Reading through Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book Z, one thing, at least, is clear -- that it is difficult indeed to comprehend this, or perhaps any of Aristotle's work, outside the context of his other works. While one of Aristotle's main philosophical motives was to understand nature, equally strong was his desire to understand man and his place in nature.[i] And nowhere is this integrative quality of Aristotle's work more important to remember than in reading his Metaphysics, where he seeks to distinguish that primary substance, which underlies and causes all else, from a wide variety of secondary substances, which are easily confused with primary -- as some Platonists had illustrated. It is easy to oversimplify what is at issue in the Metaphysics, and yet keeping an eye to Aristotle's political, ethical, and psychological purposes can allow us to consider his analysis in its fuller complexity, without losing sight of the overall ends which Aristotle, like Socrates and Plato, takes aim at in his work on whole. Indeed, Richard McKeon recommends Aristotle's works be read in reverse order of that in which they are traditionally arranged so to examine his conclusions and social analyses before inquiring into his principles.[ii]
I myself do not claim to be able to comprehend Aristotle's 'big picture' at the outset; rather, the purpose of this paper is to explore his various fine distinctions in terms of how they relate to some of Socrates' own, toward a more comprehensive picture. It seems a valuable exercise to weave together some of the themes which make the fabric of this, as all of Aristotle's work, so strong, and renders his voice critical to a deeper understanding of Socrates' own metaphysical views. While Aristotle is typically taken to oppose 'Platonic doctrine' on many levels, I hope to show, at length, that this is more apparently than actually the case. Rather, Aristotle's "affection for Plato takes second place only to his love of truth" -- "'both are dear to us'," Aristotle said, "'but truth must be preferred.'"[iii] In this, he begins in agreement with Socrates, who said, "You can't argue with the truth. Any fool can argue with Socrates".(Sym 201d)
While it is beyond the scope of this discussion to examine the relation between this ancient metaphysical conception and, say, fractal geometry, chaos theory, or any of many nonlinear systems approaches to the knowledge/substance relation, it's certainly worth mentioning that this is a metaphysical ground with much contemporary relevance.[iv]
For the sake of coming to understand this complex relationship of subject to predicate, I think Aristotle would have us put aside, for the time being (at least until the end of Book Z of the Metaphysics) the question of which way of speaking about any given object of knowledge is correct or proper (Meta 1030b3), in favor of taking full view of the various scales of perspective involved in our complex knowledge of being and use of language about it. By Aristotle's method, the question of which is the 'correct' way of using a given word is frequently set aside until all competing views are taken into account, which is to say, until the relationship between the various different senses we use is seen in its full complexity. As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, "it does not matter at all in which of the...ways one likes to describe the facts; this is evident, that [some terms]...in the primary and simple sense belong to substances. Still they belong to other things as well, only not in the primary sense."(Meta 1030b5-10) Hasty conclusion about what is primary substance --i.e. real -- can fail to shed sufficient light on the complex hierarchy of substance which organizes full being from all its multiplicity of perspectives. To read with a foregone conclusion, such as that either matter or form are primary substance (Meta Z3), is to tend to ignore what does not support that conclusion, and thus to oversimplify and even pervert the process of sorting different senses from one another. It is thus wise to refrain from taking a position on such questions as what is primary substance at least for as long as Aristotle himself does. For "it is no doubt important how we talk, but not more important than how facts actually stand.(Meta 1030a30).
I think we will see in the end that these are all important and necessary parts of how we talk about what is primarily real. And in the process of sorting them out, it might be possible to resolve at least one apparent inconsistency in Aristotle's Metaphysics -- the so-called 'terrible triad' -- which might leave a mind whirling if other of Aristotle's works are not taken into account.
This triad involves the apparent inconsistency between Aristotle's claims that:
Aristotle's main concern about the forms seems to be then that, as popularly interpreted, (then and now) they could not explain change.[ix] This concern shows the difference in his and Socrates' purposes -- Socrates having the purpose of affirming something lasting beneath change, and Aristotle affirming the importance of understanding change. While Socrates and Plato lament human ignorance of the forms (even as we pretend to 'know' so much about them) Aristotle in turn laments our chronic misunderstanding of the term, misunderstanding which comes in part from Socrates overemphasis on the forms as unchanging, separate and nameless. Unlike Socrates, whose intention it was to distinguish the stable truth from that which is too loosely called 'knowledge' in a world of so much apparent change, Aristotle's purpose in the Metaphysics was to explore more of the nature of full being. Aristotle's sensitivity to change, purpose, natural associations, proper function, and the importance of intelligent and deliberate navigation through wise choice of action is perhaps not as unlike Socrates own view as we commonly take it to be -- though it is unlike that view which is commonly attributed to Plato, that which seems to hold the forms to be something separate and 'apart from' the individuals which instantiate them. Apparently, Plato's forms had been articulated or interpreted in such a way as to be uninstructive toward understanding the interaction between that which lasts and that which changes, which is to say, the whole in its full complexity. But it seems clear that Socrates would be the first to agree with this loyalty to the whole of truth, and that he would encourage the examination of popular interpretations of his work toward a better, more complete understanding of the causes of change (a task many have taken Socrates to have either under-emphasized or ignored[x]), and this, toward a better understanding of what actually 'is', and where the 'forms', properly understood, fit into full being.
To 'know', Aristotle said, is to grasp primary cause of that which changes against a background of that which lasts (Phy, Book II 3 194b15; Meta Book I/Chap 1&2; Meta Book II/Chap 2; Meta Book VII/Chap 17). Toward this end, Aristotle feels it necessary to remind some of what they were neglecting in their understanding of Socrates' views. For instance, in his political philosophy, Aristotle takes a look at Plato's ideal state as it was understood by many in his time (if not Plato himself) and says, in effect, 'Look, that's a nice ideal, but you seem to be forgetting, or at any rate under-emphasizing, the importance of change. Everything living changes, whether by nature or by art,(Timaeus) and so everything is always either moving toward or moving away from its own best self.(Politics) Since we live in this world characterized by change, nothing, save perhaps the ideal of best self which guides every living thing toward its own good, stays the same. It stands to reason that all which is human-made can be human-changed -- unlike nature's actions, which humans must learn to live within. Therefore, all that is made by art of human action (as both individual character and collective institutions are) is subject to betterment by appeal to its ideal, i.e. by view to its highest potential. So to understand how to make character or politics more perfect, we must first have an understanding of how change effects our progress toward that ideal, by moral choice, sometimes moving us closer toward our ideal and proper function, and sometimes away, by a perversion of the process.(Nico Ethics) As we see in the Politics, where we are helped to distinguish between the proper and the perverted function of any state, no matter how many rule, and no matter how ideal the original conception looks, change necessitates intelligent navigation, and this is only accomplished by full deliberation of all relevant voices. Plato's guardian state, static as it seems to some, is vulnerable to Aristotle's worry that justice is a process, and failure to properly steer can change a just into an unjust and thus unhappy state by the effects of even a single unwise choice. So too with human character, we see in the Ethics, where the 'golden mean' is seen to be the way of wise choice toward the proper and virtuous function of human character toward happiness.(Nico Ethic, Book II) Aristotle, like Socrates, views the soul as a harmony of contraries, i.e. the patterned cause, potency, and motivating force behind the purposes of individuals, who are the actualization of what is only potential in matter.(Psy, Book IV) Individuals are the compound of form and matter, and it is largely by choice that their potentialities are actualized, and ideals are realized. This is the sense in which Aristotle is willing to allow that individuals have forms of their own, i.e. their own individual highest potentials. The idea of our potentials may be perfect, eternal and unchanging, but humans are not,(Parm 129b-c) and ours is to navigate toward the form of our own best self, our own mind causing our own future by our own wise choice. Aristotle's ethics then views change in the soul, like the state, as a matter of deliberate individual choice by which the potentialities of the individual are actualized.(Nico Ethics, Book II) Thus, Aristotle advocates a 'mixed constitution', which requires a more complex analysis of the metaphysical ground of reality.
Keeping in mind then Aristotle's ethical, psychological and political philosophy, it is easier to remember that his metaphysics needs to relate myriad different perspectives and voices to one another. No matter how perfectly formed an 'ideal' may look at the outset, to become fair in its proper function, it must respect and respond to every perspective and voice, most especially those who express where the shoe pinches worst. His politics of the mixed constitution must involve a unified plurality perspectives on being then for the sake of such ethically developing individuals who might be integrated in community by deliberative education (Pol, Book II Chapter 5).
Aristotle differs from Socrates in these claims in degree of explication, for the task he sets for himself presents him with considerable difficulty that Socrates, having different purposes, did not engage. Perhaps one key difference between these philosophers here is the disposition of their perceived audiences -- Socrates' having been treating the term 'knowledge' too broadly and weakly, while Aristotle's was treating it too narrowly. At any rate, in order for Aristotle's political philosophy of the mixed constitution to be metaphysically grounded, he has to accomplish the extremely formidable task of explicating diversity in unity, thereby providing a basis for respect and intelligent deliberation among the plethora of interdependent perspectives that interact organically in the natural associations of a healthy political community.
So for Aristotle's politics to work, his metaphysics has to take seriously and provide a basis of respect for many differing perspectives, and therefore different uses of language. Like Socrates, Aristotle is lovingly concerned with proper use of terms, and having Socrates' shoulders to stand on, and his strong (perhaps over) emphasis on the centrality of unchanging forms to the possibility of 'knowledge' to answer to, Aristotle has the challenge then to balance that emphasis. Aiming at a fuller analysis of reality, Aristotle's metaphysics requires an understanding of the interplay between 'substance' in all its various senses. For as long as we don't recognize the significance of the complementary and comprehensive relationships between the different senses in which we speak about the same and different objects with the same and different terms, Aristotle worries, we fail to notice and thus to fully understand the complex unity of relationships between the primary/objective world and that secondary reality which arises in language as we communicate about the primary. If Aristotle can help us to understand full and complex 'being' in such a way as to illuminate the complementary nature of different ways of talking about what 'is', then much of the conflict and misunderstanding which otherwise arises in our sloppy use of language -- and which is poisonous to healthy deliberation -- might be resolved.[xi]
This is a formidable task indeed. But to recognize, as Aristotle did, that "is belongs to all things" (Meta Z7.4 1030a20) is to be forced to consider the different senses in which we use related terms. In terms of the 'whole truth', which both Socrates and Aristotle took to be the ideal of understanding, everything has 'being', and thus, everything is said to be 'real' in some sense. Thus, Aristotle must proceed in his metaphysics more carefully than others, including Socrates, had, moving toward a more inclusive and more accurate account of such terms as 'being', 'substance', 'matter', 'form', 'essence', and 'universal', to name only a few of the terms that we sometimes unwittingly equivocate on. These are all important and necessary parts of how we talk about what is primarily real, and ultimately, nameless.
Aristotle took great pains to explore the diverse senses in which terms are used to show how these various substances are indeed 'real' in as much as they do exist, but they do so in different senses. In the Categories, Aristotle lays out the different relationships between substance and that which is "predicated of" and "present in" it, illuminating in the process the various degrees by which some terms participate in substance. Equivocation is involved when the same word has different definitions.(Cat 1a) Univocal terms, Aristotle says, that is, words which retain the same meaning each time they are used, are required by the syllogistic form in order to build arguments from combinations of terms.[xii] We thus see at the outset that his intention is to explore and thus teach (sometimes without argument) the complex relations that distinguish these concepts from one another, ultimately affirming forms in one sense, but disqualifying other senses, so to discourage confusion of language in the process. For, "in general, if we search for the elements of existing things without distinguishing the many senses in which things are said to exist, we cannot find them:"(Meta Book I/Chap 9)
"'What a thing is' in one sense, means substance and the 'this', in another one or other of the predicates, quantity, quality, and the like. For as 'is' belongs to all things, not however in the same sense, but to one sort of thing primarily and to others in a secondary way, so too 'what a thing is' belongs in the simple sense to substance, but in a limited sense to the other categories...For even of a quality we might ask, what it is, so that quality also is a 'what a thing is' -- not in the simple sense,[xiii] however, but just as, in the case of that which is not, some say, emphasizing the linguistic form, that which is not is -- not is simply, but is nonexistent; so too with quality"(Meta 1030a20-25).
In Book IV/Chap 2 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says, significantly, that:
"There are many senses in which a thing may be said to 'be', but all that 'is' is related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and is not said to 'be' by a mere ambiguity."[xiv]
It is "either an equivocation that we say these are, or by adding to and taking from the meaning of 'are' (in the way in which that which is not known may be said to be known) -- the truth being that we use the word neither ambiguously, nor in the same sense, but just as we apply the word 'medical' by virtue of reference to one and the same thing, not meaning one and the same thing, nor yet speaking ambiguously", but as different things are called medical by virtue of a common end (Meta 1030b).
Socrates himself shows he recognizes the importance of understanding this equivocation in his incessant questioning of ambiguous use of terms, distinguishing what we think we are saying from what our words actually mean, all things considered. This method of distinguishing equivocal senses of terms is a great help in figuring out how Socrates can make such apparently outrageous claims as that the forms are 'real' in a sense that matter is not, or that things might be called 'known' when they are really only 'believed'. Mere beliefs may be called 'knowledge', but if they are not 'tethered', they are not 'knowledge', except perhaps only in a very weak sense. If common usage is inaccurate enough to sometimes be wrong in definition or formulation, then it is not what knowledge is in the strongest sense.[xv] To 'know' something in a secondary sense does not entail that we 'know' it in the primary sense. Thus, it could be argued that properly weighing the different senses in which we use out terms in order to bring to light more of the whole truth of the issue is exactly what Socrates too was up to.[xvi] For words are, as Aristotle says, not invented, but common to all (Meta 1040a12), and so must not be constructed, but discovered and tethered to being, as two eyes add depth to what is seen with only one.
