of wisdom, for they give us knowledge not of any particular object or activity, but rather knowledge of true reality. 

Metaphysics deals with knowledge at the highest level of abstraction. This knowledge is abstract because it is about what is universal instead of what is particular. Every science has its own level of abstraction inasmuch as it deals with the first principles and causes of its subject matter, as when the physicist talks about the principles of motion in general as distinguished from describing the motion of this planet or that pendulum. Wisdom has to do, then, with the abstract levels of knowledge and not with the levels of visible things, for, as Aristotle says, "sense-perception" is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of "Wisdom." True wisdom, first philosophy, or metaphysics is the most abstract and also the most exact of all the sciences because it tries to discover the truly first principles from which even the first principles of the various sciences are derived. True knowledge is therefore found in what is most knowable, and, says Aristotle, "the first principles and the causes are most knowable … and from these, all other things come to be known …" We are lead, then, to consider more specifically the subject matter of metaphysics. 

The Problem of Metaphysics Defined

The various sciences seek to find the first principles and causes of specific kinds of things, such as material bodies, the human body, the state, a poem, and so on. Unlike these sciences, which ask "what is such and such a thing like and why?" metaphysics asks a far more general question, a question which each science must ultimately take into account, namely, "what does it mean to be anything whatsoever?" What, in short, does it mean to be? It was precisely this question that concerned Aristotle in his Metaphysics, making metaphysics for him "the science of any existent, as existent" (in other words, being as being). The problem of metaphysics as he saw it was therefore the study of Being and its "principles" and "causes."  

Aristotle’s metaphysics was to a considerable extent an outgrowth of his views on logic and his interest in biology. From the viewpoint of his logic, "to be" meant for him to be something that could be accurately defined and that could therefore become the subject of discourse. From the point of view of his interests in biology, he was disposed to think of "to be" as something implicated in a dynamic process. "To be," as Aristotle saw the matter, always meant to be something. Hence, all existence is individual and has a determinate nature. All the categories Aristotle dealt with in his logical works, categories (or predicates) such as quality, relation, posture, and place, and so on, presuppose some subject to which these predicates can apply. This subject to which all the categories apply Aristotle called substance (ousia). "To be," then, is to be a particular kind of substance. Also, "to be" means to be a substance as the product of a dynamic process. In this way, metaphysics is concerned with "Being" (that is, existing substances) and its "causes" (that is, the processes by which substances come into being.) 

 

Substance as the Primary Essence of Things

A major clue to what Aristotle means by substance is discovered, he thought, in the way we know a thing. Having in mind again the categories or predicates, Aristotle says that we know a thing better when we know what it is than when we know the color, size, or posture it has. The mind separates a thing from all its qualities and focuses upon what a thing really is, upon its "essential nature." We recognize that all humans are human in spite of their different sizes, colors, or ages. Something about each concretely different person makes him or her a person in spite of the unique characteristics that make him or her this particular person. At this point, Aristotle would readily agree that these special characteristics (categories, predicates) also exists, have some kind of being. But the being of these characteristics is not the central object of metaphysical inquiry (that is the subject of empirical science.) The central concern of metaphysics is the study of substance, the essential nature of a thing. In this view, substance means "that which is not asserted of a subject but of which everything else is asserted." Substance, that is, is what we know as basic about something, after which we can say other things about it. Whenever we define something, we get at its essence before we can say anything about it, as when we speak of a large table or a healthy person. Here table and person are understood in their "essence," in what makes them a table or a person, before they are understood as large or healthy. To be sure, we can know only specific and determinate things, actual individual persons or tables. At the same time, the essence, or substance of a table or a person has its existence peculiarly separate from its categories or its qualities. This does not mean that a substance is ever in fact found existing separately from its qualities. Still, if we can know the essence of a thing, "tableness" let us say, as "separable" from these particular qualities, round, small, and brown, there must be some universal essence that is found whenever one sees a table; and this essence or substance must be independent of its particular qualities inasmuch as the essence is the same even though in the case of each actual table the qualities are different. What Aristotle seems to be saying is that a thing is more than the sum of its particular qualities. There is something "beneath" (sub stance) all the qualities; thus, any specific thing is a combination of qualities, on the one hand, and a substratum to which the qualities apply on the other. With these distinctions in mind, Aristotle was lead, as was Plato before him, to consider just how this essence, or universal, was related to the particular thing. What, in short, makes a substance a substance; is it "matter" as a substratum or is it "form?"

