Aristotles Rational Empiricism: a Goethean

Interpretation of Aristotles Theory of Knowledge

Jakob Ziguras

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement

for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
The University of Sydney
2010

Abstract

This thesis offers an interpretation of Aristotles theory of scientific knowledge, particularly as this is
presented in the Posterior Analytics. The interpretation draws on the theory of knowledge and
philosophy of science informing the scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is argued that
the interpretation of Aristotle as a rational empiricist in the Goethean sense helps to resolve many
central problems in Aristotles theory of scientific knowledge. The widely accepted view that Aristotle
is torn between incompatible empiricist and rationalist tendencies is describe; particularly in relation to
the problems associated with the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction, and of nou`~ as an a priori
intellectual intuition. Aristotles position is shown to be fully coherent when interpretated in terms of a
theory of knowledge that transcends the opposition between empiricism and rationalism. Goethes
rational empiricism is described and is shown to be precisely the theory of knowledge needed to
understand Aristotle. A Goethean account of Aristotles theory of knowledge is given, focusing on the
nature and role of the ajrcaiv that serve as the first principles of Aristotelian science. It is argued that
Aristotles ajrcaiv are best understood as Urphnomene in the Goethean sense. A detailed interpretation
is given of Aristotles concept of nou`~ in relation to his theory of knowledge. Aristotles account of the
cognitive process in Posterior Analytics 2.19 is analysed, the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction
is criticized and an alternative account is offered. Finally, an account of Aristotles conception of
scientific method is presented, and it is argued that, contrary to some interpretations, the Posterior
Analytics does contain a general account of the method of scientific discovery.

Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family and to my partner
Katarzyna Wajerowska, for their support through the long and often difficult process of
writing this thesis. I would like to thank my supervisor at the University of Sydney, Associate
Professor Rick Benitez, for his helpful and perceptive comments on my various drafts. He has
helped me to shape an initially very vague whole into something approaching a complete and
articulate whole. I would also like to thank my associate supervisor, Emeritus Professor Paul
Crittenden, who has generously been willing to read and comment on earlier and much
rougher versions of this work. I thank my longtime friends Luke Fischer and John Nijjem for
providing me with a true sense of artistic and intellectual community over many years of
stimulating philosophical discussion. I am also grateful to Luke Fischer for his help in tracking
down various references in the German editions of Goethes work, a task made difficult by the
fact that I have only begun to study German. I also thank the many authors whose works have
inspired and contributed to this thesis and have helped me to reach a far deeper understanding
of Aristotles thought than I could possibly have achieved alone. Whatever misunderstandings
remain, are my responsibility alone. Finally, I am also grateful to the University of Sydney for
providing me with three and a half years of funding on a UPA scholarship. Aristotle says that
philosophy needs leisure and I would not have had anywhere near as much free time to read
and think had it not been for the Universitys financial support. I also thank the examiners of
this thesis in advance for taking on the task of reading my work.

Note on the Greek and on Abbreviations Used

Translations from the Greek are my own if not otherwise indicated in the footnotes. In most
cases, I have used existing translations, altering them slightly when this was necessary to
better communicate the meaning of the original.The abbreviations referring to relevant
German editions of Goethes works are given in the bibliography. I have given the German
references of all Goethe quotes in the foonotes, thus enabling readers with German to go
directly to the original sources instead of relying on the particular English translations I have
used. Citations from Aristotles works use the following conventions: I cite the full title in the
text; while in the footnotes I give the abbreviated title, followed by the book, chapter, and
Bekker page, column and line numbers. The abbreviations used are as follows:
APo.
APr.
Cael.
DA
EE
EN
GC
HA
Insomn.
Int.
Mem.
Met.
Mete.
PA
Ph.
Poet.
Pr.
Prt.
Sens.

Posterior Analytics
Prior Analytics
On the Heavens
On the Soul
Eudemian Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
On Generation and Corruption
History of Animals
On Dreams
On Interpretation
On Memory and Recollection
Metaphysics
Meteorology
On the Parts of Animals
Physics
Poetics
Problems
Protrepticus
On Sense and Sensibilia

Contents
Abstract 3
Acknowledgements 4
Note on the Greek and on Abbreviations Used 5

Introduction 8
i. Preliminary Considerations 8
ii. Methodological Issues 13
iii. Broader Philosophical Concerns Relevant to the Thesis 15

Chapter 1. Rationalism vs Empiricism in the Posterior Analytics 19

Chapter 2. Goethe and Rational Empiricism 43

2.1 Introduction 43
2.2 Goethes Rational Empiricism 44
2.3 Goethes Scientific Method 55
2.4 Goethe and the Transformation of the Scientist 72
2.5 Goethe and Limits of Human Knowledge 77
2.6 Knowledge as the Perfection of Nature 85
Chapter 3. The Meaning of ejpisthvmh and the Need for ajrcaiv 88
3.1 Introduction 88
3.2 Aristotles Conception of Scientific Knowledge 92
Chapter 4. The Meaning of nou`~ 110
4.1 Introduction 110
4.2 Nou`~ as Pure Activity and as Self-Knowledge 115
4.3 Nou`~ and the Ontological Context of the Cognitive Process

121

4.4 The Simplicity of Divine Thinking and the Concept of ajiwvn 127
6

4.5 Living Thinking: novhsi~ as zwhv 132

4.6 Simplicity and Indivisibility 133
4.7 The Goethean Conception of Oneness 136
4.8 Time, Indivisibility and Gods Knowledge of oujsivai 141
4.9 Novhsi~, Unity and Wholeness in Relation to Consciousness 145
4.10 Finitude and Perfection 147
4.11 Being and Becoming 151
4.12 The Meaning of nou`~ in Earlier Greek Thought 152
4.13 Kurt von Fritz on Nou`~ in Homer and the Pre-Socratics 154

Chapter 5. Aristotles Account of the Cognitive Process in Posterior Analytics 2.19 167
5.1 Introduction 167
5.2 The Meaning of e{xi~ 167
5.3 The Role of Perception in the Cognitive Process 173
5.4 The Role of fantasiva in the Cognitive Process 178
5.5 Experience as the Mediator Between Object and Subject 181
5.6 The Meaning of ejpagwghv 190
5.7 From Seeing to Seeing: From ejpagwghv to nou`~ 199

Chapter 6. Aristotles Conception of Scientific Method 204

6.1 Introduction 204
6.2 Understanding and Discovery 205
6.3 Posterior Analytics 2.19 or Physics 1.1? 216
6.4 From the Vague to the Complete Whole 225
6.5 The Dialectical Interpretation of Aristotles Scientific Method 234
Conclusion 239
Bibliography 247
7

Introduction
i. Preliminary Considerations
This thesis presents a Goethean interpretation of Aristotles theory of knowledge and
philosophy of science, with particular focus on the Posterior Analytics. By a Goethean
interpretation I mean one deriving from the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science
informing the scientific work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I argue that Aristotle is a
rational empiricist, a term used by Schiller to characterize Goethes approach to the study of
nature.
While the pairing of these two giants of Western culture would not seem out of place in a
literary study of, for example, the impact on Goethe of Aristotles Poetics,1 in a philosophical
work it may raise some eyebrows, especially since I am using Goethe to interpret Aristotle.
Goethe wrote no philosophical works strictly speaking and certainly no interpretations of
Aristotle; hence there is little prospect of explaining the similarity of their views on the basis
of Goethes limited study of Aristotle.2 What then are the motivations behind this study? This
is the question to which I will sketch an answer in this introduction. I will do this in two parts.
Firstly I will discuss the genesis of my theme briefly and discuss the more specific issues to
which this thesis responds, as well as presenting a general outline of my argument. Secondly, I
will mention briefly certain methodological issues.
My initial intention was to write about the relationship between Aristotles theology and his
theory of knowledge. As I became more familiar with Aristotle and the literature on his work,
I began to see links between Aristotle and the Goethean tradition, with which I was already
somewhat familiar. I also came across a few scholars of Goethes scientific work who note a
similarity between Aristotle and Goethe. Henri Bortoft, for example, writes,

A very recent study by Ellwood Wiggins does just this. Cf. Ellwood Wiggins, Dramas of Knowledge: The
Fortunate Event of Recognition, Goethe Yearbook 17 (2010), pp. 203-222. Wiggins argues that Goethes
significant description of his meeting with Schiller in 1794 shows the explicit influence of Aristotles Poetics. As
Wiggins puts it (p. 204): The structure of this narrative as Goethe frames it in Glckliches Ereignis bears a
striking resemblance to the classical drama of reversal and recognition as described by Aristotle.
2
This thesis is not an examination of Aristotles influence on Goethe, although this would be a fascinating topic
in itself. If there were some significant influence, I could argue that Aristotle is a rational empiricist, because
rational empiricism is in certain regards Aristotelianism under a different name. However, the direct influence of
Aristotles writings on Goethe seems slight, and there is certainly nothing in Goethes work like a sustained
philosophical interpretation of Aristotle, or for that matter any other philosopher. For a general examination of
Goethes relationship to Greek thought and culture see, Humphry Trevelyan, Goethe and the Greeks (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1942). Of course, in the case of a seminal thinker like Aristotle it is virtually
impossible to determine the extent of his indirect influence on Goethe.
8

Aristotle is usually thought of as an arch-rationalist who proceeded by deductive reasoning from

first principles. In fact, he was a master observer of nature. He was an experientialist but not an
empiricist, because he did not limit experience to the senses. On the other hand he was not an
analytical rationalist who limited the mind to logical thought and denied it the possibility of
experience through perceptive insight. His scientific work involved detailed sensory observation
and insight into what is not visible to the senses as such by what he called intuitive induction
. . . . Because Goethe worked by observation and intuition, it may well be that his way of science
can provide the kind of experience which is needed to understand this philosopher . . . 3

Jeffrey Barnouw also notes that Goethes conception of science is . . . strikingly

reminiscent of the epistemology and logic of science presented in Aristotles Posterior
Analytics.4 R. H. Stephenson writes that The tender empiricism which critics have ascribed
to Goethe in his scientific work turns out, in all probability, to be derived, directly or
indirectly, from Aristotle.5 Stephenson also speaks of Goethe assimilating Aristotles
intuitive induction to his own outlook.6 Finally, Hjalmar Hegge, argues that
Goethe is altogether closer . . . to the Aristotelian tradition in science than to the GalileanNewtonian. His view of induction recalls Aristotles intuitive induction, though Goethe has
also applied his view extensively in practical research, and at the same time formulated it more
precisely than did Aristotle on just this point.7

Nevertheless, these scholars do not go beyond such brief and intriguing statements. As I
continued my research I came to realize that there is nothing, at least in English, even
approaching a close philosophical study of the relationship between Goethe and Aristotle as
regards their theories of knowledge and science. As I shifted the focus of my research to the
Posterior Analytics I came to realize that many of the central problems involved in the
interpretation of Aristotles theory of knowledge and science are amenable to a Goethean
resolution. In other words, I came to believe that a Goethean approach can help to clarify deep
problems in the interpretation of Aristotle. This thesis is the first result of my attempt to
interpret Aristotle from a Goethean perspective.
Aristotles Posterior Analytics is difficult to categorise. It seems simultaneously to be work
of logic, philosophy of science and epistemology. I will be focused mostly on the
epistemological and philosophy of science aspects. The Posterior Analytics does not
present a fully articulated epistemology. Although it does contain crucial elements of
3

Henri Bortoft, The Wholeness of Nature: Goethes Way of Science (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 2007), p. 349.
Jeffrey Barnouw, Goethe and Helmholtz: Science and Sensation, in Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal,
ed. Frederick Amrine, Francis J. Zucker and Harvey Wheeler (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987), p. 54.
5
R. H. Stephenson, Goethes Conception of Knowledge and Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1995), p. 57.
6
Ibid., p. 57.
7
Hjalmar Hegge, Theory of Science in the Light of Goethes Science of Nature, in Goethe and the Sciences: A
Reappraisal, p. 213.
4

Aristotles theory of knowledge, it also presupposes a broad understanding of other aspects of

his philosophy. With Aristotle it is not possible to separate epistemology from ontology and
theology. Aristotles conception of knowledge differs from the mainstream contemporary
view not only in detail, but in its fundamental assumptions. Aristotle does not simply have a
different theory of knowledge (where knowledge means what it is typically taken to mean
today), but a different understanding of what knowledge is. Stated generally, for Aristotle,
knowledge in its primary sense is not a matter of believing in the right sort of representation of
reality. Rather, knowledge is a participation in the thing known. Aristotle has what might be
called a participatory conception of knowledge.8 As Charles Kahn writes:
The framework of modern epistemology, whether based upon a Cartesian concept of
consciousness or a Humean notion of belief, does not provide an adequate basis for
understanding Aristotles view of the radical cognitive distinction between sense and intellect,
and the interaction between the two in perceptual judgment and conceptual knowledge. . . .
Instead of systematically translating Aristotle into the terms and issues of contemporary
epistemology or philosophy of mind, we might be well advised to make sense of him in his own
terms, which are those of the ancient-medieval tradition, and to use this unfamiliar vantage point
to criticize our own assumptions inherited from the 17th century.9

Making sense of Aristotle in his own terms is difficult because the philosophical tradition to
a large extent obscures the experiential roots of Aristotles conception of scientific knowledge.
There is a broad tendency to interpret Aristotle as presenting a theory of knowledge in the
sense of a system of propositions involving reference to various explanatory entities (e.g.
nou`~) designed to account for scientific knowledge. This is certainly the case in relation to
contemporary philosophical interpretations of Aristotles science of nature. The Aristotelian
tradition of science is generally seen as having been utterly refuted by the modern scientific
revolution. Very few philosophers today have any sense of what an Aristotelian-style science
of nature would look like in practice. This strengthens the tendency to interpret Aristotles
science as a kind of speculative Naturphilosophie, historically significant no doubt, but
scientifically irrelevant.10 Hence, one can still find Aristotelian metaphysicians and moral and
political philosophers, and perhaps even a few Aristotelian philosophers of nature, but one
would be hard pressed to find any Aristotelian natural scientists.
Goethe is, in certain crucial ways, close to the ancient-medieval tradition both in his
8

For a discussion of the participatory conception in a Thomist context cf. Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of
Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 27: In short, the difference between the prevailing modern conception of
the self and that which we find in Thomas may be put in terms of a contrast between a subjectivist-observing
perspective and an objectivist-participant one.
9
Charles H. Kahn, The Role of Nous in the Cognition of First Principles in Posterior Analytics II 19, in
Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics, ed. Enrico Berti (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1981), p. 387.
10
This is precisely how Goethes science of nature has often been interpreted. Cf. Ronald H. Brady, The Idea in
Nature: Rereading Goethes Organics, in Goethes Way of Science: a Phenomenology of Nature, edited by
David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 83-84.
10

theory of knowledge and in his conception of the nature and goals of the science of nature.
Goethe, like Aristotle, has a participatory conception of knowledge. Goethes science of
nature has often been misunderstood because of a failure to grasp that he has a conception of
the nature and goals of science much closer to that of Aristotle than to anything in the
mainstream modern tradition. For this reason Goethe can help us make the difficult journey
into the Aristotelian Lebenswelt, and can help us to understand the phenomenological
character of Aristotles science of nature.
The idea that the central difficulties involved in understanding the Posterior Analytics
derive from the apparently incompatible rationalist and empiricist tendencies in the text is
widely represented in the literature. I argue that neither empiricism nor rationalism alone is
adequate to understanding Aristotles position and that the appearance of incoherence is a
result of the attempt to understand Aristotle through various dualisms inadequate to his
thought. As Joe Sachs writes, Much of Aristotles thinking involves finding a path that steers
between two alternatives that seem to exhaust the possible ways of understanding
something.11 The idea of finding a mean between extremes is a commonplace of Aristotles
ethics. I argue that a middle way between empiricism and rationalism needs to be found in the
epistemological context. There is in fact some awareness in the literature of the need for a
middle way. James D. Madden, for example, writes:
Whether Aristotle is an empiricist or rationalist is an interesting issue. My own inclination is that
he is neither in the traditional way of construing the distinction because it seems that knowledge
of the natural world is fundamentally dependent on rational principles, which themselves cannot
be divorced from experience.12

Similarly, Paulo C. Biondi writes:

Aristotle proposes a middle way. On the one hand, he is a through and through empiricist. We
learn through experience (ejmpeiriva, empeiria). There is no such thing as a priori knowledge. On
the other hand, he also avoids an extreme empiricism. The mind is not a passive recipient of
sense impressions but a creative, dynamic power that can make knowledge. Knowledge is born
of an interaction between the mind and the empirical world.13

However, such exceptions notwithstanding, a clear sense of what such a middle way would
involve is not widespread in the literature. I argue that the rational empiricism developed by
Goethe provides us with the middle way we need to make sense of Aristotles theory of
11