In considering these alternative senses we use to talk about being, Aristotle shows how easily we do wrong some of these terms by failing to distinguish them properly and so use them without sufficient reflection on the subtle equivocations involved.(Meta Z3 1028b33-36)[xvii] For instance, it is too easy to simply assume substance to be matter,(Z3 1029a10-26) reasoning that when the three dimensions are taken away, it seems like there is nothing left. "To those who consider the question thus, matter alone must seem to be substance,"(Meta 1029a18) for "evidently nothing but matter remains."(Meta Z31029a12) But this is impossible.(Meta Z3 1029a26):
"Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways....they posit the elements of bodies only, not of incorporeal things, though there are also incorporeal things. And...in giving a physical account of all things, they do away with the cause of movement. Further, they err in not positing the substance, i.e. the essence, as the cause of anything...."(Meta Book I/Chap 8)
But those who extend their vision to all things that exist, and of existing things suppose some to be perceptible and others not perceptible, evidently study both classes, which is all the more reason why one should devote some time to seeing what is good in their views and what bad from the standpoint of the inquiry we have now before us.(Meta Book I/Chap 8)
It's true that Socrates says in Phaedo, "there is nothing which to my mind is so evident as that beauty, goodness, and other [such] notions...have a most real and absolute existence; and I am satisfied with the proof." But Aristotle, perhaps rightly, adds that "these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses."(Meta I Book 2) In the Physics he says, "[T]o demonstrate the evident by means of the obscure is the mark of a man who cannot judge what is and what is not in itself knowable...The result of such a procedure is that one is talking about mere names, without there being any object for one's thought."(Phy, Book II). But perhaps "the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us," as he says. "For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all."(Meta Book II/Chapter I) First principles and causes are the most knowable of all.(Meta Book I/Chap 2)[xviii]
For Aristotle, to 'know' is to grasp primary cause of that which changes along with that which lasts (Phy Book II 3 194b15).[xix] "We do not know a truth without its cause;"(Meta Book II/Chap 1; Book VII/Chap 17)[xx] Forms are, according to Aristotle, improperly understood if seen as other than causes (Meta 8 1042a5) -- that is, if taken to be something separate and 'apart from' the individuals which instantiate them. Aristotle shows that the individual is prior to the universal,[xxi] and thus, he seems to affirm the common sense view, then and now, that objects are ontologically basic.[xxii] Substance, he says, "in the truest and primary and most definite sense of the word" is that which is neither predicate of or present in a subject, e.g. individual man or horse (Cat 5 2b14). They are "entities which underlie everything else."(Cat 5 2b15-17) After all, if there were no individual man to predicate about, there would be no 'species' man (Cat 5 2b5). However, "since substance is of two kinds, the concrete thing and the formula (I mean that one kind of substance is the formula taken with the matter, while another kind is the formula in its generality)."(Meta Book VII/Chap 15)[xxiii] Therefore, "'Socrates' or 'Coriscus', if even the soul of Socrates may be called Socrates, has two meanings (for some mean by such a term the soul, and others mean the concrete thing), but if 'Socrates' or 'Coriscus' means simply this particular soul and this particular body, the individual is analogous to the universal in its composition,"(Meta Book VII/Chap 11)[xxiv] such that, what we say of the individual holds true for species and genus.(Cat 5 3a5) Universal man is thus dependent upon there being an individual, e.g. Socrates, the body, and this it is a secondary substance to Socrates, the soul, which is primary.[xxv]
Forms, on the other hand, are primary substance, which is to say, causes, i.e. that about which all else is predicated (Meta Z7 3 1029a8) and is itself not predicated of anything else (Meta Z7 3 1029b8) -- as distinct from secondary substance, which is predicated of substance and is only real in this sense, that is, because it is "predicated of" or "present in" that which is primary. Primary substance is prior in time to secondary, does not reciprocate with it, but rather is causal of secondary, which is dependent upon primary for its existence.(Cat 5 2b39; 2b5)[xxvi] In this way then, Aristotle distinguishes the sense in which forms are most 'real' from other senses in which we use this term. In this sense, forms can do what Plato's universals don't seem to be able to, i.e. they can help us to understand and explain change. Primary substances exist objectively, and we give rise to secondary substances in the process of talking about primary.[xxvii] Such substances are of a secondary sort specifically because they follow, rather than cause primary substance. On the other hand, the fact that they are real at all, though only secondarily so, is also important to Aristotle because, as Socrates himself worried, how we talk about primarily reality, with all the various senses in which we talk about and thus break up 'the one', can be more or less accurate. Again, if we equivocate without realizing it, our understanding is vulnerable to confusion and mistakes and ultimately conflict over mere words. We might be caring more about how different uses of terms fit together to form the whole of truth about reality, in all its interacting causes.
Thus, Aristotle does not ultimately oppose the conclusion that both universals and forms are real in important senses -- though he does oppose those who interpret this conclusion in a certain limiting way -- as if either exists 'apart from" the mind which actualizes them. However, it is not here (or, to my knowledge, anywhere) argued by Aristotle that Socrates himself understood the forms in this way. Rather, Aristotle frequently seems to be speaking to "those who say" such and such (e.g. Meta 1029a18), leaving open the question of whether Socrates or Plato actually did. So for the purposes of this work I take Aristotle to be at issue with a subtle but destructive misinterpretation of the Platonic forms, rather than with Socrates' own, or even Plato's view.
Aristotle characterizes what he takes to be the Platonists' take in Z16 of the Metaphysics, seeing their sense of forms to be "the imperishable substances which exist apart from individual and sensible substances".(Meta 1040b34) Some say this because cannot declare what such substances are, he says, so say same as perishable things, because we know these, man or horse itself, adding 'itself', but even if don't know what nonsensible substances there are, still doubtless are some.(Meta 1041a4) This sense of forms as 'apart from' the mind is a conception Plato perhaps inadvertently encouraged by his Pythagorean emphasis on numbers, but one which Socrates was careful to warn against taking too far (Phaedo). There is much congruence between Aristotle and Socrates, but Plato (or at least some Platonists) seems to depart onto a path of reasoning which allows some to conclude that forms are something 'apart from' the mind of the individuals that, according to Aristotle, they cannot but be "present in".(Cat 2 1b9l; Meta Book VII/Chap 13)[xxviii] Seeing how many, already in his time, took the forms to be entities 'apart from' the mind, it falls to Aristotle to point out the danger of looking to entities extrinsic to the human mind for the perfect form of human being, which is to miss the point of Socrates central lesson -- as well as the last words of advice he left to his children -- "look to yourselves".(Phaedo)
Despite much evidence in the Socratic dialogues that Plato is taken too literally if the forms are understood as something static, separate and 'apart from' the human mind, this popular misinterpretation allowed many scholars of Plato's Socrates to misdirect their attention toward something outside of the human mind, outside of themselves, mistaking some kinds of universals (which are not causal) for forms (which are), missing a central point of Socrates' own teachings. It is because forms are, properly understood, causal, that Aristotle protests the conception of them as 'universal' or 'number', which are presumed to be static entities outside of human being that have no efficacy where change is concerned.(Meta Book I/Chap 9)
However, while Aristotle is clear that forms are not universals or numbers in the sense of being 'apart from' individuals[xxix], he is quite happy to allow forms as primary entities about which no words and no teaching is possible.(Meta 1041b5-10) In this, Aristotle seems to agree with Socrates, who says in the Republic that we can no more look directly at the good than we can look directly at the sun.(Rep VI 508)
No simple term alone involves an affirmation or assertion, Aristotle explains. Rather, positive and negative statements arise by combination of terms. Expressions which are not composite (example 'man', 'white', 'runs', 'wins') are neither true or false (Cat 2 a8), whereas every assertion is either true or false.(Cat 2 a9) Essence, which is one of the four fundamental causes,[xxx] is a formula or definition in which nothing, no term, is predicated of another, is thus simple, one, with nothing added and nothing left out.[xxxi] Thus, unless one term is predicated of another, object of inquiry is easily missed.(Meta 1041a32) "Evidently, then, in the case of simple terms no inquiry or teaching is possible; our attitude toward such things is other than that of inquiry" (Meta 1041b5-10).[xxxii] Which helps explain why:
"The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; for they do not suppose either that the Forms are the matter of sensible things, and the One the matter of the Forms, or that they are the source of movement (for they say these are causes rather of immobility and of being at rest), but they furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the essence of the Forms.(Meta Book I/Chap 6)
As Socrates said:
"How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No, they must be studied and investigated in themselves."(Theaetetus 439b)
"[R]ecourse must be had to another standard [an inner criterion] which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two are right, and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things...[for] things may be known without names."(Theaetetus 438de)
For "if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux...Whether there is this external nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heraclitus and his followers...say, is a question hard to determine, and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names...reflect well and...do not easily accept such a doctrine..."(Theaetetus: C440d)
Plato's claim in the Republic is that the forms are illuminated by the light of the good in that intelligible -- but invisible -- psychological realm which is analogous the realm of the physical. The forms of justice, courage, and beauty are absolute ideas, he says,(Rep 130b6) and they come to light in what he calls 'the mind's eye'.(Phaedo) They are ideals, targets, potentialities that only appear in answer to the question, 'What is the good?' This psychological realm is seldom understood to be 'real', Plato laments. Those who perceive of reality only in terms of the physical, in terms of changing matters only, will simply fail to recognize what is fully real in the realm of the mind, i.e. its ideas and ideals, which are even more real in as much as they are more lasting.
And if Socrates meant the forms to be anything other than causal in this realm, it seems doubtful he would have he emphasizes their nature as 'ideal patterns', that is, ends toward which human action might move. As he says:
"[P]erhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and, seeing it, to found one in himself."(Rep IX 591)
"[W]hen we set out to discover the essential nature of justice and injustice and what a perfectly just and perfectly unjust man would be like, supposing them to exist, our purpose was to use them as ideal patterns; we were to observe the degree of happiness or unhappiness that each exhibited, and to draw the necessary inferences that our own destiny would be like that of the one we most resembled. We did not set out to show that these ideals could exist in fact."(Rep V 472)
"[H]appiness can only come to a state when its lineaments are traced by an artist working after the divine pattern....He will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean... Next, he will sketch in the outline of the constitution. Then as the work goes on, he will frequently refer to his model, the ideals of justice, goodness, temperance, and the rest, and compare with them the copy of those qualities which he is trying to create in human society...he will reproduce the complexion of true humanity, guided by that divine pattern whose likeness Homer saw in the men he called godlike. He will rub out and paint in again this or that feature, until he has produced, so far as may be, a type of human character that heaven can approve."(Rep VI 500, emphasis added)
Given this metaphor of the human being as creator, it seems quite unlikely, despite popular interpretations in Aristotle's time (as today), that Socrates took the forms to be something 'apart from' and independent of the individuals they are the cause of -- except in as much as they exist as the "divine pattern" -- that is, the model by which the highest human purposes are realized in human action. Thus, Aristotle clarifies the subject by emphasizing Socrates' own point, that the forms, to exist at all, must exist 'in here' -- causal in as much as they are targets for human action and production. This is how the reality of change is reconciled with the reality of the lasting by Aristotle, as well as Socrates, i.e. by the recognition and analysis of forms in the only sense which Socrates himself could plausibly have meant them, i.e. as ends of human action. And it is necessary to understand this, Aristotle emphasizes in his ethics, because one cannot hit a target one does not aim at.(Nico Ethics, 1106b30)
Clearly, Socrates himself did not pretend that forms were not causal, nor that they were entities 'apart from' the substances they were present in. When asked directly by Parmenides whether he thinks ideas exist "apart from the likeness which we possess, and of the one and many"(Parm 129e), Socrates affirms only that there are such ideas, but not necessarily apart from the minds of individuals. "And would you make an idea of man apart from us and from all other human creatures, or of fire and water?" "I am often undecided, Parmenides," Socrates says, "as to whether I ought to include them or not."(Parm 130) "I have often been puzzled about those things, Parmenides, whether one should say that the same thing is true in the case of humans as in the case of...trivial objects", like hair and dirt, which are not puzzling as they do not have a form.(Parm 129d)[xxxiii] Ideas cannot exist merely 'apart from' the mind, as Parmenides says, for then they face problem of being separable from self, and thus confusing our conception of 'being', in the sense that it is one, unified, and whole. According to Aristotle, this is what had indeed occurred as a result of viewing the forms as if they are 'apart from' the minds which they are 'present in'.(see Cat 2 1b9) Yet even the young Socrates was able to answer to this apparent problem of the one being separatable from itself by showing how being might indeed be thought to be, in a sense, 'inside itself'.(Parm 145d) For "if all the parts are in the whole, and the one is all of them and the whole, and they are all contained by the whole, the one will be contained by the one; and thus the one will be in itself."[Parm 145d]
As Socrates said to Parmenides, "In my opinion, the ideas are, as it were, patterns fixed in nature, and other things are like them, and resemblances of them -- what is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas, is really assimilation to them."(Parm 132d) Humans are not merely 'like' nature, they are part of it -- though not 'part' in the sense we might typically use the term, as if separable from other parts (Parm 133). Rather, as Plato and Aristotle seemed to agree, humans 'participate' (in a sense that is not easy to settle on) in the patterns of nature by degrees -- and whether by 'participation', 'likeness', 'resemblance', or by 'assimilation' (Parm 132d) -- we can discover best by dialogue and deliberation.
However, forms are not 'mere patterns' as Aristotle seemed to think, as he says:
"...to say that they are patterns and the other things share in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors. For what is it that works?"(Meta Book I/Chap 9) "...one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things...they cause neither movement nor any change in them...they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being"; "...there will be several patterns of the same thing, and therefore several Forms; e.g. 'animal' and 'two-footed' and also 'man himself' will be Forms of man. Again, the Forms are patterns not only of sensible things, but of Forms themselves also; i.e. the genus, as genus of various species, will be so; therefore the same thing will be pattern and copy."(Meta Book I/Chap 9) "...the Forms are causes both of being and of becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in them do not come into being, unless there is something to originate movement..."(Meta Book 1/Chap 9)
What I hope to have shown here then is that Aristotle actually ends up making a case for the forms that he is typically taken to oppose, or at any rate, for 'forms' in the only way they can plausible exist, i.e. as potentials present within the minds of those individuals (those compounds of form in matter) who instantiate that form which is soul. This is distinct from the manner in which some Platonists interpret the 'forms', as if they are something separate and apart from the individuals who chose them as their ends, to be sure, but it is not necessarily distinct from Socrates and Plato's own view. Aristotle is thus happy to admit that forms exist, but they exist as causal entities on a continuum of substance which is not merely 'real' on one level only. By my lights, Aristotle comes close to reconciling Socratic and Platonic forms by reasserting their internal and causal nature in human character and human institutions, which Socrates assumes heartily, and which some Platonists, then and now, have forgotten.
Note that Aristotle distinguished between the realm of substance and the realm of knowledge, attributing both essential and accidental predication to knowledge, and neither to substance. Some things are 'said of' but not 'present in' substance, such as man, while other things are 'present in' but not 'said of' substance, such as white and grammatical knowledge (nonsubstance universals). However, other things are both 'said of' and 'present in', such as knowledge, and still others are neither, such as individuals. (Generally, that which is individual and has unity is never predicated of, but in some cases may be "present in" a subject, as grammatical knowledge is present in the mind.(Cat2 1b9)) As Aristotle says, "perhaps the universal, while it cannot be substance in the way in which the essence is so, can be present in this; e.g. 'animal' can be present in 'man' and 'horse'. Then clearly it is a formula of the essence. And it makes no difference even if it is not a formula of everything that is in the substance; for none the less the universal will be the substance of something, as 'man' is the substance of the individual man in whom it is present, so that the same result will follow once more; for the universal, e.g. 'animal', will be the substance of that in which it is present as something peculiar to it."(Z13 1038b20) And what must be clear in the end is that universals and genus exist in the realm of knowledge and ideas,(Meta 8 1042a16) which is to say, secondary substance (which is both 'present in' and 'said of' substance, not prior in time, does not reciprocate, and thus dependent on primary for its very existence) but they do not exist in the realm of primary substance (which is neither 'said of' or 'present in' anything else, is prior in time, and thus not dependent on secondary, as secondary is on it).(Meta Book VIII/Chap 1)
Thus, the so-called 'terrible triad' might be reconciled, for the inconsistency seems to be resolved with the recognition that universals in the 'apart from' sense (if such a thing exists) are not forms in the 'causal' sense -- and therefore universals, which are predicated of subjects, are only secondarily, not primarily, real.
Thus, the triad might read:
1. Forms are substance (in the primary sense, which is never predicated of anything else)
2. Universals are substance (only in a secondary sense, as universals are always predicated of some subject) (Meta 1038b15; Cat 14a7-10)
3. Therefore, if forms are universals (as some Platonists take them to be) they are so only in a secondary sense.
What's more:
4. Forms in the primary sense are causal, and prior to individuals (Meta 1029a5)
5. Universals which are taken to be 'apart from' individuals are not causal, but rather caused by and dependent upon the individuals which are prior to them (Cat 2b)
6. Universals which are taken to be 'apart from' individuals are not forms in the primary sense.
In the end, I think Socrates and Aristotle alike would have us remember that if we better understood the deep multiplicity of reality, then we might see the true importance of multiple perspectives on any given subject, and thus, of dialogue, deliberation, and tethering our knowledge. We are all looking at the same world, albeit from different perspectives, and the full reality of that world cannot be seen, let alone realized, without honest deliberate dialogue between the complimentary perspectives available on the whole of truth.
With all this in mind, Aristotle's claim about the process of learning seems less mysterious in its progression from inward-out, from subjective to objective, from particular to universal, than it might otherwise. This is learning, and through Socrates' and Plato's method of 'teaching' was different than Aristotle's in significant ways, their end was the same -- to inspire the will to see what is common to all and tethered from all points of view:
"Some of the sensible substances are generally admitted to be substances, so that we must look first among these. For it is an advantage to advance to that which is more knowable. For learning proceeds for all in this way -- through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know."(Meta Book VII/Chapter 3)
"Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it....[N]o one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed."(Meta Book II/Chapter I)
"It's just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought. It is true that if there had been no Timotheus we should have been without much of our lyric poetry; but if there had been no Phrynis there would have been no Timotheus. The same holds good of those who have expressed views about the truth; for from some thinkers we have inherited certain opinions, while the others have been responsible for the appearance of the former."(Meta Book II/Chapter I)
And so we would not have Aristotle without Plato, nor Plato without Socrates. To be consistent with their collective political vision, Aristotle's metaphysics must give each and all their say, the materialist and the idealist, the 'friend of individual forms' and the 'friend of universals', as well as all other contraries, toward what is 'real without qualification' by integration of all opposing points of view. And perhaps, given the implications of this method, forms are after all 'objective' -- at least in as much as they are 'knowable without qualification', yet not objective in the sense of being something outside of and 'apart from' the human mind.
