Conspectus of Aristotle’s Book Metaphysics

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ARISTOTLE. THE METAPHYSICS

TRANSLATED BY A. SCHWEGLER.

TWO VOLUMES

TÜBINGEN, 1847

See above, quotation about “house.”A mass of extremely interesting, lively, naïve (fresh) matter which introduces philosophy and is replaced in the exposi- tions by scholasticism, by the result without movement, etc. Clericalism killed what was living in Aristotle and perpetuated what was dead. “But man and horse, etc., exist as individ- uals, a universal for itself does not exist as an individual substance, but only as a whole composed of a definite concept and
definite matter” (p. 125, Book 7, Chapter 10, 27-28). Ibidem, p. 126, §§ 32-33: ...“Matter is in itself unknowable. Some matter is sensible and some intelligible; sensible, such as bronze and wood, in a word, all movable matter; intelligible, that which is present in sensible things not qua sensible, e.g., the objects of mathe-				Philosophy is often divert- ed by the definition of words, etc. Every- thing, all categories are affected
matics....” Highly characteristic and profoundly in- teresting (in the beginning of the Meta- physics) are the polemic with Plato and the “puzzling” questions, delightful for their naïveté, and Bedenken regarding the nonsense of idealism. And all this along with the most helpless confusion about the fundamental, the concept and the particular. NB: At the beginning of The Metaphysics the stubborn struggle against Her- aclitus, against his idea of the identity of Being and not-Being (the Greek philos- ophers approached close to dialectics but could not cope with it). Highly character- istic in general, throughout the whole book, passim, are the living germs of dialectics and inquiries about it.... In Aristotle, objective logic is every- where confused with subjective logic and, moreover, in such a way that everywhere objective logic is visible. There is no doubt as to the objectivity of cognition. There is a naïve faith in the power of reason, in the force, power, objective truth of cognition. And a naïve confusion, a helplessly pitiful confusion in the dia- lectics of the universal and the par- ticular—of the concept and the sensuously perceptible reality of individual objects, things, phenomena. Scholasticism and clericalism took what was dead in Aristotle, but not what was living; the inquiries, the search- ings, the labyrinth, in which man lost his way. Aristotle’s logic is an inquiry, a search- ing, an approach to the logic of Hegel— and it, the logic of Aristotle (who every- where, at every step, raises precisely the question of dialectics), has been made into a dead scholasticism by reject- ing all the searchings, waverings and modes of framing questions. What the Greeks had was precisely modes of framing ques- tions, as it were tentative systems, a naïve discordance of views, excellently reflected in Aristotle.

...“Hence it is clear that no universal exists next to and in separation from its particulars. The exponents of the Forms are partly right in their account when they make the Forms separate; for the Forms are particular substances, but they are
wrong in considering the one-over-many
as form. The reason for this is that they cannot explain what are the imperishable substances of this kind which exist beside and outside particular sensible substances; so they make the forms the same in kind as				!
perishable things (for these we know); i.e.,
they make Ideal Man and Ideal Horse, add- ing the word ‘Ideal’ to the names of sensible things # (p. 136, Book 7, Ch. 16, § 8-12) #.				!
However, I presume that even if we had never seen the stars, nonetheless there would be eternal substances besides those
which we knew; and so in the present case even if we cannot apprehend what they are, still they must be in existence. It is
clear, then, both that no universal term is particular substance and that no par- ticular substance is composed of particular substances (ούσία)” (— § 13 at the end of the chapter). Delightful! There are no doubts of the reality of the external world. The man gets into a muddle precisely over the dialectics of the universal and the par- ticular, of concept and sensation, etc., of essence and phenomenon, etc. (P. 146, Book 8—can it have been inserted afterwards?—Chapter 5, § 2-3). ...“There is a difficulty in the question (άπορία) how the matter of the individual
is related to the contraries. For example, if the body is potentially (δυνάμει) healthy, and the contrary of health is disease, is not the body potentially both healthy and diseased?...				NB
...“Further, is not the living man poten- tially (δυνάμει) dead?” (P. 481), Book 11, Chapter 1, § 12-14: ...“They” (the philosophers) “posit the objects of mathematics as intermediate be-
tween the Forms and sensible things, as a third class besides the Forms and the things of our world. But there is no third man or horse besides the Ideal one and the particulars. If on the other hand it is not as they make out, what sort of ob- jects are we to suppose to be the concern of the mathematician? Not surely the things of our world; for none of these is of the kind which the mathematical sciences in- vestigate....”
Ibidem, Chapter 2, § 21-23: ...“Again, is there anything besides the concrete whole (I mean by this matter and the material) or not? If not, all things are perishable, at least everything mate- rial is perishable; but if there is something, it must be the form or shape. It is hard to determine in what cases this is possible and in what it is not....” Pp. 185-186, Book 11, Chapter 3, § 12— mathematics sets aside heat, weight and other “sensible contrarieties,” and has in mind “only quantity”... “it is the same with regard to Being.”

Here we have the point of view of dialectical materialism, but accidental- ly, not consistently, not elaborated, in passing.