 

Matter and Form

Although Aristotle distinguished between "matter" and "form," he nevertheless said that we never find matter without form or form without matter in nature. Everything that exists is some concrete individual thing, and every "thing" is a unity of matter and form. Substance, therefore, is a composite of form and matter. Plato, it will be recalled, argued that Ideas or Forms, such as Man or Table, had a separate existence. Similarly, he treated "space" as the material substratum, or the stuff out of which individual things were made. For Plato, then, this primary stuff of space was molded by the eternally existing forms into individual shapes. This was Plato’s way of explaining how there could be many individual things that all have one and the same, that is, universal, nature or essence while still being individual. This universal, Plato said, is the Form, which exists eternally and is separate from any particular thing and is found in each thing only because the thing (this table) participates in the Form (tableness, or Ideal Table.) Aristotle rejected Plato’s explanation of the universal Forms, rejecting specifically the notion that the Forms existed separately from individual things. Of course, Aristotle did agree that there are universals, that universals such as Man and Table are more than merely subjective notions. Indeed, Aristotle recognized that without the theory of universals, there could be no scientific knowledge, for then there would be no way of saying something about all members of a particular class. What makes scientific knowledge effective is that it discovers classes of objects (for example, a certain form of human disease), so that whenever an individual falls into this class, other facts can be assumed also to be relevant. These classes, then, are not merely mental fictions but do in fact have objective reality. But, said Aristotle, their reality is to be found not anywhere else than in the individual things themselves. What purpose, he asked, could be served by assuming that the universal Forms existed separately? If anything, this would complicate matters, inasmuch as everything, that is, not only individual things but also their relationships, would have to be reduplicated in the world of Forms. Moreover, Aristotle was not convinced that Plato’s theory of Forms could help us know things any better, saying that "they help in no wise towards the knowledge of other things …" Since presumably the Forms are motionless, Aristotle concluded that they could not help us understand things as we know them which are full of motion, nor could they, being immaterial, explain objects of which we have sense impressions. Again, how could the immaterial Forms be related to any particular thing? That things participate in the Forms was not a satisfactory explanation for Aristotle, leading him to conclude that "to say that they are patterns and that other things share in them, is to use empty words and poetical metaphors."  

When we use the words "matter" and "form" to describe any specific thing, we seem to have in mind the distinction between what something is made of and what it is made into. This, again, disposes our minds to assume that what things are made of, matter, exists in some primary and unformed state until it is made into a thing. But, again, that we shall not find anywhere such a thing as "primary matter," that is, matter without form. Consider the sculptor who is about to make a statue of Venus out of marble. He or she will never find marble without some form; it will always be this marble or that, a square piece or an irregular one, that he or she will always work with a piece in which form and matter are already combined. That the sculptor will give it a different form is another question. The question here is, how does one thing become another thing? What, in short, is the nature of "change?"

 

The Process of Change; The Four Causes

In the world around us we see things constantly changing. Change is one of the basic facts of our experience. For Aristotle, the word "change" means many things, including motion, growth, decay, generation, and corruption. Some of these changes are natural, whereas others are to be products of human art. Things are always taking on new forms; new life is born and statues are made. Because change always involves taking on new form, several questions can be asked concerning the process of change. Of anything, says Aristotle, we can ask four questions, namely (1) what is it? (2) what is it made of ? (3) by what is it made? (4) for what end is it made? The four responses to these questions represent Aristotle’s four "causes." Although the word cause refers in modern use primarily to an event prior to an effect for Aristotle it meant an explanation. His four causes represent therefore a broad pattern or framework for the total explanation of anything or everything. Taking an object of art, for example, the four causes might be (1) a statue (2) of marble (3) by a sculptor (4) for a decoration. Distinguished from objects produced by human art, there are those things which are produced "by nature." Although nature does not, according to Aristotle, have "purposes" in the sense of "the reason for," it does always and everywhere have "ends" in the sense of having built in ways of behaving. For this reason, seeds sprout and roots go down (not up) and plants grow and, in this process of change, move towards their "end," that is, their distinctive function or way of being. In nature, then, change will involve these same four elements. Aristotle’s four causes are therefore (1) the formal cause, which determines what a thing is, (2) the material cause, or that out of which it is made, (3) the efficient cause, by what a thing is made, and (4) the final cause, the "end" for which it was made.  

Aristotle looked at life through the eyes of a biologist. For him, nature is life. All things are in motion, in the process of becoming and dying away. The process of reproduction was for Aristotle a clear example of the power inherent in all living things to initiate change and to reproduce their kind. Summarizing his causes, Aristotle said that "all things that come to be come to be by some agency and from something, and come to be something." From this biological viewpoint, Aristotle was able to elaborate the notion that form and matter never exist separately. In nature, generation of new life involves, according to Aristotle, first of all an individual who already possesses the specific form which the offspring will have (the male parent); there must then be the matter capable of being the vehicle for this form (this matter being contributed by the female parent); from this comes a new individual with the same specific form. In this example, Aristotle indicates that change does not involve bringing together formless matter with matterless form. On the contrary, change occurs always in and to something that is already a combination of form and matter and that is on its way to becoming something new or different.  

