Philosophy 814

ARISTOTLES METAPHYSICS

Robert Sokolowski

School of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America
2014

ARISTOTLES METAPHYSICS
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
1. The text as we have it. There are 14 books:
I
II
III
IV
V
VI

VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV

introduction & history of the problem

extraneous? Another introduction?
aporiae
science of being as being; speech & logic; contradiction
lexicon? The many ways things are said.
four ways being is said: (1) accidental; (2) true; (3) categories; (4) potential & actual;
Aristotle then goes on in E to treat (1) the accidental and (2) the true.
now he treats (3) the categories of predication & substance; ch 17 starts his own doctrine
continues with categories, substance, unity because of potential-actual;
he now treats (4) the potential-actual. Chapter 10 goes back to the true.
unity, one
chapters 1-8: reprise of %; chapters 9-12 deal with topics in physics, excerpts from Physics
general handbook of first philosophy; theology; prime mover.
critique of Plato, Platonism, Pythagoreans, separation, numbers, ideas
critique of Plato, Platonism, Pythagoreans, separation, numbers, ideas.

In the logic of this sequence, there seem to be problems with: , , and ; some people find problems with
% and are rather clearly well-formed wholes.
are quite continuous, and they fit nicely with I and M-N as well.
Burnyeat has a very interesting story as to how might have been written and inserted into the work. The work is
a search for wisdom and knowing for its own sake. It aims at a knowledge of the divine, it goes beyond
physics, it differentiates itself especially from Plato and Platonists, but also from the materialists, it deals not
only with separate substance but also with being as being and with predication and truth.
2. The name: ta meta ta physika, The beyond the physicals.
contrast this with a possible ta meta ta mathmatica that would be appropriate for a Platonist (Burnyeat)
see Ross, I: xxxii. The oldest extant list of Aristotles works, that of Diogenes Laertius (c. 200-250 AD), does not
mention this name, but may mention . (Diogenes list is probably based on a list of Hermippus, c. 200 BC).
The actual name appears first in Nicolaus of Damascus in the time of Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). The name is
often said to have been established by Andronicus of Rhodes when he made an edition of Aristotles works in
about 60 BC. (Recall that Aristotles dates are 384-322 BC).
Three possible meanings are generally suggested:
a. that which is studied after you have studied physical things, or things that are by nature;
b. the mere location of the book in the edition; it comes after the physical treatises;
c. the objects studied in this science are somehow beyond or after those that are studied in
the physics, they are beyond nature. (Is natural being the last thing there is to study?)

[time]
[place]
[substance]

3. A hermeneutical remark by Henry James, from his preface to The Wings of the Dove:
Attention of perusal, I thus confess by the way, is what I at every point, as well as here, absolutely invoke and
take for granted; a truth I avail myself of this occasion to note once for all. . . . The enjoyment of a work of art,
the acceptance of an irresistible illusion, constituting, to my sense, our highest experience of luxury, the luxury
is not greatest, by my consequent measure, when the work asks for as little attention as possible. It is greatest, it
is delightfully, divinely great, when we feel the surface, like the thick ice of the skaters pond, bear without
cracking the strongest pressure we throw on it. The sound of the crack one may recognize, but never surely to
call it luxury.