And in the end, Aristotle can fairly claim that:
"[I]t is the business of one and the same science to know the form as well as the matter" -- "not ignoring matter, but not confining ourselves to it either"(Physics Book II 194a15):
"[S]ince there are many senses in which a thing is said to be one, these terms also will have many senses, but yet it belongs to one science to know them all; for a term belongs to different sciences not if it has different senses, but if it has not one meaning and its definitions cannot be referred to one central meaning. And since all things are referred to that which is primary, as for instance all things which are called one are referred to the primary one, we must say that this holds good also of the same and the other and of contraries in general."(Meta Book IV/Chapter 2)
In this, perhaps more than any other human being before or since, Aristotle actualizes the Socratic ideal of the true philosopher. For he (certainly more than we) recognizes, as Socrates says, that:
"No measure that falls in the least degree short of the whole truth can be quite fair in so important a matter...though people sometimes think enough has been done and there is no need to look further."(Rep VI 503) "Further...this whole course of study will, I believe, contribute to the end we desire and not be labour wasted, only if it is carried to the point at which reflection can take a comprehensive view of the mutual relations and affinities which bind all these sciences together.(Rep VII 532) The detached studies...will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connexions with one another and with reality....a natural gift for Dialectic...is the same thing as the ability to see the connections of things.(Rep VII 537) And "the genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth.(Rep VI 485)
BEGIN NOTES on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
[i]Renford Bambrough, The Philosophy of Aristotle (Mentor: New York, 1963) pp.13-14.]
[ii]Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (Random House: New York, 1941) pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
[iii]Bambrough, p.17.
[iv] See Juliana Hunt, Socratic Metaphysics (Penner, Spring 1994) for a fuller discussion of the relevance of this ancient metaphysics to the contemporary controversy between so-called objectivists and subjectivists.
[v] While this is the reference given in class, I admit to not being able to reconcile it with the text. It makes me wonder if the inconsistency arises from a misreading...?
[vi] David Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism: Vol. I & Vol. II (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1978) p. 83.
[vii] I thank Jim Jennings for helping me see how 'species' is a genuine plurality by virtue of the form which organizes the matter. The assertion that object precedes subject is ubiquitous in Aristotle, such that we can recognize occurrences of a form in matter, and it is this objective condition by which things possess the form. Which is to say, that which was potential is actually present. It is this form which unifies them into 'One'. That the species in inherent in particular individuals is clear, but why this is true of the species and not the genera is less so.
[viii] This does not seem substantially different in form from what Socrates would have us seek to know. Nor does it seem incongruent with Alan Sidelle's expressed view of composite forms, that some forms have matter in their formula (e.g. bronze sphere). Although it was stated that Aristotle never says this explicitly, I think he hints toward it in his talk of that 'something else' which exists in a compound: if something is compound, then same as syllable and flesh (1041b24), no longer exists if elements are separated, though elements still do; the syllable and flesh is "something else", besides elements, either an element itself, or composed of elements, i.e. compound; "there must be something besides the concrete thing, viz. the shape or form."[Book III/Chapter 4] If compound, whole is one (not like a heap, but like a syllable), which is not its elements [e.g. B and A], as flesh is not fire and earth (1041b15); if element itself ["that into which a thing is divided and which is present in it as matter", as a and b are the elements of the syllable" (1041b33)], then infinite regress (1041b22). But as he says in Meta Book II/Chap 2, those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it. This "something else" then is the cause which makes this flesh and that a syllable (1041b26); this is the substance then, the "primary cause of its being" (1041b27). Some things are not substances, but those that are are "formed in accordance with a nature of their own and by a process of nature" (1041b30) -- not an element, but a principle. "For perishing things are obscure to those who have the relevant knowledge, when they have passed from our perception; and though the formulae remain in the soul unchanged, there will no longer be either definition or demonstration. And so when one of the definition-mongers defines any individual, he must recognize that it is not possible to define such things. Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart; and the formula must consist of words; and he who defines must not invent a word (for it would be unknown), but the established words are common to all the members of a class; these then must apply to something besides the thing defined;"[Book VII/Chapter 15]
[ix] In Book 1/Chap 6-9 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives us a good idea of his worry about the forms: "Plato...in most respects followed [the Pythagoreans, who thought that infinity itself and unity itself were the substance of the things of which they are predicated. This is why number was the substance of all things]...but had peculiarities that distinguished his from the philosophy of the Italians. For, having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views he held even in later years. Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to sensible things but to entities of another kind-for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible thing, as they were always changing. Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were all named after these, and in virtue of a relation to these; for the many existed by participation in the Ideas that have the same name as they. Only the name 'participation' was new....But what the participation or the imitation of the Forms could be they left an open question. Further, besides sensible things and Forms he says there are the objects of mathematics, which occupy an intermediate position, differing from sensible things in being eternal and unchangeable, from Forms in that there are many alike, while the Form itself is in each case unique....Since the Forms were the causes of all other things, he thought their elements were the elements of all things. As matter, the great and the small were principles; as essential reality, the One; for from the great and the small, by participation in the One, come the Numbers....he agreed with the Pythagoreans in saying that the One is substance and not a predicate of something else; and in saying that the Numbers are the causes of the reality of other things he agreed with them; but positing a dyad and constructing the infinite out of great and small, instead of treating the infinite as one, is peculiar to him; and so is his view that the Numbers exist apart from sensible things....His divergence from the Pythagoreans in making the One and the Numbers separate from things, and his introduction of the Forms, were due to his inquiries in the region of definitions (for the earlier thinkers had no tincture of dialectic), and his making the other entity besides the One a dyad was due to the belief that the numbers, except those which were prime, could be neatly produced out of the dyad as out of some plastic material. Yet what happens is the contrary; the theory is not a reasonable one." "Plato, then...used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dyad, the great and the small." [Meta Book I/Chap 6] "...of those who speak about 'principle' and 'cause' no one has mentioned any principle except those which have been distinguished in our work on nature, but all evidently have some inkling of them, though only vaguely....have all had a notion of this kind of cause....certain others have mentioned the source of movement, e.g. those who make friendship and strife, or reason, or love, a principle.[Meta Book I/Chap 6]; "if the great and the small are to he movement, evidently the Forms will be moved; but if they are not to be movement, whence did movement come? The whole study of nature has been annihilated..."[Meta Book I/Chap 9];
The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; for they do not suppose either that the Forms are the matter of sensible things, and the One the matter of the Forms, or that they are the source of movement (for they say these are causes rather of immobility and of being at rest), but they furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the essence of the Forms.[Meta Book I/Chap 6]
That for whose sake actions and changes and movements take place, they assert to be a cause in a way, but not in this way, i.e. not in the way in which it is its nature to be a cause. For those who speak of reason or friendship class these causes as goods; they do not speak, however, as if anything that exists either existed or came into being for the sake of these, but as if movements started from these. In the same way those who say the One or the existent is the good, say that it is the cause of substance, but not that substance either is or comes to be for the sake of this. Therefore it turns out that in a sense they both say and do not say the good is a cause; for they do not call it a cause qua good but only incidentally.
All these thinkers then, as they cannot pitch on another cause, seem to testify that we have determined rightly both how many and of what sort the causes are. Besides this it is plain that when the causes are being looked for, either all four must be sought thus or they must be sought in one of these four ways."[Meta Book 1/Chap 7]
"Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways....they posit the elements of bodies only, not of incorporeal things, though there are also incorporeal things. And...in giving a physical account of all things, they do away with the cause of movement. Further, they err in not positing the substance, i.e. the essence, as the cause of anything...."[Meta Book 1/Chap 8]
"But those who extend their vision to all things that exist, and of existing things suppose some to be perceptible and others not perceptible, evidently study both classes, which is all the more reason why one should devote some time to seeing what is good in their views and what bad from the standpoint of the inquiry we have now before us.
"The 'Pythagoreans' treat of principles and elements stranger than those of the physical philosophers (the reason is that they got the principles from non-sensible things, for the objects of mathematics, except those of astronomy, are of the class of things without movement); yet their discussions and investigations are all about nature; for they generate the heavens, and with regard to their parts and attributes and functions they observe the phenomena, and use up the principles and the causes in explaining these, which implies that they agree with the others, the physical philosophers, that the real is just all that which is perceptible and contained by the so-called 'heavens'. But the causes and the principles which they mention are, as we said, sufficient to act as steps even up to the higher realms of reality, and are more suited to these than to theories about nature. They do not tell us at all, however, how there can be movement if limit and unlimited and odd and even are the only things assumed, or how without movement and change there can be generation and destruction, or the bodies that move through the heavens can do what they do."[Meta Book 1/Chap 8]
"And in general the arguments for the Forms destroy the things for whose existence we are more zealous than for the existence of the Ideas; for it follows that not the dyad but number is first, i.e. that the relative is prior to the absolute,-besides all the other points on which certain people by following out the opinions held about the Ideas have come into conflict with the principles of the theory."[Meta Book 1/Chap 9]
"Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them; though if they were, they might be thought to be causes..."[Meta Book 1/Chapter 9]
[x] As Aristotle pointed out, sometimes we ignore such questions too long, and sometimes we simply jump to conclusions too quickly, deciding which way is correct without thinking through the issue in sufficient complexity. In the end I will hope to have shown that properly weighing the different senses in which we use our words is, one might argue, exactly what Socrates was up to, albeit less directly than Aristotle. This was necessary, they both said, in order to bring to light more of the whole truth of the issue before one judges the rightness or wrongness of a given use of language for a given object. Socrates would also have to agree with Aristotle that knowing the difference between that reality which is primary substance and those secondary substances which are involved in the Categories (1029a24) can help sort out many conflicts (even as it seems to give rise to new ones), including that over whether we can 'know' something in a weak sense, and yet not 'know' it in another, stronger, sense. As Socrates made clear, such equivocations can cause us endless confusion, for we may believe we have or are moving toward 'power', or 'happiness', or 'health' or 'wealth' in a given sense, even as we fail to actually possess or progress toward these in another more fundamental sense. Since we fail to hit any target we don't aim at (Nico Ethics, 1106b30), we fail to achieve our own good, our own best potential, our own ideal state, if we fail to distinguish between these ideals in their different senses. Many 'beliefs' may be called 'knowledge', but if they are so it is only in a very weak sense, for if they are inaccurate enough to sometimes be wrong in definition or formulation, then they are not what knowledge is in the strongest sense of understanding that which lasts, only opinion of that which changes (though we apparently may have knowledge of the forms of change, which do not themselves change). This is why Socrates brought our sloppy understanding of the words we use to our attention (indeed perhaps to Aristotle's own) so that we do not continue to pretend to 'know' that which cannot be known, or to have 'power' which cannot be had, or to 'teach' what cannot be taught. Arguably then, Aristotle was simply taking Socrates' advice in examining fully the complex use of language which both reveals and obscures, by subtle equivocation of sense, the deep and primary reality about which all else is predicated secondarily.
[xi] This analysis seems to provide a critical insight which today's academic climate might benefit from, as 'objectivists' have polarized with 'subjectivists' or 'relativists' or 'postmoderns' or 'multiculturalists' -- to the point of mis- if not complete non-communication. And where this conflict is manifest throughout social policy making, deliberation is hopelessly thwarted by what Aristotle would show to be the unjustified assumption that recognizing the relativity of subjective perspectives somehow obliterates the objective truth of the matter, rather than to define and deepen it, and as two eyes add depth to what is seen with only one.
[xii] McKeon, p. xvi; Note that Aristotle was not the first to use this form (though he is widely credited for making it an explicit tool of formal logic). Passages such as the following, from Symposium, suggest that it was Socrates' idea (or perhaps Diotima's idea) which Aristotle explicated. Diotima of Mantineia, the woman Socrates credits for having taught him about love, answers his question, who are the lovers of wisdom: "We would classify wisdom as very beautiful, and Eros is love of what is beautiful, and so it necessarily follows that Eros is a lover of wisdom."(204b)
[xiii] In the Categories, (Cat2 1a18) forms of speech are shown to be both simple and composite; (Cat4 1b25) simple expressions (in no way composite) signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection; examples of substance are man or the horse; quantity, length; quality, white or grammatical; relation, double or half; place, 'in the' or 'under the'; time, yesterday; position, running, sitting; state, aimed; action, "to aim", "to win"; affection, "to be lanced", "to be defeated" (Cat4 2a). No one of these terms alone involves an affirmation or assertion, Aristotle explains; positive and negative statements arise by combination of terms; expressions which are not composite (example 'man', 'white', 'runs', 'wins') are neither true or false (Cat2a8), whereas every assertion is either true or false (Cat2a9). As he says in the Metaphysics, "Evidently, then, in the case of simple terms no inquiry or teaching is possible; our attitude toward such things is other than that of inquiry" (1041b5-10); He explains in Z17, to ask "why a thing is itself" is a meaningless inquiry (1041a15), because the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident (1041a17), given (1041a18-19) in all such questions, why the man is man or musician musical (1041a18) "'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just means this'" (1041a19), "this...common to all things" is a short and easy way with the answer (1041a19-20) [connect 1030a20, "being is common to all things" (1041a20)]; but can ask "why man is an animal of such and such a nature" (1041a20), not asking why a man is a man, asking "why something is predicable of something", or else an inquiry into nothing (1041a23), [same as, why does it thunder? why is sound produced in the clouds? (1041a24) why are these bricks and stones a house?
[xiv] Just as "Everything which is healthy is related to health, one thing in the sense that it preserves health, another in the sense that it produces it, another in the sense that it is a symptom of health, another because it is capable of it. And that which is medical is relative to the medical art, one thing being called medical because it possesses it, another because it is naturally adapted to it, another because it is a function of the medical art. And we shall find other words used similarly to these. So, too, there are many senses in which a thing is said to be, but all refer to one starting-point; some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substance, others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance, or productive or generative of substance, or of things which are relative to substance, or negations of one of these thing of substance itself. It is for this reason that we say even of non-being that it is nonbeing. As, then, there is one science which deals with all healthy things, the same applies in the other cases also. For not only in the case of things which have one common notion does the investigation belong to one science, but also in the case of things which are related to one common nature; for even these in a sense have one common notion. It is clear then that it is the work of one science also to study the things that are, qua being.-But everywhere science deals chiefly with that which is primary, and on which the other things depend, and in virtue of which they get their names. If, then, this is substance, it will be of substances that the philosopher must grasp the principles and the causes."[Meta Book IV Chapter 2]
[xv] See 'Socratic Metaphysics' (Juliana Hunt for Terry Penner, Spring 1994) for a broader discussion of this point.
