ARISTOTLE IN THE POSTMODERN WORLD
ALFREDO MARCOS
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
BIOLOGY
Chapter 2
PHRONESIS
Chapter 3
PRACTICAL TRUTH
Chapter 4
SCIENCE IN ACT
Chapter 5
METAPHOR
Chapter 6
MIMESIS AND POIESIS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Introduction
Since the eighties Aristotle’s Biological Works have been the focus
of intense intellectual activity. New editions and translations as well as
detailed and creative studies have been published in English and several
other languages. A major and extensive part of Aristotle’s Works is
becoming available, perhaps for the first time since they were written, to a
large number of scholars, not only to specialists in the subject, and they are
arousing great intellectual curiosity.
This interest in the biological works has affected our interpretation
the rest of the Aristotelian Corpus and has paved the way to a new
understanding of Aristotelian thought as a whole. More specifically it has
paved the way to a new understanding of Aristotelian thought as a whole.
Paradoxical though it may seem, today, twenty-three centuries on, we may
now be in the most advantageous position for understanding the Stagirite’s
philosophy and applying it to contemporary philosophical problems.
This is the task I have undertaken in this book. I propose an
understanding of the Aristotelian Corpus inspired by the biological works,
and with the support of recent scholarship. This understanding has become
bound up with other current philosophical discussions.
Indeed, the modern world was in part born as a reaction against
Aristotelianism. We are now in a position to say that the image of Aristotle’s
thought to which modern philosophers and scientists reacted was partial, to
say the least. Many contemporary neo-Aristotelian philosophers are of the
opinion that the new perspective offered by the recuperation of his
Biological Works reinstates his thought for post-modern philosophy1.
I have reserved the term ‘post-modern’ and derivatives, hyphenated, simply to refer to the
time coming after the modern period. I shall use the term ‘postmodern’ in reference to a given
style of philosophy, with a tendency to so-called weak thought and relativism. This type of
thought is post-modern chronologically, but typically modern in content, for it is a reaction
1
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Aristotle’s work is also being recuperated in the field of science, and by way
of example, I would mention two especially important cases, taken from
widely differing sciences. In biology, Conrad H. Waddington has recovered
the Aristotelian idea of epigenesis, which is guiding a new and flourishing
line of biological research under the Evo-Devo label. And in economics, the
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen recognises taking inspiration from Aristotle to
develop his capabilities approach and the Human Development Index.
If in such diverse fields as biology and economics, Aristotle’s work
has once more found its capacity to inspire, then much more rightly will it
prove again useful in the Post-modern philosophical debate. My intention is
to contribute to the forming of an idea of Post-modern reason inspired in a
constellation of Aristotelian concepts, such as prudence (phronesis),
practical truth (aletheia praktie), science in act (episteme en energeiai),
metaphor (metaphora) and the imitation-creation pair (mimesis-poiesis).
They all form an interconnected network, as will be obvious throughout the
book, and together they make up an idea of reason that may prove suitable
for the present.
Some of my interpretations will very probably go beyond Aristotle’s
original intention. Nonetheless, my goal is not to revive the original meaning
–whatever that may be– but to extract from his work, always alive and so
prolific, any insight relevant to Contemporary philosophy. In this regard, I
have dealt with the Aristotelian Corpus as if it were a living being and,
instead of focusing on linguistic and historical analysis, I have gone one step
further to apply the Aristotelian scholarship available to us to the
philosophical thought of today.
In short, I have found that Aristotle’s works may again be a source
of inspiration for dealing with strictly contemporary problems as long as we
take Poetics, Rhetoric and the ethical writings as a theory of knowledge, a
theory of rationality and as a methodology of science; providing we interpret
the texts of the Organon as a rhetoric and axiology of science, and carry out
a metaphysical reading of his biology and a biological reading of his
metaphysics.
The book is organised as follows: Chapter One is an invitation to a
philosophical reading of Aristotle’s biological works as well as a brief
presentation of some key points for their philosophical appreciation. It shows
the possible implications of the Biological Works for the Aristotelian Corpus
as a whole. Why have I started off with an invitation, instead of a neutral
like so many others that have counterpointed the progress of the enlightened rationalist
project (nominalist, relativist and romantic, nihilist, existentialist, vitalist and irrationalist
currents, etc.).
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
introduction to Aristotelian biology? The reason is this: the Aristotelian
biological works are not too often read, so it would seem advisable to
persuade others of their great importance. It is crucial to consider the
enormous weight that biology carries over Aristotle’s thought as a whole. To
begin with, there are more texts on Biological issues than on any other topic.
Moreover, biological study was a frequent practice and a driving force
throughout Aristotle’s life. Our understanding of his metaphysics or ethics
would be poor without an accompanying reading of his biology. We must
not forget that for Aristotle, beings par excellence were indeed living beings.
Let us then briefly recall two pioneering studies of Aristotle’s
Biology. Pierre Pellegrin looked on Aristotelian biology as primarily
concerned with a better understanding of animal life, rather than with a mere
classification of animals. After Pellegrin’s valuable contribution, it is hard to
go on seeing Aristotle as a thinker obsessed by taxonomies. What is even
more important is that Pellegrin’s proposal, in demoting Aristotle’s
taxonomic intentions, makes it possible to bridge the gap between
metaphysics and biology through the key notions of eidos and genos once
they are stripped of their supposedly classificatory function. On the basis of
Pellegrin’s work, we may consider the meaning of these two terms to be the
same, in both the Biological works and in the rest of the Corpus.
A second step along this path of interpretation is that taken by David
Balme, another pioneer of Aristotelian biology. Just as Pellegrin argued
against the taxonomic ideal, Balme also rejects the idea that definitional
purposes are the main goal of Aristotle’s biological studies, arguing for an
interpretation of form (eidos) as an individuating principle, and of genos as
matter. Naturally, this inversion of the most traditional interpretation of
Aristotle has been fraught with controversy. My aim here, however, rather
than question his correct exegesis, is to find something in Balme’s
interpretation for the philosophy of today. And in this regard, as we shall
see, it must be recognised as being extremely fruitful.
For all these reasons, my personal approach to the Aristotelian
Corpus began with the Biological Works. From that starting point, I have
addressed the rest of his works. Aristotle very probably looked on himself as
a passionate advocate of living beings, something which we should always
bear in mind in our understanding of his works.
Chapter Two addresses the search for an updated model of
rationality. Apparently, Aristotle was not looking for classification or
definition as direct aims of his Biological Works. He did not study nature
principally from the point of view of logos (logikos), and his caricature as
Nature’s Secretary is quite definitely ill-founded, or at least partial. This
being the case, in Aristotle’s works themselves we may find some guidelines
for forming another, more flexible and less logicist, vision of rationality. In
this chapter I make the following claim: far from the ideal of rigid scientific
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
rationality sought by Modernity and from the irrationality proposed by
Postmodernity we may find a more moderate halfway point for reason: a
prudential rationality. Both scientism and irrationalism have become widely
developed and established. Prudential rationality is still a working process to
which this chapter seeks to contribute. Certainly, the notion of a prudential
rationality is rooted in the Aristotelian idea of phronesis. It could even be
said that two ideas of rationality coexist in Aristotle, one more logicist and
one more prudential and flexible. As in all great thinkers, in the Stagirite we
find mutually opposing tendencies, but what is important for my argument is
that one of those lines, the one pointing to prudential rationality, is of great
interest for the ongoing debate on rationality. In my opinion, such a concept
has interesting affinities with the fallibilism proposed by such contemporary
thinkers as Peirce, Popper, Jonas and Gadamer. Exploring and presenting
these similarities reveals the relevance of the Aristotelian view of phronesis
to present discussions.
Prudential action seeks, according to Aristotle, the truth of practical
reason. In consequence, Chapter Three is given over to the Aristotelian
concept of practical truth, as a middle path between naïve objectivism and
radical subjectivism. Kant’s legacy tells us that our knowledge is not a
passive representation of objects or an arbitrary construction on the part of
the subject of knowledge. Our contemporary epistemology needs the
reconciliation of the subject’s underpinnings with the objective constraints.
Obviously, this is not a simple task and numerous studies in contemporary
epistemology are working on its elucidation. The notion of practical truth as
construed as creative discovery, which I propose in this chapter, also seeks
this end.
Chapter Four uses a realist approach to the problem of universals,
while simultaneously examining the possibility of a scientific knowledge of
the individual and the particular. We bring up the distinction between
science in potency and science in act, as a key point in the interpretation of
Aristotle’s views regarding knowledge of the particular. A common
contemporary complaint against science is that it disregards concrete
individual substances to focus on theoretical abstractions that tell us little or
nothing about the world around us of singular beings and events. In Aristotle
we find indicators of the possibility of a science of the individual and,
consequently, a science relevant and reverent to the concreteness of reality.
Such a science of the individual, we believe, is also subjected to truth, but to
practical truth.
As we shall see, the concept of phronesis leads us to that of practical
truth, which in turn takes us on to that of science in act, or science of the
individual. But a science of the individual surely needs creative and
linguistic resources capable of bringing us closer to the individual, different
from those of mere conceptual language, supposedly literal and univocal.
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Aristotle suggests that it is the metaphor that possesses these creative and
expressive capacities and Chapter Five deals with the Aristotelian theory of
metaphor. The cognitive value of metaphor is also a recurrent topic in
current debates. In recent years, we have become aware of a previously
overlooked fact: there is an all-pervasive presence of metaphors in scientific
language. They cannot be replaced by a so-called “literal language”, and are
not mere aesthetic, didactic or heuristic devices. Their epistemic role is
irreplaceable. This fact compels us to reconsider scientific language in
relation to ordinary language, in its historical dimension and within the very
status of scientific realism. If we accept that scientific language is largely
metaphorical, can we still take a realistic approach to science? Aristotle
presents these questions as well as some valuable answers. According to
Aristotle, metaphor is not just an ornament for language but a way of
looking into the individual concreteness of reality and a useful way of
expressing it. A good metaphor, according to the theory we propose, is a
genuine creative discovery of similarity that takes us back to the former
notion of practical truth.
Finally, Chapter Six is concerned with an epistemic reading of
Aristotle’s Poetics. Our construction of the concepts of metaphor and
practical truth allow us to interpret the Poetics as a theory of knowledge. We
find a tension between the notions of mimesis and poiesis, for the former
concerns the representation of reality by means of imitation, while the
correspondence between that imitation and what is imitated takes priority in
the mimesis. The truth of the imitation consists in its likeness to the original.
On the other hand, the concept of poiesis is a sign of creativity, of presenting
before our eyes a reality constructed by art. Its value rests more on its
originality and vividness than on any correspondence with the original
model. The tension in question is resolved through the concept of practical
truth or creative discovery, which helps us to integrate at once the mimetic
and poetic features present in both art and science.
To sum up, the journey through the six chapters begins with biology
(chapter 1), goes on via ethics (chapters 2 and 3) and metaphysics (chapter
4) to finish with rhetoric and poetics (chapters 5 and 6). The message we get
is that Aristotle’s works could be actively used across post-modern debates:
in short, they tell us that there is a third way, a better middle path for many
of the dilemmas that threaten our philosophical discussions. For example,
between identity and difference, the Aristotelian texts propose a midpoint for
understanding reality: similarity. In the midst of the dilemma between
abstract universals and concrete individuals, between science and life,
Aristotle presents us with the possibility of scientific knowledge of
individuality, while simultaneously accepting a real foundation for
universals. Halfway between a sentimental anthropology of romantic
tailoring and a rational anthropology, according to the philosophy of the
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enlightenment, Aristotle presents an integrated anthropology. On
methodological issues, between the algorithm and anarchism, prudence
flourishes.
Bridging the gap between realists and non-realists, Aristotle
proposes an open view of reality that contemplates as real not only what is
actual but also what is possible. Between knowledge understood as a mere
subjective construction and knowledge as representation, as the mirror of
nature, we can borrow from Aristotle the notion of practical truth, that is, an
understanding of knowledge as a creative discovery, a notion in which the
activity of the subject and the reality of the object meet.
Aristotle provides a dynamic, analogical, view of language with his
theory of metaphor; a view that avoids both the equivocity of linguistic
relativism and the semantic rigidity and alleged univocity of a so-called ideal
language. From a cultural point of view, the Aristotelian proposal is halfway
between the Enlightenment and Romanticism, between extreme optimism
and pessimism, far from drama and supported by common sense and by a
sound, balanced attitude.
On the way, this shift facilitates the relationship between science,
arts and ethics, the three parts of the sphere of culture, which Modernity had
separated. It also facilitates the integration of the sphere of culture itself with
the world of life (lebenswelt). Aristotle offers the most promising
ontological, epistemological and anthropological basis for undertaking a
series of urgent reconciliations: of facts and values, of theoretical and
practical reason, of understanding and sensation and of intelligence and
emotion. Aristotle’s notions could help solve many dualisms of modern
times, in their Platonic or materialist variety. I hope the present book will
represent at least a small step in this direction.
I do not, however, wish to present the Aristotelian texts as
containing all the answers to contemporary debates. From Aristotle’s texts
we learn an intellectual modesty which is incompatible with such
pretensions. Yet, at the same time, I trust the reader will find powerful
arguments worth exploring and pursuing. My considered opinion is that to
ignore Aristotle’s work would amount to mindlessly wasting a source of
wisdom of great value for us today.
The present book is the result of more than ten years of research at
the Universities of Valladolid, in Spain, and Cambridge. It has benefited
from the comments and objections presented to the author during the courses
taught at the University of Valladolid (Spain), the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), the Universidad Javeriana of Bogotá, the
Università Campus Bio-Medico of Rome, and the National University of
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Córdoba, Argentina. Most of the book is based on papers published in
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, UK), Universitas
Philosophica (Bogotá, Colombia), Thémata (Seville, Spain), and
Epistemologia (Genoa, Italy).
Acknowledgements…
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Chapter 1
BIOLOGY
1. Introduction
The purpose of the present chapter is a short presentation of
Aristotle’s Biology, of its tone, objectives, methods, theories and
implications, both for the interpretation of the rest of his work and for
present-day debates. The rest of the chapters of this book are deeply
influenced by the reading of Aristotelian biological texts. This Invitation to
the Biology of Aristotle is completed with concise information about the
more accessible editions and translations and a selection of relevant
secondary literature.
2. The Tone
The most difficult aspect of Aristotle’s biological writings to convey
is perhaps the tone. I shall attempt to do this with a selection and brief
comments on a few excerpts:
i) “Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated,
imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and
decay. [...] whereas respecting perishable plants and animals we have
abundant information, living as we do in their midst, and ample data
may be collected concerning all their various kinds, if only we are
willing to take sufficient pains. Both departments, however, have their
special charm.[...] On the other hand, in certitude and in completeness
our knowledge of terrestrial things has the advantage. Moreover, their
greater nearness and affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier
interest of the heavenly things that are the objects of the higher
philosophy. Having already treated of the celestial world, as far as our
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conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat of animals, without
omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom,
however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet
even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit
that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links
of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be
strange if mimic representations of them were attractive, because they
disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original
realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who
have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation. We
therefore must not recoil with childish aversion from the examination
of the humbler animals. Every realm of nature is marvellous: and as
Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him
warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in,
reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that
kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of
every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us
something natural and something beautiful.”2
This is quite an apology for the study of living beings, a text to be
read as a claim made on behalf of biology in the face of academic preference
for mathematical studies, including astronomy. Aristotle believes that the
kingdom of movement and life must also be the object of research. The
reader will notice several significant notes, like the appreciation for living
beings that shows through and the demand for empirical observation, which
is brought together throughout with an intellectual reflection on their order
and functionality, and is even accompanied by evaluations of æsthetic
pleasure.
ii) “But the dolphin is equipped in the most remarkable way of all
animals: the dolphin and other similar aquatic animals, including the
other cetaceans which resemble it; that is to say, the whale, and all the
other creatures that are furnished with a blow-hole. One can hardly
allow that such an animal is terrestrial and terrestrial only, or aquatic
and aquatic only.”3 “Of these latter animals, some have a tubular airpassage and no gills, as the dolphin and the whale: the dolphin with
the air-passage going through its back, the whale with the air-passage
in its forehead.”4
2
De Partibus Animalium, 644b 22 - 645a 24. I will quote Aristotelian works using the
following abbreviations: HA: Historia Animalium; PA: De Partibus Animalium; IA: De
Incessu Animalium; MA: De Motu Animalium; GA: De Generatione Animalium; DA: De
Anima; PN: Parva Naturalia; Meta: Metaphysica; EN: Ethica Nichomachea; EE: Ethica
Eudemia; Pol: Politica; Rhet: Rhetorica; Poet: Poetics; Apo: Analtica Posteriora; SE:
Sophistici Elenchi; Top: Topica. If there is no indication to the contrary, the English
translation of Aristotelian texts are from W.D. ROSS and J.A. SMITH (eds.), The Works of
Aristotle Translated into English, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1908-1952.
3 HA 589a 31 et seqq.
4 HA 489b 2 et seqq. See also PA 669a 7, 697a 16; PN 476b 12 et seqq.
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“Among the sea-fishes many stories are told about the dolphin,
indicative of his gentle and kindly nature, and of manifestations of
passionate attachment to [his offspring][...] The story goes that, after a
dolphin had been caught and wounded off the coast of Caria, a shoal
of dolphins came into the harbour and stopped there until the
fisherman let his captive go free; whereupon the shoal departed. A
shoal of young dolphins is always, by way of protection, followed by
a large one. On one occasion a shoal of dolphins, large and small, was
seen, and two dolphins at a little distance appeared swimming in
underneath a little dead dolphin when it was sinking, and supporting it
on their backs, trying out of compassion to prevent its being devoured
by some predaceous fish. Incredible stories are told regarding the
rapidity of movement of this creature. It appears to be the fleetest of
all animals, marine and terrestrial, and it can leap over the masts of
large vessels. This speed is chiefly manifested when they are pursuing
a fish for food; then, if the fish endeavours to escape, they pursue him
in their ravenous hunger down to deep waters; but, when the necessary
return swim is getting too long, they hold in their breath, as though
calculating the length of it, and then draw themselves together for an
effort and shoot up like arrows, trying to make the long ascent rapidly
in order to breathe, and in the effort they spring right over the a ship's
masts if a ship be in the vicinity. [...] Dolphins live together in pairs,
male and female. It is not known for what reason they run themselves
aground on dry land; at all events, it is said that they do so at times,
and for no obvious reason.”5
“Of male animals the genitals of some are external, as is the case
with man, the horse, and most other creatures; some are internal, as
with the dolphin.”6 “But all the vivipara have their testes in front;
some of them inside at the end of the abdomen, as the dolphin, not
with ducts but with a penis projecting externally from them.”7 “They
come side by side, male and female, and copulate, and the act extends
over a time which is neither short nor very long.” 8 “Thus the dolphin
is directly viviparous, and accordingly we find it furnished with two
breasts, not situated high up, but in the neighbourhood of the genitals.
And this creature is not provided, like quadrupeds, with visible teats,
but has two vents, one on each flank, from which the milk flows; and
its young have to follow after it to get suckled, and this phenomenon
has been actually witnessed.”9 “Whatever animals have milk, have it
in their breasts. All animals have breasts that are internally and
externally viviparous, as for instance all animals that have hair, as
man and the horse; and the cetaceans, as the dolphin, the porpoise, and
the whale – for these animals have breasts and are supplied with milk.
5
HA 631a 8 et seqq.
HA 500b 1 et seqq. See also HA 510a 9; GA 719b 9.
7 GA 716b 26 et seqq.; See also GA 720a 33.
8 HA 540b 22 et seqq.. See also GA 756b 1 et seqq..
9 HA 504b 22-26; See also GA 718b 31, 732a 34, 732b 26.
6
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Animals that are oviparous or only externally viviparous have neither
breasts nor milk, as the fish and the bird.” 10 “The dolphin, the whale,
and all the rest of the Cetacea, all, that is to say, that are provided with
a blow-hole instead of gills, are viviparous. That is to say [...] supplied
[...] directly with an embryo from whose differentiation comes the
[animal], just as in the case of mankind and the viviparous
quadrupeds. The dolphin bears one at a time generally, but
occasionally two. [...] The young of the dolphin grow rapidly, being
full grown at ten years of age. Its period of gestation is ten months. It
brings forth its young in summer, and never at any other season; (and,
singularly enough, under the Dogstar it disappears for about thirty
days). Its young accompany it for a considerable period; and, in fact,
the creature is remarkable for the strength of its parental affection. It
lives for many years; some are known to have lived for more than
twenty-five, and some for thirty years; the fact is fishermen nick their
tails sometimes and set them adrift again, and by this expedient their
ages are ascertained.”11
“The dolphin is unprovided with a gall-bladder. Birds and fishes
all have the organ, as also oviparous quadrupeds.”12 “It was therefore
no bad saying of old writers that the absence of a gall-bladder gave
long life. In so saying they had in mind deer and animals with solid
hoofs. [...] But besides these there are other animals that have no gallbladder, though those old writers had not noticed the fact, such as the
camel and the dolphin; and these also are, as it happens, long-lived.”13
“The dolphin has bones, and not fish-spine.”14 “While it has no visible
organ for smell, it has the sense of smell remarkably keen.”15
“Viviparous animals, with the exception of the seal, the dolphin, and
those others which after a similar fashion to these are cetaceans, are
all provided with ears [...] Now, the seal has the passages visible
whereby it hears; but the dolphin can hear, but has no ears.”16
“Though a sound be very slight in the open air, it has a loud and
alarming resonance to creatures that hear under water. And this is
shown in the capture of the dolphin; for when the hunters have
enclosed a shoal of these fishes with a ring of their canoes, they set up
from inside the canoes a loud splashing in the water, and by so doing
induce the creatures to run in a shoal high and dry up on the beach,
and so capture them while stupefied with the noise. And yet, for all
this, the dolphin has no organ of hearing discernible.” 17 “if they are
entangled in nets they soon die of suffocation owing to lack of
10
HA 521b 24.
HA 566b 2 et seqq..
12 HA 506b 5 et seqq.. See also PA 676b 29.
13 PA 677a 35 et seqq..
14 HA 516b 12. See also PA 655a 16.
15 HA 534b 6 et seqq..
16 HA 492a 26 et seqq..
17 HA 533b 10-15.
11
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respiration.”18 “He can also live for a considerable while out of the
water, but all this while he keeps up a dull moaning sound.”19 “The
dolphin, when taken out of the water, gives a squeak and moans in the
air [...] For this creature has a voice [...], for it is furnished with a lung
and a windpipe; but its tongue is not loose, nor has it lips, so as to give
utterance to an articulate sound”20
“All creatures that have a blow-hole respire and inspire, for they
are provided with lungs. The dolphin has been seen asleep with his
nose above water, and when asleep he snores.”21
“Some fishes then, as has been stated, are carnivorous, and
carnivorous only, as the dolphin.” 22 “In the seas between Cyrene and
Egypt there is a fish that attends on the dolphin, which is called the
'dolphin's louse'. This fish gets exceedingly fat from enjoying an
abundance of food while the dolphin is out in pursuit of its prey.”23
I have noted almost all the texts to be found in Aristotle’s works on
biology concerning the dolphins. They demonstrate a continual and attentive
observation of both the anatomy and behaviour of these animals, an
observation that probably included dissection, for on the basis of that
dissection of dolphins and other animals, a collection of anatomical drawings
was compiled which has unfortunately been lost24. Many passages in
Aristotle’s zoological writings are doubtlessly based on those drawings.
Direct observation is complemented with information from indirect sources,
such as conversations with sailors and fishermen and the reading of treatises
and compendia. Observation is always accompanied by reflection on the
animal’s functional organisation and way of life, to the extent of reaching a
profound understanding of it, which is very often correct. What is honestly
considered to be certain is thus referred, and the inexplicable is presented as
an open question, for example the “suicidal” behaviour of cetaceans, which
is apparently not a new thing (and is still unexplained). A high estimation of
these intelligent creatures is also obvious in the passages chosen.
18
PN 476b 20.
HA 589b 9.
20 HA 535b 33 et seqq..
21 HA 537a 31 et seqq.. See also PN 476b 19
22 HA 591b 9.
23
HA 557a 30 et seqq..
24 Aristotle refers to this anatomical drawings in many places all along his biological works.
See, for instance, HA 497a 31-34 : “With reference to the appearance of this organ I must
refer the reader to diagrams in my 'Anatomy' ”. Cf. also HA 509b 22-25, 525a 6-10, 529b 1820, 530a 30-32, 565a 11-14, 566a 14-16; PA 650a 28-33, 668b 24-28, 674b 14-18, 680a 1-3,
684b 2-6, 689a 14-18, 696b 13-17; GA 740a 22-25, 746a 14-16, . Diogenes Laercio (Lives
and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, V 21, 103) también se refiere a esta obra de
Aristóteles, y precisa que contenía siete libros más un resumen.
19
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I have taken the dolphin, the emblem of the city of Delphos, so
bound up with the life of Aristotle, as an example, but I could have quoted
many more texts written in a similar vein about many other animals (around
five hundred species). I have chosen the dolphin because Aristotle applied
himself with especial brilliance, and rightly, to marine biology and because
in the case of the cetaceans, he prepared descriptions and explanations that
were not improved on until many centuries later. Moreover, after Aristotle
had done his work, it was soon forgotten that cetaceans were not fish, but
mammals.
Together with these correct explanations and many others, for
example those concerning the functions of the placenta and umbilical cord25,
Aristotle made mistakes of varying magnitude for various reasons, such as
deficient means of observation, overconfidence in his sources or the
acceptance of the cultural prejudices of the day. For example, he believed
that the animals that he called “testaceans”, and also insects, among which
he included arachnids, could appear through spontaneous generation, with no
need for forebears.26 He stated that the crocodile articulated its upper jaw,27
that a woman’s cranium had fewer sutures than a man’s,28 and that the
different directions of space corresponded to different functions and values.29
He thought that the heart was the sensory and motor centre30 and that the
brain was a mere cooler,31 and that food was assimilated through successive
processes of concoction.32 We could go on, but none of it would invalidate
the profound understanding that he achieved of living things.
iii) “The difference is the form (eidos) in the matter.”33
This idea is so unheard-of that translators and publishers have tended
to amend the author’s words to bring them more into line with logic. From
the logical point of view, if to the genus we add a differentia, we have the
species. Therefore, the species (eidos) would be the differentia in matter.34
The original formulation of the idea will only be understood if we bear in
mind that here Aristotle does not take up the point of view of logic (logikos),
but that of physics (physikos), according to which differentia is materialised
25
GA 740a 24 et seqq. See also GA 745b 23 et seqq..
GA III, 9-11; See also HA V 15, 19.
27 HA 492b 23.
28
HA 491b 2 et seqq., 516a 18 et seqq.; PA 653b 1.
29 IA 705a 32 et seqq.; PA 655 a 21 et seqq., 672b 31 et seqq.. A. CARBONE, La representation
spatiale du corps chez Aristote, Doctoral Thesis, Université de Paris I, 2005.
30 PA 665b 9 et seqq.; MA 703a 14 et seqq.
31 PA 652b16 et seqq.
32 PA 650a 2 et seqq.
33 PA 643a 24 (my translation).
34 Meta 1058b 23.
26
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
form, it is the real, physical, living being in itself. He says nothing of
differentiæ between classes of living things, but of differentiæ constituting a
particular living thing, just as we say that an embryo differentiates, that is,
by constituting or gestating; and the fact that by constituting in a determined
way it becomes different from others is secondary. Without texts like this,
we should not correctly grasp the tone of Aristotle’s biology, which is vivid
and passionate, empirical and compassionate, but also reflexive and
philosophically profound.
3. The Objectives
In principle, the questions that Aristotle addressed in his study of
living things need not be very different from those facing biology today. He
may have been overwhelmed, just as we are now, by the multiple
functionalities allowing living organisms to stay alive as individual beings,
by their capacity to generate and reproduce and by the existence of groups
with many common features – by the very existence and diversity of living
things. Aristotle tries to explain some of these characteristics in his different
biological treatises. He deals, for example, with functionality and the unity
of the living organism in De Anima and De Partibus Animalium, and with
generation in De Generatione Animalium.35 Inseparably from this, in
Aristotle there exists an interest for the philosophical understanding, not only
of life in general, but mainly of concrete life-forms, of their particular ways
35
The most general of modern biological theories, the synthetic theory of evolution, attends to
nearly all the fronts mentioned. Through the idea of natural selection, it seeks to account for
the functionality of the features of living beings, while population genetics deals with the
study of the transmission and distribution of these features in populations, and molecular
genetics works in the field of the individual. If anything remains relatively outside its
explanatory scope, and perhaps requires a new synthesis (with thermodynamics and the
theories of information and complexity), it is the diversity and progressive complexity of
living beings and their very existence (the problem of the origin of organisms). Also well out
of Aristotle’s scope, in my opinion is the explanation of existence and of the diversity of
living beings. On the synthesis referred to, see S. KAUFFMAN, The Origins of Order, Oxford
University Press, 1993; A. MARCOS, “Información y evolución” [“Information and
Evolution”], Contextos, 17-18, 1991, pp. 197-214; A. MARCOS, “Neodarwinismo, teoría de la
información y termodinámica: estado de la cuestión” [Neo-Darwinism, Theory of Information
and Thermodynamics: the State of the Question”], Estudios Filosóficos, 41, 1992, pp. 215252. There are obviously other preoccupations concerning modern and contemporary biology,
which could not have affected Aristotle. They depend on the progressive enlarging of the
empirical basis that the biologist works on. For example, from the Renaissance onwards,
ocean voyages overwhelmed European naturalists with a multitude of bio-geographical
questions and made it necessary to construct a suitable skeletal system of taxonomy.
Geological exploration of the fossil record made the chronological distribution of living
beings a challenging problem for naturalists in the 18th and 19th centuries. The development
of microscopy after the second half of the 17th century revealed the basic unit of living
beings, which made their diversity seem even more enigmatic, and so it goes on.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
of being – living – of each one’s particular way of life, of their constitution
as substances.
Sé que la expresión “concrete life-form” puede resultar incluso
paradójica. “Concrete” suggests particular, sensible or individuated.
Mientras que “form” suggests universals. Es así conforme a una cierta
interpretación de Aristóteles, según la cual la forma es universal y la materia
constituye el principio de individuación. Sin embargo, esta no es la única
interpretación posible de la filosofía del griego. Precisamente algunos
estudiosos de su obra biológica, comenzando por David Balme, han abogado
por una interpretación diferente. Según estos, la forma es el principio de
individuación, es propiamente individual. No debe ser confundida con la
especie, que es un universal, al igual que el género. La materia, por su parte,
tiene la consideración de género y es, por tanto, universal. Soy consciente de
que esta interpretación es muy polémica. Pero mi objetivo aquí no es ni
siquiera hacer una defensa de la misma. Los propios textos de Aristóteles
contienen tensiones quizá irresolubles, que dan pie a varias interpretaciones
posibles. Mi objetivo está puesto en los debates contemporáneos. La
pregunta que pretendo responder no es esta: “¿cuál es la interpretación más
correcta de los textos de Aristóteles?” Sino la siguiente: “¿alguna de las
interpretaciones vigentes resulta útil para el debate filosófico actual?”. Para
dar respuesta a la segunda cuestión no se requiere responder a la primera, tan
sólo mostrar que alguna de las interpretaciones del pensamiento de
Aristóteles nos orienta en nuestras polémicas actuales. Creo que es
precisamente lo que sucede con la interpretación propuesta por Balme y
otros, conforme a la cual la forma es individual, y “a concrete life-form” es
exactamento un ser vivo, cada animal, cada planta, este animal, esta planta.
Por otra parte, el interés por las concrete life-form, no es
incompatible con un interés por la life in general, como el que muestra
Aristóteles en De Anima II. Sin embargo, hay que aclarar que la life in
general no es una sustancia concreta, sino una abstracción. El objeto de
estudio del libro segundo del De Anima es aquello que tienen en común los
diversos seres vivos individuales. Precisamente lo que tienen en común es
que todos y cada uno poseen un alma, su propia e individual alma. Y el alma
es forma, es forma individual36. Nunca piensa Aristóteles en la vida como si
fuese una entidad concreta y global. For Aristotle, there is no a global entity
called life, of which each living being is an example, but rather a world that
is basically populated with concrete beings, for which to be is to live, and
they demonstrate this in their nutrition, growth, reproduction, perception,
locomotion and emotion, or intellectual knowledge, each according to its
fashion. To understand them and explain them implies knowing of each one
what it is and how it has come about and, to this end, to grasp the causes of
36
Cf. De Anima II, 414a 20-25. Discutiremos con más detalle si puede haber
conocimiento científico de las formas individuales más abajo, en el capítulo 4.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
its existence and its development. And without mixing up the two questions,
for to know its genesis is not to know the being itself, and much less is it to
have reduced or eliminated it to its genesis.
It is just as interesting as it is to point out the objectives that moved
Aristotle, to consider those that have mistakenly been attributed to him. For
example, his principal aim is not the classification of animals. This point is
made crystal clear by Pierre Pellegrin in his book La classification des
animaux chez Aristote.37 True it is that several classifications are to be found
in the Greek’s zoology, many of them very precise, but they have a purely
instrumental character, at the service of other objectives that are more
interesting than mere taxonomy. Nor is he interested in defining species,
which he does not do. Aristotle’s aim lies in the understanding of each living
thing. In this regard, David Balme38 states that if he had the drive of
Pellegrin, who with such force wrote against the taxonomic reading, he
would do the same with regard to the definition of species as taken as an
objective of Aristotle’s biology. In fact, the studies of Balme and Pellegrin
and other authors like James Lennox or G.E.R. Lloyd, have radically
changed our interpretation of it and have opened up a new epoch.
In short, the ultimate aim of Aristotle’s biology is not mainly the
study of life in general, or of the different classes of living beings. We could
not even say truthfully that it deals with living beings, that is, beings that are
and live, but with the living-beings, for which to be is to live, for which
being and living are one and the same, substances in their own way. And he
tries not to classify them or define them, but to understand them in their
being and in their development. We shall see below how Aristotle also
contributes to the metaphysical bases that give meaning to this type of
research.
4. The Methods
Aristotle accumulated all the information on the living world that he
could, and despised no reasonable way of approaching it. There are texts that
he could only have written after a direct and thorough exercise of
observation. For example, on the mole’s eye we can read:
“For this animal is deprived of sight; it has no eyes visible, but if the
skin – a thick one, by the way – be stripped off the head, about the
37
P. PELLEGRIN, La classification des animaux chez Aristote [The Classification of Animals in
Aristotle], Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1982.
