1
Rachel Barney
Method and Genre in Metaphysics A.3 (983a24-4b8)
Accounts
of
Metaphysics
A.3
often
begin
with
a
disclaimer:
Aristotle’s account of his precedecessors, we are warned, should
not be read as history, or as a history, of philosophy.1 Sometimes
explanation is provided by a gloss or contrast: Aristotle does not
do history ‘for its own sake’, ‘as an end in itself’ or ‘as such’.2
But I have always found this disclaimer somewhat puzzling. After
all, discussions of contemporary work in history of philosophy
1
A complication is that the phrase ‘history of philosophy’ can be used
in three quite different ways. The history of philosophy picks out a
subject-matter, the one treated in a history of philosophy. When neither
article is present, the phrase refers, I take it, to a broader family of
literary genres which deal with some part of that subject-matter, but not
necessarily in the mode of historical narrative: for instance one might
claim that Diadochai, Peri Haireseôn and biography are all ancient ways
of ‘doing history of philosophy’. I take the disclaimer to relate to both
the second and third senses: though he is writing about the history of
philosophy, Aristotle is not providing a history of philosophy, nor is he
‘doing history of philosophy’ in the broader sense. It is really this
last claim which is of interest to me here. My concern will be with the
term ‘history’ rather than philosophy: how far Aristotle’s predecessors
were in fact engaged in a project rightly called ‘philosophy’ is another
question altogether (see Mansfeld 1985c and Lloyd 1997 and 2002 for
different kinds of doubts, with the comments of Laks 2005). It seems
clear that Aristotle sees his story as one of a coherent enterprise to
which his own project of ‘first philosophy’ is heir (cf. Frede 2004).
2 “Aristotle is not, in any of the works we have, attempting to give a
historical account of earlier philosophy. He is using these theories as
interlocutors in the artificial debates which he sets up to lead
‘inevitably’ to his own solutions” (Cherniss 1935, xii cf. 349-50, 356-7,
cf. Ross 1958, vol. 1, 128, McDiarmid 1970, 180). Reale cites Schwegler
with qualified agreement: “il moderno concetto di storia della filosofia
è totalmente estraneo ad Aristotele” (1968 vol. 1, 151). Collobert,
exceptionally, treats the question as an open one, but in the end her
answer too seems to be a qualified no (2002, 294). Guthrie 1953 defends
Aristotle as a historian of philosophy; but this is not the same as
defending the claim that he is a historian of philosophy. In general, the
question of the genre of Metaphysics A.3 has been badly muddied by
evaluative controversies, regarding how far Aristotle is fair and
reliable as a source for earlier thought: I will be concerned here with
the former question only.
2
take for granted that it may be done with mixed motives and, quite
often, a powerful philosophical agenda, without being disqualified
from the genre ‘history’. Moreover the ‘end in itself’ requirement
seems impracticable. Indeed, if we factor in the possibility of
hidden agendas, self-deception and false consciousness, the genre
‘history of philosophy’ will threaten to evanesce in the familiar
way of the Kantian ideal which the phrase ‘end in itself’ recalls:
like the truly moral action, it may never have been instantiated
at all. An alternative gloss on the disclaimer is in terms of
objectivity.3 But this too becomes puzzling on reflection. What
precisely
should
objectivity
mean
in
relation
to
history
of
philosophy? Not, surely, philosophical neutrality, a refusal of
all
questionable
interpretations
or
judgements
of
value
--
no
intelligible work at all could issue from that. On the other hand,
if
by
objectivity
we
mean
interpretations and judgements
simply
the
desire
to
right, then it is no
get
one’s
longer so
obvious that A.3 fails to qualify.
More specific grounds for the disclaimer tend to run along
two lines. First, A.3ff. does not meet the norms applicable to
histories
of
philosophy:
Aristotle’s
account
is
self-serving,
schematic, gappy and tendentious. Puzzling again, since these are
the
failings
of
which
historians
of
philosophy
accuse
other
historians of philosophy when criticising their works as history
of philosophy. They cannot entail that a work falls out of the
3
E.g., “Jamais il n’adopte à leur égard l’attitude de l’historien de la
philosophie, qui se veut simplement objectif” (Mansion 1961, 75). One
could also infer this verdict from a much more sweeping disclaimer:
“Objective history of philosophy is a modern idea” (Mansfeld 1997, 107);
but this too should not be assumed without more defense and explanation
than is usually given. Of course, one might for some purposes want to
assume or stipulate a historicist understanding of literary form, so that
by definition nothing earlier than Robinson Crusoe could count as a novel
and nothing earlier than Brucker’s Historia Critica Philosophiae, say,
could count as history of philosophy. I am assuming for present purposes
that we can legitimately apply generic concepts in a more temporally open
way.
3
genre altogether. The second basis for the disclaimer is of more
interest. This is that A.3 belongs to a different, non-historical
genre: it is a dialectical survey of the endoxa, the reputable
views
which
Aristotle
uses
as
a
starting-point
for
his
own
theorizing.4 I will discuss this aspect of A.3 in sections I and
VI; but it cannot in itself settle the question of genre. To say
that A.3 cannot be history because it serves a dialectical purpose
is like saying that a piece of music cannot be a fugue because it
is a movement of a sonata. Once we have waived the procrustean
‘end
in
itself’
requirement,
the
possibility
is
open
that
a
historical form may be used to execute a philosophical project,
including a dialectical one.
Finally, one might hold that Aristotle could not be intending
to write ‘history of philosophy’ in the absence of a pre-existent
genre, for which we have no evidence. Yet it seems an intelligible
possibility, not to be excluded a priori, that Aristotle is here
prôtos heuretês: that in Metaphysics A.3 he is inventing something
we might reasonably recognise as ‘history of philosophy’. And that
is one of the possibilities I mean to explore in this paper. I
will first give a step-by-step account of Aristotle’s presentation
of his predecessors in A.3, 983a24-4b8, which I divide into five
moves
(sections
I-V
below).
The
discussion
will
focus
on
his
treatment of Thales and the other ‘first’ philosophers [prôtoi]: I
will
have
little
to
say
about
Parmenides,
Empedocles
and
Anaxagoras in 983a24-4b8, not least because it is impossible to
disentangle
the
discussions
later
issues
on.
I
here
will
from
then
Aristotle’s
turn
to
more
reflections
extended
on
the
dialectical and historical dimensions of Aristotle’s method, in
sections VI and VII respectively.
4
Cf. Cherniss 1951, Mansfeld 1986.
4
I. The Introduction of the Project (983a24-3b6):
I. Introduction of the project:
a. Résumé of the four causes, which have been sufficiently studied
in the Physics;
b. Let us also consider what our predecessors have to say, since
those who have examined ta onta have stated certain archai and
aitiai;
c. Either another kind of cause will be revealed or the fourfold
theory will be confirmed.
Aristotle begins by announcing the project that will occupy him
from A.3 through A.7 -- or, taken more inclusively, A.3-A.10, with
chapters
8
and
9
offering
criticisms
of
some
of
the
views
discussed and chapter 10 as a summation. (One might also read
Metaphysics α as at least in part a series of reflections on this
project: I will note its relevance on occasion below.) Aristotle
begins with a brief résumé of the four causes: formal, material,
moving, and final. He notes:
“We have studied [τεθεώρηται] these causes sufficiently
in our work on nature, but yet let us call to our aid
those who have attacked the investigation of being and
philosophized
about
reality
before
us.
For
obviously
they too speak of certain principles and causes; to go
over their views, then, will be profit to the present
inquiry, for we shall either find another kind of cause,
or be more convinced of the correctness of those which
we now maintain.” (983a33-b6)5
The
term
τεθεώρηται
(‘studied’)
is
carefully
chosen:
with
it
Aristotle avoids any claim to have proved the system of causes in
5
Translations are from Ross 1928, at times with revisions; the text used
is Ross 1958, with qualms as noted.
5
the Physics.6 What argumentative support can be provided for his
doctrine is at this point an open question; and as Mansion notes,
the survey which follows is offered to some extent in lieu of the
argument we might have expected in Physics ΙΙ (1961, 40).
In the course of A.3-10, Aristotle will periodically reaffirm
this project in quite consistent terms.7 At the start of A.7 he
announces its completion and its result: “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” (988a1823). At the end of that chapter, as Aristotle segues to critical
discussion, that result is restated: “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”
(988b16-18). After two chapters of critique, it is reaffirmed once
more,
with
the
philosophically
same
immature
diagnosis
of
(993a11-17).
So
his
there
predecessors
is
a
as
coherent
project here, with a clear result -- or so, at any rate, Aristotle
is determined to claim.
In a general way, this project is similar to the predecessorreviews
we
find
near
the
start
of
other
Aristotelian
works,
including De Anima I.2-5, Physics I and Gen. et Cor. I.1 (and in
some
ways
Pol.
II).
But
these
predecessor-reviews
are
a
heterogenous group; and there are at least two respects in which
the others are all like each other and unlike A.3. First, they are
diairetic, proceeding by a more or less systematic classification
6
The term is most often used by Aristotle for observations of animals
(e.g. Gen. An. 721a15, Hist. An. 501b21); at A.2, 983a17, we might
translate as ‘discern’. Cf. Nightingale 2004 on the connotations of
theôria.
7
Cf. also 986a13-15, b2-12, 987a27-8, and the particularly striking
reference at 987a2-3 to “the wise men who have now sat in council with
us”.
6
of positions by content.8 Physics I divides thinkers according to
whether they propounded one principle or many; if one, whether
motionless
or
moving;
if
more
than
one,
whether
finite
or
infinitely many, and so on. Gen. et Cor. I.1 classes philosophers
as
to
whether
they
identified
generation
with
alteration
or
distinguished the two. In De Anima, Aristotle classifies views
according to the ‘mark’ taken as definitive of soul: movement,
thought or sensation, or both. Since accounts of soul usually
derive from views on the archai, De Anima also sketches another
possible diairetic treatment of accounts of the archai, dividing
them into corporeal, incorporeal, or both, and by number (one or
many)
(404b30-5a4).
So
one
question
for
the
interpretation
of
Metaph. A.3 will be why it does not look more like this.
Second, these other discussions are all concerned to provide
a
starting-point.
For
instance,
Physics
I
shows
(among
other
things) that “our principles must be contraries” (189a10). The use
of De Anima I is less obvious since II.1 announces a fresh start;
but Aristotle’s two ‘marks’ of soul are deployed later as useful
(e.g., at the start of III.3 and III.9). By contrast, in A.3
Aristotle goes to seek confirmation of a theory to which he is
already at least provisionally committed and with which he assumes
us to be familiar. The resulting argument is neither a mode of
discovery nor merely didactic. As Mansion puts it, Aristotle “est
engagé dans la recherche au moment où il interroge ses devanciers.
Ce sont ses problèmes qu’il leur pose, mais il attend vraiment
d’eux une réponse. Cette réponse, dans la Métaphysique, prend la
forme
d’une
confirmation
à
des
vues
qu’il
n’a
pu
fonder
théoriquement” (1961, 56).