[xvi] He shows this in Symposium, for instance, where Diotima asks Socrates, "Is the wish and the desire [for happiness] common to all? and do all men always desire their own good, or only some men?-what say you?" "All men," Socrates replied; "the desire is common to all." "Why, then," she rejoined, "are not all men, Socrates, said to love, but only some them? whereas you say that all men are always loving the same things." "I myself wonder," he said,-why this is." "There is nothing to wonder at," she replied; "the reason is that one part of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have other names." "Give an illustration," I said. She answered me as follows: "There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex; and manifold. All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers." "Very true." "Still," she said, "you know that they are not called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are called poets." "Very true," I said. "And the same holds of love. For you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by any other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not called lovers -the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose affection takes one form only-they alone are said to love, or to be lovers." In the translation by Tom Griffith it is more clearly said: "We abstract a part of love, and call it by the name of the whole--love--and then for the other parts we use different names."[205b3]
[xvii] Considering several senses of substance in Z3, Aristotle distinguishes matter and form from essence, universal, genus, and substratum (1028b33-36); by substratum we mean "that of which everything else is predicated while it is itself not predicated of anything else" (1028b38); "in one sense" this involves matter(bronze)/shape(pattern of its form)/compound("the statue, the concrete whole"(1029a51)); if form is prior to matter, and therefore more real, then it will be prior to the compound of both for the same reason (1029a5); the "nature of substance" outlined, that about which all else is predicated (1029a8), but "not enough" to say this, for it is obscure and because "matter becomes substance" on this view (1029a10), when three dimensions taken away, it seems like there is nothing left, "evidently nothing but matter remains" (1029a12), "to those who consider the question thus, matter alone must seem to be substance" (1029a18), meaning 'matter' in the sense of neither a particular thing nor a certain quantity nor any other category (1029a22), for these are predicated of substance, and substance is predicated of matter (1029a24), from this view, particular things or particular quantities will not be considered "the ultimate substratum" (1029a24-25), if we take this point of view, matter will seem to be substance, but this is impossible (1029a26), for substance has 'thisness' and seperability (Z3.1029a28); so form and compound of form and matter would seem a better candidate than matter for substance (Z3.1029a30); [but earlier stated that, if form is prior to matter, and therefore more real, it will be prior to the compound of both for the same reason (Z3.1029a5)]; the compound is posterior and its "nature is obvious", and therefore can be dismissed (1029a31); but form is perplexing.(Z3.1029a35)
[xviii] "Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change)."[Book I/Chapter 3] "...the final cause is an end, and that sort of end which is not for the sake of something else, but for whose sake everything else is; so that if there is to be a last term of this sort, the process will not be infinite; but if there is no such term, there will be no final cause, but those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it (yet no one would try to do anything if he were not going to come to a limit); nor would there be reason in the world; the reasonable man, at least, always acts for a purpose, and this is a limit; for the end is a limit."[Meta Book II/Chap 2]
[xix]We are seeking the cause (1041a26-28), the essence, in some cases, the end (1041a29), in other cases, the first mover (1041a30), "for this is also a cause", in case of generation and distinction, we seek the efficient cause, and in case of being, the final cause (1041a32)]; Unless one term is predicated of another, object of inquiry is easily missed (1041a32), e.g. what man is, "because we do not distinguish and do not say definitely that certain elements make up a certain whole" (1041b); we must articulate then our meaning before inquiry (or else on broader line between search for something and for nothing (1041b5), "we must have the existence of the thing as something given", then the question is, "why the matter is some definite thing" (1041b4), "Because that which was the essence of a house is present" (1041b5); "Therefore, what we seek is the cause, i.e. the form, by reason of which the matter is some definite thing; and this is the substance of the thing."(1041b8-9)
[xx] Though as Socrates said in Timaeus, "The lover of intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes of intelligent nature first of all, and secondly, of those things which, being moved by others, are compelled to move others."[Timaeus]
[xxi] In Z16, Aristotle says some substances exist only as potencies, parts of animals, earth, fire, air, none exist separately, when are separate, lose unity, only matter (1040b10), so exists only potentially (1040b15); unity/being used alike, no universal exists apart from individuals (1040b27); universal exists only when instantiated [Cat 14a7-10]; Forms can have separate existence, if substance (1040b30), but not right to say "one over many is a form" (1040b31), some say this because cannot declare what such substances are, "the imperishable substances which exist apart from individual and sensible substances" (1040b34), so say same as perishable things, because we know these, man or horse itself, adding 'itself', but even if don't know what nonsensible substances there are, still doubtless are some (1041a4); therefore, no universal term is a name of a substance, no substance is composed of substances (1041a5); Int.7 17a38-b1 by universal I mean what is naturally predicated of more than one thing; Meta 1040b25-6 universal can be in more than one place at one time.
[xxii] Alan Sidelle, Seminar on Aristotle's Metaphysics VII, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Spring 1994.
[xxiii] Z15 two senses of substance (1029b20), 1. formula w/matter (Ross "concrete"/ Furth "composite"), 2. formula generally; formula w/matter capable of destruction and generation, but the general formula cannot be destroyed or come to be, for only 'this' house comes to be and is destroyed, not 'being house' (1039b25), therefore formulae in this latter sense both are and are not (1039b26), as at Z8, only matter and form together make a 'this', and are thus generated and destroyed; For the same reason, particular perceptibles cannot be defined or proved (1039b27), i.e. because they have matter, which comes and goes, and therefore might either be or not be (1039b30); we can only have opinion of particular perceptibles then, not knowledge (1039b34), and therefore there will be neither definition or demonstration (1040a, 1040a5); [as he says in the Physics, "It would be absurd to try to show that nature exists...to demonstrate the evident by means of the obscure is the mark of a man who cannot judge what is and what is not in itself knowable...The result of such a procedure is that one is talking about mere names, without there being any object for one's thought"(Physics, Book II);] "formulae remain in the soul unchanged", but parishing things are obscure when they pass from perception (1040a3); it is not possible to define such things (1040a7); Nor is it possible to define an Idea (1040a8); Ideas, as some conceive of them, are particular and separate [Furth], "individual and can exist apart" [Ross](1040a9); Formula must necessarily be composed of words (1040a10), which are not invented, but common to all (1040a12), so they must apply to other things too (as in defining 'you' one might use 'animal', 'lean', 'pale', and other terms with apply to more than you (1040a13), if someone objects that together the attributes/elements apply to only one, we'd reply that they belong to both elements first, which are prior in being and not destroyed when the compound is (1040a23) ['two-footed animal' belongs to two-footed and animal, which still exist with or without the compound (1040a16)]; This is also true with eternal entities, "even necessarily" (1040a19), since elements are prior to and parts of a compound, "nay more, they can exist apart, if 'man' can exist apart" (1040a19), either neither or both can, if neither element or compound can exist apart, then the genus (animal) will not exist apart from the species (man), but if it does, the differentiae (two-footedness) will also; Again (at 1040a23-24) if ideas consist of ideas, (and they must, since elements are simpler than compounds) then necessarily elements of ideas should be predicated of many subjects (1040a25), or else how would they be known? every idea can be shared (1040a27); as said earlier, it escapes notice that definition of eternal things is impossible (at least if they are particulars, individuals, especially if unique, like the sun or moon), again error by defining by addition of attributes not necessary to sun [which is to say, that the sun would survive without, e.g. going around the earth], and by mentioning attributes that belong to other things, the formula therefore is general, Socrates and the sun are "supposed to be" individuals (1040b).
[xxiv] "For this reason, also, there is neither definition of nor demonstration about sensible individual substances, because they have matter whose nature is such that they are capable both of being and of not being; for which reason all the individual instances of them are destructible. If then demonstration is of necessary truths and definition is a scientific process, and if, just as knowledge cannot be sometimes knowledge and sometimes ignorance, but the state which varies thus is opinion, so too demonstration and definition cannot vary thus, but it is opinion that deals with that which can be otherwise than as it is, clearly there can neither be definition of nor demonstration about sensible individuals."[Book VII/Chap 15] "Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart; and the formula must consist of words; and he who defines must not invent a word (for it would be unknown), but the established words are common to all the members of a class; these then must apply to something besides the thing defined."[Book VII/Chap 15] "If, on the one hand, there is nothing apart from individual things, and the individuals are infinite in number, how then is it possible to get knowledge of the infinite individuals? For all things that we come to know, we come to know in so far as they have some unity and identity, and in so far as some attribute belongs to them universally."[Metaphysics: Book IIV/Chapter 4] "[H]ow will knowing exist, if there is not to be something common to a whole set of individuals?"[Metaphysics: Book /Chapter 4] "If there is nothing apart from individuals, there will be no object of thought, but all things will be objects of sense, and there will not be knowledge of anything, unless we say that sensation is knowledge. Further, nothing will be eternal or unmovable; for all perceptible things perish and are in movement. But if there is nothing eternal, neither can there be a process of coming to be; for there must be something that comes to be, i.e. from which something comes to be, and the ultimate term in this series cannot have come to be, since the series has a limit and since nothing can come to be out of that which is not...there must be something besides the concrete thing, viz. the shape or form."[Book III/Chapter 4]
[xxv] However, such an individual being compound of 'matter' and 'form' complicates the question further. The whole of a compound is one (not like a heap, but like a syllable, which is not its elements [e.g. B and A], as flesh is not fire and earth (1041b15), when separated the whole no longer exists, but elements still do; the syllable and flesh is something else, besides elements, either an element itself, or composed of elements, compound; if element itself ["that into which a thing is divided and which is present in it as matter", as a and b are the elements of the syllable" (1041b33)], then infinite regress (1041b22), if compound, then same as syllable and flesh (1041b24), no longer exists if elements are separated, though elements still do; this "something else" then is the cause which makes this flesh and that a syllable (1041b26); this is the substance then, the "primary cause of its being" (1041b27); not an element, but a principle.[End Z17]
[xxvi] Three conditions for being 'present in' (Cat chap 12) prior in time, does not reciprocate, secondary depends on primary, which is thus causal. Thus (the argument goes) universal man, a secondary substance, is dependent on particulars like Socrates, which is primary (Cat 2b); if no particulars, then no universals (Cat). Substance, "in the truest and primary and most definite sense of the word" is that which is neither predicate of or present in a subject, e.g. individual man or horse (Cat5 2b14); "entities which underlie everything else" (Cat5 2b15-17); "and are the subject of".(Cat5 2b39) However, in a secondary sense, we also call things 'substance' within which the primary substances are included, that is, nested, e.g. species (man), genera (animal)(Cat5 2a16); As noted earlier, everything except primary substance is either "predicated of" or "present in" a primary substance (Cat5 2a34); of "things themselves", some are "predicated of" a subject, but never "present in" a subject [not "present in" as parts to whole but incapable of existence apart (Cat2 1a18-22)] as 'man' is predicated of individual man, but never present in; then again some things are "present in" a subject, but never "predicated of" a subject, such as grammatical knowledge or whiteness, for "color requires a material basis" (Cat2 1a27); others are both "predicated of" and "present in" a subject, as knowledge is present in a mind and predicated of grammar (1b); and lastly, some things are neither "present in" or "predicated of" of a subject, such as an individual man or horse (1b5) But in a secondary sense, we also call things 'substance' within which the primary substances are included, e.g. species (man), genera (animal)(Cat5 2a16); the individual is included in species 'man' and genus 'animal'(2a20), therefore both the name and the definition of species 'man' are "predicated of" the individual (Cat5 2a25), but neither name or definition is predicated of "that in which they are present" (e.g. white is not predicated of a body in definition, though it may be called that by name)(Cat5 2a30-33); of secondary substances, for reasons shown at Cat3 1b22, "species are more truly substances than genus" (Cat5 2b7-10), again, species may be more truly substance than genus (Cat5 2b22); but no species is more truly substance than another (Cat5 2b22); no primary substance is more truly substance than another (Cat5 2b27); species and genera alone secondary substances (Cat5 2b30); convey knowledge of primary substances (Cat5 2b31); we define individuals by stating species or genus (Cat5 2b32), more exact with species than genus (Cat5 2b34), all other things irrelevant to definition (e.g. white, runs, etc.) so these alone (with primary substance) should be called substance (Cat5 2b37); primary substance underlie and are the subject of everything else (Cat5 2b39); what we say of the individual holds true for species and genus (Cat5 3a5); About nestedness--"all which is predicable of a predicate is also predicable of the subject, e.g. 'man' is predicable of individual man, but animal is predicable of 'man', therefore of individual, who is both 'man' and 'animal' (Cat3 1b15); with different genus, the differentiae which distinguish species are different in kind, as with 'animal' and 'knowledge', different species of knowledge are not distinguished by being two-footed, winged, aquatic, etc. (Cat3 1b19); but when one genus is subordinate to (nested within) another, they may have the same differentiae (Cat3 1b20); "the greater class is predicated of the lessor" (Cat3 1b22), so all differentiae of the predicate will be differentiae of the subject too (Cat3 1b23). "species are more truly substances than genus" (Cat5 2b7-10), more nearly related to primary, more instructive account of the individual ('man', rather than 'animal', 'tree' rather than plant), more specific, less general (Cat5 2b12); if there were no individual man to predicate about, there would be no 'species' man (Cat5 2b5); same relation between species and genus as between primary and secondary substance (Cat5 2b19; Cat5 3a)), and between subject and predicate (Cat5 2b20).
[xxvii] "[E]ntities which underlie everything else" (Cat5 2b15-17]; "and are the subject of" all else (Cat5 2b39); primary substance underlie and are the subject of everything else (Cat5 2b39).
[xxviii] In Book III Chapter 1 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle asks "are numbers and lines and figures and points a kind of substance or not, and if they are substances are they separate from sensible things or present in them?" "[W]hile most of the philosophers and the earlier among them thought that substance and being were identical with body, and that all other things were modifications of this, so that the first principles of the bodies were the first principles of being, the more recent and those who were held to be wiser thought numbers were the first principles. As we said, then, if these are not substance, there is no substance and no being at all; for the accidents of these it cannot be right to call beings.... if on the one hand body is in the highest degree substance, and on the other hand these things are so more than body, but these are not even instances of substance, it baffles us to say what being is and what the substance of things is..."[Meta 3 Chapter 5] [From text] Generally, that which is individual and has unity is never predicated of, but in some cases may be "present in" a subject, as grammatical knowledge is present in the mind.(Cat2 1b9) "But perhaps the universal, while it cannot be substance in the way in which the essence is so, can be present in this; e.g. 'animal' can be present in 'man' and 'horse'. Then clearly it is a formula of the essence. And it makes no difference even if it is not a formula of everything that is in the substance; for none the less the universal will be the substance of something, as 'man' is the substance of the individual man in whom it is present, so that the same result will follow once more; for the universal, e.g. 'animal', will be the substance of that in which it is present as something peculiar to it."(Z13 1038b20)
[xxix] Apparently, then as now, "mathematics has come to be identical with philosophy for modern thinkers, though they say that it should be studied for the sake of other things..."[Meta Book I/ Chap 9]
[xxx] "[C]auses are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change)."[Book I/Chapter 3]
[xxxi] In Z17, Aristotle begins by taking "another starting-point" from which to get "a clear view...of that substance which exists apart from sensible substances"(1041a6-9) from the starting point that "substance is a principle and a cause" (1041a10), to ask "why a thing is itself" is a meaningless inquiry (1041a15), because the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident (1041a17), given (1041a18-19) in all such questions, why the man is man or musician musical (1041a18) "'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just means this'" (1041a19), "this...common to all things" is a short and easy way with the answer (1041a19-20) [connect 1030a20, "being is common to all things"(1041a20)]; but can ask "why man is an animal of such and such a nature" (1041a20), not asking why a man is a man, asking "why something is predicable of something", or else an inquiry into nothing (1041a23), [same as, why does it thunder? why is sound produced in the clouds? (1041a24) why are these bricks and stones a house?]
[xxxii] See "Socratic Metaphysics", Juliana Hunt [Penner; Spring 1994] for discussion of what Socrates has to say about that which falls between our words.
[xxxiii] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.