38 Balme’s most important articles on Aristotle’s biology together with articles on Balme
himself are contained in A. GOTTHELF (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living Things, Mathesis
Publications and Bristol Classical Press, Pittsburgh, 1985; A. GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX (eds.),
Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
place in the exterior where eyes usually are, the eyes are found inside
in a stunted condition, furnished with all the parts found in ordinary
eyes; that is to say, we find there the black rim, and the fatty part
surrounding it; but all these parts are smaller than the same parts in
ordinary visible eyes. There is no external sign of the existence of
these organs in the mole, owing to the thickness of the skin drawn
over them, so that it would seem that the natural course of
development were congenitally arrested; (for extending from the brain
at its junction with the marrow are two strong sinewy ducts running
past the sockets of the eyes, and terminating at the upper eye-teeth).”39
On some exceptional occasions, as well as observation, we can even
speak of experimentation, for example in De Incessu Animalium.40 The
theoretical supposition on which this is based is that animal locomotion
requires an even number of support points. This supposition is put to the
empirical test by the amputation of a number of legs from centipedes, with
the result that these animals are able to walk with an odd number of support
points. The theoretical supposition is not abandoned altogether, but – very
typically of Aristotle – attenuated and made gradual. He would say that
asymmetry in the support points makes it difficult for the animal to walk, but
less so the nearer the difference is to one, and the greater the total number is.
This is a theoretical supposition suggested by observation, a later
observation with participation by the observer and with the intention of
contrasting or refuting the theoretical supposition, and a review of the
hypothesis in the light of the results of the trial which we may justly call
experimental.
An experiment suggested in the Hippocratic text On the Nature of
the Child was in fact carried out by Aristotle. The experiment – which Rom
Harré includes among the great experiments of the history of science –
consists in incubating twenty eggs laid on the same day and breaking open
one per day in order to be able to observe the complete sequence:
“With the common hen after three days and three nights there is the
first indication of the embryo [...] and the heart appears, like a speck
of blood [...] and from it two vein-ducts with blood in them trend in a
convoluted course [...] A little afterwards the body is differentiated, at
first very small and white. [...] the eyes, [are] swollen out to a great
extent. [...] When the egg is now ten days old the chick and all its
parts are distinctly visible. The head is still larger than the rest of its
body, and the eyes larger than the head, but still devoid of vision. The
eyes, if removed about this time, are found to be larger than beans,
and black; if the cuticle be peeled off them there is a white and cold
liquid inside, quite glittering in the sunlight, but there is no hard
substance whatsoever.[...] About the twentieth day, if you open the
39
40
HA 533a 2-15.
IA 708b 4 et seqq.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
egg and touch the chick, it moves inside and chirps; and it is already
coming to be covered with down, when, after the twentieth day is past,
the chick begins to break the shell. The head is situated over the right
leg close to the flank, and the wing is placed over the head.” 41
Many are the occasions when the information is gathered by indirect
means, especially concerning animals from far-flung places (such as Egypt,
India, Iberia, Libya, etc.) that Aristotle did not visit. The echo of
conversations with travellers, sailors, fishermen, veterinarians or breeders
may still be heard in innumerable passages, as is the case in some of the
quotes above concerning dolphins. In these references Aristotle gives much
importance to endoxa, a procedure that is in line with the ideas in
Nichomachean Ethics. According to Aristotle, the ideas of experienced
persons should have more or less the same consideration as scientific
demonstrations42.
But Aristotle was also an indefatigable reader, possessing at one
time what was probably the best library in Athens. Los griegos solían oír los
libros leídos en público por un esclavo. Pero “parece que Aristóteles –
afirma Jesús Mosterín – fue uno de los primeros griegos que adoptó la
costumbre de leer por su cuenta los libros. Ello le valió el sobrenombre de
‘lector’ (anagnostes) con que se le conocía en la Academia […] Fue uno de
los iniciadores de la costumbre de la lectura personal, para uno mismo, que
hoy todos practicamos […] Quizá Aristóteles, lector empedernido, practicase
ya la lectura visual, como nosotros, aunque ello no es nada seguro, dadas las
características de la escritura de su tiempo”43. What he read about animals
led him to produce writings about fantastic animals that have not come down
to us. It is not odd, then, that many passages in his biological works should
be the fruit of his reading veterinary and medical treatises, texts on cattle
breeding and agriculture, the texts of pre-Socratic philosophers, whom he
frequently quotes, texts on journeys and travelogues, and passages from
Homer, and not only directly but also through compendia or anthologies.
Sometimes his indirect sources let him down: in the case of the crocodile’s
jaw mentioned above, it is Herodotus who leads him to this error, while on
other occasions he does not seem to be so credulous towards his sources and
he even calls Herodotus a storyteller44.
Once the empirical information is gathered, Aristotle already has the
questions and the facts that require explanation, but not the answers. To give
explanations, Aristotle begins by organizing the information in a certain
way. The unit he works on is not the species or the genus, or any other
41
HA 561a 5 et seqq., keeping the same tone of empirical precision till 562b 2.
1143b 11-13.
43 J. Mosterín, Aristóteles, Alianza, Madrid, 2006, pp. 20 and 50-51 (my translation).
44 See GA 756b 5 et seqq.
42EN
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
taxonomic category, but the differentia. That is, he notices the features or
characteristics of animals and then looks for the constellations in which they
appear together. For example, he is very interested in the mole because this
animal has two characteristics, viviparism and blindness, which rarely occur
together. This work of identification and grouping together of differentiæ is
carried out in Historia Animalium.
The order in which he deals with differentiæ constitutes a further
step towards their explanation and is rarely gratuitous (although it
occasionally can be, as in the case of the study of generation in HA, where
the order is atypical). As a guide he uses familiar models, especially the
anatomy of the human being taken from the top downwards and from the
inside outwards. The human being is the most general model, but in the case
of the non-sanguineous animals (our invertebrates), the cephalopods are
taken as a sort of submodel on which to base the structure of the study of the
remainder.
The conjunction of differentiæ takes us to within one step of the real
explanation, which is explanation through causes. A morphological,
physiological or ætiological differentia would be explained insofar as we hit
upon its material, efficient, formal and final causes. For Aristotle, all causes
must be dealt with, but he gives especial importance to the final cause and to
the form of the animal, that is its way of living. Once its way of life is
grasped, the purpose will be understood of the parts and behavioural features
previously detected and grouped together, as will the harmonious
interrelationship of all of them. I fail to see how he could grasp the particular
way of living of each animal, which is the keystone of the arch of
explanation, other than by forming conjectures brought on by familiarity
with the object of study, by experience and by some empathy. For this, a
type of prudential knowledge is needed that Aristotle himself termed
understanding or comprehension (synesis). The truly explicative phase
appears in the treatises De Partibus animalium and De Generatione
Animalium, and in the smaller texts De Incessu Animalium and De Motu
Animalium.
In this section we must also deal with the methods that Aristotle did
not use, or that he subjected to extensive manipulation before applying them
to biological research. Especially relevant here are the methodological
guidelines that he offers in the writings of the Organon (above all the
Posterior Analytics), that is to say Aristotle’s biology does not proceed by
definition, as genus plus differentia, followed by syllogistic deduction. The
research methods used in biology have to be looked for in Poetics, in
Rhetoric, and above all in Nicomachean Ethics. There, Aristotle develops a
lucid study of prudence as a guide for human activity, as we shall see in the
next chapter, – and what is research but part of human activity? Research
21
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
into dolphins requires prudence, not only because dolphins themselves are to
some extent prudent 45, but chiefly because the researcher is a human being
for whom this virtue is the most general and efficient of guidelines for
making practical decisions in his work.
I do not mean by this that the explicitly methodological writings
such as Posterior Analytics lack value, just that they did not help Aristotle in
his biology, or they did so in a very distant and lax way, as has been
suggested by G.E.R. Lloyd.46 Likewise, Newton would not have got very far
in mechanics with his philosophical rules, and some authors piensan que
Descartes no siguió exactamente el Discourse on Method a la hora de hacer
óptica47, and nobody would have done anything interesting in science having
read only Bacon, and even less having read only Carnap. The
methodological writings should perhaps be read in a rhetorical key, as
contributions setting out mainly to express a preference for certain values
(simplicity, accuracy, coherence or any other), and should be accepted
according to a definite hierarchy. Methodological literature is of little use as
a guide for the scientist’s activity, and historically has proved to be
dangerous when taken too seriously, becoming an unfeelingly paralysing
ontology. Fortunately, Aristotle took the reality of living beings more
seriously than his own methodological writings.
5. The Theories
Aristotle’s biology is structured like a family of theories keeping
different relationships with one another, and likewise we can see today’s
evolutionary biology as a family of theories more than as a single theory
with different applications. Indeed, this is how it is considered from the so45
See A. MACINTYRE, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues,
Open Court, Chicago, 1999, chapter, 3; J.L. LABARRIERE, “De la phronesis animale”, in D.
DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, Logique et Métaphysique chez Aristote
[Biology, Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle], Paris, C.N.R.S., 1990, pp. 405-428
46 See, for example, G.E.R. LLOYD, "Theories and Practices of Demonstration in Aristotle", in
J. CLEARLY and D.C. SHARTIN (eds.), The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy,
vol. VI, University Press of America, Maryland, 1990.
47 See for instance M. AUTHIERS, “La réfraction et l' "oubli" cartésien” , in M. SERRES (ed.),
Élements d’Histoire des Sciences, Bordas, Paris, 1989, pp.. “No resulta inusual –afirma
Desmond M. CLARKE en su libro Descartes’ Philosophy of Science (Manchester University
Press, Manchester, 1982, p.)- en los comentarios de científicos sobre la metodología de su
propio trabajo encontrar discrepancias significativas entre lo que hacen en ciencia y lo que
ellos dicen hacer. Cuando Newton escribe en el Escolio General de los Principia: ‘aquello
que no se ha deducido de los fenómenos debe llamarse hipótesis; y las hipótesis, ya sean
físicas o metafísicas, de cualidades ocultas o mecánicas, no tienen lugar en la filosofía
experimental’ [I. Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Pincipia Mathematica, 3ª ed. p. 530], nadie
lo toma al pie de la letra. Tanto si le gusta como si no, de hecho, su física descansa sobre
hipótesis” [no hace falta traducirlo, lo copiaré del libro que cito].
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
called semantic concept of theories. This conception has been successfully
applied to the study of evolutionary theories by such authors as Paul
Thompson and Elisabeth Lloyd.48 I believe that, avoiding any superfluous
attempt at formalisation, the same perspective can be used for the study of
Aristotelian biology.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that, as has already been pointed out,
Aristotle sought the causal explanation of beings and processes; that is of the
living and their functions. Now, the most general theoretical model used by
Aristotle is that of four causes (material, formal, efficient and final). The
paradigmatic case of this model is the artefact. In artefacts, the four causes
are very clear and discrete. But the model needs a number of adaptations
before it can be applied to living beings and their functions. For example, in
the case of living beings, we really need the application of the model to
respect the unity of the substance: in a living being the formal and final
causes are identified, and the efficient cause of the growth of a living being
is in the living being itself, while the potter, for example, is not imprisoned
in the pot that he makes. Aristotle’s biological theories are mutually related
in that they are adaptations or applications of the general model of four
causes, the paradigm for which is the artefact.
Aristotle develops a general theory of the living being, contained in
the treatise De Anima, which is of the utmost importance for the
understanding of the rest of his biology and its relationships with
metaphysics and ethics. The first step towards the application of the model
of the four causes to the living being consists in the coming together of the
material and efficient causes in the notion of body, and the formal and final
causes in the soul. Later, body is associated with potentiality and soul with
act, so the living being will be made up of soul and body, which are related
in the same way as potentiality and act, that is they are one and the same
entity seen from two different angles: as what it can be and as what it in fact
is (let us not forget that it can be, among other things, what it is). On the
other hand, between body and soul there is an instrumental relationship, like
that between the eye and sight49. In other words, this theory explains the
being of the living being in general (regardless of the type of living being in
question), seeks to avoid both Platonic dualism and atomist materialism, and
to this end applies the model of four causes adapted through the Aristotelian
theories of substance and change, as expressed in Metaphysics ZH and in
Physics.
48
P. THOMPSON, The Structure of Biological Theories, SUNY Press, Albany, 1989; E. LLOYD,
The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory, Greenwood Press, New York, 1988.
49 A.P. BOS, The Soul and its Instrumental Body. A Reinterpretation of Aristotle’s Philosophy
of Living Nature, Brill, Leiden-Boston, 2003.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
But the treatise De Anima speaks of the existence of living beings
(plants, animals and men) with different functions and different ways of
carrying out those functions. From this point of view, we need to explain
why certain animals have certain parts, which are there at the service of
functions effected because of the specific way those animals live. This task
is tackled especially in the treatise De Partibus Animalium (and in De
Generatione Animalium, as far as the parts involved in generation are
concerned). In this case the material cause is the genus. It should be
remembered that the identification of genus and material has a major textual
basis in Aristotle. The efficient cause is double, that is, two successive
processes act as efficient causes of the parts of the living being: generation
and development. Aristotle also has theories on these processes, as we shall
see below. The formal cause will have to be sought in the set of differentiæ
and the final cause in the set of vital functions, which the parts of animals
are at the service of.
So much, then, for the explanation of beings, but in Aristotle’s
biology, processes are also explained through the adaptation and application
of the general model of four causes. Among them is the genesis of new
living beings. The material cause of generation is maternal blood, the
efficient cause is the heat contained in the pneuma50, the formal one is the
constellation of features inherited according to a complex combining of
movements explained in GA IV 3, and the final cause is the formation of a
new individual. Of course, Aristotle’s theory of generation is not so
elementary and naïve as it often seems, with the mother giving the material
and the father the formal cause. If this were the case, it would be impossible
to explain a mother’s resemblance to her forebears or even the very birth of
females. Aristotle’s theory of generation is based on idealizing the simplest
case, whereby the mother only gives matter and the father form, but it is
adapted and made flexible to account for real and more complex cases.
Another process theorised by Aristotle is the development and
growth of the living being. In this case, material is the blood obtained from
nutrition, the efficient cause is the warmth generated by the heart, form is
that of the individual, expressed in the movements of the blood which are
specific and peculiar to each living being, and the purpose is the fully
developed adult individual.
Let us observe that the movements of blood are involved in both
generation and development: the seminal residues are the product of the
concoction of the blood, and preserve the movements present in it. Thus, in
the genesis of a new being, the movements present in the paternal and
maternal seminal residues are combined (as is set out in GA IV 3). On the
See S. BERRYMAN, “Aristotle on Pneuma and Animal Self-Motion”, Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy, 23, 2002, pp. 85-97.
50
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
other hand, in the new being, the blood is the first tissue (homœomerous
part, in Aristotle’s terminology) to be constituted. The blood of the new
living being is no longer that of its mother, it is different, for it possesses the
specific movements resulting from the combination set out above. These
movements of blood specific to the new individual are now to be kept
throughout its whole life, and will be involved in its development, for thanks
to them nutrients will be transformed, by concoction, into the blood of this
individual. It is important that it should be so, for the other tissues of the
organism are produced by successive processes of concoction of the blood,
and the organs and members (non-homœomerous parts) are formed from the
combination of tissues. It is important also because among the residues
produced by the concoction of blood are the seminal residues that will take
part in the new process of reproduction. And so it goes on. In other words, in
Aristotelian biology, the so-called movements of blood intervene in
reproduction with heredity and in the assimilation of nutrients. They fulfil
functions analogous to those that today’s biology ascribes to genetic
material, capable of being copied in every part of the body, or recombining
in reproduction and serving as a template for the synthesis of proteins.
The processes whose theoretical structure we have seen are common
to all living organisms – that is plants and animals, and especially humans,
reproduce and grow. But Aristotle also theorises on the processes inherent in
animal life, perception and movement51. These processes are studied in
Parva Naturalia, De Anima, De Incessu Animalium and in the profound and
somewhat cryptic De Motu Animalium. He also addresses the explanation of
processes specific to human life, like the exercising of reason and the
practical application of moral or æsthetic criteria. Here we leave the strictly
biological field and diverge towards texts on ethics, politics, rhetoric,
poetics, knowledge, language, logic and other branches of the humanities.
The theories of perception, movement, knowledge and those proper to
practical and æsthetic philosophy may also have an analogous theoretical
structure and may be integrated in a family of theories as adaptations or
applications of a single general model of four causes. Human reasoning,
morals, art, language and social aspects are probably not, for Aristotle,
completely removed from a biological basis. After all, it was Aristotle who
characterised man as a political and rational animal. But there is no need to
accept that the relationship is as linear and frustrating as contemporary
sociobiologists dream, along with others who would fully naturalise ethics
and epistemology. I believe that the types of relationship between the two
fields conceived by Aristotle are as interesting as they are complex and
P.M. MOREL, “La definition de l’animal par la sensation chez Aristote”, in U. LA
PALOMBARA and G. LUCCHETTA (eds.), Mente, anima e corpo nel mondo antico, La
Biblioteca di Scheria, Pescara, 2006, pp. 91-103; A. LAKS and M. RASHED (ed.), Aristote et le
mouvement des animaux, Presses du Septentrion, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2004.
51
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intensely relevant today, and that their study is an urgent task. The dualism
of Platonic roots and the nihilistic view of man are still the anthropologies in
fashion, just as when Aristotle sought to improve on them by means of an
intelligent integration of the animalness and rationality present in every one
of us. Aristotle’s philosophy, his biology, his understanding of the political
animal, are still there as an inexhaustible source of suggestions and
orientations.
6. Expositional Resources
Aristotle’s biology is beset with comparisons, analogies and
metaphors, as we shall see in detail in chapter five. This is his habitual form
of expression, especially on the most difficult and interesting points, and we
could cite examples from almost any page of the treatises Historia
Animalium, De Partibus Animalium or De Generatione Animalium. He
frequently uses elements from daily life and human activity, especially those
concerning fishing and sailing, which must have been familiar to any Greek.
It should be pointed out that almost all these images refer to the function of a
given tissue, organ or member and seek to explain it through relation to
artificial objects constructed for analogous uses and whose purpose is
therefore obvious. The treatise De Anima is based on an extensive collection
of comparisons and metaphors not easily replaceable in their explanatory
function, used in the most compromising points of theory. Indeed, without
comparisons, metaphors and analogies, el De Anima perdería buena parte de
su claridad y potencia explicativa.
It can rightly be said that we have before us a poetic study of living
beings. Of course, it cannot be said that Aristotle’s biology is free of any
commitment to truth. On the contrary, the search for truth in the strong
sense, “to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”52,
was for Aristotle something more than a passion. What is true is that
metaphors can be true or false, not just beautiful, elegant, suitable or
otherwise. Moreover, perhaps they are beautiful insofar as they are true.
Furthermore, each metaphor has its own heuristic inertia, and the scientist is
obliged to pursue his metaphors wherever they may lead him, to check their
truth or to alter them, while the poet, who does not have to commit himself
to all the consequences of his metaphors, can leave off whenever he chooses.
Thus, for example, the Nobel Prize poetess Wislawa Szymborska sets before
us a conception of living beings that is just as original as Aristotle’s may be,
but not so well finished off, contemplating evolution just as forcefully as it
was conceived by Darwin, a master of metaphor, but it would not be fair to
ask her for the monumental empirical support that Darwin demanded of
himself. We should not ask the poet – but we must ask the scientist – to
52
Meta 1011b 26.
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submit his images to a demanding Popperian torture, for we should disrupt
the process of a new creation. There is a difference between these two
human activities, poetry and science, but it does not lie in the presence or
absence of metaphor.
The possibilities of metaphor, and its ubiquitous presence in the
great scientific texts of all periods, have been limited by the positivist belief
that good scientific language should always be literal, while metaphor would
only make an emotive contribution to the meaning, and science should
restrict itself to heuristic and didactic uses. Hardly anyone accepts this
simplistic division, but many recent studies on metaphor in science and on
the rhetorical resources of scientific literature are still, despite their authors,
positivist. That is, they admit the premise that knowledge cannot be seriously
expressed in metaphors, and as they discover metaphors in the best science,
they opt for lowering their commitment to realism. So, the recognition of the
presence of metaphors in science would appear to have to go hand in hand
with relativism: each theory is a narration and science is a story among
stories. In Aristotle, on the other hand, we find just as much metaphor as
realism. The key to the question lies in his theory of metaphor, expressed in
Rhetoric and Poetics. These texts are, in my opinion, of the utmost necessity
for understanding the science of Aristotle.
For scientific discovery to be basically a creative, poetic process is
understandable only from the standpoint of a suitable theory of metaphor
that will respect its double face: it is simultaneously discovery and creation.
According to the spirit of the Aristotelian theory of metaphor, it should be
understood precisely as the expression of a creative discovery. It is discovery
insofar that it lays before us aspects of reality, it is creative inasmuch as
those aspects are actualised by the active gaze of the researcher. The notion
of creative discovery, to be examined thoroughly in chapter three, functions
properly in an Aristotelian metaphysical framework, where similarities
between substances are potential, and therefore real, but are only actualised
through knowledge, through theorizing action. The notion of creative
discovery, which resolves many apparent aporias in the theory of knowledge
and philosophy of science, is in line with the Aristotelian notions of
potentiality and act, and with his highly important distinction between
potential knowledge and actual knowledge.
We stated above that the desire to understand living beings guided
Aristotle in his biological studies. Now, metaphor is a way of approaching
reality very vividly, of approaching given individuals and their functions,
their ways of life. Metaphor, according to Aristotle, sets reality before our
eyes and allows us to become acquainted with it as in act53.
En consecuencia, la metaforización tiene un importante y múltiple
papel epistémico. En términos de la informática contemporánea, diríamos
53
Rhet 1411a 25 et seqq.
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que la metáfora ejerce de interfaz entre el plano de la experiencia de lo
individual concreto y el plano de los conceptos universales. Digamos que
tiene un pie en cada uno de los dos niveles del arco del conocimiento [the
arch of knowledge]. Contribuye primero a la producción de conceptos a
partir de la experiencia de lo concreto. Y después contribuye a la
interpretación y aplicación de dichos conceptos cuando se requieren para la
intelección a los seres individuales concretos. Gracias a esta función de
conexión, la metáfora posee también un importante papel en la
comunicación del conocimiento. It is therefore one of the most valuable
resources for communicating to others our experience and understanding of
the real concrete.
It may be objected that science is about the universal. For Aristotle it
is true that science concerns the universal, but also the individual, as we shall
see below, in Chapter four. This thesis has an epistemological and
ontological character, but is not divorced from his particular conception of
living beings. In other words, perhaps the most important objective of
Aristotle’s biology is the understanding of living beings, of their ways of
life, and metaphor is the main way of grasping and conveying the way of life
of each of them.
7. The Implications
After reading the biological texts, nothing is the same any more:
metaphysics, the theory of knowledge and Aristotle’s practical philosophy
take on a new aspect. This is the first set of implications of Aristotle’s
biology, on which such authors as P. Pellegrin, D. Balme, A. Gotthelf, J.
Lennox, J.M. Cooper, M. Furth, M. Frede, A. Preus and M. Nussbaum have
all insisted. But it does not only have implications for the intellection of the
rest of his works, it also contributes important points of view to debates
going on now.
The reading of the biological works can contribute to the
interpretation of difficult metaphysical questions given that substances as
such are, in Aristotle, the living beings, so the understanding of being in
general has its roots in the understanding of the living being. There was,
however, a barrier that hindered the passage from biology to metaphysics:
the notions of eidos and genos seemed to have uses that were incompatible
in the two fields. Pierre Pellegrin’s work has removed this obstacle by
showing that in biology, too, eidos and genos are relative notions, applicable
on different levels, not taxonomically fixed categories as was previously
thought. Passages of biology, then, that speak of eidos can obviously have
metaphysical implications. Let us see the relationships between metaphysics
and biology regarding one of the traditionally debated questions: whether
form is individual or not. There are many links between biology and
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metaphysics, but we shall concentrate on this one. I shall shortly attempt to
set out the interpretation that I believe to be the most correct one and which
is based on the biological texts.
In the first place, it is important to notice that in Metaphysics
Aristotle successively adopts the point of view of logos, whereby reality is
grasped through linguistic categories, and that of physis. In this second
perspective, an effort is made to grasp nature for itself and adapt the
language to reality, not the other way round, always in the awareness that a
certain distance exists between the two. Reality from this physical outlook is
made up of definite individuals and processes. Several levels of formality
have to be distinguished: the formal features inherited by the individual, the
species, essence and the soul. All are notions concerning formal aspects, but
which must be carefully distinguished, for they can be different as regards
their generality, their physical reality and the theoretical framework within
which each one functions. The inherited features have physical reality, like
the soul, that is they do not depend at all on our characterisation of reality,
while the species has a real basis but is a universal. Essence has its role in
the linguistic perspective, as a correlate of definition assimilable to the
species, but also in the physical perspective, as a physical reality identifiable
with the soul and with the living being itself.
From the way it deals with essence from the physical perspective,
the reading of biology suggests that it should be distinguished both from the
species and from the inherited formal features, and identified with the soul.
The impression one gets from these texts is that Aristotle considers essence
not only in the logical sense, that is, as a correlate of definition, but also in
the physical sense. In this regard, the texts are still open to a reading
whereby essence can be numerical and qualitatively different to each
individual living being. Furthermore, a grading can be accepted of the
differentiæ existing between individuals in a given group. In other words:
i) Essence is quantitatively individual in all cases, that is, each living being
has its own quantitative essence, which is different from any other’s.
ii) Essence is qualitatively individual in a gradual manner: two bees54 are
less easy to distinguish than two dolphins.
This interpretation of metaphysics agrees remarkably with our
common sense and our moral intuitions concerning the value of the life of
different living beings. When one knows a lot in general about bees and their
types, one knows almost all that can be learnt about each individual
(although surprises should not be ruled out), while a specialist in cetaceans
still has a lot to learn about each family group and each particular individual.
54
Aristotle shows a thorough knowledge of this insect. Around forty passages in HA speak of
bees.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Yet, regarding both bees and cetaceans, what we are primordially
interested in is individuals, not species, for universals are not substances,
having a derived, secondary existence. It is evident that what we are most
interested in is what is real in a primary and more proper sense: substances,
concrete living beings, for example the dolphin which one day – a day as
real as today – was wounded near Caria, or the one that perhaps kept its dead
offspring afloat. Indeed, today’s biology is more and more about the study of
individuals, beginning with primatology (one only has to consult the works
of contemporary primatologists like Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall or Fran de
Waal, which are full of proper names) and continuing with the study of
cetaceans, felines and other mammals. In the past the observation and
identification of individuals would have been very difficult and so it was of
paramount importance (as it still almost always is) to know them via the
species.
The soul of the living being is its essence. It is also its substance and
the living being itself. The relationship between the soul and the body is a
special case of the relationship between material and form, between act and
potentiality. In the case of living beings, it is a relationship of identity. In my
view, the definitive argument in favour of the interpretation that I propose is
to be found in Nicomachean Ethics, in the beautiful passages that Aristotle
dedicates to the exploration of friendship55. He tells us that the friend is
another self. Among friends a sort of unanimity is born, two souls become
one. What strange merit would this unifying of souls of the same species
have if they started out as qualitatively the same?
From the physical point of view, form, that is form, or way of life,
can be nothing but the soul, that is to say the essence, which is quantitatively
individual in all cases, and with increasing qualitative differences, which are
lesser in the simpler organisms (today we would say more genetically
determined) with a lower capacity for learning and behavioural flexibility,
with a more elementary nervous system or none at all; and greater in the
more complex and flexible ones.
On the other hand, although the line dividing inheritable features
from those others that are the fruit of interaction with the environment is not
so clear in Aristotle’s texts, it does seem clear that inherited formal
characteristics include those that are strictly necessary and others incidental
to the life of the individual, even non-functional ones (studied in GA V).
Inherited formal features are the result of combining the formal
characteristics of given forebears according to the laws of combination
established in GA IV 3. In any event, the development of the individual tends
to the full realisation of its form, a result of the combination of features
55
EN VIII and IX.
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inherited from its parents and ancestors, and not of the specific form, which
is a universal whose causal capacity would be difficult to explain.
I am not proposing any extreme form of nominalism. Species and
other universals have their real basis. But, following the interpretation made
by Balme56, we can say that they are more a result than a cause – a stable
result insofar as the forces in action whose tension they stem from remain in
equilibrium, that is the tendency to the good of the given individual in its
given environmental circumstance and the hereditary restrictions of common
origin. Both factors make up the real physical basis, which as a result gives
the specific appearance.
En opinión de Balme, las nociones de especie y de forma deben ser
distinguidas, y no igualadas como se hizo tradicionalmente desde Porphyry
(c. 234-305 A.D.). La forma es individual, actual, tiene realidad física y
capacidad causal. La especie es universal, tiene carácter lógico, es un
resultado y no una causa. Siguiendo esta lectura de Balme, cuando
Aristóteles afirma en la Physica, que “The form indeed is 'nature' rather than
the matter”57, hay que entender que se está refiriendo precisamente a la
forma y no a la especie. “It is often remarked –affirms Balme- that he has
only the one word eidos for both form and species. But he does not need a
technical word for species, since he does not hypostatize it into an entity or
absolute; its status is merely that of a universal”. Actually –continue Balme-,
in his Metaphysics and biological works, “when he refers to what we call
species, he more usually call it the universal”58.
Aristotle’s biology has also, in my opinion, clear implications for
problems existing today. We could consider the contributions that it makes
D. BALME, “Aristotle’s Biology was not essentialist”, in A. GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX
(eds.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1987, p. 293.
57 Physica 193b 6-9.
58 D. BALME, “Aristotle’s Biology was not essentialist”, in A. GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX
(eds.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1987, p. 296-297. Esta interpretación de Balme ha resultado polémica. Algunos autores han
opuesto objeciones a la misma. No es este el lugar adecuado para reflejar este largo y
complejo debate, pero podemos al menos citar: E. HARTMAN, Substance, Body and Soul,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1977, chapter 2; C. WITT, Substance and Essence
in Aristotle. An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII-IX, Cornell University Press. Ithaca, NY,
1989; M. FURTH, Substance, Form and Psyche: an Aristotelian Metaphysics, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1988; M. FURTH, "Specific and Individual Form in Aristotles",
in D. DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, Logique et Métaphysique chez Aristote,
C.N.R.S., Paris, 1990, pp. 85-111 ; G. E. R. LLOYD, "Aristotle's Zoology and his
Metaphysics. The status quaestionis. A Critical Review of some Recent Theories" in D.
DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, Logique et Métaphysique chez Aristote,
C.N.R.S., Paris, 1990, pp. 16-17; M. FREDE, "The Definition of Sensible Substances in
Metaphysics Z" in D. DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, Logique et Métaphysique
chez Aristote, C.N.R.S., Paris, 1990, pp. 114-116.
56
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to the intellection of the functionality of living beings59. It also makes highly
important suggestions in the field of bioethics.
Se podría argumentar que la biología actual es evolucionista,
mientras que la aristotélica no lo es. Es famoso el dictum de Theodosius
Dobzhansky según el cual "nothing in biology makes sense except in the
light of evolution". Parece, pues, que la biología aristotélica resulta hoy
completamente inútil y carente de sentido. Nevertheless, the relationships
between the Greek’s biological texts and the perspective of evolution require
a detailed study, for Aristotle’s biology is, in my opinion, neither
evolutionist nor fixist, but is outside this nineteenth-century controversy, and
it would be anachronic to consider it from within it. El evolucionsimo
contemporáneo es de corte darwinista. Contiene dos ideas principales, la
idea de evolución y la idea de selección. La posición de Aristóteles respecto
del seleccionismo es claramente contraria. Se puede decir que conoció y
comprendió una idea similar, propuesta por Empédocles, y también que la
rechazó con diversos argumentos60. Su posición respecto de la idea
evolucionista es mucho más matizada. Si bien no puede ser calificado como
evolucionista, tampoco debería ser inscrito dentro del fijismo estricto.
Aristóteles sabe que la forma heredada no es absolutamente estable, que está
sometida, hasta cierto punto, a los efectos del azar. Su estudio de la
desviación del parecido con el progenitor masculino y su mención de los
monstruos, de los híbridos y de animales intermedios entre dos categorías así
lo atestiguan.
Las dificultades interpretativas en cuanto a la relación entre la
biología aristotélica y la biología evolucionista contemporánea derivan al
menos de dos factores: i) por un lado la tensión que existe dentro de la
propia obra de Aristóteles, y que remite a la dualidad del concepto de forma.
Por otro lado, las dificultades interpretativas tienen que ver con un segundo
hecho: ii) el evolucionismo darwinista no se enfrenta a la biología de
Aristóteles, sino al fijismo de los siglos XVIII y XIX. Una vez establecida la
dicotomía evolucionismo-fijismo, tendemos a pensar que Aristóteles, ya que
no era evolucionista, debería ser considerado necesariamente como fijista.
Sin embargo, esto nos hace cometer un anacronismo.
i) En cuanto al primer factor, this tension is present throughout
Aristotle’s work. In the words of Jean Gayon, “In the Aristotelian corpus
there is tension showing through of two concepts of eidos. One of them is of
a logical and classificational nature, used in connection with that of genus
(genos), it is applied to all realms of reality, and constitutes a tool for
See in this regard: A. MARCOS, “Finalizm biologiczny a problemy ontologiczne:
perspektywa arystolelesowska”, in Czlowiek w kulturze (Man in Culture), vol. 19, 2008,
Lublin (Poland), pp. 357-388.
60 Physica 198b 12-32, 199b 19 et seqq, PA 640a 26 – b 1, Apo 95a 4.
59
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hierarchizing universals. This concept of eidos as a logical class is valid
without restriction, and not only for living beings. In biological treatises,
nevertheless, a second concept of eidos arises, that of eidos-form: from this
point of view, the eidos is the soul of the individual organism, that is an
organizing principle transmissible by generation […] In most contexts,
Aristotle avoids using eidos in the meaning of a class subordinated to a
genus and more frequently uses a word connoting form (morphè) or
configuration (schema)”.61
The important thing about Aristotelian thought on this point is that it
poses the thorny problem of the relations between the species as a logical
class and the species as a physical principle intervening in generation.
Nevertheless, this qualified wealth of Aristotelian biophilosophy is often
overlooked, so, according to Lennox, “Aristotle is often characterized, by
both philosophers and evolutionist biologists, as the fountainhead of a
typological theory of species that is absolutely inconsistent with evolutionary
thinking.”62 He goes on to say, however, “Aristotle treats variations between
one form [eidos] of a kind [genos] and another as differences of degree.
Such a move conflicts with the sort of typological thinking traditionally
ascribed to Aristotle by biologists and philosophers […] It should become
clear that Aristotle’s essentialism is not typological, nor is it in any obvious
way ‘anti-evolutionist.’ Whatever it was that Darwin was up against, it was
not Aristotelian essentialism.”63
ii) This last observation of Lennox’s is valuable in this context. The
stereotyped telling of history causes the evolutionist concept of species to
arise in contrast to a supposed Aristotelian typological concept. This unfair
simplification does not only fail to make use of the suggestions that
Aristotle’s thought may still be able to make, but also makes it difficult to
appreciate the very evolutionist concept of species. In order to be able to
argue on the evolutionist concept of species we must know beforehand what
other concept or concepts of species it enters into direct conflict with. It
seems obvious, as Jean Gayon points out, that “it is in the naturalist thinking
of the 19th century where we must look for the modern use of the term
species in the life sciences.”64
J. GAYON, “L’Espèce sans la forme,” in J. GAYON and J-J. WUNENBURGER (eds.), Les
figures de la forme, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1992, pp. 51-52 (my translation).
62 J. LENNOX, “Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More and Less in Aristotle’s Biology,” in A.
GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1987, p. 339.