Windelband in his sketch of the history

of ancient philosophy (Müller’s Handbuch

der klassisehen Altertums-wissensehaft,

V, I, S. 265) (Reading room of the Bern Li-

brary) stresses that in Aristotle’s logic

(die Logik) “has as its most general pre-

mise the identity of the forms of thought

with those of Being,” and he quotes Metaph-

ysik, V, 7: “δσαχώς λέγεται τοσαχώς

τό εϊναι σημαίνει.” That is § 4. Schwegler

translates it: “Denn so vielfach die Ka-

tegorien ausgesagt werden, so vielfach be-

zeichnen sie em Sein.” A bad translation.

An approach to God:

Book 12, Chapter 6, § 10-11:

...“For how can there be motion if there

is no actual cause? Wood will not move

itself—carpentry must act upon it; nor

will the menses or the earth move them-

selves—the seeds must act upon the earth,

and the semen on the menses....”

Leucippus (idem, § 14) accepts eternal

motion, but he does not explain why

(§ 11).

Chapter 7, § 11-19—God (p. 213).

...“Eternal motion must be excited by

something ... eternal” (Chapter 8, § 4)...

Book 12, Chapter 10—again a

“re-examination” of the fundamental ques-

tions of philosophy; “interrogation marks,”

so to speak. A very fresh, naïve, doubting

exposition (often hints) of various points

of view.

In Book 13 Aristotle again returns

to a criticism of Pythagoras’ theory of

numbers (and Plato’s theory of ideas),

independent of sensible things.

[[ Primitive idealism: the universal (con- cept, idea) is a particular being. This appears wild, monstrously (more accu- rately, childishly) stupid. But is not modern idealism, Kant, Hegel, the idea of God, of the same nature. (absolutely of the same nature)? Tables, chairs and the ideas of table and chair; the world and the idea of the world (God); thing and “noumen,” the unknowable “Thing- in-itself”; the connection of the earth and the sun, nature in general—and law, λόγος, God. The dichotomy of human knowledge and the possibility of idealism (= religion) are given already in the first, elemen- tary abstraction “house” in general and particular houses				NB NB
The approach of the (human) mind to a particular thing, the taking of a copy (= a concept) of it is not a simple, immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one which is complex, split into two, zig-zag- like, which includes in it the possibility of the flight of fantasy from life; more than that: the possibility of the transfor- mation (moreover, an unnoticeable trans- formation, of which man is unaware) of the abstract concept, idea, into a fantasy (in letzter Instanz = God). For even in the simplest generalisation, in the most elementary general idea (“table” in gen- eral), there is a certain bit of fantasy. (Vice versa: it would be stupid to deny the role of fantasy, even in the strictest science: cf. Pisarev on useful dreaming, as an impulse to work, and on empty day- dreaming.) Naïve expression of the “difficulties” of the “philosophy of mathematics” (to use modern language): Book 13, Chapter 2, § 23: ...“Further, body is a kind of substance, since it already in some sense possesses completeness; but in what sense are lines substances? They could not be that, neither as form or shape as, for instance, the soul, nor as matter, like the body; for it does not appear that anything can be composed either of lines or of planes or of points....” (p. 224) Book 13, Chapter 3 solves these dif- ficulties excellently, distinctly, clearly, materialistically (mathematics and other sciences abstract one of the aspects of a body, phenomenon, life). But the au- thor does not consistently maintain this point of view. Schwegler in his commentary (Vol. IV, p. 303) says: Aristotle gives here a positive
exposition of “his view of the mathemat- ical: the mathematical is the abstraction from the sensuous.”				NB
Book 13, Chapter 10 touches on the ques- tion, which is better expounded by Schweg- ler in the commentary (in connection with Metaphysik VII, 13, 5): science is con- cerned only with the universal (cf. Book 13, Chapter 10, § 6), but only the particular is actual (substantial). Does that mean that there is a gulf between science and real- ity? Does it mean that Being and thought are incommensurable? “Is true knowledge of reality impossible?” (Schwegler, Vol. IV, p. 338.) Aristotle answers: potentially knowledge is directed to the universal, actually it is directed to the particular. Schwegler (ibidem) describes as höchst
beachtenswert F. Fischer’s work: DieMetaphysik, von empirischem Standpunkte aus dargestellt [year of publication (1847)], who speaks of Aristotle’s “realism.”				NB?
Book 14, Chapter 3, § 7: ...“why is it that while the mathematical is in no way present in sensible things, its attributes are pres- ent in sensible things?”... (p. 254) (The last sentence of the book, Book 14, Chapter 6, § 21, has the same meaning.)

End of The Metaphysics

Friedrich Fischer (1801-1853), Professor of philosophy in Basle. An article about him by Prantl (Allgemeine Deutsche Bio- graphie, Vol. 7, p. 67) gives a disparag-
ing account of him and says that “through a complete rejection of subjective idealism he nearly fell into the opposite extreme of an un-ideal empiricism.”				ha-ha!!!

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