I myself do not claim to be able to comprehend Aristotle's 'big picture' at the outset; rather, the purpose of this paper is to explore his various fine distinctions in terms of how they relate to some of Socrates' own, toward a more comprehensive picture. It seems a valuable exercise to weave together some of the themes which make the fabric of this, as all of Aristotle's work, so strong, and renders his voice critical to a deeper understanding of Socrates' own metaphysical views. While Aristotle is typically taken to oppose 'Platonic doctrine' on many levels, I hope to show, at length, that this is more apparently than actually the case. Rather, Aristotle's "affection for Plato takes second place only to his love of truth" -- "'both are dear to us'," Aristotle said, "'but truth must be preferred.'"[iii] In this, he begins in agreement with Socrates, who said, "You can't argue with the truth. Any fool can argue with Socrates".(Sym 201d)
While it is beyond the scope of this discussion to examine the relation between this ancient metaphysical conception and, say, fractal geometry, chaos theory, or any of many nonlinear systems approaches to the knowledge/substance relation, it's certainly worth mentioning that this is a metaphysical ground with much contemporary relevance.[iv]
For the sake of coming to understand this complex relationship of subject to predicate, I think Aristotle would have us put aside, for the time being (at least until the end of Book Z of the Metaphysics) the question of which way of speaking about any given object of knowledge is correct or proper (Meta 1030b3), in favor of taking full view of the various scales of perspective involved in our complex knowledge of being and use of language about it. By Aristotle's method, the question of which is the 'correct' way of using a given word is frequently set aside until all competing views are taken into account, which is to say, until the relationship between the various different senses we use is seen in its full complexity. As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics, "it does not matter at all in which of the...ways one likes to describe the facts; this is evident, that [some terms]...in the primary and simple sense belong to substances. Still they belong to other things as well, only not in the primary sense."(Meta 1030b5-10) Hasty conclusion about what is primary substance --i.e. real -- can fail to shed sufficient light on the complex hierarchy of substance which organizes full being from all its multiplicity of perspectives. To read with a foregone conclusion, such as that either matter or form are primary substance (Meta Z3), is to tend to ignore what does not support that conclusion, and thus to oversimplify and even pervert the process of sorting different senses from one another. It is thus wise to refrain from taking a position on such questions as what is primary substance at least for as long as Aristotle himself does. For "it is no doubt important how we talk, but not more important than how facts actually stand.(Meta 1030a30).
I think we will see in the end that these are all important and necessary parts of how we talk about what is primarily real. And in the process of sorting them out, it might be possible to resolve at least one apparent inconsistency in Aristotle's Metaphysics -- the so-called 'terrible triad' -- which might leave a mind whirling if other of Aristotle's works are not taken into account.
This triad involves the apparent inconsistency between Aristotle's claims that:
- Forms are substance (Meta 1029a30; 1041b7-9)
- Forms are universals (Meta 1040b31)[v]
- No universals can be a substance (Meta 1038b7-8; 1041a16)
Aristotle's main concern about the forms seems to be then that, as popularly interpreted, (then and now) they could not explain change.[ix] This concern shows the difference in his and Socrates' purposes -- Socrates having the purpose of affirming something lasting beneath change, and Aristotle affirming the importance of understanding change. While Socrates and Plato lament human ignorance of the forms (even as we pretend to 'know' so much about them) Aristotle in turn laments our chronic misunderstanding of the term, misunderstanding which comes in part from Socrates overemphasis on the forms as unchanging, separate and nameless. Unlike Socrates, whose intention it was to distinguish the stable truth from that which is too loosely called 'knowledge' in a world of so much apparent change, Aristotle's purpose in the Metaphysics was to explore more of the nature of full being. Aristotle's sensitivity to change, purpose, natural associations, proper function, and the importance of intelligent and deliberate navigation through wise choice of action is perhaps not as unlike Socrates own view as we commonly take it to be -- though it is unlike that view which is commonly attributed to Plato, that which seems to hold the forms to be something separate and 'apart from' the individuals which instantiate them. Apparently, Plato's forms had been articulated or interpreted in such a way as to be uninstructive toward understanding the interaction between that which lasts and that which changes, which is to say, the whole in its full complexity. But it seems clear that Socrates would be the first to agree with this loyalty to the whole of truth, and that he would encourage the examination of popular interpretations of his work toward a better, more complete understanding of the causes of change (a task many have taken Socrates to have either under-emphasized or ignored[x]), and this, toward a better understanding of what actually 'is', and where the 'forms', properly understood, fit into full being.
To 'know', Aristotle said, is to grasp primary cause of that which changes against a background of that which lasts (Phy, Book II 3 194b15; Meta Book I/Chap 1&2; Meta Book II/Chap 2; Meta Book VII/Chap 17). Toward this end, Aristotle feels it necessary to remind some of what they were neglecting in their understanding of Socrates' views. For instance, in his political philosophy, Aristotle takes a look at Plato's ideal state as it was understood by many in his time (if not Plato himself) and says, in effect, 'Look, that's a nice ideal, but you seem to be forgetting, or at any rate under-emphasizing, the importance of change. Everything living changes, whether by nature or by art,(Timaeus) and so everything is always either moving toward or moving away from its own best self.(Politics) Since we live in this world characterized by change, nothing, save perhaps the ideal of best self which guides every living thing toward its own good, stays the same. It stands to reason that all which is human-made can be human-changed -- unlike nature's actions, which humans must learn to live within. Therefore, all that is made by art of human action (as both individual character and collective institutions are) is subject to betterment by appeal to its ideal, i.e. by view to its highest potential. So to understand how to make character or politics more perfect, we must first have an understanding of how change effects our progress toward that ideal, by moral choice, sometimes moving us closer toward our ideal and proper function, and sometimes away, by a perversion of the process.(Nico Ethics) As we see in the Politics, where we are helped to distinguish between the proper and the perverted function of any state, no matter how many rule, and no matter how ideal the original conception looks, change necessitates intelligent navigation, and this is only accomplished by full deliberation of all relevant voices. Plato's guardian state, static as it seems to some, is vulnerable to Aristotle's worry that justice is a process, and failure to properly steer can change a just into an unjust and thus unhappy state by the effects of even a single unwise choice. So too with human character, we see in the Ethics, where the 'golden mean' is seen to be the way of wise choice toward the proper and virtuous function of human character toward happiness.(Nico Ethic, Book II) Aristotle, like Socrates, views the soul as a harmony of contraries, i.e. the patterned cause, potency, and motivating force behind the purposes of individuals, who are the actualization of what is only potential in matter.(Psy, Book IV) Individuals are the compound of form and matter, and it is largely by choice that their potentialities are actualized, and ideals are realized. This is the sense in which Aristotle is willing to allow that individuals have forms of their own, i.e. their own individual highest potentials. The idea of our potentials may be perfect, eternal and unchanging, but humans are not,(Parm 129b-c) and ours is to navigate toward the form of our own best self, our own mind causing our own future by our own wise choice. Aristotle's ethics then views change in the soul, like the state, as a matter of deliberate individual choice by which the potentialities of the individual are actualized.(Nico Ethics, Book II) Thus, Aristotle advocates a 'mixed constitution', which requires a more complex analysis of the metaphysical ground of reality.
Keeping in mind then Aristotle's ethical, psychological and political philosophy, it is easier to remember that his metaphysics needs to relate myriad different perspectives and voices to one another. No matter how perfectly formed an 'ideal' may look at the outset, to become fair in its proper function, it must respect and respond to every perspective and voice, most especially those who express where the shoe pinches worst. His politics of the mixed constitution must involve a unified plurality perspectives on being then for the sake of such ethically developing individuals who might be integrated in community by deliberative education (Pol, Book II Chapter 5).
Aristotle differs from Socrates in these claims in degree of explication, for the task he sets for himself presents him with considerable difficulty that Socrates, having different purposes, did not engage. Perhaps one key difference between these philosophers here is the disposition of their perceived audiences -- Socrates' having been treating the term 'knowledge' too broadly and weakly, while Aristotle's was treating it too narrowly. At any rate, in order for Aristotle's political philosophy of the mixed constitution to be metaphysically grounded, he has to accomplish the extremely formidable task of explicating diversity in unity, thereby providing a basis for respect and intelligent deliberation among the plethora of interdependent perspectives that interact organically in the natural associations of a healthy political community.
So for Aristotle's politics to work, his metaphysics has to take seriously and provide a basis of respect for many differing perspectives, and therefore different uses of language. Like Socrates, Aristotle is lovingly concerned with proper use of terms, and having Socrates' shoulders to stand on, and his strong (perhaps over) emphasis on the centrality of unchanging forms to the possibility of 'knowledge' to answer to, Aristotle has the challenge then to balance that emphasis. Aiming at a fuller analysis of reality, Aristotle's metaphysics requires an understanding of the interplay between 'substance' in all its various senses. For as long as we don't recognize the significance of the complementary and comprehensive relationships between the different senses in which we speak about the same and different objects with the same and different terms, Aristotle worries, we fail to notice and thus to fully understand the complex unity of relationships between the primary/objective world and that secondary reality which arises in language as we communicate about the primary. If Aristotle can help us to understand full and complex 'being' in such a way as to illuminate the complementary nature of different ways of talking about what 'is', then much of the conflict and misunderstanding which otherwise arises in our sloppy use of language -- and which is poisonous to healthy deliberation -- might be resolved.[xi]
This is a formidable task indeed. But to recognize, as Aristotle did, that "is belongs to all things" (Meta Z7.4 1030a20) is to be forced to consider the different senses in which we use related terms. In terms of the 'whole truth', which both Socrates and Aristotle took to be the ideal of understanding, everything has 'being', and thus, everything is said to be 'real' in some sense. Thus, Aristotle must proceed in his metaphysics more carefully than others, including Socrates, had, moving toward a more inclusive and more accurate account of such terms as 'being', 'substance', 'matter', 'form', 'essence', and 'universal', to name only a few of the terms that we sometimes unwittingly equivocate on. These are all important and necessary parts of how we talk about what is primarily real, and ultimately, nameless.
Aristotle took great pains to explore the diverse senses in which terms are used to show how these various substances are indeed 'real' in as much as they do exist, but they do so in different senses. In the Categories, Aristotle lays out the different relationships between substance and that which is "predicated of" and "present in" it, illuminating in the process the various degrees by which some terms participate in substance. Equivocation is involved when the same word has different definitions.(Cat 1a) Univocal terms, Aristotle says, that is, words which retain the same meaning each time they are used, are required by the syllogistic form in order to build arguments from combinations of terms.[xii] We thus see at the outset that his intention is to explore and thus teach (sometimes without argument) the complex relations that distinguish these concepts from one another, ultimately affirming forms in one sense, but disqualifying other senses, so to discourage confusion of language in the process. For, "in general, if we search for the elements of existing things without distinguishing the many senses in which things are said to exist, we cannot find them:"(Meta Book I/Chap 9)
"'What a thing is' in one sense, means substance and the 'this', in another one or other of the predicates, quantity, quality, and the like. For as 'is' belongs to all things, not however in the same sense, but to one sort of thing primarily and to others in a secondary way, so too 'what a thing is' belongs in the simple sense to substance, but in a limited sense to the other categories...For even of a quality we might ask, what it is, so that quality also is a 'what a thing is' -- not in the simple sense,[xiii] however, but just as, in the case of that which is not, some say, emphasizing the linguistic form, that which is not is -- not is simply, but is nonexistent; so too with quality"(Meta 1030a20-25).
In Book IV/Chap 2 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says, significantly, that:
"There are many senses in which a thing may be said to 'be', but all that 'is' is related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and is not said to 'be' by a mere ambiguity."[xiv]
It is "either an equivocation that we say these are, or by adding to and taking from the meaning of 'are' (in the way in which that which is not known may be said to be known) -- the truth being that we use the word neither ambiguously, nor in the same sense, but just as we apply the word 'medical' by virtue of reference to one and the same thing, not meaning one and the same thing, nor yet speaking ambiguously", but as different things are called medical by virtue of a common end (Meta 1030b).
Socrates himself shows he recognizes the importance of understanding this equivocation in his incessant questioning of ambiguous use of terms, distinguishing what we think we are saying from what our words actually mean, all things considered. This method of distinguishing equivocal senses of terms is a great help in figuring out how Socrates can make such apparently outrageous claims as that the forms are 'real' in a sense that matter is not, or that things might be called 'known' when they are really only 'believed'. Mere beliefs may be called 'knowledge', but if they are not 'tethered', they are not 'knowledge', except perhaps only in a very weak sense. If common usage is inaccurate enough to sometimes be wrong in definition or formulation, then it is not what knowledge is in the strongest sense.[xv] To 'know' something in a secondary sense does not entail that we 'know' it in the primary sense. Thus, it could be argued that properly weighing the different senses in which we use out terms in order to bring to light more of the whole truth of the issue is exactly what Socrates too was up to.[xvi] For words are, as Aristotle says, not invented, but common to all (Meta 1040a12), and so must not be constructed, but discovered and tethered to being, as two eyes add depth to what is seen with only one.
In considering these alternative senses we use to talk about being, Aristotle shows how easily we do wrong some of these terms by failing to distinguish them properly and so use them without sufficient reflection on the subtle equivocations involved.(Meta Z3 1028b33-36)[xvii] For instance, it is too easy to simply assume substance to be matter,(Z3 1029a10-26) reasoning that when the three dimensions are taken away, it seems like there is nothing left. "To those who consider the question thus, matter alone must seem to be substance,"(Meta 1029a18) for "evidently nothing but matter remains."(Meta Z31029a12) But this is impossible.(Meta Z3 1029a26):
"Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways....they posit the elements of bodies only, not of incorporeal things, though there are also incorporeal things. And...in giving a physical account of all things, they do away with the cause of movement. Further, they err in not positing the substance, i.e. the essence, as the cause of anything...."(Meta Book I/Chap 8)
But those who extend their vision to all things that exist, and of existing things suppose some to be perceptible and others not perceptible, evidently study both classes, which is all the more reason why one should devote some time to seeing what is good in their views and what bad from the standpoint of the inquiry we have now before us.(Meta Book I/Chap 8)
It's true that Socrates says in Phaedo, "there is nothing which to my mind is so evident as that beauty, goodness, and other [such] notions...have a most real and absolute existence; and I am satisfied with the proof." But Aristotle, perhaps rightly, adds that "these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses."(Meta I Book 2) In the Physics he says, "[T]o demonstrate the evident by means of the obscure is the mark of a man who cannot judge what is and what is not in itself knowable...The result of such a procedure is that one is talking about mere names, without there being any object for one's thought."(Phy, Book II). But perhaps "the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us," as he says. "For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all."(Meta Book II/Chapter I) First principles and causes are the most knowable of all.(Meta Book I/Chap 2)[xviii]
For Aristotle, to 'know' is to grasp primary cause of that which changes along with that which lasts (Phy Book II 3 194b15).[xix] "We do not know a truth without its cause;"(Meta Book II/Chap 1; Book VII/Chap 17)[xx] Forms are, according to Aristotle, improperly understood if seen as other than causes (Meta 8 1042a5) -- that is, if taken to be something separate and 'apart from' the individuals which instantiate them. Aristotle shows that the individual is prior to the universal,[xxi] and thus, he seems to affirm the common sense view, then and now, that objects are ontologically basic.[xxii] Substance, he says, "in the truest and primary and most definite sense of the word" is that which is neither predicate of or present in a subject, e.g. individual man or horse (Cat 5 2b14). They are "entities which underlie everything else."(Cat 5 2b15-17) After all, if there were no individual man to predicate about, there would be no 'species' man (Cat 5 2b5). However, "since substance is of two kinds, the concrete thing and the formula (I mean that one kind of substance is the formula taken with the matter, while another kind is the formula in its generality)."(Meta Book VII/Chap 15)[xxiii] Therefore, "'Socrates' or 'Coriscus', if even the soul of Socrates may be called Socrates, has two meanings (for some mean by such a term the soul, and others mean the concrete thing), but if 'Socrates' or 'Coriscus' means simply this particular soul and this particular body, the individual is analogous to the universal in its composition,"(Meta Book VII/Chap 11)[xxiv] such that, what we say of the individual holds true for species and genus.(Cat 5 3a5) Universal man is thus dependent upon there being an individual, e.g. Socrates, the body, and this it is a secondary substance to Socrates, the soul, which is primary.[xxv]
Forms, on the other hand, are primary substance, which is to say, causes, i.e. that about which all else is predicated (Meta Z7 3 1029a8) and is itself not predicated of anything else (Meta Z7 3 1029b8) -- as distinct from secondary substance, which is predicated of substance and is only real in this sense, that is, because it is "predicated of" or "present in" that which is primary. Primary substance is prior in time to secondary, does not reciprocate with it, but rather is causal of secondary, which is dependent upon primary for its existence.(Cat 5 2b39; 2b5)[xxvi] In this way then, Aristotle distinguishes the sense in which forms are most 'real' from other senses in which we use this term. In this sense, forms can do what Plato's universals don't seem to be able to, i.e. they can help us to understand and explain change. Primary substances exist objectively, and we give rise to secondary substances in the process of talking about primary.[xxvii] Such substances are of a secondary sort specifically because they follow, rather than cause primary substance. On the other hand, the fact that they are real at all, though only secondarily so, is also important to Aristotle because, as Socrates himself worried, how we talk about primarily reality, with all the various senses in which we talk about and thus break up 'the one', can be more or less accurate. Again, if we equivocate without realizing it, our understanding is vulnerable to confusion and mistakes and ultimately conflict over mere words. We might be caring more about how different uses of terms fit together to form the whole of truth about reality, in all its interacting causes.