Joe Sachs, trans., Aristotles On the Soul and On Memory and Recollection (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2001),
p. 20.
12
James D. Madden, Aristotle, Induction and First Principles, International Philosophical Quarterly 44 1
(2004), p. 38.
13
Paolo C. Biondi, Aristotle, Posterior Analytic II.19: Introduction, Greek Text, Translation and Commentary
Accompanied by a Critical Analysis (Saint-Nicolas: Les Presses de l Universit Laval, 2004), p. 405.
11

knowledge. Many of the problems isolated by interpreters of the Posterior Analytics are
symptoms of the failure to recognize that Aristotle is neither an empiricist, nor a rationalist,
but a rational empiricist in the Goethean sense.
The general structure of my argument will be as follows. In Chapter 1, I present a general
overview of some of the main problems of interpretation associated with the Posterior
Analytics. I focus on a cluster of problems associated with the view that the Posterior
Analytics is torn between incompatible rationalist and empiricist tendencies. Two key themes
that emerge in this context are: firstly, the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction, and hence
the view that Aristotle has a problem of induction; secondly, the view that the role of nou`~
in the grasping of first principles is inconsistent with Aristotles empiricism. This latter view is
connected with the idea that nou`~, if understood as a form of intellectual intuition, implies that
we should be able to gain knowledge independently of experience.
In Chapter 2, I provide a sketch of Goethes approach to the study of nature, focusing on his
conception of knowledge and of the nature of science. Firstly, I discuss the origins and
meaning of the label rational empiricism. Secondly, I consider Goethes relationship to
induction, arguing that Goethes method is non-inductive.14 Thirdly, I discuss the idea that for
Goethe the student of nature acquires a developed capacity to intuitively discern the
necessary in nature15 by means of a cognitive training that presupposes a long dwelling with
the phenomena of nature. Finally, I consider the question whether Goethe thought that there
are limits to human knowledge.
In Chapter 3, I present an initial sketch of Aristotles conception of scientific knowledge or
ejpisthvmh. I affirm both the phenomenological character and the ontological status of the
ajrcaiv that serve as the starting points of ejpisthvmh, in opposition to interpretations that see
them as merely logical or linguistic principles (e.g. basic propositions or axioms).
In Chapter 4, I turn to a detailed consideration of the place of nou`~ in Aristotles philosophy
as this relates to his theory of knowledge. My focus in Chapter 4 is twofold: Firstly, I attempt
to describe the ontological context of the cognitive process leading to the noetic seeing of the
ajrcaiv. I argue that the cognitive process, as presented by Aristotle, presupposes God as the
active ground of the potential intelligibility of the sensible world. In other words, it is divine
nou`~ that ultimately makes possible the cognitive process as Aristotle describes it. Secondly, I
consider the meaning of nou`~ in the context of earlier Greek thought, as discussed in the work
of Kurt von Fritz. The purpose of this discussion is to forestall an overly intellectual and
metaphysical understanding of nou`~. I argue that Aristotles conception of nou`~ emerges in the
context of a tradition in which nou`~ is not as radically opposed to sense perception as a
translation such as intellectual intuition may suggest. In the course of describing Aristotles
14

In fact, as subsequent chapters argue, Goethe and Aristotle are non-inductive in a very similar way.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, Letter to Goethe 23/08/1794, in Correspondence Between Schiller
and Goethe: From 1794-1805, Vol. 1, ed. L. Dora Schmitz (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914), p. 6.
15

12

conception of the relationship between divine nou`~ and the sensible world I draw attention to
what I refer to as an organicist element in Aristotles ontology.
In Chapter 5, I return to the Posterior Analytics and present an interpretation of 2.19, since
it is here that Aristotle gives his fullest account (apart from the parallel account in Metaphysics
1.1) of the cognitive process leading from sense perception to the grasp of the principles of
science. In this chapter the resources prepared in earlier chapters are brought together to
provide a rational empiricist reading of the origins of scientific knowledge in the noetic seeing
of the ajrcaiv. I also discuss and criticize the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction and offer
an alternative Goethean interpretation.
Finally, in Chapter 6, I do three things: Firstly I discuss some more concrete examples taken
from the Posterior Analytics in order to flesh out my interpretation of Aristotles scientific
method. Whereas Chapter 5 focuses on the cognitive process mediating between sense
perception and the noetic seeing of the first principles in a general sense, Chapter 6 looks at
some more specific examples in order to argue that, contrary to some views, the Posterior
Analytics does include a conception of how scientific truths about the world are discovered.
Secondly, I offer a resolution of the apparent incompatibility between the accounts of
scientific method given in the Posterior Analytics and in Physics 1.1. Thirdly, I briefly discuss
and criticize the dialectical interpretation of Aristotles scientific method.
ii. Methodological Issues
The main methodological issue facing this work has been Goethes ambiguous relationship
to philosophy. Goethe sometimes gives the impression of being averse to philosophy as such.
He writes, for instance: I have never possessed any receptivity for philosophy in the proper
sense.16 On another occasion, writing to Schiller concerning his meeting with Schelling,
Goethe states that he would like to spend more time with the philosopher, but finds that
. . . philosophy destroys poetry, and that because it confronts me with an object. I can never
relate to anything in a purely speculative sense, but must always seek out some corresponding
intuition for every claim, and that is why I flee immediately to Nature.17

Goethes relationship to philosophy is complex. While Goethes scientific work certainly

has great philosophical substance, it does not take a systematic philosophical form. In
attempting to draw from Goethes scientific work an implicit theory, we need to be aware of
the distinctive meaning theory has for Goethe. It has been said that the Goethean notion of
theory is fundamentally more akin to the ancient Greek notion of qewriva, than to the
16

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Schiller 19/02/1802, in Rdiger Bubner, The Innovations of Idealism
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 239 (FA V (32): 226).
13

modern understanding of theory.18 Theory, understood in the modern way, is a human artifact,
a representation of the world. It is a system of logically inter-related propositions about the
world. As William McNeill has said, drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, in modernity
theoria becomes world representation for the subjectivity of the subject.19 In the ancient
Greek sense, qewriva is seeing, but this seeing retains a crucial ambiguity that is progressively
lost as seeing comes to be understood more and more as the activity of a subject (or for that
matter the effect of the causal activity of an object). In the original Greek sense, the look . . .
is not the activity of a subject but the way in which another being (whose presence is
likewise not reducible to that of an object) . . . emerges and comes towards us.20 Qewriva is
a seeing of the divine, a participation in the self-disclosure of worldly divinity.21 An
account of Goethes theory of knowledge, of nature, of scientific method, must, if it is to be
true to its theme, remain aware that what it describes is, ultimately, not a set of propositions,
but a phenomenological practice. In view of this, it will not do to reduce Goethes qewriva to a
few axiomatic concepts and attempt to construct on this basis a systematic Goethean theory,
whether of knowledge, nature, or scientific method.
Indeed, many of the most pregnant points22 in Goethes work take the form of short, highly
condensed expressions that contain much philosophical substance. Michael Beddow has
discussed the importance of this form of expression in relation to Goethes overall aims:
Although . . . any maxim is an abstraction from raw experience, the type of abstraction
involved maintains a peculiarly close link to the stuff of concrete experience. Unlike more
expansive forms of abstract discourse, the maxim is . . . concentrated, gnomic. Its brevity and
concision actually invite expansion and elucidation, which normally happens through reflection
upon concrete situations from which the maxim finds its import.23

This feature of Goethes work has affected my general approach. While I certainly present
17

Goethe, Letter to Schiller 19/02/1802, in Bubner (2003), p. 239 (FA V (32): 226).
Dennis L. Sepper, Goethe Contra Newton: Polemics and the Project for a New Science of Colour (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 17: It has not been widely understood that theory does not have the same
meaning for Goethe and Newton, and therefore direct comparisons based on the assumption that they are (or
should be) guided by similar principles and methods and concerned with identical domains are misleading.
Theory for Goethe is not a set of propositions or a mathematical modelling; rather it is more akin to something
suggested by the root meaning of ancient Greek theoria, which was the activity of the spectator, a seeing and
recognising, a sense conveyed by the German Anschauung (onlooking, a perhaps simpler and more faithful
rendering than the usual intuition).
19
William McNeill, The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1999), p. 241.
20
Ibid., p. 307.
21
Ibid., p. 245.
22
The phrase pregnant point is taken from Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase,
in Scientific Studies, ed. Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, 1988), p. 41 (HA XIII: 40).
23
Michael Beddow, The Fiction of Humanity: Studies in the Bildungsroman from Wieland to Thomas Mann
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 77.
18

14

arguments in a more typically philosophical way, I also engage in extensive expansion and
elucidation of certain central statements. This close attention to particularly exemplary
formulations is also characteristic of my approach to Aristotles work. I also make use of the
method of building up a kind of cumulative picture of a position by the presentation of many
characteristic examples. The reason for this has to do with the distinctive character of the
Goethean perspective. I am convinced that really grasping the Goethean method involves a
kind of aspect shift, and this can be mediated either through an exemplary instance, or by a
kind of symphonic presentation of ideas. This also explains the occasionally baroque growth
of my footnotes. Rather than simply providing page references to illuminating statements
made by other authors, I will typically quote the relevant passage. This is because I want the
reader to have these illuminating perspectives at their fingertips. Such citations contribute to
the overall picture I am painting. For similar reasons, I will often repeat the same ideas
throughout the course of the thesis. This is because the same central statements acquire a
different and fuller sense in the context of the developing whole.
Although I shall rely primarily on Goethe to explain Aristotle, I will sometimes use either
one to illuminate the other. The purpose of these comparisons is not to presuppose the identity
of the ideas in each given instance, but to facilitate in the reader an initial perception of
similarities. In the course of the thesis as a whole this initial view will hopefully develop into a
more articulated vision of the relationship between the two thinkers.
While I draw widely on Goethes own statements, I also make free use of interpretations of
his work to explicate his ideas in more philosophical detail than he himself does. Since the
primary focus of this thesis is the interpretation of Aristotle, I do not defend my interpretation
of Goethe against possible objections. Similarly, I do not make any sharp distinction between
Goethean science as a tradition, and Goethes science; although I recognize that in a work
more heavily focused on Goethe it would be necessary to distinguish more clearly between
those views that can definitely be ascribed to Goethe himself, and those aspects of the
Goethean tradition that derive from the work of subsequent interpreters.
iii. Broader Philosophical Concerns Relevant to the Thesis
While this thesis is intended primarily as a contribution to scholarship on Aristotle, and to a
lesser extent on Goethe, it does have a relationship to broader philosophical concerns. I
consider the phenomenological tradition emerging from Husserls pioneering work to be the
most significant development in 20th century philosophy. Although the subsequent
development of the phenomenological tradition is very complex, I consider certain features to
be particularly significant. Firstly, there is the attempt, found particularly in the work of
Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, to think the being of nature in a way free from the distortions
15

of metaphysical dualism, including its most recent form: modern scientific naturalism and
modern technology. Secondly, there is the attempt, found particularly in Heidegger, and
thinkers influenced by him, to uncover a pre-metaphysical understanding of nature by
engaging with Greek thought. Thirdly, there is the awareness, again particularly in Heidegger
and his interpreters, of the importance of the poetic as a guide to the recovery of a nonmetaphysical relationship to nature. Nature, as Heidegger put it, has been doubly
. . . de-natured. Once through Christianity, whereby nature was, in the first place, depreciated to
[the level of] the created . . . Then . . . through modern natural science, which dissolved nature
into the orbit of the mathematical order of world commerce, industrialization, and in a particular
sense, machine technology.24

Goethe, living at a time when science and technology had not yet given rise to the
environmental crisis we face today, already wrote: The nature with which we must work is no
longer nature it is an entity quite different from that dealt with by the Greeks.25 As
Heidegger saw so clearly, the poetic experience of the world offers a way back to primordial
nature. Quoting Heidegger, Bruce Foltz writes:
If we are to speak, along with the poet, of the primordial nature that was disclosed and brought
to language by the Greeks, of nature strictly speaking [Natur im engeren Sinne] we must
leave aside the modern representation [Vorstellung] of nature.26

The following three elements are present in a unique way in Goethes scientific work: a
deep concern to defend primordial nature against the depredations of the materialists,
mechanists and mathematisers, a fundamentally poetic approach to nature, and a
phenomenological methodology. That Goethe is a phenomenologist has been argued by a
number of interpreters, going back at least to Fritz Heinemann.27 Goethe expresses his
phenomenological impulse in Italian Journey when he writes, I shall never rest until I know
that all my ideas are derived, not from hearsay or tradition, but from my real living contact
with the things themselves.28 In an article comparing Goethe and Husserl, Eva-Maria Simms
writes,
Phenomenology, after Husserl, always has had a double task: to unearth the cultural
sedimentations and hidden motivations in our habitual assumptions about reality and to return to

24

Bruce V. Foltz, Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics and the Metaphysics of Nature (New
Jersey: Humanities Press, 1995), p. 63.
25
Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 304 (HA XII: 372).
26
Foltz (1995), p. 64.
27
Fritz Heinemann, Goethes Phenomenological Method, Philosophy 9 33 (1934), pp. 67-81.
28
Goethe, Italian Journey, trans. W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer (San Francisco: North Point Press), p. 343
(HA XI: 352).
16

a faithful exploration of the fullness of being as it discloses itself to human experience.29

Heidegger saw that, to paraphrase Simms, the freeing of the fullness of being from the
cultural sedimentations that obscure it, involves working our way back to the origins of
Western metaphysics in ancient Greece. The idea that the path back to the things themselves
might lead through Greece has as its flipside the idea that phenomenology is particularly
suited to understanding Greek thought. Robert Sokolowski is quite right when he says:
Because of its understanding of reason and truth, phenomenology allows us to reappropriate
the philosophy of antiquity and the Middle Ages.30 Phenomenology and the study of ancient
philosophy have much to offer each other. On the one hand, ancient philosophy enables us to
see beyond many modern assumptions. As Gadamer has argued,
. . . the Greeks have something over us, for we are entangled in the aporias of subjectivism. They
did not try to base the objectivity of knowledge on subjectivity. Rather, their thinking always
regarded itself as an element of being itself.31

On the other hand, phenomenology can enable us to understand the experiential roots of
Greek thought, by freeing us from the distorting lens of later dualisms. I believe that in the
dialogue between phenomenology and Greek thought, particularly with regard to the
understanding of nature, Goethe has a crucial role to play. Simms has seen clearly the
significance of Goethes phenomenology of nature in relation to the mainstream
phenomenological tradition. She writes:
Husserls phenomenology places the problematic of human consciousness and its worldconstitution at the centre of phenomenological inquiry, and most phenomenologists in the past
century have done so as well. Goethe, on the other hand, offers a phenomenological method for
a qualitative study of nature. It seems to me that phenomenologys humanism has reached its
limits and that, once again, we are called to look beyond the human realm into life forms that are
different and non-human.32

Here Simms puts her finger on something essential. The subjectivism of modern thought
makes it difficult for us to understand the realism of ancient thought without interpreting it in a
dualistic and objectivistic manner. The idea of a phenomenological science of nature that is
simultaneously realist and rigorously experiential seems almost like a contradiction in terms. It
is precisely in relation to non-human nature that we tend to harbor the most inveterate, if not
necessarily conscious, scientistic assumptions. We may be convinced that scientific naturalism
29

Eva-Maria Simms, Goethe, Husserl, and the Crisis of the European Sciences, Janus Head 8 1 (2005), p. 166.
Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 203.
31
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Sheed
and Ward, 1989), p. 460.
32
Simms (2005), p. 171.
30

17

is incapable of giving a satisfying account of e.g. human consciousness, but still find it hard to
extend this view to cover non-human nature, because the inner being of nature, as opposed to
its everyday sensible manifestation, is to a large extent a closed book to us.
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty seem to be of the view that the step beyond our current
predicament requires more than just another theory. What is needed is a transformation of
thinking, a development of new cognitive capacities.33 The great significance of Goethes
work lies precisely in the fact that he offers a concrete response to the predicament diagnosed
with such comprehensiveness and precision by Heidegger and others. To what extent the
Goethean approach to the study of nature is akin to the new style of thinking Heidegger was
working towards is an open question. What is clear is that Goethe presents one path towards a
transformation of the cognitive capacities of the human being that opens up a transformed
relationship to nature. Goethes phenomenology of nature is not primarily a philosophy of
nature, but a phenomenological science of nature, and as such it challenges the hegemony of
modern scientism in precisely that place where the latter seems to reign undisputed. I believe
that a Goethean reappropriation of Aristotelian thought, particularly in relation to the study of
nature, would represent a significant and necessary counterbalance to the more general,
philosophical responses to the problems associated with thinking nature beyond the confines
of the metaphysical tradition.

33

Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell
Krell (London: Routledge & Paul, 1978), p. 431: The title designates the attempt at a reflection that persists in
questioning. Questions are paths toward an answer. If the answer could be given it would consist in a
transformation of thinking, not in a propositional statement about a matter at stake. Cf. also p. 442, where
Heidegger actually quotes Goethe: It is necessary for thinking to become explicitly aware of the matter here
called clearing. We are not extracting mere notions from mere words, e.g., Lichtung, as it might easily appear on
the surface. Rather, we must observe the unique matter that is named with the name clearing in accordance with
the matter. What the word designates in the connection we are now thinking, free openness, is a primal
phenomenon [Urphnomen], to use a word of Goethes. . . . Goethe notes (Maxims and Reflections, no. 993):
Look for nothing behind phenomena: they themselves are what is to be learned. This means the phenomenon
itself, in the present case the clearing, sets us the task of learning from it while questioning it, that is, of letting it
say something to us. Cf. Mauro Carbone, The Thinking of the Sensible: Merleau-Pontys A-Philosophy
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004), p. 32. Carbone speaks of Merleau-Pontys use of the term
Voyance to characterise the sort of new thinking of nature towards which he was moving: Voyance literally
means clairvoyance, the gift of double sight, . . . . Voyance which, in the mutual referring of perception and
the imaginary, renders present to us what is absent (OE 41/132) therefore characterises seeing in MerleauPontys conception. . . . With voyance, we discover that seeing is complying with the showing of the sensible
universe itself, within which we find ourselves and through which runs the power of analogy. Carbone also
speaks (pp. xiv-xv and pp. 29-30) of the influence on Merleau-Pontys late thought of the Goethe-inspired
biologist Jakob von Uexkll. According to Carbone, von Uexkll played an important part in Merleau-Pontys
attempt to develop a new, non-Platonic theory of ideas, including those of natural species.