The form of the argument Aristotle here undertakes is thus a
distinctive one: it is a search for alternatives or additions to
8
Cf. also the division of positions in Theophrastus De Sensibus and the
Menôneia portion of the Anon. Lond.
7
an account already offered. Through its failure, the search will
confirm the completeness and adequacy of that account, roughly as
follows: ‘P. One might propose instead Q, R, S, or T; but Q, R, S
and
T
can
all
be
reduced
to
P.
Therefore
P
(and
P
alone).’
Formally speaking, this is not any familiar mode of Aristotelian
dialectical argument -- and it is certainly not demonstrative. So
far as I know, Aristotle does not use anything quite like it
elsewhere in his surviving works. The closest analogue is perhaps
the
argument
of
Metaphysics
Γ.
Here
Aristotle’s
procedure
is
(roughly) to explore the various avenues by which some thinkers
have purported (or been alleged) to deny the principle of noncontradiction, and to show that none of them is genuinely viable,
so that the (indisputability of the) principle is confirmed. The
project embarked on in A.3 differs in that the operation here is
presented as one of subsumption rather than refutation: still, it
too seeks to confirm a claim about first principles by exploring
the
putative
alternatives
and
showing
that
none
really
is
an
alternative.
Thus Aristotle’s project is to determine how far his own
explanatory
incompatible
framework
causal
can
effectively
accounts
advanced
subsume
by
his
the
apparently
predecessors.
Criticisms of A.3 for the anachronistic application of Aristotle’s
own conceptual scheme are thus somewhat obtuse: the whole point of
the exercise, about which Aristotle is perfectly explicit, is to
see how far this can be made to work. And his project imposes a
certain historical fidelity as well as thoroughgoing anachronism.
For Aristotle’s corroborative test is worthless unless the rivals
considered (his chosen Q, R, S and T) really do represent the most
promising alternatives, and are considered in such a way that
anything valuable which could not be subsumed by his own system
would become visible as such. Given the terms of his own project,
Aristotle should be concerned to present the views he discusses
8
with
sufficient
clarity,
accuracy
and
detail
to
convince
an
informed reader (one better informed than we are in a position to
be)
that
his
interpretive
subsumptions
are
successful
--
for
instance, that what Empedocles in some sense ‘really meant’ was
that philia is the cause of good things, and that this is best
understood
causes
as
a
(A.4,
fascinating
partial
discovery
985a3-10).
This
questions
about
of
one
of
subsumptive
interpretive
method
the
Aristotelian
strategy
which
raises
I
cannot
here address.9 And whether Aristotle actually meets its constraints
is of course another question. My impression is that the argument
of A.3-10 often strikes contemporary readers as somehow rigged to
the point of worthlessness. However, this must be at least in part
an artifact of the context (or rather the lack of context) in
which we encounter it. If we imagine reading A.3-10 at a time when
Empedocles’
own
text
was
easily
available,
and
practising
Platonists might object to any misrepresentations, it has a rather
different air -- even more controversial and parti pris, perhaps,
but less easily accused of any sleight of hand. At any rate this
kind of project, in which one philosophical stance asserts its
superiority by showing that it can subsume and explain its rivals,
remains a central mode of historically informed philosophizing.10
II. The Reasoning of the Prôtoi (983b6-20):
2. The reasoning of the prôtoi:
a. Of the earliest philosophers [prôtoi], most recognized only the
material cause as archê;
b. They said that the archê was preserved as substrate through all
changes, as a substance underlies its changing pathê;
c. They disagreed on the number and identity of this archê/ai.
9
Cf. the methodological reflections in Rorty 1984 and Brandom 2002.
Cf. e.g., the works of Alasdair MacIntyre, including his 1984, 1988,
and 1990, as well as Korsgaard 1996 and Brandom 2002.
10
9
Aristotle’s
survey
begins
with
the
‘first’,
materialist
philosophers introduced at 983b6-8: “Of the first philosophers,
most
[tôn
prôton
principles
which
philosophêsantôn
were
of
the
hoi
nature
pleistoi]
of
matter
thought
were
the
the
only
principles of all things”. His treatment of these prôtoi falls
into four phases: a general account of their reasoning (983b8-20)
(discussed in this section); a discussion of Thales’ views and the
reasoning
behind
his
choice
of
water
as
archê
(983b20-4a3),
together with an excursus on the possibility that the earlier
poets
should
count
as
sharing
his
doxa
(983b27-4a2)
(both
discussed in section III); and a listing of philosophers by their
archai, including Empedocles and Anaxagoras (984a2-16) (section
IV). This procedure leaves the membership of the prôtoi somewhat
unclear. Presumably the group strictly speaking includes only the
(pre-Parmenidean)
Anaxagoras,
since
philosophers
the
latter
listed
group
prior
do
to
Empedocles
recognise
an
and
efficient
cause.11 Exactly what Aristotle means to attribute to the prôtoi is
also a delicate question. According to Ross, “Aristotle does not
say
that
the
earlier
thinkers
recognized
the
material
cause”
(1958, 128); for the ultimate material cause is prime matter, and
their analysis went only as far as the four elements. But even
assuming that Aristotle believes in ‘prime matter’, this does less
to fix the reference of the term hulê than the functional role of
matter as the substrate of substances. And this role is just what
Aristotle emphasises here by using the circumlocutory phrase, ‘in
the class of <or of the kind, type, etc. of> matter’. This means
something like ‘properly classed as material’; and a cause is
11
Later, at 987a3-9, the παρὰ μὲν τῶν πρώτων... παρὰ δέ τινων τιθέντων
seems to confirm that the prôtoi are those who recognised only a material
cause. At the same time, as in A.3 itself, it seems to be suggested that
this group includes never-named dualists and pluralists as well as
monists; cf. n. 41* below.
10
properly classed as material if it persists as a substrate through
change.
For
12
Aristotle,
a
cause
which
does
the
work
of
the
material cause is a material cause, however lispingly explained or
incompletely recognised.
If this is right, then what qualifies an earlier thinker’s
choice of cause as material has nothing to do with whether it
resembles the material ingredients of Aristotle’s own cosmos. One
might object that in that case apeiron should be just as much a
material
cause
Aristotle’s
as
list
water,
of
and
yet
materialists.
Anaximander
On
the
is
other
missing
hand,
from
perhaps
Anaximander is here omitted because Aristotle did not take his
apeiron to function as an enduring
substrate: for the opposites
once segregated off are precisely not apeira. In that case, the
apeiron would not for Aristotle count as belonging ‘in the class
of matter’. (A) This would also explain why Aristotle says that of
the first philosophers οἱ πλεῖστοι -- not πάντες -- thought there
were only material causes – though why he should cope with the
exceptional case of Anaximander by simply omitting him, rather
than treating him as a pioneer, is an open question.13
12
That this is what Aristotle uses the phrase ἐν ὕλης εἴδει for is clear
from Metaph. A.5, 986b4-7: ἐοίκασι δ’ ὡς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει τὰ στοιχεῖα
τάττειν· ἐκ τούτων γὰρ ὡς ἐνυπαρχόντων συνεστάναι καὶ πεπλάσθαι φασὶ τὴν
οὐσίαν (note the γὰρ). At A.5, 987a7, that the prôtoi regarded the archê
as somatikê is a distinct point from their having set down those archai
ἐν ὕλης εἴδει.
13 Aristotle’s explicit references to Anaximander are rather few and too
sketchy to decide this question (cf. Physics 187a21, 203b14, Gen. et Cor.
332a19-25). Aristotle’s reading of Anaximander is in general a vexed
question, much complicated by the question whether we should see
Anaximander in his references to those who postulated an intermediate
substrate; I here assume Physics A.4, 187a12ff. to be decisive evidence
against that identification. Admittedly Simplicius takes it for granted
that the apeiron is a stoicheion in the manner of the other monistic
archai, Phys. 24.13. But Graham seems to me too quick to attribute this
reading to Aristotle himself (2006, Ch. 2, 3.2, and 20 n. 55).
11
The
central
interpretive
claim
here
is
thus
the
infamous
‘material monism’:14
(1) There is a single archê from which all things emerge and into
which they are destroyed, and which persists through all change as
their substrate.
Now Aristotle’s attribution of (1) to the prôtoi is clear and
unequivocal,
and
discussion.
Yet
indeed
as
forms
scholars
the
have
principal
often
theme
pointed
out,
of
we
his
have
remarkably little external evidence to support this understanding
of their archê as a persisting substrate: in particular, there is
reason to doubt that Thales intended anything more than a more
traditional kind of cosmogonic claim, viz that all things come
from water.15 There is evidence to support Aristotle’s claim only
for
Anaximenes,
Xenophanes
(who
seems
not
to
be
in
view
here
anyway) and Heraclitus;16 moreover, Daniel Graham has argued that
this evidence is far from unequivocal, and that the ‘material
monism’ here ascribed to the prôtoi was really the innovation of
Diogenes of Apollonia (Graham 2006). I cannot here engage properly
with Graham’s arguments, but will note some points of immediate
relevance.
First,
(1)
remains
a
possible
interpretation
of
Anaximenes and Heraclitus, two central figures among the prôtoi;
and Aristotle is highly unlikely to have had any evidence to the
contrary in Thales’ case. So we should perhaps understand him as
standardizing the unclear and gappy views attributed to the prôtoi
rather
14
than
retrojecting
post-Parmenidean
ideas
wholesale.
Cf. Graham, who however uses ‘material monism’ to include counterparts
to (2) and (3) below (2006, 49).
15 See Algra for a succinct statement of the reasons for doubt (1999, 4954).
16 For Anaximenes, see DKA7; for Xenophanes, B29; for Heraclitus, B30.
12
Moreover, we should distinguish (1) from two further, stronger
claims Aristotle might mean to impute to the prôtoi:
(2) The persisting archê is what all things really are.
(3)
There
is
no
real
generation
or
destruction;
apparent
generation and destruction are really just qualititative changes
in the persisting archê.
We
might
call
everything
‘really
is
(2)
and
‘really
just’
(3)
just’
qualitative
together
the
monistic
archê,
change
and
rather
so
reductionism:
all
than
change
generation
is
or
destruction. This is obviously a much stronger position than (1),
and it is harder to see why Aristotle would attribute it to the
prôtoi. It does not really follow from (1): one could perfectly
well hold that all things are made out of water without inferring
either that they are ontologically
their
formation
constitutes
reducible to water or that
something
less
than
substantial
generation. Moreover, even more than with (1), all our external
evidence
tends
attributed
Parmenidean
to
to
any
suggest
that,
of
Presocratics,
the
pluralists,
concerned
if
reductionism
as
it
they
is
are
is
to
rightly
the
to
post-
give
a
deflationary account of substantial generation and destruction.
Aristotle is often taken to attribute (2) and (3) to the
prôtoi
on
the
basis
of
the
following
presentation
of
their
reasoning:
“that of which all things that are consist, and from
which they first come to be, and into which they are
finally resolved (the substance [ousia] remaining, but
changing in its modifications), this they say is the
element and the principle of things, and because of this
13
they
think
nothing
is
either
generated
or
destroyed,
since this sort of nature [phusis] is always conserved,
as we say Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when
he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor ceases to be
when
he
loses
substratum,
these
Socrates
characteristics,
himself,
remains.
because
So
they
the
say
nothing else comes to be or ceases to be; for there must
be some nature -- either one or more than one -- from
which all other things come to be, it being conserved.”