63 J. LENNOX, “Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More and Less in Aristotle’s Biology,” in A.
GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX (eds), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, pp. 340-341.
64 J. GAYON, “L’Espèce sans la forme,” in J. GAYON and J-J. WUNENBURGER (eds), Les
figures de la forme, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1992, p. 51 (my translation).
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Nevertheless, the confusion that we have been detecting with regard
to Aristotle leads to statements like this one of Ernst Mayr’s: “The
typological species concept going back to the philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle (and thus sometimes called the essentialist concept), was the
species concept of Linnaeus and his followers.”65 This is not so: the concept
of species that Darwin confronted was that of Linnaeus and the naturalists of
the 18th century and first half of the 19th, not Aristotle’s, among other
reasons because the 18th-century concept of species arose against an
“evolutionist” background, which did not happen in Aristotle’s. Several
vicissitudes divide Aristotle’s concept of species from Linnaeus’. We must
not overlook the medieval polemic on universals and the extreme positions
of realists and nominalists.66 Nor can we disregard the chaotic wastefulness
of the Renaissance in dealing out transformations here and there throughout
nature.It is not surprising, then, that naturalists before Darwin should have
thought that a scientific, rational and realistic biology could only be
established on the basis of a consistency in types of organisms through
reproduction or, in other words, on the basis of the stability of species. Only
thus could biology construct genuinely scientific classifications and laws,
like those already existing in the physical sciences. Sobre esta idea biólogos
como John Ray (1627-1705), Linnaeus (1707-1778), Charles Bonnet (17201793) y Cuvier (1769-1832) construye el concepto fijista de especie. Frente
a este concepto fijista argumenta Charles Darwin67, no frente a la biología
aristotélica. Lo más que podríamos decir es que la noción de forma en
Aristóteles, por una parte (como forma específica) tiende o se aproxima a la
especie en sentido fijista, mientras que por otra (como forma individual)
estaría más abierta a una posible flexibilidad y dinamismo.
Although all these questions are important, I shall just mention them
in passing to explore a point that I consider central to our intellectual
preoccupations: the universal is considered substance, Aristotle said, by
those who investigate from the point of view of logos.68 Meanwhile, the
common people recognise plants and animals as substances.69 Aristotle, who
prefers to accept common feeling, here comes up against a problem of the
E. MAYR, “Species concepts and their application,” M. ERESHESFSKY (ed.), The Units of
Evolution. Essays on the Nature of Species, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, p. 16.
Mayr’s influential text was first published in 1963, since which time the author has modified
his positions (cf. E. MAYR, Towards a New Philosophy of Biology, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA, 1988), but the text is still published with no changes on this point.
66 Cf. D. STAMOS, The Species Concept: Biological Species, Ontology, and the Metaphysics of
Biology, Lexington, Lanham, MD, 2003, pp. 1-9 and ch. 2.
67 Cf. A. MARCOS, “The Species Concept in Evolutionary Biology: Current Polemics”, in W.
J. González (ed.): Evolutionism: present approaches, Netbiblo, La Coruña, 2008, pp. 121142.
68 Meta 1069a 26-8.
69 Meta 1069a 31 et seqq.
65
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science of his day that is also present in the science of today: what really
exists is individual substances, while science concerns the universal,
therefore our science will not concern the real, and if it is about the real it
will not be genuine science. Either idealism or scepticism, that is the
dilemma. Our dilemma. In other words, science deals with abstractions, cold
abstractions, divorced from any moral or æsthetic intuition or affective link,
which are a long way from the life and experience of people, about which it
tells us nothing. On the other hand, the world of life is only accessible from
emotivity, quasi-mystic experience, art or the deeper parts of the irrational.
That is how many of our – disappointed – contemporaries see science, that is
how they see culture split into two irreconcilable and mutually threatening
hemispheres. But in Aristotle’s biology we can find a method, different from
the strict definition by genus plus specific differentia, different from
dichotomic classification, from explanation by deduction, in short, diverse
from the mere science of universals. If our culture has forgotten the
possibility of a science in act and of the actual, it is simply because it has
forgotten that in the creation, communication and application of the concept,
a part is played by the human factor. This is the bridge that allows us to
cross from concrete life to the abstract concept, in return journeys, lugging
sentient intelligence, emotions and evaluations. And oblivion will remain
while our favourite cognitive metaphor remains that of the machine, so
typical of modern times.
The solution to our aporia consists in drawing up, on the one hand, a
suitable ontology with the notions of potency and act. On the other hand, it
will be necessary to formulate an epistemology that distinguishes between
two types of knowledge, one in act and of the actual, that is of individual
substances, and one in potency and of the potential, material or general. That
is a basic contribution made by Aristotle to our problems today, a
contribution which in large part is obtained from the biological texts and as a
function of the implications that they present for the reading of the rest of the
Greek’s works, as we shall see below.
8. The Books
Regarding Aristotle’s texts, three great zoological treatises are
preserved: Historia Animalium, De Partibus Animalium and De Generatione
Animalium. There is also a general biology in De Anima. This treatise
includes questions that today would come under psychology or the theory of
knowledge. Closely linked with De Anima and De Partibus Animalium there
are several articles, some contained in Parva Naturalia and others published
separately, like De Incessu Animalium and De Motu Animalium. This is what
has come down to us of Aristotle’s biology. We know that he also wrote a
treatise on plants, which was probably lost because it was no longer copied
35
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
after it was superseded by Theophrastus’ botany. A set of anatomical
drawings and a text on legendary animals have also been lost70.
Regarding secondary literature, it should be said that an active
debate is currently going on about the interpretation and importance of the
biological works. Much secondary literature is therefore being produced. We
have already mentioned in this text some of the more important participants
in this discussion. A sufficiently accurate idea of its terms may be inferred
by consulting some volumes containing essays by the most important
scholars in this field: Allan GOTTHELF (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and Living
Things, Mathesis Publications and Bristol Classical Press, Pittsburgh, 1985;
Allan GOTTHELF and James G. LENNOX (eds.), Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge University Press, 1987; Daniel DEVEREUX
and Pierre PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, Logique et Métaphysique chez
Aristote [Biology, Logic and Metaphysics in Aristotle], Paris, C.N.R.S.,
1990; W. KULLMANN and S. FÖLLINGER (eds.), Aristotelische Biologie
[Aristotelian Biology], Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 1997.
Among the latest important publications on this topic are G.E.R.
LLOYD’s book Aristotelian Explorations, Cambridge University Press, 1997;
James G. LENNOX: Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge University
Press, 2001; J. LENNOX, “Aristotle’s Biology and Aristotle’s Philosophy”, in
M. GILL and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Philosophy,
Blackwell, Oxford, 2006; P-M. MOREL: De la Matière à l’action. Aristote et
le problème du vivant, Vrin, Paris, 2007; J. LENNOX, Form, Essence, and
Explanation in Aristotle’s Biology, in G. ANAGNOSTOPUOLOS (ed.), and A
companion to Aristotle, Blackwell, Oxford, 2009, pp. 348-367.
70
The zoological works extant are available in several fairly recent editions and translations.
Apart from BEKKER’s classic, there are editions of the Greek texts, for example in Oxford
Classical Texts and in the Teubner collection of classical texts. P. LOUIS has published the
Greek text of the zoological works with a translation into French in Les Belles Lettres, and
A.L. PECK et al., with a translation into English, in the Loeb Classical Library. Especial
mention must be made of a work by Martha NUSSBAUM containing the Greek text of De Motu
Animalium, its translation into English and a collection of very lucid essays on this difficult
text. Among the most recent English translations are the PA prepared by J. LENNOX and the
HA by D. BALME and A. GOTTHELF.
36
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Chapter 2
PHRONESIS
1. Introduction
My intention in this chapter is to explore the possibilities of a project
of basically Aristotelian inspiration for the integration of the theoretical and
practical aspects of reason, for the search for a happy medium between the
extremes of logicism and irrationalism. In the Modern Age, certainty became
the highest and most sought-after espistemic value, even more valued than
truth, and the so-called scientific method was seen as the surest path to
certainty. Indeed, human reason became identified with the application of a
supposed scientific method of Cartesian or Baconian inspiration. The
domain of the practical became considered either one more area for the mere
application of the scientific method, an application which would lead to
human progress, or as an area beyond reason. One of the stereotyped
convictions attributed to the enlightened mentality is this: insofar as human
life in all its extremes becomes more rational, that is, more scientific,
practical problems will start being solved. Indeed, Rousseau, in his
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750), pointed out that human
progress did not always go hand in hand with scientific and technical
progress, which today is a self-evident truth that is not discussed. On the
other hand, dual accounting, that is the consideration that science is fully
rational and the other areas of human activity are not, as well as an insult to
common sense, has rebounded against science itself, for its practical aspects
cannot be hidden, and it is hardly possible to parcel off a purely logical
context, as that of justification set out to be.
It is obvious that not even the application of a supposed scientific
method can guarantee the progressive character of our practical decisions.
To this evidence there has been added the recognition of science’s own
37
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
practical aspects. This evolution has convinced many of the impossibility of
obtaining certainty even in the domain of science, which has given rise to
diverse forms of desperation regarding the abilities of human reasoning. This
oscillation between the obsession for certainty and desperation with regard
to reason has been the tune most frequently danced to in modern times.
Yet today we do not want environmental problems to be left entirely
up to the expert’s decision or the irrational imposition of power or
arbitrariness, but to be tackled in reasoned dialogue, on a footing of equality,
by scientists, technicians, lawyers, politicians, businessmen, private
individuals, representatives of social movements - and indeed philosophers!
We are recognizing, at least implicitly, the possibility of being reasonable in
an area where we do not expect absolute certainty, and we accept that human
reason goes beyond the limits of science and technology, that reason is more
deeply rooted in human life than a mere method could ever be. To reach this
point we have had to come a long way as far as our concept of reason and
science is concerned, and have also needed a great deal of experience bittersweet experience - regarding the practical consequences of science.
Everything would seem to show, then, that the most typical extreme
positions of modern times are being abandoned, and that we have entered the
post-modern period.
In my opinion, the Aristotelian outlook has much to contribute to the
on-going debate on the rationality of science and on the environmental
questions that its application brings up. This is, indeed, a particular aspect of
the relationship between reason and practice, but not just any aspect:
traditional philosophical problems are arising now, and they will continue to
come up in the future, in direct connection with environmental matters - this
will be an area and a way for the classical topics of philosophy to reappear.
Rationality, good and evil, justice, the relationship between being and value,
the objectivity or subjectivity of knowledge, etc., are venerable philosophical
topics that we shall have to reconsider in the light of environmental
problems, as they were once tackled in connection with questions of politics,
theology, society, science and economy.
I shall now outline the steps that my exposition will follow. In the
first place, we need a correct characterisation of the Modern Age which
makes it possible to explain the causes of a bad relationship between theory
and practice. This is an extremely complex and multi-faceted task. Here we
can hardly even approach a full idea of modernity. What we can do,
however, is point out one of its most essential characteristics: the quest for
certainty. I do not mean that this is the only explanatory key of modernity.
Indeed, I eschew the very notion of an explanatory key in the face of such a
complex and somewhat diffuse historical phenomenon. But it is certainly an
important characteristic of modernity, in some way the cause of many others
38
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
and one especially near to the interests of these pages. I mean the
predilection for certainty, which is a constant of the modern spirit, just like
the energetic and cyclic irrationalist reactions. Obsession with certainty and
sceptical desperation are mutual causes of each other like pre-Socratic
opposites. We shall come back to this in section 2.
Secondly, we must go through the Aristotelian concepts which may,
in my opinion, take us out of this thankless to-ing and fro-ing. What I mean
basically is the Aristotelian notions of prudence (phronesis) and practical
truth (aletheia praktike). The notion of prudence is closely linked in
Aristotle to practical truth. The study of practical truth complements then,
that of prudence. In section 3, I shall set out the contents of Aristotelian
prudence and the contribution that it can make to the present debate. An
analogous study of the notion of practical truth will be set out in the next
chapter.
The concept of prudence is one that has been taken from the area of
Aristotelian practical philosophy, where absolute certainty is not expected,
but nor are decisions left to mere arbitrariness or imposition. The novelty
consists in the fact that, when we recognise – as we do today – that science
itself is a human action, then we may use this notion taken from practical
philosophy for understanding and integrating scientific rationality. When
science is characterised as an activity governed by prudence, it moves away
from both the logicist and the irrationalist poles, from an obsession with
certainty and from “anything goes”, from algorithm and anarchism.
Furthermore, if science is made a prudential activity, it will be much easier
for us to connect its particular mode of rationality with that of discussions,
decisions and environmental actions.
Although it is true that Aristotelian notions can be suggestive, it is
not true that they do no more than answer contemporary questions. For them
to be active in the on-going debate on the relationship between theoretical
reason and practical reason, they must be developed, updated through
contemporary texts. The profit from this manœuvre is double: it makes
Aristotle’s concepts available for the present debate and gives some
contemporary ideas a very comprehensive and fertile philosophical
framework, the Aristotelian framework. The remaining sections try to bring
the Aristotelian notion of prudence to the current debate through the
fallibilism of Peirce, Popper and Gadamer as well as through Hans Jonas’
imperative of responsibility. The fallibilist attitude is, to my mind, the most
suitable post-modern characterisation of scientific rationality and of human
rationality, and applied to environmental problems it would give rise to the
so-called principle of responsibility.
In section 4, I maintain that only a fallibilistic attitude can open the
doors to prudential reasoning, and that the ontological and anthropological
39
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
bases of prudence are also suitable for fallibilism, founding it and
encouraging it. In Aristotle, there are certain fallibilistic attitudes but they
are ambiguous and combine with other statements in which science is
characterised as universal and necessary knowledge. In this regard, Peirce’s
texts are the most useful and the clearest, and, of course, the nearest to
current problems of science. Fallibilism is for Peirce an attitude, something
practical rather than a concept or a rule; it is the scientific attitude par
excellence. On the basis of the fallibilist attitude there stands what may be
the ultimate and most universal rule of scientific rationality: Do not block the
way of inquiry.
In section 5 I set out to bring the Aristotelian idea of prudence to the
on-going debate on the environment. As in the previous case, we will see its
proximity to and continuity with the present notion of responsibility as
treated by Hans Jonas. Again we have an Aristotelian concept that can be
developed or, as Jonas himself would say, improved on, by a notion of
today. In compensation, this present notion is supported by a very articulate
and coherent ontology. Jonas sets out the so-called principle of responsibility
as the ultimate element of the moral control of our relationship with the
environment: Proceed in such a way that you do not endanger the conditions
for humanity’s indefinite continuity on Earth.
One may consider Peirce’s and Jonas’s formulations – each in its
own area, respectively those of science and ethics – the expression of one
and the same attitude, of one and the same present – and therefore postmodern – way of understanding rationality, with both fitting perfectly into a
metaphysical framework of Aristotelian inspiration. Essentially, these ideas
are convergent, for they respond to the same attitude and may be based on
one Aristotelian conception of reality, and together they offer a good answer
to questions about scientific rationality and environmental responsibility.
2. Modern Age and the Present: from the Quest for Certainty to
Fallibilism
Among the characteristics of modern thought is the predilection for
certainty. The quest for it has been one of the signs of identity of a whole
intellectual tradition, of what Husserl71 calls “European science”. According
to Husserl, the abandonment of this quest steeps us in crisis, in scepticism or
in some type of naturalism. However, as Kolakowski72 observes, neither
Descartes nor Husserl managed to distinguish between the subjective feeling
71
E. HUSSERL, Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die Transzendentale
Phänomenologie, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague, 1976.
72 L. KOLAKOWSKI, Husserl and the Search for Certitude, Yale University Press, New Haven,
1975.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
of evidence and the objective evidence of truth. Consequently, in many of
the modern philosophical traditions, the pursuit of certainty has become a
threat to the pursuit of truth, an impulse towards different types of idealism
and a cause of crisis (by inference and by reaction) rather than an antidote to
it.
The pursuit of certainty - infallibilism, as Larry Laudan calls it - is
one of the legacies of Cartesian philosophy. One could state, as Clarke does,
that Cartesian science is defined in terms of certainty rather than in terms of
the truth of the explanations proposed.73 A text in which Descartes himself
sets this point out clearly is: “What can it matter to us for something to be
absolutely false if anyway we believe it and we do not have the slightest
suspicion that it is false?”74 Or, if a negative formulation is required, “any
knowledge that can be rendered doubtful must not be called scientific”75 and
“I treat [...] as false everything which is merely likely” 76. These words give
the tone of what would from then on be the object of the quest for the
scientific method.
It is, in any event, a question of establishing methods whose results
will be certain knowledge, methods which we cannot but trust, whether or
not subjective certainty is accompanied by objective truth. Descartes could
move from certainty to truth thanks to the bridge built by a bounteous creator
God. Lacking that bridge, later modern philosophers had to choose between
truth and certainty, and they have almost always opted for the latter.
Francis Bacon initiated another route of access to certainty, this time
with an empirical and inductive character. According to Bacon, the inductive
method is the art of invention and machine, as well as formula, clear and
radiant light77, and other similar boons. Those of Bacon’s ideas with the
greatest influence on subsequent scientific thought are those which he
expressed in the second book of his Novum Organum, that is his inductive
logic, the so-called Baconian method. In general, and as Rossi states, many
have seen in Bacon the constructor of a gigantic “logic machine” doomed to
not being used. With the Baconian method, according to Spedding, we
D. CLARKE, Descartes’ Philosophy of Science, Manchester University Press, Manchester,
1982.
74 Author's translation from: R. DESCARTES, “Sécondes Reponses”, in Oeuvres de Descartes
publiées par Charles Adams & Paul Tannery, Vrin, Paris, 1969, vol. IX-1, pp. 113-4.
75
Author's translation from: R. DESCARTES, “Sécondes Reponses”, in Oeuvres de Descartes
publiées par Charles Adams & Paul Tannery, Vrin, Paris, 1969, vol. IX-1, p. 111.
76 Author's translation from: R. DESCARTES, “Descartes à Mersenne, 5 octobre 1637 ”, in
Oeuvres de Descartes publiées par Charles Adams & Paul Tannery, Vrin, Paris, 1969, vol. I,
p. 450. “Dubia etiam pro falsis habenda”, we can read in Principia Philosophiae, in Oeuvres
de Descartes publiées par Charles Adams & Paul Tannery, Vrin, Paris, 1969, vol. VIII-1, p.
5.
77 See P. ROSSI, Francesco Bacone, Einaudi editore, Torino, 1974.
73
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
cannot do anything. We consider it a subtle, elaborate and ingenious
mechanism, but one which can produce nothing78. In spite of everything,
Bacon’s image as the founder of the new science thanks to his discovery of
the inductive method was greatly appreciated by the founders of the Royal
Society and the authors of the great illustrated Encyclopædia.
In what situation do we place the practical with regard to rationality
when the first value is certainty?
Many writings by modern thinkers begin with the observation of the
disappointing state of the philosophy of human things in comparison with
natural philosophy, that is natural science. The Critique of Pure Reason is a
paradigmatic case. Dissension and lack of certainty, both in metaphysics and
in moral philosophy, are the points causing the greatest unrest. Both
Descartes and Hume, to mention two of the most noteworthy thinkers, feel
that the model that inquiry into mankind should follow is that of natural and
formal sciences, which have already opened up a path – a method – to
certainty and consensus. So, Descartes set out to find “the highest and most
perfect moral science, which, presupposing a knowledge of other sciences, is
the ultimate degree of wisdom”79. Naturally, Descartes had to settle
indefinitely for what he called “provisional morals”. Hume stated with his
empiricist approach based on the inductive method, “Where experiments of
this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish
on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much
superior in utility to any other of human comprehension”80. This science will
imply the extension of the principles of Newtonian natural philosophy to the
study of human nature, and within it to the study of morals. Regarding
politics, Hume has still fewer doubts, and states categorically that it can be
reduced to a science endowed with a degree of certainty almost as perfect as
that of mathematics81.
But this naturalist approach to the study of man, which in principle
promises that much longed-for certainty, leads to further disappointments
and carries with it the germ of its own destruction, in the long term
threatening natural science itself, which will always be an activity and
product of human freedom and reason. Today we know from experience
how these tendencies implicit in the naturalist position itself have been
developed, but in Hume, the whole trajectory is already indicated.
78
Quoted in P. ROSSI, Francesco Bacone, Einaudi editore, Torino, 1974, p. 24.
Author’s translation from: R. DESCARTES, “Lettre-Préface aux Principes de la
Philosophie”, in Oeuvres de Descartes publiées par Charles Adams & Paul Tannery, Vrin,
Paris, 1969, vol. IX-2, p. 14.
80 D. HUME, “Introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature”, in T.H. GREEN and T.H. GROSE
(eds.), David Hume: The Philosophical Works, Scientia Verlag Aalen, Darmstadt, Germany,
1964, vol. I, p. 310.
81 In this regard, see Hume’s essay That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science (1742).
79
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Naturalisation of moral studies seems to demand a methodological reduction
of the normative and the evaluative, which will end up being established as a
definitive ontological reduction of human reason and freedom, which are
mutually inseparable and inaccessible to the empirical method and never
totally explained from strictly naturalist bases. Thence are derived an
emotivism and an irrationalism which threaten science itself insofar as its
practical aspects are recognised along with its inability to produce absolutely
certain knowledge. Hume assures that “We speak not strictly and
philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason
is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to
any other office than to serve and obey them”82. Paradoxical though this may
seem, this resignation that the practical should be the place for feelings
derives from a reduced notion of reason, excessively bound up with a given
idea of science and method and an extreme valuation of certainty.
In Hume there is no renunciation of certainty, the basis of which is
confided to habit, but one of reason. Predilection for certainty leads Hume to
irrationalism, not to scepticism83. Karl Popper sums up the situation as
follows, saying that, according to Hume, the scientific method is inductive,
but:
“[...] induction is completely invalid as an inference. There is not a
shadow of a logical argument that would support the inference to a
generalisation from statements about the past (such as past repetitions
of some “evidence”). He [Hume] said that in spite of its lack of logical
validity, induction plays an indispensable part in practical life [...]
Thus there is a paradox. Even our intellect does not work rationally.
[...] This led Hume, one of the most reasonable thinkers of all time, to
give up rationalism and look at man not as endowed with reason but
as a product of blind habit. According to Russell this paradox of
Hume’s is responsible for the schizophrenia of modern man”.84
If anything can be learnt for the present it is that we lack a notion of
practical reason that is well structured and free of traditional errors85.
Practical criteria cannot depend on a supposed scientific method and cannot
aspire to confer absolute certainty on our decisions, but we do not have to go
without reason in practical situations, as there is no need to identify reason
82
D. HUME, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2.3.3., in T.H. GREEN and T.H. GROSE (eds.), David
Hume: The Philosophical Works, Scientia Verlag Aalen, Darmstadt, Germany, 1964, vol. II,
p. 195.
83 This interpretation, which I consider extremely valid, is clearly set out in A. MUSGRAVE,
Common Sense, Science and Scepticism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993,
chapter 8.
84 K. POPPER, Objective Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972, pp. 94-95; my italics.
85 Evandro Agazzi affirms “the situation of our present culture [...] won’t be improved unless
a resurrection of practical philosophy occurs”. E. AGAZZI, “Philosophie technique et
philosophie practique”, in G. HOTTOIS, Évaluer la Technique, Vrin, Paris, 1988, p. 48.
43
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
with a supposed scientific method or with the sure way to certainty. In part,
the obstacles encountered by Hume and Descartes in the development of an
idea of practical reason have been swept away, for today we are aware that
sciences are not governed strictly by the Cartesian method or by the
inductive method, and that they are far from reaching complete certainty,
which does not make them directly irrational. Above everything else it is the
renunciation of the obsession with certainty that enables us today to imagine
a suitable notion of practical reason.
It will be said that a notion of practical reason already existed in
Kant. And this is so. But two observations must be made in this regard. In
Kant, unlike Hume, there is a radical denaturalisation of practical reason,
which today seems unacceptable. Such is the case that for Kant, for whom
prudence mainly has nothing to do with practical reason, but with theoretical
reason, despite any apparent paradox. This means that he excludes it from
the nucleus of morals and considers it a mere technical ability for the pursuit
of happiness86. In the Modern period, from Descartes to Bacon, any
technique was considered to be no more than applied science, and that if any
problem arose in practice, it was due to deficiencies in theory. This view of
science as immediately applicable soon spread, as we have seen in Hume, to
morals, so the application of a science of man that would not present
genuinely technical problems but only theoretical ones would solve the
problems of human happiness. Philosophers of the Enlightenment felt
attracted by this new way of approaching human affairs. Kant shared the
technological optimism of his day although he was the first to resist the
concept of morals as a technique, that is, as the application of a science of
man to the pursuit of happiness (happiness, by the way, previously defined
by that very science). Kant, on the other hand, sought to protect morals from
influences external to the very freedom of the subject. He did this by
excluding the traditional contents from the nucleus of practical philosophy.
According to Kant, prudence lies rather in theoretical reason, as it could
become a mere applied science87. In the interests of autonomy of reason,
Kant separates morals radically from nature, setting them in the sphere of the
freedom of the subject. The attempt to protect morals from naturalism leads
to the new excess of putting them in the hands of logicism. The categorical
imperative is basically of a logical character: Behave in such a way that you
might also want your maxim to become universal law. The “might also
want” invoked here is, as Jonas88 states, that of reason and its concord with
86
Cf. P. AUBENQUE, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F, Paris, 1993, appendix III.
Which confirms, by the way, that a post-modern conception of science obliges us to also
reconsider practical philosophy, as we are doing here.
88 H. JONAS, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological
Age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984. Originally published as H. JONAS, Das
Prinzip Verantwortung: Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation, Insel Verlag,
Frankfurt am Main, 1979.
87
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
itself, an ability that would only be negated by self-contradiction. One might
break a promise out of convenience, but this could not become a universal
criterion, as the very notion of promise would lose its meaning. The criterion
of only keeping promises when it suits us cannot be universalised for reasons
of a logical nature.
In Aristotle, on the other hand, happiness is man’s natural and
legitimate aim, whereby it was possible, according to Aubenque, “to
integrate the technical moment of the correct choice of means in the
definition of morality”89.
The second observation concerns the certainty of what Kant takes to
be really practical. No comparison can be made between the splendid
certainty which Kant attributes to Newtonian science and the practical faith
in postulates necessary to give consistence to the practical use of reason. In
an atmosphere of extreme valuation of certainty and of the scientific method,
no credence or serious consideration was given to the Kantian foundation for
practical reason, which, in short, leads to the postulates of human freedom,
the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. Kant expressed his
admiration and respect for two areas of reality, the starry sky above me and
the moral law inside me. But to keep them separate is not sustainable, for
indeed he who looks at the stars and grasps moral law is a human being who
takes part in the two areas of reality, as a system subject to physical laws and
as a free being. The integration of the two spheres seems necessary without
the negation of either of them. But if we separate to such an extent the
degree of certainty that we attribute to the knowledge of each of them, and if
we set such a high value on certainty, then the so-called practical use of
reason runs the risk of immediately being seen as one more mask of the
irrational, as a concession by Kant to his beliefs, affections, desires or
interests. The historical proof that these two sets of accounts cannot be
tenable for long is what happened to the Kantian tradition. Either it tended
towards an idealism that suppressed the peculiarity of the practical and made
it depend for everything on theory by identifying the rational with the real,
or it drifted towards an irrationalism in which the pure use of reason had the
same fate as the practical use, until it was seen as one more mask of the wish
for power90. The pure and practical uses of reason must be integrated and
must support each other, for today we know that they either stand or fall
together91. But this requires a reconsideration of the ideal of certainty and of
the nature of science which only came about in the twentieth century.
89
AUBENQUE, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F, Paris, 1993, p. 195.
Regarding the line of development from Kant to Nietzsche, see J. CONILL, El poder de la
mentira [The power of the Lie], Tecnos, Madrid, 1997.
91 The third critique perhaps comes nearer to the idea of phronesis, with a reflexive judgement
on reason, as Heidegger points out and Gadamer reiterates, but it is not feasible to follow this
line here. In this regard, see J. CHATEAU, La vérité pratique, Vrin, Paris, 1997, p. 251 n. 1.
90
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Since Hegel and since Nietzsche, several campaigns have been
launched in the pursuit of certainty. One of the last of these campaigns for
automatism and the segregation of the practical, based on the identification
of reason with science, was called Neo-positivism (and it was pursued as the
so-called received view). Its internal decadence apart, it was Popper’s
philosophy and Kuhn’s criticisms that put an end to this venture, and with it
to a way of making philosophy. Kuhn laid forth the practical aspects of
scientific rationality. As he states - in my opinion, rightly - “Recognizing
that criteria of choice can function as values when incomplete as rules has, I
think, a number of striking advantages.”92. In Popper, a clear renunciation of
the ideal of certainty and a reinstatement of truth are to be noticed.
The recognition of the practical implication of science, in its genesis,
applications and justification, as well as the renunciation of the idea of
certainty no doubt mark the end of the epoch in which the supposedly
scientific method was shown as the zenith and model of human reason,
where all philosophy aspired to the ideal of certainty or took its failure as the
failure of reason, first in the practical terrain and then, as an inexorable
consequence, in the theoretical. Today there is an abandonment of the
logico-linguistic conception of theories in favour of a pragmatic conception
of science. Science, it is said, is action. But, as previously the possibility of
practical reason was not clear, nor was its articulation with theory, the
rationality of science itself has been questioned. Kuhn has been accused of
being relativist and irrationalist, an accusation which he rejected, but without
going so far as to construct a philosophical basis on which to base this
rejection. For their parts, Peirce and Popper, each in his own way, have
tackled this subject but both have recoiled, paradoxically, to quasi-Hegelian
positions.
Science taken as action, as the art of research, of teaching, diffusion
of knowledge and application, etc., can and must be judged with criteria that
cannot in themselves be exclusively scientific or merely arbitrary, but a part
of the general rationality of human life. The birth, then, of new disciplines,
such as bioethics, environmental ethics and STS (science and technology
studies), is not just a collateral phenomenon, a momentary collision point
between science and practical thought, but an indication of a new way of
conceiving rationality itself, or at least an indication of the need for this new
reason.
I believe that the time has come to perfect concepts and attitudes that
have always had a vocation to integrate the theoretical and practical planes
without ruling out either of them, concepts and attitudes which were born to
avoid the swing of the pendulum between the logicist and irrationalist
92
T. KUHN, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1977, p. 331.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
extremes (between Permenides and Heracleitus, between Charybdis and
Scylla).
3. Phronesis in Aristotle
Aristotle characterises prudence (phronesis) as “a true and reasoned
state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for
man.”93
By means of this definition he distinguishes prudence from other
notions. Given that it is a disposition, or state of capacity (hexis), it will be
distinguished from science (episteme), for prudence will be knowledge
linked with human action. In the second place, as it is practical (praktike), its
result will be an action, not an object, which distinguishes it from art or
technique (tekhne). The demand for rationality and truth (“...meta logoy
alethe”) distinguishes prudence from moral virtues and sets it among the
intellectual ones. Finally, the fact that it deals with what is good and bad for
mankind, and not right and wrong in an abstract way, sets prudence apart
from wisdom (sophia).
So far we have sketched the limits of the notion of prudence and
others akin to it, and the points where they overlap94, but we must not forget
that “Regarding practical wisdom [phronesis] we shall get at the truth by
considering who are the persons we credit with it”.95
Texts about prudence suggest that it is an intellectual virtue. It
implies experience and concerns both means and ends. Its ultimate horizon is
the good life as a whole, and this is the only end which is beyond prudence.
Prudence is at the service of wisdom, “for its sake”. Al menos es lo que
podría inferirse de algunas afirmaciones del filósofo griego: “But again it
[phronesis] is not supreme over philosophic wisdom, i.e. over the superior
part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over health; for it does not
use it but provides for its coming into being; it issues orders, then, for its
sake, but not to it. Further, to maintain its supremacy would be like saying
that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the
affairs of the state”96. En un sentido muy parecido Aristóteles añade: “Now it
is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom [phronimos] to be
able to deliberate well about what is good and expedient for himself, not in
93
Ethica Nicomachea (EN) 1140b 4 et seq.; see also 1140b 20 et seq..
On Aristotelian prudence, see R. BODÉÜS, The Political Dimensions of Aristotle’s Ethics,
S.U.N.Y. Press Albany, 1993, pp. 27-30. An extensive monograph on EN VI may be seen in
J. CHATEAU, La vérité pratique, Vrin, Paris, 1997. For the understanding of Book VI of EN,
an indispensable work is P. AUBENQUE, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F, Paris, 1993.
95 EN 1140a 23-24.
96 EN 1145a 5-10 (italics added).
94
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
some particular respect, e.g. about what sorts of thing conduce to health or to
strength, but about what sorts of thing conduce to the good life in general”97.
Si la prudencia no buscase the good life in general, quedaría reducida a mera
cleverness or smartness98. Y el vivir bien en general parece identificarse con
la sabiduría, “so does philosophic wisdom produce happiness”, but “not as
the art of medicine produces health, however, but as health produces
health”99. Esta idea se reitera y amplía en en EN X 7-8, donde Aristóteles
argumenta largamente sobre la superioridad de la vida contemplativa, y
concluye: “Happiness extends, then, just so far as contemplation does”100.
Esta relación entre prudencia y sabiduría, remite a la relación más
general entre teoría y práctica. En este plano las afirmaciones de Aristóteles
manifiestan una evidente tensión. Es cierto que en EN X 7-8 hace una loa de
la vida contemplativa, de la theoria, hasta considerarla divina, o la parte más
divina que hay en nosotros101. Únase a esto la afirmación con la que
concluye the Eudemian Ethics. Allí Aristóteles dice que Dios es el fin con
vistas al cual la prudencia da órdenes102. Tendremos de nuevo la impresión
de que la prudencia labora for the sake of wisdom. No obstante, en muchos
otros pasajes alaba la mentalidad práctica, e incluso habla de la teoría en
términos que rebajan su importancia. Como veremos, esto sucede
especialmente en EN VI. Pero lo hace incluso en el contexto de EN X 7-8:
“We must therefore survey what we have already said, bringing it to the test
of the facts of life, and if it harmonizes with the facts we must accept it, but
if it clashes with them we must suppose it to be mere theory”103. Hay que
reconocer, pues, la imposibilidad de resolver aquí el problema interpretativo
que los textos de Aristóteles nos presentan. Quizá todo lo que podemos decir
es que la prudencia busca la sabiduría y la sabiduría potencia la prudencia.
Por otro lado, “It is clear […] that it is not possible to be good in the strict
sense without practical wisdom [phronesis], nor practically wise
[phronimos] without moral virtue”104. Existe pues un doble ciclo [¿loop?] de
feedback (wisdom - prudence - moral virtues), cuyo nodo de conexión es la
prudencia.
However, Aristotle goes as far as to say:
“We ought to attend to the undemonstrated saying and opinions of
experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom
97
EN 1140a 25-29 (italics added)
EN 1144a 25-28.
99
EN 1144a 3-6.
100 EN 1178b 28-31. Cf. also EN 1143b 33-34: “it would be thought strange if practical
wisdom [phronesis], being inferior to philosophic wisdom [sophia], is to be put in authority
over it”.