18

Chapter 1. Rationalism vs Empiricism in the Posterior Analytics

In this first chapter I present some of the main problems associated with the interpretation
of the Posterior Analytics. The purpose of this brief survey is twofold. Firstly, I want to
substantiate my claim that the idea of a conflict between empiricist and rationalist tendencies
in the Posterior Analytics is widely endorsed. Secondly, I want to give the reader a rough
sketch of the terrain, to highlight some of the main problems to which I will be responding in
subsequent chapters.
A number of scholars have seen a tension in the Posterior Analytics between empiricist and
rationalist elements. James H. Lesher presents his own assessment of the familiar and widely
accepted picture of Aristotles account34 as follows: Aristotle is faced with the problem of
providing foundations for his demonstrative view of science. The first principles cannot be
demonstrated since Aristotle rejects both circular demonstration and demonstration involving
an infinite regress.35 However, the principles cannot merely be assumed. If we do not know
the principles in a way more basic than demonstration, then we do not know what follows
from them. In Posterior Analytics 2.19 Aristotle argues that we know the first principles
through nou`~36 rather than ejpisthvmh.37 However, his postulation of nou`~ seems hopelessly ad
hoc: we possess nou`~ of first principles because we must have some knowledge of them, and
no other kind of knowledge seems possible.38
Here, Lesher expresses the common view that nou`~ is a theoretical postulate designed to
solve the problem of how we know the first principles, on the assumption that they cannot
be demonstrated. This view insists on reading Aristotle as providing a theory of nou`~ in the
modern sense, i.e. a discursive account; and it assumes that nou`~ is a theoretical posit that
Aristotle wants us to accept on the strength of discursive arguments.39
However, as I will argue, Aristotle makes it very clear that discursive thinking is in
principle incapable of accounting for its own origins in what Stanley Rosen has called a pre34

James H. Lesher, The Meaning of NOUS in the Posterior Analytics, Phronesis 18 1 (1973), p. 45.
APo. 1.3.
36
Providing an adequate account of the meaning of nou`~ is one of the goals of Chapter 4. For now, the least
misleading translation of this term is intuitive thinking.
37
This word refers to the discursively mediated scientific knowledge gained through demonstration from first
principles.
38
Lesher (1973), p. 44. Cf. EN 6.6.1141a3-7: If, then, the states by which we have truth and are never deceived
about things that cannot or can be otherwise are knowledge [ejpisthvmh], practical wisdom [frovnhsi~],
philosophic wisdom [sofiva], and comprehension [nou`~], and it cannot be any of the three (i.e. practical wisdom,
scientific knowledge, or philosophic wisdom), the remaining alternative is that it is comprehension that grasps the
first principles. (Ross).
39
Joseph Owens, Aristotle Cognition a Way of Being, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6 1 (1976),
p. 6: In this regard one may note that the whole Aristotelian reasoning about cognition is based upon the tenet of
the unity of knower and known in the actuality of cognition. No reasoning or attempt at proof is offered for this
tenet. It seems to be accepted on what is stronger than proof and is the source of proof, namely, immediate
intuition.
35

19

discursive (or antepredicative) seeing of formal structure.40 To paraphrase Rosen, Aristotle

does not give a theory of intuition (nou`~); rather, he calls attention to the intuitive dimension
of theories.41
Lesher also discusses another well known problem:
. . . first principles are said to be known through induction (ejpagwgh`/); i.e., from a series of
observations of particular cases, but nou`~ is generally thought of as a faculty of intuition (or
intellectual intuition or intuitive reason) and it is difficult to see why we should need to
proceed by induction when we possess such a faculty. Thus, in spite of the empiricism which
characterizes much of his account . . . Aristotle seems to revert to a faculty which, at least as
described by Plato, operates independently of sensory observation and yet enjoys an immediate
and infallible vision of the real world.42

Aristotles position seems inconsistent because it is not clear how induction (ejpagwghv) and
nou`~ fit together. If we reach the first principles by induction then what can nou``~ add to this
process? If we possess intellectual intuition why cant we just directly intuit truths about the
world independently of sense perception? If nou`~ is immediate insight, how does it relate to
the cognitive process that purportedly leads up to it?43
Two assumptions are evident here. The first is that ejpagwghv means induction in the
modern sense, and hence is a process that involves inference from repeated sense perceptions,
independently of any form of intellectual intuition. Thus if Aristotle claims that we reach the
first principles by induction this ought to be comprehensible independently of nou`~. This is
an empiricist assumption. Secondly, there is the assumption that nou`~ is a purely intellectual
intuition operating independently of the senses and yet supposedly able to grasp truths about
the world. If we have such an intellectual intuition it should be possible for us to gain
knowledge about the world a priori. This is a rationalist assumption.
In fact, the problems Lesher describes are constituted by the incompatibility between these
assumptions. These problems dissolve if the following are true: firstly, ejpagwghv is not
induction in the modern sense, and is inseparable from nou`~; secondly, nou`~ is not an a priori
intellectual intuition, but rather a developed capacity to see the intelligible in the sensible that

40

Stanley Rosen, The Limits of Analysis (New York: Basic Books, 1980), pp. 52-53.
Ibid., p. 54.
42
Lesher (1973), pp. 44-45.
43
W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 1923), p. 55. According to Ross ejpagwghv is . . . the passage from
particulars to the universals implicit in them. This is . . . a process not of reasoning but of direct insight,
mediated psychologically by a review of particular instances. Cf. Kwon Chang-un, Aristotles Epagoge as
Logos, in The Philosophy of Logos: Volume 1, ed. Konstantinos Ioannou Voudouris (Athens, 1996), p. 120.
Kwon Chang-un criticizes Ross description of induction as a process . . . of direct insight as follows: It is
doubtful . . . that the expression, the process of direct insight, itself is meaningful, because any process implies
the sense of duration which cannot be attributed to the direct insight.
41

20

arises in response to perception.44

Charles Kahn has noted a tendency among scholars to see the Posterior Analytics as torn
between empiricist and rationalist elements. Kahn recognizes that this problem arises when
scholars insist on reformulating Aristotles doctrine in terms of post-Cartesian
epistemology.45 From this modern perspective Aristotles
. . . emphasis on the indispensible starting point in sense perception seems to ally him with the
empiricists, whereas the ultimate appeal to nous then takes on the air of a last-minute betrayal, a
sellout to the rationalists particularly if nous is understood as an infallible intuition of selfevident truths.46

Jonathan Barnes also points to an apparent incoherence in the Posterior Analytics, although
he ultimately comes down on the empiricist side and attempts to reduce nou`~ to a
philosophically insignificant role by claiming that intuition as a mode of discovery is absent
from the Posterior Analytics.47 The idea that the Posterior Analytics deals only with how the
results of scientific research are to be systematized and taught, an idea defended by Barnes
among others, is influential. Michael Ferejohn, for example, writes:
In fact, the two Analytics on the whole seem to have very little to say about the investigatory
methods of science in general, much less about any differences among those of the special
44

A few scholars have suggested that Aristotles ejpagwghv is different from induction in the modern sense,
although their reasons vary. See, for example, T. Engberg-Pedersen, More on Aristotelian Epagoge, Phronesis
24 3 (1979), p. 305: If the schema is adequate, clearly Aristotelian epagoge will be different from the modern
concept of induction: while this concept includes the idea of an inference from particular to universal and hence
raises the question of the validity of the inductive procedure, there is no trace of these ideas in the schema as
given. Cf. Jaakko Hintikka, Aristotelian Induction, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 34 (1980), p. 423.
Hintikka notes that the translation of ejpagwghv as induction is . . . highly misleading if used without
explanations. Cf. also, Richard D. McKirahan Jr., Aristotelian Epagoge in Prior Analytics 2.21 and Posterior
Analytics 1.1, Journal of the History of Philosophy 2 (1983), pp. 1-2: It would be fundamentally wrong to
assume that Aristotles notion is the same as any modern notion of induction. This kind of anachronism would
only lead to the conclusion that Aristotle did a wretched job of describing induction. For a very clear and
comprehensive account of the difference between the Aristotelian and the modern notions of induction, see
especially: Louis Groarke, An Aristotelian Account of Induction: Creating Something from Nothing (Montreal:
McGill-Queens University Press, 2009). Although Groarke retains the word induction he presents a devastating
case against the modern understanding of induction, arguing instead for a traditional conception founded in
Aristotle and medieval philosophy.
45
Kahn (1981), p. 386. As noted in the introduction, Kahn believes that post-Cartesian epistemology is not
adequate to the task of understanding Aristotle. Cf. Charles H. Kahn, Aristotle on Thinking, in Essays on
Aristotles De Anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amlie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p.
359. Here, Kahn responds affirmatively to Miles Burnyeats question whether an Aristotelian philosophy of mind
is still credible. Kahn argues that the value of Aristotles philosophy of mind lies precisely in the fact that
Aristotle stands outside of the post-Cartesian tradition and thus allows us to free ourselves from this tradition and
from the dead ends to which it leads. He writes that . . . Aristotle offers us the best alternative to the dualist and
anti-dualist philosophies of mind that have plagued philosophy with persistent and fruitless conflict for more than
three centuries.
46
Kahn (1981), p. 386.
47
Jonathan Barnes, trans., Aristotles Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975b), p. 259.
21

sciences. Instead, these works proceed from the standpoint of a finished science whose
research is complete, and are largely focused on questions about the characteristic patterns of
reasoning through which one might prove, or demonstrate (ajpodeivknumi), that certain
independently discovered particular facts of interest follow from, and thus are explained by,
general scientific principles already in hand.48

Referring to Posterior Analytics 2.19 (the chapter where Aristotle gives his account of the
cognitive process leading to the first principles) Barnes describes the tension in the work as
follows:
B 19 is Janus-faced, looking in one direction towards empiricism, and in the other towards
rationalism. The principles are apprehended by induction (epagg) in an honest empiricist
way; but they are also grasped by nous, or intuition as it is normally translated, in the easy
rationalist fashion. It is a classic problem of Aristotelian scholarship to explain or reconcile these
two apparently opposing aspects of Aristotles thought.49

The contrast between honest empiricism and easy rationalism does more than reveal
Barnes own philosophical sympathies; it also highlights a characteristic attitude to intuition
on the part of many contemporary philosophers, namely, the view that it is somehow
intellectually disreputable. Intuition, on this understanding, is a faculty for discovering truths
about the world a priori, without any need to engage in actual empirical study. Philosophers
tend to be more tolerant of the notion in mathematics.50 What really bothers some
philosophers is the idea that intuition may be a mode of discovery in the empirical sciences.
If nou`~ is understood as a faculty able to discover truths a priori it becomes difficult to
avoid the view that whatever truths one has access to by nou`~ will be accessible from the
beginning and independently of any research. Given Aristotles rejection of innate ideas and of
knowledge as Platonic recollection, a nou`~ of this a priori kind seems fundamentally
incompatible both with the rest of Posterior Analytics 2.19, and with the strongly empirical
character of other parts of Aristotles philosophy.
Aristotle distinguishes sharply between the activity of nou`~ per se and its discursive
realization in the ensouled body.51 Our conscious, discursive thinking is indivisibly linked to
48

Michael Ferejohn, The Origins of Aristotelian Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 2.
Barnes (1975b), p. 249.
50
Arguably, even in relation to mathematics the notion that intuition is easy is a misrepresentation of the facts.
The source of this false stereotype may lie in a failure to understand the relationship between the discursive
activity that prepares for intuition, and the intuitive act itself. Intuition may be effortless in the sense that when it
happens no discursive activity is involved. This by no means implies that the moment of insight is not hard won
by long struggle with a certain problem. But even apart from this, the idea that the state of insight is lacking in
activity is simply not true to the phenomenology of the experience. If anything, insight is characterized by
heightened activity, although the characteristic ambiguity between activity and receptivity in intuition
distinguishes it from the effort involved in discursive thinking.
51
Kahn (1992), p. 375: We are of course often aware of our mental activity of reasoning or discursive thinking.
But this awareness . . . is for Aristotle the proper function of sentience, even though in our case it is the enriched
sentience of a noetic animal.
49

22

mental images, and so is dependent on experience.52 The view that nou`~ is an intellectual
intuition that sees intelligibles independently of any experience must mean that it is
independent also of discursive thinking. If this is the case then no clear account can be given
as to why such a faculty does not have complete access to the realm of intelligibles from the
beginning. Since neither sense perception, nor discursive thinking, can in any way prepare for
such an intuition, there is no explanation as to why one person does intuit some truth while
another does not. Given these assumptions nou`~ must seem to be a more or less miraculous
capacity for gaining knowledge without having to work for it.
There are thus two further interpretations to keep in mind, both of which I will subsequently
bring into question: firstly, there is the assumption that if nou`~ is a form of intuition distinct
from sense perception then it must be a capacity for gaining truths about the world a priori;
and secondly, that as an a priori faculty nou`~ cannot be developed by cognitive engagement
with the world.
The perceived incompatibility between ejpagwghv and nou`~ leads to various subordinate
problems and a variety of attempts to resolve them. Although there are tendencies here and
there towards a higher synthesis of rationalism and empiricism, for the most part the
resolutions offered are reductive, in the sense that they attempt to downplay or deny the
importance of either ejpagwghv or nou`~, or to reduce one to the other.
These subordinate questions include, among others, the following: Is nou`~ operative at all
stages of the process leading to the grasp of the first principles? Does the term ejpagwghv
describe the whole process or only a portion of it? Is nou`~ only the culmination of the
cognitive process? If nou`~ is the culmination of the cognitive process what is its purpose?
Does it grasp the first principles (in which case it is not clear what ejpagwghv contributes)? Or
does it only validate the principles which are provided by induction? Is nou``~ (understood as a
state of insight coming at the end of the inductive process) caused by ejpagwghv? In other
words, is nou``~ a product of ejpagwghv? Or is ejpagwgh only a preparation for an act of insight
quite distinct from it?
What is common to all of these questions is the assumption that there is a fundamental
explanatory gap between ejpagwghv and nou`~. This assumption is a consequence of two main
things: firstly, that ejpagwghv is interpreted as induction; and secondly, that nou`~ is interpreted
as an innate, a priori intellectual intuition.
Induction is typically understood as a form of argument where one infers from the
perception of a certain number of particular cases to a universal claim. A classic example is
the statement that all swans are white. What Murat Aydede calls the notorious frailty53 of

52

Ibid., p. 365: . . . what we call empirical consciousness is located for Aristotle in the primary aisthtikon, the
common power accompanying all the senses. . . .
53
Murat Aydede, Aristotle on Episteme and Nous: The Posterior Analytics, http://www.philosophy.ubc.
23

induction derives from the supposed fact that any such claim can be falsified by the
subsequent perception of even one counterexample. The idea that an inductive generalization
is vulnerable to subsequent observations is connected to the idea that induction involves
prediction. In claiming, on the basis of past observations, that all swans are white, I am also
predicting that all swans throughout future time will be white. Induction is typically seen as in
principle incapable of leading to necessary and universal truths of the kind Aristotle requires
as the first principles of demonstrative science. This implies that there is some gap to be
bridged between induction proper, and the grasp of the principles.
Aydede criticises the assumption that Aristotles epistemology, like post-Cartesian
epistemology, attempts to defend knowledge claims against the sceptic. On the view Aydede
criticizes, the Posterior Analytics is an attempt to defend the possibility of scientific
knowledge against a sceptic who will accept nothing less than a conclusive defense of the
possibility of scientific knowledge. Since, for Aristotle, scientific knowledge depends on
knowing the first principles, he needs to present a conclusive defense of our ability to know
the first principles. This is the reason for introducing nou`~. In relation to this interpretation,
Aydede writes:
On this view, Aristotle introduces nous as an intuitive faculty that grasps the first principles once
and for all as true in such a way that it does not leave any room for the skeptic to press his
skeptical point any further. Thus the traditional interpretation views Aristotelian nous as having
an internalist justificatory role in Aristotelian epistemology.54

Nou`~ does something that neither demonstration nor induction can do it provides an
absolutely unshakable foundation for the claim to know the first principles. One representative
of this interpretation is T. H. Irwin, who writes:
The knower must grasp self-evident principles as such; for if they are grasped noninferentially,
without any further justification, they must be grasped as true and necessary when considered in
themselves, with no reference to anything else. If first principles are to meet all Aristotles
conditions, they must be grasped by intuition that certifies [italics added] that they have the
relevant properties.55

In other words, nou`~ serves as the ultimate justification of the claim to knowledge of the
first principles. On this view, Aristotles position in the Posterior Analytics, despite the
apparently thoroughgoing empiricism of the bulk of 2.19, ends up as a form of rationalist
foundationalism, since the ultimate ground of all claims to scientific knowledge is a form of
purely intellectual intuition.
ca/faculty/aydede/Aristotle.pdf, p. 5. This is a revised and longer version of a paper which appeared in Southern
Journal of Philosophy 36 1 (1998), pp. 1546.
54
Ibid., p. 1.
24

The tendency to view Aristotle through the prism of post-Cartesian epistemology leads to
another problematic understanding. Central to the modern epistemological tradition is the idea
that knowledge requires justification. Lloyd P. Gerson has presented a powerful case for the
view that classical Greek thought generally does not subscribe to the view that justification is
required for knowledge. Knowledge does not require justification because knowledge is not a
matter of justified true belief. Rather, knowledge, while not a physical state, is as much a real
state of the knower as being pregnant, or having a fever; whether or not one is in this state is a
fact quite independent of whether or not one can justify the claim to be in this state.56 A good
example of the sort of problematic understanding the anachronistic epistemological reading
of Aristotle leads to leads to is provided by G. R. Morrow, who responds tartly to Aristotles
view that our knowledge of first principles is independent of demonstration:
There is a certain disingenuousness in Aristotles rather smug solution. To affirm that not all
knowledge is demonstrable is to reject what he has given every show of affirming in the
precedent chapter of this very treatise. Worst of all, the necessity which he says compels us to
assert that knowledge of immediate premises is independent of demonstration is itself a
consequence of the assumption that knowledge in the strict sense is possible which is the very
point at issue.57