A major problem regarding the topic of this work is that being and the question of being are not demarcated against
anything else. There is nothing behind being and there is nothing against which it can be contrasted. Being and
the question of being are not contrasted with anything. Being is not a genus. It is the ultimate backstop.
The question of being is demarcated against questions that deal with only a part of being, but this is not like a
demarcation (definition) among various parts. Language goes wild when you turn to the question of being. It
spins out of control. There is nothing to give it friction. It has to be adjusted into this new context.
There is a special problem in reading this book because what we are to read about is not clear (because it is
not demarcated); even the title is not certain. In reading most books we come with an anticipation of what
we are going to find out. Aristotles books on rhetoric, dialectics, generation and corruption, the motion of
animals, etc., are all demarcated by their titles. They are about this and not about that. We have a question
as we begin the book and we find an answer when we read it. But what are we going to study in the
metaphysics? In this book the question itself is obscure, as Heidegger has famously observed.
If we have any anticipation of the issue at all,
1. it is partly because it is a question that all men share (by nature, if not in fact)
2. but also partly because this book was written; we then inherit the form of the question that the book set in
motion in other minds; we recapitulate the question and answer that Aristotle set in motion. This motion
was carried, with some perturbation, to us. But most likely the question in motion was not and is not
exactly the original question Aristotle raised. For one thing, the Christian interpretation of the book stands
between Aristotle and us. We might wish to say:
for the Greeks the ultimate whole is cosmological,
for Christians the ultimate whole is theological,
for modernity the ultimate whole is anthropological.
So in reading the book we will try to find out why we should be reading it and what we should expect to find in
it. This is not to say that there is no possibility of raising the question apart from reading about it in texts of
philosophy, but in fact most of us wouldnt raise it, certainly not in this form, without having read such texts.
The book raises the most comprehensive question, which includes not only the whole of being but also the
questioner. Right at the beginning it questions the questioner as well as that which he is asking about. It raises the
issue of first philosophy, that beyond which there is no other. It examines the whole, to pan. This is a hard
questions; as David Hume says toward the end of his The Natural History of Religion, The whole is a riddle, an
enigma, an inexplicable mystery. But we need not follow Hume into skepticism.
We can get an intuitive sense of the comprehensive character of this study through the following consideration:
the principle of noncontradiction has to be treated in this book, by this science. This principle is the condition
for all thinking. Why cant this principle be treated in the Physics? Is it a natural process or somehow the
outcome or achievement of a natural process? To treat it in the Physics would be to reduce being to material
being and its natural processes, and to reduce thinking to that same dimension. Or perhaps it could be treated
in the De Anima; is it a part of rational psychology? Wouldnt this be to reduce it to psychology, and to
reduce logic to psychologism? The principle of noncontradiction has to do with being and not with material or
psychological being.
[If the physical world has to be transcended in meta-physics, perhaps the human soul serves as a bridge
between the physical and the metaphysical domains. Our thinking, after all, is part of our psychic life, but it
does reach beyond our psychic processes into truth; and truth comes to us from beyond.]

BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
It is interesting that the first chapter turns to the knower and to the process of knowing. There are three things that
one might turn to in the beginning of an investigation:
a. that which is known, the field of knowledge,
b. the science itself,
c. the person who knows.
In most of his treatises, Aristotle turns to what is known. In some he turns to the science itself; see the Topics, De
Anima, and the Rhetoric. In other works he does not turn to the person knowing, but in this work he does so at the
very beginning. He calls the person into question. The book is not only about being but also about the dative for the
manifestation of being. However,
Aristotle does not turn to something that could be called the subject in a modern sense, endowed with
certain a priori forms. This turn to the knower is not like the Cartesian attempt to show that there can be
such a thing as knowing, or to give his own history of how he came to know what he knows (Descartes
autobiographical sketch). It is neither critical nor anecdotal. Instead, Aristotle simply turns to what we
normally understand knowing to be, to what we take to be its features. The activity of knowing,
furthermore, is taken to become visible to us as a part of nature. Once having described the features of
knowing, Aristotle tries to establish the highest form of knowing, which he often enigmatically calls the
science that we are seeking.
980a21-27.

All men

on behalf of knowing

stretch out

.
by nature.

A sign of this is the love [they have] of the perceptions.

For beyond any need they are loved for themselves;
and more than the others that through the eyes. For not only that we may act but even without
wanting to do anything we choose seeing, as is generally said, beyond all the others.
The cause of this is that it of all the sensings most makes us to know/discover something and it manifests many
differences.
We will read the first sentence backward, from the end to the beginning: All men to know stretch out by nature.
physei: by nature; nature is what you are born (natus) to be. What is by nature is what is opposed to what is by
fabrication, custom, or force (techni, nomi, biai); both what is by nature and what is by custom, techn, and
force are parts of the world. To explain techn, nomos, and bia we must invoke a principle, a governor (arch)
from outside the thing, but if something is by nature then why it comes out this way is explained from within the
thing itself. The thing unfolds from within. You do not have to do anything to the thing, you let it run on its
own. You explain a seagull by its nature of being a seagull, not through a combination of processing
programs or laws and raw materials that somehow are really outside the thing in question. If you let man be
on his own, this is what he does. Its how he unfolds as a man. It is part of being human, part of the
manifestation of being human.
phusis:
phu:
phuomai:
phu:

to beget, bring forth, produce;

to be begotten, to grow up and unfold, to wax, spring up, arise, to be (passive)
form, stature.