101 EN 1177a 15-25, 1177b 1-5, 1177b 24 – 1178a 9, 1178b 15-25.
102 EE 1249b 13-16.
103 EN 1179a 21-24 (italics added).
104 EN 1144b 30-35.
98
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
[phronimos] not less than to demonstrations; for because experience
has given them an eye they see aright.”105
In general, prudence pursues wisdom and wisdom stimulates human
prudence. It is best to “possess both, or preferably prudence”106. Of animals,
Aristotle says that they too are prudent107, but as they lack wisdom their
prudence is certainly limited. For all this, prudence is worth pursuing for
itself, regardless of its possible usefulness, given that it is a virtue108.
Prudence is a virtue, and virtue, for Aristotle, is:
“a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the
mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and
by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom [phronimos]
would determine it.” 109
Virtue, therefore, is a habit or disposition to choosing the right
medium between excess and shortage. But this is not easy, for the right mean
is not the arithmetic mean. To find it we need another rule. This rule will be
the one established by the prudent man and applied just as he would apply it.
In short, we cannot determine what is or is not virtuous without the
concurrence of the prudent person.
The mid point is dictated by reason or by the right rule of the
prudent man. This reason or rule is, rather, a corrected reason. It is the limit
to which a process of correction tends, one of elimination of errors, in
relation to the end sought:
“[...] there is a mark to which the man who has the rule looks, and
heightens or relaxes his activity accordingly, and there is a standard
which determines the mean states which we say are intermediate
between excess and defect, being in accordance with the right rule
(kata ton orthon logon)”110.
Therefore, prudence requires experience:
“Young men become geometricians and mathematicians and wise in
matters like these, it is thought that a young man of practical wisdom
cannot be found. The cause is that such wisdom is concerned not only
105
EN 1143b 10-13.
EN 1141b 21.
107 EN 1141a 26-28; see also J.L. LABARRIÈRE, “De la phronesis animale”, in D. DEVEREUX
and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, logique et métaphysique chez Aristote [Biology, Logic and
Metaphysics in Aristotle], Paris, C.N.R.S., 1990, pp. 405-428.
108 EN 1144a 1 et seq..
109 EN 1106b 36 et seq..
110 EN 1138b 22.25.
106
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
with universals but with particulars, which become familiar from
experience.”111
Experience is time and memory, but not just any lapse of time, but
one which one has spent reflecting, trying to understand the nature of the
things we see, of the actions we do and what happens to us. Experience is the
memory of a time lived and thought, for it is the fruit of succeeding
corrections.
But let us remember that prudence itself is a virtue and, moreover,
“it is impossible to be practically wise [phronimos] without being good”112.
Therefore, nobody could be prudent without following the ruled dictated by
prudence. In other words, if the answer is phronesis, some sceptics will still
be wondering how we are to recognise phronesis and phronimos. Not by a
rigid algorithm, to be sure. So, it seems that nobody could be prudent
without having been so already. This vicious circle (or virtuous one,
depending on how we look on it) is resolved by education (paideia) and
action, not by an abstract rule; that is, by action steered by somebody
prudent until one becomes prudent oneself113.
The prudence of an experienced person serves for drawing up rules,
“since the universals are reached from the particulars”114. But
methodological prudence, so to speak, cannot consist simply of a set of rules
and meta-rules for the formulation and application of rules, which in turn
would generate the same problems of definition and application but at a
higher level, “for the error is not in the law nor in the legislator but in the
nature of the thing”115.
Therefore, prudence also constitutes the criterion of application,
interpretation and, when necessary, modification or violation of the rule.
Aristotelian prudence is rooted in the non-delegable experience and
responsibility - in the risk, Pierre Aubenque would say - of each human
being. Man cannot cede the risk of decision and action (nor, obviously, can
the scientist) to any rule or automatic process of decision.
Not even the laws of the city can be applied completely literally.
Aristotle warned that such a process could lead to grave injustice. The
application of the law to the case requires something very much like
prudence: equity (epieikeia)116. “The reason is that all law is universal but
111
EN 1142a 12.21.
EN 1144a 35-36.
113 See also EN X 9.
114 EN 1143b 4.
115 EN 1137b 18-19.
116 Aristotle deals with equity in EN V 10.
112
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
about some things it is not possible to make a universal statement which
shall be correct.”117
The proper application of the law is not guaranteed by science alone,
as in the case of Plato’s king-philosopher, by the fact that science itself, for
belonging to the general, is subject to the same problems as the law in its
relation with the concrete118.
But this does not condemn us to irrationality or to subjectivism in
our practical decisions, for prudence is not science, yet nor is it simple
opinion or skill119, it is genuine rational knowledge with the intention of
objective truth. Research must be understood as a part of human action,
decisions taken in it are practical decisions falling under the jurisdiction of
the Aristotelian concept of practical truth, the type of truth that prudence
seeks120.
In conclusion, Aristotle achieves a noticeable integration of
knowledge and human action, of freedom and nature, as well as of the ends
of science, which we call instrumentalist and realist. This composition is not
arrived at in the Platonic way, where the science of Ideas will be the ultimate
practical guide. Aubenque assures us that:
“in man, Aristotle does not set one against the other, but maintains
both: contemplative vocation and practical demand. But the latter no
longer finds its model and guide in the former, and must look on its
own level for a rule which, nevertheless, will still be intellectual or
“dianoetic”.”121
This integration is achieved, then, through prudence and practical
truth: scientific research is still part of human action and, as such, is subject
to the ethical rule of prudence, and to the service of the ultimate of man’s
ends, happiness, which in turn consists in true knowledge, as well as coexistence122 and a moderate degree of welfare123.
Science is rooted in human life, in practical values, in time and in
experience through prudence, which is a virtue and is intellectual; or, more
correctly, through the prudent person. Furthermore, this prudential
conception of human reason is rooted in a very realistic, profound, fruitful
117
EN 1137b 13-15.
EN 1107a 27-31.
119 EN 1142a 34 et seq.
120 EN 1139a 26 et seq.
121 P. AUBENQUE, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F, Paris, 1993, p. 19.
122 EE 1244b 24.26; EN 1178b 18-19.
123 EN 1178b 34 et seq..
118
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
and commonly accepted idea of human nature: “desiderative reason or
ratiocinative desire”124.
Well, if the human being is desiderative intelligence or intelligent
desire, then the function of the human being will be intelligent fulfilment of
the wishes of an intelligent being, that is, one endowed with reason. And one
of those wishes is knowledge, of feeding the intelligence. But there is more:
the desire to coexist (the human being is a “political animal”), to have a
family, friends and fellow-citizens, and the wish for some level of wellbeing. A life, generally speaking, endowed with moderate well-being, in the
company of loved ones and with enough time for the cultivation of
knowledge would, for Aristotle, be a fulfilling and happy life. But it should
be borne in mind that the search for knowledge, coexistence and well-being
are not means exterior to the end they seek – happiness – but the very form
which happiness assumes, they are the contents of happiness and are means
only insofar as they are parts of it, as the parts of a living being are its
organs.
A point must be made clear here. In Greek, happiness is eudaimonia,
and our rendering of this as happiness may be somewhat confusing, as for
Aristotle, eudaimonia, rather that a state I find myself in, is something that I
do, an activity which is an end in itself. If we ask, “What do I want to be
happy for?”, the most sensible answer would be quite simply, “For
happiness’ own sake”. It is the activity that we should always like to be
indulged in. When I move, it is because I want to get to a place other than
the one where I am now, and when I get there, I have achieved my end and
the movement stops. Many of our movements are of this type, they seek an
end and stop when that end is achieved. But activities like happiness set out
in search of themselves, so their execution does not have to stop once the
end is achieved, for their end is to continue being executed. The question is
that the word “happiness” suggests a state. We can get an idea of what
eudaimonia means if we translate it as “flourishing”. To achieve a happy life
of this kind, Aristotle recommends the development of virtuous habits
guided by prudence, which is a virtue (and therefore a habit) halfway
between desire and intellect, that is, an intellectual virtue. Let us now look
into some contemporary notions which could perhaps be considered as
present-day versions of phronesis.
4. Prudence and Scientific Rationality: “Do not block the way of inquiry”
For some contemporary thinkers, like Popper and Peirce, it is clear
that in empirical science we cannot achieve certainty, that no method exists
that in any way guarantees the results of research, either in the context of
124
EN 1139b 4-6.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
discovery or in that of justification, or in any other. A similar position was
suggested by Gadamer regarding the disciplines that are based on
understanding (die verstehenden Wissenschaften).
Nobody denies the existence of methods, in the plural, or of
standardised guidelines in science, because they exist, indeed, in any other
human activity, however little developed, including the purely artistic ones.
But these methods are in the hands of prudence and from its hands they were
born (Aristotle said that the hand was the instrument of instruments). There
are methods for gathering statistical data, for carrying out pharmaceutical
controls and for designing experiments with particles or proteins. But these
methods are plural, and are applied to very specific processes – they have
not steered research from the beginning but have been the fruit of it,
generated during it, and are subject to criticism, control and checking. What
is denied here is the existence of the great universal, uniform, and logical
scientific method. What is denied is the existence of a logic machine to
produce or justify with certainty what science enounces. What is denied is
the existence of a meta-method to generate, monitor and check the first-order
methods and standardised procedures. What is denied most forcefully here is
the identification of this supposed scientific method with human reason.
Popper sums up the situation thus:
“As a rule, I begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my
students that [the] scientific method does not exist.[...] I assert that no
scientific method exists in any of these three senses. To put it in a
more direct way: (1) There is no method of discovering a scientific
theory. (2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth of a scientific
hypothesis, i.e., no method of verification. (3) There is no method of
ascertaining whether a hypothesis is “probable”, or probably true.”125
If anything characterises reason in critical rationalism, that
something is more of an attitude than the observance of a supposed scientific
method, and that attitude is not exclusive to the scientist, but advisable for
any person who in any walk of life wishes to act in a reasonable way. It is, of
course, the fallibilist attitude.
Charles Sanders Peirce once wrote of himself that he was a thinker
about whom critics never found anything good to say. One of his critics went
as far as to say that Peirce did not even seem to be absolutely sure of his own
conclusions. The sentence, naturally enough, was not conceived as praise,
but Peirce used it, ironically, as grounds for pride, for “infallibility in
scientific matters,” he said, “seems to me irresistibly comical”. He even
thought of adopting the term “fallibilism” as a name for his ideas.
125
K. POPPER, Realism and the Aim of Science, Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J., 1983,
pp. 5-6.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Fallibilism, together with a great confidence in the reality of knowledge and
an intense desire to learn, made up, in his sight, the core of his thought126.
Peirce insists that the fallibilist attitude is the one to be desired in a scientist
and that it arises, in fact, from experience: “Persons who know science
chiefly by its results – that is to say, have no acquaintance with it at all as a
living inquiry – are apt to acquire the notion that the universe is now entirely
explained in all its leading features”127. What has been growing since
Newton, together with scientific knowledge, is the awareness of its limits. In
other words, the fallibilist attitude is the fruit both of the scientist’s personal
experience and of several centuries of experience of the scientific
community, as is the prudence in general of human experience. The
fallibilist attitude arises from our proven inability to predict with certainty
what future science will be like128, which is a consequence of the lack of a
regular method. The method is formed with research129, and its future
alterations are as unforeseeable as the very content of future science.
A clear defence of fallibilism is also to be found in Hans-Georg
Gadamer:
“It is still a misunderstanding of reason and rationality if one finds
them only within the anonymity of science as science. So, I was
persuaded that the Socratic legacy of “human wisdom” had to be
taken up again in my own hermeneutical theory-formation, a legacy
which, when measured against the godlike infallibility of science, is,
in the sense of sophia, a consciousness of not knowing. What Aristotle
developed as “practical philosophy” can serve as a model for this
fallible and merely human wisdom […] The Aristotelian project of
developing a practical science [praktische Wissenschaft] represents, it
seems to me, the only scientific-theoretical model according to which
the scholarly disciplines that are based on understanding [die
“verstehenden” Wissenschaften] can be developed and thought
through […] This model must be invoked against all who would bend
human reason into the methodological thinking that characterizes what
we call “anonymous” science. To present and defend the model of
rationality belonging to practical reason against the perfection of a
logical self-understanding specific to the science seems to me the true
126
The information in this paragraph is taken from a short autobiographical piece,
“Concerning the Author”, in J. BUCHLER, (ed.), Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover, New
York, 1955, pp. 1-4.
127 C.S. PEIRCE, “The Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism”, in J. BUCHLER, (ed.), Philosophical
Writings of Peirce, Dover, New York, 1955, p. 53; my italics.
128 In this regard, see N. RESCHER, The Limits of Science, University of California Press
Berkeley, 1984, chapter 7.
129 Nobody has expressed more beautifully or more concisely what method is than the Spanish
poet Antonio Machado in his line “... se hace camino al andar..” [“The way is in the
walking”]. Nor is it easy to find a more perspicacious and ironic expression of the fallibilist
attitude than Machado’s copla: “Confiemos / en que no sea verdad / nada de lo que creemos”
[“Let us hope that nothing we believe may be true”].
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and authentic task of philosophy today. This is especially true in light
of the practical meaning of science for our life and survival today.” 130
It is true that sceptical tendencies are not new, but the fallibilism of
the twentieth century has some distinctive aspects. In the first place, it is
relative to a very specific undertaking of human knowledge, modern science,
and as such, closes a circle of confidence in the possibility of human
knowledge of reality and the command of it to become complete and certain
by the application of the scientific method. It therefore brings modern times
to a close and depends on the experience acquired during them, it is not just
another edition of Pre-modern or Modern scepticism. On the other hand, this
fallibilism is not truly sceptical, but through it and by distinguishing truth
from certainty, we can continue to trust in the truth of most of our
knowledge, although it maintains that we shall never be definitely and
perfectly sure of knowing what part is in fact true. One thing is certainty and
another is objective truth. More often than not, certainty is not reached. And
even if it is, it does not serve as either a definition or a criterion of truth.
Perhaps it can be taken as a fallible symptom of truth. But it must be
remembered that we can be surer of what we believe in erroneously than of
what we know to be true.
Present-day fallibilism has not lost hope in the possibility of true
knowledge, but of certain knowledge. Moreover, it rests on what Popper has
called critical common sense, that is, there is no question – far from it – of
doubting everything out of frivolity, out of pure play or out of method.
Nothing could be farther from the fallibilist spirit than frivolity or
methodical doubt. Never should criticism be taken as a destructive
intellectual game. In other words, all our knowledge is subjected to a
potential revision, for in any part of it errors may exist, but one must only
really doubt when there are reasons for doubt. There are very clear
statements by Peirce and also by Popper in this regard. Popper says: “A habit
which I dislike: that of philosophizing without a real problem.”131 Fallibilism
is in connection with a serious idea of research and its aims: “Rational
discussion must not be practised, however, as a mere game to while away
our time. It cannot exist without real problems, without the search for
objective truth.”132
Peirce’s criticism of methodical doubt is even more relevant in this
context, for it is set clearly and consciously in the surpassing of modernity.
H.G. Gadamer, “Autobiographical Reflections”, in H.G. Gadamer, A Bouquet of the Later
Writings (Topics in Historical Philosophy), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL,
2007, trans. By Richard E. Palmer p. 28.
131 K. POPPER, Realism and the aim of science, Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J., 1983,
p. 85.
132 K. POPPER, Realism and the aim of science, Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, N.J., 1983.,
p. 157.
130
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Peirce accepts the common statement that “Descartes is the father of modern
philosophy”. He tries to sum up the spirit of Cartesianism in four essential
points, the first of which he formulates thus: “It teaches that philosophy must
begin with universal doubt”. Peirce makes the following commentary on it:
“It seems to me that modern science and modern logic require us to
stand upon a very different platform from this [...] We cannot begin
with complete doubt. [...] A person may, it is true, in the course of his
studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that
case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on
account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in
philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts”.133
Today’s fallibilism, rather than a thesis is an attitude, and is thus
characterised by Peirce134 and Popper135. An attitude may be taken to be a
disposition. Prudence is just that, a disposition (hexis). Prudence and
fallibilism are both attitudes, but are they the same attitude? Let us
remember that prudence is intellectual and practical, and that fallibilism
undoubtedly is, too. Both are intellectual insofar as they consist in a certain
knowledge obtained from past experience. Both are practical inasmuch as
they prepare us in some way for future action. Prudence is the virtue that
produces practical truth. From my point of view, fallibilism as a guide for
scientific action tends to the same end.
However, there is a difference: Aristotle did not clearly conceive
prudence as a guide for scientific procedure. Indeed, we may infer something
on these lines if we put together two of his statements on this point: in the
first place, he states that prudence seeks for the way of producing wisdom136,
while in the second he says that science is part of wisdom137. In any event,
however, he was not very explicit on this point.
A second difference is concerned with the fact that fallibilism now
depends on a concept of science that Aristotle could not have had. Aristotle
thought that science was knowledge of the universal and necessary138. Of
C.S. PEIRCE, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities”, in J. BUCHLER, (ed.),
Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover, New York, 1955, pp. 228-29; my italics.
134 See C.S. PEIRCE, “The Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism”, in J. BUCHLER, (ed.),
Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover, New York, 1955, pp. 42-59.
135 When arguing against conventionalism, Popper states: “My conflict with the
conventionalists is not one that can be ultimately settled by a detached theoretical discussion
[...] The only way to avoid conventionalism is by taking a decision: the decision not to apply
its methods”. K. POPPER, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Hutchinson, London, 1962, pp.
81-2. In conventionalism, Popper seems to see a sort of legal fraud that cannot be attacked
from pure logic. To answer conventionalism, Popper sets himself more in the terrain of moral
attitude than in that of pure logic.
136 EN 1145a 8-10.
137 EN 1141a 18-20.
138 EN 1140b 30-31.
133
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prudence he says that it is quite obvious that it is not science, “for it is, as has
been said, concerned with the ultimate particular fact, since the thing to be
done is of this nature”139. It is a fact that nowhere in this text of EN does
Aristotle recognise the possibility of a scientific knowledge of the particular,
nor does he directly accord prudence the category of guide of science,
although he always considers it an intellectual and practical disposition
according to reason and truth. Judging from this text, Aristotle does not seem
to be a fallibilist as far as scientific knowledge is concerned. He goes as far
as to say explicitly that when one is somehow sure of something and one
knows its principles, one has scientific knowledge140.
This question, cannot, however, be dealt with in such a simple
manner. Many considerations would have to be added for a correct
evaluation of Aristotle’s position. For example, there is a text (Metaphysics
M, 10) in which the typical position concerning the object of science is
reviewed. As exploring this train of thought here would mean digressing too
far from the present context, we shall leave it for Chapter four.
Thirdly, fallibilism today depends on a historical experience that
Aristotle could not have had, the experience of the development of modern
science, of the hopes deposited in it, of the memory of its successes and of
the gradual recognition of its limits. The firm belief that Kant and his
contemporaries had in Newton’s work gradually lessened over the 19th
century with the opening-up of non-Newtonian branches of physics, such as
thermodynamics and electromagnetism. And with the advent of relativist
mechanics and quantum mechanics, we learnt once and for all that the
degree of trust given to a theory does not guarantee its truth.
We could take as another difference the fact that prudence is not at
the service of individual ends but of generally living well, that is, happiness,
while fallibilism seems only to affect science. But fallibilism soon becomes
critical rationalism and, in this form, shows an unstoppable tendency to be
applied to more and more areas of human activity. Popper’s use of critical
rationalism in the terrain of political thought is a good example. Indeed,
from the start of his career, he showed an intense philosophical interest in
moral and political matters, which was at least as great as his interest in
science.
In the light of the foregoing, I consider that fallibilism would be
today’s version of prudence, or perhaps prudence brought into today’s
debate, shaped by the experience that we have today. The fallibilist attitude
consists, in short, in assuming that, however much one trusts the truth of
what one knows, an error may always be present and that this conviction
must guide our actions. This disposition may doubtless be called prudence; it
139
140
EN 1142a 24-26.
EN 1139b 33-34.
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is prudence in today’s form, born from our historical experience. It is also
the genuinely present form or reason. This attitude, which in itself is
practical, has in turn many practical implications. The practical
consequences of fallibilism may be expressed succinctly in the following
maxim formulated by Peirce:
Do not block the way of inquiry141.
According to Peirce, inquiry cannot be blocked, not because it is an
end in itself142, which would make it a futile game, but because each and
every one of us may be wrong, and to block the way out of the error would
be rather irrational. That is, although we honestly believe in the truth of our
ideas and have done our utmost to submit them to criticism, we cannot avoid
thinking that even so they may be wrong, and we cannot help acting
accordingly, that is, avoiding blocking the way to inquiry. But this implies
that research must go on for the very reason that its object is the
development of true knowledge (may the tautology stand) and well-being.
Consequently, any action that tends to hinder or block the course of
research must be considered both irrational and immoral. There are many
attitudes of this type: dogmatic pedagogy, deficient information, forgetting
or despising different traditions, subtle or brutal censorship of criticism,
uncontrolled and threatening applications of technology, hypocrisy and
academic corruption, secrecy in research, and others.
On the other hand, Aristotelian prudence is a disposition which takes
on full sense in conjunction with a given idea of the world and of mankind.
Pierre Aubenque has researched into what this ontology and this
anthropology of prudence are. Prudence has no sense amid chaos or in a
world of which it can be said that “what is rational is real and what is real is
rational”. Well, fallibilism takes on full sense together with the same
ontology and anthropology as Aristotelian prudence, whence the connection
between the two also affording a benefit to fallibilism, which becomes much
more lucid and fertile in connection with a metaphysics like Aristotle’s.
Fallibilism today, as much as Aristotelian prudence, harmonises well with an
ontology and anthropology built on a basis of the notions of potency and act;
they both harmonise with a pluralist ontology that contemplates a reality
formed by many substances, like persons, animals, plants and elements, a
reality with its own dynamic, not subjected to concept, but open to fallible
human intellection.
C.S. PEIRCE, “The Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism”, in J. BUCHLER, (ed.), Philosophical
Writings of Peirce, Dover, New York, 1955, p. 54. This obviously does not mean that a
moratorium can never be established, or that financing a given line of research cannot stop.
Sometimes this partial and provisional block of a way of inquiry may be a perfectly rational
decision, as long as it is subjected to criticism and open to review.
142 This is how it is interpreted, in my view erroneously, by Richard Rorty.
141
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5. Prudence and Environmental Responsibility: “May human life remain
possible”
Hans Jonas’ environmental ethics are clearly set in a post-modern
attitude as he rejects some basic dogmas of the Modern Age, for example the
one which says that there are no metaphysical truths or the one that states
that there is no way from the “is” to the “ought”. But he is not postmodern,
rather he is of today, combining intellectual modesty and mistrust in
certainty with the quest for an objective basis; he explicitly renounces the
utopian outlook, he does not identify science with reason but develops
criteria of judgement independent of techno-science precisely in order to
judge its applications.
Many of these features bring the environmental ethics of Jonas
nearer to the ideas we have been setting out. Their principle of responsibility
corresponds clearly to Peirce’s maxim of not blocking the way of inquiry,
and both suggest the same concept of rationality. Furthermore, Jonas
explicitly recognises his Aristotelian leanings in his writing, so his concepts
may fairly easily be linked with those of Aristotle.
In what follows I shall attempt to relate Jonas’ responsibility
principle with the Aristotelian notion of prudence and with Peirce’s maxim.
At the same time I shall highlight the link between scientific rationality as
Peirce understands it and environmental responsibility as Jonas sets it out143.
The ideas of both men, and with them the new rationality that they suggest,
are reinforced when seen against a background of ontology and
anthropology of Aristotelian inspiration.
Hans Jonas’ responsibility principle, in one of its formulations,
states: “Behave in such a way that you do not endanger the conditions for
mankind’s indefinite stay on Earth.” It is a principle of respect and care for
life in general and of human life in particular and is born from an attitude of
intellectual modesty and of the recognition that while our capacity for
foresight has grown, it has grown much less than our scope for affecting the
environment. Furthermore, the information we obtain ends up being released
to the general public and constitutes in itself a causal factor. This feedback
loop makes the future dynamics of society and nature even more
unpredictable – nature, too, for it has fallen under mankind’s power and
143
I shall be citing Jonas extensively to show that the links are neither forced nor merely
circumstantial. As far as I know, these links between Jonas’ thought and Peirce’s have not
been explored. To my mind they are important, as they form the profile of a new idea of
reason that is indeed today’s. All the quotes from Hans Jonas are from his book: H. JONAS,
The Imperative of Responsability: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984.
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depends to a great extent on our knowledge, on our decisions, and in general
on the progress of human society.
The ethics of responsibility are uncertain, and have given up
certainty in favour of respect for reality, which accepts the inescapable risk
of action, so much so that the fear of that risk is in part what serves as a
prudential guide (heuristic of fear). It is indeed this fallibilistic attitude that
will lead to a demand for a constant openness to the future. Jonas’ texts in
this regard are perfectly clear:
“The one paradoxical certainty here is that of uncertainty.” 144
“We know, if nothing else, that most of these will be changed. It is the
difference between a static and a dynamic situation. Dynamism is the
signature of modernity. It is not an accident, but an immanent property
of the epoch, and until further notice it is our fate. It bespeaks the fact
that we must always figure on novelty without ever being able to
figure it out; that change is certain, but not what the changed condition
will be “145.
Of the politician he says:
“For no general rule of ethics can make it a duty, on the mere criterion
of subjective certainty, to risk committing possibly fatal mistakes at
others’ expense. Rather must he who wagers on his own certainty take
the never excludable possibility of being in error upon his own
conscience. For this, there exists no general law, only the free deed,
which in the unassuredness of its eventual justification (even in the
mere presumption of its self-confidence, which surely cannot be part
of any moral prescription) is entirely its own venture.” 146.
“All Statesmanship Is Responsible for the Possibility of Future
Statesmanship [...] Nonetheless – remembering what we have said
before – even the most skeptical estimate of historical prognosis
leaves at least one basic certainty, itself a prognosis, that political
spontaneity will remain necessary at all times, precisely because the
excessively intricate web of events will, in principle, never conform to
plan147.
“We contend that to build upon this certainty [...] is at least as
irresponsible as was [...] to rely on the uncertain. [...] From all of this
it follows that, while today there is as little a recipe for statecraft as
144
Jonas: op. cit. p. 117.
Jonas: op. cit. pp. 119-20.
146 Jonas: op. cit. p. 97.
147 Jonas: op. cit. pp. 117-18; Jonas’s italics and capitals. Hence, I believe, it is possible to
speak on a rational basis, together with legitimacy of origin and exercise, of a legitimacy
referring to the future, and which is lost as the politician strangles the possibilities of change,
or which is won with the development of pluralism.
145
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there ever was, the time spans of responsibility as well as of informed
planning have widened unprecedentedly”. 148
Jonas does not believe for a minute that his ethics alone can bring
about complete good, but, aware of their limits, he merely seeks to protect
the conditions of freedom, happiness and the future assuming of
responsibilities, in the same way that prudence, rather than squarely
producing practical truth, protects and cultivates the conditions for its
appearance, just as Peirce recommends as the ultimate maxim of reason, as a
more universal and peremptory norm of the method, that we look after the
conditions of free research and do not block the way of inquiry. The ethics of
responsibility are then far from any utopian idea:
“But no less should one distrust those who pretend to know about a
future destination of their own or every society, about a goal of
history, for which all of the past was but a preparation and the present
is only a transitional stage. “149
“But in believing to know the direction and the goal, Marxism is still
heir to the Kantian regulative idea, which is stripped of its infinitude
and wholly transposed into the finite [...] We post-Marxists (a word
still sounding audacious150 and certainly mistaken to many) must see
things differently.”151
In short, the rational attitude consists above all in a protection and
stimulus of creative capacities which will allow future adjustment to
conditions that we cannot foresee:
“[...] the spontaneity or freedom of the life in question – the greatest of
all unknowns, which yet must be included in the total responsibility.
[...] It can be so in one way only: respecting this transcendent horizon,
the intent of the responsibility must be not so much to determine as to
enable, that is, to prepare and keep the capacity for itself in those to
come intact, never foreclosing the future exercise of responsibility by
them. The object’s self-owned futurity is the truest futural aspect of
the responsibility, [...] In the light of such self-transcending width, it
becomes apparent that responsibility as such is nothing else but the
moral complement to the ontological constitution of our
temporality.”152
“We omit here what lies beyond these duties of guarding and
preserving: obligations to ends which none other than he first creates
148
Jonas: op. cit. pp. 121-22.
Jonas: op. cit. p. 109.
150 It must be remembered that Jonas wrote this at the end of the 70s.
151 Jonas: op. cit. p. 127.
152 Jonas: op. cit. p. 107.
149
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as it were out of nothing. For creativity lies outside the tasks of
responsibility, which extends no further than to making it possible,
that is, to keeping intact its ontological premise, the being of man is
such. This is its more modest, but more stringent duty.” 153
On the other hand, Hans Jonas’ responsibility ethic is totally
realistic, seeking its basis in the object, which will be the object of
responsibility, in the good that resides in being (“an ontic paradigm”154). It
seeks an objective basis in the demands for care and respect, an objective
basis even for the subjective feeling of responsibility. We feel responsibility
towards living things and this feeling is correct insofar as such living things
have a value in themselves, inasmuch as they are objectively valuable and
would be even without our recognition of that value and without our feeling
of responsibility. “What matters,” he states, “are things rather than states of
my will.”155 This is tantamount to saying that what has value is truth, rather
than subjective states (like certainty). To sum up: “The objectivity must
really stem from the object.”156
But objective good is basically a possibility that requires actualizing,
for which the contribution of the responsible subject is required. The
paradigm of this situation is the child, a fragile existence which requires care
to continue existing, which is like demanding to be more, and that demand is
directed to the responsible subject, who has to protect and provide for the
full realisation of his possibilities.
“Not duty itself is the object: not the moral law motivates moral
action, but the appeal of a possible good-in-itself in the world, which
confronts my will and demands to be heard – in accordance with the
moral law. To grant that appeal a hearing is precisely what the moral
law commands: this law is nothing but the general enjoinder of the
call of all action-dependent “goods” and of their situation-determined
right to just my action”157.
The ethics of responsibility eschews the universal norm, formal duty,
as it does action for action’s sake, full subjectivity. In this regard, it is again
close to the Aristotelian balances between abstract formalism and pure
arbitrariness. Its realist foundation makes it insecure, not subject to strict
formal norms, but it also makes it objective, not subjected to whim, in the
same way that prudence too is neither law nor whim, but a norm incarnate,
responsibility culminates not in a rule for the conservation of the
environment but in the responsible being who recognises the otherness of the
153
Jonas: op. cit. p. 130.
Jonas: op. cit. p. 130.
155 Jonas: op. cit. p. 89.
156 Jonas: op. cit. p. 130.
157 Jonas: op. cit. p. 85.
154
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object of his responsibility and at the same time his openness to possibilities
that will come into existence with his help. In this Jonas differs from the
most typical extremes of modernity, whose paradigmatic exponents might
have been Kant and Nietzsche. The concrete character of responsibility
permits – or rather demands – the integration of intellect and sentiment
(“desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire”158):
“A theory of responsibility, as any ethical theory, must deal both with
the rational ground of obligation, that is, the validating principle
behind the claim to a binding “ought,” and with the psychological
ground of its moving the will, that is, of an agent’s letting it determine
his course of action. This is to say that ethics has an objective side and
a subjective side, the one having to do with reason, the other with
emotion.”159
“Existentialism is the modern extreme of this ethics of subjective
intention (cf. Nietzsche’s “will to will,” Sartre’s “authentic decision,”
Heidegger’s “resoluteness,” etc.), where the worldly issue is not by
itself endowed with a claim on us but receives its significance from
the choice of our passionate concern. Here the self-committing
freedom of the self reigns supreme.” 160
In opposition to Kantian ethics, Jonas confirms that “the good is the
“cause” at issue out there in the world [...] Morality can never have itself for
its goal”161. Jonas recognises that Kantian morals also appeal to sentiment,
but “What is unique is that this feeling is directed not at a material object but
at the law itself162.”
Still other features of responsibility may be added to confer
continuity with Aristotelian prudence, for example, the temporary and
contingent character of its object and the global nature of its perspective,
which covers the object of its care completely:
“[...] the object of responsibility is emphatically the perishable qua
perishable”163.
“The child as a whole and in all its possibilities, not only in its
immediate needs, is its [parental responsibility’s] object.”164.
The paradigmatic examples of responsibility, that of parents and
children, that of the politician and the public weal, tell us just how far this is
158
EN 1139b 4-6.
Jonas: op. cit. p. 85; italics in the original.
160 Jonas: op. cit. p. 88.
161 Jonas: op. cit. p. 85.
162 Jonas: op. cit. p. 88.
163 Jonas: op. cit. p. 87.
164 Jonas: op. cit. p. 101.
159
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so. The parent cannot, and must not, make his son his own creation, he
cannot bring him happiness in his own hands, but he must protect and ensure
the conditions for it, among which are the child’s freedom and spontaneity.
Nor can society and each of its members expect everything from the
politician, but they can expect him to stimulate and protect the conditions in
which everything is possible, those in which active members of society can
work for the public weal and individual happiness. Jonas’s responsibility and
Aristotle’s prudence look to the common good, but they are not methods for
its effective production, for there is no method for it, for it is produced in an
ever-new world, in an ever-new subject, and they are rather generators and
protectors of the conditions for global good, in an uncertain but habitable
world.
6. Conclusion
During the Modern Age, reason was identified with the scientific
method, the principal objective of which consisted in the quest for certain
knowledge. From there, the practical became considered an area for the mere
application of science, whereby it lost its own character and its touch of
uncertainty, risk and responsibility. Practical certainty through the
application of science was never achieved, so a second possibility became
available: renouncing the rational characteristic of action; human action
would be guided only by forces of an irrational nature. But there soon appear
the practical aspects of science itself, which is thereby also subject to the
forces of the irrational. Human reason, and with it science, is now no more
than a slave of passions or a mask over the will to power.
This unsatisfactory result can only be avoided by having available a
concept of practical reason independent from a supposed scientific method
and free from the obsession with certainty, which is not compatible with
practice. We find notions of this type in texts of Aristotle’s practical
philosophy. Indeed, the notion of prudence, as an intellectual virtue, and that
of practical truth, bring together reason and praxis sufficiently.
However, these concepts may be beyond the present debate. They
should be brought into it through genuinely present-day notions, which
already incorporate the experience that humanity has acquired over time,
especially the experience accumulated during the Modern period. We need
to develop Aristotle’s ideas from a post-modern perspective.
Today, then, Aristotelian prudence is correctly expressed in the
attitude of intellectual modesty and respect for reality that we find in
thinkers like Peirce, Popper, Gadamer and Jonas, enshrined in the Peircian
maxim of not blocking the way of inquiry and in Jonas’s responsibility
principle, which insists on the protection of the conditions for the continuity
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of life. These positions of contemporary authors are strengthened when
understood against the background of Aristotelian ontology (there is a
plurality of substances; being may be actual or potential; there is a path from
is to ought; man is desiring intelligence or intelligent desire; reality is not a
copy of the concept, but is intelligible). On the other hand, from the
Aristotelian perspective, the integrity of human action is recuperated, and is
no longer split off in unconnected areas – Aristotelian anthropology may
thus contribute to saving what Russell called ‘the schizophrenia of modern
man’.