Morrows suggestion that Aristotle is being inconsistent is another symptom of the desire to
force Aristotle into the categories of modern philosophy. Indeed there are parallels here with
the way some interpreters respond to the place of nou`~ in On the Soul. Charles Kahn has
commented on the view that Aristotles psychology is rendered inconsistent by his
introduction of nou`~. Kahn writes:
I want to suggest that this is not so much an inconsistency in his theory as a systematic attempt
on his part to do justice to our split nature as human beings . . . his theory of human psuch
requires both the hylomorphic definition and an account of incorporeal nous. . . . So the lack of
unity in Aristotles account of the soul can be seen as an accurate reflection of the complex,
paradoxical structure of the human condition.58

Kahn is exactly right here Aristotle is not inconsistent, he simply has a richer conception
of the human being than is typically the case in contemporary philosophy of mind, and his
position is therefore not fully comprehensible in terms of that philosophy. His account is
driven by a more fundamental demand than mere consistency, namely, faithfulness to the
phenomena. The same can be said for the Posterior Analytics the introduction of nou`~ is not
55

T. H. Irwin, Aristotles First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 134.

Lloyd P. Gerson, Ancient Epistemology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 2.
57
G. R. Morrow, Plato and the Mathematicians: An Interpretation of Socrates Dream in the Theatetus, The
Philosophical Review 79 3 (1970), p. 333.
58
Kahn (1992), pp. 361-362.
56

25

inconsistent in Aristotles own terms, it is only inconsistent when seen through an inadequate
interpretative approach.
The second part of Morrows statement displays a misunderstanding connected to the view
that Aristotle is attempting to justify knowledge. Morrow in effect argues that Aristotle has
begged the question in simply assuming that knowledge in the strict sense is possible.
However, if we consider Aristotles own views on begging the question, we find that one can
only beg the question in relation to matters that are not self-evident.59 Since the principles (and
nou`~ as the active state of knowing the principles) are maximally self-evident, it is in principle
impossible to beg the question in regard to them. Implicit in Morrows criticism is the
assumption that Aristotle should prove, i.e. justify discursively, that knowledge is possible.
What Morrow doesnt seem to recognize is that this is precisely what Aristotle is explicitly
denying; namely, that all knowledge is able to be demonstrated. Morrow is assuming that the
claim that there is a non-demonstrable knowledge should itself be demonstrable. This is
because he assumes that Aristotle postulates nou`~ as a theoretical solution to a problem and
that he intends it to be accepted on the strength of discursive arguments.
This problematic understanding is also found to some extent in the cases of Lesher and
Grene. Lesher, for example, criticizes Aristotles first argument for the view that not all
knowledge is demonstrable by claiming that the argument shows only that knowledge of first
principles (if we have it) must be indemonstrable, not that we actually possess such
knowledge.60 Again, the implication here is that Aristotle is trying to prove, or justify, that
we have knowledge that is not dependent on demonstration. Grene offers a similar criticism:
It is, on the face of it, a most unconvincing argument. How do we know there is knowledge of
conclusions? Because there is knowledge of premises. How do we know there is knowledge of
premises? There must be, if there is to be knowledge of conclusions. And if there are two
sources of certainty, nous and episteme, and one of these is the source of inferential certainty,
then the other must be the source of the certainty of the starting-points of inference. But how do
we know there are two such sources? Presumably because if there were not, there could not be
the whole premise-inference-conclusion structure we have been describing. . . . The existence of
nous seems to be hung simply and solely on the demand that, to have Aristotelian science, we
must have it, and so we do.61

Grene seems to forget that nou`~ and the first principles it grasps are not the conclusions of
an argument they are what argument starts from. Implicit in Grenes criticism is the idea that
we start in a position where we have no justified knowledge and we must prove that we do in
59

APr. 2.16.65a23-25: For we have explained the meaning of begging the question, viz., proving that which is
not self-evident by means of itself. Cf. also Apr. 2.16.64b34: . . . since we get to know some things naturally
through themselves, and other things by means of something else (the first principles through themselves, what is
subordinate to them through something else), whenever a man tries to prove what is not self-evident by means of
itself, then he begs the original question. (Jenkinson).
60
Lesher (1973), p. 44.
26

fact have knowledge, or that it is in fact possible. The starting point is the worldless subject
who must first gain cognitive access to the world.
But Aristotle never says that nou`~ must exist if there is to be knowledge of conclusions.
Similarly, the existence of nou`~ is not hung simply and solely on the fact that we must have
it in order for Aristotelian science to be possible. Aristotle simply states that nou`~ exists. His
claim is descriptive. If nou`~ as described by Aristotle exists, then the only possible proof of
its existence and character would be an experiential one, i.e. actual noetic activity. It is in
principle impossible for nou`~ to be proved by anything other than nou`~. Rosen is definitely
on the right track when he writes,
At the risk of sounding anachronistic, I am tempted to suggest that the Aristotelian thesis of
intellectual intuition is an implicit transcendental argument. There is no possibility of the direct
demonstration of the act of intuition in the sense of a discursive analysis of that act. This is
because intuition is the necessary precondition for discursivity and, as an act, it has no
structure.62

While I wouldnt go as far as saying that Aristotle is presenting a transcendental argument,

Rosen is quite right that nou`~ is a precondition for discursive thinking, and as such is not
amenable to proof by means of discursive thinking. I will return to the question whether nou`~
has an internal structure when I discuss Aristotles views about divine nou`~ in Chapter 4.
Desiring to get away from the subjective, epistemological reading of the Posterior Analytics
Aydede argues that
. . . Aristotles project in the Posterior Analytics is not to answer the skeptic on internalist
justificatory grounds, but rather to lay out a largely externalist explication of scientific
knowledge, i.e. what scientific knowledge consists in, without worrying as to whether we can
ever show the skeptic to his satisfaction that we do ever possess knowledge so defined.63

Aydede is right that Aristotle is laying out an explication of scientific knowledge, but
calling it externalist is not helpful. The internalist/externalist dichotomy is ultimately no
more useful than the rationalist/empiricist one.64 The second part of the passage just quoted is
61

M. G. Grene, A Portrait of Aristotle (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963), p. 111.

Rosen (1980), p. 63. I wouldnt go as far as saying that Aristotle is presenting a transcendental argument. My
agreement with Rosen here is restricted to the idea that nou`~ is a precondition for discursive thinking, and as such
is not amenable to proof by means of discursive thinking. I will return to the question whether nou`~ has an
internal structure when I discuss Aristotles views about divine nou`~ in Chapter 4.
63
Aydede, op. cit., p. 1.
64
One reason why this dichotomy is not helpful is because nou`~ is amenable to neither an internalist nor an
externalist understanding. On the internalist side, nou`~ is not equivalent to the Cartesian idea of consciousness
that dominates much epistemological discussion. On the externalist side, nou`~ is not some kind of reliable
mechanism that puts the knower in the right kind of relationship with the external world, a relationship
describable independently of nou`~. For Aristotle, nou`~ is neither subjective nor objective, it is both: both the
highest form of cognitive activity, and the highest form of reality. In this sense nou`~ is both internal and external
62

27

more problematic. Whether or not one agrees with Aydedes claim that Aristotle is not
concerned to offer a defense of scientific knowledge that will satisfy the sceptic ultimately
depends on what Aydede means. Specifically, it is unclear how he understands Aristotles
explication of the nature of scientific knowledge. If he means that Aristotle is explicating
solely what scientific knowledge should be, irrespective of whether it exists or not, then he is
mistaken. If he means that Aristotle is describing actual scientific knowledge, then he is
correct. The key to understanding the nature of Aristotles explication lies in the realisation
that it is phenomenological. Because phenomenological description involves the seeing of the
essential structure of the phenomenon, in this case scientific knowledge, a phenomenological
explication of scientific knowledge can be simultaneously descriptive and normative.
What is puzzling, from a modern point of view, is that Aristotle is engaging in a project
which is both descriptive and normative simultaneously. This puzzlement arises from
projecting modern epistemological assumptions onto Aristotles thought. There is insufficient
recognition of the fact that Aristotle does not share the dualist and representationalist
assumptions about knowledge that characterize so much post-Cartesian epistemology. It is not
that Aristotle opts for something less than a fully justified science, by simply opting not to
respond to the sceptic. Rather, he has no need to respond to the sceptic because the kind of
skeptical doubts that dominate modern philosophy get no purchase in the context of his theory
of knowledge.
The tension between empiricism and rationalism in the Posterior Analytics is also discussed
by Michael Frede, who ends up concluding that Aristotle is a rationalist.65 Frede begins by
presenting a fairly standard picture of the tension. On the one hand, Aristotle says that all
knowledge originates in sense perception and that the lack of a particular sense closes off
access to the corresponding domain of knowledge.66 In his own scientific practice Aristotle
recognizes the value of painstaking observation and the gathering of data pertaining to a given
scientific domain. This suggests that Aristotle is an empiricist. On the other hand, Aristotle
thinks that knowledge strictly speaking is either knowledge of basic principles or knowledge
by deduction from those principles. This view could perhaps be reconciled with empiricism if
Aristotle thought that the principles themselves owe their epistemic status as known truths to
simultaneously.
65
Michael Frede, Aristotles Rationalism, in Rationality in Greek Thought, ed. Michael Frede and Gisela
Striker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
66
APo.1.18.81a38-81b9: It is also clear that the loss of any one of the senses entails the loss of a corresponding
portion of knowledge, and that, since we learn either by induction or by demonstration, this knowledge cannot be
acquired. Thus demonstration develops from universals, induction from particulars; but since it is possible to
familiarize the pupil with even the so-called mathematical abstractions only through induction i.e. only because
each subject genus possesses, in virtue of a determinate mathematical character, certain properties which can be
treated as separate even though they do not exist in isolation it is consequently impossible to come to grasp
universals except through induction. But induction is impossible for those who have not sense-perception.
(Mure).
28

the fact that they can be justified by some kind of inference from what we observe.67
However, this is not Aristotles view.
According to Frede, Aristotles view is that we know the principles immediately, and their
epistemic status is in no way dependent upon their confirmation by what deductively follows
from them, let alone upon their confirmation by what we can observe.68 Hence, our
knowledge of these principles is not a posteriori but is a result of their being seen directly by
reason (nou`~). All knowledge in the true sense is knowledge a priori, purely by reason. From
this perspective Aristotle turns out to be an extreme rationalist.69 For Frede, this is deeply
puzzling. Why, if all knowledge is based on an a priori intuition of immediate truths, does
Aristotle say that knowledge has its origins in perception? Even more puzzlingly, Aristotle
sometimes speaks as if we could
. . . argue for these first principles, as if we could come to know them by inference, indeed, as if
we could come to know them by what he calls induction (epagoge), an induction at least
sometimes based on perception.70

Frede assumes the opposition between empiricism and rationalism as a given, and as
representing the full range of choices in the matter. According to Frede there is no knowledge
of the principles a posteriori. But as Fredes own account makes clear, Aristotle does not think
that the knowledge of the principles is a priori in the sense that they could be discovered
independently of perception and ejpagwghv. We are again forcibly struck by the possibility that
the problem is not with Aristotles position, but with interpretative paradigms of his readers.
Although Frede begins by assuming the opposition between rationalism and empiricism, he
subsequently makes a number of points that lead in the right direction. Frede states that instead
of dealing with the above puzzles, he wants to focus on clarifying the notion of reason
involved in Aristotles rationalism. I will return to this aspect of Fredes account in Chapter 6.
Unfortunately the rest of Fredes account is unsatisfying. He repeats the tired old clich that
Aristotles introduction of nou`~ seems to be an appeal to a mysterious quasi-mystical power
of the mind to intuit universals.71 We are given no reason why such a faculty is mysterious
other than the contention that it is. This common accusation is significant because it is one of
those cases where centuries worth of sedimented prejudice comes to the surface. Indeed, to
flesh out what is contained in this kind of claim would lead us too far astray. Nevertheless, a
few basic points need to be made, because although Frede wants to argue that Aristotle does
not have any such mysterious faculty in mind, his account goes astray at precisely this point.
67

Frede (1996), p. 157.

Ibid., p. 157.
69
Ibid., p. 158.
70
Ibid., p. 158.
71
Ibid., p. 167.
68

29

The accusation derives what little force it has from a failure to clarify what is meant by
mysterious. The claim that nou`~ is mysterious or mystical in the sense of being noncognitive or irrational is simply false. Nou`~ is the ultimate exemplar of seeing something with
full intellectual clarity, and has nothing to do with the crude popular sense of intuition as
some kind of inexplicable hunch or feeling. Mysterious in this sort of context often really
means not compatible with modern scientific naturalism. But this is not relevant. Aristotle is
not a modern scientific naturalist, and is under no obligation to subscribe to its criteria of
intelligibility. We should attempt to grasp what his criteria are before we judge him by ours.
The problem with taking stock of such accusations is that it usually leads an interpreter to
reduce Aristotles nou`~ to something less than its full richness. And this is just what happens
in Fredes account. Frede argues that nou`~ is related to perception and experience causally
rather than cognitively. In other words, we acquire nou`~ over time by means of some natural,
causal process starting from perception. This idea is presented in the following statement:
The process by which perception gives rise to memory and memory in turn to experience, and by
which this in turn leads to incipient concepts, is something which goes on in us without our
doing anything about it. It seems, indeed, that Aristotle thinks that there is a very powerful
mechanism which guarantees that, by and large, we end up with adequate, though perhaps
primitive and as yet inarticulate, notions of things.72

However, the reference to a mechanism is unilluminating. The statement that a mechanism

is operative only tells us that something happens, not why it does so. The postulation of a
mechanism in and of itself explains nothing, because what we seek in knowledge is insight.
This is a reductive distortion of Aristotles view, which makes the matter mysterious in a
genuinely problematic sense.
On the one hand, Frede wants to insist that the knowledge of principles is not reducible to
perception or experience, but is a function of nou`~; while on the other hand he wants to render
nou`~ as unmysterious as possible by making it nothing more than our possession of a coherent
body of concepts and our ability to use these. And he ends up basing this causally on
perception. But in doing so he simply obscures the fact that the real issue namely what
distinguishes nou`~ from perception and experience, and further how we make the transition
from one to the other has not been dealt with at all. All he has done is to say that it happens
by means of a mechanism. At most this tells us that something happens in a certain way, i.e.
human beings are so constituted that they invariably reach a more or less adequate cognitive
grasp of the world.
Aristotle does indeed think that truth is like the proverbial door that nobody can completely
miss.73 However, this fact is not the result of any mechanism (an explanation that would give
72
73

Ibid., p. 171.
Met. 2.1.993a27-993b7: The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of
30

us merely what Frede calls an empirical generalization.) In order to understand why human
beings invariably grasp some portion of the truth, we would need to grasp the salient feature of
human beings that enables them to reach knowledge; and this salient feature is nou`~. Such a
grasp would involve our actual understanding, our actual and present act of noetically seeing,
the necessary connection between our ability to see noetically and our ability to know
necessary and universal features of the world. In other words, nou`~ in its actual occurrence is
not explicable in terms of anything other than itself. To search for any deeper explanation is to
misunderstand what one is looking for.
Since for Aristotle the ground of reality is the activity of nou`~ (something I will defend in
Chapter 4) the demand to explain nou`~ is based on a misunderstanding. Nou`~ is the
ontological ground of the possibility of any explanation of anything whatsoever. An account
like Fredes implicitly rejects the identity of thinking and being which, I shall argue, is the
core of Aristotles thought, and it is for this reason that it can seem sensical to explain nou`~
through a natural mechanism. This is because Frede is implicitly equating nou`~ with thinking
as it is understood today, as a subjective activity, a form of empirical consciousness. The
assumption is that something subjective like nou`~ can only ultimately be explained by
reducing it to, or deriving it from, something objective like a natural mechanism. Frede forgets
that for Aristotle what is most objective is precisely the activity of nou`~. This is just another
illustration of how essential it is to keep the priority of nou`~ in mind, or perhaps more
accurately, to keep ones mind in nou`~. As soon as one attempts to explain nou`~ one has
entered a world far removed from Aristotles.
Frede concedes that to say that it [the acquisition of nou`~] is somehow a natural process by
means of which we arrive at first principles is to exploit Aristotles generous conception of
what is natural and to focus on just one aspect of it.74 But this is a serious understatement.
The plausibility of this suggestion rests on the sleight of hand involved in ignoring the
difference between Aristotles conception of the world including what we would call
nature and the modern scientific one Frede presupposes. Frede concedes that, as in ethical
development, a great deal of effort is necessary to acquire knowledge of the principles. He
even makes the point that the insight that grasps principles does not derive its epistemic
status from the observations and reflections leading up to it, but rather involves seeing how
the features in question are related to each other and to other relevant features.75 However, he
seems oblivious to the fact that since nou`~, as he seems to concede, is an insight into the
this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails
entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and while individually they contribute little
or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to
be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this way it is easy, but the fact that we can have a
whole truth and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it. (Ross).
74
Frede (1996), p. 172.
75
Ibid., p. 172.
31

relations between phenomena, the postulation of a natural mechanism adds nothing of value to
his account.
Another scholar who recognizes that Aristotle does not have an epistemology of a
recognizably modern kind is C. C. W. Taylor.76 Taylor notes that the justification of
knowledge claims in the face of skeptical challenge is at best peripheral to Aristotles
concerns.77 The Posterior Analytics provides us with an insight into Aristotle's conception of
knowledge. The knowledge described in this text is knowledge of a very restricted kind.
Aristotle is not interested in what we might call everyday empirical knowledge, such as my
knowledge that there is a cup of coffee on the desk in front of me.78 Taylor suggests that
Aristotle
. . . does not seek to argue that knowledge is possible, but, assuming its possibility . . . seeks to
understand how it is realised in different fields of mental activity and how the states in which it
is realised relate to other cognitive states of the agent. In particular, the central problem of postCartesian epistemology, that of showing how our experience may reasonably be held to be
experience of an objective world, is hardly a problem for Aristotle.79