Phusis is not just the process of changing or becoming, but the blossoming or the disclosure, the being, that
comes to be in the process. Phusis is thought to come from a Proto-Indo-European root (PIE) *bheu-, which
means be (the source of English be and the Latin fuit). It is not just natural process apart from being.
3

The context for first philosophy is something that comes about by nature in man, even though it leads to
what is beyond the natural things, the METAphysics. It is natural for man to transcend nature through
knowing (I think the claim can be made that the activity of knowing or intellecting is not a natural
process, not something automatic, and not a natural generation and corruption; it involves a kind of
initiative that is not just cosmic or cosmological in the sense of physiological reality). At this point,
however, we have not gotten to anything that transcends nature. We only say that it is natural to man to
want to know things.
If this inquiry into things comes about by nature in man, it does not require a break with tradition or a
story about an invention, or a fabrication, or a protestation against something, to establish the science.
It is not essentially a critique. The activity of knowing has a place in nature. This is a big difference
between Aristotle and modernity; for him, knowing and philosophy are unfoldings of what we are.
desire: oregontai: oreg: to reach, stretch out; in the middle and passive voice, to stretch oneself out, lean over (I
stretch me out). Note the latent spatial metaphor. Without planning all men stretch out, exert themselves,
bestir themselves, yearn for this. The verb takes the genitive.
tou eidenai: on behalf of knowing.
eidenai is the perfect infinitive active form of eid, I see, but eid is an irregular verb
the active present tense (eid) is not used in Greek; instead, the word ora is used in Greek to say I see.
the perfect tense of eid, oida, literally means, I have seen. This perfect tense is used in Greek to mean, I
know. This is an elegant shift of meaning; it implies, I have seen, and therefore I know. When a speaker
wanted to say, I know, he would literally say, I have seen.
and what we have here is the perfect active infinitive, which signifies to know
However, knowing here does not signify science as such; it simply means to have looks, to know this
and that, to pick up knowings. All men by nature are curious and want to know things.
The PIE stem of oida is Fid (the first consonant being the wau), the same stem as for the Latin video, to see.
All men spontaneously, by nature, stretch out to have looks, to pick up knowings. This is the horizon for
metaphysics: knowing is an unquestionable good that we see all men enjoy for its own sake. They enjoy
knowing from within; they desire knowledge for itself, not just to cope with problems. Metaphysics will
work out this tendency, to want to know for its own sake, to the fullest. However, Aristotle is not saying
that all men want to know first philosophy. They simply want to know things.
Of course, what people want to know differs greatly. The desire to know can degenerate into mere
curiosity, as television news programs and supermarket magazines show. Why do so many people want to
know the latest celebrity gossip or the latest information about sports? It is their way of unfolding the desire
to know, just to be in the know. Its the best they can do as participants in the theoretic life.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, the well-being of action (praxis) is described, here the well-being of knowledge.
Note that metaphysics will not only describe this well-being of knowledge but will actually achieve it (even
though there will be a lot of aporiae left in our knowledge); in this respect it is different from the Ethics, since
simply reading the Ethics will not make us good; we have to act to become good.
note that Aristotle says all men, not man as a species; the distributive is emphasized; everybody wants
to know, we all want to know.

