Lecture Notes: Aristotle

• Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great. Broadly speaking, his philosophy began as a reaction against that of Plato, particularly Plato’s tendency to minimize the reality and importance of the sensible world. But by the end of his career Aristotle reapproached Plato in some important ways, as we will see in connection with the Nicomachean Ethics.
  

1. Categories 1 - 5: Substance and Accident

• The Categories is one of Aristotle’s earliest works. Its title comes from the list in chapter 4 of ten things that can be signified by an individual term. These are the famous Aristotelian categories:
  

• In the Categories itself it is not entirely clear whether the items being categorized are entities, terms, or concepts (or some combination thereof). Elsewhere, however, Aristotle seems to assume that they are entities. It is also not entirely clear whether the categories are meant to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive (so that every item must belong to exactly one category) or the classification is merely a rough-and-ready tool that leaves room for gaps and overlapping.
  
• The most important of the ten categories is substance. The term “substance” (ousia) is an abstract noun formed from the participle “being” (ousa). It might literally be translated “beingness.” (Cf. Phaedo 65e, where Plato says that the Forms are the ousia of sensible objects.) The term is thus a traditional one, but Aristotle gives it new prominence. Looking at what he says about substance will reveal the main features of his “ontology”--i.e., his understanding of what exists and of the nature of being.
  
• Aristotle takes the hallmark of substance to be that, if it did not exist, nothing else would either (2b5-6; cf. Metaphysics VII.1 [not in BK]). Given this understanding of what substance is, some plausible candidates for substance might be the four elements (Empedocles), certain basic stuffs (Anaxagoras), atoms (Democritus), or the Forms (Plato). Instead Aristotle chooses common, everyday items like man and horse. Why?
  
• The answer is that such items are neither said of nor present in a subject. The best way to understand this claim is in terms of the examples Aristotle gives in chapter 2:
  

* Here Aristotle probably means an individual shade of white or type of knowledge-of-grammar, not an individual instance.
When something is present in a subject, it is not a part of the subject but is nonetheless “in” the subject and could not exist without being in some subject (1a22-23).
When something is said of a subject, both its name and its definition apply to that subject; for example, both the term “man” and the definition of man (“rational animal”) apply to an individual man (2a19-25). In terms Aristotle will use later, to be said ofessentially predicated of that subject, i.e., to tell what the subject is “essentially” or “by definition.”

• Aristotle claims that it is “clear from the examination of cases” that everything other than what he calls “primary substance” is either said of or present in some subject, and that the subject is a primary substance (2a35-36). Therefore, “if the primary substances did not exist it would be impossible for any of the other things to exist” (2b5-6). In other words, primary substances have a certain ontological independence and basic-ness not possessed by anything else; this is what makes them primary substance.
  
• Besides primary substance—the individual man, horse, etc.—there is also “secondary substance.” This is the species or genus containing the primary substance; e.g., in the case of an individual man, the corresponding secondary substances are the species “man,” the genus “animal,” and so on (2a16-18). The reason they are secondary is that they are said of a subject (namely, primary substance) and therefore do not exhibit full ontological independence. The species is “more a substance” than the genus, however, since it is closer to primary substance and serves as a subject for the genus (2b7-22).
  
• The other categories besides substance are various types of “accident” (sumbebekos, lit. “something that has happened”). Intuitively, the distinction is that categorizing an item according to its substance tells what the item is and must be if it is to remain the same item; identifying its accidents tells only the qualities it happens to have at the present time. In general, something can change any of its accidents while remaining the same substance.
  
• The second half of chapter 5 lists various features of primary substance. The most important are:
  
  • Every primary substance is “a certain ‘this’” (tode ti), i.e., something that is individual and numerically one (3b10-12). This is a rejection of the claim of the Timaeus that a sensible object is not a “this” but only a “such.”
    
  • Primary substance is the only thing that is able to receive opposite qualities by itself undergoing change, and not by being about something else that changes, as is a statement or belief (4a10-b18). Hence, as will become evident in the Physics, primary substance figures crucially in the analysis of change.
    