Thus, Aristotle does not ultimately oppose the conclusion that both universals and forms are real in important senses -- though he does oppose those who interpret this conclusion in a certain limiting way -- as if either exists 'apart from" the mind which actualizes them. However, it is not here (or, to my knowledge, anywhere) argued by Aristotle that Socrates himself understood the forms in this way. Rather, Aristotle frequently seems to be speaking to "those who say" such and such (e.g. Meta 1029a18), leaving open the question of whether Socrates or Plato actually did. So for the purposes of this work I take Aristotle to be at issue with a subtle but destructive misinterpretation of the Platonic forms, rather than with Socrates' own, or even Plato's view.
Aristotle characterizes what he takes to be the Platonists' take in Z16 of the Metaphysics, seeing their sense of forms to be "the imperishable substances which exist apart from individual and sensible substances".(Meta 1040b34) Some say this because cannot declare what such substances are, he says, so say same as perishable things, because we know these, man or horse itself, adding 'itself', but even if don't know what nonsensible substances there are, still doubtless are some.(Meta 1041a4) This sense of forms as 'apart from' the mind is a conception Plato perhaps inadvertently encouraged by his Pythagorean emphasis on numbers, but one which Socrates was careful to warn against taking too far (Phaedo). There is much congruence between Aristotle and Socrates, but Plato (or at least some Platonists) seems to depart onto a path of reasoning which allows some to conclude that forms are something 'apart from' the mind of the individuals that, according to Aristotle, they cannot but be "present in".(Cat 2 1b9l; Meta Book VII/Chap 13)[xxviii] Seeing how many, already in his time, took the forms to be entities 'apart from' the mind, it falls to Aristotle to point out the danger of looking to entities extrinsic to the human mind for the perfect form of human being, which is to miss the point of Socrates central lesson -- as well as the last words of advice he left to his children -- "look to yourselves".(Phaedo)
Despite much evidence in the Socratic dialogues that Plato is taken too literally if the forms are understood as something static, separate and 'apart from' the human mind, this popular misinterpretation allowed many scholars of Plato's Socrates to misdirect their attention toward something outside of the human mind, outside of themselves, mistaking some kinds of universals (which are not causal) for forms (which are), missing a central point of Socrates' own teachings. It is because forms are, properly understood, causal, that Aristotle protests the conception of them as 'universal' or 'number', which are presumed to be static entities outside of human being that have no efficacy where change is concerned.(Meta Book I/Chap 9)
However, while Aristotle is clear that forms are not universals or numbers in the sense of being 'apart from' individuals[xxix], he is quite happy to allow forms as primary entities about which no words and no teaching is possible.(Meta 1041b5-10) In this, Aristotle seems to agree with Socrates, who says in the Republic that we can no more look directly at the good than we can look directly at the sun.(Rep VI 508)
No simple term alone involves an affirmation or assertion, Aristotle explains. Rather, positive and negative statements arise by combination of terms. Expressions which are not composite (example 'man', 'white', 'runs', 'wins') are neither true or false (Cat 2 a8), whereas every assertion is either true or false.(Cat 2 a9) Essence, which is one of the four fundamental causes,[xxx] is a formula or definition in which nothing, no term, is predicated of another, is thus simple, one, with nothing added and nothing left out.[xxxi] Thus, unless one term is predicated of another, object of inquiry is easily missed.(Meta 1041a32) "Evidently, then, in the case of simple terms no inquiry or teaching is possible; our attitude toward such things is other than that of inquiry" (Meta 1041b5-10).[xxxii] Which helps explain why:
"The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; for they do not suppose either that the Forms are the matter of sensible things, and the One the matter of the Forms, or that they are the source of movement (for they say these are causes rather of immobility and of being at rest), but they furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the essence of the Forms.(Meta Book I/Chap 6)
As Socrates said:
"How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No, they must be studied and investigated in themselves."(Theaetetus 439b)
"[R]ecourse must be had to another standard [an inner criterion] which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two are right, and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things...[for] things may be known without names."(Theaetetus 438de)
For "if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux...Whether there is this external nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heraclitus and his followers...say, is a question hard to determine, and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names...reflect well and...do not easily accept such a doctrine..."(Theaetetus: C440d)
Plato's claim in the Republic is that the forms are illuminated by the light of the good in that intelligible -- but invisible -- psychological realm which is analogous the realm of the physical. The forms of justice, courage, and beauty are absolute ideas, he says,(Rep 130b6) and they come to light in what he calls 'the mind's eye'.(Phaedo) They are ideals, targets, potentialities that only appear in answer to the question, 'What is the good?' This psychological realm is seldom understood to be 'real', Plato laments. Those who perceive of reality only in terms of the physical, in terms of changing matters only, will simply fail to recognize what is fully real in the realm of the mind, i.e. its ideas and ideals, which are even more real in as much as they are more lasting.
And if Socrates meant the forms to be anything other than causal in this realm, it seems doubtful he would have he emphasizes their nature as 'ideal patterns', that is, ends toward which human action might move. As he says:
"[P]erhaps there is a pattern set up in the heavens for one who desires to see it and, seeing it, to found one in himself."(Rep IX 591)
"[W]hen we set out to discover the essential nature of justice and injustice and what a perfectly just and perfectly unjust man would be like, supposing them to exist, our purpose was to use them as ideal patterns; we were to observe the degree of happiness or unhappiness that each exhibited, and to draw the necessary inferences that our own destiny would be like that of the one we most resembled. We did not set out to show that these ideals could exist in fact."(Rep V 472)
"[H]appiness can only come to a state when its lineaments are traced by an artist working after the divine pattern....He will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean... Next, he will sketch in the outline of the constitution. Then as the work goes on, he will frequently refer to his model, the ideals of justice, goodness, temperance, and the rest, and compare with them the copy of those qualities which he is trying to create in human society...he will reproduce the complexion of true humanity, guided by that divine pattern whose likeness Homer saw in the men he called godlike. He will rub out and paint in again this or that feature, until he has produced, so far as may be, a type of human character that heaven can approve."(Rep VI 500, emphasis added)
Given this metaphor of the human being as creator, it seems quite unlikely, despite popular interpretations in Aristotle's time (as today), that Socrates took the forms to be something 'apart from' and independent of the individuals they are the cause of -- except in as much as they exist as the "divine pattern" -- that is, the model by which the highest human purposes are realized in human action. Thus, Aristotle clarifies the subject by emphasizing Socrates' own point, that the forms, to exist at all, must exist 'in here' -- causal in as much as they are targets for human action and production. This is how the reality of change is reconciled with the reality of the lasting by Aristotle, as well as Socrates, i.e. by the recognition and analysis of forms in the only sense which Socrates himself could plausibly have meant them, i.e. as ends of human action. And it is necessary to understand this, Aristotle emphasizes in his ethics, because one cannot hit a target one does not aim at.(Nico Ethics, 1106b30)
Clearly, Socrates himself did not pretend that forms were not causal, nor that they were entities 'apart from' the substances they were present in. When asked directly by Parmenides whether he thinks ideas exist "apart from the likeness which we possess, and of the one and many"(Parm 129e), Socrates affirms only that there are such ideas, but not necessarily apart from the minds of individuals. "And would you make an idea of man apart from us and from all other human creatures, or of fire and water?" "I am often undecided, Parmenides," Socrates says, "as to whether I ought to include them or not."(Parm 130) "I have often been puzzled about those things, Parmenides, whether one should say that the same thing is true in the case of humans as in the case of...trivial objects", like hair and dirt, which are not puzzling as they do not have a form.(Parm 129d)[xxxiii] Ideas cannot exist merely 'apart from' the mind, as Parmenides says, for then they face problem of being separable from self, and thus confusing our conception of 'being', in the sense that it is one, unified, and whole. According to Aristotle, this is what had indeed occurred as a result of viewing the forms as if they are 'apart from' the minds which they are 'present in'.(see Cat 2 1b9) Yet even the young Socrates was able to answer to this apparent problem of the one being separatable from itself by showing how being might indeed be thought to be, in a sense, 'inside itself'.(Parm 145d) For "if all the parts are in the whole, and the one is all of them and the whole, and they are all contained by the whole, the one will be contained by the one; and thus the one will be in itself."[Parm 145d]
As Socrates said to Parmenides, "In my opinion, the ideas are, as it were, patterns fixed in nature, and other things are like them, and resemblances of them -- what is meant by the participation of other things in the ideas, is really assimilation to them."(Parm 132d) Humans are not merely 'like' nature, they are part of it -- though not 'part' in the sense we might typically use the term, as if separable from other parts (Parm 133). Rather, as Plato and Aristotle seemed to agree, humans 'participate' (in a sense that is not easy to settle on) in the patterns of nature by degrees -- and whether by 'participation', 'likeness', 'resemblance', or by 'assimilation' (Parm 132d) -- we can discover best by dialogue and deliberation.
However, forms are not 'mere patterns' as Aristotle seemed to think, as he says:
"...to say that they are patterns and the other things share in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors. For what is it that works?"(Meta Book I/Chap 9) "...one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things...they cause neither movement nor any change in them...they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being"; "...there will be several patterns of the same thing, and therefore several Forms; e.g. 'animal' and 'two-footed' and also 'man himself' will be Forms of man. Again, the Forms are patterns not only of sensible things, but of Forms themselves also; i.e. the genus, as genus of various species, will be so; therefore the same thing will be pattern and copy."(Meta Book I/Chap 9) "...the Forms are causes both of being and of becoming; yet when the Forms exist, still the things that share in them do not come into being, unless there is something to originate movement..."(Meta Book 1/Chap 9)
What I hope to have shown here then is that Aristotle actually ends up making a case for the forms that he is typically taken to oppose, or at any rate, for 'forms' in the only way they can plausible exist, i.e. as potentials present within the minds of those individuals (those compounds of form in matter) who instantiate that form which is soul. This is distinct from the manner in which some Platonists interpret the 'forms', as if they are something separate and apart from the individuals who chose them as their ends, to be sure, but it is not necessarily distinct from Socrates and Plato's own view. Aristotle is thus happy to admit that forms exist, but they exist as causal entities on a continuum of substance which is not merely 'real' on one level only. By my lights, Aristotle comes close to reconciling Socratic and Platonic forms by reasserting their internal and causal nature in human character and human institutions, which Socrates assumes heartily, and which some Platonists, then and now, have forgotten.
Note that Aristotle distinguished between the realm of substance and the realm of knowledge, attributing both essential and accidental predication to knowledge, and neither to substance. Some things are 'said of' but not 'present in' substance, such as man, while other things are 'present in' but not 'said of' substance, such as white and grammatical knowledge (nonsubstance universals). However, other things are both 'said of' and 'present in', such as knowledge, and still others are neither, such as individuals. (Generally, that which is individual and has unity is never predicated of, but in some cases may be "present in" a subject, as grammatical knowledge is present in the mind.(Cat2 1b9)) As Aristotle says, "perhaps the universal, while it cannot be substance in the way in which the essence is so, can be present in this; e.g. 'animal' can be present in 'man' and 'horse'. Then clearly it is a formula of the essence. And it makes no difference even if it is not a formula of everything that is in the substance; for none the less the universal will be the substance of something, as 'man' is the substance of the individual man in whom it is present, so that the same result will follow once more; for the universal, e.g. 'animal', will be the substance of that in which it is present as something peculiar to it."(Z13 1038b20) And what must be clear in the end is that universals and genus exist in the realm of knowledge and ideas,(Meta 8 1042a16) which is to say, secondary substance (which is both 'present in' and 'said of' substance, not prior in time, does not reciprocate, and thus dependent on primary for its very existence) but they do not exist in the realm of primary substance (which is neither 'said of' or 'present in' anything else, is prior in time, and thus not dependent on secondary, as secondary is on it).(Meta Book VIII/Chap 1)
Thus, the so-called 'terrible triad' might be reconciled, for the inconsistency seems to be resolved with the recognition that universals in the 'apart from' sense (if such a thing exists) are not forms in the 'causal' sense -- and therefore universals, which are predicated of subjects, are only secondarily, not primarily, real.
Thus, the triad might read:
1. Forms are substance (in the primary sense, which is never predicated of anything else)
2. Universals are substance (only in a secondary sense, as universals are always predicated of some subject) (Meta 1038b15; Cat 14a7-10)
3. Therefore, if forms are universals (as some Platonists take them to be) they are so only in a secondary sense.
What's more:
4. Forms in the primary sense are causal, and prior to individuals (Meta 1029a5)
5. Universals which are taken to be 'apart from' individuals are not causal, but rather caused by and dependent upon the individuals which are prior to them (Cat 2b)
6. Universals which are taken to be 'apart from' individuals are not forms in the primary sense.
In the end, I think Socrates and Aristotle alike would have us remember that if we better understood the deep multiplicity of reality, then we might see the true importance of multiple perspectives on any given subject, and thus, of dialogue, deliberation, and tethering our knowledge. We are all looking at the same world, albeit from different perspectives, and the full reality of that world cannot be seen, let alone realized, without honest deliberate dialogue between the complimentary perspectives available on the whole of truth.
With all this in mind, Aristotle's claim about the process of learning seems less mysterious in its progression from inward-out, from subjective to objective, from particular to universal, than it might otherwise. This is learning, and through Socrates' and Plato's method of 'teaching' was different than Aristotle's in significant ways, their end was the same -- to inspire the will to see what is common to all and tethered from all points of view:
"Some of the sensible substances are generally admitted to be substances, so that we must look first among these. For it is an advantage to advance to that which is more knowable. For learning proceeds for all in this way -- through that which is less knowable by nature to that which is more knowable; and just as in conduct our task is to start from what is good for each and make what is without qualification good good for each, so it is our task to start from what is more knowable to oneself and make what is knowable by nature knowable to oneself. Now what is knowable and primary for particular sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one does know."(Meta Book VII/Chapter 3)
"Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this respect it must be easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it....[N]o one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed."(Meta Book II/Chapter I)
"It's just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought. It is true that if there had been no Timotheus we should have been without much of our lyric poetry; but if there had been no Phrynis there would have been no Timotheus. The same holds good of those who have expressed views about the truth; for from some thinkers we have inherited certain opinions, while the others have been responsible for the appearance of the former."(Meta Book II/Chapter I)
And so we would not have Aristotle without Plato, nor Plato without Socrates. To be consistent with their collective political vision, Aristotle's metaphysics must give each and all their say, the materialist and the idealist, the 'friend of individual forms' and the 'friend of universals', as well as all other contraries, toward what is 'real without qualification' by integration of all opposing points of view. And perhaps, given the implications of this method, forms are after all 'objective' -- at least in as much as they are 'knowable without qualification', yet not objective in the sense of being something outside of and 'apart from' the human mind.