While I think Taylor is quite right in general, a few qualifications are in order. Taylors
statement that Aristotle simply assumes the possibility of knowledge is potentially misleading.
If we approach it from the modern, sceptical perspective it can seem as if Aristotle is helping
himself to knowledge without any argument. It may seem as if he is either naively assuming
knowledge, or claiming that knowledge is possible without any justification. It is important to
remember that for Aristotle, knowledge as such and not relative to us is always already active,
or at-work.80 Aristotle notes in another context:
He who knows what human or any other nature is, must know also that man exists; for no
one knows the nature of what does not exist one can know the meaning of the phrase or name
goat-stag but not what the essential nature of a goat-stag is.81

76

C. C. W. Taylor, Aristotles Epistemology, in Companions to Ancient Thought 1: Epistemology, ed. Stephen

Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 116.
77
Ibid., p. 116.
78
The reasons for this are bound up with the differences between Aristotles philosophical views and those that
underpin post-Cartesian epistemology. Ordinary, everyday knowledge is not a problem for Aristotle because he
has no conception of consciousness as a closed-off realm, which has to be connected with a world outside. For
Aristotle the fact of our everyday cognition of the world is simply a phenomenological given that he has no need
to question. Nevertheless, and this is important, this kind of everyday cognition is not knowledge in his sense.
It is possible to have knowledge, in Aristotles strict sense, only of universal and necessary connections between
phenomena, or of the essential natures of things.
79
Taylor (1990), p. 116.
80
Being-at-work is perhaps the best translation of Aristotles term ejnevrgeia, although activity is also good.
The popular translation of this term as actuality is misleading because it suggests a kind of static fulfillment
that is not in tune with the essentially active meaning of the word. Cf. Sachs (2001), p. 189.
81
APo. 2.7.92b4-7 (Mure).
32

In the present context this means that we can grasp the essence of knowledge only by
examining cognition as an activity. A theory of knowledge cannot merely involve determining
what we mean by the word knowledge. We cannot start from some a priori notion of what
knowledge should be, prior to knowing that it exists. This is not to deny that there is such a
thing as knowledge in potency, but such potency is dependent on knowledge as an activity,
and so has little in common with the mere possibility implied when a modern sceptical
philosopher asks about the possibility of knowledge. Potency is always relative to activity and
is understood through the activity which is its realisation. Aristotle does not assume the
possibility of knowledge; rather, he gives a descriptive, phenomenological account of
cognitive activity, as it presents itself in different contexts.
Aydede suggests another reason why the Posterior Analytics is so puzzling to many. It is
not only that Aristotles position seems to be an incongruous mix of empiricism and
rationalism; the foundationalist element in his account is puzzling whether one interprets him
from a rationalist or an empiricist point of view. This is because
. . . Aristotles first principles seem to find their contemporary parallels in the explanatory laws
of current scientific theories. But these are neither analytic nor about anything like sense-data.
They are full-fledged universal empirical propositions that explain phenomena.82

The first principles, the ultimate objects of Aristotles foundational knowledge (if we
interpret him as a foundationalist) are incompatible with either empiricism or rationalism
strictly speaking. They are incompatible with empiricism because they are not sense data, or
about anything like sense data. They also possess a necessity, despite arising through what is
supposedly induction, which is incompatible with empiricist assumptions about the limits of
induction. They are incompatible with rationalism because they are not analytic truths. The
first principles are, as Aydede puts it, full-fledged universal empirical propositions that
explain phenomena. Although Aydede is wrong to call them propositions, he has nevertheless
isolated something very important about Aristotles position. The first principles are neither
purely empirical, i.e. sense-data or statements about sense data, nor analytic truths. In other
words, they do not fall into the dichotomy known as Humes Fork, which divides the possible
objects of human knowledge comprehensively into two categories. In Humes words:
All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit,
Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra,
and Arithmetic . . . [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought. . . . Matters of
fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is
our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.83
82

Aydede, op. cit., p. 4.

David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997),
p. 15.
83

33

Hume implies that this dichotomy is exhaustive, and this seems to undermine the possibility
of scientific knowledge of the world. Aydedes point is important because the idea that
Aristotles ajrcaiv84 are akin to analytic truths is found in a few recent works on the Posterior
Analytics. For instance, Owen Goldin writes:
It is not often recognized, however, that, as it is usually interpreted, the syllogistic structure of
Aristotles theory of explanation binds scientific explanation so radically that it excludes every
nontautologous proposition from scientific explanation.85

Goldin explains this as follows: For scientific explanations to be ultimate explanations, they
must be based on predications that are not themselves in need of explanation. These
unmediated predications are derived from the first principles of a science. According to
Goldin,
. . . the only kind of principle discussed by Aristotle that can furnish unmediated predications (in
which some single term is predicated of x) will be a definition of x. Since demonstrations are
first figure universal syllogisms, the explanation of any proposition of the form S is P must in
part rest on a member of that set of predications that makes up the essence of S.86

Goldin argues that as typically interpreted Aristotles position leads to a very restricted
conception of scientific explanation in which demonstration is limited to rendering genusspecies relations explicit.87 Goldin thinks, however, that Aristotle sees his theory of
explanation as more powerful than this and as extending to the demonstration of predications
that are not already explicit within the definition of the subject.88
Michael Ferejohn is similarly troubled by the fact that Aristotelian science seems to be
severely restricted to what we might now call analytic truths.89 Ferejohn writes:
From the standpoint of modern philosophers of science, a theory of scientific explanation that
took such a narrow view of the scientific domain would be utterly intolerable, since it would
exclude precisely the sort of statements with which scientists are most concerned: those logically
contingent, but highly probable, generalizations thought to express natural causal connections.
Indeed, the only kind of premises countenanced by such a theory, those whose truth follows
84

This is the plural of ajrchv, which I have so far translated, as is common, by the term first principle. I will
subsequently bring into question this translation. Cf. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek- English
Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Among the definitions of ajrchv given by Liddell and Scott (hereafter
LSJ) the most relevant are the following: A. beginning, origin, 2. first principle, element, II. first place or
power, sovereignty.
85
Owen Goldin, Explaining an Eclipse: Aristotles Posterior Analytics 2.1-10 (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1996), p. 2.
86
Ibid., p. 2.
87
Ibid., p. 4.
88
Ibid., p. 4.
89
Ferejohn (1991), p. 117.
34

from the definitions of the terms they contain, are the concerns of such exact disciplines as
mathematics and logic, which are generally classified as sciences only in a very special sense of
that term.90

As we will see, Aristotles ajrcaiv are not analytic truths. Goldin and Ferejohn are led astray
by a failure to keep in mind the ultimate source of definitions, namely, nou`~ in conjunction
with experience and ejpagwghv. Ferejohn states that the scientist is interested in logically
contingent, but highly probable, generalizations. This implies a contrast with the logically
necessary and truly universal statements in which Aristotle is supposedly interested. But a
statement like all animals are mortal, which could certainly serve as the premise of a first
figure universal syllogism, is not logically necessary. Hence, this is a false contrast. It presents
Aristotelian definition as the discursive procedure of defining the meanings of words.91
What is overlooked here is the experiential and noetic basis of definition. Definitions do not
arise out of nowhere, nor are they based exclusively on discursive reasoning. Definitions are
the products of non-discursive insight; they are the linguistic expression of intelligible
essences discovered by cognitive engagement with the world. So, it is false to claim that
demonstration involves making explicit what is already contained in a definition understood as
something linguistic. What comes first is the non-discursive, non-representational and nonpropositional seeing of an ontological necessity inherent in the phenomena themselves.
Ferejohn and Goldin misleadingly suggest that Aristotlelian science involves merely the
explication of the meanings of words.
In the case of Jaakko Hintikka, the mistaken assumption that Aristotelian science involves
nothing more than a kind of conceptual analysis is used to make sense of ejpagwghv. Hintikka
mentions a passage from the Posterior Analytics where Aristotle describes the process of
reaching a definition of megaloyuciva (greatness of soul).92 Although Hintikka notes,
correctly, that there is a close connection between ejpagwghv and the forming of definitions
(which in his view distinguishes ejpagwghv from the modern notion of induction) he makes
some rather problematic claims. He writes as follows:

90

Ibid., p. 117.
Ibid., p. 4. Ferejohn seems to be guilty of a reductive focus on the linguistic expression of knowledge, when he
writes that . . . most or all of what Aristotle says about the nature of scientific knowledge in the Posterior
Analytics can be cast without intolerable distortion into talk about the requisite features of the kinds of statements
he thinks suitable for expressing such knowledge.
92
APo. 2.13.97b15-28. The translation of megaloyuciva as high-mindedness is Tredennicks. It is preferable
to Barnes, Ross and Mures pride. The latter might be improved by qualifying it as appropriate pride. This
is important, because, as Aristotle says at EN 4.3.1123b1-4: Now the man is thought to be proud who thinks
himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them; for he who does so beyond his deserts is a fool. For this
reason it is preferable to translate this term in a way which makes clear that the self-regard of the man who is
megalovyuco~ is based on his actual quality, i.e. on his greatness of soul, and not the other way around.
91

35

First, in the megalopsychia example the induction does not turn on perceptual evidence, but on
what one finds difficult not to call conceptual analysis. When Aristotle decides that Alcibiades
and Achilles are megalopsychoi because of their impatience of insult, he is not recording any
perceptual observations. Rather, he is pointing out the conceptual fact that this is the basis of our
calling them megalopsychoi in the first place. He is not inviting his audience to carry out
experiments or observations, but to reflect on the way they use their own concepts. This
illustrates one of the most important and most characteristic features of Aristotles philosophical
and scientific methodology. He does not distinguish sharply factual issues and concepts from
conceptual ones.93

Hintikka is right to suggest that Aristotle does not distinguish sharply between the factual
and the conceptual. However, Hintikka fails to see that the reason Aristotle does not
distinguish between these sharply is because for him the essential structures of the world are
real features of it discoverable by cognition. In severing the connection between experience
and definition, and making ejpagwghv a process of conceptual analysis, Hintikka implies that
where Aristotle appears to be talking about factual issues and concepts, or matters of fact
in the Humean sense, he is in fact talking about relations of ideas.
But if the above example involves nothing more than the analysis of how we use our
concepts, what grounds or explains that use? If a pragmatist answer is given namely that the
linguistic practices of a community determine what counts as a good definition then this will
surely fail to give a properly universal definition. But Aristotle clearly says that every
definition is always universal.94
It is better to say that, for Aristotle, the conceptual is factual our concepts are the
expressions of an intelligibility operative in the world itself. This allows us to retain the
connection between ejpagwghv, definition, and experience, which Hintikka severs. Hintikkas
statement that when Aristotle decides that Alcibiades and Achilles are megalopsychoi
because of their impatience of insult, he is not recording any perceptual observations is rather
puzzling. How does Aristotle know who Alcibiades and Achilles are and what personal
qualities they have if not through experience, e.g. through having heard about them, read about
them etc.?
It seems that for Hintikka having read or heard the Iliad recited does not count as
experience. This seems to be supported by his positive assessment of G. E. L. Owens view
that well-founded opinions, endoxa, were among the phainomena a scientific explanation
was supposed to account for, according to Aristotle.95 In other words, Hintikka seems to be
saying that Aristotles knowledge about the existence and characteristics of Alcibiades and
Achilles is a form of well-founded opinion, and is not based on perception. This suggests that
Hintikka has some more restricted empiricist notion of observation in mind.
93

Hintikka (1980), pp. 437-38.

APo. 2.13.97b26.
95
Hintikka (1980), p. 438.
94

36

The problem with Hintikkas account is that it involves a reductionism often found in
interpretations of those aspects of Aristotles thought that appear ambiguous to a modern
mind. Faced with the apparent ambiguity in Aristotles views concerning the relation between
the factual and the conceptual, Hintikka assumes the modern dualism of the empirical and the
conceptual, and errs on the side of modern subjectivism. It turns out that we dont have to
worry about how we get from sense-perception via ejpagwghv to a grasp of essences, because in
fact ejpagwghv is just a matter of conceptual analysis anyway.
I suggest, instead, that we should take a different approach. When we find statements in
Aristotle that seem to involve confusion between elements modern thinkers are inclined to
keep strictly separate, we should consider the possibility that the assumption of a dualism is
itself mistaken.
In order to clarify what I mean I will take an example from Owen Barfield.96 Barfield notes
that when we trace the history of languages back we find them becoming more and more
figurative. Barfield mentions many examples, but the one I want to focus on is the Greek word
pneu`ma. This word can mean either wind or spirit. Such a duality is puzzling to a modern
sensibility since it combines two meanings we consider to be irreconcilable, an external
physical one, and an internal psychic or mental one. The modern tendency is to assume that
this dualism was shared by the ancients. Hence, as Barfield shows, certain linguists have been
inclined to see the latter, psychic or mental meaning as metaphorical and as based on an
earlier, merely physical sense.97 On this view, pneu`ma would originally have meant simply
wind, or breath, and would at some point have been applied, in an intentionally
metaphorical way, to express e.g. the idea of the principle of life within man or animal.98
Barfield objects that the history of language in fact lends support to the idea that
. . . such a purely material content as wind, on the one hand, and on the other, such a purely
abstract concept as the principle of life within man or animal are both late arrivals in human
consciousness.99

He suggests that we should

. . . imagine a time when spiritus or pneu`ma, or older words from which these had descended,
96

Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1978).
Ibid., p. 73. Speaking of how this view of language arises, Barfield writes: (i) The theorist beholds metaphors
and similtudes being invented by poets and others in his own time. (ii) Examining the more recent history of
language, he finds many examples of such metaphors having actually become a part of language, that is to say,
having become meanings. (iii) Delving deeper still into etymology, he discovers that all our words were at one
time the names of sensible objects, and (iv) he jumps to the conclusion that they therefore, at that time, had no
other meanings. From these four observations, he proceeds to deduce, fifthly, that the application of these names
of sensible objects to what we now call insensible objects was deliberately metaphorical.
98
Ibid., p. 80.
99
Ibid., p. 80.
97

37

meant neither breath, nor wind, nor spirit, nor yet all three of these things, but when they simply
had their own old peculiar meaning, which has since, in the course of the evolution of
consciouness, crystallized into the three meanings specified.100

The moral of this story for our purposes is as follows: There are certain crucial elements in
Aristotles thought, some of which I have mentioned already, that seem to a modern reader to
involve incompatible elements. The incompatibility is typically connected to an apparent
mixing of categories that we tend to see in dualistic terms: inner and outer, subjective and
objective, factual and conceptual, sensible and intelligible, and so on. The modern tendency is
to see this twofoldness as presenting a dilemma and to opt for one of the horns. The rational
empiricist perspective I argue for in this thesis brings into question this whole approach.
Rational empiricism is not a composite of rationalism and empiricism. Rather, it has its own
peculiar meaning, from which the latter two are abstractions.
I have already noted that the view that Aristotle faces a problem of induction is connected to
the assumption that the opposition between rationalism and empiricism can validly be applied
to Aristotles thought. The problems arising from the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction in
the modern sense are among the most important for an understanding of Aristotles theory of
knowledge. Aristotle says that all the principles of scientific knowledge are gained by
ejpagwghv.101 If we understand ejpagwghv as induction in the usual sense we will find this very
difficult to understand. Taylor has expressed the problems in very clear terms:
. . . how can induction as conceived by Aristotle give any grasp of necessary truth, whether a
priori or empirical? For, notoriously, induction is inference from a finite set of observable cases
to conclusions about unobserved cases, whereas necessary truths hold in all actual cases,
whether observed or unobserved, and in all non-actual (and therefore not actually observed) but
possible cases.102

The conception of induction implicit in accounts like Taylors presupposes a roughly

empiricist theory of concept formation. The idea is that general, universally valid truths are to
be gained on the basis of the perception of particular cases. But more importantly, the
empiricist account presupposes that the universal grasped by nou`~ gets its content from
perception. This in turn presupposes that the sensible particular has a determinate nature
independently of any intelligible element.
This conception is not compatible with Aristotles epistemology and ontology for a number
of reasons. Firstly, for Aristotle there is no such thing as a purely sensible particular case.
Any individual sensible object is unity of form and matter, of intelligible and sensible aspects
100

Ibid., p. 81.
APo.1.18.81a37-81b9. Cf. APo.2.19.100b3-5: Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premises
by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception implants the universal is inductive. (Mure).
102
Taylor (1990), p. 128.
101

38

which are divisible in thought without implying an ontological dualism. Hence we are never in
the position presupposed by the above characterization of induction. We are never faced with
purely sensible particulars and asked to derive some general law, or universal and necessary
truth, from these.
This is certainly the case with the everyday entities making up the world, and these are the
particulars of most relevance to the inductive process, since induction is not based on the
perception of, e.g. patches of colour. However, even in the case of the simplest perceptual
objects we are not faced with something purely sensible. Although Aristotle may seem to
imply that the proper objects of the senses (e.g. colour as the proper object of vision) are
purely sensible, it is arguable that even such sensible qualities are sensible-intelligible wholes.
This is suggested in the Metaphysics, when Aristotle writes:
For knowledge, like knowing, is spoken of in two ways as in potency and as active. The
potency, being, as matter, universal and indefinite, deals with the universal and indefinite; but
activity, being definite, deals with a definite object, being a this, it deals with a this. But per
accidens sight sees universal colour, because this individual colour which it sees is colour; and
this individual a which the grammarian investigates is an a.103

The main points of interest here are the following: Firstly, even the simplest percepts (e.g.
this letter a, or this patch of red) are simultaneously and implicitly universals. The dimension
of universality is not seen as such by the senses, but it is present nevertheless. Secondly,
Aristotles solution to the problem of the universality of knowledge seems to be that any
actual thing is a whole that is sensible-intelligible and is the correlate of an act of cognition
that is similarly sensible-intelligible.104 It is noteworthy that he refers to the universal, and the
cognition of it, as like matter and indefinite, characteristics normally associated with the
sensible. His view cannot be that the indefinite universal is specified by sensible particularity
as such, since the senses give access to only the most restricted and primitive sensible
qualities. Besides, as he points out here, even a patch of colour is a sensible-intelligible whole.
Thus, his point seems to be that the full realisation of the object known, corresponding to
knowledge in activity, is a unity of the sensible and the intelligible, of which these two are
interdependent aspects.
Thus, as I will show in more detail in Chapter 5, Aristotelian ejpagwghv is not at all
inference from a finite set of observable cases to conclusions about unobserved cases. The
103

Met. 13.10.1087a15-21 (Ross, slightly altered).