Potentiality and Actuality

All things, said Aristotle, are involved in processes of change. Each thing possesses a power to become what its form has set as its end. There is in all things a dynamic power of striving toward their "end." Some of this striving is toward external objects as when a person builds a house. But there is also the striving to achieve ends that pertain to one’s internal nature, as when one fulfills one’s nature as a human being by the act of thinking. This self contained end of anything Aristotle called its entelechy. All things have their own entelechy. 

That things have ends lead Aristotle to consider the distinction between potentiality and actuality. This distinction is used by Aristotle to explain the processes of change and development. If the "end" of an acorn is to be a tree, in some way the acorn is only potentially a tree but not actually so at this time. A fundamental mode of change, then, is the change from potentiality to actuality. But the chief significance of this distinction is that Aristotle argues for the priority of actuality over potentiality. That is, although something actual emerges from the potential, there could be no movement from potential to actual if there were not first of all something actual. A child is potentially an adult, but before there could be a child with that potentiality there had to be an actual adult. All things in nature are similar to the relation of child to adult, or an acorn to a tree, Aristotle was lead to see in nature different levels of being. If everything were involved in change, in generation and corruption, everything would partake of potentiality. But, as we have seen, for there to be something potential, there must be already something actual. To explain the existence of the world of potential things, Aristotle thought it was necessary to presuppose the existence of some actuality at a level above potential or perishing things. This lead to the notion of a Being that is pure actuality without any potentiality, at the highest level of being. Since change is a kind of motion, Aristotle saw the visible world as one composed of things in motion. But motion, a mode of change, involves potentiality. Things are potentially in motion but must be moved by something that is actually in motion. Again, to explain motion ultimately led Aristotle to speak of the Unmoved Mover.  

Unmoved Mover

For Aristotle the Unmoved Mover does not mean the same thing as a first mover, as though motion could be traced back to a time when motion began. Nor was the Unmoved Mover considered by him a creator in the sense of later theology. From his previous distinction between potentiality and actuality, Aristotle concluded that the only way to explain how motion or change can occur is to assume that something actual is logically prior to whatever is potential. The fact of change must imply the existence of something actual, something purely actual without any mixture of potentiality. This "Mover" is not, according to Aristotle, an efficient cause in the sense of exerting a power of force, or as expressing will. Such acts would imply potentiality as when one says that God "willed" to create the world. This would mean that before God created the world, he was potentially capable or intended to create it.  

Aristotle did not think of the Unmoved Mover as a Being that thinks or prescribes purposes for the world. In a sense, the Unmoved Mover does not know anything precisely because it is not a kind of being as much as it is a way of explaining the fact of motion. All of nature is full of striving toward fulfilling all of its particular entelechies. Each thing is aiming at perfecting its possibilities and its end, that is, at becoming the perfect tree, the perfectly good person, and so on. The aggregate of all these strivings constitutes the large-scale processes of the world order so that it can be said that all of reality is in the process of change, moving from its potentialities and possibilities to the ultimate perfection of these potentialities. To explain this comprehensive or general motion, to make it intelligible, Aristotle referred to the Unmoved Mover as the "reason for" or the "principle of" motion. For this reason, the Unmoved Mover stood for the actual, and because there is here no potentiality, the eternal principle of motion. Since this explanation of motion implies an eternal activity, then, there was never a "time" when there was not a world of things in process. For this reason, too, Aristotle denied that there was a "creation" in time. Although there are passages in Aristotle that have a distinctly religious and theistic flavor, the dominant mood of his thought on this matter is less religious than it is scientific. Still, to speak of an Unmoved Mover involved Aristotle in certain metaphorical language. In explaining how an Unmoved Mover can "cause" motion, he compared it to a beloved who "moves" the lover just by being the object of love, by the power of attraction and not by force. In a more technical way, Aristotle considered the Unmoved Mover as the form and the world as the substance. From the point of view of his four causes, Aristotle considered the Mover as the final cause, in the way that the form of the adult is in the child, directing the motion of change toward a final, that is, fixed or appropriate, natural end. By being a final cause, the Unmoved Mover, thereby, in relation to the world becomes also an efficient cause, through the power of attraction, by being desired and loved, by inspiring the striving toward natural ends, a process that goes on eternally. Hence, Aristotle says that whatever is pure actuality contains no matter. Thus, anything situated somewhere in space is material, because it might be somewhere else and still remain itself; but there is nothing that God might be and is not, for the things which he is not, for example, a stone, are things which he could not be without ceasing to be God; and hence, God is pure actuality and contains no matter. What in Aristotle’s thought was the unconscious principle of motion and immanent form of the world, the Unmoved Mover, became, especially at the hands of Aquinas in the Thirteenth Century the philosophical description of the God of Christianity. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover could be said to be pure nous, and since it must think the best, it "thinks itself … and its thinking is a thinking of thinking … throughout all eternity." Such a "God" is not the religious God who becomes involved in the affairs of man. Aristotle’s "God" is immanent in the world, making the world an intelligible order.