Here the underlined passages seem to settle the question: each
amounts to (3), attributed to the prôtoi collectively. The Greek,
however, is not so unequivocal. In the first, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οὔτε
γίγνεσθαι οὐθὲν οἴονται οὔτε ἀπόλλυσθαι, the outhen could perhaps
be adverbial, with the touto at b10 understood as subject, i.e.:
“and for this reason they think it <i.e., the archê as stoicheion
and
substrate>
is
in
no
way
generated
or
destroyed”
(cf.
the
adverbial outhen at 984a29). At b16-7, Ross is filling out what is
much
vaguer
in
the
text:
οὕτως
οὐδὲ
τῶν
ἄλλων
οὐδέν
(more
literally, “so too neither does any of the others”). This clause
is correlative with the long preceding hôsper clause on Socrates
and his pathê; and the point made there is that for Socrates to
‘become’ [gignetai] in a particular way (e.g., become musical) is
not for him to be generated [gignetai haplôs], since he persists
through such changes as their subject. Aristotle has just likened
the relation of archê to ta onta to that of ousia to pathê (983b910): the point of the analogy seems to be to illuminate this
relation, showing that it explains change as something less than
generation of the archê. (A later allusion in A.3 confirms that it
is this claim about the archê which is definitive of the prôtoi:
for the Eleatics, “the one and nature as a whole is unchangeable
not only in respect of generation and destruction (for this is an
14
ancient belief, and all agreed in it)...” (984a32-3)). So, though
it is somewhat mysterious what tôn allôn in the correlative clause
might be, Aristotle can hardly mean simply to extend to ordinary
substances
his
claim
about
the
archê,
viz
that
it
escapes
generation and destruction by eternally persisting. At most, he
might
mean
terms
in
that
all
‘generation’
cases
of
and
change,
‘destruction’
since
the
are
prôtoi
misleading
reduce
the
generation and destruction of substances to qualititative change
in the archê as substrate -- just as they are accused of doing in
Gen. et Cor. I.1.
17
Though this amounts to (3), it would be somewhat misleading
to
say
that
Aristotle
attributes
monistic
reductionism
to
the
prôtoi. He does not attribute the more overtly reductionist (2) to
them, and he is happy, throughout A.3-10, to speak of generation
and destruction in describing their views; his criticisms in A.8
even describe them as seeking to explain these phenomena (988b267).
(And
at
986b14-15
he
presumably
has
them
in
mind
in
contrasting the Eleatics with phusiologoi who set down being [to
on] as one but nonetheless ‘generate’ from it as from matter.)
Moreover, the evidence of Gen. et Corr. I.1 cuts both ways. For
Aristotle opens by claiming that some earlier philosophers say
that generation and alteration are the same (314a6-8); but when he
actually turns to expound the views of the monists, the point is
twice put in terms of what it is necessary [anankê, anankaion] for
them to say (314a9-10, b1-5). This suggests that the conflation of
generation and alteration is an inference on Aristotle’s part, a
position to which he takes them to be committed given their other
17
At Physics 191a24-31, Aristotle speaks of ζητοῦντες γὰρ οἱ κατὰ
φιλοσοφίαν πρῶτοι τὴν ἀλήθειαν καὶ τὴν φύσιν τῶν ὄντων and says that, in
order to deny generation ex nihilo, they φασιν οὔτε γίγνεσθαι τῶν ὄντων
οὐδὲν οὔτε φθείρεσθαι. This looks like an equivalent to b12 as usually
read, i.e., (3). On the other hand, Aristotle goes on to add that this
drove them to monism, which makes it seem that he really has here in view
the radicalization of this view by the Eleatics.
15
views -- not an explicit doxa.18 This does not really amount to
presenting the prôtoi as sharing the post-Parmenidean agenda of
giving
deflationary
destruction.
significant
accounts
Aristotle’s
hints
methodological
of
substance,
towards
point.
In
(3)
generation
thus
discussing
bring
and
out
Empedocles
a
and
Anaxagoras, he will be explicitly concerned with the implications
and commitments of their views as much as with their explicit
doxa: the same is true, though less visibly so, in his treatment
of the prôtoi.
A final complication comes in 983b17-18, quoted above. As
Ross translates, “for there must be some entity -- either one or
more than one -- from which all other things come to be...”. But
here our mss have (uniformly, according to both Ross and Jaeger)
δεῖ γὰρ εἶναί τινα φύσιν. If δεῖ is right, then the postulation of
an ongoing substrate is presented here in Aristotle’s own voice,
presumably in a kind of temporary identification with the prôtoi.
Rejecting this as impossible, Ross says, “It is necessary to read
ἀεί with Bywater, or δεῖν with Wirth, instead of δεῖ, since the
clause
is
still
concerned
with
what
the
early
philosophers
thought” (1958, 129).19 Now there is rather a lot at stake here
between ἀεί and δεῖ (or δεῖν). If we emend to the former, then the
line merely affirms, yet again, the commitment of the prôtoi to an
eternally
persisting
substrate.
If
we
read
δεῖ
with
the
manuscripts, however (or δεῖν), then this position is presented as
a
theoretical
desideratum:
something
must
persist
through
all
change. And it is presumably in order to meet that desideratum
that the prôtoi proceed to postulate their various archai. But why
would the prôtoi think that there must be an enduring substrate?
An answer is suggested by some strong wording in the Gen et Cor.:
18
Cf. Barnes 1982, 41.
Ross’ text follows
however, has ‘must’.
19
Bywater
and
changes
to
ἀεὶ;
his
translation,
16
“that coming-to-be proceeds out of nothing pre-existing <is>... a
thesis which, more than any other, preoccupied and alarmed the
earliest
philosophers”
(I.3,
317b28-31).
Thus
the
transmitted
reading, δεῖ, seems to preserve an important Aristotelian point
about
the
thought
of
the
prôtoi.
Their
agenda
is
to
explain
generation and destruction while denying -- and, at least in part,
in order to deny -- that it ever occurs ex nihilo, particularly in
the case of the cosmos as a whole. The cosmos must be formed out
of a single enduring substrate, from which particular onta are in
turn generated, providing ‘the all’ with unity and continuity.
We
might
still
wonder
why
Aristotle
attributes
‘material
monism’ in the sense of (1) to the prôtoi in the first place -for this is all the more puzzling once we take (2) and (3) off
their agenda. The answer may seem obvious: after all, Aristotle’s
purpose in attributing (1) to the prôtoi is clearly to show that
they therefore count as having recognised the material cause. And
interpreted otherwise -- if the archê of Thales, for instance,
were seen by Aristotle as simply an ex hou and eis ho, without
being
a
hupokeimenon
--
it
is
not
clear
what
philosophical
interest they would hold for him. For if the archê is not an
enduring substrate, then, as a generating cause of onta which are
different in kind from itself, it must really reduce to a kind of
efficient cause. But without any conception of a formal cause
there is no way to explain what an efficient cause does, leaving
only an arbitrary, Hesiodic succession. Whatever else it may be,
Aristotle’s
reading
of
the
prôtoi
as
material
monists
is
a
charitable one: the terms of his project allow for no other way
for them to be included among his ancestors.
But Aristotle’s commitment to (1) may also be shaped by a
certain
awkwardness
he
is
faced
with
in
constructing
his
investigation. Aristotle’s interest is in what the prôtoi have had
to say about causes and principles; he admits at the outset that
17
he will thus be mining their episkepsis tôn ontôn for their views
about the archai. Admittedly, this need not entail conflation of
onta and archai; but Aristotle does at some points speak of the
archê
as
ousia
(notably
at
983b10).
And
in
Metaphysics
Z,
he
presents what looks like the A.3 account of the archai under the
rubric of to on:
“And indeed the question which was of old and is now and
always the object of inquiry, and is always puzzled over
[to
palai
te
kai
nun
kai
aei
zêtoumenon
kai
aei
aporoumenon], viz. what being is, is just the question,
what is substance? For it is this that some assert to be
one, others more than one, and that some assert to be
limited in number, others unlimited. And so we also must
consider chiefly
and primarily and almost exclusively
what that is which is in this sense.” (Ζ.1, 1028b2-7)
Aristotle here presents a diairesis of positions which corresponds
reasonably well with the progression of archai given in Metaph.
A.3,
from
‘one’
pluralists),
(monists
some
of
whom
such
as
opt
for
Thales)
to
‘limited’
‘many’
(various
(Empedocles)
and
others for ‘unlimited’ (Anaxagoras). But here these are presented
as accounts of ti to on, used in turn as a proxy for ousia. So
Aristotle
may
well
see
his
project
in
A.3
as
involving
a
repurposing of earlier theories of to on, to serve as theories
about the archai. But what would have made it seem natural to him
to read the earlier thinkers as theorizing about to on and ousia
in the first place -- to understand Thales’ water, for instance,
as his theory of what all things really are? The answer is not far
to seek. I will argue in sections IV and VI that A.3 is enormously
influenced
by
the
‘doxographic’
passages
of
Plato’s
Sophist,
which, like Hippias’ work on ‘related ideas’ (see section III),
18
serves Aristotle here as a kind of ‘reference text’.20 Now in the
Sophist
the
Eleatic
Visitor
presents
the
early
philosophical
debate as a debate about ta onta, tout court. It is about ta onta
that, as he puts it, his predecessors asked posa kai poia: “how
many real things there are and what they are like” (Sophist 242c56). This catch-phrase for the framing of an inquiry is used by
Aristotle for the account he takes himself to have vindicated in
A.7 (περὶ τῶν αἰτίων καὶ πόσα καὶ ποῖα, 988b17); and the phrase is
clearly alluded to in A.3 when he says that the prôtoi disagreed
as to the plêthos and eidos of the archai (983b19).21 Moreover,
that Aristotle himself accepts this Platonic reading of the early
debate is clear, not only from his admission in A.3 that his
predecessors were engaged in an episkepsis tôn ontôn but from his
construal of the same material in terms of onta and ousia in Z.1.
Be this genealogical suggestion as it may, if Aristotle takes
the default reading of the prôtoi to be as giving accounts of ta
onta or ti to on, we can see why he would tend to fall into
ascribing to them the implausibly reductionist (2) and (3). After
all, if water is Thales' conception of ti to on, it does indeed
follow that water is what things really are. And if, as I have
argued, Aristotle actually holds back from fully ascribing these
claims to the prôtoi, it is presumably because his somewhat sneaky
repurposing of their views as accounts of archai leads away from
this reading.
The suggestion, for which I will argue more fully in the
following sections, is that in A.3 Aristotle encounters the prôtoi
20
I do not mean this phrase to imply anything about exactly how
Aristotle used either Hippias or the Sophist. But I do mean suggest a
closer relation than would be conveyed by ‘source’. These texts do not
just supply Aristotle with raw materials; their mode of presentation has
detectable effects on his own.