this brings us to the elegant conclusion of this introductory passage, in which Aristotle plays off sign and cause:
A. smeion: a sign. Not a proof why, but a sign of something, as wet streets are a sign that it has rained. Our love
of perceiving is a sign that all men want to know (this shows that eidenai is very general not limited to science)
love of perceptions: aisthsen: we love our perceptions. Aisthsis is not the picking up of sense data, but
achieving a general impression, such as my perception of Washington, DC. We perceive an articulated whole,
not a flash of color or a burst of sound; we take it in.
for they, the perceptions, are loved beyond any use, loved through themselves, dihautas: we can love
many things through (dia) others: I love my desk through something else because I love it for the
use I make of it. But sensings are loved just in and for the perceivings.
Aristotle intensifies his point: and more than the others, that through the eyes. I.e. the perceiving
through the eyes. For not only in order that we act, but even when not wanting to do anything
we prefer seeing. We want, for example, to watch TV just to keep on looking (in contrast to the
radio, where we often listen only marginally and do something else). Thus, even in ordinary life we do
some things for themselves, and we want to know some things just for the sake of knowing. Watching
TV sitcoms is done for its own sake, as opposed to watching the weather reports.
B. why is seeing preferable? aition: the reason, what is responsible for this:
1. This one of the senses most makes us know something, makes us become acquainted with things;
2. and it manifests many differences. dloi, from dlo: makes visible, manifests, shows, exhibits,
discloses, reveals: sight makes many differences appear.
a. Not necessarily in terms of how many discriminations are possible, but in terms of a variegated whole:
you have more variety while yet seeing one thing: more slants, a more intensive identity-synthesis.
b. Note how this is an aition: you may have known beforehand that we prefer sight, but now you know
why. (This cause is for seeing, but can be expanded for knowing.)
Right in the first sentence of the book, and throughout the first chapter, Aristotle tells us that nature includes
such a thing as knowing. There are not only things, but the knowing of things. In the Physics we saw that there
were entities and natural processes; in this book, which comes after the physicals, we continue to think about
natural entities but we examine them in their being known, being defined, being named, and not in their natural
processes merely. Things or entities are one not just in regard to substantial and other changes, but also in
their intelligibility, their being known or being knowable, which is something that is good in itself.
In the rest of Chapter 1, Aristotle shows how a hierarchy of forms of awareness arises, from an animal level to the
highest human knowing. The main point that is emphasized in this sequence is the fact that at crucial points there are
forms of knowing that are desired for their own sake. This occurs even on the level of perception. The hierarchy is
as follows. Here, as elsewhere in his works, Aristotle argues by means of an array:
1.
2.
3-4: PIVOTAL 3.
DISTINCTION 4.

5.
6.

perception, especially sight. Out of many such perceptions comes:

memory: it makes animals more intelligent & able to learn;
+ when hearing is added, the animal becomes teachable;
empeiria emerges out of many memories; then, out of empeiria comes:
techn; not just know-how; now, you can see the common form; you know the cause; you are
able to teach others by conveying the reason or cause; and there can be:
techn about necessary things
about pastimes [these are more admired because they are freer]
about things neither necessary nor entertaining: the pure knowing; this is equivalent to:
science, epistm, in which you know causes
sophia, wisdom: science about certain ultimate causes & principles; [note that wisdom isnt
more and more science, but something different; Hobbes says it is just much science].
5

980a27-b28;
we go through these stages in more detail:
Animals have sensation physi, by nature: By nature animals are born having sensation, and from this memory
does not come about (emerge, eggignetai) for some of them, while it does come about for others.
Those with memory are
a. phronimtera, more intelligent;
b. mathtiktera, more capable of learning than those that are not able to remember.
Mnm itself means a remembering, a remembrance; this is what is meant here; but it can also mean the
power of remembering.
a further distinction; you can have (a) intelligence without having (b) ability to be taught. Bees are intelligent but
dont learn; memories are needed for both (a) and (b), but hearing sounds, tn psophn akouein, is needed for
learning, i.e. being taught: manthanein.
For this, sound is more important than what we see; sound makes us vulnerable to others who can call us. No
one can make us look (we have to turn and look, we have to open our eyes; vision rests more on our own
initiative), but sound covers distance and makes us capable of being called and taught. We are patients; we
speak along with the one who is commanding. The initiative is elsewhere, whereas the initiative in vision is in
us. Being taught is being led. (If we lose the power of hearing we become more impervious to others: there is a
painful isolation in deafness.)
then a new factor is introduced: empeiria: the result of a sum of perceptions. It is not just the sum itself. In empeiria
one thing is known, not just an accumulation. A new one arises. For example, we know how to handle snakes
or deal with stomach aches. We dont yet reach a real universal that is exactly the same for all, but we do
generalize in a rather concrete way. Animals have little of this, but they have some (mikron). Men have a lot, and
they also have techn and logismos. (Note that phantasia is used here in place of aisthsis: animals live by
phantasiais and remembrances.)
But the race (genos) of men lives also by techni and by thinkings [logismois]. This emerges out of empeiria.
Logismos means reasoning in general, which covers all the forms of thinking that come in from this point on, the
forms that require calculation or categorial composition.
Note how Aristotle defines man by contrasting him with the animals, not by analyzing the development of
consciousness in itself or by turning to introspection.
980b28-981a12. Now we turn from animals in general to man specifically.
EMPEIRIA
Empeiria emerges for men out of remembering; for many rememberings of the same thing bring about the
ability of one empeiria.
An empeiria is a single state or disposition: how to handle snakes, how to handle trout, how to cook souffls.
We could call empeiria know-how. It is one power, one knowledge, not an accumulation of memories or
impressions; a new power of identification, a new identity synthesis. Furthermore, it has an object or a target, it
is an empeiria OF the thing known.
It almost seems that empeiria is similar to science and techn, but science and techn come to men through
empeiria.
Again, a further congelation of awareness. One man can have one and not the other: one person has the
know-how, another the science. Through all these the stretching out to know is at work.