This problem is described in C. D. C Reeve, Substantial Knowledge: Aristotles Metaphysics (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2000), p. xiii: . . . Aristotle claims that primary substances must be both ontologically primary (the
fundamental beings) and epistemologically primary (the primary objects of scientific knowledge). At the same
time, he is explicit that universals (specifically, definable universal essences) alone enjoy epistemological
primacy, since they are the first principles of the sciences. It seems to follow that primary substances must be
universals. But this conclusion he just as firmly rejects.
104

39

standard account of induction inverts the relationship between form and matter in a way
Aristotle would reject. It is an attempt to derive form from the multiplicity of matter. From an
Aristotelian perspective such an enterprise is doomed to failure, and it is no surprise that the
problem of induction as typically presented is insoluble.105
As we will see, the resolution of the Aristotelian problem of induction lies in the realization
that Aristotle has no problem of induction. We understand why he has no problem of induction
by understanding the twofoldness (not duality) that characterizes the world as realised in
cognitive activity.
Robert Bolton deals with another important group of issues pertaining to Aristotles theory
of knowledge. Bolton writes:
The relation between Aristotles official account in the Posterior Analytics of the nature of
scientific knowledge and of the means by which it is reached and his actual practice in arriving
at the results presented in his special scientific writings has long been a topic of considerable
study.106

It has generally been believed that there is a discrepancy between the theory presented in
the Posterior Analytics and Aristotles actual scientific practice, as evidenced e.g. in his
biological works. This discrepancy was seen by Jaeger as evidence for Aristotles move away
from Platonism towards a more empirically grounded philosophy.107 The view that there is a
discrepancy between the Posterior Analytics and the scientific writings has persisted and
developed.
Bolton isolates two main discrepancies. Firstly, there is a widespread belief that the
biological works involve an empirical methodology which has no counterpart in the Posterior
Analytics. Secondly, whereas the Posterior Analytics restricts knowledge to what has been
demonstrated from self-evident first principles,108 such demonstration has no place in the
methodology Aristotle applies in his concrete scientific research. A popular current
explanation of this is that
105

By this I mean insoluble in terms that would be acceptable to someone with a conception of knowledge as
strict as Aristotles. Although, since I think Aristotles account of knowledge is basically right, I also believe the
problem is generally insoluble. The empiricist assumptions that are constitutive of how the problem is
traditionally formulated mean that solutions that do not reject these assumptions can only lead to a sort of
bluffing. In other words, such solutions will involve either settling for less than knowledge (although this
resignation will be cleverly disguised as a redefinition of what knowledge is) or they will attempt to show that
enough appearances somehow amount to reality. Cf. Gerson (2009), p. 131: No sum of appearances or
representations, however scrutinized, amounts to reality, any more than does an endless heap of points amount to
a line. Similarly, no amount of particulars will add up to a true universal, if the universal is not already implicit
in the particulars.
106
Robert Bolton, Definition and Scientific Method in Aristotles Posterior Analytics and Generation of
Animals, in Philosophical Issues in Aristotles Biology, ed. Allan Gotthelf and James G. Lennox (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 120.
107
Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948).
108
Bolton (1987), p. 121.
40

. . . the Posterior Analytics does not contain recommendations as to how scientific knowledge is
to be pursued or discovered but only how it is to be systematically presented once discovered.
The method for scientific discovery to be employed in the search for theoretical principles is not
the method described in the Analytics but rather the alternative to it described in detail in the
Topics, namely dialectical reasoning.109

The great merit of Boltons paper lies in providing many of the elements needed to
fundamentally undermine this interpretation of the Posterior Analytics in its relation to the
scientific writings. Specifically, Bolton gives compelling arguments for two main points:
firstly, that Aristotles method in the scientific works is not dialectical, and that it is intimately
related to the theory of scientific knowledge presented in the Posterior Analytics; and
secondly, that the Posterior Analytics does contain an account of scientific methodology, i.e.
an account of how scientific truths about the world are discovered.110
What I think is lacking in Boltons account, is a more general epistemological theory that
can put his insights in context. This is precisely what I aim to do in Chapter 2, which deals
with Goethes theory of knowledge and science and provides the conceptual resources for a
rational empiricist reinterpretation of Aristotles theory of knowledge. This includes a
reinterpretation of nou`~, ejpagwghv, the ajrcaiv of a science, and of the relation between
Aristotles conception of science as a demonstrative system based on primary truths, and the
empirical tendency of his scientific research.
To sum up, the main problems I have drawn attention to are as follows: (1) There is a
widespread tendency to see Aristotles theory of knowledge as involving incompatible
rationalist and empiricist tendencies, an opposition that is reflected in many sub-problems; (2)
this is particularly evident in the relationship between the complex of perception, imagination,
memory, experience and ejpagwghv on the one side, and nou`~ on the other; (3) since ejpagwghv is
typically interpreted as induction in the modern sense many scholars are unable to see how
Aristotle can claim that it can lead to universal and necessary truths; (4) the tendency to
interpret nou`~ in a rationalist manner, as an innate faculty capable of grasping truths
independently of experience exacerbates the sense of a rift between experience and ejpagwghv
on the one hand, and nou`~ on the other. Dissatisfaction with this rift often leads interpreters to
choose one or the other horn of the apparent dilemma, with the consequence that they provide
a reductionist account of Aristotles position, i.e. they make Aristotle into either an empiricist
or a rationalist, and consequently attempt to downplay or ignore aspects of his philosophy. I
will argue that a rational empiricist interpretation allows us to make coherent sense of
109

Ibid., p. 121. Cf. G. E. L. Owen, Tithenai ta phainomena, in Articles on Aristotle I: Science, ed. Jonathan
Barnes, Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1975).
110
Cf. Dusan Galik, Induction in Aristotles System of Philosophical Knowledge, Organon Filozoficzny 13 4
(2006), pp. 495-505. Galik supports the idea that the Posterior Analytics includes the description of a method of
scientific discovery, focused on ejpagwghv.
41

Aristotles theory of knowledge in a non-reductive manner. With this in mind, I now turn to a
consideration of the Goethean theory of knowledge and science.

42

Chapter 2. Goethe and Rational Empiricism

In the observation of nature
It is necessary to attend to one and all.
Nothing is inside, nothing is outside;
As what is inside, that is outside.
So grasp without delay
The holy open secret!
Rejoice in the true appearing;
Rejoice in the serious game.
No living thing is singular,
One is always many.111

2.1 Introduction
In this chapter I present a sketch of Johann Wolfgang von Goethes theory of knowledge
and science. I will not be able to go into detail concerning Goethes concrete scientific
researches. Instead I will restrict myself to an interpretation of the philosophical foundations
of his approach. I will not consider the question of Goethes own philosophical influences.112
Nor will I engage in assessment of divergent scholarly opinions concerning the philosophical
interpretation of Goethes science, except where this helps to make my own interpretation
clear.
I have chosen to organize my Goethean interpretation of Aristotle around the term rational
empiricism. This term is useful because, as I have shown, there is a strong tendency to
characterize Aristotles position in terms of an opposition between rationalism and
empiricism. However, an important clarification needs to be made that applies both to Goethe
and to Aristotle. The term rational in rational empiricism might suggest that Goethe
reconciled empiricism with rationalism in the specific sense associated with the philosophy
111

Goethe, Epirrhema, (FA III: 96). This translation was done by Luke Fischer, who has pointed out to me a
number of interesting features of the poem. Of particular interest are the last two lines, which in German are:
Kein Lebend'ges ist ein Eins, / Immer ist's ein Vieles. Fischer has suggested to me that Goethe is playing on the
relationship between the indefinite article ein and the word for one, eins. Thus, the first line suggests that
No living thing is one one in the sense of one singular thing. In the second line the word Vieles is a singular
neuter noun derived from the adjective many. So it means literally a many thing. This gives the second line
the sense of Always it is a many-thing. Given the play on a/one in the first line, one could interpret this as
Always it is a/one many-thing. Fischer has also noted that the use of thing in the English translation suggests
a more objectified sense, whereas the German can create nouns whose entire content is derived from the
adjective.
112
It would be interesting, of course, to determine as precisely as possible Goethes familiarity with Aristotles
thought. By most accounts, Goethes knowledge of Aristotles works was slight. Cf. Karl Vitor, Goethe the
Thinker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 61: In general, Goethe was not an authority on
Aristotle; he appears not to have read his chief works. Most studies note the influence of Spinoza. Cf. H. B.
Nisbet, Goethe and the Scientific Tradition (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, 1972).
43

of someone like Descartes. This would be a mistake. We should not think of Goethes rational
empiricism as a fusion of empiricism and rationalism in this more specific sense. H. B.
Nisbet has noted that while Goethes relationship to the empiricist tradition, specifically
Francis Bacon, is nuanced, he is generally negative with regard to rationalism. Nisbet
characterizes what rationalism means in this context as follows:
In the present context, the word rationalism denotes that style of thinking in European
philosophy and science which, beginning with Descartes, shared in many ways by Newton, and
perpetuated by innumerable eighteenth-century thinkers and scientists, saw in abstract reasoning
the key to all of natures mysteries, and in nature itself a rational system governed by mechanical
laws imposed on it by a rational creator.113

Goethes conception of knowledge and science is based on an act of seeing with the eye of
the mind, not on reasoning. In this he seems to be at one with Aristotle, who was also clear
that all discursive knowledge presupposes and depends on nou`~. Nou`~ was translated into
Latin thought, e.g. in Thomas Aquinas, as intellectus, as distinct from ratio the discursive
thinking that reaches its conclusions via a process of reasoning. Goethes rational empiricism
is not a fusion of empiricism and ratio; rather it is a noetic or intellectual empiricism. This
should be kept in mind when the term rational empiricism is used.
2.2 Goethes Rational Empiricism
The term rational empiricism was applied to Goethes science by Friedrich Schiller, in the
context of an exchange of letters between the two men. However, before discussing the
emergence of this term, it is necessary to mention the famous encounter between Goethe and
Schiller in 1794, after a meeting of a scientific society in Jena.114
Goethe and Schiller struck up a conversation after the meeting had ended. Schiller
commented on the fragmented way in which the speaker had dealt with natural phenomena.
Goethe suggested that another way may be possible that portrays nature as alive and active,
with its efforts directed from the whole to the parts.115 Schiller expressed doubt that any such
approach could be based on empirical observation. Goethe described to him the
metamorphosis of plants and attempted to present a symbolic plant116 to Schiller by means
113

Ibid., p. 48. This judgement needs to be treated carefully. The emphasis on abstract reasoning could, of
course, be brought into question. One might make note of the role of intellectual intuition in a rationalist like
Spinoza, who had a deep influence on Goethe. Nisbet also mentions as significant Goethes deep hostility
towards mechanical explanations and metaphors.
114
Goethe, Fortunate Encounter, in Scientific Studies, pp. 18-21 (HA X: 538-542).
115
Ibid., p. 20 (HA X: 540).
116
Cf. Goethe, Italian Journey, pp. 305-6 (HA XI: 324): The Primal Plant is going to be the strangest creature in
the world, which Nature herself shall envy me. With this model and the key to it, it will be possible to go on for
ever inventing plants and know that their existence is logical; that is to say, if they do not actually exist, they
44

of a sketch. Schiller responded: That is not an observation from experience. That is an idea.
To this Goethe retorted: Then I may rejoice that I have ideas without knowing it, and can
even see them with my own eyes.117 In relation to this meeting Ronald Brady writes:
The incident is almost too archetypal to accept. Schiller, replying, as Goethe says later, with the
outlook of a trained Kantian, cannot believe that an idea which goes beyond what one would
call simple observation of sense, or actually simple empiricism, can be an experience. He
supposes that it is a hypothetical interpretation of the simple empiric observations supplied by
the rational side of man. Goethe, who does not think in terms of this duality, cannot understand
that his experience is also an idea, and claims that he sees it before his very eyes! Schillers
position is one of unmediated duality, Goethes of naive unity, and a dialectical friendship has
begun.118

Goethe expresses a conception of the relationship between the sensible and the intelligible
in which the two are so close that the idea seems almost to be visible to the eyes. Goethe is
deeply opposed to the tendency to draw a sharp line between the sensible and the intelligible.
However, we need not literally take this to mean that Goethe believed he saw ideas with his
physical eyes. This would be to assume the very dualism Goethe is opposing. Goethe wants to
affirm that in the human being, as in the world, the sensible and the intelligible are one. It
seems that Goethes subsequent friendship with Schiller led him to consider more closely, and
to make more explicit and conscious, his own earlier views about the relationship between
perception and thinking. It would be wrong to assume from this encounter that Goethe was
ever an empiricist, in the sense of believing that the idea is a sensible aspect of the
phenomenon seen with the physical eyes. Rather, he had simply not distinguished as
consciously between the sensible and the intelligible elements in experience as he did later, in
part under the influence of Schiller.119
The term rational empiricism arose in the context of the correspondence between Goethe
and Schiller in 1798. This discussion seems to have been precipitated by a letter from Goethe,
dated January 10, 1798, in which he sent to Schiller a copy of his essay The Experiment as
Mediator between Object and Subject.120 I will return to the content of this essay shortly. On
January 15, 1798, Goethe sent Schiller a copy of another, shorter essay Empirical
could, for they are not the shadowy phantoms of a vain imagination, but possess an inner necessity and truth.
117
Goethe, Fortunate Encounter, in Scientific Studies, p. 20 (HA X: 40).
118
Ronald Brady, Towards a Common Morphology for Aesthetics and Natural Science: A Study of Goethes
Empiricism (PhD diss., State University of New York, Buffalo, 1972), p. 43.
119
Cf. Goethe, The Influence of Modern Philosophy, in Scientific Studies, pp.28-29 (HA XIII: 26-27): I heard
a few discussions of the work [Kants Critique of Pure Reason], however, and I could see that an old issue was
being revived: i.e., what role do we ourselves play in our intellectual life, and what part is played by the external
world. I had never separated the two, and when I philosophized about things in my own way I did so with
unconscious naivet; I truly believed that my eyes beheld what my mind thought true.
120
Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, pp. 11-17 (HA XIII:
10-20).
45

Observation and Science.121 This gives a condensed account of his scientific method leading
up to the perception of the Urphnomen.122 Goethe begins this latter essay as follows:
Phenomena, which others of us may call facts, are certain and definite by nature, but often
fluctuating in appearance. The scientific researcher strives to grasp and keep the definite aspect
of what he beholds; in each individual case he is careful to note not only how the phenomena
appear, but also how they should appear.123

If we approach Goethe with dualistic preconceptions, we are apt to be puzzled. Goethe is

simultaneously saying that phenomena are often fluctuating in appearance and that they are
certain and definite by nature. What is puzzling, from a dualistic perspective, is that he is
speaking about phenomena, in other words entities that are by definition cognitively
accessible. If phenomenon is understood as a synonym for appearance then what Goethe
says doesnt make sense. It would make sense if he said something like, The reality behind
appearances is certain and definite by nature, while the appearances are often fluctuating in
character. He does not say this however. Goethe, like Aristotle, has a participatory
conception of knowledge. Knowledge is not the attempt to grasp, by means of representations,
a radically transcendent reality behind appearances. Rather, knowledge is the always finite
participation of the knower in reality by means of phenomena made intelligible in act of
knowledge.
That Goethe is not talking about a pure empiricism of sense perception is made clear by
what follows. In the next sentence Goethe writes,
There are many empirical fractions which must be discarded if we are to arrive at a pure,
constant phenomenon . . . . However, the instant I allow myself this, I already establish a type of
ideal. But there is a great difference between someone like the theorist who turns whole numbers
into fractions for the sake of a theory, and someone who sacrifices an empirical fraction for the
idea of the pure phenomenon.124

The scientific researcher must note not only how the phenomena appear, but how they
should appear. This normative judgment is specific to the phenomena being studied and is
121

Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, pp. 24-25 (HA XIII: 23-25).
Subsequently, I will argue that the Aristotelian ajrchv can best be understood as akin to the Goethean
Urphnomen. Cf. David Seamon, Goethes Approach to the Natural World: Implications for Environmental
Theory and Education, in Humanistic Geography, ed. D. Ley and M. Samuels (Chicago: Maaroufa Press, 1978),
p. 242: Ur- bears the connotation of primordial, basic, elemental, archetypal; the ur-phenomenon may be
thought of as the deep-down phenomenon, the essential core of a thing which makes it what it is and what it
becomes. One objection to the identification of ajrchv and Urphnomen might be that the latter is in some sense a
phenomenon, whereas the ajrchv is an essence or cause behind the phenomena. This is precisely the sort of
dualistic picture I want to oppose. Firstly, as we will see, the Urphnomen is not given to the senses alone; it is
not a merely sensible phenomenon. Secondly, both Goethe and Aristotle are committed to the reality of intuitive
thinking. Hence, there is nothing to stop an intelligible essence from being a phenomenon for intuitive thinking.
123
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 24 (HA XIII: 23-24).
122

46

made with reference to an ideal.125 There is a crucial ideal element in this empiricism.
However, this ideal, or idea, is not an abstract concept but the pure phenomenon itself. The
analogy Goethe draws is helpful. As Goethe suggests, it is one thing to divide up a whole to fit
the demands of a theory; and it is another to overlook a problematic part based on a view of
the whole. Just as it will always be necessary to bridge the gaps between the sensibly given
parts making up the whole by means of an insight into the whole going beyond sense
perception, so sometimes a view of the whole will allow one to integrate, or set aside, an
incongruous part without sacrificing the essence. For Goethe the pure phenomenon is not
something perceived with the eyes alone.126 One sees the pure phenomenon only by means of
a perception illuminated by thinking. Goethe continues as follows:
For the observer never sees the pure phenomenon with his own eyes, rather, much depends on
his mood, the state of his senses, the light, air, weather, the physical object, how it is handled,
and a thousand other circumstances. Hence it is like trying to drink the sea dry if we try to stay
with the individual aspect of the phenomenon, observe it, measure it, weigh it, and describe it.127

One cannot rely solely on the observation of particular instances. To attempt to capture the
pure phenomenon by a mere description and enumeration of the individual phenomena is an
impossible task. The infinite variety of the fluctuating appearances needs to be sorted and
sifted by thinking. However, this is not a matter of constructing theories. Here Goethes
affirmation of the human power to discriminate in beholding is crucial. While sense perception
sees the sensible appearance, intuitive thinking sees the intelligible essence of the
phenomenon, which is as much a part of it as its sensible appearance. If we remember this we
124

Ibid., p. 24 (HA XIII: 24).

More could be said here, especially concerning the aesthetic aspect of this normative dimension. Cf. Frederick
Amrine and Francis J. Zucker, Postcript, in Goethe and the Sciences: A Reappraisal, p. 379. Here mention is
made of Goethes extraordinary powers of apprehension. One example serves to illustrate this well. During his
student days in Strasbourg . . . Goethe attended a party at which there was an argument about the unfinished
second tower of the cathedral. How would it have appeared had it been completed? Several people made guesses,
and some, including Goethe, even made a sketch. Goethes second tower looked quite different from the finished
first tower, yet it was found, on comparison with the original plans, to be precisely what the architects had
intended. What this implies is an ability to perceive a certain aesthetic necessity, enabling Goethe to make an
intuitive judgement on the basis of how the phenomenon appears (i.e. the overall structure of the cathedral with
the unfinished second tower) concerning how it should appear (i.e. how the second tower should look.) In
perceiving this aesthetic necessity he could simultaneously see that the finished first tower, which was present,
was nevertheless not present as it should be, i.e. according to the idea of the whole. Cf. Plato, Laws, in Plato in
Twelve Volumes, trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 2.668c: Now the man who is
to judge a poem unerringly must know in each particular case the exact nature of the poem; for if he does not
know its essence, what its intention is and what the actual original which it represents, then he will hardly be
able to decide how far it succeeds or fails in fulfilling its intention.
126
Goethe, in Goethe on Science: an Anthology of Goethes Scientific Writings, ed. Jeremy Naydler (Edinburgh:
Floris Books, 1996), p. 115 (FA XXIV: 432): . . . there is a difference between seeing and seeing; . . . the eyes of
the spirit have to work in perpetual living connection with those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing and
yet seeing past a thing.
127
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 24 (HA XIII: 24).
125

47

will not be inclined to read the following statement of Goethes as affirming an inductive
method as this is typically understood. Goethe writes:
After observing a certain degree of constancy and consistency in phenomena, I derive an
empirical law from my observation and expect to find it in later phenomena. If the law and the
phenomena are in complete agreement, I have succeeded; if they are not in complete agreement,
my attention is drawn to the circumstances surrounding each case, and I am forced to find new
conditions for conducting the contradictory experiments in a purer way.128

Goethe aims to reach a state where the human mind can come closest to things in their
general state, draw them near, and, so to speak, form an amalgam with them just as it usually
does in common empiricism, but now in a rational way.129 This process of achieving
cognitive identity with the pure phenomenon is composed, for Goethe, of the following stages:
1. The empirical phenomenon,
which everyone finds in nature, and which is then raised through experiments to the
level of
2. the scientific phenomenon
by producing it under circumstances and conditions different from those in which it
was first observed, and in a sequence which is more or less successful.
3. The pure phenomenon
now stands before us as a result of all our observations and experiments. It can never
be isolated, but it appears in a continuous sequence of events. To depict it, the human
mind gives definition to the empirically variable, excludes the accidental, sets aside
the impure, untangles the complicated, and even discovers the unknown.130

We begin with the phenomena of everyday experience. While these phenomena are
fluctuating for us, by nature they are definite. We proceed to refine these initial phenomena by
means of experiment.131 Although it is not possible here to attempt any detailed discussion of
Goethes actual experimental method, some general points can be made.
In The Experiment as Mediator between Object and Subject, Goethe begins by speaking
of the need for the scientist to transcend the natural way of seeing and judging things132 that
characterizes our everyday experience. Normally we judge things as pleasing or displeasing, in
128

Ibid., p. 24 (HA XIII: 24).

Ibid., p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).
130
Ibid., p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).
131
It may be argued that Goethe differs here from Aristotle, who seems to have no conception of experiment in
his science of nature. However when one bears in mind the broad meaning of this term in Goethe the
incompatibility is reduced. The stricter kind of experiment where the researcher reproduces a phenomenon in
artificially controlled circumstances is for Goethe but a refinement of the more basic sense of experiment
understood as the experiential manifolding of phenomena with a view to discerning the idea. As we will see
subsequently, the Aristotelian notion of ejmpeiriva can accommodate both the notions of experience and
experiment. When Aristotle imagines what it would be like to view an eclipse from the moon, he is engaging in
an experiment. In this case, a thought experiment, an experiment in imagination.
132
Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).
129

48

relation to ourselves. The scientist needs to transcend this natural subjectivity and begin to see
natures objects in their own right and in relation to one another. . . . as a neutral, seemingly
godlike being he must seek out and examine what is, not what pleases.133
At first glance this may seem to be nothing more than an expression of the truism that
science seeks objectivity. However, the kind of objectivity Goethe aims for is quite different
from the objectivity sought by those who hold to the idol of the transcendent thing-in-itself.
This Goethean objectivity is sought not by moving away from the phenomena, but by going
deeper into them; it is gained by allowing the object itself to speak. The student of nature
needs to develop the calm exercise of his powers of attention, to observe each
phenomenon with the same quiet gaze in order to find the measure for what he learns, the
data of judgment, not in himself but in the sphere of what he observes.134 By patiently and
meticulously observing a given phenomenon over a long period of time we gain a clear initial
concept of the object, its parts, and its relationships.135 This initial grasp is refined by means
of experiment. Goethe defines his notion of experiment as follows:
When we intentionally reproduce empirical evidence found by earlier researchers,
contemporaries, or ourselves, when we re-create natural or artificial phenomena, we speak of
this as an experiment.136

For Goethe, it is not the purpose of experiment to prove a theory or hypothesis.137 As R. H.

Stephenson puts it, The whole point of Goethes experimentation is Darstellung
(representation of an object, brought into relation with others in such a way that its
133

Ibid., p. 11 (HA XIII: 10). Cf. PA 1.5.645a4-26: . . . 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 . . . We therefore must not recoil
with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler animals. Every realm of nature is marvelous: and as
Heraclitus, who when the strangers came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen
and hesitated to go in, is 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 will reveal to
us something natural and something beautiful. (Ogle).
134
Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).
135
Ibid., p. 11 (HA XIII: 10).
136
Ibid., p. 13 (HA XIII: 14).
137
Ibid., p. 14 (HA XIII: 5): . . . I would venture to say that we cannot prove anything by one experiment or
even several experiments together, that nothing is more dangerous than the desire to prove some thesis directly
through experiments, that the greatest errors have arisen just where the dangers and shortcomings in this method
have been overlooked. Cf. Nisbet (1972), p. 23: . . . in the opinion of Newton despite his famous hypothesis
non fingo the experiment is conducted in order to test a hypothesis, whereas Goethe . . . believes that
experiments should not be designed to prove some preexistent hypothesis or theory, but rather to enlarge our
knowledge of nature. Cf. Herbert Hensel, Goethe, Science and Sensory Experience, in Goethes Way of
Science: a Phenomenology of Nature, ed. David Seamon and Arthur Zajonc (New York: State University of New
York Press, 1998), p. 75: Instead of verifying or falsifying a hypothesis conceived ideally, outside of experience,
the important thing is to order the experiments in such a way that, in progressing through the series of
experiments, the underlying idea becomes immediately intuitive.
49

significance is revealed). . .138 Experiment assists the sorting and sifting of sense experience,
of the initially unclear multiplicity of the phenomena being studied, to their essential elements.
Any one experiment taken in isolation gives us only an isolated portion of the whole, i.e. of
the type of phenomenon being studied.139 The individual experiments, and the individual
insights they afford us concerning a small sphere of phenomena, or concerning a single
phenomenon, need to be linked into a whole series of contiguous experiments.140
We should not let the terminology of experiment mislead us into imagining that Goethe is
speaking solely of a situation where a phenomenon is artificially created in controlled
conditions. The essential thing is the repetition of experiences pertaining to the phenomena in
a given field in as comprehensive a manner as possible and according to an order appropriate
to the phenomena. The comprehensive series of experiments, with each growing by minute
gradations from the preceding, is understood by Goethe as a single experience:
Studied thoroughly and understood as a whole, these experiments could even be thought of as
representing a single experiment, a single piece of empirical evidence explored in its most
manifold variations. Such a piece of empirical evidence, composed of many others, is clearly of
a higher sort. It shows the general formula, so to speak, that overarches an array of individual
arithmetic sums. In my view, it is the task of the scientific researcher to work toward empirical
evidence of this higher sort.141

Although Goethe was largely hostile to the mathematisation of nature,142 he believed that
the student of nature should learn from the mathematician the meticulous care required to
138

Stephenson (1995), p. 11.

Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, pp. 14-15 (HA
XIII: 16-17): Every piece of empirical evidence, every experiment, must be viewed as isolated. . . . Nothing
happens in living nature which does not bear some relation to the whole. The empirical evidence may seem quite
isolated, we may view our experiments as mere isolated facts, but this is not to say that they are, in fact, isolated.
The question is: how can we find the connection between these phenomena, these events?
140
Ibid., p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).
141
Ibid., p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).When we examine Aristotles account of the emergence of the ajrcaiv in APo. 2.19
there will be cause to recall this idea of many perceptions that compose a single variegated experience in which
the universal is implicit.
142
This hostility originated in part from the belief that the principles of explanation should be derived from the
phenomena and not imposed on them. Hence, e.g. it is in principle misguided to reduce something qualitative to a
quantitative model of it. It is not the role of the scientist to postulate causes or explanatory entities behind the
scenes. Goethe was well aware that the nature of the mathematical physicists is not nature at all but simply
an aspect of nature. Cf. Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 310 (HA XII:
454): An important task: to banish mathematical-philosophical theories from those areas of physics where they
impede rather than advance knowledge, those areas where a one-sided development in modern scientific
education has made such perverse use of them. Goethe was not hostile to mathematics itself, only to its
inappropriate use in relation to the study of nature. Ibid., p. 310 (HA XII: 454): A strict separation must be
maintained between physics and mathematics. Physics must remain quite independent . . . . The latter, on the
other hand, must declare itself independent of all externalities, take its own path of intellect, and develop in a
purer way than it does now in working with the physical world to gain something from it or impose something on
it. It is worthwhile to note here that Aristotle believed that mathematical entities were simply aspects of the
world, not substances in their own right.
139

50

link things in unbroken succession, or rather, to derive things step by step.143 Goethe makes a
distinction between the method employed in mathematical proofs and what he calls
arguments. He writes of mathematics that
. . . its proofs merely state in a detailed way that what is presented as connected was already
there in each of the parts and as a consecutive whole, that it has been reviewed in its entirety and
found to be correct and irrefutable under all circumstances. Thus its demonstrations are always
more exposition, recapitulation, than argument.144

One might say, that just as for Goethe all mathematics is in a sense a higher empiricism,145
which involves making visible the detailed inner structure already implicitly contained within
a given whole, so also the science of nature attempts to make explicit the necessary
relationships between the phenomena, all of which are implicit within the phenomena of
nature as initially given in perception.
Dennis L. Sepper has described this aspect of Goethes thought well.146 Sepper discusses
the method Goethe followed in his early work Contributions to Optics as an example of the
kind of manifolding involved in his experimental approach. Sepper distinguishes two
important features of Goethes method. Firstly, there is a systematic experimental variation,
by which one gains a progressively more comprehensive acquaintance with the full range of
phenomena possible in limited circumstances.147 This experimental manifolding involves the
gathering together of as full a range as possible of phenomena of a certain type.
This gathering together is not a form of enumerative induction. The purpose of this method
is to bring the phenomena under consideration as much as possible into a form that allows the
ideal principles governing them to become visible. One is not aiming for the impossible goal
of actual comprehensiveness, but rather moving towards the idea, whose unity cannot, as
such, be present in the spatio-temporally distinct sensible phenomena, but which the latter can
nevertheless approximate more and more adequately, up until the moment when one grasps
the underlying principles involved.
The continuity between individual sensible phenomena will never be fully seamless. The
move from the complex experiment or experience, to the seamless unity of the idea always

143

Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).
Cf. Goethe, Scientific Studies, p. 310 (HA XII: 455): What except for its exactitude is exact about mathematics?
And this exactitude does it not flow from an inner feeling for truth?
144
Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 16 (HA XIII: 17).
145
Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 310 (HA XII: 454-455): Like
dialectics, mathematics is an organ for a higher kind of inner sense; in practice it is an art like rhetoric. Both
value nothing but form the content is unimportant.
146
Dennis L. Sepper, Goethe and the Poetics of Science, Janus Head 8 1 (2005), pp. 207-227.
147
Ibid., p. 217.
51

involves a leap of insight.148 Nevertheless, this method has its purpose. Goethe himself makes
this very clear when he writes,
Two needs arise in us when we observe nature: to gain complete knowledge of the phenomena
themselves, and then to make them our own by reflection upon them. Completeness is a product
of order, order demands method, and method makes it easier to perceive the concept [italics
added]. When we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it correctly, and reproduce it
in our minds eye, we can say that we have an intuitive perception of it in the truest and highest
sense. . . . And thus the particular always leads us to the general, the general to the particular.149

The point is not to amass evidence, but to foster the discernment of the underlying principle,
the idea of the phenomena. While the variation of experiments and their arrangement in a
continuous series serve to provide a kind of empirical approximation to the unity of the idea,
and to foster its discernment, the attempt to reduce the phenomena to their most simple
elements has another purpose. Sepper writes:
Goethes way of science thus aims at an original experience, original in the sense not so much of
being unprecedented as of taking or referring things back to their origins and placing them in
fundamental relations to other things in the relevant field of interest. Several years later Goethe
began using the term Urphnomen for the unity of what is experienced as single despite the
manifold perspectives under which it appears (Ur- as a prefix in German refers to something
original or foundational).150

Ronald Brady has argued that Schiller was also concerned to reach a middle way between
rationalism and empiricism, and that he saw in Goethe someone who had achieved in
scientific practice what he had sought more theoretically. After reading Goethes essay
Empirical Observation and Science, Schiller responded, in a letter dated January 19, 1798,
with what is perhaps the fullest treatment of Goethes scientific ideas in the correspondence
between the men.151 In this letter Schiller seeks to apply the categories of Kants first Critique
to the interpretation of Goethes thought. There is no space here to consider this Kantian