21 For this formula cf. also De Caelo 277b25, NE 1115a5 and 1135a14, Gen.
et Cor. 329b3, Hist. An. 505b23, Meteor. 338a23, Part. An. 660a7, Phys.
194b17, Pol. 1299a31, Rhet. 1368b32, 1369b29.
19
as already the inheritor of one or more interpretive traditions.
And the most important of these, the Platonic interpretation given
in the Sophist, seems to have presented the theories of the prôtoi
as accounts of what things really are, thus entailing all of (1)
(2) and (3) above. This is a reading which Aristotle in other
places is willing to take as given; but in A.3 he reconfigures it
by treating their theories as accounts not of ta onta but, more
restrictively,
of
their
archai.
This
change
is
an
obvious
improvement by our interpretive lights; yet it seems to be made
not as a direct response to the evidence, so far as one can tell,
but
as
a
repurposing
to
fit
the
local
demands
of
Aristotle’s
project.
III. Thales, the Theologians and Hippo (983b20-4a5):
3. Thales, with an excursus on his putative predecessors:
a. Thales, archêgos of this philosophy, said that [a] the archê
was water, and thus that [b] the earth floated on water; his
reasons were perhaps that [c] the nurture of things is moist, and
[d] heat itself comes from moisture, and lives by it; and [e]
seeds have a moist nature, and water is the archê of moist things.
b. Excursus on the ‘theologians’ (3b27-4a2): some hold that
ancient thinkers about the divine held the same position;
c. The evidence: (i) they made Ocean and Tethys parents of
generation; (ii) they made water (‘Styx’) what the gods swear by,
and the oldest thing is most honoured, and what one swears by is
the most honoured;
d. But whether this is really a doxa peri phuseôs is unclear.
e. So we will start with Thales, and his thesis that water was the
archê -- and we will be omitting Hippo.
Aristotle’s emphasis on rational reconstruction continues in his
treatment of the archêgos Thales:
“Thales, the founder of this school of philosophy, says
[a] the principle is water ([b] for which reason he
20
declared that the earth rests on water), getting the
notion perhaps from seeing that [c] the nutriment of all
things is moist, and that [d] heat itself is generated
from the moist and kept alive by it (and that from which
they come to be is a principle of all things). He gets
his notion from this fact, and from the fact that [e]
the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and that
water is the origin of the
nature of moist things.”
(983b20-27)
This treatment is much fuller than that given to the other prôtoi.
Thales’ archê-selection [a] is followed by [b] as a corollary.
This is perhaps to give a taste of the sort of use which the
prôtoi made of their archai, though it has been plausibly argued
that Thales’ reasoning is more likely to have been the other way
around.22
Aristotle
then
turns
to
assign
reasons
--
empirical
reasons [ὁρᾶν, b23] [c], [d], and [e] -- for the particular choice
of archê made by Thales. Nothing comparable is offered for the
later
prôtoi
listed;
presumably
the
grounds
offered
here
are
supposed to stand in for the kind of reasons relied on by the
others mutatis mutandis.
The reasoning attributed to Thales is avowedly speculative.23
The first reason mentioned, [c], is qualified with an isôs, and
though this is not repeated there is no obvious reason to give
more credence to the others. Later legetai is applied even to
Thales’ opinion about the archê (984a2). The reasons unfold in a
stuttering, spontaneous-looking way: the διά τοῦτο at b25 suggests
that [d] is an elaboration of [c] (Ross takes the two as a single
reason),
22
and
[e]
seems
to
be
presented
as
an
afterthought
or
E.g. Cherniss 1935, 4. The doxa is repeated at De Caelo 294a29-30.
As Ross notes, Aristotle always speaks of Thales’ views with caution:
cf. de Caelo 294a29, de Anima 405a19, 411a8, Pol. 1259a6, 18.
23
21
correction.
suggests
Even
some
if
[d]
is
significant
merely
lines
of
a
special
case
supporting
of
[c],
argument,
it
both
cosmological and biological. Moisture and warmth are both signs of
life;
24
and it seems to have been a common Presocratic view that
fire as we experience it is ‘nourished’ by moisture, so that by
extrapolation, the fire of the heavenly bodies must depend on
exhalations from the sea (Meteorology II.2, 354b33-5a32).25
Now at least some of the reasoning here attributed to Thales
has been drawn by Aristotle from Hippo. In De Anima, Aristotle
ascribes [e] to Hippo – again with a slight -- as a basis for
holding that the soul is water:
“Of more superficial writers,
some, e.g., Hippo, have pronounced it to be water; they seem to
have argued from the fact that the seed of all animals is fluid,
for Hippo tries to refute those who say that the soul is blood, on
the ground that the seed, which is the primordial soul, is not
blood”.26
And
arguments
of
as
the
Burnet
first
observed,
Milesians
it
is
were
plausible
for
the
that
most
the
part
cosmological and meteorological, whereas reasoning from the nature
of seed is more plausibly the work of a fifth-century medical
writer like Hippo (1930, 48). Moreover, [d] (and thus, perhaps,
24
“From this largely biological point of view, hot and wet are together
opposed to cold and dry” (Lloyd 1964, 272).
25 At 354b32-5, Aristotle indicates that his target is much wider than
the Heracliteans, and he himself makes some use of the ‘observation’ they
depend on: “the fire we are familiar with lives as long as it is fed, and
the only food for fire is moisture” (355a3-5). Cf. the discussions of
Cherniss 1935, 133-6 and Graham 2006, 58-62. It is striking that
Aristotle’s discussion of the topic emerges as a digression from the
question of whether the sea is the source of fresh water. Thus the only
two non-medical phusikai doxai which we arguably possess for Hippo, that
the sea is the origin of fresh water and that the wet nourishes the hot
in cosmological contexts, are discussed in conjunction by Aristotle.
Might he be following the order of some earlier proto-doxography in which
Hippo figured regularly?
26 405b2, trans. Smith (ROT). The moistness of seed is also noted in the
brief account of Hippo at Hippolytus Ref. I.16.
22
the more general [c]) should be attributed to Hippo as well.27
According to Hippolytus, Hippo claimed that water (or the cold)
and fire (or the hot) are both archai, but that water begets fire,
which in turn overmasters it to form the cosmos. In other words,
that the hot comes from the wet is the most basic principle of
Hippo’s cosmogeny. Moreover, returning for the moment to [b], our
one fragment of Hippo’s work, from a scholion to Homer, is a
lumbering syllogism proving that the sea, since it goes deeper
than wells, springs etc., must be the source of fresh water:
“All drinking waters come from the sea. For the wells
from which we drink are surely not deeper than the sea
is. If they were, the water would come not from the sea
but from somewhere else. But in fact the sea is deeper
than the waters. Now all waters that are higher than the
sea come from the sea.”28
Here we have the purported Thalean doxa that the sea runs deeper
than the earth and underlies it; so it seems plausible that Hippo
would have proposed this argument in the context of argument for
[b]. If we take these points together, it turns out that all of
Aristotle’s report on Thales can be read as deriving from Hippo.
This report needs to be put into context with the digression
(or
retrogression)
into
the
poets
which
immmediately
follows
Aristotle’s account of Thales’ reasoning. As Bruno Snell argued in
an
important
certain
paper,
this
proto-doxographic
passage
seems
passages
of
to
be
Plato’s
(together
Theaetetus
with
and
Cratylus) derived from Hippias’ anthology or proto-doxography of
27
Simplicius Phys. 23.21-9 attributes [c] to Thales and Hippo alike.
Schol. Homer. Genev.197, 19 Nicole, on Iliad ΧΧΙ.195 = DK38B1, trans.
Barnes 1987.
28
23
‘related ideas’.29 Having raised the question, Aristotle dismisses
the poets with little explanation, saying only “It may perhaps be
uncertain
whether
this
opinion
about
nature
is
primitive
and
ancient” (983b33-4a2). The doubtful point is whether the doxa that
water is the archê can legitimately be attributed to the poets;30
since
the
reasoning
cited
in
favour
of
doing
so
is
valid,31
Aristotle’s scepticism must be about the very idea of reading
poetic claims about Ocean, Styx et al. as expressing a phusikê
doxa about water. The issue arises again at the start of A.4, when
Aristotle
notes,
probably
prompted
by
Hippias
once
more,
that
Hesiod might be credited with discovery of the final cause; and
here too the question is basically punted (984b31-2).
32
In B.4,
Aristotle for a third time invokes the poets only to dismiss them.
He
complains,
thought
only
“the
of
school
what
was
of
Hesiod
plausible
and
to
all
the
themselves,
mythologists
and
had
no
regard to us” (1000a9-11), in treating ambrosia and nectar as
somehow,
mysteriously,
causes
of
immortality.
He
brushes
them
aside as not worth serious investigation; “those, however, who use
the language of proof we must cross-examine and ask why, after
29
See Snell 1944, Mansfeld 1983, 1986, Patzer 1986.
See Mansfeld 1985a, 132-4 and Palmer 2000, 184-5. Note that this does
not mean or entail that the poets expressed themselves unclearly:
Aristotle’s remarks about the unclear state of our knowledge about
certain views (cf. 984b18) should not be conflated with his complaints
that various authors have expressed themselves unclearly. The latter
criticism actually seems to be used exclusively for philosophers, notably
Xenophanes and Empedocles (986b21-5, 993a22-4, cf. 985a4-6 etc.) (contra
Mansfeld 1986, 41-44). On the ‘criterion of clarity’ and Aristotle’s use
elsewhere of the theologoi, see Palmer 2000.
31
Though
awkwardly
expressed:
Water=Oath,
Oldest=Most
Honoured,
Oath=Most
Honoured;
therefore
Water=Most
Honoured
and
therefore
Water=Oldest, ie water is the archê. Not a valid syllogism for class
inclusions, of course, but these are identities.
32
Thus Frede 2004, for instance, overestates the extent to which
Aristotle is concerned in Metaph. A.3 or elsewhere to ‘make a clear cut’
between the philosophers and their predecessors. Palmer 2000 and Sassi
2002, 66-70, offer more nuanced views. Palmer indeed makes a strong case
for the claim that “it is not the case that for Aristotle the history of
philosophy begins with Thales” (2000, 182).
30
24
all, things which consist of the same elements are, some of them,
eternal in nature, while others perish” (1000a18-22). Here we seem
to have what was lacking in A.3-4: a programmatic statement of
demarcation,
with
the
mythologists
excluded
on
the
grounds
of
unclarity and lack of argument. Still, even here matters are not
so simple. It is striking that the phrasing of Aristotle’s initial
complaint
is
taken
from
his
other
‘reference
text’
for
A.3,
Plato’s proto-doxography in the Sophist; there it is complained
that
the
earlier
philosophers
were
unclear,
with
the
same
sarcastic suggestion that this shows a self-involved contempt for
their audience.33 Moreover, Aristotle’s main complaint here is that
the
mythologists
--
and
philosophers
like
Empedocles
--
are
arbitrary, using the same causes for opposite effects. And this
criticism presupposes that we can legitimately attribute to the
mythologists the same
kind of doxai
as the philosophers. This
suggests that the question left hanging in A.3 -- is it legitimate
to interpret the mythologists in such a way that their works yield
doxai equivalent to those of the philosophers? -- is in fact to be
answered
Metaph.
in
the
affirmative
Λ.6
and
N.4).