Polus says: Empeiria brings about techn, inexperience brings about chance.
TECHN
techn emerges when from many thinkings of the one empeiria there arises one hypolpsis, one assumption,
conviction, anticipation, one taking up that is universal and holds for a lot of similar instances.
the last sentence shows the difference between (a) an empeiria-hypolpsis and (b) a techn-hypolpsis.
Empeiria involves knowing a lot of thats; it works in a mass of similars (I once took this for an upset
stomach and it worked, so I do it all the time now and it generally works). Techn, in contrast, knows the
cases are not just similars but are identifiable according to one eidos: they now become seen as cases or
instances of this one kind. You get to know the kind: all the instances are kat eidos hen. You move from
just seeing similars to seeing a mass of instances, seen as instances of an eidos: all people with peptic
ulcers. You achieve a deeper identity synthesis.
981a12-24
as far as doing things goes, empeiria is as good as techn, and even better. It is better to have empeiria without
techn than to have logos without empeiria. A doctor who never practices has logos but no empeiria and cannot
handle the sick person in front of him. The reason (aition) for this: acting and bringing things about deal with
particular things, not with universals.
981a24-b6
nonetheless, we say the man of techn knows (eidenai he has seen) and understands (epaiein) more than the man
of empeiria. Like a great automobile mechanic and cars. He is sophteros: it seems sophia comes with
knowledge, not with knack and know-how. This distinction between empeiria and techn is known to common
opinion, and Aristotle is confirming it.
Why does wisdom come with techn but not empeiria? Because those with techn know the aitia, the causes,
and those with empeiria do not. These only know that (hoti), those know why (dioti). To know that is to
know just the phenomenon, but to know why is to know what is going on and to know its causes (for instance,
the difference between just knowing economic facts and knowing economic reasons; many people know that
there is inflation, but not all know why or even what it really is). To know why is also to know what and why.
But it is possible to know the that without knowing the why or the what. The intermediate state of knowing,
knowing only that without knowing why is an important phenomenon. Aristotle treats the difference between
knowing that and knowing why in Posterior Analytics II 1-2.
compares master craftsmen (architektonas) with handworkers (cheirotekneis) in regard to knowing causes.
Handworkers are like soulless things, apsucha, they work as fire works, somewhat mechanically, but with
this difference: fire heats by nature, but workers work diethos, through a settled state of the soul, habit, the
result of earlier acts. They have to become habituated to what they do, but they dont know why they do it.
981b7-13
a sign, smeion of knowing and not knowing: the ability to teach, to make another enter the same state. Techn and
empeiria differ on this. Someone who only has know-how cannot easily teach, because all he can really say is,
Watch me and do as I do. He cannot explain, give reasons, for what he is doing. Also, the senses, which are the
elements for empeiria, have no wisdom because they never give the why. (Again, the senses furnish not mere simple
sense data but the thats that you get by perception.)
[perhaps: the reason why techn can teach is that it does grasp a new one in what it knows, and this grasp is
made possible by language, by naming. Language then also makes it possible to teach what is grasped, to let the
same one become visible to someone else. If this is so, then we have provided a why for the that that
those with techn can teach while those only with empeiria cannot. Those with empeiria would not be able to
name or identify what language makes possible to identify.]

