Category — Hellenic

“Epic poetry and Tragedy, Comedy also and Dithyrambic poetry, and the music of the flute and of the lyre in most of their forms, are all in their general conception modes of imitation“. — Aristotle, The Poetics

Notes on the Matter-Form Ground Motive (from Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture)

1. The Matter-Form ground motive is historically in alliance with the Roman Imperium (p. 15).

2. The Matter-Form ground motive is prior to, yet continues to operate in both Roman Catholicism and modern Humanism (p. 16). 

3. The central idea of the Matter religion is the deification of a formless, cyclical stream of life (Dionysian). According to Frederick Copleston, the cyclical notion of time cannot be found in Aristotle. Copleston is an Aristotelean expert, so I take him at his word. However, it was Aristotle who first employed the Matter-Form construction. He possessed a more refined notion of matter (is that an oxymoron?), but nonetheless, it was still based in a purely biotic aspect of reality. Matter can be defined as blind, incalculable fate, with no traceable, rational order. Decay and change, or alteration, are central notions as well. 

4. The central idea of the Form religion is cultural order, based in harmony, form & measure. The emphasis is upon aesthetic and formative power. This was the official religion of the polis (p. 17). Design and technological aspects of experience are elevated to the central motive of life and society (Apollonian). Beauty, form, health, design and cultural refinement are some of the notions inherent in this religion. Vitality and life are esteemed as values. Death is viewed in a superficial way. 

5. The dialectic between these two aspects is relative in the temporal plane. They are not at absolute odds, and instead are relative to one another. But raised to the level of religious absolutes, as they are in the Matter-Form ground motive, they become antithetical. “With intrinsic necessity, the ground motive of the culture religion called forth its counterpart” (p. 18). They are mutually supportive and correlative under the C-F-R ground motive.

6. The inner tension and “puzzle” of the dialectic that exists between these two poles was called μοῖρα by the Greeks. This morphed into the notion of the three Fates. Man in the midst of this tension, and subject to μοῖρα is the basis for much of the Classic Hellenic literature and philosophical speculations. 

My question: Where are we today? Are we just a massive conglomeration of all preceding Ground-Motives, every one vying for dominance, pushing us this way and that? Is pluralism just the Freedom pole of the Nature-Freedom ground motive, or is it an expression of every preceding ground motive seeking for the absolute centrality? Or, something else altogether?  

Some final thoughts.

The value of Aristotle’s Metaphysics

1. A recognition of the sensual mediation of life. Even reading is a sensate action. Everything is mediated to us through the five senses.

2. The place of ostensive definition in the development of understanding (sensate aspect), in relation to the linguistic aspect of experience. Aristotle recognizes the place of prior knowledge in the learning process, however, the limiting nature of his theory of knowledge would exclude a linguistic a priori meaning.

3. The recognition that the religious absolute, or First Cause, is the determiner of everything. To know this is to know. This is the first problem of philosophy: what is absolute?

Aristotle’s answers to the three problems of philosophy:

1. “What is absolute?” Matter-Substance-Being, in our temporal plane of existence. It is true that Being precedes Meaning in regards to the relationship between the Creator and the creature. The Triune God is a being that determines all meaning. However, He lives outside of space and time, and is not subject to them. Therefore in our temporal sphere of existence, the Triune God mediates His authority to us through revelation. Aristotle puts Being first in the temporal sphere. What he has done is absolutize one of the legitimate modal aspects of our experience. In this case it is the biotic aspect (the Hellenic Dionysian pole). Likewise, he has asserted that Form is subject to it. This is a subordination of the cultural or formative aspect of classical Greek society (the Apollonian pole). Man is matter and form, but he is also subject to matter in regards to all of life. Everything is determined by matter. The dualism created by the elevation of one pole over the other cannot be maintained, for they are set up as antithetical to one another. The relative has been made the absolute.