What
(as
also
leads
to
seems
their
to
be
assumed
exclusion
from
at
the
present discussion is a different and subtler point: there is no
point
in
trying
philosophers
may
Aristotle’s
method
to
investigate
fruitfully
of
be
dialectical
what
they
questioned.
say,
I
whereas
will
cross-examination
in
the
discuss
section
VI.34
33
Both passages use ὠλιγώρησαν and deny that the earlier thinkers
φροντίζειν about our understanding (Sophist 243a6-7, Metaph. 1000a10-1).
Frede notes the parallels (2004, 43).
34 Cf. also 988b17 on the use of earlier philosophers as ‘witnesses’, and
cf. Eudemian Ethics 1216 b26-35, discussed below. The basic criticism
here goes back at least as far as Plato’s Protagoras, where Socrates
retroactively rejects Protagoras’ proposal that they discuss ethical
issues via the poets. Poets cannot be interrogated about what they say;
people interpret them differently and these conflicts can never be
25
It is in turning back from the poets to Thales that Aristotle
finally mentions Hippo, with an abrupt sideswipe: “Hippo no one
would think fit to include among these thinkers [μετὰ τούτων],
because of the paltriness of his thought” (983b4a3-5). Air and
fire will each get a pair of advocates: Aristotle here considers
the possibility of adding Hippo to round out the hydromonist team,
and
rejects
it.
This
thinking-aloud
may
seem
less
odd
if
we
consider again Aristotle’s use of his reference texts. We already
have good reason to believe that Aristotle’s excursus into the
poets is prompted by a counterpart passage in Hippias’ work on
related ideas.35 Now we have no direct evidence that Hippo was
included
in
Hippias’
work.
However,
the
fragment
of
Hippo
discussed above is from a scholion to Iliad XXI.195, where it is
introduced
as
coming
from
the
third
book
of
Crates’
Homeric
Studies: “Then in the third book [of his Homeric Studies] he says
that the later natural scientists also agreed that the water which
surrounds the earth for most of its extent is Ocean, and that
fresh water comes from this.”36 The quotation from Hippo follows,
and is followed by a standardized-looking claim that Homer said
the same thing.
Now we might well wonder how Crates, a scholar and (probably
Stoic)
philosopher
of
the
second
century
BC,
came
by
Hippo’s
ipsissima verba on this particular point. Content and context here
point to the same answer. For that Homer is in agreement with the
phusikoi as regards Ocean is, after all, just the point which
Snell traced back to Hippias’ work on ‘related ideas’. Mansfeld
has noted that in doing so Hippias must have practised something
decided. So we should set the poets aside and test our own logoi in
discussion (Prot. 347e-8a).
35
Patzer thinks it likely that Aristotle’s reference to Hippo is
prompted by his inclusion in Hippias, and notes that DK38B1 would have
fit Hippias’ purposes in relation to the locus discussed by Snell (1986,
40-1).
36 Trans. Barnes 1987.
26
very like allegorical interpretation, and that the Stoics may have
drawn on his works for their own allegorical extravaganzas.37
Given
this
consonance
of
content
and
function,
and
the
apparently very restricted circulation of Hippo’s (non-medical)
ideas in the Hellenistic period (see Appendix), I would suggest
that Crates’ source is likely to have been Hippias or some closely
derivative
text.
And
this
is
worth
factoring
back
in
to
our
reading of A.3. I have already argued that Aristotle’s report on
Thales is probably in its entirety a retrojection of Hippo; and
given Aristotle’s reliance on Hippias here, we should probably see
his understanding of Hippo as deriving from Hippias rather than
from Hippo’s own works. In that case the engagement with Hippias
here is much more extensive
than Snell noted: it can be traced
through the entirety of Aristotle’s account of Thales, with the
excursus, and even continues as Aristotle launches in to his list
of the material monists.
However, this does not explain why Aristotle thinks it worth
mentioning
trope
here
that
is
Hippo
is
paralipsis
not
or
worth
mentioning.
praeteritio,
but
The
the
rhetorical
standard
agonistic uses of this -- ‘Far be it from me to speculate about
the Honourable Member’s drinking problem’ -- seem unlikely to be
called for here. Aristotle’s phrasing is striking but unhelpful.
Hippo is deprecated for euteleia dianoias -- for the cheapness,
shoddiness, low quality of his thought.38 Alexander suggests that
37
“It is therefore entirely possible that at least some of Hippias’
quotations were taken over by the Stoics, and that they lived on in the
professional literature explaining the poets, or the Poet, as well as in
the doxographical accounts” (1985a, 143). We cannot be sure that Hippias
cited Iliad XXI, 195-6, but it would have been extremely pertinent (cf.
Guthrie vol. 1, 60, Mansfeld 1983, 88 n. 17, 90, 93 n. 35). Xenophanes
21B30, also on the ocean as source, follows almost at once in the Geneva
scholia ad XXI, 196.
38
Dianoia in Aristotle has a very wide range of meanings, and is
commonly used both for a rather broad
mental faculty (e.g. De An.
427b15, De Motu An. 700b17, Metaph. 1012a2), and for its exercise (Eud.
27
it
is
significant
that
Aristotle’s
criticism
is
of
Hippo’s
dianoia, rather than the doxa which he shares with Thales (In
Metaph. 26.24-27.3). This is interesting but does not get us very
far. For one thing, Aristotle has apparently
borrowed
much of
Hippo’s dianoia as worthy of attribution to Thales. For another,
the
term
euteleia
is
so
far
from
being
a
normal
term
of
philosophical criticism that it is hard to guess what Aristotle
might have in mind by it.39 Likewise phortikoteros, used of Hippo
in De Anima (though an argument of Melissus is said to be μᾶλλον
φορτικός
at
Physics
185a9-12).
Both
terms
suggest
a
kind
of
aesthetic, moral or even class distaste, and thus are odd ones to
use in a purely theoretical context. Perhaps Hippo’s reasoning was
somehow uniquely vulgar and tawdry by the standards of Aristotle’s
day; but it is hard to imagine what specific features of his
thought
would
prompt
criticism
of
that
flavour.40
We
might
speculate that Hippo’s resolutely materialist account of the soul,
scorned in De Anima (and not shared by Aristotle’s Thales) is the
real source of Aristotle’s hostility in both texts. Or perhaps
Hippo irritates Aristotle simply as a throwback: a late monist
without a clue about the moving cause, who thus has no role to
play in the developmentalist story told in A.3 about the serial
unfolding of causal explanation. But on either count it remains
Eth. 1214a29, 1217a6, Nic. Eth. 1166a27, 1175a14, De Interp. 16b20,
23a33, Metaph. 995a30, 1009a4): we might translate ‘thought’ and
‘thinking’ respectively. The closest uses to 984a5 are in the Metaph.
itself, at 985a5 (what Empedocles had in mind, contrasted with his
lisping expression), 986b10, 1009a16, etc. Cf. also perhaps De An.
404a17, De Caelo 280b3, Div. per Som. 464a29.
39 According to the TLG, Aristotle’s other uses of euteleia are: De div.
per Som. 463b15, Part. An. 683a25, Poet. 1448b26 and 1458b22, Pol.
1267b26, 1272b41, 1336b30, and Rhet. 1390b24, 1408a13. All are apparently
used to express aesthetic or ethical contempt -- as indeed are all his
uses of phortikos other than De An. 405b2.
40 In another paper currently in preparation (originally presented at the
Symposium Aristotelicum as an Appendix to this one), ‘On Hippo of
(possibly) Rhegium’, I survey what can be pieced together about Hippo’s
thought, and find no grounds for contempt visible at this distance.
28
hard to see why he should be singled out for scorn when Diogenes
of Apollonia, for instance, is not. I will come back to this
question at the end.
IV. Aristotle’s Survey of the Prôtoi (984a5-16):
4. Survey of the prôtoi (and their monistic successors):
a. Anaximenes and Diogenes said that the archê was air;
b. Hippasus and Heraclitus said that the archê was fire;
c. Empedocles said that all four elements were archai;
d. Anaxagoras said that the archai were unlimited: for all the
homoiomeries are generated and destroyed in the same way that the
elements are, by combination and separation.
Aristotle
here
proceeds
by
interweaving
systematic
and
chronological ordering principles. The overarching cause-by-cause
presentation which structures A.3-7 obviously represents a kind of
diairetic principle; but the material cause appeared first because
it was first to emerge chronologically. Aristotle’s listing of the
prôtoi begins with another gesture towards diairesis:
they
do
not
principles”41
all
--
agree
and
the
as
to
prôtoi
the
are
number
and
grouped
nature
-- “Yet
of
these
systematically,
by
their choice of archai. But at least two of the three pairs of
single-archê theorists (counting Thales-Hippo as an abortive pair)
are ordered internally by chronology,42 and the pairs are in turn
set
41
out
in
chronological
order.
The
four-archai
theory
of
An awkwardness is being papered over here, more successfully in Ross’
translation than in the Greek. The previous sentence specified an
underlying nature ‘whether one or many’; and the introduction to the
prôtoi at b6-8, to which Aristotle is now reverting after the interlude
on their reasoning, also spoke of archas in the plural. Later on as well,
Aristotle seems to allude vaguely to early pluralist materialists
(984a20); yet none are ever named.
42 This is clear in the cases of Thales and Hippo and Anaximenes and
Diogenes. If we accept the traditional floruit of c. 500 B.C. for
Heraclitus, Hippasus was probably a generation later (cf. von Fritz 1945
at 383-6). But Aristotle never mentions Hippasus elsewhere.
29
Empedocles and the infinitely-many archai theory of Anaxagoras are
most easily read as diairetically ordered, in the sequence onemany-infinitely many. Aristotle seems to be mildly carried away
here by this diairetic progression, since the references to both
Empedocles
and
Anaxagoras
are
proleptic,
and
we
must
soon
backtrack to Parmenides and the discovery of the moving cause.
(This prolepsis cannot represent an impulse to comprehensiveness
in listing material archai, since the atomists remain offstage
until the end of A.4.) The progression here is complicated by an
ambiguity:
having
covered
Empedocles,
Aristotle
continues:
“Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, who, though older than Empedocles, was
later
in
his
Κλαζομένιος
τῇ
philosophical
μὲν
ἡλικίᾳ
activity,
πρότερος
says...”
ὢν
τούτου
Ἀναξαγόρας
τοῖς
δ’
δὲ
ὁ
ἔργοις
ὕστερος (984a11-13). The interpretation of the proteros-husteros
contrast here is enormously controversial: the phrase translated
“but later in his philosophical activity” might equally well be
read
as
expressing
philosophical
inferiority.43
But
for
our
purposes the important point is fortunately the unambiguous one:
Aristotle is warning that he has broken away from the birth-order
of the philosophers in his order of presentation. That he bothers
to
alert
us
to
the
breach
confirms
the
importance
of
the
chronological principle even in this primarily diairetic survey of
the materialists.