And in the end, Aristotle can fairly claim that:
"[I]t is the business of one and the same science to know the form as well as the matter" -- "not ignoring matter, but not confining ourselves to it either"(Physics Book II 194a15):
"[S]ince there are many senses in which a thing is said to be one, these terms also will have many senses, but yet it belongs to one science to know them all; for a term belongs to different sciences not if it has different senses, but if it has not one meaning and its definitions cannot be referred to one central meaning. And since all things are referred to that which is primary, as for instance all things which are called one are referred to the primary one, we must say that this holds good also of the same and the other and of contraries in general."(Meta Book IV/Chapter 2)
In this, perhaps more than any other human being before or since, Aristotle actualizes the Socratic ideal of the true philosopher. For he (certainly more than we) recognizes, as Socrates says, that:
"No measure that falls in the least degree short of the whole truth can be quite fair in so important a matter...though people sometimes think enough has been done and there is no need to look further."(Rep VI 503) "Further...this whole course of study will, I believe, contribute to the end we desire and not be labour wasted, only if it is carried to the point at which reflection can take a comprehensive view of the mutual relations and affinities which bind all these sciences together.(Rep VII 532) The detached studies...will now be brought together in a comprehensive view of their connexions with one another and with reality....a natural gift for Dialectic...is the same thing as the ability to see the connections of things.(Rep VII 537) And "the genuine lover of knowledge cannot fail, from his youth up, to strive after the whole of truth.(Rep VI 485)
BEGIN NOTES on Aristotle’s Metaphysics
[i]Renford Bambrough, The Philosophy of Aristotle (Mentor: New York, 1963) pp.13-14.]
[ii]Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (Random House: New York, 1941) pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
[iii]Bambrough, p.17.
[iv] See Juliana Hunt, Socratic Metaphysics (Penner, Spring 1994) for a fuller discussion of the relevance of this ancient metaphysics to the contemporary controversy between so-called objectivists and subjectivists.
[v] While this is the reference given in class, I admit to not being able to reconcile it with the text. It makes me wonder if the inconsistency arises from a misreading...?
[vi] David Armstrong, Universals and Scientific Realism: Vol. I & Vol. II (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1978) p. 83.
[vii] I thank Jim Jennings for helping me see how 'species' is a genuine plurality by virtue of the form which organizes the matter. The assertion that object precedes subject is ubiquitous in Aristotle, such that we can recognize occurrences of a form in matter, and it is this objective condition by which things possess the form. Which is to say, that which was potential is actually present. It is this form which unifies them into 'One'. That the species in inherent in particular individuals is clear, but why this is true of the species and not the genera is less so.
[viii] This does not seem substantially different in form from what Socrates would have us seek to know. Nor does it seem incongruent with Alan Sidelle's expressed view of composite forms, that some forms have matter in their formula (e.g. bronze sphere). Although it was stated that Aristotle never says this explicitly, I think he hints toward it in his talk of that 'something else' which exists in a compound: if something is compound, then same as syllable and flesh (1041b24), no longer exists if elements are separated, though elements still do; the syllable and flesh is "something else", besides elements, either an element itself, or composed of elements, i.e. compound; "there must be something besides the concrete thing, viz. the shape or form."[Book III/Chapter 4] If compound, whole is one (not like a heap, but like a syllable), which is not its elements [e.g. B and A], as flesh is not fire and earth (1041b15); if element itself ["that into which a thing is divided and which is present in it as matter", as a and b are the elements of the syllable" (1041b33)], then infinite regress (1041b22). But as he says in Meta Book II/Chap 2, those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it. This "something else" then is the cause which makes this flesh and that a syllable (1041b26); this is the substance then, the "primary cause of its being" (1041b27). Some things are not substances, but those that are are "formed in accordance with a nature of their own and by a process of nature" (1041b30) -- not an element, but a principle. "For perishing things are obscure to those who have the relevant knowledge, when they have passed from our perception; and though the formulae remain in the soul unchanged, there will no longer be either definition or demonstration. And so when one of the definition-mongers defines any individual, he must recognize that it is not possible to define such things. Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart; and the formula must consist of words; and he who defines must not invent a word (for it would be unknown), but the established words are common to all the members of a class; these then must apply to something besides the thing defined;"[Book VII/Chapter 15]
[ix] In Book 1/Chap 6-9 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle gives us a good idea of his worry about the forms: "Plato...in most respects followed [the Pythagoreans, who thought that infinity itself and unity itself were the substance of the things of which they are predicated. This is why number was the substance of all things]...but had peculiarities that distinguished his from the philosophy of the Italians. For, having in his youth first become familiar with Cratylus and with the Heraclitean doctrines (that all sensible things are ever in a state of flux and there is no knowledge about them), these views he held even in later years. Socrates, however, was busying himself about ethical matters and neglecting the world of nature as a whole but seeking the universal in these ethical matters, and fixed thought for the first time on definitions; Plato accepted his teaching, but held that the problem applied not to sensible things but to entities of another kind-for this reason, that the common definition could not be a definition of any sensible thing, as they were always changing. Things of this other sort, then, he called Ideas, and sensible things, he said, were all named after these, and in virtue of a relation to these; for the many existed by participation in the Ideas that have the same name as they. Only the name 'participation' was new....But what the participation or the imitation of the Forms could be they left an open question. Further, besides sensible things and Forms he says there are the objects of mathematics, which occupy an intermediate position, differing from sensible things in being eternal and unchangeable, from Forms in that there are many alike, while the Form itself is in each case unique....Since the Forms were the causes of all other things, he thought their elements were the elements of all things. As matter, the great and the small were principles; as essential reality, the One; for from the great and the small, by participation in the One, come the Numbers....he agreed with the Pythagoreans in saying that the One is substance and not a predicate of something else; and in saying that the Numbers are the causes of the reality of other things he agreed with them; but positing a dyad and constructing the infinite out of great and small, instead of treating the infinite as one, is peculiar to him; and so is his view that the Numbers exist apart from sensible things....His divergence from the Pythagoreans in making the One and the Numbers separate from things, and his introduction of the Forms, were due to his inquiries in the region of definitions (for the earlier thinkers had no tincture of dialectic), and his making the other entity besides the One a dyad was due to the belief that the numbers, except those which were prime, could be neatly produced out of the dyad as out of some plastic material. Yet what happens is the contrary; the theory is not a reasonable one." "Plato, then...used only two causes, that of the essence and the material cause (for the Forms are the causes of the essence of all other things, and the One is the cause of the essence of the Forms); and it is evident what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are predicated in the case of sensible things, and the One in the case of Forms, viz. that this is a dyad, the great and the small." [Meta Book I/Chap 6] "...of those who speak about 'principle' and 'cause' no one has mentioned any principle except those which have been distinguished in our work on nature, but all evidently have some inkling of them, though only vaguely....have all had a notion of this kind of cause....certain others have mentioned the source of movement, e.g. those who make friendship and strife, or reason, or love, a principle.[Meta Book I/Chap 6]; "if the great and the small are to he movement, evidently the Forms will be moved; but if they are not to be movement, whence did movement come? The whole study of nature has been annihilated..."[Meta Book I/Chap 9];
The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly. It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; for they do not suppose either that the Forms are the matter of sensible things, and the One the matter of the Forms, or that they are the source of movement (for they say these are causes rather of immobility and of being at rest), but they furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the essence of the Forms.[Meta Book I/Chap 6]
That for whose sake actions and changes and movements take place, they assert to be a cause in a way, but not in this way, i.e. not in the way in which it is its nature to be a cause. For those who speak of reason or friendship class these causes as goods; they do not speak, however, as if anything that exists either existed or came into being for the sake of these, but as if movements started from these. In the same way those who say the One or the existent is the good, say that it is the cause of substance, but not that substance either is or comes to be for the sake of this. Therefore it turns out that in a sense they both say and do not say the good is a cause; for they do not call it a cause qua good but only incidentally.
All these thinkers then, as they cannot pitch on another cause, seem to testify that we have determined rightly both how many and of what sort the causes are. Besides this it is plain that when the causes are being looked for, either all four must be sought thus or they must be sought in one of these four ways."[Meta Book 1/Chap 7]
"Those, then, who say the universe is one and posit one kind of thing as matter, and as corporeal matter which has spatial magnitude, evidently go astray in many ways....they posit the elements of bodies only, not of incorporeal things, though there are also incorporeal things. And...in giving a physical account of all things, they do away with the cause of movement. Further, they err in not positing the substance, i.e. the essence, as the cause of anything...."[Meta Book 1/Chap 8]
"But those who extend their vision to all things that exist, and of existing things suppose some to be perceptible and others not perceptible, evidently study both classes, which is all the more reason why one should devote some time to seeing what is good in their views and what bad from the standpoint of the inquiry we have now before us.
"The 'Pythagoreans' treat of principles and elements stranger than those of the physical philosophers (the reason is that they got the principles from non-sensible things, for the objects of mathematics, except those of astronomy, are of the class of things without movement); yet their discussions and investigations are all about nature; for they generate the heavens, and with regard to their parts and attributes and functions they observe the phenomena, and use up the principles and the causes in explaining these, which implies that they agree with the others, the physical philosophers, that the real is just all that which is perceptible and contained by the so-called 'heavens'. But the causes and the principles which they mention are, as we said, sufficient to act as steps even up to the higher realms of reality, and are more suited to these than to theories about nature. They do not tell us at all, however, how there can be movement if limit and unlimited and odd and even are the only things assumed, or how without movement and change there can be generation and destruction, or the bodies that move through the heavens can do what they do."[Meta Book 1/Chap 8]
"And in general the arguments for the Forms destroy the things for whose existence we are more zealous than for the existence of the Ideas; for it follows that not the dyad but number is first, i.e. that the relative is prior to the absolute,-besides all the other points on which certain people by following out the opinions held about the Ideas have come into conflict with the principles of the theory."[Meta Book 1/Chap 9]
"Above all one might discuss the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, either to those that are eternal or to those that come into being and cease to be. For they cause neither movement nor any change in them. But again they help in no wise either towards the knowledge of the other things (for they are not even the substance of these, else they would have been in them), or towards their being, if they are not in the particulars which share in them; though if they were, they might be thought to be causes..."[Meta Book 1/Chapter 9]
[x] As Aristotle pointed out, sometimes we ignore such questions too long, and sometimes we simply jump to conclusions too quickly, deciding which way is correct without thinking through the issue in sufficient complexity. In the end I will hope to have shown that properly weighing the different senses in which we use our words is, one might argue, exactly what Socrates was up to, albeit less directly than Aristotle. This was necessary, they both said, in order to bring to light more of the whole truth of the issue before one judges the rightness or wrongness of a given use of language for a given object. Socrates would also have to agree with Aristotle that knowing the difference between that reality which is primary substance and those secondary substances which are involved in the Categories (1029a24) can help sort out many conflicts (even as it seems to give rise to new ones), including that over whether we can 'know' something in a weak sense, and yet not 'know' it in another, stronger, sense. As Socrates made clear, such equivocations can cause us endless confusion, for we may believe we have or are moving toward 'power', or 'happiness', or 'health' or 'wealth' in a given sense, even as we fail to actually possess or progress toward these in another more fundamental sense. Since we fail to hit any target we don't aim at (Nico Ethics, 1106b30), we fail to achieve our own good, our own best potential, our own ideal state, if we fail to distinguish between these ideals in their different senses. Many 'beliefs' may be called 'knowledge', but if they are so it is only in a very weak sense, for if they are inaccurate enough to sometimes be wrong in definition or formulation, then they are not what knowledge is in the strongest sense of understanding that which lasts, only opinion of that which changes (though we apparently may have knowledge of the forms of change, which do not themselves change). This is why Socrates brought our sloppy understanding of the words we use to our attention (indeed perhaps to Aristotle's own) so that we do not continue to pretend to 'know' that which cannot be known, or to have 'power' which cannot be had, or to 'teach' what cannot be taught. Arguably then, Aristotle was simply taking Socrates' advice in examining fully the complex use of language which both reveals and obscures, by subtle equivocation of sense, the deep and primary reality about which all else is predicated secondarily.
[xi] This analysis seems to provide a critical insight which today's academic climate might benefit from, as 'objectivists' have polarized with 'subjectivists' or 'relativists' or 'postmoderns' or 'multiculturalists' -- to the point of mis- if not complete non-communication. And where this conflict is manifest throughout social policy making, deliberation is hopelessly thwarted by what Aristotle would show to be the unjustified assumption that recognizing the relativity of subjective perspectives somehow obliterates the objective truth of the matter, rather than to define and deepen it, and as two eyes add depth to what is seen with only one.
[xii] McKeon, p. xvi; Note that Aristotle was not the first to use this form (though he is widely credited for making it an explicit tool of formal logic). Passages such as the following, from Symposium, suggest that it was Socrates' idea (or perhaps Diotima's idea) which Aristotle explicated. Diotima of Mantineia, the woman Socrates credits for having taught him about love, answers his question, who are the lovers of wisdom: "We would classify wisdom as very beautiful, and Eros is love of what is beautiful, and so it necessarily follows that Eros is a lover of wisdom."(204b)
[xiii] In the Categories, (Cat2 1a18) forms of speech are shown to be both simple and composite; (Cat4 1b25) simple expressions (in no way composite) signify substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, or affection; examples of substance are man or the horse; quantity, length; quality, white or grammatical; relation, double or half; place, 'in the' or 'under the'; time, yesterday; position, running, sitting; state, aimed; action, "to aim", "to win"; affection, "to be lanced", "to be defeated" (Cat4 2a). No one of these terms alone involves an affirmation or assertion, Aristotle explains; positive and negative statements arise by combination of terms; expressions which are not composite (example 'man', 'white', 'runs', 'wins') are neither true or false (Cat2a8), whereas every assertion is either true or false (Cat2a9). As he says in the Metaphysics, "Evidently, then, in the case of simple terms no inquiry or teaching is possible; our attitude toward such things is other than that of inquiry" (1041b5-10); He explains in Z17, to ask "why a thing is itself" is a meaningless inquiry (1041a15), because the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident (1041a17), given (1041a18-19) in all such questions, why the man is man or musician musical (1041a18) "'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just means this'" (1041a19), "this...common to all things" is a short and easy way with the answer (1041a19-20) [connect 1030a20, "being is common to all things" (1041a20)]; but can ask "why man is an animal of such and such a nature" (1041a20), not asking why a man is a man, asking "why something is predicable of something", or else an inquiry into nothing (1041a23), [same as, why does it thunder? why is sound produced in the clouds? (1041a24) why are these bricks and stones a house?
[xiv] Just as "Everything which is healthy is related to health, one thing in the sense that it preserves health, another in the sense that it produces it, another in the sense that it is a symptom of health, another because it is capable of it. And that which is medical is relative to the medical art, one thing being called medical because it possesses it, another because it is naturally adapted to it, another because it is a function of the medical art. And we shall find other words used similarly to these. So, too, there are many senses in which a thing is said to be, but all refer to one starting-point; some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substance, others because they are a process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance, or productive or generative of substance, or of things which are relative to substance, or negations of one of these thing of substance itself. It is for this reason that we say even of non-being that it is nonbeing. As, then, there is one science which deals with all healthy things, the same applies in the other cases also. For not only in the case of things which have one common notion does the investigation belong to one science, but also in the case of things which are related to one common nature; for even these in a sense have one common notion. It is clear then that it is the work of one science also to study the things that are, qua being.-But everywhere science deals chiefly with that which is primary, and on which the other things depend, and in virtue of which they get their names. If, then, this is substance, it will be of substances that the philosopher must grasp the principles and the causes."[Meta Book IV Chapter 2]
[xv] See 'Socratic Metaphysics' (Juliana Hunt for Terry Penner, Spring 1994) for a broader discussion of this point.