2. “Where does thought begin?” Thought begins with Matter, and has an affective pressure on the five senses. We begin with individual things, and proceed from them to universals. There are elements of truth to this, however, this is the extent of Aristotle’s epistemology, and it cannot explain the origin and nature of language, nor give any real meaning to the world in which we find ourselves. He realizes that we must assume meaning in propositions, and explains as much with the law of non-contradiction. But, he cannot, via this method, get at what he hopes. Aristotle must assume a concrete meaning exists, prior to even discovering the meaning itself. There is no rational justification for this assumption in his system. Why should meaning exist? There can be no reasonable reply.

3. “Who am I?” I am simply matter and form. But these two elements exist as polar opposites, warring with one another for dominance. If one is asserted as the dominant pole, the other will be eclipsed or destroyed. If I am purely matter, then I am of no inherent value, save what I might be able to perform or act out, if I am free. If I am not free, I am free to be used and abused by others as a useful piece of matter until such time I am no longer useful; i.e. old age, decrepitude, mental illness, etc. As matter, I may be used for whatever purpose others more powerful than me deem fit; i.e. tissue for medical purposes, organs, food, etc. I will whistle in the dark in the hope that a normative ethic can be derived from Being.

Book XII

§7 “Life is the actuality of the mind, and god is that actuality, and his independent actuality is the best life and eternal life”. 

“God is an eternal and most excellent living being, so that continuous and eternal life belong to him. For that is what god is”. 

Concerning god: “If it is thinking of nothing, what is there that is noble in this? It will be like someone who is asleep. If it is thinking, but there is something else that determines its thinking, its substance will not be thought but a potency for thought, and it will no longer be the best substance, since its value belongs to it by virtue of its thinking”. 

God is “thinking upon thinking”. God is “mind” (νοῦς). 

“The mind and its object are not different in the case of things that have no matter, they will be the same, and thought will be one with the object of thought”. 

First thoughts: Aristotle has said repeatedly up to this point that matter, substance, essence, being and truth are really the same thing. And, things without matter are non-being, they do not exist. He is now suggesting that god is pure mind, and has no substance. The immediate conclusion is that, there is no god (which was Heidegger’s reading). However, he seems to be putting god into the category of pure form, as self-referential thinking. I am not certain of this, but otherwise we are left with an irresolvable paradox. But then again, perhaps this is the case. Aristotle has created a philosophy that might very well be at war with itself. It is a futility. 

If nothing else we are left with a god that is:
1. Indifferent to anything but himself.
2. Uninvolved in anything but himself.
3. Ignorant of anything but himself.
4. Distinguished as thought.

The notion that mind is non-matter, and thus one with god will be later adopted by Siger of Brabant (1235-1282), called the Oneness of the Intellect doctrine. He was accused of being a “heterodox Aristotelean”, but it seems to me that he was spot on. He was simply following Aristotle to the logical conclusion. 

Eckhart (1262-1328), another Medieval scholastic, went so far as to say that God does not exist, because God is pure intellect, which has no place in time. Again, he was simply being consistent with Aristotelean thought. 

Rather than ending with the Blessed Trinity, Aristotle ends with a non-god, wholly removed from the world of men. This is where all Aristotelean imagining ends when it is truly honest and consistent. Forcing Aristotle backwards, from temporal Being to the Triune God is an impossibility. We can only end where he did if we follow the same track of thinking. Autonomous thought is a ratio abumbrata. 

Book VI

§1
“All causes must be eternal , but especially these, since they are the causes of such divine objects as are visible”. 

Basic propositions:
1. Causes include Being and Essence, as well as Matter and Substratum of Matter, etc.
2. The material world is eternal.
3. The material world is divine.
4. There is a hierarchy of Being, but all is eternal.

Book VII

§1
“Substance is primary; it is primary in definition, primary in knowledge, and primary in time”. 

“And , indeed, the question that was raised long ago, is raised now, and always will be raised and puzzled about— namely, “What is being?”— is really the same as the question, “What is substance?” 

§3
“…matter is substance.”

§6
“The individual and the essence…are one and the same thing”.
“The essence is the same as the individual”.