This narrative twisting and turning may be easier to make
sense of in light of Aristotle’s ‘reference text’ here, the proto-
43
In principle, that is: of the two, Aristotle does seem to have the
higher opinion of Empedocles (see O’Brien 1968). On the other hand,
984b15-20 does not entail that Anaxagoras’ work cannot have been later
than Empedocles’; and it is hard to see why Anaxagoras’ inferiority would
be relevant here, least of all as an excuse for discussing him after
Empedocles. If anything, given the progressivist orientation of A.3,
Aristotle’s presentation should be in order of ascending merit. For upto-date discussion and references, see Sider 2005, 3-11 and Curd 2007,
130-7, and more fully O’Brien 1968 and Mansfeld 1979-80.
30
doxography
of
Plato’s
Sophist.
At
242c,
the
Eleatic
Visitor
launches into a somewhat jokey sketch of earlier thought about ta
onta, posa te kai poia estin:
“It strikes me that Parmenides and everyone else who has
set out to determine how many real things there are and
what they are like, have discoursed to us in rather an
off-hand fashion.... They each and all seem to treat us
as children to whom they are telling a story. According
to one there are three real things, some of which now
carry on a sort of warfare with one another, and then
make friends and set about marrying and begetting and
bringing up their children. Another tells us that there
are two -- Moist and Dry, or Hot and Cold -- whom he
marries off, and makes them set up house together. In
our part of the world the Eleatic set, who hark back to
Xenophanes or even earlier, unfold their tale on the
assumption that what we call ‘all things’ are only one
thing.
Later,
perceived
that
certain
safety
Muses
lay
in
rather
Ionia
in
and
Sicily
combining
both
accounts and saying that the real is both many and one
and is held together by enmity and friendship.”44
The specifics of Plato’s story here are admittedly very different
from the narrative of A.3, and in some respects rather baffling.
Here monism seems to be an Eleatic invention, and preceding it are
unattributed
three-
and
two-archai
mythological, Hesiodic character.
45
cosmogenies
of
a
vaguely
What is strikingly similar is
Plato’s more careful and skillful combination of chronological and
44
Trans. Cornford 1934.
Cornford ad loc. is silent on the identities of the two- and threearchai theorists. Pherecydes is often mentioned as a candidate for the
latter: but see the cautious remarks of Schibli 1990, 195-6.
45
31
diairetic organization. We are given a ‘countdown’ diairesis from
three
archai
followed
by
to
two
synthetic
chronological
to
one
views;
development
(cf.
but
from
Isocrates,
this
is
Antidosis
also
traditional
268),
presented
cosmogeny
as
a
through
Eleaticism (‘starting from Xenophanes and even before’) to (‘later
on’) post-Eleatic synthesis.
Despite the very different content of his story, Aristotle in
A.3 seems to be looking back to the methods and strategies of the
Visitor’s account. First, the question is still poia kai posa, as
pursued through an episkepsis tôn ontôn: as I noted in II, though
his
topic
account
is
in
tradition
the
contact
as
one
archai,
Aristotle
with
Platonic
about
a
einai
and
is
concerned
to
keep
his
understanding
of
the
same
ta
onta.
Second,
Aristotle
follows Plato in positing a division into three stages -- the
three stages, indeed, that we still find in standard histories of
Presocratic philosophy, viz pre-Parmenidean, Eleatic, and a postParmenidean
synthesis
(with
the
Pythagoreans,
a
poor
narrative
fit, apparently excluded from both the Sophist and A.3). Third,
Aristotle follows the Sophist in framing this story as one of an
inquiry into problems about change, with real progress towards a
solution
coming
structural
only
similarity
towards
I
the
just
end.
noted:
Finally,
in
both
there
is
texts,
the
the
chronological and diairetic principles are both used and, insofar
as possible, made to converge. I will say more about the Sophist
as model in section VI.
V. The Progress of the Inquiry and the Discovery of the Moving
Cause (984a16-4b8):
5. Progress and the discovery of the moving cause:
32
a. As inquiry progressed, the subject-matter itself made a way
and compelled inquiry:
b. For the material cause alone cannot explain generation and
destruction: a substrate does not change itself.
c. The earliest monists didn’t trouble themselves about this; but
other monists, ‘as if defeated by the inquiry’, said that the one
was entirely unmoved.
d. None grasped the moving cause except Parmenides, and he only
insofar as he said that the aitiai were in a way two.
e. It is much easier for pluralists to speak of the moving cause:
for instance, they can use fire as having a nature which moves,
and water and earth and the rest as being the opposite.
This section of the chapter is shaped by a pair of fascinating but
somewhat enigmatic statements at 984a18-9 and -- running beyond
the
brief
of
this
paper,
but
indispensible
to
understand
the
former -- 984b8-11. First:
“From these one might think that the only cause is the
so-called
material
cause;
but
as
they
thus
advanced
[προϊόντων], the very facts [αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα] showed them
the way and joined in forcing them to investigate.”
And
second,
after
the
account
of
Parmenides
and
the
unnamed
pluralists:
“When these men and the principles of this kind had had
their
day,
as
the
latter
were
found
inadequate
to
generate the nature of things, men were again forced by
the truth itself, as we said, to inquire into the next
kind of cause.”46
46
μετὰ δὲ τούτους καὶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἀρχάς, ὡς οὐχ ἱκανῶν οὐσῶν γεννῆσαι
τὴν τῶν ὄντων φύσιν, πάλιν ὑπ’ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀληθείας, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν,
ἀναγκαζόμενοι τὴν ἐχομένην ἐζήτησαν ἀρχήν. It is controversial whether
this second allusion describes a second intervention, prompting inquiry
into the final cause, or is just a reiteration of the first. Ross argues
for the latter reading (1958, 135-6), which is supported by 985a11 and
33
I will call these together the internal logic claim. This striking
and
hugely
important
claim
--
that
philosophical
progress
in
uncovering the causes was somehow caused by the subject-matter
itself, and so was presumably necessary or inevitable -- seems to
occur nowhere else in Metaph. A,47 but variants appear in other
works of Aristotle. One is in a closely parallel context in the
Physics,
after
Aristotle’s
review
of
his
predecessors
on
the
question of the ‘number and nature’ of the principles. The moral
drawn from this survey is that the principles must be contraries:
for
all
identify
contraries,
“giving
their
no
elements
reason
and
indeed
principles
for
the
with
the
theory,
but
constrained as it were by the truth itself” (188b27-30). Then in
Part. An. both Empedocles and Democritus are said to have been led
to recognise the formal cause or essence in spite of themselves.
Empedocles,
led
by
the
truth
itself
[ἀγόμενος
ὑπ’
αὐτῆς
τῆς
ἀληθείας], was compelled [ἀναγκάζεται] to identify the nature of a
thing with the ratio (642a18-21). And Democritus, because he was
‘carried away by the matter itself’ [ἐκφερόμενος ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ
πράγματος], was the first to touch on the essence and definition
of substance (642a24-8). These references are a curiously close
match to the pair of claims in A.3, of which one, likewise, refers
to the truth as forceful agent and the other to the pragma itself.
But what is compelled in Part. An. is recognition of the formal
cause,
to
which
the
internal
logic
claim
is
never
applied
in
Metaph. A. Indeed, strictly speaking, in A.3 what is compelled is
not
recognition
[συνηνάγκασε
of
ζητεῖν,
any
cause,
but
ἀναγκαζόμενοι
further
ἐζήτησαν].
inquiry
In
the
b21. But this requires awkwardly taking the πάλιν to go
εἴπομεν; and it is hard to see how it can make any sense of
μετὰ ...τὰς τοιαύτας ἀρχάς or the ἐχομένην... ἀρχήν.
47
Unless we add Parmenides’ having been compelled by the
themselves, A.5, 986b31 -- which would perhaps be a gloss
version of the claim.
or
search
internal
with ὥσπερ
either the
phainomena
on the A.3
34
logic claim as it appears in A.3, Aristotle’s claim is not that
particular aspects of reality force us to acknowledge them, but
that a partial grasp of reality makes further explanatory puzzles
irresistable.
48
The question that is forced on the materialists as
they progress would seem to be: given the continuity and stability
provided by the persisting archê or archai, what happens when a
natural substance comes into existence or goes out of it -- and
why does it happen just when it does?
As scholars have noted, the internal logic claim must be an
expression
of
understanding
two
of
more
the
general
development
Aristotelian
of
the
views:
arts
and
first,
sciences
his
as
following a teleological (and even cyclical) progression;49 and
second,
more
generally
still,
his
epistemological
optimism.50
Aristotle holds that all the arts and sciences have been developed
and perfected many times, with the epochs of human culture divided
and destroyed by recurrent natural disasters. Fragments of wisdom
somehow survive in mythic form to provide the starting-point for
the next civilization (Metaph. Λ.8). Aristotle also seems to think
of the development of a science within each epoch as naturally
exhibiting
48
the
kind
of
teleological
progress
to
perfection
Unfortunately Aristotle does not spell out how it does so. The
clearest account I know is Irwin’s: “<the material monists> have to
explain the variation of non-essential properties at different times; and
they cannot simply mention the permanent subject and its composition,
since these alone do not explain why the changes happen at some times and
places rather than others.... Even though they do not initially recognize
the efficient cause, their own questions, not some questions raised by
another theorist from within quite a different theory, require the
recognition of an efficient cause” (1988, 158). This is an attractive
picture of how philosophical investigation might progress as a series of
self-propelling problems and solutions. The difficulty is that it
presupposes that Aristotle’s monists were all along trying to explain
‘the variation of non-essential properties’, which seems unlikely.
Aristotle’s critique in A.8 describes them as “trying to state the causes
of generation and destruction, and doing natural science with regard to
all things” (988b26-7).
49 Mansfeld 1985c, 3-10, Palmer 2000, 196-202.
50 Cf. Denyer 1991, 183-213.
35
characteristic of natural organisms. This is presumably because -and this is the second view -- we are naturally adapted to opt for
the
true
over
the
false:
humans
“have
a
sufficient
natural
instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth”
(Rhetoric 1355a15-8, cf. E.E. 1.6, 1216b28-31, N.E. 1.8, 1098b279, Pol. 1264a1-4). This general orientation to the truth implies
that
(barring special countervailing factors of some sort) good
explanations will tend to drive out bad ones, the false parts of
theories will tend to be corrected, and the sciences, philosophy
included, will tend naturally towards completion. The link between
this
epistemological
optimism
and
Aristotle’s
progressivist
conception of philosophy is made explicit in Metaph. α.1, where it
is perhaps meant to serve as a kind of retrospective gloss on the
project of A.3-10. As it explains, the investigation of the truth
is in a way hard, but in another way easy. While no one gets the
entirety
of
it,
“no
one
fails
entirely,
but
every
one
says
something true about the nature of things, and while individually
they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of
all a considerable amount is amassed” (993b1-5). Contributions to
the arts and sciences build on each other and all are of value
(993b11-19); so it is not surprising that Aristotle would tend to
view
progress
in
thinking
about
the
archai
as
virtually
inevitable.
