Part 12

It is difficult to determine the relation between this first philosophy as the science of the ultimate ground of things, and that science which is ordinarily termed the logic of Aristotle, and which is exhibited in the writings bearing the name of the _Organon_. Aristotle himself has not accurately examined the relations of these two sciences, the reason of which is doubtless to be found in the incomplete form of the metaphysics. But since he has embraced them both under the same name of logic, since the investigation of the essence of things (VII. 17), and the doctrine of ideas (XIII. 5), are expressly called logical, since he repeatedly attempts in the Metaphysics (_Book_ IV.), to establish the logical principle of contradiction as an absolute presupposition for all thinking and speaking and philosophizing, and employs the method of argument belonging to that science which has to do with the essence of things (III. 2. IV. 3), and since, in fine, the categories to which he had already dedicated a separate book in the Organon are also discussed again in the Metaphysics (_Book_ V.), it follows that this much at least may be affirmed with certainty, that he would not absolutely separate the investigations of the Organon from those of the Metaphysics, and that he would not counsel the ordinary division of formal logic and metaphysics, although he has omitted to show more clearly their inner connection.

2. LOGIC.—The great problem both of the logical faculty and also of logic both as science and art, consists in this, viz., to form and judge of conclusions, and through conclusions to be able to establish a proof. The conclusions, however, arise from propositions, and the propositions from conceptions. According to this natural point of view, which lies in the very nature of the case, Aristotle has divided the content of the logical and dialectical doctrine contained in the different treatises of the Organon. The first treatise in the Organon is that containing the _categories_, a work which treats of the universal determinations of being, and gives the first attempt at an ontology. Of these categories Aristotle enumerates ten; essence, magnitude, quality, relation, the where, the when, position, habit, action, and passion. The second treatise (_de interpretatione_) investigates speech as the expression of thought, and discusses the doctrine of the parts of speech, propositions and judgments. The third are the analytic books, which show how conclusions may be referred back to their principles and arranged in order of their antecedence. The first Analytic contains in two books the universal doctrine of the Syllogism. Conclusions are according to their content and end either apodictic, which possess a certain and incontrovertible truth, or dialectic, which are directed toward that which may be disputed and is probable, or, finally, sophistic, which are announced deceptively as correct conclusions while they are not. The doctrine of apodictic conclusions and thus of proofs is given in the two books of the second Analytic, that of dialectic, is furnished in the eight books of the Topic, and that of sophistic in the treatise concerning “Sophistical Convictions.”

A closer statement of the Aristotelian logic would be familiar to every one, since the formal representations of this science ordinarily given, employ for the most part only the material furnished by Aristotle. Kant has remarked, that since the time of the Grecian sage, logic has made neither progress nor retrogression. Only in two points has the formal logic of our time advanced beyond that of Aristotle; first, in adding to the categorical conclusion which was the only one Aristotle had in mind, the hypothetical and disjunctive, and second, in adding the fourth to the first three figures of conclusion. But the incompleteness of the Aristotelian logic, which might be pardoned in the founder of this science, yet abides, and its thoroughly empirical method not only still continues, but has even been exalted to a principle by making the antithesis, which Aristotle did not, between the form of a thought and the content. Aristotle, in reality, only attempted to collect the logical facts in reference to the formation of propositions, and the method of conclusions; he has given in his logic only the natural history of finite thinking. However highly now we may rate the correctness of his abstraction, and the clearness with which he brings into consciousness the logical operation of the understanding, we must make equally conspicuous with this the want of all scientific derivation and foundation. The ten categories which he, as already remarked, has discussed in a separate treatise, he simply mentions, without furnishing any ground or principle for this enumeration; that there are this number of categories is only a matter of fact to him, and he even cites them differently in different writings. In the same way also he takes up the figures of the conclusion empirically; he considers them only as forms and determinations of relation of the formal thinking, and continues thus, although he allows the conclusion to stand for the only form of science within the province of the logic of the understanding. Neither in his Metaphysics nor in his Physics does he cite the rules of the formal methods of conclusion which he develops in the Organon, clearly proving that he has nowhere in his system properly elaborated either his categories or his analytic; his logical investigations do not influence generally the development of his philosophical thought, but have for the most part only the value of a preliminary scrutiny.