Basic propositions:
1. All meaning originates in substance. It is the dictator of every value, definition and purpose in our temporal existence.
2. The question of Being is the key and most essential question. For to determine Being is to determine what is absolute.
3. Being is matter, is substance, is essence. They are the same thing.
4. The individual thing is its own definition. Meaning does not come before it, but follows from it. The meaning of a thing is in itself. This is the foundation of later Medieval Nominalism. 

First thoughts:
Aristotle is not an atheist, as is suggested by Heidegger. Rather, he places the material world at the center of all authority. His question, “What is Being?” can be rephrased as “What has absolute authority?” Or, “Who or what is the dictator of everything- the starting place of knowledge, and of value?” This is a perennial question, one of the three primary problems of philosophy. Aristotle has answered plainly that it is the world around us, the eternal kosmos. He has chosen the Hylomorphic pole of Matter over Form. 

Modern Atheism has come to define itself according to a purely materialistic perspective which has no god. But the Biblical understanding of Atheism is not the absence of any god, but the rejection of the One True God for another authority. Man will always have a god, as he is religious at his very core. The old playground question, “Who said?” is still the issue of our day. Aristotle depersonalized it into “What said?” Reframing the question so that the doctrine seems different, does not empty the notion of worship. 

Book IV

§1 As compared to the science of “being qua being” all other sciences “cut off a bit of being, and then study its attributes”. Aristotle seeks to study “being as a whole”, that is, reality as a whole. In the structure of reality, Aristotle asserts Being as the central determining factor of all other perspectives.

§4 The impossibility of being and non-being in regards to the same things. This is a principle that needs no proof, and is self-justifying according to Aristotle. “Of all the principles this is the least open to question”. The law of non-contradiction. 

§6 Aristotle proves his assertion made in §4. Basic propositions:
1. “The starting point of demonstration is not a demonstration”.
2. There are no reasons that can be given for first principles.
3. The men who refuse first principles because there is no demonstrative proof, are “compelled to say that this is not true in itself but only to the person who perceives it”. In other words, refusing the premise of the law of non-contradiction, we are left with a pure subjectivism: “what’s true for you is true: what’s true for me is true”. The impossibility of this is explained in §7, below.
4. “The most indisputable of all beliefs is that it is not possible for contradictories to be true at the same time, to indicate what are the consequences of saying that they can be true, and to explain why people maintain this view”.

§7 Heraclitus suggested that “Everything is and is not” (everything is true).
Anaxagoras suggested that “There is something intermediate between contradictories” (everything is false, or “there is no truth”). 

Aristotle responds: “The man that says everything is true makes the view opposed to his own true, and thus makes his own view not true since his opponent does not think that his view is true; and, the man who says everything is false is making his own view false as well”.  

First thoughts: Aristotle is not presenting the law of non-contradiction in a vacuum, but is attempting to prove his theory of Being. What he is suggesting, and will further elaborate in Book XII, is that mind and substance are one, and that the very act of thought is an actuality of substance (“life is the actuality of mind”– Book XII, §7). Thus, to display the law of non-contradiction as contrarily impossible is to display the Truth of Being. It is an elegant argument. However, placing Being/Substance/Matter as the dictating absolute may not be a sure justification for the Law of Non-contradiction. The connection between thought and substance must be assumed, even prior to the proof suggested. 

Book 2, §1

Basic propositions:
1. Truth is multifaceted although it is One.
2. Through joint contributions by many people something substantial emerges.
3. Philosophy is defined as knowledge of the truth.
4. The Cause of things is truth.
5. Everything has as much Truth as it has Being.
Cause, truth and being are identified. This is Aristotle’s absolute, the ultimate authority. 

Book 2, §3

Basic propositions:
1. “Our attitude towards what we listen to is determined by our habits”.
2. There is the science itself (perception or actual subject?), and…
3. There is a particular way in which knowledge of the science should be acquired.
4. “To approach every subject with mathematical rigor is wrongheaded”. 

