A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

But there is another side to the syllogistic besides the deduction of proof or the explanation of empirical fact. This is the establishment of the premises. All deduction presupposes absolute premises. All deduction is grounded on something not deduced; all proof on something not proved; all explanation on something that has not been explained. These presuppositions are universal propositions that can be known only immediately through intuitions. Aristotle is not altogether clear as to what these intuitions are. He names such axioms as the law of contradiction and the law of the excluded middle, and some special propositions which apply only to particular sciences. Since the premises which we actually use are not open to proof, but only strengthened as to the validity of their application, we must use the method of induction in our search for them. We accumulate data from opinions and varied experiences, and then we ascend to a generalization which we take as a premise. The results of induction cannot therefore be in themselves certain. The results are only probable, and can have the character of knowledge only as they explain phenomena. Aristotle means by induction something different from the present use of the term. Induction in modern times means a kind of proof; Aristotle means a method of discovery ofrelatively universal terms where the absolutely universal cannot be obtained.

There is an ideal involved in this conception of logic that is interesting. In a perfectly intellectual society there would be a perfect science in which all particular facts could be derived with absolute certainty from premises absolutely known. Life and logic would be identical. We should then be certain not only as to our proof but as to our premises. Logic has sometimes been used very effectively in this way. When the mediæval church conceived its dogmas to be the ultimate premises of truth, it could deduce from them complete rules for living. To the mediæval mind the perfect science was formulated by deducing it from the dogma of the church. The dogmas were the absolute premises. The Renaissance did not doubt the infallibility of the traditional dogmas so much as the logical method, and Aristotle, who had been so long artificially identified with the proof of ecclesiastical dogma, was set aside.

Aristotle, moreover, showed great insight into the present relation of thought and reality. The sequence of facts in our experience, he pointed out, is exactly the reverse of what it is in reality. What is first in reality comes last in our experience, and what is first in our experience is last in reality. To illustrate: the mission of the Athenian State in the eternity of things did not appear until every event in its history had occurred. A perfect being would see the universal ground before the historical particulars derived from it, while we look from the particulars to their universal causes. Logic and metaphysics agree; but they stand in inverted parallelism to historical and psychological processes. Knowledge is a development from the sensesinto the Ideas, and yet, on the other hand, Aristotle never fails to remind us that this development is the expression of an idea which has been present from the beginning.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

1. Development is Purposeful. The conception of relation is, of course, quite as fundamental in Aristotle’s theory of metaphysics as in his logic. In logic knowledge of the particular is possible through its relationship to the universal; in metaphysics the relationship is the relationship of development—the particular has significance and value through the universal essence that unfolds from within it. If Aristotle shows genius for abstract thinking by becoming the “Father of Logic,” he shows equal genius for abstract thinking in his metaphysical conception of development. He believed that metaphysics applies the same conditions to things that logic discovers in thought. But in metaphysics the relationship is not the abstract relationship that Aristotle saw in Plato, but the vital relation of development in the life and change of nature.

We have already stated the fundamental principle in Aristotle’s teaching as an unfolding essence in phenomena. The unfolding is the relationship of development. Reality does not consist in the particular things of nature, nor in something outside nature, but in this essential linkage of the perceptual and conceptual in nature. As the world is spread out before us, it presents objects that are dynamic, however much they may appear to be static. Everywhere matter is in the process of forming. The world is a forming, not a formed nor a formless world. So, also, if you undertook to describe any individual object in the world, you would have todefine it as a forming or developing thing. A tree, for example, would not be adequately defined or described by enumerating its parts at any one moment; but you must describe it as a unitary organism developing from a seed. The reality of the world is the development of its meaning in its history; the same is true of the reality of any individual thing in the world. The world and the things therein have an unfolding essence.

The next point to be observed about Aristotle’s conception is that the relationship of development is between two terms. The individual must have two aspects: there must be that out of which the development is passing, and that into which it is passing. Aristotle calls these two aspects of development respectively Matter and Form. Every object of nature consists of Form and Matter, and these two terms have passed into history. To Aristotle everything is Matter becoming Form, or, in other words, Form realizing itself in Matter. The tree has its Matter which is becoming Formed, and its Form into which the Matter is growing. The principle which unites the two is development,—the principle of the individual. Matter, then, is the possibility or potentiality of an individual thing—it is the thing given potentially; Form is its actuality or reality. If you emphasize merely the stages in the development, you are regarding merely the occurrences; if, however, you emphasize the stages of development as aspects of a unity, you see its essence.

The relationship of development between two terms thus becomes under Aristotle’s hands the relation of purpose. Aristotle calls this self-realization of the essence in phenomena by the technical word entelechy, i. e. in opposition to the earlier conceptions of natureAristotle conceived nature teleologically. Teleology or purpose we found Plato using in his second draft of the Ideas, but more as a postulate than as an efficient means of explanation. Aristotle uses teleology as his positive fundamental principle of nature.

2. Aristotle’s Two Different Conceptions of Purpose. Aristotle illustrated his conception of the purposeful relation in nature from two very different types: (1) the development of organisms; (2) the development that takes place when an artisan moulds plastic material. Manifestly here are two different kinds of teleological activities. In organic growth the Form that realizes itself in Matter is immanent in the organism; the artist, on the other hand, superimposes the Form upon the plastic material. In the case of organisms Matter and Form are separable only by abstraction, and are only two aspects of a development which is identical from the beginning to the end; in the case of artistic construction the Matter is first a possibility existing by itself, and the purpose of the artist is later added unto it. In the case of organisms Aristotle speaks of two causes,—the material and the formal; in the case of artistic construction he employs four causes,—the material, the efficient, the formal, and the final. Aristotle did not expressly formulate these two different conceptions of purpose, but he completely applied them in practice. On the one hand he regarded individual things as self-realizing, and on the other he looked upon them as realized in other things. This seemingly harmless difference is really very fundamental, for it is the difference between Aristotle as he meant to be—Aristotle as the critic of Plato’s dualism—and Aristotle who reverts to Plato’s teaching. We find therefore two Aristotles;one a dynamic monist, the other a transcendent dualist. We cannot say that Aristotle as he meant to be is the true Aristotle, for he is a dualist in very many important doctrines.

Aristotle’s conception of purpose as exemplified by organisms is his original conception, and is what he intended to be the basis of his philosophy. Here the truly real is the individual determined by its own Form. It is the dynamic and not the artistic view of life. Activity is directed to an end not without but within itself. The individual is a complete organic unity at rest within itself. The individual is primarily the essence or substance. Of the ten categories which he enumerates, substance from this point of view is to Aristotle the most important. The nine other categories only describe the states or relations of the substance. The essence of the individual is the substance; and Aristotle conceives the substance as the species or universal in the thing. It is pointed out that even here Aristotle is guilty of a dualism in the double meaning in which he uses substance. But the conception of Aristotle here is of an immanent, dynamic reality. He has in mind the self-contained unity of the individual, whether that be a tree, a man, or the universe.