3. METAPHYSICS.—Among all the Aristotelian writings, the Metaphysics is least entitled to be called a connected whole; it is only a connection of sketches, which, though they follow a certain fundamental idea, utterly fail of an inner mediation and a perfect development. We may distinguish in it seven distinct groups. (1) Criticism of the previous philosophic systems viewed in the light of the four Aristotelian principles, _Book_ I. (2) Positing of the apories or the philosophical preliminary questions, III. (3) The principle of contradiction, IV. (4) Definitions, V. (5) Examination of the conception of essence (οὐσία) and conceivable being (the τί ἦν εἴναι) or the conception of matter (ὕλη), form (εἶδος), and that which arises from the connection of these two (σύνολον), VII. VIII. (6) Potentiality and actuality, IX. (7) The Divine Spirit moving all, but itself unmoved, XII. (8) To these we may add the polemic against the Platonic doctrine of ideas and numbers, which runs through the whole Metaphysics, but is especially carried out in _Books_ XIII. and XIV.

(1) _The Aristotelian Criticism of the Platonic Doctrine of Ideas._—In Aristotle’s antagonism to the Platonic doctrine of ideas, we must seek for the specific difference between the two systems, a difference of which Aristotle avails himself of every opportunity (especially _Metaph._ I. and XIII.) to express. Plato had beheld every thing actual in the idea, but the idea was to him a rigid truth, which had not yet become interwoven with the life and the movement of existence. Such a view, however, had this difficulty, the idea, however little Plato would have it so, found standing over against it in independent being the phenomenal world, while it furnished no principle on which the being of the phenomenal world could be affirmed. This Aristotle recognizes and charges upon Plato, that his ideas were only “immortalized things of sense,” out of which the being and becoming of the sensible could not be explained. In order to avoid this consequence, he himself makes out an original reference of mind to phenomenon, affirming that the relation of the two is, that of the actual to the possible, or that of form to matter, and considering also mind as the absolute actuality of matter, and matter, as the potentially mind. His argument against the Platonic doctrine of ideas, Aristotle makes out in the following way.