Furthermore, things being thus, we realise that a rational attitude is
fundamentally the same in the different contexts of science and in other
areas of human life. In Gadamer’s words: “In the end, I think, the way such a
dialogue goes on is very much like the way we acquire our experience in
life: a fullness of experiences, encounters, instructions, and disappointments
does not just conjoin everything and in the end mean that one knows
everything; rather, it means that one is initiated and at the same time has
learned a bit of modesty”165. So, rational attitude should be a question
basically of protecting openness of human action in the future, for we know
that it will have to tackle a (socio-natural) world whose future is also open.
This attitude of protecting openness does not guarantee anything, but it is the
best bet we can place in order for creative discoveries to continue to be
made, so that man’s and nature’s creativity may survive. Indeed, the concept
of creative discovery will play as the leitmotif and recurring theme of the
remaining chapters.
H.G. Gadamer, “Autobiographical Reflections”, in H.G. Gadamer, A Bouquet of the Later
Writings (Topics in Historical Philosophy), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL,
2007, trans. By Richard E. Palmer pp. 33-34.
165
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Chapter 3
PRACTICAL TRUTH
1. Introduction
In the previous chapter we identified rationality with prudence. One
might think, however, that both Aristotelian prudence and Peirce’s maxim,
together with Jonas’s responsibility principle are a scanty characterisation of
human action. They do not account for creative aspects, but just protect the
conditions making creativity possible. Jonas does not for a moment believe
that his ethics alone can bring about total good, but rather, aware of their
limits, he just seeks to protect the conditions of liberty, happiness and the
future assumption of responsibilities – in the same way that Aristotelian
prudence, rather than effectively producing practical truth, protects and
cultivates the conditions for its appearance; and in the same way as Peirce
recommends as the ultimate maxim of reason, as the most universal and
conclusive norm, that we should ensure the conditions needed for free
research, and not block the way of inquiry. In short, the rational attitude
consists above all in a protection and stimulation of the creative capacities
that will allow us to adapt to unforeseeable conditions in the future. Prudent
rationality, although it does not guarantee it, is directed towards creative
discovery, seeking to make it possible at all times, ensuring and stimulating
the right conditions for it, removing obstacles, and upholding the openness
of human action so that it can tackle the future course of events, always open
and never quite determined. On the other hand, compliance with prudence
and responsibility in difficult situations depends precisely on creativity. All
too often human action is described from the methodological or ethical point
of view as a set of alternatives, as the obligation to choose from pre-set
options; in this way, it is forgotten that many times the best option – or the
least bad – is not available and has to be created while it is chosen and put
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into effect. Furthermore, the development of what is created, and judgement
on its adaptation, are again carried out under the auspices of prudence. This
multiple linking of the principles of prudence with creative discovery
demands of us an elucidation of this concept.
Current versions of prudence, like Peirce’s maxim or Jonas’s
principle, are at the service of creative discovery. Aristotelian prudence
looks for practical truth (aletheia praktike). This chapter seeks to trace a
movement from the Aristotelian notion of practical truth to the Peircian
concept of creative discovery. Science discovers as it creates: it makes
discoveries. This allows its activity to go in the direction of truth, but that
truth must be made, brought about and actualised. Science – unlike the
Moderns – does not aspire principally to certainty, but must go on – unlike
the Postmoderns – looking for truth. But it will be a practical truth.
The fallibilists, like Popper, distinguish between truth and certainty.
Therefore, the critique of the ideal of certainty does not necessarily have to
affect the ideal of truth. But once the practical nature of science is
recognised, the truth corresponding to it is practical truth. The notion of
practical truth is of Aristotelian origin and is set out and studied in Ethica
Nicomachea VI, 2.
It seems that this notion allows us at the same time to save the
objectivity of science and its constructive aspect, without one threatening the
other. Within the present argument it also allows us to bring out the deep
reasons for which science is a prudent activity, never subjected to a rigid
method, for it is creative; nor left to the whim of the irrational, for it must
adjust to the reality it discovers. It may be shown, furthermore, as an activity
that makes discoveries, to be not substantially different from other human
activities, such as the arts, poetry, technology or moral action, although it
has clear differences of manner with them. Now that its relationship with the
Aristotelian concept of practical truth has been suggested, the notion of
creative discovery also finds a basis in Aristotelian ontology of act and
potentiality, and therefore looses its paradoxical aspect.
To comply with the goal mentioned, we shall first set out (in section
2) the contents of the Aristotelian concept of practical truth just as it appears
in Ethica Nicomachae VI, 2. Secondly, I shall show how the Aristotelian
notion of practical truth may be linked with today’s notion of creative
discovery (in section 3). Discoveries are made in many human activities: in
science, poetry, art, technology, politics and ethics166. In all human activities
there is a theoretical aspect and a constructive one, which are only
distinguished conceptually: we behold what we make, and this beholding is
one of reality, for what we see are the possibilities of reality that our action
166
I believe that it would also be correct to say that in its dynamics, nature discovers aspects
of reality for us.
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has actualised, putting them before our eyes. Human action makes the
discovery of similarity and puts it into practice physically (art, technology,
politics, etc.) or simply contemplates it (poetry, science). In a world
inhabited by a plurality of substances, real and possible, which are not
absolutely identical or chaotically different, human action weaves the web of
similarities. The ‘mechanism’ that produces similarities is called metaphor;
as Umberto Eco would say: the ‘Aristotelian machine of the metaphor’,
which, of course, is not a machine but a person. Finally, I shall set out the
conclusions of this chapter and the outlook for the remaining chapters.
2. Practical Truth
Prudence is not science, nor is it simple opinion or skill167, it is
genuine rational knowledge with the intention of objective truth. The truth of
human action falls within the jurisdiction of the Aristotelian concept of
practical truth, the kind of truth that seeks prudence:
“Now this kind of intellect and of truth – according to EN – is
practical [...] of the part which is practical and intellectual the good
state is truth in agreement with right desire” 168.
Practical truth, then, has two dimensions: concord between desire
and intellect (which is why it is a kind of truth) and creation of an objective
good (which is why it is practical). When there is agreement between desire
and intelligence, an objective good is also produced in the world by the
action and in the subject that constructs and improves itself. So practical
truth does not consist only in the agreement between two human faculties,
but also has an objective dimension:
“It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is
produced [...] without doing these no one would have even a prospect
of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in
theory [...] behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to
their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do” 169.
That is, in order to know truthfully what is good for man, one must
do it: ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by
doing them’ 170.
According to Aristotle, the truth of science (‘episteme’ in the narrow
sense) is necessary and is not mixed with error, and the Greeks themselves
167
EN 1142a 34 et seqq.
EN 1139a 26 et seqq.
169 EN 1105b 10 et seqq.
170 EN 1103a 32 et seq.
168
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suspected that this perfect knowledge was reserved for God, and man could
only aspire to it171. Practical truth, however, is the result of successive
corrections, of a history of trial and error, of rectifying in our conduct the
tendencies to the powerful attraction of extremes; a history, according to
Aristotle, of approaching the happy medium, or equilibrium. On the other
hand, to lose ground towards either of the extremes is, as Aristotle says, very
easy, you just have to let yourself go172.
Finally, it might seem that practical truth has to do only with the
interest or usefulness of an action, and with its potential for making for a
pleasant life. Thinking this way reduces prudence to a mere skill (deinos) or
ability to achieve any ends. But prudence does not only seek partial ends but,
in the final analysis, ‘good life in general’173. Science governed by ability
would be instrumental in the poorer sense of the word.
But this is only so if we forget that among man’s most conspicuous
interests is knowledge174, the satisfying of curiosity about what surrounds
him. Aristotle says that virtue is about pleasures and pains175 and that,
therefore, the most virtuous life will be the most pleasurable, the one most
full of happiness176. But, according to him, what produces the most pleasure
is knowledge of the world, of man himself and of the divine. Therefore, he
who seeks happiness is he who seeks knowledge, or truth, and is the
philosopher in the original sense of the word.
3. Practical Truth and Creative Discovery
It may seem that Aristotelian prudence, Peirce’s maxim and
Jonas’s principle are indicators of a negative type, advice as to what to
avoid. Indeed the Peircian maxim which we have mentioned is formulated in
a negative way, as is Jonas’s responsibility principle. The fact that the Greek
term used by Aristotle (phronesis) can be translated as prudence brings out
these negative connotations even more. Some authors prefer to avoid them,
rendering phronesis as ‘practical wisdom’ rather than ‘prudence’. There is,
however, no cause for worry about these connotations for, in fact, phronesis
is knowledge based on experience and tends especially to foresee the
unwanted consequences of our actions, above all those which would make
rectification or correction impossible, and which would make us forfeit our
171
Aristotle, in some parts of EN VI, suggests that genuine wisdom belongs to the gods (EN
1141a 22; 1145a 9-11), but also that man must, in his knowledge and behaviour, aspire to the
divine, for man really is what there is of divine in him (EN 1178a 25 et seqq.).
172 EN II 9.
173 EN 1140a 26.
174 Meta 980a 22.
175 EN 1104a 10-14.
176 EN X 6-8.
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very capacity to go on learning from experience and with it our freedom and
reason. ‘Prudentia’ appears in Cicero as a contraction of the Latin term
‘providentia’, that is foresight. If the Modern ideals had been fulfilled
completely, then our reason, in the shape of the scientific method, would be
our eye on the future, steering research and human action with certainty in
such a way that we might forgo that other kind of practical knowledge,
grounded on living experience, fallible and ever fearful that something
irremediable might happen, the custodian of our freedom, the knowledge we
call prudence. But this was not to be.
Today we need the prudential attitude more than ever – because
our scope for action is more powerful than ever –in order to avoid a one-way
journey to error, slavery or extinction. That is, we need an attitude of
carefulness, of watchfulness and of custodianship of our freedom, rather that
a set of rules for exercising it. Nature is creative, prolific, unforeseeable and
fecund, as is borne out by our presence among living things. People also are
by nature nodes of spontaneity, substances projected towards the future. In
the light of this reality, we do not need to become obsessed with marking
routes for our creativity, or with rules or rigour for the rules, but rather with
protecting or pampering the capacity for openness, for novelty, for creation,
already present in nature, and also in people, in the shape of freedom177. We
cannot hope for a more reasonable method than one that prepares us to face
what is new and unforeseeable, the extraordinary178, what nobody knows or
has ever seen. Only prudence protects the way to the realisation of truth, to
the discovery that is made.
Of course, this way of taking prudence does not identify it with
inaction. On the contrary, the custody of our freedom and creativity
obviously requires actions of all kinds advised by prudence. But we know
little of the roots of creativity, prudence only tells us – and without any
guarantee – how to ensure its conditions here and now. Pierre Duhem
comments with irony that whoever thinks that an idea comes to the scientist
out of nowhere, as if by magic, is like the child who sees the chick come out
of its shell and thinks that it all happened in that instant, without imagining
for a moment the complexity of a long period of gestation179. The scientist
usually prepares the ground through study, meditation, progress in the
correct formulation of the problem, conversation, observation, reading, etc.
Despite everything, according to Duhem, the hypothesis, ‘must germinate in
Evandro Agazzi characterises “freedom as a specific and necessary condition of
authentically human actions”. E. AGAZZI, “Philosophie technique et philosophie practique”, in
G. HOTTOIS, Évaluer la Technique, Vrin, Paris, 1988, p. 47.
178 “The extraordinary: everything”. The Spanish poet Jorge Guillén put it like this and it is
difficult to get more into fewer words.
179 P. DUHEM, La théorie physique, Marcel Rivière, Paris, 1914, p. 337.
177
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him without him’180. And, once he has an idea, again his ‘free and laborious
activity must come into play’ to ‘develop it and make it bear fruit’181. We say
of our ideas that they occur to us, not that ‘we occur them’, but we freely
look after the conditions in which they might arise.
Knowledge, as the human action that it is, is then two-sided. On
the one hand it is the fruit of human creativity, while on the other it responds
to the reality of things. It is objective and subjective. We are not mere
mirrors of nature, yet on the other hand relativist epistemologies will never
be able to explain the nature of error, they will never be able to tell us what
happens when reality simply says no. The two sides of human knowledge,
which discovers reality at the same time as it creates it, is perfectly summed
up in the expression ‘creative discovery’.
But it is one thing to have a suitable formula for talking about
human knowledge and it is another to endow that formula with content, with
a content that will avoid its paradoxical aspect. From my point of view, a
good way of carrying out such a task is to relate the formula to the
Aristotelian concept of practical truth. It is true that this concept is not free
of a paradoxical aspect, but within the framework of Aristotelian philosophy
it may be demonstrated to have full coherence.
For us, for the moment, it already has an advantage: its link with
prudence. Practical truth, that is the truth that is made, is the result of the
creative force arising from the protection of prudence.
But the Aristotelian concept of practical truth has certain
limitations. It appears in connection with prudence, but not with science or
technology. In these areas, truth is traditionally established by the adaptation
of ideas to things. In science, true ideas are those which, so to speak, imitate
the things that they are about; in the production of artefacts, these follow the
ideas182. The very truth of practice also has two poles, but neither dominates
the other. Practical truth consists in the adaptation of wish to understanding.
Here the characteristics of truth are different, because the adaptation of the
two poles must happen via integration, with neither of them suffering any
violence to adjust to the other, for at such a moment, man, who is intelligent
desire and desiring intelligence, would be betraying himself, and would
cease to be authentic and true. This happens both when desires are denied by
extreme asceticism and when they rule without restriction over the
intelligence to the point of clouding it and forging it. In other words, what is
to be achieved is not previously granted by either of the poles in such a way
that the other simply has to adjust to it, but what both have to adjust to is
180
181
Duhem, op. cit., p. 390.
Duhem, op. cit., p. 391.
182
We deal extensively with imitation (mimesis) in Chapter 6.
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something that must be made as something new at the same time as the
adjustment is made. Every human action consists in a creative task of this
type (as does the very history of humanity), and their common result – if
they are true – will be a life of fulfilment and the human being himself.
In this regard, it may be said without any doubt that there exists a
type of truth that is not conceived as an abstract agreement, but which rather
is made, comes into effect, or to be more exact, is actualised, because the
way in which wish and understanding finally come to an agreement was
potential in both, and is discovered. This is the objective aspect of practical
truth. But this potentiality had to be actualised by the subject. This is the
creative aspect of practical truth. The paradoxical appearance of the formula
fades away once it is set against the Aristotelian background of the potential
and the actual.
Theoretical truth, for its part, may now be understood as the ideal
correspondence, considered in abstract, between ideas and things, as a limit
that humans will never be able to reach.
We can sum up the general characteristics of practical truth as
follows: it consists in the adaptation of two poles brought about by the action
of a subject; it is established when the adaptation occurs without any
violence by either pole on the other, but arises at an intermediate and better
point; the result is something new and in the process both poles undergo
changes; the adaptation may be understood as the actualizing of a
potentiality; insofar as the potentiality was real, practical truth is objective;
insofar as its bringing about requires human action, it is creative; there is no
automatic rule for the creation or for the recognition of this type of truth, yet
arbitrariness is excluded; it is an exercise determined by the rational
principle by which the phronimos would judge.
Could we extend this notion of practical truth as a creative
discovery also to science and technology? In my opinion we could. To do so
we need to recognise the practical aspects of science and the cognitive
aspects of technology, in order to appreciate how much science also creates
and technology also discovers.
The genuine act of discovery does not discover what is hidden
behind a veil, behind a web of appearances, behind the unstable
phenomenon, but actualises what was there potentially. To discover is
indeed to make a discovery. When by discover we mean simply remove the
veil behind which reality is supposedly hidden from us, wipe our glasses,
clean our eyes, rid the mind of deception, when the catharsis or the critique
takes the leading role, then the illusion of method is produced. Because a
veil may be unwoven in order, thread by thread, in a premeditated and
orthogonal alternation of horizontal and vertical strands; or armed with
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scissors we can unveil along a set path. When to discover is basically to
eliminate something that is there, whether a veil or a vice, an element of
deception or distraction, then it can be done with method, for, at the end of
the day, one knows what one is up against. When discovering, or rather
making a discovery, is creating, producing what was not there, poetizing,
conjecturing, inventing, then no algorithm is possible, nor is any general
method, nor is there any law or rule capable of tackling the unknown, the
different and new, the extraordinary. To discover is to make actual, to bring
about, and thereby to make clear and obvious some facet of reality that was
previously just potential. The discoveries man makes are genuinely his
creation, for the potentialities that nature itself does not actualise require
man’s creative intervention (whether practical or poetic) to become actual.
The same is true for science as for art or technology.
To make a discovery, however, is not simply to construct (as
constructivism says), but to actualise, to invent (in the Latin sense of the
verb invenio, with all its rich polysemy). Mere construction leaves us a long
way from the desirable objectivity, it steeps us in relativism and
subjectivism, while actualizing brings together the creative and veritative
facets of every genuine discovery, of every invention. Thus, what is said to
be discovered is only really discovered if it previously existed potentially.
This is the objective, veritative, pole of discovery.
And what is it that covers possibilities before they are discovered?
A deceptive phenomenon? The path of opinion or appearances? Deficiencies
of our minds, of our conduct or of the language we use? Rather than any of
these and in a much more radical way, possibilities are hidden behind what
substances are in act. Nothing negative or deceptive, nothing that must be
eliminated, but the very act of each substance is what primarily harbours its
potentialities. Discovery is not, then, the elimination of anything, but
creation, the actualisation of real possibilities.
Nature is creative, generative, it is physis, and actualises
potentialities in a natural way. Art and technology imitate nature in this, not
because they copy its products, but because they produce like it. Thus is it
said by Aristotle and thus is it interpreted, I believe quite rightly, by
Ricœur183.
For this line of interpretation, much seems to be suggested by
Heidegger in his text Die Frage Nach Der Technik184, where he states that
technology discovers, brings out possibilities that existed in nature thanks to
the creative action of man. The steam engine actualises the movements that
183
P. RICŒUR, La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris, 1975.
M. HEIDEGGER, “Die Frage Nach Der Technik“, in M. HEIDEGGER, Die Technik und Die
Kehre, Neske Verlag, Tübingen, 1962, pp. 5 et seqq.
184
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nature could, but did not, yield; wind farms actualise the electricity present
in wind; solar panels make actual the lukewarm pleasure of a bath, hidden
and aloof in sunlight; swords and pistols what there is of terror in iron.
Technology is then a means of transformation, of actualisation, and
sometimes of humanisation of nature (when it does not become a risk). But it
is also a means of knowledge, as art is, for it brings out what was hidden, not
behind a veil, but as a potentiality. And then we see metal as a resource;
steam as movement or, what is more, as a journey or as a leave-taking or
reunion; wind as heat under the pot; the controlled collision of two minute
nuclei as the horn of plenty, or if they get out of control, as the end of man’s
home. But this is just a seeing, and this seeing may be distinguished from
doing, or rather in the doing, which is technology.
Let us remember that nature actualises its possibilities and by so
doing reveals itself to us, that human technology and art do the same: with
their process of making they actualise what was potential and so develop
reality and our knowledge. Therefore, art and technology are modes both of
action and of human investigation of reality. Both nature and technology or
art afford us knowledge because they are active, because they actualise what
was only potential, because they are continually inventing and making
discoveries, nature because of its own dynamism, technology thanks to
human action. Such is Heidegger’s view of technology (from a rather hurried
and free reading).
It seems clear, then, that to technology, like art, we can apply the
notion of practical truth. We can now see that the artefact is not a mere
realisation of an idea, but the result of a process of adaptation, of ‘becoming
alike’ of two poles: needs – many of them ‘superfluous’, as Ortega y
Gasset185 would have said, perhaps the most important ones – and
availabilities (skill, materials, finance, etc.). When there is a genuine
technical invention, the meeting point is not discovered mainly by an
automatic method, or by a downward negotiation in which both parts give
ground, but by an act of invention that gels, as a symptom of truth, in
innovation. It is by no means strange that every technical innovation entails
the modification of the two poles, of our needs and out capacities. The
automobile increases our capacity for movement, but at the same time
generates many new needs. The same may be said of computers or mobile
telephones. This is precisely what is to be expected from their nature of
practical truth.
What about science? Is it really true to say that it makes
discoveries? Science proceeds in the same way as nature, technology or art,
except that it does not carry out the physical transformation of this into that,
185
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Meditación sobre la técnica [Meditation on Technics], Alianza,
Madrid, 1992 [1939].
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it just shows us this as that, the two points on the way together, without
telling us the effective steps (that is steps that should be part of our present
repertory of actions) necessary to indeed transform this into that, without
taking those steps, which will be taken by technology, given the time, the
knowledge and the will. Here science is like poetry, which also makes us see
‘that this one is that one’186 and makes – this is the key – the similarity
evident, but does not physically transform this one into that one. There are
also differences between science and poetry, of course. They are similar in
that they both live from metaphor; although they use it in different ways and
chase after it with varying amounts of savagery: poetry prefers a new
metaphor to the consequences of a known one, science preferring the latter.
What science discovers in a creative way, that is, by actualizing the
potentialities of the things themselves, is similarity. Science puts over the
similarity it discovers in the form of concepts, classifications, laws and
theories. We could say that similarity is the raw material for concepts,
classifications, laws and theories. Resemblance is caught and created by one
and the same action. Potential similarity is caught and actualised by the mind
and this idea is true, for similarity seen corresponds to similarity made. Here
truth itself depends on and is identified with the creation of its object.
Nelson Goodman warns us that similarity is “as undependable as
indispensable”187. It is undependable especially if we think that it is there, no
more, that it is available and ready to solve all our epistemic problems. What
is true is that similarity only has epistemic interest after an arduous creative
task of actualisation carried out by the subject.
Similarity always has its physical cause in the past. This cause is of
a genetic character, i.e. a common origin. The present reality of similarity is
always by way of a potentiality, unless it is actualised by a cognisant being.
And it also has a future dimension: the effective transformation of this into
that. This is why science sometimes has desirable applications, while in
other cases it shows us the possibilities that should never be actualised by
anybody. (Might this also be applied poetry?)
The effective transformation of this into that occurs when we
succeed in connecting our desire with our repertory of available movements
by means of concepts and laws. Let us see why. The Aristotelian theory of
action allows for a correct integration of moving desire (the physician wishes
to heal), the knowing intellect (he knows that the patient needs warmth and
that there is a blanket in the cupboard) and the movement that is made (he
puts the blanket over the patient). Desire undergoes a process of
differentiation as the result of deliberation. I take this interpretation of the
ARISTOTLE, Poetics 1448b 17; author’s translation.
N. GOODMAN, “Seven Strictures on Similarity”, in M. DOUGLAS and D. HULL (eds.), How
Classification Works, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1992, p. 20.
186
187
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Aristotelian theory of action from John Lear188, for whom the practical
syllogism would only be a dried, fossilised version of this living
characterisation that is integrated into human action189. The practical
syllogism would be a logikos study of the action. While this characterisation
adopts the physikos way, it seeks to tell us what the action is really like,
which is not the sum of wish plus intellect, but desire-differentiated-byintellect. Logical analysis is necessary, but if we go no further than logical
analysis, we are preparing the ground for ‘the schizophrenia of modern
man’. On reaching a certain degree of specification, the desire thus
differentiated is now in line with the repertory of available movements and
brings off the action (it is not possible to heal, just like that, in the abstract,
but it is possible to heal-by-putting-over-the-patient-here-and-now-theblanket-in-the-cupboard). The desire is not exterior to the intellect or to the
movement, nor are these exterior to each other, but movement is
differentiated desire, incubated by means of intellectual deliberation.
4. Conclusion
The Aristotelian outlook allows us to integrate knowledge and
action. Or, rather, it allows us to see the human being as a unitary whole,
whose motivations, knowledge and movements are only different in the
analysis, but are physically integrated in one and the same substance, they
are that substance. The notion of practical truth, or creative discovery, is then
applicable to many aspects of human life. The prime object of creative
discovery is similarity. This process of creative discovery could correctly be
called metaphorisation, as we shall see below. To discover similarity is at
the same time to actualise it. The discovery of similarity breaks the extremes
of identity and difference, produces a midpoint, a better point; it enables us
to see ‘this’ as ‘that’ and, from there, to build concepts, classifications, laws
and theories, and to physically transform ‘this’ into ‘that’, in what will be
just one more differentiated action.
Is there still anything left like a method of discovery? Something
does indeed remain different from ‘anything goes’, a midpoint between
algorithm and anarchism: the prudent being and the metaphorical being. This
is the only rule that can face up to an ever different reality, new and
188
J. LEAR, Aristotle. The Desire to Understand, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
1988. See also D. CHARLES, Aristotle’s philosophy of action, Duckworth, London, 1984; P.M.
MOREL, Aristote. Une philosophie de l’activité, Flammarion, Paris, 2003; C. NATALI,
L’Action efficace. Étudies sur la philosophie de l’action d’Aristote, Peeters, Louven-LaNeuve, 2004.
189 M. CRUBELLIER, “Le ‘syllogisme pratique’ ou comment la pensée meut le corps”, in A.
LAKS and M. RASHED (ed.), Aristote et le mouvement des animaux, Presses du Septentrion,
Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2004, pp. 9-26.
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changing, because it is law incarnate: it is the prudent person who can carry
out prudent actions; it is the metaphorical person who can create new
connections, images or theories. And a human being is thus a being set in
time, creative, one who can respond to novelty with novelty. Prudence
advises us always to have an open mind and an open attitude, to welcome as
true that which comes to us as truth, but never in such a way that it becomes
impossible to check it, always with some, albeit remote, reserve. In the same
way prudence recommends virtue as a precondition of freedom, of
rectification, of correction, and in the final instance, of creation. Only
prudence can extract wisdom from past experience and direct future action in
a non-mechanical but rational way, without certainty or arbitrariness,
remaining always open to novelty, to the extraordinary, whether it comes
from the world or from the person himself. Only prudence is compatible
simultaneously with truth and creativity. Prudence recommends also a
culture of oneself which will make us not only prudent, but also, as Paul
Ricœur says, metaphorical190. This is the genuinely creative part, which will
also have to be built into the person himself and which no method can
guarantee if it does not arise from within or we do not appropriate it from a
culture.
In any event, Aristotle is more optimistic regarding the possibility of
becoming prudent than becoming metaphorical. The former seems to be
attainable through education, by doing prudent works with the guidance of a
prudent person, while, according to Aristotle, metaphor “cannot be learnt
from others”191. There must remain for further research the problem of
whether it is possible to cultivate creativity. Since Aristotle’s time, many
things have changed, among them our knowledge of didactics and of the
psychology of learning.
Finally, I should like to be permitted to point out that Aristotle
himself was able to glimpse the possibility of applying the notion of
practical truth to science, to wisdom and to technology. There is a text by
Aristotle which seems to me to be extremely valuable in this regard,
contained in Metaphysics M 10. Naturally, if we seek to make use of the
Greek’s ideas in today’s debates, we should not lose sight of this passage,
perhaps one with the most bearing on the present of all Aristotle’s works. In
it he distinguishes two kinds of science: potential and actual. We shall look
into this idea in depth in the next chapter, but let me at least suggest here that
practical truth could be understood as the truth of science in act.
190
191
P. RICŒUR, La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris, 1975.
Poetics, 1459a 5 et seqq..
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Chapter 4
SCIENCE IN ACT
1. Introduction
Is a science of the individual possible? Is there room for scientific
knowledge concerning concrete individuals and singular events and
processes? There is a long tradition of the opposite going back to Plato and
Aristotle whereby “science concerns the universal”. In Plato, each Idea is a
concrete entity in itself, while having the function of an abstract universal
concept regarding perceivable entities. Hegel speaks of the concrete
universal as the dialectic synthesis of the general-abstract and the particular.
But when we leave the metaphysics of such people as Plato or Hegel, this
axiom becomes quite a problem for science and for life: we are surrounded
by concrete substances, wrapped in singular events, but science deals with
the universal. Science thus distances itself from the understanding of life,
and therefore from living experiences and the feelings linked to them. A
good many of the outbreaks of modern Romanticism and Vitalism have
taken up this gap between science and life as the cause of their rebellion.
Since Rousseau, at least, vehement protests have been raised against this
separation of the intellectual aspects of the human being – supposedly
directed at the universal– and the emotional ones, supposedly confined to the
concrete. According to the Romantics, this separation has been compatible
with an attempt at a practical imposition of the intellectual on the
sentimental, of science on life. Such schizophrenia and violence are
inevitable if we insist on science dealing only with the universal.
The Postmodern thinking may be seen as the fruit of this unease felt
by culture and life towards science. We could see the debate between Václav
Havel and Gerald Holton as a paradigmatic illustration of this well-known
phenomenon. The former defended his theses in the article entitled The End
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of the Modern Era. His opinion is that this period – the Modern Era – has
been characterised by the domination of an abstract science over all aspects
of human life. It is on this critique that Postmodern thinking has taken shape,
since its roots in Nietzsche and Heidegger. Václav Havel’s theses have been
contested by Gerald Holton192, whose view is that Havel’s position is no
more than another symptom of the Neo-Romantic revolt underway against
modern science. Many sensible authors, among them Havel and Holton, each
after his own fashion, seek some type of new covenant. Unfortunately, in the
face of individual wills, we still lack an adequate philosophical basis to
effect the integration.
This chapter seeks to take a step forward from the historical and
conceptual points of view towards the discovery of philosophical bases that
may enable us to find a remedy for the cultural schism in which we live. In
this regard, any step towards the recognition that science can also deal with
the concrete and individual seems promising and positive. I shall concentrate
on some of Aristotle’s texts, as a certain interpretation of his work was one
of the causes of the schism and yet his work also contains texts that might
help us even today to remedy the situation: ‘But where danger lies,’ wrote
Hölderlin, ‘there also what saves grows.’
2. The First Sally in Search of a Science of the Individual. Definition
Aristotle made some steps towards the rapprochement of science as
conceptual and universal knowledge (the logikos perspective) and the
knowledge of concrete individuals and processes (the physikos perspective).
He makes an attempt at this rapprochement by means of different
observations that improve the process of definition, but ends up realizing
that there are some unreachable limits. The most important works in this
regard are to be found in De Anima II, De Partibus Animalium I and
Metaphysica ZH.
i) En Meta Z 12, he reduces all the genera that could form part of a
definition to one: “There is nothing in the definition except the first-named
genus and the differentiae”193. He goes on to reduce the genus to the species:
“The genus absolutely does not exist apart from the species-of-a-genus, or if
it exists but exists as matter”194. In a third step he reduces the species to
differentiae: “clearly the definition is the formula which comprises the
V. HAVEL, “The End of the Modern Era” in The New York Times on the 1st March, 1992;
G. HOLTON, Einstein, History of Other Passions. The Rebellion Against Science at the End of
the Twentieth Century. Woodbury, New York, 1995.
193 Meta 1037b 30 - 1038a 4.
194 Meta 1038a 5-8.
192
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differentiae”195. The fourth step reduces all differences to the last: “clearly
the last differentia will be the substance of the thing and its definition”196.
Therefore, if it were possible to effect the process properly, that is
dividing by the differentia of the differentia197, then the whole definition and,
what is more, the very substance, would be contained in the last differentia.
This substance would have to be individual.
After the reduction of the whole definition to the last differentia, we
have to give consideration to the duplicity of meanings in the notion of
differentia: (a) as something establishing logical limits (the features
differentiating, in the definition, one species from another) and (b) as
something physically constitutive (the features constituting the individual).
In this second meaning, the differentia is the form in the matter198, that is, it
is nearer to matter and has more content than the species. This last
differentia is the individual form, to which a science of the individual would
have to refer.
ii) After the reduction mentioned, genus finds a place as matter, that
is to say, it does not exist at all beyond the species belonging to the genus
and in them it exists as matter199. But it should be added that for Aristotle,
genos and eidos are not taxonomically fixed categories200. Therefore, the
same scheme of reasoning may be applied to the species with regard to the
individuals comprising it. That is, species do not physically exist other than
as matter in individuals.
iii) The unity of matter and form is established in several
Aristotelian texts, especially in DA II 1, PA 1201 and Meta H 6, where we can
read: “The proximate matter and the form are one and the same thing, the
one potentially, and the other actually” 202. In these texts, matter and form are
no longer considered as mutually opposed but as the same thing seen in
different ways, insofar as it may be another (potential) and inasmuch as it is
what it is (act). Thus considered, substance ceases to be a compound, for
there is now nothing to combine, and it becomes an original unity. Indeed,
195
Meta 1038a 8-9.
Meta 1038a 19-20; italics in the original.
197 Meta Z 1038a 9 and PA I, 642b 5 - 644a 12
198 PA 643a 24. There are two manuscripts reading “en te hyle to eidos” ( and ). All the
others have “to eidos en te hyle”, which is the version that I have taken here.
199 Meta 1024b 8, 1038a 6, 1045a 23, 1058a 23, 1058b 6; PA 643a 24.
200 In this regard, see P. PELLEGRIN, La classification des animaux chez Aristote, Les Belles
Lettres, París, 1982; and A. MARCOS, Aristóteles y otros animales. Una lectura filosófica de
la biología aristotélica [Aristotle and Other Animals. A Philophical Reading of Aristotelian
Biology], P.P.U., Barcelona, 1996.
201 DA 412a 21 - b 10 and PA 645a 36.
202 Meta 1045b 16-21.
196
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the form in act is the totality of substance203. Matter does not disappear, what
disappears is the composition. What is peculiar in these texts is that, before
the unity of substance is established, emphasis passes from the matter/form
pair to the potency/act pair: “But if, as we say, one element is matter and
another is form, and one is potentially and the other actually, the question [as
to whether substance is one] will no longer be thought of as a difficulty” 204.
That is to say that the transition from the first pair to the second would seem
to be a precondition for tackling the problem of the unity of definition and of
substance. The form of an individual is its act and consists in the
maintenance of the structure making its existence possible, it acts by
unifying matter, which, when it functions in a unitary way, is none other
than form itself.
Consequently, in this way, Aristotle has gone a long way towards the
rapprochement between physis and logos, between actual reality and science.
If on the basis of the definition we had words to name the last differentia, in
other words individual form, form in matter, then we should have a science
of the individual. Unfortunately, however, the question is not so simple and
major difficulties will soon arise.
iv) In PA I 643b 10 et seqq. problems appear when connections are
established between physis and logos. The definition that will lead to the last
differentia, dividing by the differentia of the differentia, is not feasible, so
when distinctions are made between the various genera of animals, progress
is via several parallel sets of differentiae, which do not come together in the
last one, so it is more recommendable to proceed according to common
knowledge, grouping together those individuals that share a given
constellation of characteristics (differentiae) that we cannot compress into
one. For example, it is understood that birds are warm-blooded, oviparous,
winged, feathered, hollow-boned, beaked and toothless; each of these
differentiae may be the extreme of a different set and none of them need
include all of the others.
v) On the other hand, a profound reform is required in the way of
expressing reality and understanding the function of conceptual language in
order to go further with the rapprochement between physis and logos, for a
word always has many tasks to perform: “It is impossible in a discussion to
bring in the actual things discussed [auta ta pragmata] [...] Inevitably, then,
the same formula, and a single name, have a number of meanings”205. A
name therefore refers to what several substances have in common, their
genus or species. Therefore, in principle, scientific language would not serve
to express things in act. Aristotle, however, asks the poet to imitate actions
203
As is expressed in Meta H6 and very explicitly in PA 645a 30-36.