VI. Notes on Genre and Method in
Metaphysics A.3, 983a24-4b8:
Aristotelian Dialectic
It is natural to take Aristotle’s predecessor-surveys, and Metaph.
A.3 in particular, as dealing with the endoxa -- the reputable
opinions
which
he
identifies
as
the
starting-point
for
philosophical inquiry in a famous passage of NE. VII.1 (1145b3-
36
7).51 I think that this is basically right, but needs to be made
more precise. For how to fit together Aristotle’s practice in A.3
with his account of dialectic in the Topics and his programmatic
remarks elsewhere is a vexed question. The dialectic of the Topics
is essentially elenctic, a matter of refutation through questionand-answer,52 and it is difficult to read Aristotle’s project of
subsumption in A.3 that way. Moreover, in thinking about A.3 as
dialectic about the archai, we need to be careful not to assume
that the referent of archai is fixed. The term seems to be used
for three different things in Metaph. A: (1) in A.1-2, for the
archai in an honorific sense, the knowledge of which deserves the
name ‘wisdom’; (2) in A.3-10, for the archai of the cosmos and
‘the
all’,
as
identified
in
various
ways
by
the
early
philosophers; (3) for Aristotle’s own system of the four causes -but these are referred to as archai only somewhat indirectly and,
it seems, in order to preserve some kind of continuity with (1)
and
(2)
(e.g.,
983b3,
4a25-6,
988a21-3,
b18-19).
Aristotle
habitually collocates archai and aitiai, but clearly prefers the
latter in relation to his own theory from the Physics (983a24-7,
b54a17, 984a25, 988b16-21, 993a11). And it is not clear that the
fourfold causal scheme should count as archai of physics (Physics
I
at
any
rate
investigates
the
archai
of
physics
in
a
very
different sense); and even if they do, that will not be sufficient
to make them the archai of first philosophy as well. Now A.1-2 are
concerned
constitutes
to
identify
wisdom
(it
certain
is
marks
universal,
of
the
science
theoretical,
an
which
end
in
itself, divine, etc.) which in fact are met quite well by the
philosophical inquiry narrated in A.3-7. So one might think that
51
On Peripatetic doxography as dialectic more generally, see Mansfeld
1992b and Baltussen 1992.
52
Cf. Brunschwig 1967: “La tâche du questionneur est d’élaborer une
argumentation tendant à établir la proposition contradictoire de celle
que soutient le répondant (xxix-xxx).
37
the
argumentative
structure
of
Metaph.
A
as
a
whole
runs
as
follows: (1) wisdom is argued to be knowledge of the ‘honorific’
archai (i.e., the archai to be studied by first philosophy) (A.12); (2) the archai of the earlier philosophers are discussed as
likely
candidates
for
these
honorific
archai
(A.3-7);
(3)
the
archai of the earlier philosophers are shown to reduce to the
Aristotelian four causes (A.3-10).53 Thus the four causes turn out
to be the leading candidates for the honorific archai. And perhaps
this is the structure of Aristotle’s argument; but it is important
to bear in mind that Aristotle’s next move (in Metaph. B) is to
set out aporiai, an operation which still belongs to dialectic,
rather than to proceed to any systematic science of metaphysics.
54
Moreover, it is doubtful that any later part of the Metaphysics
treats the four causes as a set of ‘first principles’ in the Post.
An. sense, as opposed to providing a handy framework and startingpoint
for
further
dialectical
inquiry
into
what
those
first
principles might be. So if A.3-10 is dialectic, it is of a kind
which
is
preliminary
even
in
relation
to
the
dialectical
investigations of the later books of the Metaphysics.
How A.3 operates as dialectic can be made more visible by
further comparison with Plato’s Sophist. I have already noted the
parallels between Sophist 242cff. and A.3 as surveys of views poia
kai posa ta onta/hai archai. But in terms of method, A.3 is still
more endebted to the second phase of Plato’s discussion, Sophist
246a-9d. In this famous passage, ‘the battle of the gods and the
53
On the overall project of Metaph. A see Frede 2004.
So the Metaphysics itself shows that a predecessor-review and a
working out of aporia are, or at least may be, distinct dialectical
operations (whereas in Physics I, say, they seem to be combined: nb I.8,
191a23-5). Aristotle concludes in A.10: “but let us return to enumerate
the difficulties that might be raised on these same points; for perhaps
we may get some help towards our later difficulties” (993a24-7). The
identity of these two sets of difficulties is controversial, but at any
rate those of A.8-9 are clearly ad hominem and a completion of the
predecessor-review, whereas the aporiai of B are forward-looking.
54
38
giants’, two earlier views are expounded and scrutinized at much
greater length: a kind of materialism and what sounds very much
like the middle-period theory of Forms. The Visitor launches into
a
critical
dialogue
with
each
faction
in
turn.
This
involves
positing ‘improved’ materialists, who are willing to answer ‘in a
more orderly way’ than their real-life originals. In defense of
this idealization, the Visitor notes that agreement from these
‘better’ interlocutors is worth more anyway; and that our concern
is not with them but to seek the truth. In the interrogation which
follows, he begins from the fact that the materialists set down
and even define being as body (246c7, b1). But they must admit
that there is such a thing as an animal; that animals are ensouled
bodies; that souls therefore exist; that souls can be qualified as
just
and
intelligent
or
the
opposite;
that
they
gain
these
qualities by the presence of justice and intelligence and their
opposites; that justice and intelligence are not visible and... at
this point the answers fall into disarray, but the conclusion is
that the giants must admit that there are non-perceptible and by
extension non-bodily existents. The Visitor at this point proposes
to them a new criterion of being, one coherent with this newly
expanded ontology: being is power [dunamis], the ability to affect
and be affected. (Note that this new criterion might plausibly be
claimed to be what the giants ‘really’ had in mind all along: it
would explain why they readily accepted that the qualities which
affect bodies must exist just as much as those bodies.) As for the
friends of the Forms, they are presented as initially denying the
new
criterion:
capacities
to
‘Being’
act
and
properly
be
acted
speaking
upon,
does
since
all
not
have
such
‘becoming’
is
excluded from it. However, they in turn must admit that knowing
and being known are a form of acting and being acted on; that what
really is has intelligence; that it therefore has life; that it
therefore has soul and is alive; and that it is therefore subject
39
to motion and change (though not complete motion and change, i.e.
flux). In sum, each faction is forced to concede, on the basis of
its own thesis in conjunction with further premises acceptable
from its own viewpoint, the contradictory of that initial thesis,
which in turn supports a new constructive account of being.
The form of each argument is thus that of a Socratic elenchus
with a positive upshot affirmed. And this upshot -- that both
change (or motion) and rest really exist, and that Being must be
understood as not the same as but different from both of them -constitutes the basic framework of the account of the ‘greatest
kinds’ which the Visitor goes on to produce. Each side can thus be
seen to have a positive contribution to make to that framework,
once its one-sidedness is corrected. The materialists were right
that what exists must have powers to act and be acted upon (a
point to be pressed again at 252c-e); but they were wrong to
assume that such powers could only be realized by bodies. The
friends
of
the
Forms
knowable
and
stable,
complete
stasis.
As
were
but
each
right
wrong
is
that
to
what
assume
corrected,
really
that
they
is
this
converge
must
be
entailed
on
the
correct account; and Plato presents this as something that they
(or somewhat idealized counterparts) could be brought to recognise
themselves through dialectical question-and-answer. This questionand-answer
is
at
once
refutative
and
constructive;
though
superficially elenctic, it is also oriented towards sorting the
true from the false, and amassing convergent grains of truth from
superficially conflicting sources.
In
the
Eudemian
Ethics,
Aristotle
describes
a
dialectical
procedure along very much the lines displayed in the Sophist:
“We
must
try,
by
argument,
to
reach
a
convincing
conclusion on all these questions, using, as testimony
[μαρτυρίοις] and by way of example, what appears to be
40
the case. For it would be best if everyone should turn
out to agree with what we are going to say; if not that,
that they should all agree in a way and will agree after
a change of mind [μεταβιβαζόμενοι]; for each man has
something of his own to contribute to the finding of the
truth, and it is from such <starting-points> that we
must in a way demonstrate: beginning with things that
are correctly said, but not clearly, as we proceed we
shall come to express them clearly, with what is more
perspicuous
at
each
stage
superseding
what
is
customarily expressed in a confused fashion.” (1216b2635, trans. Woods 1992)
If we read
μεταβιβαζόμενοι
here as simply ‘after [or, better,
‘with’] a change of mind’, it sounds like a sort of fantasy by
stipulation: after they change their minds, everyone will agree!
But this would make nonsense of the crucial claim that everyone
has something of his own to contribute. So Aristotle cannot have
in view here the simple replacement of other people’s views with
his own. Instead, we should see here a reference to the kind of
dialectical clarification and correction we find in the Sophist,
as the following lines of the passage confirm; it is as we move
from confusion to clarity that everyone can be shown to (‘in a
way’) agree, just as the gods and giants come to do.55 Several
55
Cf. also the use of metabibazô at Topics 101a33: dialectic is useful
in ‘encounters’, “because if we have correctly reckoned up the opinions
of the many, we will speak to them not from foreign opinions but from
their own, changing their minds [μεταβιβάζοντες] about anything they do
not seem to us have well said”. Again, whatever exactly is envisaged
here, again it can hardly be wholesale belief-replacement. What is ‘not
well said’ must be not well said for the purposes at hand, e.g., by
mixing up several topoi. Aristotle is describing the correction of views
not in order to make them identical to his own, but simply to make them
usable in discussion: as Smith says, “replacing our audience’s clumsy
41
points of the Eudemian passage also recall Aristotle’s procedure
in Metaphysics A.3-10. A progression from the confused to the
clear and corrected is precisely what he here aims to offer, not
only in the narrative progression from more primitive views to
more
articulate
ones
but,
even
more,
in
the
dialectical
clarification of those views from the vantage point of Aristotle’s
own theory. “But while he would necessarily have agreed if another
had
said
this,
he
has
not
said
it
clearly”,
as
he
says
of
Empedocles’ approach to the formal cause in A.10, 993a22-4. That
everyone, once their views have been fully clarified and adjusted,
has
a
distinctive
contribution
to
make
to
the
truth
is
then
thematized in α.1.
In sum, Aristotle’s project in A.3-10 is one of theoretical
subsumption through dialectical engagement. More precisely put, in
A.3-10 Aristotle is working with a species of originally Platonic
dialectic
exemplified
interrogation
of
in
the
Protagoras
in
Sophist
the
(and
perhaps
Theaetetus),
one
also
which
the
he
himself describes in the Eudemian Ethics. To distinguish this from
other forms of argument for which ‘dialectic’ is sometimes used, I
will
refer
to
it
as
‘Eudemian
dialectic’.