[xvi] He shows this in Symposium, for instance, where Diotima asks Socrates, "Is the wish and the desire [for happiness] common to all? and do all men always desire their own good, or only some men?-what say you?" "All men," Socrates replied; "the desire is common to all." "Why, then," she rejoined, "are not all men, Socrates, said to love, but only some them? whereas you say that all men are always loving the same things." "I myself wonder," he said,-why this is." "There is nothing to wonder at," she replied; "the reason is that one part of love is separated off and receives the name of the whole, but the other parts have other names." "Give an illustration," I said. She answered me as follows: "There is poetry, which, as you know, is complex; and manifold. All creation or passage of non-being into being is poetry or making, and the processes of all art are creative; and the masters of arts are all poets or makers." "Very true." "Still," she said, "you know that they are not called poets, but have other names; only that portion of the art which is separated off from the rest, and is concerned with music and metre, is termed poetry, and they who possess poetry in this sense of the word are called poets." "Very true," I said. "And the same holds of love. For you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is only the great and subtle power of love; but they who are drawn towards him by any other path, whether the path of money-making or gymnastics or philosophy, are not called lovers -the name of the whole is appropriated to those whose affection takes one form only-they alone are said to love, or to be lovers." In the translation by Tom Griffith it is more clearly said: "We abstract a part of love, and call it by the name of the whole--love--and then for the other parts we use different names."[205b3]
[xvii] Considering several senses of substance in Z3, Aristotle distinguishes matter and form from essence, universal, genus, and substratum (1028b33-36); by substratum we mean "that of which everything else is predicated while it is itself not predicated of anything else" (1028b38); "in one sense" this involves matter(bronze)/shape(pattern of its form)/compound("the statue, the concrete whole"(1029a51)); if form is prior to matter, and therefore more real, then it will be prior to the compound of both for the same reason (1029a5); the "nature of substance" outlined, that about which all else is predicated (1029a8), but "not enough" to say this, for it is obscure and because "matter becomes substance" on this view (1029a10), when three dimensions taken away, it seems like there is nothing left, "evidently nothing but matter remains" (1029a12), "to those who consider the question thus, matter alone must seem to be substance" (1029a18), meaning 'matter' in the sense of neither a particular thing nor a certain quantity nor any other category (1029a22), for these are predicated of substance, and substance is predicated of matter (1029a24), from this view, particular things or particular quantities will not be considered "the ultimate substratum" (1029a24-25), if we take this point of view, matter will seem to be substance, but this is impossible (1029a26), for substance has 'thisness' and seperability (Z3.1029a28); so form and compound of form and matter would seem a better candidate than matter for substance (Z3.1029a30); [but earlier stated that, if form is prior to matter, and therefore more real, it will be prior to the compound of both for the same reason (Z3.1029a5)]; the compound is posterior and its "nature is obvious", and therefore can be dismissed (1029a31); but form is perplexing.(Z3.1029a35)
[xviii] "Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change)."[Book I/Chapter 3] "...the final cause is an end, and that sort of end which is not for the sake of something else, but for whose sake everything else is; so that if there is to be a last term of this sort, the process will not be infinite; but if there is no such term, there will be no final cause, but those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it (yet no one would try to do anything if he were not going to come to a limit); nor would there be reason in the world; the reasonable man, at least, always acts for a purpose, and this is a limit; for the end is a limit."[Meta Book II/Chap 2]
[xix]We are seeking the cause (1041a26-28), the essence, in some cases, the end (1041a29), in other cases, the first mover (1041a30), "for this is also a cause", in case of generation and distinction, we seek the efficient cause, and in case of being, the final cause (1041a32)]; Unless one term is predicated of another, object of inquiry is easily missed (1041a32), e.g. what man is, "because we do not distinguish and do not say definitely that certain elements make up a certain whole" (1041b); we must articulate then our meaning before inquiry (or else on broader line between search for something and for nothing (1041b5), "we must have the existence of the thing as something given", then the question is, "why the matter is some definite thing" (1041b4), "Because that which was the essence of a house is present" (1041b5); "Therefore, what we seek is the cause, i.e. the form, by reason of which the matter is some definite thing; and this is the substance of the thing."(1041b8-9)
[xx] Though as Socrates said in Timaeus, "The lover of intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes of intelligent nature first of all, and secondly, of those things which, being moved by others, are compelled to move others."[Timaeus]
[xxi] In Z16, Aristotle says some substances exist only as potencies, parts of animals, earth, fire, air, none exist separately, when are separate, lose unity, only matter (1040b10), so exists only potentially (1040b15); unity/being used alike, no universal exists apart from individuals (1040b27); universal exists only when instantiated [Cat 14a7-10]; Forms can have separate existence, if substance (1040b30), but not right to say "one over many is a form" (1040b31), some say this because cannot declare what such substances are, "the imperishable substances which exist apart from individual and sensible substances" (1040b34), so say same as perishable things, because we know these, man or horse itself, adding 'itself', but even if don't know what nonsensible substances there are, still doubtless are some (1041a4); therefore, no universal term is a name of a substance, no substance is composed of substances (1041a5); Int.7 17a38-b1 by universal I mean what is naturally predicated of more than one thing; Meta 1040b25-6 universal can be in more than one place at one time.
[xxii] Alan Sidelle, Seminar on Aristotle's Metaphysics VII, University of Wisconsin, Madison: Spring 1994.
[xxiii] Z15 two senses of substance (1029b20), 1. formula w/matter (Ross "concrete"/ Furth "composite"), 2. formula generally; formula w/matter capable of destruction and generation, but the general formula cannot be destroyed or come to be, for only 'this' house comes to be and is destroyed, not 'being house' (1039b25), therefore formulae in this latter sense both are and are not (1039b26), as at Z8, only matter and form together make a 'this', and are thus generated and destroyed; For the same reason, particular perceptibles cannot be defined or proved (1039b27), i.e. because they have matter, which comes and goes, and therefore might either be or not be (1039b30); we can only have opinion of particular perceptibles then, not knowledge (1039b34), and therefore there will be neither definition or demonstration (1040a, 1040a5); [as he says in the Physics, "It would be absurd to try to show that nature exists...to demonstrate the evident by means of the obscure is the mark of a man who cannot judge what is and what is not in itself knowable...The result of such a procedure is that one is talking about mere names, without there being any object for one's thought"(Physics, Book II);] "formulae remain in the soul unchanged", but parishing things are obscure when they pass from perception (1040a3); it is not possible to define such things (1040a7); Nor is it possible to define an Idea (1040a8); Ideas, as some conceive of them, are particular and separate [Furth], "individual and can exist apart" [Ross](1040a9); Formula must necessarily be composed of words (1040a10), which are not invented, but common to all (1040a12), so they must apply to other things too (as in defining 'you' one might use 'animal', 'lean', 'pale', and other terms with apply to more than you (1040a13), if someone objects that together the attributes/elements apply to only one, we'd reply that they belong to both elements first, which are prior in being and not destroyed when the compound is (1040a23) ['two-footed animal' belongs to two-footed and animal, which still exist with or without the compound (1040a16)]; This is also true with eternal entities, "even necessarily" (1040a19), since elements are prior to and parts of a compound, "nay more, they can exist apart, if 'man' can exist apart" (1040a19), either neither or both can, if neither element or compound can exist apart, then the genus (animal) will not exist apart from the species (man), but if it does, the differentiae (two-footedness) will also; Again (at 1040a23-24) if ideas consist of ideas, (and they must, since elements are simpler than compounds) then necessarily elements of ideas should be predicated of many subjects (1040a25), or else how would they be known? every idea can be shared (1040a27); as said earlier, it escapes notice that definition of eternal things is impossible (at least if they are particulars, individuals, especially if unique, like the sun or moon), again error by defining by addition of attributes not necessary to sun [which is to say, that the sun would survive without, e.g. going around the earth], and by mentioning attributes that belong to other things, the formula therefore is general, Socrates and the sun are "supposed to be" individuals (1040b).
[xxiv] "For this reason, also, there is neither definition of nor demonstration about sensible individual substances, because they have matter whose nature is such that they are capable both of being and of not being; for which reason all the individual instances of them are destructible. If then demonstration is of necessary truths and definition is a scientific process, and if, just as knowledge cannot be sometimes knowledge and sometimes ignorance, but the state which varies thus is opinion, so too demonstration and definition cannot vary thus, but it is opinion that deals with that which can be otherwise than as it is, clearly there can neither be definition of nor demonstration about sensible individuals."[Book VII/Chap 15] "Nor is it possible to define any Idea. For the Idea is, as its supporters say, an individual, and can exist apart; and the formula must consist of words; and he who defines must not invent a word (for it would be unknown), but the established words are common to all the members of a class; these then must apply to something besides the thing defined."[Book VII/Chap 15] "If, on the one hand, there is nothing apart from individual things, and the individuals are infinite in number, how then is it possible to get knowledge of the infinite individuals? For all things that we come to know, we come to know in so far as they have some unity and identity, and in so far as some attribute belongs to them universally."[Metaphysics: Book IIV/Chapter 4] "[H]ow will knowing exist, if there is not to be something common to a whole set of individuals?"[Metaphysics: Book /Chapter 4] "If there is nothing apart from individuals, there will be no object of thought, but all things will be objects of sense, and there will not be knowledge of anything, unless we say that sensation is knowledge. Further, nothing will be eternal or unmovable; for all perceptible things perish and are in movement. But if there is nothing eternal, neither can there be a process of coming to be; for there must be something that comes to be, i.e. from which something comes to be, and the ultimate term in this series cannot have come to be, since the series has a limit and since nothing can come to be out of that which is not...there must be something besides the concrete thing, viz. the shape or form."[Book III/Chapter 4]
[xxv] However, such an individual being compound of 'matter' and 'form' complicates the question further. The whole of a compound is one (not like a heap, but like a syllable, which is not its elements [e.g. B and A], as flesh is not fire and earth (1041b15), when separated the whole no longer exists, but elements still do; the syllable and flesh is something else, besides elements, either an element itself, or composed of elements, compound; if element itself ["that into which a thing is divided and which is present in it as matter", as a and b are the elements of the syllable" (1041b33)], then infinite regress (1041b22), if compound, then same as syllable and flesh (1041b24), no longer exists if elements are separated, though elements still do; this "something else" then is the cause which makes this flesh and that a syllable (1041b26); this is the substance then, the "primary cause of its being" (1041b27); not an element, but a principle.[End Z17]
[xxvi] Three conditions for being 'present in' (Cat chap 12) prior in time, does not reciprocate, secondary depends on primary, which is thus causal. Thus (the argument goes) universal man, a secondary substance, is dependent on particulars like Socrates, which is primary (Cat 2b); if no particulars, then no universals (Cat). Substance, "in the truest and primary and most definite sense of the word" is that which is neither predicate of or present in a subject, e.g. individual man or horse (Cat5 2b14); "entities which underlie everything else" (Cat5 2b15-17); "and are the subject of".(Cat5 2b39) However, in a secondary sense, we also call things 'substance' within which the primary substances are included, that is, nested, e.g. species (man), genera (animal)(Cat5 2a16); As noted earlier, everything except primary substance is either "predicated of" or "present in" a primary substance (Cat5 2a34); of "things themselves", some are "predicated of" a subject, but never "present in" a subject [not "present in" as parts to whole but incapable of existence apart (Cat2 1a18-22)] as 'man' is predicated of individual man, but never present in; then again some things are "present in" a subject, but never "predicated of" a subject, such as grammatical knowledge or whiteness, for "color requires a material basis" (Cat2 1a27); others are both "predicated of" and "present in" a subject, as knowledge is present in a mind and predicated of grammar (1b); and lastly, some things are neither "present in" or "predicated of" of a subject, such as an individual man or horse (1b5) But in a secondary sense, we also call things 'substance' within which the primary substances are included, e.g. species (man), genera (animal)(Cat5 2a16); the individual is included in species 'man' and genus 'animal'(2a20), therefore both the name and the definition of species 'man' are "predicated of" the individual (Cat5 2a25), but neither name or definition is predicated of "that in which they are present" (e.g. white is not predicated of a body in definition, though it may be called that by name)(Cat5 2a30-33); of secondary substances, for reasons shown at Cat3 1b22, "species are more truly substances than genus" (Cat5 2b7-10), again, species may be more truly substance than genus (Cat5 2b22); but no species is more truly substance than another (Cat5 2b22); no primary substance is more truly substance than another (Cat5 2b27); species and genera alone secondary substances (Cat5 2b30); convey knowledge of primary substances (Cat5 2b31); we define individuals by stating species or genus (Cat5 2b32), more exact with species than genus (Cat5 2b34), all other things irrelevant to definition (e.g. white, runs, etc.) so these alone (with primary substance) should be called substance (Cat5 2b37); primary substance underlie and are the subject of everything else (Cat5 2b39); what we say of the individual holds true for species and genus (Cat5 3a5); About nestedness--"all which is predicable of a predicate is also predicable of the subject, e.g. 'man' is predicable of individual man, but animal is predicable of 'man', therefore of individual, who is both 'man' and 'animal' (Cat3 1b15); with different genus, the differentiae which distinguish species are different in kind, as with 'animal' and 'knowledge', different species of knowledge are not distinguished by being two-footed, winged, aquatic, etc. (Cat3 1b19); but when one genus is subordinate to (nested within) another, they may have the same differentiae (Cat3 1b20); "the greater class is predicated of the lessor" (Cat3 1b22), so all differentiae of the predicate will be differentiae of the subject too (Cat3 1b23). "species are more truly substances than genus" (Cat5 2b7-10), more nearly related to primary, more instructive account of the individual ('man', rather than 'animal', 'tree' rather than plant), more specific, less general (Cat5 2b12); if there were no individual man to predicate about, there would be no 'species' man (Cat5 2b5); same relation between species and genus as between primary and secondary substance (Cat5 2b19; Cat5 3a)), and between subject and predicate (Cat5 2b20).
[xxvii] "[E]ntities which underlie everything else" (Cat5 2b15-17]; "and are the subject of" all else (Cat5 2b39); primary substance underlie and are the subject of everything else (Cat5 2b39).
[xxviii] In Book III Chapter 1 of the Metaphysics, Aristotle asks "are numbers and lines and figures and points a kind of substance or not, and if they are substances are they separate from sensible things or present in them?" "[W]hile most of the philosophers and the earlier among them thought that substance and being were identical with body, and that all other things were modifications of this, so that the first principles of the bodies were the first principles of being, the more recent and those who were held to be wiser thought numbers were the first principles. As we said, then, if these are not substance, there is no substance and no being at all; for the accidents of these it cannot be right to call beings.... if on the one hand body is in the highest degree substance, and on the other hand these things are so more than body, but these are not even instances of substance, it baffles us to say what being is and what the substance of things is..."[Meta 3 Chapter 5] [From text] Generally, that which is individual and has unity is never predicated of, but in some cases may be "present in" a subject, as grammatical knowledge is present in the mind.(Cat2 1b9) "But perhaps the universal, while it cannot be substance in the way in which the essence is so, can be present in this; e.g. 'animal' can be present in 'man' and 'horse'. Then clearly it is a formula of the essence. And it makes no difference even if it is not a formula of everything that is in the substance; for none the less the universal will be the substance of something, as 'man' is the substance of the individual man in whom it is present, so that the same result will follow once more; for the universal, e.g. 'animal', will be the substance of that in which it is present as something peculiar to it."(Z13 1038b20)
[xxix] Apparently, then as now, "mathematics has come to be identical with philosophy for modern thinkers, though they say that it should be studied for the sake of other things..."[Meta Book I/ Chap 9]
[xxx] "[C]auses are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change)."[Book I/Chapter 3]
[xxxi] In Z17, Aristotle begins by taking "another starting-point" from which to get "a clear view...of that substance which exists apart from sensible substances"(1041a6-9) from the starting point that "substance is a principle and a cause" (1041a10), to ask "why a thing is itself" is a meaningless inquiry (1041a15), because the fact or existence of the thing must already be evident (1041a17), given (1041a18-19) in all such questions, why the man is man or musician musical (1041a18) "'because each thing is inseparable from itself, and its being one just means this'" (1041a19), "this...common to all things" is a short and easy way with the answer (1041a19-20) [connect 1030a20, "being is common to all things"(1041a20)]; but can ask "why man is an animal of such and such a nature" (1041a20), not asking why a man is a man, asking "why something is predicable of something", or else an inquiry into nothing (1041a23), [same as, why does it thunder? why is sound produced in the clouds? (1041a24) why are these bricks and stones a house?]
[xxxii] See "Socratic Metaphysics", Juliana Hunt [Penner; Spring 1994] for discussion of what Socrates has to say about that which falls between our words.
[xxxiii] Plato's PARMENIDES, translated by Francis McDonald Cornford.