Thus, Aristotle brings us to see the inner state of knowledge as the best and most crucial element. He
goes through the lower states to get to this one. Note the strategic, pivotal place of techn; techn
introduces logos into the foundation provided by sensation, memory, and empeiria; techn already begins to
show signs of wisdom. These are all differentiations of stretching-out-to-know.
981b13-25 WE NOW SUBDIVIDE TECHN
First sentence speaks about some minds emerging as different from others, standing out: Someone who FINDS
(heuronta) a techn that goes beyond the koinas aisthseis, common perceptions, which everybody has and which do
not distinguish anyone. This man was wondered at, thaumazesthai, by other men; he stands out as wonderful. Not
just because of pragmatic use, but because of being sophos, wise, and differing from others. This is the first form of
the emergence and presence of mind; the differentiation of mind. It is something to be admired in itself.
Aristotle accepts the common admiration of reason that arises spontaneously among men. He does not think he
must reject common opinion or common evaluations. He describes them and shows what is going on in them.
such establishment, emergence, takes place without causes; it is more of a self-creation than other human
actions. It is more than developing muscles or learning a skill. There is a rather mysterious beginning here.
It involves more self-generated motion than other human achievements (though obviously it is not absolute:
you need a brain and nervous system, language, and other people). It is for its own sake. Such a person has
authority not by office or tradition, but because of what he can say.
Aristotle turns from the knower to those who admire him. They identify the knowers power of
identification and discovery. They identify his power of identification. And Aristotle as a philosopher
identifies their identification of him, as well as the knowers own power of identification (always
accompanied by differentiation, of course). Note the difference between Aristotle and Machiavelli, who
wants to be the inventor or discoverer himself. Note how Aristotle takes common opinion seriously, he
accepts it and the phenomena that it discloses.
still further progress is made: more arts are developed, and each time the inventor is considered wiser than
other men, and the inventors of the non-necessary arts, the arts of entertainment or the free arts, are esteemed
higher still. There seems to be a natural recognition by men generally of the good that is present in knowledge
for its own sake, free knowledge. Freedom here is in the realm of arts dedicated to pastime leisure, free from
necessity. Note how techn is here giving way to useless knowledge.
then a still further step, (c), is added:
a. necessary arts;
b. pastime arts;
c. knowledge neither for necessity nor for entertainment.
This third level occurs in places (topoi) where men have leisure. The example he gives: the mathematical
technai, say, to measure fields after floods (not sciences) were constituted, came to be, originated, because of the
leisure of the priestly class in Egypt. [They had time for research.]
[Medieval monastic communities may have played a similar role. COMMENT: in general, free theoretical
thinking opens up new practical possibilities: Frege wanted something theoretical with his logic, but it
turned out to be the foundation for computer languages; electricity was discovered out of theoretical
curiosity, not to illuminate the darkness. It is not the case that human need provokes discovery; rather,
theoretical discovery opens up new practical possibilities.]
this sort of thing happens generally, by nature: get enough men and get these conditions and this will come to pass.

the free sciences: neither necessity nor pleasure. No subordination whatsoever to anything more, just the truth and
nothing but the truth.
free science allows the precisions and differences, the discriminations, proper to the thing itself to become manifest,
not the properties useful for something else.

981b25-982a3
In the Ethics we spoke of differences between techn and science; why do we make a logos about this now?
Because all agree that what is named wisdom is about the first causes (aitia) and the principles (archai).
then he retraces, in the last sentence, the development of knowledge: the empeiros appears (dokei) wiser than
those that have perception, the man of techn wiser than the empeiros, the architect than the handworker, and the
theoretical than the productive scientist. Now it is clear (dlon) that wisdom is a science (epistm) about
certain (tines) archas and aitias.
arch: power, command, beginning, origin. Arch, archein: to begin, make a beginning, to lead, rule, govern.
Wisdom will study this: it will disclose what governs ultimately.
aitia: causes; aitios: the one responsible, the guilty party, the one who brought this about. aition: the cause. Now
we examine what kind of causes.