Meta 1045a 22-24. See also DA 412a 9.
205 SE 165a 5-14; my italics.
204
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so as to bring them before our eyes206, and recognises that metaphor has the
power to express things as in a state of actuality207. Art approaches concrete
living reality, but science does not. Again we are faced by the unsatisfactory
schism.
vi) After this set of difficulties, it is not surprising that in Aristotle
there should appear a certain mistrust of logos, and with it, a certain mistrust
of the possibility of definition, the bastions of which Aristotle tends to see as
a heuristic support that must be surpassed. What gains ground in the face of
univocal definition is analogy (and the concept understood as analogy),
which allows for a great approximation to physis. This is one of Aristotle’s
great discoveries, the possibility to remain on neutral ground between the
univocal and mere equivocality.
3. The Second Sally in Search of a Science of the Individual. Science in
Act
Our first sally in search of a science of the individual, by means of a
reform of definition, resulted in failure, but on the way we learnt something:
we now know that genus and species are in concrete things as matter, that is,
as potency; we know that matter and form in concrete substances are not two
distinct things but the same thing seen in different ways; we suspect that if
knowledge of the concrete can in any way be expressed, it will be by
analogy, simile or metaphor. For the moment, however, science only seems
able to see things in their universal aspect (that is, matter or potency), which
does not enter the realm of the actual. Furthermore, it would seem that
metaphorical language is foreign to science. What, then, remains to be done?
We need to dream of a science of the actual capable of expressing itself in
metaphors. Here, I shall concentrate on the possibility of a science of the
actual arising, and deal with metaphor in the next chapter.
There is in fact an Aristotelian text in Metaphysica M 10 which
allows for something of this nature. I shall quote it before commenting on it
as I believe it to be a key text:
“The statement that all knowledge [episteme] is universal, so that the
principles of things must also be universal and not separate
substances, presents indeed, of all the points we have mentioned, the
greatest difficulty, but yet the statement is in a sense true, although in
a sense it is not. For knowledge [episteme], like the verb ‘to know’,
means two things, of which one is potential and one actual. The
potency, being, as matter, universal and indefinite, deals with the
universal and indefinite; but actuality, being definite, deals with a
206
207
Poet 1451b 29; 1455a 23-26.
Rhet 1411b 24-26.
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definite object, – being a ‘this’, it deals with a ‘this’ [...] For if the
principles must be universal, what is derived from them must also be
universal, as in demonstrations; and if this is so, there will be nothing
capable of separate existence – i.e. no substance. But evidently in a
sense knowledge [episteme] is universal, and in a sense it is not!” 208.
In short, the problem in question, which is the most difficult and
which does not end with the refutation of Platonism, may be said to lie in the
fact that substances are individual, while the cognizable is universal;
therefore, our knowledge, if it is genuine, will not be of substances as such,
and if it is, then it will not be genuine knowledge. Idealism or scepticism,
that is the question – and our dilemma!
Let us examine it in greater detail. Before offering a possible
solution to the problem, Aristotle establishes that one point cannot be
renounced: we must understand that substances are separate and
individual209. This being so, he wonders what their principles or elements
will be like. Well, these principles210 will have to be either universal or
individual. In either case, problems of an ontological or epistemological
order will arise.
i) If they are individual, then “real things will be just of the same
number as elements” (an ontological problem), “and the elements will not be
knowable211” (an epistemological problem). The ontological question lies in
the fact that there would in no sense be anything common to more than one
thing, each entity in the universe would be individual in the absolute sense,
constituted by its own individual principles, which are free from any relation
with those of all other entities. Yet we do not like this option, for we, like
Aristotle, want to be able to say that the syllable BA is somehow the same as
the syllable BA and not that the latter is an entity bearing no relationship to
the former. The epistemological problem is inevitable if one continues to
accept the doctrine that science is concerned with universals. If nothing is
universal, then scepticism cannot be avoided.
ii) If principles were universal, the epistemological problem of their
incognoscibility would disappear, but this solution poses us new ontological
problems: if the sum of the universals is a universal, then we shall be left
208
Meta M 10 1086b 14 - 1087a 26. I keep here the original translation by Ross and Smith,
but “science” or “scientific knowledge” would be a more standard translation for "episteme".
209
Meta 1086b 16 et seqq.. Aristóteles también afirma que la forma es sustancia. Si los
universales no son sustancias, como aquí y en otros varios lugares afirma, parece seguirse que
la forma, al menos en algún sentido, ha de ser individual.
210 Here we can consider “principle” and “element” as synonyms. The element takes part in
the formation of the substance while the principle, on the other hand, need not. Here,
however, Aristotle refers to matter and form, that is to intrinsic principles which are,
therefore, also elements.
211 Meta 1086b 21.
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without substances, for the universal is not substance. And this is another
fixed and unforfeitable point in our discussion. The textual base in Aristotle
is forthright. The assertion that the universal is not substance is reiterated at
several points throughout his metaphysical work212. Es cierto que en
Metaphysics Z 3 Aristóteles juega con la hipótesis tentativa de que los
universales sean sustancias213. Pero más adelante, en el mismo libro Z,
capítulos 13 y 16, deshecha explícita y repetidamente esa hipótesis214. The
universal is thought of as substance, asserts Aristotle, only by those who
investigate from the point of view of logos, while most people recognise
plants and animals as substances215. If, on the other hand, the sum of
universal principals could give a particular, then we should have something
which is not substance coming before substance, as if the colour green came
before the apple. The rejection of this possibility is something else that
cannot be questioned.
3.1 The Ontological Problem: a Realistic Basis for Universals
How can we get out of this aporia? By detecting its ontological and
epistemological roots. Let us begin with the ontological ones, which
especially affect universals, for their cognoscibility is guaranteed, but their
reality is not. In the first place, all this stems from upholding “that apart from
the substances which have the same form there are Ideas, a single separate
entity”. Aristotle goes on to say that this is not necessary: “the a’s and the
b’s may quite well be many and there need be no a-itself and b-itself besides
the many, there may be, so far as this goes, an infinite number of similar
syllables”216. In any event, the rejection of Platonism is not enough. Even if
what is common to the a’s is not a-itself, they must have something in
common if we wish to save the realism of the concepts. Let us for the
moment remember that the connection between two syllables, BA and BA, is
called by Aristotle similarity (homoiai syllabai). The relationship of
similarity is very important for by means of it we can relate two or more
substances together which are not identical to each other or absolutely
different. The relationship of similarity lies between identity and difference,
and is the real basis of concepts, it is what is known through conceptual
knowledge.
What is similarity? A relationship established between two things by
means of a cognisant subject. The relationship of similarity is not in things in
an actual way. It is in them in a potential way, as a capacity to appear similar
212
Meta Z 13, 14, 16 and M 10 1087a 1.
213
Meta 1028b 35.
Meta 1038b 10, 1038b 34, 1040b 25 et seqq..
214
215
216
Meta 1069a 26 et seqq..
Meta 1087a 5-10.
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to a cognisant subject. The discovery of similarity is not always easy and it
cannot be simply imposed without further ado on a passive subject. The
discovery of similarity requires active cognisant and creative subjects217. On
the other hand, however, it is not a purely subjective creation, but has a basis
in reality, as this tripartite relationship of two objects and a subject is only
established correctly if the objects can be perceived as similar, if in them
there is an objective potential basis for establishing the relationship.
The intention of this movement suggested by Aristotle is clear, it is
meant to save at the same time the individuality of actual forms, the
universality of the concept and its objectivity. That is, the idea that
universals may not exist as separate entities, and in actuality, does not mean
that they are absolutely bereft of reality, for they have their own degree of
reality as potential. Potentials or possibilities, in Aristotle, are a part of
reality218 – not mere logical possibilities, of course, but physical possibilities.
It may be understood that the generic exists potentially in individual
substances, as matter: “The genus is the matter of that of which it is called
the genus”219. This is not an isolated statement; Aristotle reiterates this
doctrine of genus as matter in many parts of his work220. From my point of
view, Aristotle goes beyond suggesting that the logical genus attributed to a
substance, when it is true, is no more that a representation of physical matter
in the cognisant subject. One of the objective potentials of substance consists
in the ability to be seen as an instance of such a genus. Thus, this dog
217
See Poet 1459a 7 et seqq.; Rhet 1412a 19-12; Meta 1054b 4 et seqq..
Meta 1046b 29 - 47a 24.
219 Meta 1058a 23-24.
220 In Meta D 60 and 28, in Z 12, H 2, in I 3, 7 and 8, and in PA I. See especially: Meta 1016a
24-28; Meta 1024b 1-9: Meta 1054b 28-29; Meta 1057b 38 - 1058a 2; PA 643a 24 and the
already cited Meta 1058a 23-24. M. FREDE (“The Definition of Sensible Substances in
Metaphysics Z”, in D. DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.), Biologie, logique et métaphysique
chez Aristote, C.N.R.S., Paris, 1990, pp. 127-8) finds some problems in this interpretation of
genus as matter. J. LENNOX (“Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More and the Less in Aristotle’s
Biology”, in A. GOTTHELF and J. LENNOX (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 347-8) supports this interpretation of
genus as matter with arguments taken from zoology. A debate was held on this question
between R.M. RORTY (“Genus as Matter: a Reading of Metaphysics Z-H”, in E.N. LEE,
A.D.P. MOURELATOS and R.M. RORTY (eds.): Exegesis and Arguments: Studies in Greek
Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos. Phronesis, suppl. vol. I, Assen 1973, págs. 393420; “Matter as Goo: Comments on Grene’s Paper”, Synthèse XXVIII, pp. 71-7, 1974) and
M. GRENE (“Is Genus to Species as Matter to Form?", Synthèse XXXVIII, pp. 51-69, 1974).
According to Grene, when genus is called matter, we must adopt a very metaphorical
interpretation, as a “matter” of study. However, D. BALME (translation of De Partibus
Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992, p. 114) points
out that Aristotle makes no distinction between physical matter and logical genus: both are a
way of considering “what is potentially X”. T. SCALTSAS states that matter is universal insofar
as it can belong, at different times, to different substances (Substances & Universals in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, NY, 1994, pp. 3 and 33-5).
218
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(substance) is seen as a dog (genus) by certain cognisant subjects given that
this concrete individual possesses among its objective capacities (matter)
that of being seen as a dog by those cognisant subjects. Let us say that the
real basis of the concept is the matter of the substances. We obviously do not
have before us here a supposed raw material, shapeless and uncognizable,
but the substance itself seen as potency.
As we have interpreted it, the common or general is matter and not
form in the physical sense, which is always individual. Matter is substance
itself but only insofar as it can be another, can change, be seen as similar or
be what it actually is. That is, the universalizable and potential is the species
or genus or matter, while the act is individual, it is the form or essence in the
physical sense, substance itself seen as what it is being. Of course, matter
does not exist separate from concrete substance – this is precisely what
Aristotle rejects of the Platonists, without putting the possibility of realist
knowledge at risk.
3.2 The Epistemological Problem: Towards a Science of the Individual
Let us return to Aristotle’s text in Meta M10, where we meet with
the other root of the aporia, which is epistemological. This time it especially
affects individual substances, which are obviously real, but we do not know
if they are scientifically cognizable.
In this case it is Aristotle himself who creates the problem by stating
that “knowledge [episteme] is of universals”221. If this statement is taken as
definite and unqualified, then we are plunged into a disconcerting aporia, for
paradigmatic substances will be outside what is scientifically cognizable,
along with, if we will, all that actually exists, for, as Aristotle says, we may
not expect a definition of the act and it must suffice us to grasp it by
analogy222, nor is there demonstration or definition of individual sensible
things223, of essence224 or of principles225.
However, the distinction between the logical perspective and the
physical one, together with the affirmation of individuality of physical form
and of essence, and also of the unity of matter and form, suggests that in
Aristotle we may find something different from the pure science of
universals.
221
Meta 1086b 32 et seqq.; see also Meta 1036a 8, 1040a 23-25 and DA 417b 22.
Meta 1048a 35 - b1. See also P. RICŒUR, La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris, 1975, pp.
325-399.
223 Meta 1039b 28-30.
224 Meta 997a 31-33.
225 GA 747b 27.
222
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Aristotle himself seeks to resolve in the text we cite the dilemma that
he created. He does not utterly deny his previous thesis, that knowledge is of
the universal, but develops it, differentiates it and hones it to leave room for
the scientific knowledge of the individual, keeping for the science of the
universal certain important functions and its realism. In the last part of the
text, Aristotle establishes the existence of two types of science and
knowledge: actual and potential. He also establishes the correspondence
between the types of knowledge and the types of object of that knowledge.
Thus, actual knowledge will be of the actual and potential knowledge of the
potential226.
But he says more: “The potency, being, as matter, universal and
indefinite, deals with the universal and indefinite”. Here, “the potency”
means potential science. Well, potential science is indeterminate and
universal, and deals with the indeterminate, of the universal, and – if we
wish to finish the set – of the potential and of the material. On the other
hand, science in act, correspondingly, “deals with a ‘this’”, that is, with an
individual, of a being in act, of the determinate, of the form or physical
essence, of each substance or concrete process.
In science in act the subject and object meet at a certain time and in a
certain place, on a certain occasion. Since Parmenides, it has been traditional
to be concerned with the stability of knowledge. The classical strategy
consisted in founding the stability of knowledge on the known object, which
led Plato to propose the reality of Ideas. The moderns have taken the
stability of knowledge to the subjective pole. The stability of knowledge in
act rests on the stability of the act itself. We must bear in mind that the act is
not something that is over and done with in an instant. The Aristotelian
notion of act – as is clear in Metaphysica  6 – is not bound up with
instantaneousness, but with the fullness of presence, which can be prolonged
in time, for we can by the same act see and keep seeing, live and go on
living, think and continue to think, meditate and keep meditating, be happy
and stay happy227.
The moment we put science in the grounds of the practical, which is
the case of science in act, we can also apply to it the considerations that
Aristotle uses in relation to the virtue which must steer the action, that is,
prudence: the prudent man “will be engaged in virtuous action and
contemplation”, in a stable way according to circumstances. The good and
prudent man bears with dignity all the vicissitudes of fortune and always acts
in the best possible manner under any circumstance. Science in act, guided
by prudence, acquires thus the same stability as virtue. “For no function of
226
The idea is that there should be a correlation between the type of knowledge and its object.
See Meta 1072 b 18-20, DA 425b 25 and 430a 5.
227 See Meta 1048b 20-30.
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man,” Aristotle states, “has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these
are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences)”228.
Indeed, although both poles may change, they will do so together.
Science in act is, thus, a stable knowledge of the changing, of the contingent,
a living knowledge, actualised by a subject that is also changing. It is stable
not only for being knowledge in act, but also in action. It is knowledge seen
from life and, therefore, accompanied by perception and emotion, by all the
feelings aroused by contact with concrete substances and processes.
Whenever we are cognisant of an act we are cognisant of individuals
(or singular events), but we are capable of this, largely, because we possess
universal concepts that are the means of actual cognizance. Of course, these
concepts are obtained creatively from the experience of the individual229 and
they have their objective basis, if they are correct, in individual substances.
The general is intermediate, it is a bridge between knowledge of the
concrete and knowledge of the concrete. We learn “through the genus”. This
instrument is of great importance as it vastly enhances the capacity of
knowing the individual. Animals, Aristotle says, “have no universal
judgement but only imagination and memory of particulars”230. Obviously,
the lack of conceptual instruments limits their capacity for knowledge of the
individual. Nevertheless, however important they may be, we must not lose
sight of the fact that universal concepts, and the language in which they are
formulated, are instruments at the service of knowledge of concrete reality
and of its communication231.
Now we can also clarify the function of science as potential, of
concepts, classifications, laws and theories. If science in act consists in an
agreement, an integration or unification of subject and object, science in
potency consists in a representation of matter in the mind, of genera in
concepts. Theoretical truth, for its part, may now be understood as the ideal
correspondence, considered in the abstract, of ideas and the potential aspects
of things. Indeed, it is not just by chance that counterfactual and
228
EN 1100b 12 - 1101a 4; my italics. Within EN a tension exists between praise for
theoretical life and a predilection or practical virtue. That tension, possibly inevitable, is a
classic topic of study. The theory of happiness may help to understand this apparent disparity,
as we saw in Chapter 2. With no pretension at all of solving the classic problem of exegesis,
here I explore another route for reducing the tension between theoretical life and praxis. I
suggest the possibility of a contemplation of the individual and concrete.
229
Meta 980b 28-29; EN 1142a 13 et seqq.
EN 1147b 3 et seqq.
231 This suggests a parallelism between technique and contemplation, both of which are
applications of science in potency. Knowledge in potential is useful for technics, for we see
something as what it could be, nature as a resource. Some of these possibilities are actualised
by technical action.
230
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dispositional statements exist in science. This type of knowledge and its
corresponding truth (the fitting of the representations to the represented) is
exclusive to the human being. Animals do not possess it and God does not
need it. But we cannot make the mistake of identifying knowledge in its
most essential sense with science in potential, which is no more than a
means for attaining the most genuine knowledge, the knowledge in act of
what is in act. This is a phenomenon experienced by any cognisant being,
whether a beast, a man or a god, they all genuinely know in act what is in
act, singular objects and processes. Knowledge is thus seen as a single
phenomenon with different modes, one of them human232. Potential science,
though, is peculiar to man. What is stated here is that human (and only
human) knowledge of the actual can also be scientific. It could be a
contemplation assisted by science, from scientific knowledge. We could now
accept a modified version of the classical assertion “science is of the
universal” as “where there is a (rigorous and objective) knowledge of the
universal, there is science”.
This vision of science also has methodological consequences. In the
handling of abstract concepts, in the web of their connections and
implications, that is where the Aristotelian methodology of science,
expounded in APo, holds its greatest sway, but in contact with actual reality
it becomes clearly inadequate. When we obtain or apply concepts, in the act
of cognizance of the actual, we need the help of all human experience of
reality and of all the sources of creativity. Therefore, the methodology
expressed in APo is partial and instrumental and, being an instrument, is
subject to the relative control of its function. The user of such an instrument
is free to bend it, alter it and shape it to the extent necessary to his ends.
Therefore, the most general criteria of action in science are no more than the
criteria governing human action in general. Therefore, the “methodological”
discourse of the greatest scope will have to be sought in practical philosophy
(in EE, Pol, Rhet, Poet and, more especially, EN VI)233. The methodology
Artificial cognitive systems belong to the human mode. Perhaps – and I say this as mere
conjecture – they are only capable of potential knowledge.
233 The solution consisting in recognizing the existence of two types of science, one in act and
of the actual, that is of individual substances, and another of potency and the potential,
material or general, has been pondered in very different ways: Thus, for J. ANNAS
(Metaphysics, Books M and N, Clarendon, Oxford, 1976, pp. 188 et seqq.) and for M. FREDE
and G. PATZIG (Aristotle: “Metaphysik Z”, C.H. Beck, Munich, 1988), this is an important
text leading inexorably to the recognition of the existence of individual forms. However,
according to other authors, such as D. ROSS (Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Clarendon Press,
Oxford, 1924, vol. II, pp 445-6) and H. BONITZ (Metaphysica, 2 vols, Bonn, 1948-9, p. 569,
note 1), this is an atypical passage whose doctrine, which is rather surprising, differs from
what is usual in Aristotle. G. REALE (Metafisica, Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1993, p. 672) does
no more than point out the disparity of the opinions. J. TRICOT (La Métaphysique, Vrin, Paris,
1953) refers to a commentary by Pseudo-Alexander describing the situation in a tone of
approbation. T. SCALTSAS (Substances & Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Cornell Univ.
232
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for moving onto and off the bridge (to bring science and life into contact)
cannot be simply that of the Analytics, which only serves when we are on the
bridge (to move between concepts, classifications, laws and scientific
theories), but prudence (phronesis).
4. Practical Truth and Science in Act
In Aristotle we can find some suggestions concerning the kind of
truth applicable to science in act: practical truth (alétheia praktiké). Let us
remember that the science of the individual would be science in act of what
is in act, that is, science here and now, science in action, a kind of science
applied to the contemplation of the actual. Well, according to Aristotle, the
truth of human action falls under the jurisdiction of the concept of practical
truth. This concept comes from practical philosophy, but as for prudence, we
can find a use for it in the context of the philosophy of science. The concept
of practical truth was presented in Chapter three. Here I shall attempt to
apply it to what we have called science in act or science of the individual.
The concept of practical truth is considered especially in the ethical
and anthropological dimensions, as the self-realisation of each human being
by agreement of intellect and desire, as a process of the actualisation of
human abilities occurring in action and guided by prudence. Could we
extend his notion of practical truth to include science? This would facilitate
the recognition of the practical aspects of science and its insertion in human
life, at the same time avoiding the risks of relativism. We should thus
discover a second dimension to the notion of practical truth. This time it is
not principally a co-ordination of faculties of the soul, but rather an
adaptation of the knowing subject to the known object.
In science in act, let us remember, there is an adaptation of two poles
to each other, without either of them submitting to the other. Indeed, science
in act consists, as we have seen, in the actualisation of potentials thanks to
the contemplative action of the cognisant subject. On one hand, the subject’s
science in potential is actualised, as is, on the other, the capacity of the
object to be known, its intelligibility. Such an actualisation constitutes a
novelty, a meeting of subject and object at an intermediate and better point:
Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1994, pp. 90, 91, 96, 252 et seqq.) rules it out as Platonic and not very
coherent. Nevertheless, there is nothing more Aristotelian than developing a thesis already
propounded by means of fine tuning and distinctions, without rejecting it. This is precisely
what Aristotle does here. Furthermore, Meta M 10 is strictly parallel to other texts in DA
(417a 10-15) and PN (439a 15 et seqq.) concerning perception, and other passages clearly
suggest the ideas of Meta M 10 (DA 430a 1 et seqq.; DA 430a et seq.). We could also quote
the distinction between aisthesis and aisthanesthai in Apo XIX. There Aristotle again relaxes
his general principle, to allow that while perception is of the universal, what we perceive is
always a particular. Finally, Aristotle recognises that rational contemplation of the contingent
exists (EN 1139a 7-11).
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the subject knows what he previously did not know in act (which is
positive), and the object makes sense, it becomes part of a network of
relationships, integrated in the cosmos, it realises more fully some of its own
possibilities that remained silent. The capacities mutually referred to of
subject and object are real regardless of whether they are actualised, but
through contemplation they are actualised and become obvious, present. And
the result is creative, subject and object constitute each other.
From the anthropological point of view, this second dimension of
practical truth also seems to be important, for the human being is made up
not only of the intimate union of desire and intellect but also of knowledge
in act. Finally, there exists no automatic method of achieving science in act;
it is, rather, a matter of applying scientific theories, laws, classifications and
concepts (science in potential) to the contemplation of reality with the
guidance of prudence. Consequently, I think that it is correct to speak of
practical truth as a truth of science in act. Science in act, as the human action
that it is, has two faces – on one hand it is the fruit of human creativity and
on the other it responds to the reality of things, it discovers reality at the
same time as it creates it. This idea is perfectly set out in the “creative
discovery” formula, which can be taken as a correct translation of aletheia
praktike, or, as Pigogine so beautifully put it, “poetic listening”234.
Between the ethical and epistemic dimensions of practical truth there
is no simple parallelism, but a strict continuity demanded by Aristotle’s
anthropology itself, by his theory of happiness (eudaimonia) and by his
theory of action. If the human being is desirous intelligence or intelligent
desire, then the function of the human being will be the intelligent fulfilment
of the desires of an intelligent being. And one of those desires is that of
knowing235. A life in general endowed with moderate well-being, in the
company of loved ones and directed to the cultivation of knowledge would
for Aristotle be a life of fulfilment and happiness. But it should be borne in
mind that the cultivation of knowledge is not simply a means to achieve
happiness, but the concrete way in which it is realised, the content of
happiness. And happiness, according to Aristotle, is an activity. A fulfilled
human life, then, demands equally the agreement between desire and
intellect and the knowledge in act of what is in act. “We state the function of
man to be a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the
“Discovery” covers a semantic field similar to that of “aletheia”. Both refer to the
unveiling or unhiding of something that was already there, but hidden. Moreover, both terms
have the same structure, marked by the negative prefixes “dis” and “a”. On the other hand,
“creative” and “praktike” are also semantically very close. I propose the formula “poetic
listening” only as a free and literary version, where “poetic” covers the creative aspect and
“listening” the idea of perceiving something already present.
235Another sentiment closely related to knowledge is admiration, which, according to
Aristotle, is at the beginning of any research.
234
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soul implying a rational principle”. The primordial function, then, of the
human being, consists in leading a rational life, “and, as ‘life of the rational
element’ has two meanings, we must state that life in the sense of activity is
what we mean”236, that is, as a certain contemplative activity of the soul
which cannot be orientated to anything other than the assimilation of
substances in the primordial sense, of concrete singular entities.
5. Conclusion
We may conclude that in Aristotle there is at least one text which
mentions a science of the concrete and individual – and that this text is not
an anomaly in Aristotle’s thought but the expression of his thought at its
most mature. And that this science of the individual also stands up in its own
way in the court of truth, in this case practical truth. And that the role of the
science of the universal is not cancelled out, but clarified and integrated,
indeed justified in its pretensions of realism.
Furthermore, the reconsideration of this text may be of great
assistance in the Post-modern debate on the function of science, for it may
help us to understand better some of the present branches of science, which
are concerned with unrepeatable processes and concrete individuals, and
may help integrate science and life. Thus understood, science does not
hinder, but helps one to have the appropriate emotions237, for example due
compassion towards a certain animal, which we can feel better if we know
something of evolutionary biology or neurophysiology; reverence for a
starry sky which we can contemplate better through astrophysics. It does not
conceal meaning, but helps to scrutinise it and reveal it, it is one of the
means at our disposal to understand better what pain or death is, it does not
suppress mystery where it still remains, but contributes to a better pondering
of its limits; it does not produce disenchantment, but admiration and æsthetic
pleasure. Science thus understood does not have to be distanced from human
life, it can facilitate happiness not only as well-being and communication but
also as contemplation. And, while nothing justifies entrusting everything to
science, nothing justifies neglecting it in our business of living and
understanding.
This may amount to taking Aristotle beyond Aristotle, but it was he
himself who made suggestions along these lines while talking about animals,
236
EN 1098a 4-15.
Emotions can also be better or worse, suitable for circumstances or not (see, for example,
EN 1125b 31-4). They must therefore be educated. This is part of Aristotle’s ethical teaching,
and science can contribute to this education. Thus, emotions are not outside scientific
rationality, but are part of it. See also K. KRISTJÁNSSON, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education,
Ashgate, London, 2007; B. BESNIER, “Aristote et les passions”, in B. BESNIER, P.F. MOREAU
and L. RENAULT (eds.), Les passions antiques et médiévales, PUF, Paris, 2003, pp. 27-94.
237
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stating that “each and all will reveal to us something natural and something
beautiful”238.
238
PA 645a 24.
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
Chapter 5
METAPHOR
1. Introduction
Today the philosophy of science commonly acknowledges the
cognitive and scientific role of metaphor239. Moreover, metaphor is now
being treated by linguists as a cognitive phenomenon240, while a flourishing
tradition exists in rhetorical studies advocating the cognitive and
239
See, for instance, G. CORRADI, The Metaphoric Process, Routledge, London, 1995; M.
HESSE, Models and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame, 1965;
M. HESSE, “The Cognitive Claims of Metaphor”, Journal of Speculatice Philosphy, 1988, 116.; M. HESSE, “Theories, Family-Resemblance and Analogy”, in D.H. HELMAN (ed.),
Analogical Reasoning, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1988, pp. 317-340; M. HESSE, “Models,
Metaphors and Truth”, in Z. RADMAN (ed.), From a Metaphoric Point of View. A
Multidisciplinary Approach To the Cognitive Content of Metaphor, de Gruyter, Berlin, 1995,
pp. 351-372; J. HINTIKKA (ed.), Aspects of Metaphor, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1994; G. HOLTON,
“Metaphors in Science and Education”, in Z. RADMAN (ed.), op. cit., pp. 259-288; K. KNORR
CETINA, “Metaphors in the Scientific Laboratory: Why Are They There and What Do They
Do?”, in Z. RADMAN (ed.), op. cit., pp. 329-349; S. MAASEN, P. WEINGART, E. MENDELSOHN
(eds.), Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1995; J.
MARTIN SOSKICE and R. HARRÉ, “Metaphor in Science”, in Z. RADMAN (ed.), op. cit., pp.
289-307; E. MONTUSCHI, “What is Wrong with Talking of Metaphors in Science”, in Z.
RADMAN (ed.), op. cit., pp. 309-327; A. ORTONY (ed.), Metaphor and Thought, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1979; E.C. WAY, Knowledge, Representation and Metaphor,
Kluwer, Dordrecht 1991; and F. SUPPE, The Semantic Conception of Theories and Scientific
Realism, Illinois University Press, Urbana, 1989. This author thinks that the language of
science is not literal, but that science does aim at objective truth (see op. cit. pg. 23).
240 From the field of linguistics see B. INDUKHYA, Metaphor and Cognition, Kluwer,
Dordrecht, 1992; M. JOHNSON, The Body in the Mind, University of Chicago Press,
Chicago,1987; G. LAKOFF, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories reveal
about the mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987; G. LAKOFF and M. JOHNSON,
Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980; E.R. MAC CORMAC, A
Cognitive Theory of Metaphor, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1985.
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communicative relevance of metaphor and other tropes in different
discursive contexts241.
There is still, however, an on-going debate concerning the role of
tropes in scientific discourse and their compatibility with a realistic theory of
science. In this regard, Aristotle’s work is one of the most interesting casestudies in history, from which some light might be thrown on this debate, as
it contains an unavoidable three-way tension between methodological
claims, rhetorical and literary theories and scientific practice. In his
biological works, as we have seen, there are many instances of explanatory
resources other than definition followed by deduction, while metaphor,
simile, analogy and model are used throughout. And although Aristotle, as a
natural philosopher, never abandons a realistic point of view, it was he who
developed the first explicit theory of metaphor. Despite the ubiquitous
presence of metaphorical expressions in his biological texts, in some (e.g.,
Analitica Posteriora) he denies the cognitive functions of metaphor. We are
therefore justified in demanding a new, more consistent, interpretation of the
relevant Aristotelian passages, and an explanation of their relevance to some
contemporary philosophical problems.
The approach will be as follows: firstly, I shall comment on the texts
where criticism is made of the use of metaphorical expressions in science
(section 2). Secondly, the third section deals with the actual use of
metaphors, similes, analogies and models in Aristotelian biology, examples
being used to bring out their extent and function. In section four I shall
attempt to counter the assumed opposition by means of a new interpretation
of the Aristotelian theory of metaphor and Analitica Posteriora (Apo)
methodology, for which a delimitation of metaphor, simile, analogy and
model is required, as is a discussion of their mutual relationships (4.1). We
shall then be in a position to suggest a reading to reduce the perennial
tension between different Aristotelian treatises (4.2). At that point, a
comment on the role of APo in the economy of scientific explanation would
seem to be in order (section 5). I shall end with a conclusive summary (6.).
241
See, for instance, R. BARTHES, Le degré zéro de l'écriture, du Seuil, Paris, 1953; G.
GENETTE, Figures III, du Seuil, Paris, 1972; GROUPE µ, Rhétorique générale, Laruosse, Paris,
1970; P. RICOEUR, La Métaphore vive, du Seuil, Paris, 1975; H. WHITE, Tropics of Discourse:
Essay in Cultural Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978; H. WHITE, The
Content of the Form, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1987; and specially on
rhetoric and science see B. ROLAND, “Science versus Literature”, in M. LANE (ed.),
Introduction to Structuralism, Basic Books, New York,1970, pp. 410-416; O. GAL, “Tropes
and Topics in Scientific Discourse: Galileo’s De Motu”, Science in Context 7, 1994, pp. 2552; A. GROSS, The Rhetoric of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990; D.
LOCKE, Science as Writing, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992.
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2. The Assumed Refusal of Metaphor
It would be easy to establish, by means of examples, the practical
significance of metaphorical images in natural history and metaphysics.
Difficulties arise, however, from the theoretical and methodological points
of view, owing to the puzzling nature of Aristotle’s explicit statements about
the cognitive value of metaphor242.
When Empedocles took the salty ocean to be the Earth’s sweat,
Aristotle judged this figure as unfit for the understanding of the nature of
things and suitable only as ornament243. He also criticised other comparisons
made by Empedocles244, by the other pre-Socratic philosophers245 and by
Plato246.
We can easily accommodate these texts by considering that the
criticism affects only particular instances of metaphor because of their lack
of appropriateness or accuracy, because of their obscurity or emptiness and
their merely ornamental character, but not because they are metaphors,
which is to say, for instance, that Empedocles comes in for Aristotle’s
criticism not for using metaphors, but for using bad ones247. So, all that is
important here is that criticism is levelled at the quality of the figures, not at
their metaphorical nature.
In APo, however, we may find more explicit condemnation of
metaphor in science248:
“We may add that if dialectical disputation must not employ
metaphors, clearly metaphors and metaphorical expressions are
precluded in definition: otherwise dialectic would involve
metaphors”249.
242
However, some authors have reduced the cognitive value of metaphorical language in
Aristotelian science on theoretical as well as on practical grounds. So, for instance, Pierre
Louis downgrades the scope of metaphors in biology acknowledging only a secondary role in
explanation. See P. LOUIS, “Introduction”, in ARISTOTE, Les parties des animaux, Les Belles
Lettres, Paris, 1956, pp. V-XL; see also pp. XXIX and XXX. He holds a position very similar
to the post-positivism of his age. M. Vegetti, in turn, stresses the rhetorical function of
metaphorical figures in Aristotelian biology. See M. VEGETTI, “Quand la science parle à vide:
procédés dialectiques et métaphoriques chez Aristote”, in V. COOREBYTER, Rhétoriques de la
science, P.U.F., Paris, 1994, pp. 7-32, see pp. 18 et seqq..
243 Mete 357a 24 et seqq..
244
For example in GA 777a 7 et seqq..
245 Top 127a 17 et seqq.; GA 747a 34 et seqq.; PN 347b 9 et seqq.; PA 652b 7.
246 Meta 991a 20, 1079b 24; Pol 1264b 4 et seqq., 1265b 18 et seqq..
247 G.E.R. LLOYD, The Revolution of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient
Greek Science, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, see pp. 183-187.
248 We can find another unqualified refusal of metaphoric figures in Top: “for a metaphorical
expression is always obscure” 139b 32 et seqq..