2. Physics I.7: Form and Matter

• The Physics is a wide-ranging discussion of topics that today would mostly be categorized as metaphysics, such as the nature of change, causation, space, time, and matter. It ends with a famous argument for the existence of an “unmoved mover,” a being which turns out (in the Metaphysics) to be Aristotle’s equivalent of God. The selections we will read are from Books I and II, dealing with change and causation.
  
• Chapter I.7 begins by identifying three ways of describing a change:
  
  1. The man becomes musical. (Note: here “musical” = musically educated.)
     
  2. What is not-musical becomes musical.
     
  3. The not-musical man becomes a musical man.
     
  Each of the three ways can be used to make a different point. Implicit in (1) is the point that there is something (namely, the man) that endures through the change. Implicit in (2) is the point that the change is one from the lack (privation) of some state to the presence or possession of that state. The third statement combines these points by indicating that the privation and the state are present in the same object—namely, that which endures through the change.
  
• Aristotle refers to the state that comes to be present as the “form.” The word translated “form” is generally either eidos (visual appearance) or morphe (shape). In simple examples, such as that of a hunk of bronze being made into a statue, the form actually is a visual appearance or shape. More often, however, it is some complex quality. An example Aristotle often uses is that of an ax. The form of the ax is not only its shape; it is also the power of the ax to cut wood. Of course, the ax only has this power in virtue of its shape, so the two are closely related. Aristotle regards them as a unity and calls them both together the “form.”
  
• Something similar is true in the example of a man becoming musical. Here the form is a certain state of knowledge. The knowledge is not just an awareness of certain facts, however, but a skill, a developed capacity or “causal power” to understand and produce music. This skill, in turn, resides in the soul in virtue of some physical change in the body. So in this example, as is often the case, the form is is both the physical shape, arrangement, or quality of some body and the corresponding causal power.
  
• Besides the form, the other factor that can be identified by analysis of (3) is the thing that persists through the change—in this case, the man. Aristotle refers to the thing that persists as the subject or “substratum” (hupokeimenon, lit. “that which underlies”) of the change.
  
• Now a question arises. Aren’t there some changes that have no substratum? For example:
  1. An acorn becomes an oak tree.
  This is a case in which what comes to be is a new substance (in Aristotle’s sense of that term). Aristotle calls it a case of “substantial change” or of “coming to be without qualification,” whereas the example described in (1)-(3) was a case of “accidental change” or of “coming to be so-and-so” (190a34). He argues that even in cases like (4) there actually is a substratum, the “seed.” (Think of this as protoplasm.) The alternative would be to say that the new substance comes to be out of nothing, which is impossible.
  
• The recognition of substantial change leads Aristotle to a new and broader understanding of the substratum. Whereas the substratum of accidental change is typically a substance, the substratum of substantial change is “matter.” It has to be understood by analogy: “as the bronze is to the statue, the wood to the bed, or the matter and the formless before receiving form to anything which has form, so is the underlying nature (hupokeimene phusis) to substance” (191a8-12).
  
• The distinction between form and matter is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Aristotle’s philosophy. It is sometimes called “hylomorphism” (from hule, matter + morphe, form). Its antecedents go far back. They include Anaximenes’ positing of air as an a constant “stuff” underlying change; the Pythagorean Table of Opposites; and the atomists’ attempt to explain change through the recombination of atoms. But none of these is really very close to Aristotle—e.g., they do not make the point that a form is both a physical constitution and a causal power.
  
• A nearer antecedent is the distinction between the Forms and the Receptacle of Becoming in the Timaeus. The Receptacle receives the Forms much as Aristotelian matter receives form. But Plato does not connect the Receptacle to the analysis of change, and he identifies the Receptacle with space rather than matter. Aristotle is the first philosopher to isolate matter as the complement of form. Hence scholars sometimes refer to Physics I.7 as “Aristotle’s discovery of matter.”
  

3. Metaphysics I.1-2: The Nature of Wisdom

• Aristotle did not compose the Metaphysics as a single unified work. It is a collection of writings, probably from different points in his career, on topics such as the law of noncontradiction, the nature of substance, the nature of numbers, and God. The editor who bound these works together gave them the title Metaphysics (meta, after + physica) because most of them presuppose the conclusions about change and causation of the Physics. In that sense they are “after the Physics.”
  
