Dr Menahem Luz,
Presocratic Philosophers
Summary 3
Aristotle's Metaphysics A

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  1. Aristotle Metaphysics A
     Contents

    Although we have seen that Aristotle does not give an objective systematic account of the Presocratics, his discussion is the earliest that survives. First we need to understand what Aristotle is attempting to do in this book before examining his evidence for the Presocratics.
    From here on I will refer to the book by page number in its Hebrew trans. to be read in class: Roth-Skolnikov, Aristotle Metaphysics A' ed. Magnes

    Chapter 1 (p. 21) opens with his famous dictum, 'All Men desire knowledge by nature'. Knowledge (epsiteme ) means both what we know and the undersanding of it. 'Nature' (physis) refers primarily to human nature, but later Aristotle will show that the early thinkers tried to understand the Nature of the universe. Thus, he calls them 'those who give an account of nature' (physiologoi, physiologists). For Aristotle the beginning of all knowledge and understanding is his pwm nature and leads man to study the nature of the universe.

    How then do we actualise this knowledge? As he explains on p. 21, it is becaue of the love of the use of the senses (especially sight) and the use of memory of what we gain experience (empeiria) - from experience we learn crafts (techne) but the result of specific experience and particular crafts is a general, theoretical knowledge (epsiteme) (p 22). But the sort of knowledge that we aim at is not particular knowledge that governs a specific cause (aitia), e.g. that a particular table is straight, but a knowledge of a general cause (aitia) of things.

    Aristotle thus says that the urge to know universal cause is inbuilt in us all and as he will later show, it is what lay behind cosmological speculation not only among the mythologists but also among the first philosophers. What he will then try to show is that the search for knowledge of cause (aitia) is what lies at the basis of all metaphysical speculation.As he states at the very end of cap. 1 (p 26): "Wisdom (sophia) is clearly the knowledge of what comprise elemental beginnings (archai) and causes"

    Aristotle thus claims that philosophy has a natural basis in this search for causes and elements.It is in the second half of chapter 2 (pp 29-32) that he connects this theoretical (i.e. metaphysical) speculation with the search for the very first elements and causes of things whether they be prior causes or causative aims. Philosophy, he adds, has its beginning in 'wonderment' at the cause of the earth and the universe. In this way the lover of myth (philomythos) is in a way a (philosophos).Later in chapter 3 (p 39) he even sees the early theological mythologists (like Hesiod) as serving as precedents for this metaphysical search and driven by the same search for causes

    for did not the "First theologians think the same about nature when they proposed that the Ocean and Mother Sea (Tethys) were the forebears of all creation"(pp 38-39).

    Aristotle notices an interesting problem that we discussed in our previous lectures: what distinguishes mythical and poetic speculation about the universe from a reasoned and philosophic one?

    In fact, he points out that both the mythologist and the philosopher ask the same questions - What is the beginning of the universe?
    They also sometimes give the same answers
    As Aristotle noted, both the mythogists and Thales said that liquidity or water was the first principle in creation (p. 39)
    However, while the mythologists claim that the Ocean was the beginning of all making it a divine living being, older than the gods themselves, Thales uses rational arguments to make water the first priniple:
    whether that moistness was the principle of all life (p. 38)
    or that the base of the cosmos floated on water

    We thus see that Thales did not raise different question from the mythologists, nor gave different answers, but gave his answers for different reasons.The difference between them was in approach and methodology.

    It is at this point that Aristotle suggests that each and every one of the early Ionian thinkers sought to explain the universe by the material cause in nature (p. 37 = 983b) - and that each one sought a different material element to explain it (p 39 = 984a):

    • Thales and Hippo tried to explain the arche or first elemental principle of the universe by the element of water or liquidity
    • Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia tried to explain the arche or first elemental principle of the universe by the element of air
    • Heraclitus tried to explain the arche or first elemental principle of the universe by the element of fire or heat
    • Empedocles tried to explain the arche or first elemental principle of the universe by the element of earth or solidity

    However, two things are obvious

    • Aristotle does not always rely on the earlier thinkers themselves, but on later thinkers who revived their ideas -- thus he seems to use Hippon as a source for Thales and perhaps Diogenes as a source for Anaximenes
    • More importantly, Aristotle is imposing on these early thinkers a methodology and subject of research that is somewhat forced.
      Empedocles did not make earth the single arche but one of the elements and forces that explain change in the universe.
      Secondly, Heraclitus thought of fire as a descriptive model of the universe but not an actual element -- for him the world for ever changes LIKE a flame of fire.

    Why does Aristotle impose this methodology and approach?
    This methodology was part of Aristotle's own concept of what he expected physics and metaphysics to examine: philosophy (or sophia) as the science (episteme) of the elements and the causes of objects (p. 26 = 982a)
    Every change on the earth that results in a product should be explained by four causes or aitiai (p. 35-36 = 983a):

    • the material cause (from Latin: materies = wood), is the basic elements of a substance. This matter, known in Greek as hyle (= wood), explains what underlies an object that has yet to receive a final form. The hyle of a table is the wooden planks from which it is made - but the planks may receive various different forms on emerging as a finalised table.

      This hyle or matter is comprised out of combinations of different elements or archai. The archai often resemble what we call states of the matter :

      • liquidity or water
      • solidity or earth
      • heat or fire
      • cold or air

    • the formal cause (from Latin: forma=shape) denotes not only the physical shape that matter acquires when it becomes an object, but also its meaning. The form (known in Greek as eidos of the table explains how the matter becomes an object with the meaning and shape of a table. Before the formal cause applies to the wood, the matter has the shape of planks or an object of a different form.
    • the efficient cause is the cause that efficates or produces the form out of the matter. In the case of the table, the efficient form is the carpenter who endows the planks with the shape and meaning of a table. In self-moving animate beings endowed with life, their own nature is the efficient cause when their matter grows for example into the form of a flower or tree.
    • the final cause is the purpose towards which the efficient cause works. When the carpetner creates the table from planks with a specific shape or form it is for a particular final purpose (Greek:telos = end). The carpenter could make it with a telos of a writing table but this would have a different form or eidos from a dining table, or a coffee table. The final cause is also included within the nature of self-moving animate beings.The seed grows towards a particular teleological end in view to become a flower for example.

    It is now obvious why Aristotle thinks that the earliest philosophers sought to examine these specific causes. In his opinion, the earliest Ionian philosophers all sought a material cause and each tried to explain objects by one of the four material elements that comprise this cause (pp. 39-40). In this way he considers that philosophy advanced in an organised way -- and although the earliest thinkers did not discover all the causes, its content was always part of what he himself considered the basis of philososophy.

    With this method in mind, Aristotle then sates that later philosophers recognised the efficient cause in addition to the material one (pp. 44-45 = 985a), citing Empedocles and Anaxagoras as examples.

    For the greatest discoveries, Aristotle mentions Plato and the Pythagoreans as those who discovered the formal cause (or eidos; pp 49-52) although he also recognises the role played by the Eleatic monists (pp 53-54) in this, in spite of the fact that they really denied all change and causation as part of a monistic reality.

    Conclusions

    It is clear then that Aristotle does not give us an objective account of the development of early philosophy, but sees these early thinkers as precursers of his own ideas. Several of them do not fit this format at all, but Aristotle forces them into that framework nonetheless. We should thus be careful how we draw conclusions from his text.

    However, it must be admitted that Aristotle did have the works of several of these philosophers before him and he was immersed in their thought. For us of course they are fragmentary and their thought needs reconstruction. It would seem best then to accept Aristotles' judgement of these philosophers in very general terms and to criticise it when it contradicts the evidence found in the tadpis.

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