249 APo 97b 37-39.
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On the basis of these texts, subsequent tradition abolished the
cognitive dimension of the Aristotelian theory of metaphor250, although it
might be a historical mistake to blame Aristotle himself for such a loss on
the grounds of these passages alone. Aristotle was the first philosopher to
assert the importance of the role of metaphor in the growth of knowledge
and language251. In my opinion, the Aristotelian theory of metaphor should
be placed near the current cognitive theories of metaphor (such as the
formular view, intentionalism, intuitionism, contextualism and
interactionism) and in opposition to such non-cognitive theories as
emotivism252. Let us then comment on another set of Aristotelian passages
where extensive use is made of tropes, and their cognitive value is asserted.
3. The Actual Use of Metaphors, Similes, Analogies and Models
Metaphor, simile, analogy and model appear throughout Aristotle’s
biological treatises253, with the following occurring, for example in PA: the
blood vessels and heart are compared to vases254, the flow of blood is like
water in an irrigation channel255, the belly resembles a manger from which
the body takes its nourishment256, the warm area of the heart is like the
acropolis for a polis, or the fireplace for a home257. The term “concoction”
(pepsis), the centre of Aristotle’s “thermodynamic” physiology, is a
250
See, as an explanation of this process, P. RICŒUR, La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris,
1975, pp. 63-86; see, especially, pp. 66-67.
251 E. BUSTOS, “La teoría aristotélica sobre la metáfora” [“The Aristotelian Theory of
Metaphor”], in D. SÁNCHEZ MECA y J. DOMÍNGUEZ CAPARRÓS (eds.), Historia de la relación
filosofía-literatura en sus textos, Anthropos, Barcelona, 1992, pp. 17-21, see pp. 19-21.
252 For a clear characterisation of these theories see I. SCHEFFLER, Beyond the Letter,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1979.
253 See G.E.R. LLOYD, Polarity and Analogy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1966;
E. MONTUSCHI, Le metafore scientifiche, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1993; E. MARTINO,
Aristóteles, el alma y la comparación, Gredos, Madrid, 1975; M. VEGETTI, “Quand la science
parle à vide: procédés dialectiques et métaphoriques chez Aristote”, in V. COOREBYTER,
Rhétoriques de la science, P.U.F., Paris, 1994, pp. 7-32; G.A. LUCCHETA, Scienza e retorica
in Aristotele, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1990; S. GASTALDI, “Teoria e funzioni della metafora in
Aristotele” in A.M. BATTEGAZZORE, Dimostrazione, argomentazione dialettica e
argomentazione retorica nel pensiero antico, Sagep, Genoa, 1993; G. S. BORDONI,
Linguaggio e realtà in Aristotele, Laterza, Bari, 1994; T. BENATOUÏL, “L’usage des analogies
dans le De Motu Animalium” in A. LAKS and M. RASHED (ed.), Aristote et le mouvement des
animaux, Presses du Septentrion, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2004, pp. 81-114
254
PA 650a 32, 650b 8, 665b 12, 666a 18, 667a 26; cf. Timaeus 73d.
255 PA 668a 13, 27, 35; cf. Timaeus 77cd, 79a.
256 PA 650a 19; cf. Timaeus 70e.
257 PA 670a 25-26; cf. Timaeus 70a. Mario Vegetti analyses the functions of some of these
similes. For example, a broad analysis of the heart-acropolis-fireplace and body-polis-home
comparisons can be seen in M. VEGETTI, “Quand la science parle à vide: procédés
dialectiques et métaphoriques chez Aristote”, in V. COOREBYTER, Rhétoriques de la science,
P.U.F., Paris, 1994, pp. 19 et seqq..
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metaphorical one258. Some of these figures, as P. Louis259 points out, are
taken from Plato’s Timaeus, while the origin of some others is even older260,
for example, male and female in generation are compared respectively to the
Sun and Earth261, a figure going back at least as far as Hesiod. He also
compares the male principle in generation, as an efficient cause, to a
carpenter or a potter262. For Aristotle, even the development and motion of a
living being could be seen as the motion of wonderful automata263.
Aristotle often uses elements taken from everyday life and work,
especially from fishing and sailing, such activities obviously being familiar
to the Greek people, so a quadruped’s legs are seen as the supports of a ship
in dry dock264, the back legs of a grasshopper are like the rudder of a boat265,
and a lobster’s tail is like an oar266. The elephant’s trunk is likened to a
diver’s breathing tube267, and the neck and beak of certain long-legged birds
are seen as a fishing-rod with a line and hook268.
It is worth noting that all of them refer to the functions of organs or
tissues and they seek to explain these functions by means of an analogy with
artificial objects and their well-known purposes. In fact, we can find much
more interesting comparisons throughout the treatises269. We could also
quote, mainly by virtue of its evocative force, the resemblance supposed to
exist between plants and little babies asleep all the time270.
The treatise De Anima is built upon a broad set of similes and
metaphors, all used to explain the most difficult doctrinal points271: the unity
of body and soul is conceived as the unity of a circle and its tangent at a
“Originally used of the ripening of fruit, then of cooking and digestion it came to be
applied to a wide range of physiological processes”, G.E.R. LLOYD, Polarity and Analogy,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1966, pp. 204-205.
259 P. LOUIS, “Introduction”, in ARISTOTE, Les parties des animaux, Les Belles Lettres, Paris,
1956, pp. V-XL, see pp. XXIX and XXX.
260 See, in this sense, G.A. LUCCHETA, Scienza e retorica in Aristotele, Il Mulino, Bologne,
1990.
261 GA 716a 15 et seqq..
262 GA 730b 5 et seqq..
263 See GA 743b 11 et seqq.; MA 701b 2 et seqq.. See also S. BERRYMAN, “Ancient Automata
and Mechanical Explanation”, Phronesis, 48, 2003, pp. 344-369. I.M. BODNAR, “The
Mechanical Principles of Animal Motion”, in A. LAKS and M. RASHED (ed.), Aristote et le
mouvement des animaux, Presses du Septentrion, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2004, pp. 137-147.
264
PA, 655a 11, 23, 25.
265 PA 683b 1 and HA 535b 12.
266 PA 684a 3.
267 PA 659a 2.
268 PA 693a 23.
269 See, for instance, in PA 653a 3 et seqq., 653a 21 et seqq., 654a 7 et seqq..
270 EE, 1216a 3-9 and EN, 1176a 34-35.
271 See E. MARTINO, Aristóteles, el alma y la comparación, Gredos, Madrid.
258
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point272, and as the unity of a wax tablet and the image stamped upon it273.
Concerning the body’s instrumental relationship to the soul, Aristotle says
that the body is to the soul as the eye is to sight, as the axe is to cutting274.
The active nous is like light275, while the passive nous is compared to a blank
board276. Other comparisons are called upon for vegetative and sensitive
faculties, memory, imagination and will, the principle of movement, and
practical understanding. In conclusion, las metáforas y comparaciones
forman una parte medular del De Anima. Resultaría complicado [difícil]
sustituirlas por lenguaje literal. Y, aunque fuese posible, no es seguro que se
lograse alguna ganancia.
Even notions so central to Aristotelian theories as nature, soul or act
are explained by means of analogies, similes or metaphors: nature is thought
of as a potter277, as a house builder278 or a painter279, and so on. Regarding
the concept of act, so important throughout Aristotle’s works, the author
states that only by analogy shall we be able to grasp its meaning280.
The use of models is also noticeable as an explanatory resource in
Aristotelian biology, for example, the human body is taken as a model for
the study of other living things281. Generally speaking, the conformation of a
domain following the structure of a phenomenon already understood, i.e., the
use of a familiar template, is an important step in the explanation of anything
belonging to it. This procedure implies a flow of meaning from the familiar
to the new and strange. A flux of affections also occurs, for, at least in
Aristotelian biology, as well as a deep knowledge, there is a very clear and
profound esteem for living beings282.
4. The Aristotelian Theory of Metaphor
4.1. Differences and Relationships between Metaphor, Simile, Analogy and
Model
In Aristotle’s opinion, metaphor and simile are very similar:
“The simile (eikon) also is a metaphor (metaphora); the difference is
but slight. When the poet says of Achilles that he
272
DA 403a 11-16.
DA 412b 6-9.
274 DA 412b 9 et seqq..
275
DA 430a 10 et seqq..
276 DA 429b 29 et seqq..
277 PA 654b 29 et seqq.; GA 730b 27 et seqq..
278 PA 668a 16.
279 GA 743b 20 et seqq.; 764b 30 et seqq..
280 Meta 1048a 35 et seqq..
281 HA, I, 6, 491a 19-23.
282 See PA, I, 5, 644b 22-645a 36.
273
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Leapt on the foe as a lion,
this is a simile; when he says of him ‘The lion leapt’, it is a
metaphor.”283
Simile, or comparison, establishes a relationship between two
explicit terms by means of an explicit grammatical connection, such as
“like”, while in metaphor this grammatical connection is omitted, as often is
one of the two terms:
“[Simile] is a metaphor, differing from it only in the way it is put; and
just because it is longer it is less attractive. Besides, it does not say
outright that ‘this’ is ‘that’, and therefore the hearer is less interested
in the idea.”284
Despite their similarity, there are relevant æsthetic and functional
differences between these figures. Metaphor poses a question, it surprises us,
it triggers off a heuristic process, it forces an interpretative task onto us.
Simile, on the other hand, does part of the work for us, as we need a shorter
interpretative run, the effort probably yielding a lesser intellectual reward
than the metaphor. Aristotle consequently prefers metaphor to simile, which
he considers a developed metaphor.
It should, by the way, be noted that this development is not always
automatic, for we compare certain aspects of two objects, so a decision is
required as to which aspects, among all those possible, are relevant.
We should add to this that if we use a metaphor to obscure our
discourse, then it will lack any justification in scientific texts. It should not
be a means of expressing obscurely what can be said plainly, but rather a
way of expressing difficult matters as clearly as possible, a manner of
stretching language into new areas of reality, which is, furthermore, why
Aristotle said that “[m]etaphor, moreover, gives style clearness (saphes),
charm, and distinction as nothing else can”285.
Analogy would seem to be another step in the development of
metaphor, so “the evening of life...” is a metaphor, “old age is like the
evening” is a simile and “As old age is to life, so evening is to day” is an
analogy.
Aristotle discovered various ways of transferring names, which
enabled him to draft a taxonomy of metaphorical expressions, whereby it is
possible to use the name of the kind (genos) to name the species (eidos) and
the name of species to refer to the kind, while the name of one species may
be applied to another or, finally, the name may be transferred “on grounds of
283
Rhet, 1406b 20 et seqq..
Rhet, 1410b 17-19.
285 Rhet, 1405a 8.
284
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analogy”286. We commonly associate the last mentioned with metaphor in a
narrow sense, the others being more like our synecdoche or metonymy287.
Aristotle holds that there is proportional analogy whenever “the
second (B) is to the first (A) as the fourth (D) to the third (C)”288. Originally
proportion referred mainly to quantitative ideas, but qualitative ones were
included early on: “Thus a cup (B) is in relation to Dionysus (A) what a
shield (D) is to Ares (C) [...] As old age (D) is to life (C), so is evening (B) is
to day (A)”289.
With regard to the cognitive relevance of figures and their
explanatory power, Aristotle wrote that “[o]f the four kinds of metaphor the
most taking is the proportional kind (kat’ analogian)”290, a doctrine which
does not mean, however, that a paraphrase from metaphor to analogy could
always be easily attained only by making the concealed analogies explicit.
We would stress once more that understanding new metaphors often requires
an interpretative effort. This heuristic task yields the poetic discovery of new
analogical relationships. Every good metaphor is followed by what might be
called a heuristic inertia. The development of metaphor into analogies, then,
requires the concurrence of all the general intelligence.
Aristotelian texts have been very useful for understanding the mutual
differences and relations of metaphor, simile and analogy and, to this end, I
have kept close to them. We cannot dismiss the fact, however, that Aristotle
used some models in his biological treatises, for example the human body as
a model to explain other living things, as we have seen above, or artefacts in
the explanation of natural things. Nevertheless, he does not theorise about
models, which means that his texts are of no help to understanding the role
of models and their relationships with other explanatory resources. We
therefore have to look elsewhere to throw light on models, even at the risk of
temporarily abandoning the historical context we are dealing with. In my
opinion, some of the ideas put forward by Lakoff and Indukhya may be
extremely useful in the comprehension of the functions of models and their
relationships with other figures291.
286
Poet, 1457b 6-9.
See E. BUSTOS, “La teoría aristotélica sobre la metáfora” [“The Aristotelian Theory of
Metaphor”], in D. SÁNCHEZ MECA y J. DOMÍNGUEZ CAPARRÓS (eds.), Historia de la relación
filosofía-literatura en sus textos, Anthropos, Barcelona, 1992, pp. 19-20.
288 Poet, 1457b 16 et seqq..
289 Poet, 1457b 20-25; see also EN 1131a 29-30.
290 Rhet, 1410b 36 and f.; see also E. MONTUSCHI, Le metafore scientifiche, Franco Angeli,
Milan, 1993, p. 31.
291 G. LAKKOF, “Cognitive Semantics”, in U. ECO et al. (eds.), Meaning and Mental
Representation, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1988, pp. 119-154; B. INDUKHYA,
Metaphor and Cognition, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1992.
287
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In his “Cognitive Semantics”, Lakoff states that we elaborate
abstract models by means of schematisation, categorisation, metaphor and
metonymy. He believes that these processes all require the use of a
projective imagination based on our structured experience (through bodily,
social and cultural factors) and our innate sensorimotor faculties and
activities, and notes some general schemes based on our experience, which,
owing to their experiential basis, bring us meaning in a direct way: the
container, part-whole, link, source-path-goal, up-down and linear order
schemata.
When faced with the unfamiliar, we react – perhaps without full
awareness – by trying to reduce it to the basic experiential schemes that we
know how to handle. Indeed, it is an essential factor of our everyday
understanding and communication292 and, of course, of scientific enquiry.
We can thus grasp the explicative power of the very structure of biological
treatises insofar as it fits some of these schemes. PA and HA were written in
a top-down order, based on the opposition between internal and external
organs, on the container model, in such a way that the very arrangement of
data has an explanatory effect. This is how we begin to assimilate the nature
of living things.
Other models have an even more important role regarding the
explanatory economy of biological treatises, for Aristotle adds a profuse
philosophical reflection to their direct understanding as based on experience.
Such is the case of the source-path-goal schema, which has an evident
relationship with the philosophical topic of telos, and of the part-whole
schema, which concerns the hylemorphic structure attributed by Aristotle to
living beings, as well as the careful study of their parts (meros)293. It should
come as no surprise, then, that Aristotle should find these models so useful
and powerful in explaining living things.
It should be noted that these schemes, when applied, are not entirely
determined by their bases, but rather are submitted to criticism. Thus, for
example, the final cause in biology does not involve awareness of the
purpose, or deliberation, despite being drawn from our everyday intentional
experience.
292
See M. JOHNSON, The Body in the Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1987; G.
LAKOFF, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987.
293 See G.E.R. LLOYD, “Aristotle’s Zoology and his Metaphysics. The Status Quaestionis. A
Critical Review of some Recent Theories”, in D. DEVEREUX and P. PELLEGRIN (eds.),
Biologie, logique et métaphysique chez Aristote, C.N.R.S., Paris, 1990, pp. 7-35; P.
PELLEGRIN, “Taxinomie, moriologie, division: réponses à G.E.R.Lloyd“, in D. DEVEREUX and
P. PELLEGRIN, op. cit., pp. 37-47.
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Indurkhya294 suggests a gradation ranging from pure metaphor,
through simile and analogy, to models, for, in his view, models are already
outside the domain of metaphors because their interpretation is entirely
conventional. Following on from Indurkhya, we can appreciate other
gradations, whereby metaphor is less symmetrical than simile, simile less
than analogy, and analogy less than model, besides which metaphor is more
emotionally charged than the other figures.
Indurkhya uses the notion of metaphor in an intermediate way
between the narrow and broad senses. In the narrow sense, metaphor “refers
to a specific way of using the words and phrases of a language”, while in the
broad sense “it is applied to the process of conceptualisation itself, leading to
the aphorism ‘all thought is metaphorical?’ ”295.
We are interested in a very broad meaning of metaphor, including
models and even any general concept, for, in Aristotle, metaphor is equal to
transfer, which is involved in pure metaphor, as it is in simile, analogy,
model and even general concepts, despite their gradual differences, which
are secondary in epistemological discussion to common traits. In particular,
it is possible to detect a genetic relationship between those figures requiring
a more metaphorical reading and the more conventional ones, that is, there
are expressions born as pure metaphors which later become plain
conventions. On the other hand, even the most established convention
requires interpretation to some extent; a metaphor still lingers even in the
most literal concept. With regard to this idea, Aristotle wrote: “Metaphor
consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else”296, and
“[i]nevitably, then, the same formula, and a single name, have a number of
meanings”297. The only way a common name can reach this plural
signification is by becoming transferable itself.
4.2. Metaphorical Figures as Creative Discoveries298
In his Rhetorics, Aristotle states:
294
B. INDUKHYA, Metaphor and Cognition, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1992, pp. 26 et seqq..
B. INDUKHYA, op. cit., note 2, p. 13.
296 Poet, 1457b 7.
297 SE 165a 13 and f..
298 I am not trying even to suggest that metaphorical figures belong to the “context of
discovery”, while APo is the correct methodology in relation to the “context of justification”.
In APo, and generally in traditional methodology (there are traces even in Mill or in the first
Carnap), justification comes hand in hand with some assumed method of discovery, the
“right” one for each author. I think, of course, that no particular method of discovery is
sufficient to guarantee justification. My concern here is to explain how some metaphors are
the expression of a creative discovery, and how they could help, with a new point of view or
new heuristic trends, to obtain new discoveries. But we can only obtain a provisional and
pragmatic justification by following the suggestions of metaphor and contrasting them with
experience. This is not, of course, the tenor of APo.
295
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“[...] we all naturally find it agreeable to get hold of new ideas easily:
words express ideas and therefore those words are the most agreeable
that enable us to get hold of new ideas. Now strange words simply
puzzle us; ordinary words convey only what we know already; it is
from metaphor that we can best get hold of something fresh (he de
metaphora poiei touto malista). When the poet calls old age ‘a
withered stalk’, he conveys a new idea, a new fact, to us by means of
the general notion (dia tou genous) of ‘lost bloom’, which is common
to both things. The similes of the poets do the same, and therefore, if
they are good similes, give an effect of brilliance” 299.
Let us comment on some salient features of this passage. After this
text, no doubt could remain about the cognitive purport of metaphor and
simile, although Aristotle does stress that in order to be cognitive, they must
fulfil certain requirements, that is, they must be proper.
Secondly, we are informed that teaching is accomplished by means
of the kind (dia tou genous), when an objective similarity hits one in the eye.
Aprendemos a partir de lo individual y sobre lo individual. Lo hacemos por
medio del género. Y la metaforización posibilita la doble conexión,
ascendente y descendente, entre el nivel de lo universal y el de lo individual.
The kind is but a means of gaining knowledge – it is not the final purpose of
knowledge. Showing that two entities are similar in some way, that they
belong to the same kind, enables us to transfer our knowledge of the more
familiar one to the other, thus affording us a better understanding of the new
or inexperienced. This transfer must, however, be subject to the filter of
critical scrutiny to avoid improper uses.
Thirdly, Aristotle unites the æsthetic and cognitive aspects of an
expression. In his Rhetorics300, he also asserts that learning and admiring are
sources of pleasure301.
What does Aristotle mean by a proper metaphor or comparison? We
may recall here the passage from Poetics302 defining four types of
metaphorical expression bearing in mind that he goes on to say that, “of the
four kinds of metaphor the most taking is the proportional kind”. It is
therefore clear that an image is proper insofar as it is based upon an
objective proportional analogy and expresses a real similarity allowing us
the information transfer from one pole to the other.
299
Rhet 1410b 10-19.
Rhet 1371b 4 et seq..
301 S. MAS TORRES, “Platón y Aristóteles: sobre filosofía y poesía”, in D. SÁNCHEZ MECA y J.
DOMÍNGUEZ CAPARRÓS (eds.), Historia de la relación filosofía-literatura en sus textos,
Anthropos, Barcelona, 1992, pp. 5-10, see p. 8.
302 Poet, 1457b 6 et seqq..
300
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What, then, became of the creative aspect of metaphor? Did it turn
out to be a mere discovery? Is this kind of knowledge not simply a mirror of
nature?
The concept of creative or poetic discovery is used by Haley303 as an
intermediate between the traditional and interactionist views of metaphor.
According to the former, true metaphor is just a discovery of underlying
similarities, where the cognitive subject has a rather passive function – it is
a mirror of nature. Interactionism, on the other hand, proclaims metaphoric
creativity, with a subject that creates a web of connections, organizing reality
in an active way. Nevertheless, this view fails to provide a clear account of
the constraints affecting the creation, interpretation and evaluation of figures.
Indurkhya is also aware of this shortcoming and seeks to solve it. In my
opinion, however, finding a solution to this problem depends on the
acknowledgement of the objective pole, that is, real similarities that one can
either discover or fail to discover. Yet nothing in the expression itself allows
for mechanical decoding, for a metaphor works or not according to the
interpreter, to his background, and his creativity in building conjectures. It
also depends on the world itself, on the potential (but real) similarities
between entities dwelling in it. What then, could possibly constitute a
creative discovery?
We shall see. Similarities uncovered by true metaphorical
expressions are real. There are objective constraints existing as possibilities
in entities – any two entities either have or do not have the potential to be
seen as similar in some respect by a given cognitive subject. We cannot,
however, rest on any special intuitive faculty for similarities. The potential
for objects to be seen as similar cannot be actualised or communicated
without an active subject. Even our natural ability to catch surface
similarities has phylogenetically evolved by means of creative activity and
corrections, as authors like Popper or Quine have pointed out304. In the first
place, we need to invent conjectures or hypotheses and set them up against
the facts. In this way, we are able to descry new resemblances between
objects. On the other hand we can also try to communicate them by means of
a metaphorical expression, that is, by building new language or stretching
the semantic range of existing language. To construe a metaphor, however,
the receiver needs to display the same creative attitude as we have before
nature. It is in this sense that metaphor is just as much a discovery as a
creation. It may rightly be called, then, a creative, or poetic, discovery.
I take the expression “creative discovery” from M.C. HALEY, The Semiosis of Poetic
Metaphor, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1988, where a Peircian theory of poetic
metaphor is explained.
304 See, for instance, K. POPPER, A World of Propensities, Thoemmes, Bristol 1990; W.V.
QUINE, “Natural Kinds”, in W.V. QUINE, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia
University Press, New York, 1969, pp. 114-138.
303
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The expression “creative discovery” is not explicitly mentioned in
Aristotle’s works, though I would not consider it anachronistic to say that its
meaning may be inferred from several passages, for example:
“Metaphors must be drawn, as has been said already, from things that
are related to the original thing, and yet not obviously related – just as
in philosophy also an acute mind will perceive resemblances even in
things far apart”305.
Therefore,
“the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one
thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a sign of genius
for to draw good metaphors is to perceive resemblance” 306.
Spotting resemblances for the first time requires the invention of
new points of view, of new interpretative hypotheses, of new and fallible
conjectures. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, similarity is not
what is at the same time in two different places or substances, but what can
be abstracted from both by a cognitive agent. Consequently, similarity is not
a direct or ontic relationship between two or more objects, as all dynamic
actions are, but one established by means of a subject. In this regard,
Scaltsas affirms that “similarity between substances cannot consist in the
presence of a distinct (abstract) component in different substances. Rather, it
consists in the derivation of the same distinct entity out of different
substances”307. In spite of the objective character of potential similarities,
there are no actual ones unless they are established by a cognitive subject.
We very often find that a good metaphor, because of its creative
nature, seems unpredictable yet, owing to its character of objective
discovery, it appear obvious to nearly everybody once enunciated. Thus,
Aristotle said that metaphor gave greater clarity than anything else could308
305
Rhet 1412a 10 et seqq..
Poet 1459a 5 et seqq. See also PN (464b 5 et seqq.), where Aristotle wrote a beautiful
passage on resemblance in dreams in the same purport as the previously quoted ones. It even
contains a metaphor full of suggestions: “The most skilful interpreter of dreams is he who has
the faculty of observing resemblances. Anyone may interpret dreams which are vivid and
plain. But, speaking of ‘resemblances’, I mean that dream presentations are analogous to the
forms reflected in water, as indeed we have already stated. In the latter case, if the motion in
the water be great, the reflexion has no resemblance to its original, nor do the forms resemble
the real objects. Skilful, indeed, would he be in interpreting such reflexions who could rapidly
discern, and at a glance comprehend, the scattered and distorted fragments of such forms, so
as to perceive that one of them represents a man, or a horse, Or anything whatever”.
307 T. SCALTSAS, Substances & Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Cornell Univ. Press,
Ithaca, NY, 1994, pp. 197-8.
308 See Rhet 1405a 8 et seqq..
306
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and makes us see309. Metaphor, Aristotle states, brings our senses face to
face with reality: “I mean using expressions that represent things as in a state
of activity (osa energounta semainei)”310. The author is stressing the
sensitive aspects of understanding in this passage. Others exist in the same
direction, for instance, those that establish the cognitive relevance of images:
Aristotle affirms that we take delight in our senses, “and above all others the
sense of sight”311, and that never does the soul think without an image312.
Understanding is compared to the soul’s sight313, and, especially, active
understanding is compared to light314. Furthermore, we have read above that
wise and prudent person (phronimos) is characterised by their experience
and sight315.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that passages in favour of a cognitive
view of metaphor are found in contexts far removed from the methodology
of science, while it is precisely in APo that we find the most explicit refusal.
On this point, some remarks will be necessary.
5. APo and Aristotelian Science
To begin with, we should not glibly equate poetics with rhetoric, for
the latter deals with discourse aimed purely at convincing, while the former
has to do with paradigmatically creative discourse316. In his Poetics,
Aristotle clearly states the philosophical nature of poetry317.
Secondly, it should be remembered at this point that the taxonomy of
metaphor is coined in terms of “species”, “kind” and “proportion”, all of
them belonging to the very core of philosophy, biology and even Aristotelian
science in general. According to E. Montuschi, metaphor “institutes a sort of
symbiosis between the logical and categorical apparatus of philosophy on
the one hand and, on the other hand, the transgressing effects that analogy
systematically pursues”318.
309
See Rhet 1411a 25 et seqq..
Rhet 1411b 24-26.
311 Meta 980a 21 and f..
312 DA 431a 14-17; PN 450a 1 et seq..
313 EN 1096b 29.
314
DA 430a 14-17.
315 EN 1143b 11-13. On cognitive functions of imagination for Aristotle, see also M.V.
WEDIN, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle, Yale University Press, London, 1988; on
perception, D.K.W. MODRAK, Aristotle: The Power of Perception, University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1987.
316 See P. RICŒUR, La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris, 1975, pp. 13-61 and 310-311.
317 Poet 1451a 37.
318 E. MONTUSCHI, Le metafore scientifiche, Franco Angeli, Milan, 1993, p. 30.
310
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In the third place, there is some evidence to show that Aristotle does
not confer such great importance on the methodological rules of the APo
while doing empirical science, so he never took it as a rigid set of constraints
for scientific practice. We have already seen that in DA he uses more
comparisons than definitions whenever he finds a problematic node, the
same being the case for the other biological treatises, where functional
aspects of organisms are systematically explained by means of metaphors,
similes and analogies, even the very structure of treatises being thought out
on the basis of models. In addition, as we have seen, in his Metaphysics,
Aristotle states that the important concept of act lacks a proper definition,
while individual substances lack both definition and demonstration, as well
as essence. We are informed in GA that we cannot expect a demonstration of
principles, so they require “another method (alle gnosis)”319.
Let us now examine two less – known passages, where Aristotle
rules out explanations precisely on the grounds of their logical character,
that is, because, being too general, they are closer to the logos than to the
particular object of research:
“Perhaps an abstract proof (apodeixis logike) might appear to be more
plausible than those already given; I call it abstract because the more
general it is the further is it removed from the special principles
involved. [...] For all theories not based on the special principles
involved are empty; they only appear to be connected with the facts
without being so really. [...] that which is empty may seem to be
something, but is really nothing.”320
“And we must grasp this not only generally in theory, but also by
reference to individuals in the world of sense, for with these in view
we seek general theories, and with these we believe that general
theories ought to harmonise”321.
The logical apparatus of definition and demonstration does not work
properly unless a connection is provided between theoretical terms and our
experience of concrete reality. The judgement about truth of principles used
319
GA 742b 32 and f..
GA 747b 27 - 748a 10. M. Vegetti (M. VEGETTI, “Quand la science parle à vide: procédés
dialectiques et métaphoriques chez Aristote”, in V. COOREBYTER, Rhétoriques de la science,
P.U.F., Paris, 1994, p. 8) has commented on this passage in a different way. This author
believes that “apodeixis logike” is criticised because of its dialectic character. However, in my
opinion, this text has nothing to do with the dialectics-vs.-science distinction. Logical
demonstration or explanation is criticised precisely for its generality, for its lack of empiric
charge, for its emptiness, i.e., for an excess of abstraction (as the aforementioned text on MA
confirms). But all that relates it more to strict episteme than to dialectics. In addition, the
commonly acknowledged opinions (endoxa) are not necessarily very abstract or general;
reputed views on concrete subjects also exist.
321 MA 698a 11-14.
320
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as premises in deduction, the ascription of reference to the terms, the
knowledge of causal connections concealed behind logical ones, all this
remains outside the logical apparatus of APo. This set of methodological
rules acquires its full meaning once the above operations have been carried
out and, even then, the outcome of deductive machinery is subject to
common – sense scrutiny and personal experience.
We must now address the problem of determining whether or not
APo still plays a role in the economy of scientific explanation.
Aristotle often uses terms in a non-univocal sense, subjecting them
to semantic stretch322, whereby they acquire new meanings. He starts with a
focal familiar meaning and applies the terms analogically. Important notions
are said in “many ways” (pollakos legomenon), so we are justified in
suspecting that the ideal of strict univocity of APo soon became unfit for
actual science in Aristotle’s view323.
Indeed, univocity could only be reached either by increasing the
complexity of language or by decreasing the complexity of the world. The
first solution would make language a useless point-by-point reproduction of
the world – one object, one word, like a map drawn to a scale of 1:1324, while
in the second hypothesis, the world would include but few entities, one for
each concept, that is, the real world would be like Plato’s ideal world.
Nevertheless, in Aristotle’s view, language is inexact because of the very
nature of things – there are more entities than terms. I consider this passage
ontologically revealing, because the problem arises only when the
ontological load is born more by concrete substances (as in Aristotle) than
by ideal forms. In such cases, name transfer seems unavoidable.
Furthermore, methodological terms like “demonstration” or
“definition” are also subject to semantic stretch, so they do not mean exactly
the same in different research contexts325.
Nevertheless, the methodology of APo still retains a relevant role
(paradoxically) as a rhetorical device. It is an important part of the process of
legitimizing new wisdom, opposed to traditional wisdom, which rested on
story-telling, poetry and myth. The new wisdom, on the other hand, sought
accuracy and stability in the meaning of words, univocity as an ideal, and
deductive inference:
322
See G.E.R. LLOYD, The Revolution of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of
Ancient Greek Science, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. 198.
323 See Lloyd, op. cit., p. 191.
324 Not to mention the insoluble metalinguistic issue, because words, of course, are objects.
325 See G.E.R. LLOYD, “Theories and Practices of Demonstration in Aristotle”, in J. CLEARLY
and D.C. SHARTIN (eds.), The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, vol. VI,
University Press of America, Maryland, 1990, pp. 371-401.
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“The polemic against metaphor and myth – as G.E.R. Lloyd writes –
is thus part of the campaign waged by philosophy and science against
poetry and religion”326.
This demarcation is not only sociological, however. Nor is it only a
dispute between groups aiming at social control or intellectual prestige.
There is more to it than that. The methodological prescriptions of APo may
never have been strictly followed. Metaphorical resources – against
prohibition – may actually have been used in scientific practice and
methodological constraints may have been softened in various treatises, but
something did change: once Aristotle had established the desideratum of
stability and univocity in the meaning of terms, together with the ideals of
exactitude, definition and deductive control of inference, the philosopher and
the scientist were affected by them in a way that the poet or story-teller
never had been before. Scientists and philosophers must submit their
metaphors, similes, analogies and models to criticism or empirical control,
and must follow the heuristic inertia of images and test their implications.
They must set them up against reality. Once the will of truth, the ideal of
precision, the necessity of exploring implication as well as a self-critical
mind were accepted as values, the particular formalist devices and
methodological constraints of APo became secondary to actual scientific
practice.
All these values are acknowledged and pursued in Aristotle's works.
His De Caelo explicitly states:
"To give a satisfactory decision as to the truth it is necessary to be
rather an arbitrator than a party to the dispute" 327.
6. Conclusion
Between the claim that biological works (and natural history
treatises in general) strictly follow the methodological constraints of APo,
and the assumption that it has nothing to do with them, we would suggest an
intermediate position: expressive resources such as metaphors rejected in
Apo are often used in scientific practice, although the way in which they are
used is determined by desiderata of precision, clear meaning of terms,
empirical tests and deductive control of inferences.
Metaphor is not a superfluous ornament nor is it mechanically
reducible, no universal rules existing for its translation into literal language.
326
G.E.R. LLOYD, The Revolution of Wisdom: Studies in the Claims and Practice of Ancient
Greek Science, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1987, p. 198, p. 210.
327 De Caelo 279b 9-12. See also P. AUBENQUE, La prudence chez Aristote, P.U.F, Paris,
1993, p. 39.
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Understanding metaphor does not, however, depend on any special intuitive
faculty. I have suggested reading Aristotelian texts with what may be termed
an interpretative view of metaphor, for understanding a metaphor involves
an interpretative task very similar to understanding the world. Every good
metaphor has its own heuristic inertia. We need to create conjectures and
challenge their functionality, a process which depends on the interpreter’s
creativity, on his ability to recognise their limits and on his previous
experience and knowledge. No automatic rules, no special faculties.
Moreover, the very notion of literal meaning is problematic.
Aristotle refers to conventional (usual) rather than to literal meaning in his
study on different kinds of names328. In short, metaphoric meaning is not
opposed to literal meaning, although it does gradually differ from
conventional meaning329. An expression conceived as a metaphor could be
developed into a simile or analogy, indeed it might even become
conventional, while, conversely any conventional expression could be hiding
a lethargic metaphor. It may therefore be useful to look on metaphorical
expressions as living things: during their lifetime they can remain detached
from any cognitive discourse or become integrated as conventional language
into science or philosophy. Another consideration should be added with
regard to the importance of the topic we are dealing with: both the increase
in our knowledge and the enlargement of our linguistic resources depend on
our ability to grasp new similarities and express them in a metaphorical way.
Today’s conventional language and knowledge were metaphorical yesterday,
and even conventional language requires interpretation each time it is used
pragmatically. As Nietzsche reminded us330, convention is no more than
lethargic metaphor, so each concept has to be understood in its context, from
a concrete subject’s experience, and referred to the world by him. Only in
this way does language leave the domain of the general to enter the terrain of
concrete substances, which are also, as we have sustained, suitable objects
for scientific knowledge.