• The first chapter begins with the stirring declaration that “all men by nature desire to know.” Aristotle believes that what distinguishes man from other animals is the faculty of reason. Animals have sensation and memory and can therefore accumulate “experience” (empeiria); what they cannot do is generalize from experience to make universal judgements. This is the distinctive feature of human “art” (techne, lit. skill or craft) (981a5-6).
  
• Although experience is often an effective guide to action, art is superior because one who possesses art knows the causes of things that fall within that art. That is why we think that master-craftsmen are superior to manual workers--“not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and of knowing the causes” (981b4-6).
  
• An aside: who is “we”? All educated Athenians. Aristotle typically starts from beliefs and assumptions taken for granted in Athens at that time. He seeks to explicate the rational foundations of these beliefs. This process which may ultimately lead him to revise them considerably. Nonetheless, his starting point is usually what an Athenian would recognize as common sense.
  
• Given that the distinctively human type of knowledge is knowledge of the causes of things, what is wisdom (sophia)? It is the most universal type of such knowledge, namely, that of “the first causes and the principles (archai) of things” (981b28). Notice how different this is from the Sophists’ conception of sophia. The Sophists claimed to teach sophia in the sense of a universal practical mastery, i.e., that which makes a person successful. Aristotle is returning to the Pre-Socratics’ quest for a general understanding of the nature of reality.
  
• Chapter 2 argues that someone who possesses knowledge of this sort fits the popular conception of a wise man. The key point is that the first principles and causes of things are intrinsically more knowable than anything else, because “by reason of these, and from these, all other things are known” (982b2). This is true despite the fact that they may be very difficult to discover! An analogy is the way that the fundamental laws of physics (e.g., Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism) took centuries to discover, and are even today are difficult for a student to understand. Once the student reaches the appropriate point, however, he sees that these equations are simple and elegant and that from them follows all the rest of that branch of knowledge. Thus, in their own nature the laws of physics are highly knowable, despite the fact that they are initially difficult to understand.
  
• Since the first principles are intrinsically most knowable, to know them is also intrinsically most desirable. The reason is that “he who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose most readily that which is most truly knowledge” (982a34).
• Finally, Aristotle argues that wisdom, understood as the knowledge of first principles, is “divine” (theia). This is true in two senses. First, it is the sort of knowledge that “either God alone can have, or God above all others”; second, it is knowledge of God, since “God is thought to be among the causes of all things and to be a first principle” (983a9-10). Notice that Aristotle says this long before advancing his own theory about the nature of God. His point is that, whatever God is like, God surely must possess the highest sort of knowledge and be part of what such knowledge is about.
  

4. Physics II.3 and Metaphysics I.3-7: The Four Causes

• The remainder of Metaphysics I is a discussion of what previous thinkers (the Pre-Socratics and Plato) said about the “first principles and causes of things.” It argues that earlier thinkers anticipated Aristotle’s own theory of the four causes, and that Aristotle’s theory incorporates their legitimate insights while also answering some questions that they overlooked.
  
• Before reviewing that discussion, we should first get clear on what the four causes are. The simplest example is a statue. In the case of a statue, the four causes would be:
  

Although this is a handy example, it is not one that Aristotle uses. Here are his own examples and the way he defines each cause in Physics II.3.

• Clearly the material cause and formal cause are just matter and form. Note, however, that Aristotle now extends the concept of “matter” to include that of which anything is made, including the way a syllable is made of letters or a conclusion of its premises.
  
• Note also that he describes the form as “the definition of the essence.” The essence of something is what makes the thing be the very thing that it is. (In Greek “essence” is ti en einai, lit. “what it was to be.”) In describing the form as the definition (logos) of the essence, Aristotle does not mean that it is merely a verbal expression. Rather, the form is the essence considered as an abstract pattern—as, for example, 2:1 is the form (definition of the essence) of an octave.
  