Eudemian
dialectic
consists in a critical, dialogic examination of earlier views, in
the course of which they are clarified so that what is true in
them may be sorted from what is false. The end result is that
superficially
conflicting
views
are
shown
to
converge
on
a
framework which can be used as a starting-point for constructive
theorizing about first principles. Though Eudemian dialectic is
critical, the extent to which it is refutative (rather than being
seen as a constructive exercise in the clarification, correction
formulations of their own views with better ones we have worked out in
advance” (1993, 351).
42
and harmonization of views) is subject to variation.56 In A.3-10
(and
likewise
De
Anima
I),
the
emphasis
is
on
finding
the
distinctive, though incomplete, contribution to the truth made by
the views under examination. In the Sophist, the emphasis is on
their correction, and the discussion is elenctic in form; but
there is still a profoundly important positive upshot. In the
Theaetetus’ refutation of Protagoras and in Metaph. Γ, virtually
nothing survives the examination, and the path to first principles
is pointed by negation. But these differing outcomes represent not
so much differences in method as in the value of the raw materials
to hand.
This mode of argument deserves the name of dialectic for
several reasons. It is clearly a close descendant of the Socratic
elenchus. As per Aristotle’s own account of dialectic, it deals
with endoxa (specifically the views of the wise), and takes a
dialogic form; it is a preliminary stage of inquiry, and a useful
non-demonstrative way of getting clear about prospective archai
(cf. Topics I.2).
As we can see from A.3-7 itself, Eudemian
dialectic is the kind of enterprise for which a collection of
doxai would be a necessary resource, and Mansfeld has noted that
such collections are proposed for dialectic in Topics I.14.57 At
the same time, Eudemian dialectic is not quite the same thing as
the dialectic of the Topics; for it need not be syllogistic in
form, nor refutative in its fundamental aim.58 Nor does Aristotle’s
much-discussed sketch of method in NE VII.1 map properly on to
this
kind
of
consideration
56
dialectic.
of
For
aporiai,
though
and
A.3
might
is
thus
preparatory
be
classed
to
as
the
an
It is unclear to me how far all Aristotelian dialectic is supposed to
be refutative in form, or how the refutative dialectic of Topics VIII is
related to any broader genre: cf. Topics VIII, S.E. 2, 165b1-4.
57 Mansfeld 1986, 25, Mansfeld 1992b.
58 Strictly speaking, according to Topics Ι.12, a dialectial argument is
either an induction [epagôgê] or a deduction [sullogismos]: I see no good
way to read A.3 as either.
43
elaborate way of tithenai ta phainomena, it is hardly the case
that the rest of the Metaphysics is simply concerned to vindicate
as many of those phainomena as possible.59
Eudemian dialectic remains a canonical mode of philosophical
argument.
In
her
Tanner
lectures,
The
Sources
of
Normativity,
Christine Korsgaard constructs an account of normativity in part
by way of engagement with such predecessors as Grotius, Hume and
Kant. In the final lecture, Korsgaard concludes: “I hope by now it
is clear that all of the accounts of normativity which I have
discussed
in
explains,
voluntarists
necessity
legislator
for
is.
these
a
lectures
moral
Realists
like
are
true”
(1996,
Pufendorf
legislator
like
--
Nagel
are
but
are
164).
right
wrong
right
As
she
about
the
about
that
who
that
normativity
involves objectivity -- but objectivity does not entail what Nagel
thinks. Meanwhile Kant is right sans phrase that autonomy is the
source of obligation; and Aristotle is (after some corrections)
right that normativity gets its authority from human nature. These
critical subsumptions are quite similar to Aristotle’s procedures
in Metaphysics A; the underlying assumptions about philosophical
progress cannot be far from those articulated in Metaph. α.1.
VII. Conclusions on A.3 and ‘History of Philosophy’
The Sources of Normativity is catalogued as ethics, not history of
ethics:
Eudemian
dialectic
today
lies
on
the
borderlands
of
‘history of philosophy’.60 But Eudemian dialectic is clearly not
the only genre in play in A.3; for it cannot explain Aristotle’s
59
I cannot here engage with the rich and complex reading of Aristotelian
dialectic offered in Irwin 1988. But if I am right to connect Metaphysics
A and Γ with the Eudemian Ethics and the Sophist, the gap between the
Topics and dialectic as used in the Metaphysics is not primarily to be
explained in developmental terms.
60
Cf. also Rorty 1984 on posthumous dialectical ‘re-education’ as a
historical mode, and Brandom 2002.
44
use
of
chronology
as
a
central
structural
principle.
This
principle governs his decision to begin with the material cause
and with Thales in particular. It helps to explain why, having
decided
to
begin
with
Thales,
Aristotle
immediately
wonders
whether he should move back to still earlier thinkers; once he
returns to forward gear, it determines the order in which the
various candidate archai are discussed. When the introduction of
Empedocles before Anaxagoras seems to break with chronology, he is
careful to explain the apparent deviation; having jumped ahead by
mentioning
them
both
before
Parmenides,
Aristotle
reverts
and
fills in the missing steps. And all this can be seen as just
continuing a perspective adopted even before A.3: for in A.1 and
A.2, Aristotle muses repeatedly on the origins of philosophy in
order
to
identify
wisdom
with
non-utilitarian
knowledge
(A.1,
981b14-24) and non-productive episteme (A.2, 982b11).
This
chronological
emphasis
is
unique
in
Aristotle’s
predecessor-surveys, and calls for explanation. Two complementary
lines of explanation seem to me to be available. First, we have
plenty of evidence, both internal and external, that Aristotle has
a serious ongoing interest in certain kinds of historical question
about
the
sciences.61
We
successors
researched
and
know
that
wrote
Aristotle’s
studies
of
students
the
history
and
of
philosophy, mathematics, medicine and theology: it is hard not to
infer that Aristotle himself inspired this ‘historical turn’. And
this was just part of a quite general interest in the development
of civilization and the arts and sciences, commonly put in terms
of the prôtos heuretês -- the subject, apparently, of a whole
Peripatetic
genre.62
This
research
in
turn
belongs
to
a
more
general Peripatetic engagement with history of all kinds, which
also led to collections of constitutions, political histories and
61
62
See Zhmud 2006 for a full account, esp. Ch. 4.
ibid., 149-52; cf. his Ch. 1 on heurematography in general.
45
chronologies.63 It would be perverse to insist that, despite this
powerful concern with history of all kinds, Aristotle can have had
no interest in the history of philosophy as such, or that such an
interest can have played no role in shaping Metaph. A.64
Still, this does little to explain why Aristotle would adopt
the chronological mode here in particular, when it is dispensible
for his purposes in (say) De Anima. The obvious explanation, it
seems to me, is that A.3 is special because of the availability of
the
‘internal
logic’
claim.
Aristotle
here
presents
earlier
thought in narrative form because in this case he has a story to
tell, one in which the progression of inquiries and discoveries
takes on a life of its own.65 (Admittedly this is not yet much of
an explanation: what we would like to know is why thought about
the archai would have been uniquely self-propelling in this way.
But so far as I can see A.3-10 offers no answer to that question.)
Aristotle’s announced demonstrandum, the negative claim that no
cause has been detected beyond his own four, does not require the
narrative mode; but in the execution, this purpose is overtaken by
a
more
ambitious
and
constructive
one.
In
fact,
it
is
doubly
overtaken, by a ‘Eudemian’ argument for dialectical convergence
and by the historical claim that his own four causes have at least
in part been forced upon philosophical inquiry. And the latter is
a claim that can only be made good in the narrative mode.
63
ibid., 136-40.
Cf. the sensible Jaeger 1937, contra Cherniss 1935: “We must not
separate Aristotle’s interest in the history of philosophy from his
historical research in all these other fields of civilization” (p. 354).
Zhmud 2006 points to Aristotle’s treatise De Inundatione Nili (preserved
only in a Latin abridgement), which gives a doxographic survey of earlier
opinions on a problem which Aristotle takes to have been conclusively
solved. Zhmud goes too far in inferring the primacy of historical
motivations in Peripatetic doxography; but clearly such motivations had
some independent force (2006, 143-4).
65 Cf. Frede 2004, 13-4.
64
46
Like ‘Eudemian’ dialectic, narratives driven by the ‘internal
logic’
claim
are
alive
and
well
in
contemporary
history
of
philosophy. So, to return to our opening question, it is worth
noting how far other features of Aristotle’s method in A.3-7 also
fit our understanding of the historian’s undertaking. A number of
his
moves
look
very
familiar.66
Aristotle
worries
about
scanty
evidence and calibrates his claims to reflect the quality of his
information. He also refers us to the texts, occasionally with a
slight air of bluff (985b2-3). He raises but fudges the problem of
the
demarcation
of
philosophy
from
its
precursors
and
kindred
works. He reconstructs reasoning which he finds murky, to tell us
what Empedocles or Anaxagoras was really getting at; he offers
charitably anachronistic interpretations, usually flagged as such,
in the interests of philosophical clarification. Overall, he is at
pains to tell a story of philosophical progress, i.e. of increased
clarity
in
the
posing
and
solution
of
central
philosophical
problems. If Aristotle is not a historian of philosophy, it is
remarkable
how
many
of
the
historian’s
problems,
worries,
desiderata, and strategms he has managed to accumulate.
Another marker of genre deserves special mention. This is
Aristotle’s praeteritio, noted in section III, of poor old Hippo.
For this too is best understood as part of the construction of a
specifically historical genre. So far as we can tell, Aristotle
has no good reason to dismiss Hippo so scornfully: but he does
have good reason to dismiss somebody. To narrate is to select; and
to select among philosophers is to offer up a canon. Aristotle’s
explicit exclusion of Hippo serves to signal this undertaking of
canon-formation. Moreover, in avowing that the exclusion is based
on the inferiority of Hippo’s thought, rather than the falsity of
66
In the terms of Rorty 1984, still the most useful typology of ‘history
of philosophy’, these features place A.3 in the category of both rational
reconstruction and (‘Whiggish’) Geistesgechichte.
47
his doctrine (or the crudeness of his expression, or any other
consideration), Aristotle avows that his canon will be governed by
considerations of philosophical merit. To return to a question
mooted at the outset, this is surely a large part of what we mean
by ‘objectivity’ in the history of philosophy. We are objective as
historians
when,
respecting
this
distinction
dianoia, we give a fair hearing to
between
doxa
and
philosophical reasoning with
which we disagree. And the historical enterprise depends on a
certain optimism about the prospects for convergence between the
demands of narrative and of canon -- between considerations of
historical
importance
and
philosophical
quality.
When
he
drop-
kicks Hippo out of canon and story alike, Aristotle affirms that
optimistic presumption. He thereby, I suggest, announces himself
as something fully recognisable only in retrospect: a historian of
philosophy.
So Metaphysics A.3 is a palimpsest of methods and genres.
There are vestiges of a diairetic structure; there are twists and
turns
inspired
by
Aristotle’s
reference
texts;
there
is
an
exercise in Eudemian dialectic; and finally there is a historical
narrative
--
a
story
--
and
with
that
story
a
canon.
The
dialectical exercise and the historical narrative are jointly the
core of the enterprise; and while the former is in some ways a
Platonic inheritance, the latter seems to be all Aristotle’s own.