A good metaphor gives us more than emotional content – it can
transmit to us genuine information about the world. The radical distinction
between the genesis of emotion and objective information transfer is
artificial, for metaphor explains by bringing in the unusual, new or unknown
to what is familiar or already experienced. Owing to the fact that our
experience is not emotionally neutral, however, the flow of information runs
328
See Poet cap. 21.
See E. BUSTOS, “La polémica del significado literal”, in E. BUSTOS, et al. (eds.), Actas del
I Congreso de la Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia en España,
U.N.E.D., Madrid, 1993, pp. 160-163.
330 See F. NIETZSCHE, “Ueber Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne“, in G. COLLI
and M. MONTINARI, Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe, de Gruyter, München, 1980,
vol. 1, pp. 873-890.
329
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together with emotional connotations. Aristotle, for instance, in his
biological treatises, displays as much knowledge of as esteem for living
things331.
Metaphorical expressions, apart from their communicative or
emotional virtues, can be either true or false, and this despite the fact that we
can never reach a full certainty about it, as Peirce stated. A good metaphor
uncovers objective potential similarities existing between entities in the
world, a discovery which is, however, a creative one. We shall go deeper
into this in the next chapter through a rereading of Poetica.
331
See PA I 5.
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Chapter 6
MIMESIS AND POIESIS
1. Introduction
Aristotle’s Poetics has an interesting history, indeed an intriguing
one. It was hardly noticed in ancient times and even at moments of great
activity as far as the rest of the Aristotelian corpus is concerned, for example
from the second century CE onwards, very little attention was paid to it. It
was probably in that period that the second book of the treatise, thought to be
about comedy,332 was lost. The extant part of the Poetics remained in a state
of lethargy, in a kind of prolonged hibernation, for more than a thousand
years. Guillermo de Moerbeke translated the text into Latin in the 13th
century, but the commentators of the day were more interested in the parts of
the corpus concerning logic and metaphysics. From the 15th century on,
under the influence of the Humanist movement, more translations were made
into Latin and the text began to come in for more attention as an object of
commentary, to the point where it became a veritable canon of poetic
composition with a great influence on the European literatures of the 16th18th centuries.
As it did in so many other disciplines (e.g., metaphysics, logic,
biology, physics, etc.) the modern world tended to distance itself from
Aristotelianism also in the field of composition and literary criticism.
Reaction to Aristotelianism here was at its height in the 19th century. Today,
some readers would consider Poetics to be a text of purely historical interest.
Nevertheless, the purpose of this chapter is not to offer a historical treatment
332
On the loss of this second book of Poetics Umberto Eco based the plot of his famous novel
The Name of the Rose, although Eco moved the event of the mutilation to the late Middle
Ages.
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of Aristotle’s text, or, naturally, a philological one. The point of view is
strictly present and philosophical, it stems from current problems of the
theory of knowledge and from an intuition that Aristotle’s Poetics has
something important to say in this regard. The intention here, then, is to read
Poetics as a theory of knowledge. I do not intend to give an intellectualist
interpretation of æsthetics, but to state that in Poetics, inspiration may be
found for a true theory of knowledge as a creative discovery. This point of
view is not unknown to poetic practice itself, for many artists see their
mission as a way of investigating reality. And no few scientists see their
work as a form of creation akin to artistic creation. Reading a treatise on
poetic theory as a theory of knowledge supposes no upheaval at all, but
rather fits in with the intuitions of those who are nearer to the practices that
are considered paradigmatically poetic (art) or epistemic (science).
Perhaps one of the greatest problems today regarding the theory of
knowledge is integrating the contributions of the subject and object. Let us
call it the Post-Kantian Problem. Today we hesitate to consider knowledge
as something objective, as a discovery of reality, or, otherwise, as a pure
product of the subject, something constructed, or created. Pure subjectivism,
like naïve realism (for which knowledge is a mere imitation of reality), can
apparently be ruled out. And to posit something in between is to say nothing,
unless the intermediate position in question is presented in a positive and
clearly structured way, like something more – much more – than a mere
equidistancing or negation of the two excesses.
In Poetics, there is a theory of creation (poiesis), poetic in itself, and
a theory of imitation (mimesis), for it would seem that according to Aristotle
the primordial function of tragedy and comedy is mimetic. We can expect a
text like this to throw some light on the present problem of knowledge, at
least because in it the notions of poiesis and mimesis are key ones. We shall
now go on to read Aristotle’s Poetics from this standpoint, as a theory of
knowledge capable of positively reconciling its representative and creative
aspects. To know, therefore, is both to discover and to create the known, and
we shall see later how it can be both at the same time.
In the first place, the tension between mimesis and poiesis (sections
2 and 3) has to be established. Secondly, it is necessary to show how this
tension can be resolved and integrated by means of an ontology that
considers the possible to be real (section 4). Then we shall be in a better
position to offer an interpretation in accordance with what has been said of
the concept of katharsis, which is central to Aristotle’s Poetics (section 5). I
shall also bring in two notes on the link between Aristotelian ideas and those
of two contemporary authors, Heidegger and Peirce (section 6). Then I shall
finish with some concluding remarks (7).
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2. Mimesis
For Aristotle, arts consist in different forms of imitation, different
from one another because of the means used to imitate, the object imitated
and the way of imitating.333 But what they have in common is imitation. This
could suggest, on the face of it, a theory of art that would be too realist and
naïve, as a mere copy or representation of parts of reality, but if we analyse
Poetics more thoroughly, then we get a better impression, as we shall see
later. In tragedy, to which most of Poetics is given over, the imitation is of
human action by human action: “the imitators may represent the whole story
dramatically, as though they were actually doing the things described […] as
acting and doing. This in fact, according to some, is the reason for plays
being termed dramas.”334
The link between imitation and knowledge appears early on in
Aristotle’s Poetics: “Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his
advantages over the lower animals being this, that he is the most imitative
creature in the world, and learns at first by imitation.”335
Like a good naturalist, Aristotle sets out from the observation of
animal and human behaviour. Through it he reaches the conclusion that
human beings, unlike other animals, are by their very nature imitators. By
imitating they learn – one learns by doing.336 When art imitates nature, it
does not only imitate nature’s products, but mainly its dynamism, its action.
As for the human, art imitates the actions of people, and this imitation of
both the activity of nature and of the actions of people produces learning.
This link between mimesis and learning is not divorced from its
æsthetic aspects. Imitation pleases us in some measure because it brings
knowledge. When he seeks to explain why imitation is pleasant to us,
Aristotle gives the following argument:
“Though the objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to
view the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms for
example of the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The explanation is
to be found in a further fact: to be learning something is the greatest of
pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind
[...] The reason of the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the
same time learning – gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the
man there is so-and-so.”337
333
Poet 1447a 15-19.
Poet 1448a 23-29; See also 1459a 15. The Greek word drao means “to work”, and from
the same root we have drama, “action”, work”.
335 Poet 1448b 5-9.
336 EN 1103a 32 et seq..
337 Poet 1448b 10-18.
334
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We shall take this last text as a nodal point through which links with
other parts of Aristotle’s works can be set up. For the habitual reader of
Aristotle, this text immediately arouses associations. It seems to have
continuity with some statements in Metaphysics, with the Aristotelian theory
of happiness as it appears in his ethical writings, with some parts of Rhetoric
and even with a well-known passage of the treatise On the Parts of Animals.
On the basis of these texts we can appreciate the coherence between Poetics
and other areas of Aristotelian thought.
Imitating and learning occur in the human being by nature, and as
both are in conformity with his nature, they produce pleasure.338 To such an
extent does the desire to learn belong to human nature that knowledge is a
fundamental part of human happiness, according to the Aristotelian theory of
happiness.339 Now, one of the best tools available to us for learning is
imitating. Artistic creation is, then, one of the procedures at our disposal for
the investigation of reality. Seen this way, æsthetic pleasure proves to be
closely linked with the knowledge of reality that a work of art affords us.
But if art is a mere representation, then why not observe reality
directly and learn from it, without the need for artistic brokerage? In Plato,
sensible reality is an imperfect copy of Ideas, and art is an imperfect copy of
an imperfect copy. It obviously has a degenerate character and is of little
service to human knowledge. It would be better to observe the originals than
their images: sensible reality is better than an artistic copy, and Ideas are
better than the world of the senses. In Aristotle there remains something of
this Platonic idea of art as a copy, but the assessment he makes of it as an
instrument of learning is very different, as we already know from the texts
cited. We may then wonder what this change is due to. The only possible
answer is that in Aristotle, artistic mimesis is not only a representation but
also an irreplaceable presentation of certain aspects of reality. Of course, in
Aristotle, there is no world of Ideas as distinct from that of the senses, but
rather a world of substances, to some of whose aspects we can only accede
in an active, creative way, through works of art. In this regard, Poetics and
the epistemic aspects appearing in it are closely linked with Aristotelian
metaphysics and his anthropology.
We can delve deeper into the connection between imitation, learning
and æsthetic pleasure through the following passage from Rhetoric:
“Again, since learning and wondering are pleasant, it follows that such
things as acts of imitation must be pleasant – for instance, painting,
sculpture, poetry – and every product of skilful imitation; this latter,
even if the object imitated is not itself pleasant; for it is not the object
As Aristotle points out at the beginning of Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to
know.” (Meta 980a 20).
339 See EN, X, 6-8.
338
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itself which here gives delight; the spectator draws inferences (‘That is
a so-and-so’) and thus learns something fresh.”340
Enjoyment does not lie in whether the imitated is beautiful or not,
but in the fact that with the imitation something is learnt.341
Even in the Parts of Animals, Aristotle implores for the direct
observation of all animals, even those that could be considered repulsive,
and appeals to the pleasure produced by seeing their images. Aristotle seems
to think that if we all enjoy seeing images, as he states in Poetics and
Rhetoric, then why not seek enjoyment also in direct observation? He takes
for granted, also in Parts of Animals, that observing images is pleasurable
and knowledge-giving, not a waste of time that could be replaced to our
benefit by the direct observation of nature. He seems to think rather in two
different and complementary ways, both of them valuable, of investigating
reality: “Indeed, it would be strange if mimic representations of them
[animals] were attractive, because they disclose the mimetic skill of the
painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more
interesting”342.
The texts of Poetics, Rhetoric and Parts of the Animals have
something in common: the link between pleasure and learning. At this point
we come up against the differences and similarities between science and art.
Between them there are obviously profound differences, so many in fact that
we often overlook the similarities. It is also normally overlooked that there
are several intermediate activities, halfway between science and art
(documentaries, naturalist reporting, naturalist painting, development of
fractals, graphic or multimedia presentations with a scientific content,
scientific essays, science fiction, historical novels, etc.), so we should think
more in terms of a continuum of the two than of a dichotomy. It would seem
clear that both are forms of investigating reality, that through both we
acquire knowledge and that this makes them pleasant.
340
Rhet 1371b 4-10.
Here we could observe an excessive intellectualism in the Aristotelian theory of art, which
expressly links pleasure with learning. It is not in the scope of this chapter to discuss the
possibility of a strict reduction of the æsthetic to the epistemic – there are probably other roots
of the æsthetic, and Aristotle recognises this. What we seek to do here is simply to stress the
presence of a certain theory of knowledge in his Poetics. Nevertheless, Aristotle did make
steps towards the rationalisation of art, which for him was not an exclusive task of the exalted
or possessed, but also of the man of talent (Poet 1455a 31-34). On this point he also differs
from Plato. However, changing the subject, Aristotle grants art more autonomy with regard to
the politic. For Plato, art had to fit in, as we would say today, with political correctness (see
Republic X 601d-e; Laws II 653b-660) while Aristotle makes a veritable declaration of the
political autonomy of art: “There is not the same kind of correctness in poetry as in politics, or
indeed any other art.” (Poet 1460b 13-15).
342 PA 645a 10-15.
341
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Furthermore, Aristotle seems to be saying that beauty, both in the
animal and in its representation, is in the harmony of the parts, destined to
functions, in the functional order set by nature or art, and that æsthetic
delight stems from the knowledge we are able to derive from that order,
whether through observation of nature or through artistic imitation:
“As for the poetry which merely narrates, or imitates by means of
versified language (without action), it is evident that it has several
points in common with Tragedy. The construction of its stories should
clearly be like that in a drama; they should be based in a single action,
one that is a complete whole in itself, with a beginning, middle and
end, so as to enable the work to produce its own proper pleasure with
all the organic unity of a living creature.” 343
Indeed, bad tragedy is characterised by the lack of internal
connection, of unity: “Nature is not a series of episodes, like a bad
tragedy.”344
There is yet another obviously associated passage which we have
taken as a nodal point. Let us remember the expression that appears in it:
“The reason of the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time
learning – gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the man there is so-andso”, i.e. that this one in the picture is that one. Well, as we saw above,
Aristotle states in Rhetoric that, unlike the metaphor, the simile “does not
say outright that ‘this’ is ‘that’, and therefore the hearer is less interested in
the idea.”345 The metaphor teaches us that “this” is “that”, or to put it better,
it enables us to see “that” through “this”, like a play, which enables us to see
reality through imitation, and thanks to this it teaches us many aspects of
reality itself. It would seem, then, that metaphorisation is at the very centre
of artistic creation and of the epistemic aspects of art.346 We already know
that metaphor can indeed be understood as a powerful epistemic medium for
making creative discoveries and communicating them. For Aristotle, the
metaphor would be a creative discovery of similarity, in science as in poetry:
a discovery because in substances there already exists the possibility of their
being seen as similar in some aspects, creative because this ability can only
be actualised by a cognisant subject347.
So far we have tried to clarify the concept of mimesis through
Aristotelian texts. We have seen the connections that it has with epistemic
aspects, which are deeply rooted in the human being’s very nature. But the
theory of knowledge that we seek to glean from Poetics requires another
343
Poet 1459a 16-22; See also 1450b 35-37.
Meta 1090b 19.
345 Rhet 1410b 17-19.
346 See Poet 1457b 6-34.
347 Poet 1459a 5-9. See also Rhet 1410b 10-20 and 1412a 10-12.
344
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pole, the creative pole. Knowledge will arise from the integration of and
tension between mimesis and poiesis. We shall now give the concept of
poiesis a similar treatment to the one we have hitherto given to mimesis, and
try to detect its connections with epistemic aspects.
3. Poiesis
V. García Yebra says that here, the word poets should be taken in its
etymological meaning, makers348, that is, not mere imitators, but genuine
creators. However, at first sight at least, it would seem that if we lay
emphasis on the creative aspect, we compromise the epistemic aspect of
imitation. Let us see if there is any possibility of reconciling faithful
imitation and poetic creativity.
Aristotle insists time and time again that the object imitated is the
actions of men, rather than the men themselves. And in the theatre, the
imitation of action is carried out through action: “Tragedy is essentially an
imitation not of persons but of action and life, of happiness and misery. All
human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end we live for is a
certain kind of activity [...] A tragedy is impossible without action.”349
Curiously, however, the author states that “the tragic effect is quite possible
without a public performance and actors.”350 That is, the dramatic text itself
may have the strength of what has been experienced.
Here we begin to see that the poet’s creative function consists
mainly in conceiving a fable (mythos) – today we would say a script – to
represent with the force of experience, to set before our eyes actions, life,
happiness and unhappiness.
This could be done by simply relating in the best way possible
actions that have indeed happened, but this does not seem to be the function
that Aristotle attributes to the poet, although we might think that it comes
under mimesis. Nevertheless, the poet is not a historian. If before we touched
on the similarities between science and art, here we have to see the
differences between art and history. If in the first case Aristotle emphasises
similarities, as the differences are rather obvious and traditional, in the
second one he stresses the differences to avoid the risk of confusion:
regarding dramatic compositions, he says that “nor should one suppose that
there is anything like them in our usual histories. A history has to deal not
348
V. GARCÍA YEBRA: Poética de Aristóteles (trilingual edition), Gredos, Madrid, 1992, p.
257, n. 68.
349 Poet 1450a 15-25; see also 1449b 24 et seqq. Aristotle stresses this point very heavily.
350 Poet 1450b 19-20; see also 1453b 4-6.
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with one action, but with one period and all that happened in that to one or
more persons, however disconnected the several events may have been.”351
Tragedy is an organic unit, while history is a continuous flow that we retell
by the conventional segmenting of time.
And now “the possible” (ta dynata) makes its entrance: “From what
we have said it will be seen that the poet’s function is to describe, not the
thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e. what is
possible as being probable or necessary.”352 This is the keystone of the vault
of Aristotelian construction, the nexus and the point of inflexion, the place
where mimesis and poiesis are kept in balance: imitation is not of effective
facts, but of possibilities. Poetic imitation is a way of investigating the space
of possibility surrounding every action and substance.
But we must take into account that speaking of what is really
possible is not the same as speaking of possible worlds generated by mere
changes of values in laws. Nor do we refer to what is only possible from the
point of view of logic, that is, what is not contradictory. From Aristotle’s
perspective, the only real world is the effective one. Others are mental
variations on the same theme. The idea in Aristotle is that there is only one
world, the real one, which hides many possibilities that are also real,
physical and objective possibilities, independent of any cognisant subject.
In poetic imitation there is creativity, given that it is not just a
question of imitating what has indeed happened, but there is genuine
knowledge, for art produces an apparition, a revelation, it puts a part of
reality before our very eyes, as if we were witnessing the facts directly, with
the vividness of an eye-witness, and these facts – the possible, ta dynata –
would otherwise go unnoticed. And this is not shown to us in just any way,
but as if it were real, vividly, leaping up before our eyes thanks to the
creative operation of the artist.
Of course, part of the possible is what has actually happened, “else it
would not have come to pass”.353 But what has actually happened does not
exhaust the possible, and the function of the poet is to explore this realm of
the possible. The possible includes much more that what has actually
happened. It also contains what should be, whence the moral implications of
art354. The scope of the possible is really wide, including even what at first
sight might appear unlikely: for it is likely, states Aristotle, quoting Agathon,
for many things to happen despite being unlikely355.
351
Poet 1459a 21-24.
Poet 1451a 36-38.
353 Poet 1451b 16-19.
354 See Poet 1460b 10.
355 Poet 1456a 24-25; see also Rhet 1402a 5-20.
352
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To say the possible, to set it before our eyes, the poet can use various
resources, including the enigmatic, the wonderful and even the impossible
and the false. This does not mean that the poet is not committed to truth. On
the contrary, in order to put the truth of the possible before our eyes, the poet
may resort to the use of the impossible. In Aristotelian texts concerning these
poetic resources, it is very noticeable that they are all compatible with an
ultimate wish for truth and that, furthermore, they are at its service.
“The very nature indeed of a riddle,” explains Aristotle, “is this, to
describe a fact in an impossible combination of words.”356 Naturally, the use
of enigmas requires a certain sparingness – let us call it poetic prudence – in
order not to run the risk of the ridiculous.357 Art has room for the unlikely,
the wonderful, the irrational,358 even the false: “Homer more than any other
has taught the rest of us the art of framing lies in the right way.”359
Provided the expression of the possible receives liveliness and
credibility, “a likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing
possibility”.360 Of course, resorting to the impossible or false has to be
justified by the poetic end sought, but if the end could also be achieved
better, or not worse, according to the rules of poetic art, the error is not
acceptable, “since the description should be, if it can, entirely free from
error”361. By error, what is meant here is precisely the use in the drama of an
impossible: “As to the criticisms relating to the poet’s art itself: any
impossibilities there may be in his descriptions of things are faults”. But
errors of this type are pardonable “if they serve to the end of poetry itself”,
and if, as has already been said, the purpose of the poem cannot be met
without that errors being committed. That purpose, explains Aristotle,
consists in making it “more astounding”.362
It is clear that the purpose of art is to put things before our eyes, to
impress, to vividly present tà dynatà, the possible, even if, when there is no
better solution, resort is taken to the likely but impossible. In no way does
this cancel out the exploratory character of art, its commitment to truth or its
will to delve into the scope of the possible, but it is limited to the expressive
resources used to give liveliness to the presentation. Thus, we understand
that “for the purpose of poetry, a convincing impossibility is preferable to an
unconvincing possibility.”363
356
Poet 1458a 26-8; my italics.
Poet 1458b 10-15.
358 Poet 1460a 11-15.
359 Poet 1460a 19-20; my italics.
360 Poet 1460a 26-27.
361 Poet 1460b 25-30.
362 The last three quotes are from Poet 1460b 22-29.
363 Poet 1461b 10-12; my italics.
357
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4. The Possible is Real
The interpretation of Poetics as a theory of knowledge, as it has
appeared so far, only makes complete sense in connection with a certain
ontology where the possible is real. From a positivist ontology that
recognises as real only the actual, the effective, what happens, we could not
draw up a theory of knowledge that would reconcile creative and
representative aspects, which would integrate mimesis and poiesis. If the
world is simply what happens, then knowledge can only be understood as a
mimetic representation (a mirror of nature) or as a purely constructive task,
not committed to truth as correspondence. But Aristotelian ontology is wide
and pluralist, it admits as basic entities a great plurality of substances and it
is wide enough to accept that the possible is part of the real in the strictest
sense.
There are some – Aristotle reminds us – who, like the Megarics,
state that we only have potential to act when we act:
“It is not hard to see the absurdities that attend this view […] Nothing
will be either cold or hot or sweet or perceptible at all if people are not
perceiving it [...] But we cannot say this, so that evidently potency and
actuality are different [...], so that it is possible that a thing may be
capable of being and not be, and capable of not being and yet be.”364
In short, for Aristotle the possible is real.
In Aristotle we find the metaphysics necessary for us to be able to
state with sense that the possible is real, and for us to be able to differentiate
between the possible and the actual. Everything actual is possible, obviously,
but not everything possible is actual. It is easier for us to know what is
actual, which is what happens, than what is only possible. Now, the point of
a good work of art, its irreplaceable contribution to knowledge, and
therefore, to æsthetic pleasure, is that it manages to show us what is merely
possible as actual, as though it were before our eyes:
“We have still to explain what we mean by their ‘seeing things’ [pro
ommaton poiein], and what must be done to effect this. By ‘making
them see things’ I mean using expressions that represent things as in a
state of activity. Thus, to say that a good man is ‘four-square’ is
certainly a metaphor; both the good man and the square are perfect;
but the metaphor does not suggest activity. On the other hand, in the
expression ‘with his vigour in full bloom’ there is a notion of activity;
and so in ‘But you must roam as free as a sacred victim’ […] So with
Homer’s common practice of giving metaphorical life to lifeless
things: all such passages are distinguished by the effect of activity
364
Meta 1046b 29 et seqq.
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they convey. […] In all these examples the things have the effect of
being active”365.
Even with resort to the false, as when the inanimate is made animate,
what is sought is to set before our eyes, as in act, a part of reality that would
prove otherwise difficult for us to know, for it is only potential, hidden in the
actual as possible.
This combination of a certain ontology of the possible, a conception
of knowledge as creative discovery and an idea of the function of art, is also
present in Poetics itself. If we bring together two passages from this treatise,
it will become even clearer: (i) “From what we have said it will be seen that
the poet’s function is to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind
of thing that might happen, i.e. what is possible as being probable or
necessary.”366 (ii) “The poet being an imitator just like the painter or other
maker of likenesses, he must necessarily in all instances represent things in
one or other of three aspects, either as they were or are, or as they are said or
thought to be or to have been, or as they ought to be.”367 The sum of the two
passages only makes sense if in “were or are”, we include the possible.
Works of art are not outside truth, or the true relationship with
reality, because they speak of the possible, and the possible is real. That is,
reality is made up of what indeed happens, the actual, and by possibilities,
some of them actualised, others not. Art explores the spaces of possibility,
that is, a part of the real. The “trick” of art does not consist in passing off for
real what is not – that is a lie, not fiction – but passing off for actual what is
merely possible, but real. When the possible is expressed without poetry,
what we utter is a collection of insipid generalities that teach nothing. Good
fiction speaks to us of reality, for it speaks of the possible, but it also teaches
us much about the actual, about accomplished facts, especially historical
facts, which we can only appreciate properly by putting ourselves in their
context, in their space of possibilities. The same may be said of personal
biographies, which are made up of the effective plus the possible.368
365
Rhet 1411b 24-35.
Poet 1451a 36-38; my italics.
367 Poet 1460b 8-11.
368 “When we speak of the life of a man or a woman,” says the novelist Javier MARÍAS, “we
normally tell what that person carried out and what indeed happened [...] And we almost
always forget that people’s lives do not end there: each passage through life is also made of
our losses and our wastage, our omissions and our unfulfilled wishes, of what we once put
aside or didn’t choose or didn’t achieve, of many possibilities most of which did not come
true [...] of our vacillations and our dreams, of frustrated plans and false and lukewarm
longings, of fears that had us dumbstruck, of what we gave up or gave us up. In short, people
consist both of what we are and of what we have not been [...] perhaps we are made of equal
parts of what was and what might have been [...] and I dare think that it is precisely fiction
that tells us this [...] And today the novel is still the best worked-out form of fiction or at least
366
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Furthermore, the possible has historical and biographical effects, it is cause,
it permeates the sphere of the effective via the minds of people. Because the
idea of something possible is, as an idea, something effective.
5. Katharsis
Before finishing the commentary on Poetics, I must refer to a
passage from it which has traditionally come in for more attention than the
rest. In these lines, Aristotle establishes that the aim of tragedy consists in a
sort of purging (katharsis) of the soul. Given that this passage has been
considered the essential nucleus of Poetics, and the very definition of the
aims of tragedy, we have to find out to what extent it is compatible with the
epistemic reading which we have been concerned with thus far.
The passage in question is this: “A tragedy, then, is the imitation of
an action [...], in a dramatic, not in a narrative form [...] with incidents
arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such
emotions.”369 Tragedy is, then, the imitation of possible action, as we have
said, through dramatic action, which puts the possible before our eyes and
arouses compassion and fear vividly in the spectator, thus bringing about,
through them, the purging of such affections.
Is it possible to read this passage epistemically? For that we would
have to bear in mind that in Rhetoric, Aristotle sets out the epistemic aspects
of compassion or pity. He says that compassion can be suffered by those
who have already suffered some evil but have been able to escape from it, by
those of advanced years (through both prudence and experience) by the
weak, by the more fearful, and by the learned, for they are very reflexive370.
Prudence – an intellectual virtue – experience, learning and reflection can
lead to compassion. Through different forms of knowledge it is possible to
feel compassion. Indeed, compassion itself is no more than a form of vivid
knowledge of what others feel or suffer. Through tragedy, we achieve this
vivid presentation of other people’s passions that the spectator can
experience as though they were his own, for they are set before his eyes by
means of the dramatic resources of the possibility that he might suffer them
himself: “In order to feel pity”, states Aristotle, “we must obviously be
capable of supposing that some evil may happen to us or some friend of
ours.”371 Setting the possible before one’s eyes as something effectively real
is the key to the production of compassion, as Aristotle explains: “It follows
I think so.” (From the “Epilogue” to the novel Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí [Tomorrow
in the Battle, Think on me], Alfaguara, Madrid, 1996).
369 Poet 1449b 24-28.
370 Rhet 1385b 25-29.
371 Rhet 1385b 15-18.
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that those who heighten the effect of their words with suitable gestures,
tones, dress and dramatic action generally are especially successful in
exciting pity: they thus put the disasters before our eyes, and make them
seem close to us, just coming or just past.”372 By analogy, perhaps the same
might be said of fear as of compassion. The observation of the fear of the
characters produces an awareness of the possibilities of one’s own life.
Through compassion and fear, a catharsis of the soul is sought. And
we must not overlook the medical connotations of the term catharsis or
purging. In the Hippocratic tradition, curing is achieved by recuperating the
balance of humours. The purging of the humour present in excess is one of
the possible ways of regaining that balance and, thus, health. Aristotle seems
to understand that a soul dominated by passions is a sick one. The cure
would not consist in the elimination of these passions, for medicine does not
seek the elimination of any of the humours, as they are all necessary, but in
their reduction by purging to an intensity where it is possible for the soul to
control them. It is then, a task of setting the soul free, whereby the soul
ceases to be at the mercy of passions and has them at its service. In fact, it is
a question of integrating emotional and rational aspects by means of
dramatic resources that allow for knowledge of the passions themselves, and
of their possibilities. It is a labour of enlightenment facilitated by the
emancipation of the rational part of the soul. In this regard, Manara
Valgimigli, in his translation of Poetics into Italian comments that “catharsis
is pleasure”, but “it is also a clarification and a purification: it is the return of
the soul from uncertainty to certainty, from ignorance to knowledge, from
darkness to light”.373
6. Two Contemporary Notes
From my point of view, it would be of great interest to bring the
ideas of Aristotle’s onto the stage of contemporary debate. To do this, it
would be necessary to put them in continuity with other contemporary ideas.
Very worthy of attention in my view is the possible nexus between the ideas
that we have seen and Heidegger’s concept of technique. On the other hand,
the interplay of tension and integration existing between mimesis and poiesis
leads us to the idea of creative discovery, which has recently been theorised
in the tradition of Peirce.
i) Let us very briefly recall the observation made above in chapter 3,
about the possible relationship between Aristotle’s Poetics and Heidegger’s
372
373
Rhet 1386a 29 - 1386b 1.
M. VALGIMIGLI, Aristotele. Poetica, Bari, 1946, p. 40-41.
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philosophy of technique.374 Here Heidegger states that technique discovers
and actualises possibilities that were in nature thanks to the creative – poetic
– action of man. Technology is thus a form of knowledge, as is art, for it
reveals what was hidden as potential. After all, “technique” (tekhne) and
“art” (ars) are the same word, the former from a Greek etymon and the latter
from a Latin one. Therefore, art and technology are forms both of action and
of human investigation of reality. They allow us to know because they are
active, because they actualise what was only present as potential.
ii) In the second place, I should like to consider the closeness of
Aristotle’s Poetics to some of the ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce. The
notion of creative discovery, which we have linked here with the tensionintegration of mimesis and poiesis, is also linked today with the poetics of
Peirce: “In other words,” writes Michael C. Haley in his work on Peircean
poetics, “the thesis is that real, poetic, metaphorical, similarity is a creative
discovery made by the poet, not a mere creation.”375 Haley points out
likewise the influence of Aristotle on Peirce concerning the theory of
metaphor.376 From my point of view, the coincidence is deeper, and in both
cases leads us to an ontology that recognises the possible as real. Both
Aristotle and Peirce argued in favour of the reality of the possible: “I have
always recognised,” writes Peirce, “that a possibility may be real, that it is
pure madness to deny the possibility of my raising my arm, even if, when the
moment comes, I do not raise it.”377 However, for Peirce, ontology is of
events, while in Aristotle we find an ontology which is principally concerned
with substances, into which events fit as relationships between substances
and changes in them Let us say that in Aristotle, the key category is
substance. Peirce posits three categories: firstness, secondness and thirdness.
The key, here, is in the category of secondness, to which physical
interactions belong, these being of necessity relationships between two,
always actual, which have their being only where and when they happen,
while the possible is real in two ways, as firstness or as thirdness.378
Another profound link between the concepts of Aristotle and Peirce
is to be found in the notion that both have of the relationship of likeness.
Obviously the relationship of likeness is essential for a poetics of mimesis.
Let us remember, furthermore, that relationships of likeness are in the basis
M. HEIDEGGER, “Die Frage Nach Der Technik“, in M. HEIDEGGER, Die Technik und Die
Kehre, Neske Verlag, Tübingen, 1962, pp. 5 et seqq..
375
See M.C. HALEY, The Semiosis of Poetic Metaphor, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1988, p. 10; italics in the original.
376 See M.C. HALEY, op. cit., p. 9.
377 C.S. PEIRCE, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, 8 vols. Edited by C.
HARTSHORNE, P. WEISS, and A. BURKS, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 19311958, vol. 4, p. 579.
378 In this regard, see G. DEBROCK, “Las categorías y el problema de lo posible en C.S.
Peirce”, Anuario Filosófico 34, pp. 39-55, 2001.
374
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Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
of the construction of concepts. Both in Aristotle and in Peirce, likeness is
understood as a relationship with three poles. From the Platonic point of
view, the relationship of likeness is triadic, the reference demands an Idea.
From this point of view, two objects are similar insofar as they are both more
or less close palpable copies of a Platonic Idea. Aristotle keeps the triadic
format, but the third pole is no longer an Idea, but a cognisant subject who
creatively actualises the likeness which the objects only had as a possibility
– a real possibility, of course.379 Likeness is not something that is at the same
time in two different substances or places, but something that can be
actualised on the basis of two different substances by a cognisant subject.
Consequently, likeness is not a direct physical relationship between peers.
Peirce fully agrees on this point. In his terminology, one would have to say
that likeness does not belong to the category of secondness but to that of
thirdness, as it always requires a third pole, an active subject to actualise real
possibilities. The relationship of likeness thus leaves the scope of Platonism
and comes to rest, not on immovable Ideas, but precisely on the activity of a
subject. Thus, the artistic mimesis in Aristotle is no longer a copy of a copy,
a doubly degenerated imitation of the Idea, but poetic mimesis, a creative
discovery of objective possibilities through the activity of the subject. Art
has, then an irreplaceable epistemic function. From this perspective of the
creative discovery of likeness, we can also account for the important
anthropological and social functions that art has as the presentation and
experienced representation of human life itself.
6. Conclusion
In Aristotle’s Poetics, we have a theory of knowledge that shows us
i) the form of production of knowledge through art and ii) the function for
human life of the knowledge thus produced.
i) Knowledge is always produced through human creativity, which
allows for relationships of likeness to be set before our eyes. Art is an
imitating activity (and, especially, tragedy is the imitation of action by
action). Art functions as a creative activity in production and reception, that
is, the artist creates a second pole of likeness, the work of art. For this, he
has had to actively investigate spaces of possibility, he has had to imagine
ways of putting these possibilities before the eyes of the spectator. The
spectator, whoever he may be – perhaps the artist himself, of course – must
also contribute his creativity to actualise the likeness between the work and
life and thus creatively discover the possibilities of life.
In this regard, see T. SCALTSAS, Substances & Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, NY, 1994, pp. 197-8.
379
127
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
ii) The function of art, and especially drama, is catharsis or purging,
and thereby the curing of the soul. That is, dramatic representation
contributes to setting the soul free from excessive passions that could
overwhelm it. Here, too, knowledge, the truth of the fable, is what sets it
free. But the presentation is just as vital as the representation. The
presentation of the compassion and fear involved makes both come over as if
they were real; they are obvious and the spectator feels them almost as if
they formed part of his life. The representation, however, establishes a
certain distance in this regard. The play of presentation and representation
affords the spectator a “practical” learning of the management of passions
and with it some freedom regarding them. It is something like learning a
craft or school learning, where contexts are necessary that are not completely
“serious”, that is, contexts in which mistakes need not be fatal. The spectator
who sees his life via a work of art manages to grasp the possibilities that it
hides with no need for them to be effective or actual.
The last conclusion that we can draw from our journey through
Poetics is that the ideas contained in it may be of great usefulness to the
contemporary debate, for they make up a form of integration of the
subjective and objective aspects of knowledge. These ideas of Aristotle’s
allow us to go beyond merely stating the need for something intermediate:
they make a positive contribution to the formulation of a midpoint which
improves on extreme constructivism and the concept of knowledge as mere
representation
128
Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-Modern Reason
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