Passing by now the fact that Plato has furnished no satisfactory proof for the objective and independent reality of ideas, and that his theory is without vindication, we may affirm in the first place that it is wholly unfruitful, since it possesses no ground of explanation for being. The ideas have no proper and independent content. To see this we need only refer to the manner in which Plato introduced them. In order to make science possible he had posited certain substances independent of the sensible, and uninfluenced by its changes. But to serve such a purpose, there was offered to him nothing other than this individual thing of sense. Hence he gave to this individual a universal form, which was with him the idea. From this it resulted, that his ideas can hardly be separated from the sensible and individual objects which participate in them. The ideal duality and the empirical duality is one and the same content. The truth of this we can readily see, whenever we gain from the adherents to the doctrine of ideas a definite statement respecting the peculiar character of their unchangeable substances, in comparison with the sensible and individual things which participate in them. The only difference between the two consists in appending _per se_ to the names expressing the respective ideas; thus, while the individual things are _e. g._ man, horse, etc., the ideas are man _per se_, horse _per se_, etc. There is only this formal change for the doctrine of ideas to rest upon; the finite content is not removed, but is only _characterized_ as perpetual. This objection, that in the doctrine of ideas we have in reality only the sensible posited as a not-sensible, and endowed with the predicate of immutability, Aristotle urges as above remarked when he calls the ideas “immortalized things of sense,” not as though they were actually something sensible and spacial, but because in them the sensible individual loses at once its individuality, and becomes a universal. He compares them in this respect with the gods of the popular and anthropomorphical religion; as these are nothing but deified men, so the ideas are only things of nature endowed with a supernatural potency, a sensible exalted to a not-sensible. This identity between the ideas and their respective individual things amounts moreover to this, that the introduction of ideas doubles the objects to be known in a burdensome manner, and without any good results. Why set up the same thing over again? Why besides the sensible twofoldness and threefoldness, affirm a twofoldness and threefoldness in the idea? The adherents of the doctrine of ideas, when they posit an idea for every class of natural things, and through this theory set up two equivalent theories of sensible and not-sensible substances, seem therefore to Aristotle like men who think they can reckon better with many numbers than with few, and who therefore go to multiplying their numbers before they begin their reckoning. Therefore again the doctrine of ideas is a tautology, and wholly unfruitful of the explanation of being, “The ideas give no aid to the knowledge of the individual things participating in them, since the ideas are not immanent in these things, but separate from them.” Equally unfruitful are the ideas when considered in reference to the arising and departing of the things of sense. They contain no principle of becoming, of movement. There is in them no causality which might bring out the event, or explain the event when it had actually happened. Themselves without motion and process, if they had any effect, it could only be that of perfect repose. True, Plato affirms in his Phædon that the ideas are causes both of being and becoming, but in spite of the ideas, nothing ever _becomes_ without a moving; the ideas, by their separation from the becoming, have no such capacity to move. This indifferent relation of ideas to the actual becoming, Aristotle brings under the categories, potentiality and actuality, and farther says that the ideas are only potential, they are only bare possibility and essentiality because they are wanting in actuality.—The inner contradiction of the doctrine of ideas is in brief this, viz., that it posits an individual immediately as a universal, and at the same time pronounces the universal, the species, as numerically an individual, and also that the ideas are set up on the one side as separate individual substances, and on the other side as participant, and therefore as universal. Although the ideas as the original conceptions of species are a universal, which arise when being is fixed in existence, and the one brought out in the many, and the abiding is given a place in the changeable, yet can they not be defined as they should be according to the Platonic notion, that they are individual substances, for there can be neither definition nor derivation of an absolute individual, since even the word (and only in words is a definition possible) is in its nature a universal, and belongs also to other objects, consequently, every predicate in which I attempt to determine an individual thing cannot belong exclusively to that thing. The adherents of the doctrine of ideas, are therefore not at all in a condition to give an idea a conceivable termination; their ideas are indefinable.—In general, Plato has left the relation of the individual objects to ideas very obscure. He calls the ideas archetypes, and allows that the objects may participate in them; yet are these only poetical metaphors. How shall we represent to ourselves this “participation,” this copying of the original archetype? We seek in vain for more accurate explanations of this in Plato. It is impossible to conceive how and why matter participates in the ideas. In order to explain this, we must add to the ideas a still higher and wider principle, which contains the cause for this “participation” of objects, for without a moving principle we find no ground for “participation.” Alike above the idea (_e. g._ the idea of man), and the phenomenon (_e. g._ the individual man), there must stand a third common to both, and in which the two were united, _i. e._ as Aristotle was in the habit of expressing this objection, the doctrine of ideas leads to the adoption of a “third man.” The result of this Aristotelian criticism is the immanence of the universal in the individual. The method of Socrates in trying to find the universal as the essence of the individual, and to give definitions according to conception, was as correct (for no science is possible without the universal) as the theory of Plato in exalting these universal conceptions to an independent subsistence as real individual substances, was erroneous. Nothing universal, nothing which is a kind or a species, exists besides and separate from the individual; a thing and its conception cannot be separated from each other. With these principles Aristotle hardly deviated from Plato’s fundamental idea that the universal is the only true being, and the essence of individual things; it may rather be said that he has freed this idea from its original abstraction, and given it a more profound mediation with the phenomenal world. Notwithstanding his apparent contradiction to Plato, the fundamental position of Aristotle is the same as that of his master, viz., that the essence of a thing (τὸ τί ἐστιν, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) is known and represented in the conception; Aristotle however recognizes the universal, the conception to be as little separated from the determined phenomenon as form from matter, and essence or substance (οὐσία) in its most proper sense is, according to him, only that which cannot be predicated of another, though of this other every remaining thing may be predicated; it is that which is a this (τόδε τι), the individual thing and not a universal.