First thoughts:
Aristotle identifies truth as being. Once again, here is his affirmation that this is the ground of all knowledge. He begins to introduce the idea of an aspectual approach to truth, suggesting that there are limits to knowledge in regard to certain things. Not every object or thing will present the full range of information that we might expect, as not every thing can be analyzed according to an assumed perspective. He discusses the aspect of number. This is an obvious jab at the Pythagoreans who assumed that things are numbers. 

Our perceptions of the Truth are shaped by the basic questions we ask or assume as we approach it. This can be looked at in a number of ways: as the pre-theoretical (which I think Aristotle assumes to be the Form-Matter motive) or as the intention of a person as they do their work (the cultural/ formative aspect), ie an artist will look at an apple differently (aesthetic) than a nutritionist (biotic), or a hungry man for that matter. It seems Aristotle is here talking of the latter approach, which is the basis for the distinction in vocation and the sciences. I use sciences in the broad sense of the word. I may be wrong in imputing this much to Aristotle at this point. But I believe he understood the variety of ways in which a thing could be perceived, although Truth is known only by those who understand Being. Every other sort of perception is secondary in his mind. Here is the beginning of the caste system of vocation and work. 

Metaphysics, Book 1, § 3

According to Aristotle, to know is to know first causes. This is real knowledge. He lists the four causes (aitia). (His idea is also explained in Physics, Book 2, § 3)
1. The being and essence of a thing; what it is for a thing to be what it is. The silver in a cup or the bronze in a statue are the essence of the thing (material cause). This “cause” leads us to differentiate between the objects of our temporal horizon. [physical aspect]

2. The form or pattern. This exists in an analogous relationship to the thing. Aristotle uses the example of the ratio 2:1 as the form of the octave in music. It seems that this descriptive form is the one step toward the “idea” and the language we employ to describe the thing; it is a step towards abstraction, as the first cause is a step toward differentiation. It seems to me to be a mediated cause. It can exist in the mind of the maker or shaper of things (formal cause). [formative aspect- culture, history, deliberate shaping as well as biotic aspect] Once the form is applied to the thing, for example, the rubber and steel are combined to make a tyre, the form becomes intrinsic. Or, once the egg and sperm meet, the form of a person emerges. 

3. The source of movement. Movement is ambiguous, a better term is change; as this entails not just a spacial idea but also the decay and regeneration we see all around us. There are four types of motion (kinêsis): substantial; qualitative; quantitative and spacial. [biotic aspect; as well as kinematic]

4. The teleological or final cause. This is the reason why a thing exists, the purpose it serves. This is the goal of all generation and movement. This is the foundation of Aristotle’s ethics. Everything that exists, exists for a “good” purpose. [ethical aspect]

First thoughts:
In each of the four the cause is intrinsic to the thing. This is where Aristotle departs from Plato, who asserted the existence of forms as a transcendent entities. Aristotle goes so far as to suggest that the form exists in the mind of the maker of the thing, but the mind too is a material within his schema. He critiques Plato’s views in §9 of the Metaphysics through a reductio argument. Immanence is one of the key factors in the Aristotelean system; everything we know as well as how we know is determined by the context of our temporal existence. 

Aristotle implies a hierarchy, with Matter as the dominate cause. This stands in direct contradiction to Plato who placed the Forms at the top. However, despite the ordering of the two poles, both men agreed that Matter, Form, Change and Telos make up the totality of our existence. Each man simply assumed the absolute nature of the one pole or the other. 

Switched over to the Philosophy of Aristotle, edited by Renford Bambrough, with translations by J.L. Creed and A.E. Wardman. I found the McKeon edition to be a bit stilted in the translation, full of unnecessary Latinisms and difficult syntax. The Bambrough edition is much easier to read and this makes it easier to absorb the actual ideas. Aristotle is difficult enough without having to overcome the obstacles of a bad translation. Like batting blindfolded. 

So, I am starting the Metaphysics first, rather than Analytica Posteriora. I have read a couple of professors’ comments on the differences between the two translations, and both have said the structure of Aristotle’s system is easier to grasp when following Bambrough’s edition. This seems to make sense, as Analytica assumes things that are explained in the Metaphysics. Simple enough. There are two good reasons for a switch to this edition. 