• The efficient cause derives its name from Latin efficere, to bring about. It is “the cause whence the motion comes” (195a8). (Here “motion” simply means change.) Note that, in the case of the statue, Aristotle actually says that the efficient cause is the art residing in the sculptor (195a5). The reason is that the art is the effective component within the sculptor; it is that by virtue of which the sculptor is able to act as a sculptor. Thus, although it is not incorrect to say that the sculptor is the efficient cause, the “most precise” cause is the art within the sculptor (195b22-25).
  
• Finally, there is “the end (telos) or that for the sake of which.” This sort of cause is called the “final cause” (from finis, end or goal, the Latin translation of telos). Although Aristotle’s example of a final cause is the purpose (health) of an action (walking), we will see later that other things besides actions can have a final cause.
  
• Now we are ready to turn to Metaphysics I.3-7 to see how Aristotle views his predecessors as anticipating (but never quite reaching) the theory of four causes. This survey will serve two purposes. It is a handy review of pre-Aristotelian philosophy; more importantly, it will show us at least part of the actual process of thought by which Aristotle arrived at his theory.
  
• As Aristotle sees it, the first philosophers—the Milesians—identified only an underlying “stuff” for all things. In so doing they were seeking to identify what Aristotle calls the material cause. But they neglected to ask what makes the “stuff” take on various forms at various times; in Aristotle’s terms, they were neglecting “the beginning of movement” (984a27), i.e., the “efficient cause.”
  
• Some (Heraclitus?) did make fire an efficient cause; however, since fire is simply a material element it cannot explain the goodness, order, and beauty of the world. The great breakthrough in this direction was made by Anaxagoras. Aristotle’s praise of Anaxagoras is famous: “when one man said, then, that reason (nous) was present—as in animals, so throughout nature—as the cause of the world and of all its order, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors” (985b15-17). Empedocles also had something like an efficient cause in Love and Strife. Much like Socrates in the Phaedo, however, Aristotle complains that neither Anaxagoras nor Empedocles really took full advantage of his own theory (985a11-b2).
  
• Meanwhile the Pythagoreans developed a theory that “the elements of number”—namely even (the unlimited) and odd (the limited)—are “the elements of all things” (986a2). Plainly this is not a doctrine of a material cause or efficient cause. It is more like an attempt to identify the abstract structure of things, or (in Aristotelian terms) the formal cause.
  
• Socrates turned philosophy in a new direction by “seeking the universal” in ethical matters. He thus “fixed thought for the first time on definitions” (987b2). Plato accepted this Socratic challenge; he held, however, that the definitions being sought cannot be satisfied by any sensible object, but must be of the Ideas (987b8). Note: here “Idea” is simply a transliteration of one of Plato’s regular terms for Form, idea (visible character, from idein, to see). The use of this term does not imply that the Forms are thoughts in a mind.
  
• The second half of chapter I.6 describes what are known as Plato’s “unwritten doctrines.” Apparently Plato held that the Forms come about by participation of the dyad (great and small) in the One (988a10-14). As Aristotle points out, this brings Plato’s theory close to Pythagoreanism. Aristotle views Plato’s unwritten doctrines as another anticipation of his own position. The One is the essence of the Forms, and the Forms are the essence of sensible objects (988b4-5); they are thus what Aristotle would call a formal cause. The dyad, meanwhile, is the material cause of the Forms (988a13-14).
  
• Aristotle’s biggest complaint about his predecessors is that none of them gives sufficient attention to the final cause. Some do posit a principle that is intrinsically good and orders things—for example, Anaxagoras (Mind) and Empedocles (Love). But these philosophers “do not speak . . . as if anything existed or came into being for the sake of these” (988b9-10). Thus they fail to make “that for the sake of which” truly a cause. Plato comes closer by making the Good the cause of substance (i.e., the Forms). Even he, however, fails to say “that substance either is or comes to be for the sake of this” (988b12), so that the Good remains effectively just an efficient cause.
  
• We may therefore expect that the attempt to give due weight to “that for the sake of which” will be an important theme as Aristotle continues to flesh out his account of the “first causes and principles.”
  

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