(2.) _The four Aristotelian principles or causes, and the relation of form and matter._—From the criticism of the Platonic doctrine of ideas arose directly the groundwork of the Aristotelian system, the determinations of matter (ὕλη), and form (εἶδος). Aristotle enumerates four metaphysical principles or causes: matter, form, moving cause, and end. In a house, for instance, the matter is the wood, the form is the conception of the house, the moving cause is the builder, and the end is the actual house. These four determinations of all being resolve themselves upon a closer scrutiny into the fundamental antithesis of matter and form. The conception of the moving cause is involved with the two other ideal principles of form and of end. The moving cause is that which has secured the transition of the incomplete actuality or potentiality to the complete actuality, or induces the becoming of matter to form. But in every movement of the incomplete to the complete, the latter antedates in conception this movement, and is its motive. The moving cause of matter is therefore form. So is man the moving and producing cause of man; the form of the statue in the understanding of the artist is the cause of the movement by which the statue is produced; health must be in the thought of the physician before it can become the moving cause of convalescence; so in a certain degree is medicine, health, and the art of building the form of the house. But in the same way, the moving or first cause is also identical with the final cause or end, for the end is the motive for all becoming and movement. The moving cause of the house is the builder, but the moving cause of the builder is the end to be attained, _i. e._ the house. From such examples as these it is seen that the determinations of form and end may be considered under one, in so far as both are united in the conception of actuality (ἐνέργεια), for the end of every thing is its completed being, its conception or its form, the bringing out into complete actuality that which was potentially contained in it. The end of the hand is its conception, the end of the seed is the tree, which is at the same time the essence of the seed. The only fundamental determinations, therefore, which cannot be wholly resolved into each other, are matter and form.

Matter when abstracted from form in thought, Aristotle regarded as that which was entirely without predicate, determination and distinction. It is that abiding thing which lies at the basis of all becoming; but which in its own being is different from every thing which has become. It is capable of the widest diversity of forms, but is itself without determinate form; it is every thing in possibility, but nothing in actuality. There is a first matter which lies at the basis of every determinate thing, precisely as the wood is related to the bench and the marble to the statue. With this conception of matter Aristotle prides himself upon having conquered the difficulty so frequently urged of explaining the possibility that any thing can become, since being can neither come out of being nor out of not-being. For it is not out of not-being absolutely, but only out of that which as to actuality is not-being, but which potentially is being, that any thing becomes. Possible or potential being is no more not-being than actuality. Every existing object of nature is hence but a potential thing which has become actualized. Matter is thus a far more positive substratum with Aristotle than with Plato, who had treated it as absolutely not-being. From this is clearly seen how Aristotle could apprehend matter in opposition to form as something positively negative and antithetic to the form, and as its positive denial (στέρησις).

As matter coalesces with potentiality, so does form coincide with actuality. It is that which makes a distinguishable and actual object, a this (τόδε τι) out of the undistinguished and indeterminate matter; it is the peculiar virtue, the completed activity, the soul of every thing. That which Aristotle calls form, therefore, is not to be confounded with what we perhaps may call shape; a hand severed from the arm, for instance, has still the outward shape of a hand, but according to the Aristotelian apprehension, it is only a hand now as to matter and not as to form: an actual hand, a hand as to form, is only that which can do the proper work of a hand. Pure form is that which, in truth, is without matter (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι); or, in other words, the conception of being, the pure conception. But such pure form does not exist in the realm of determined being; every determined being, every individual substance (οὐσία), every thing which is a this, is rather a totality of matter and form, a (σύνολον). It is, therefore, owing to matter, that being is not pure form and pure conception; matter is the ground of the becoming, the manifold, and the accidental; and it is this, also, which gives to science its limits. For in precisely the measure in which the individual thing bears in itself a material element is it uncognizable. From what has been said, it follows that the opposition between matter and form is a variable one, that being matter in one respect which in another is form; building-wood, _e. g._ is matter in relation to the completed house, but in relation to the unhewn tree it is form; the soul in respect to the body is form, but in respect to the reason, which is the form of form (εἶδος εἴδους) is it matter. On this standpoint the totality of all existence may be represented as a ladder, whose lowest step is a prime matter (πρώτη ὕλη), which is not at all form, and whose highest step is an ultimate form which is not at all matter, but is pure form (the absolute, divine spirit). That which stands between these two points is in one respect matter, and in another respect form, _i. e._ the former is ever translating itself into the latter. This position, which lies at the basis of the Aristotelian view of nature, is attained analytically through the observation that all nature exhibits the perpetual and progressive transition of matter into form, and shows the exhaustless and original ground of things as it comes to view in ever ascending ideal formations. That all matter should become form, and all that is potential should be actual, and all that is should be known, is doubtless the demand of the reason and the end of all becoming; yet is this actually impracticable, since Aristotle expressly affirms that matter as the antithesis, or denial of form, can never become wholly actualized, and therefore can never be perfectly known. The Aristotelian system ends thus like its predecessors, in the unsubdued dualism of matter and form.