The Metaphysics approaches the question of the source of knowledge, how we know, or where thought begins. It opens with the assertion:
“All men by nature desire to have knowledge”. 

Here are the basic ideas in Book 1, §1:
1. Men delight in the five senses for their own sake.
2. Men delight most in the sense of sight, as it makes possible the process of distinction.
3. Many memories of the same thing produce the effect of a single experience.
4. Experience of things produces scientific knowledge, that is, knowledge of causes.
5. Experience is necessary for scientific knowledge but does not guarantee it.
6. “Perception by the senses form our most authoritative knowledge of individual things”. But, “they do not answer the question ‘why?’” They do not tell us why fire is hot, only that it is hot. 

Book 1, §2
1. The nature of science, i.e. real knowledge, is the study of causes.
2. Knowledge of causes is the basis for knowledge of all things, apart from knowledge of every particular. If one knows causes, one “knows” every instance of a thing, even apart from empirical knowledge.
3. Universals are the things most far removed from the five senses.
4. Universals are the things most knowable, that is, the most certain and unchanging.
5. Knowledge of causes may be beyond men, as we are enslaved to our nature (cf. Book 2, Part 1, for Aristotle’s description of man’s intellect as being like a bat’s eyes in response to daylight).
6. We do not come to know first principles from particulars*.
7. “God is agreed by all to be one of the causes of things and to be a first principle”. 

First thoughts:
Aristotle asserts that experience of particulars leads to universal judgments about those particular things. But, we can’t know their causes from the immediate experience of them, we must look for this elsewhere. This is an important distinction in the kinds of knowledge, of which he will later elaborate.  

Number 6 of Part 2 stands in direct opposition to the caricature of Aristotle that we know in the West. I have known him as the Apostle of the Particulars, but here he asserts that they are not the basis for knowledge of the first principles or causes. He seems to be creating a contradictory or paradox, as he asserts in Part 1 that experience of things leads to scientific knowledge. In fact, first causes are discovered through a negative argumentation, by way of denial rather than by way of positive assertion. In other words, a “if this is not the case…” reductio approach to arguing. This is explained later in Book 4, Part 4. The assumption of the Four Causes is predicated on the impossibility of it being otherwise. Men philosophize out of a sense of wonder at the way things are, but find their way blocked by their own darkened intellect. Desire for knowledge pushes us to find the solution in another way. Paul’s description of men as “groping” for the truth seems like an appropriate description of A’s wrestling.

In all of this, Aristotle assumes that Immanent Being is the foundation for knowledge. This will become clearer further on in the book. Immanent Being dictates what & how we know.

*Note: I am banking on the assumption that this is a solid translation of the passage, and so until I get confirmation, the preceding thoughts are tentative. However, they do seem to fit with the rest of Aristotle’s argumentation. 

Reading McKeon’s translation of Aristotle. The three big questions of life have never really changed, although they may be asked in various ways. The following is just a basic outline of some introductory thoughts on Aristotle. This is to be taken lightly. 

The first is, “Who is in charge?” Rephrased it might sound like this: “What is absolute?” For Aristotle, temporal being was absolute. The temporal things lead through a chain of causation back to a singular Unmoved Mover, or ultimate cause. Material being prescribes the absolute, is in fact the absolute. Thus, absolute authority rests in the temporal horizon of existence. The question of living is a secondary question that is answered once this is determined. For the deciding authority makes the rules. For Aristotle, the primary authority within society was the collective of the state. 

The second big question is “How do we know?” Rephrased it might be “Where does thought begin?” For Aristotle thought begins within the temporal horizon, and is determined by the absolute beings of things. The five senses are employed in determining meaning, but the beings themselves possess intrinsic meaning that is simply discovered. 

The third question is “Who am I?” It is a question of self-knowledge. Again, the answer to this question, according to Aristotle, resides within the individual themselves. The being of man determines the meaning and identity of man. Form (within the temporal horizon) and matter provide the answers. Man may very well be just a featherless biped. But the good news is, man is an absolute, featherless biped.