148

Goethe, in Nisbet (1972), p. 42 (JA I 6:75): Experiments are mediators between nature and concept, between
nature and the idea, and between the concept and the idea.
149
Goethe, Polarity, in Scientific Studies, p.155 (WA II: 11). Cf. Sepper (2005), pp. 217-218: By means of the
manifold variations of experiments one seeks an overall experience that will be unitary in two ways: in that the
experiments performed are progressively evolved from one another by a series of small modifications, and in that
one has seen how the small modifications affect and vary the outcome while still remaining basically the same
type of experimental phenomenon (for example, refraction of light through an aperture.)
150
Ibid., pp. 215-217. As we will see later, this is in essence Aristotles approach to science. Each science deals
with a set of indemonstrable ajrcaiv. These are reached on the basis of experience, by a combination of ejpagwghv
and nou`~. These ajrcaiv are proper to their particular science. All other, more complex, phenomena are explained
by being referred back to these indemonstrable origins. The basic movement of science is from the particulars
to these ajrcaiv, from the parts to the whole, by means of ejpagwghv and nou`~, and then back down from the ajrcaiv
in demonstration.
151
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 2, pp. 16-19.
52

architecture itself, and I will focus only on the main points that Schiller makes.152
Schiller distinguishes between three general approaches: common empiricism, rationalism,
and finally rational empiricism. These clearly correspond to the three stages outlined by
Goethe in his essay. From Schillers characterizations it is clear that when he uses the terms
empiricism and rationalism he is not referring to specific philosophical schools so much
as general aspects, or stages of cognitive engagement with the world.
Common empiricism is characterized by the following features: Firstly, it focuses always on
one definite instance without distinguishing it from or relating it to others. Secondly, it has no
way of distinguishing what is accidental from what is essential. Thirdly, it confines itself to a
concrete actuality without considering possibility. Fourthly, it fails to reach any necessity.
Fifthly, it is never exposed to error in so far as it simply describes the occurrence of concrete
instances of perception.153
The philosophical phenomenon and the possibility of error only arise with what Schiller
calls rationalism, for in this field the thinking faculties commence their play, and arbitrariness
enters with the freedom that is granted to these powers which are so inclined to substitute
themselves for the object.154 It is not thinking, as such, that is the problem. The problem is
with the tendency of discursive thinking to run ahead of the phenomena, to make premature
syntheses, to hazard explanations on the basis of insufficient observation (not insufficient
evidence), and to replace the phenomenon with a theoretical construct.
Rationalism also has the following features: Firstly, it deals with several cases, rather than
the isolated observation of the particular case of common empiricism. This in itself is positive
and a way to truth, which can be found only when one understands how to free oneself from
particular cases.155 It goes astray, however, when it mistakenly regards a mere plurality as
unity, and hence treats that which is no totality, as totality.156 In other words, it makes
generalizations not in accord with the phenomena. Secondly, it distinguishes and compares
phenomena, in other words, engages in analysis and synthesis. This also is not in itself
problematic. It becomes problematic when it tends towards a one-sided operation of discursive
thinking divorced from the phenomena of nature. In this case, such analysis and synthesis are
in danger of strictly separating that which is allied in nature or joining what is separated in
152

I will also avoid the question regarding what subtle differences there may be between Schillers presentation
and Goethes own position. This complex question is discussed in Brady (1972) who argues that by the time
Schiller met Goethe he was already moving away from Kant and that Goethe helped him in this regard.
153
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 2, p. 16: What it observes, it really observes,
and as it feels no desire to make its perceptions laws for the object, so its perceptions may always, without any
danger, be isolated and accidental. Regarding this last, whether or not this is a conscious reference to the
Aristotelian doctrine that the senses do not err in the perception of their proper objects, the point seems to be
basically the same. Cf. Goethe, in The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, trans. Bailey Saunders (London:
Macmillan and Co., 1893), p. 135 (HA XII: 406): The senses do not deceive, the judgment deceives.
154
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 2, p. 17.
155
Ibid., p. 17.
156
Ibid., p. 17.
53

nature. Thirdly, rationalism looks everywhere for causality, and strives to unite all
phenomenoa in terms of cause and effect. Fourthly, rationalism quits reality without arriving
at necessity. Possibility is its immense field, hence its unlimited hypotheses. This last point is
significant. The term rationalism may be said to characterize abstract discursive thinking
insofar as it frees the knower from the limitations of perception, but simultaneously opens up
the possibility of losing touch with reality in a concern with mere logical possibility.157 The
necessity Schiller is referring to is not logical necessity; it can be grasped only in relation to
the phenomena, not solely in the realm of discursive thinking. It is, one might say, a necessity
of form and content.
Schiller then turns to rational empiricism, and writes: The pure phenomenon which, as I
think, is one with the objective law of nature, can be got at only by rational empiricism.158
Here, Schiller is making explicit reference to Goethes essay and to the pure phenomenon
discussed there. Schiller identifies the pure phenomenon with the objective law of nature. The
law is not other than the phenomenon. It is the phenomenon itself grasped in its necessity.
As Schiller says, The pure phenomenon must comprehend the totality of instances, for it is
the element of constancy in every one of them.159 Rational empiricism grasps not a mere
empirical group of instances, nor a hypothetical totality that may or may not be the proper
whole in terms of which the particular instances become intelligible, but the wholeness of the
phenomena themselves.
Schiller states the following further features of rational empiricism: Firstly, rational
empiricism always sets a limit, as may be learnt from the example of all true enquirers into
nature, who are equally removed from all absolute affirmations and denials.160 By this
Schiller seems to refer both to the necessary finitude of human cognition of nature, and the
need to remember the dependence of any partial whole on the whole of nature. In grasping the
pure phenomenon, or element of constancy underlying the individual instances, I
nevertheless grasp something limited, in the sense of something having a form. Secondly,
. . . rational empiricism pays heed both to causality and to the independence of the phenomena; it
sees all nature in a reciprocal state of activity, everything is determined alternately, and hence it
157

Cf. Groarke (2009). Groarke presents a very insightful description of this kind of thinking in his
characterization of Cartesian doubt as a general philosophical tendency and its connection to the problem of
induction. There is a general tendency to question the validity of induction on the basis of mere logical
possibilities. An inductive generalization is thought to be undermined by the mere possibility that the object,
which has invariably appeared in a certain manner up till now, e.g. the sun rising at dawn, might suddenly act
differently in the future, even though such an occurrence would involve a miraculous violation of the laws of
nature.
158
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 2, p.18.
159
Ibid., p. 18. Cf. APo. 2.19.100a6-9: From experience, that is, from the whole universal that has come to rest
in the soul (the one beside the many, that which would be, in all [things], one self-same thing, [arises] the
governing origin of art and science.
160
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 2, p. 18.
54

takes good care not to allow causality to assert itself only according to a simple scanty length,
but breadth too is in all cases taken into account.161

Here Schiller expresses ideas echoed by Goethe in various places.162 Rational empiricism
gets away from the linear and objectifying tendency to see causes and effects as distinct
entities interacting mechanically. When Goethe says that scientific understanding is not a
question of causes but of conditions under which the phenomena appear,163 he is expressing
not so much a denial of causality, as a different understanding of causality.164
Finally, Schiller says that rational empiricism always penetrates to necessity.165 This
necessity, as already mentioned, is the necessity of the phenomena themselves, not merely of
thought, and is reached via the closest interplay between thinking and perception.166
Rational empiricism involves a transformation both of the subject and of the object. On the
one hand, it excludes the arbitrariness which influences the mind of man towards the object
and thereby grants to the human mind its full rational freedom by cutting off from it all
arbitrariness.167 This is achieved because rational empiricism always stays faithful to the
phenomena, and seeks to discern their immanent principles, rather than imposing theories onto
them. On the other hand, rational empiricism removes blind chance in the object, and the
limited individuality of the single phenomenon and takes from the object its blind power.168
In the next section we will examine what this implies more carefully.
2.3 Goethes Scientific Method
I stated that Goethes method is not inductive. It is necessary to clarify further what this
means. Goethe is clear in his rejection of the inductive method as the following statement
shows: Induction I have never permitted myself, and if another had set up such a method in
opposition to mine, I would have had my reason for rejecting it.169 In another place he
expresses an even stronger negative judgment:

161

Ibid., pp. 18-19.

Goethe, in Arthur Zajonc, Goethe and the Science of his Time, in Goethes Way of Science: a
Phenomenology of Nature, p. 26 (HA XII: 446): . . . man in thinking errs particularly when inquiring after cause
and effect; the two together constitute the indissoluble phenomenon.
163
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).
164
Zajonc (1998), p. 26: Goethe is therefore uninterested in causes as such and goes so far as to state that to
separate effect from cause is an error. Rather, the phenomenon should be taken as a whole. Instead of causes, one
searches for the essential circumstances under which the phenomenon occurs.
165
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 19/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol 2, p. 18.
166
Ibid., p. 18: . . . it is only the full activity of the freely thinking faculties together with the purest and most
extensive activity of the sensuous powers of perception, that leads to scientific knowledge.
167
Ibid., p. 18.
168
Ibid., p. 18.
169
Goethe, in Hegge (1987), p. 212 (FA XIII: 77).
162

55

Thinking by means of analogies is not to be condemned. Analogy has this advantage that it
comes to no conclusion, and does not, in truth, aim at finality at all. Induction, on the contrary, is
fatal, for it sets up an object and keeps it in view, and, working on towards it, drags false and
true with it in its train.170

Goethe sees the formation of premature theories and hypotheses as a great danger in
scientific research. Induction, in the usual sense, can be understood as a means to making a
generalization, but it can also been seen as a way of supporting a hypothesis, as a way of
gathering evidence for a theoretical claim. Having determined the object in advance of an
adequate exploration of the relevant phenomena, one then gathers evidence by the observation
of particular instances that fit the hypothesis. But since the hypothesis has been fixed
prematurely, and is not adequate to the richness of the phenomena, one is as likely to include
the accidental as the essential.
This points to an important feature of Goethes rational empiricism, namely that the
appropriate balance between observation and thinking cannot be defined in advance of
investigation, and its maintenance always requires an artistic sensitivity to the phenomena
studied. There is no mechanism that can produce scientific knowledge. In relation to this
difficult question concerning the relation between perception and thinking in Goethe one must
be very careful. The treatment of H. R. Nisbet seems to me to be a revealing example of where
one can go wrong. A consideration of Nisbets account will also help us to appreciate the
nature of Goethes relationship to empiricism, as represented in the person of Francis Bacon.
Nisbet seems eager to show that Goethes ideas are ultimately no more than a brilliant
combination of traditional notions, derived from earlier philosophies. Speaking of Goethes
Urpflanze and Typus, Nisbet claims that these ideas are derived from other thinkers and not by
simple induction from observation. The purpose of Goethes extensive observations was
simply to provide evidence for these theories. Elsewhere, Nisbet argues that Goethe in any
case rejected the naive Baconian belief in the possibility of induction without any prior
theory.171 According to Nisbet, Goethe realized that any such induction would lead either to
an interminable compilation of empirical instances, or to a self-defeating generalization (for
any generalization will necessarily be based on a prior selection from the data of
observation).172 Nisbet concludes as follows:
Goethe, whose philosophical acumen is too often underrated, has here put his finger unerringly
on the fallacy which underlies Bacons whole theory of the inductive process, on what Sir Karl
Popper calls the Baconian myth that we must begin with observations in order to derive our
theories from them.173
170

Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 70 (FA XIII: 44).

Nisbet (1972), p. 29.
172
Ibid., p. 29.
173
Ibid., p. 29.
171

56

I think that Nisbet has misunderstood Goethes relationship to observation and induction.
Nisbet notes the claim made by G. A. Wells174 that Goethes view of science and experiment is
not that of modern science, but that of Francis Bacon. Nisbet is concerned to clarify the nature
of Goethes relationship to Bacon, in light of the various seemingly contradictory statements
Goethe makes. Goethe respected Bacon for bringing into question an uncritical reliance on
inherited assumptions that might stand in the way of an unprejudiced engagement with the
phenomena. Nisbet is right in saying that Goethe approved of Bacons indictment of
speculation and premature conclusions.175 Nisbet also notes certain interesting parallels
between the two abovementioned essays of Goethes and Bacons Novum Organum.176
However, his overall assessment of Goethes conception of the relation between perception
and thinking is problematic. He does not seem to recognize the crucial role played by intuitive
thinking in Goethes approach. Goethe does say that there is no pure perception absolutely
uninformed by thinking. In the preface to the Theory of Color Goethe writes:

An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never met, even by those who make it: i.e., that
empirical data should be presented without any theoretical context . . . . This demand seems odd
because it is useless simply to look at something. Every act of looking turns into observation,
every act of observation into reflection, every act of reflection into the making of associations;
thus it is evident that we theorize every time we look carefully at the world.177

There can be no question here of naive inductivism, which seeks to derive generalizations
from naked facts. There are no naked facts. Indeed this whole idea is a product of a dualism
Goethe rejected, which sees the sensible as the direct effect of some underlying material
substrate, and the intelligible as a subjective creation of the human mind. Ideas are as much
constitutive of the facts as their sensible appearance. Nor can one speak here of naive
174

G. A. Wells, Goethes Scientific Method and Aims in the Light of his Studies of Physical Optics,
Publications of the English Goethe Society 38 (1968), p. 103.
175
Nisbet (1972), p. 27.
176
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum: With Other Parts of the Great Instauration, trans. and ed. Peter Urbach and
John Gibson (Chicago: Open Court, 1994). Nisbet notes the apparent similarities between the Urphnomen and
what Bacon refers to as Shining or Revealing instances. Bacon (pp. 184-185) describes these as follows:
They are those that reveal the nature in question naked and standing on its own, in its exaltation or to the highest
degree of its power, that is to say, emancipated and freed from impediments, or at least dominating them by its
strength and forcing them into submission. For since every body contains many forms or natures, linked and in a
concrete state, they all beat back, suppress, break and bind one another, so that each individual form is obscured.
But in some subjects, the nature in question is found to exceed the others in its vigour, either from the absence of
any impediments or by the predominance of its vigour. And instances of this kind are the most revealing of the
form. While there is some similarity, it is instructive to note the crudity and violent rhetoric of Bacons account
in comparison with Goethes gentle empiricism.
177
Goethe, Preface to the Theory of Colour, in Scientific Studies, p. 159 (HA XIII: 317).
57

abstractionism, which thinks that we derive concepts and theories by reading them off the
sensible phenomena. Nisbet seems to think that the conceptual content that necessarily
informs conscious perception is a function solely of the subjective activity of the human mind.
Even more problematically, he claims that Goethe grew more tolerant of hypotheses in his
later years, under the influence of Schiller, and seems to imply that Goethe would have been
sympathetic to Kants conception of the proper attitude of the researcher to nature, expressed
in the following statement:
Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant appearances can
be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other hand the experiment which it has decided in
conformity with those principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not,
however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to
say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witnesses to answer questions that he has
himself formulated.178

The attitude expressed in this quote is antithetical to Goethes delicate empiricism, which
is characterized by its humility in the face of natures unfathomable, but not thereby absolutely
unknowable, richness. While Goethe undoubtedly learnt from Kants third Critique, Alan P.
Cottrell is right when he states that, The epistemology underlying Goethes scientific efforts
is fundamentally non-Kantian.179 We will return in the next section to another aspect of
Cottrells statement, namely, his contention that pace Cassirer,180 Goethes recognition of the
limits of human knowing is not equivalent to a resignation to the Kantian notion that truth
(the Ding an sich) is by definition inaccessible to cognition.181
If we consider Goethes statement about the relationship between thinking and observation
above, we notice that he does not say that we begin with theories and then approach the
phenomena. Rather, he says that we begin to think in response to perception Every act of
looking turns into observation . . . etc. This does not mean that we ever perceive a completely
raw sensible datum. The crucial thing is how one interprets the apparent theory-ladenness of
our perception.
Clearly, by the time a person turns to scientific research they are very far progressed along
the path of being enculturated, shaped by various general ways of looking at the world. And in
some cases these ways of seeing will obscure our view of the phenomena under consideration.
This is the case when for instance we insist on imposing mechanistic or quantitative concepts
on phenomena that are irreducibly qualitative, e.g. colours.
178

Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan,
1986), p. 20.
179
Alan P. Cottrell, Appendix: A Note on Goethes Epistemology in Contrast to Kant, in Goethes Faust:
Seven Essays (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), p. 132.
180
Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau Kant Goethe: Two Esssays, trans. James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John
Herman Randall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945), p. 80.
181
Cottrell (1972), p. 133.
58

It is wrong to think that we need to strip away all thinking to get at the phenomena
uncontaminated. Even if it were possible to reach some purely sensible datum, this would be
of no use to knowledge, because the senses in themselves do not ground knowledge in the
objective world. Nevertheless, we should not conclude from this that we are locked within our
merely human theories about nature. What such a view fails to appreciate is that, for Goethe,
human cognition is itself an organ of natures manifestation.182 We do not derive ideas from
pure perception by induction or abstraction, because ideas are not perceptible to the senses;
they are not a sensible attribute of the phenomenon that one can simply read off. Nevertheless,
insofar as they are adequate, they really are the ideas of the things themselves.
Our perceptions of phenomena are always to some extent structured by our
Vorstellungsarten, which Sepper calls our ways or manners or types of conceiving,
presenting, and representing things.183 As Sepper says, These ways of representing things
are not merely subjective factors that unfortunately color our perceptions.184 We develop our
ways of seeing in a dynamic interaction with nature which can be reduced neither to a passive
reception of something already objectively there, nor to the active imposition of our subjective
mental categories onto experience.185 For Goethe, human culture is itself a higher form of
nature.186
Even where Goethe seems to come close to some form of historicism or perspectivalism we
need to remember that for Goethe there are no things in themselves, only the One in
itself187 and that this is not an objectified reality underlying appearances. It is because nature
is for Goethe an unfathomable unity and creative source that it is possible for various
Vorstellungsarten to reveal nature truly, if partially.
The fact that we do not get ideas directly from the sensible phenomena through our senses,
but rather through intuitive thinking, does not mean that the ideas are not simultaneously the
ideas of the phenomena. The depths within the human mind from which thoughts emerge are
182

Goethe, in Vitor (1950), p. 57 (JA II: 260): Is not the core of Nature / In the hearts of men?
Sepper (2005), p. 221: They are not simply recognitions of what is objectively the case, nor are they to be
simply identified with what one might call the subjective realization of the abstraction of an intelligible form. For
Goethe, the human being is not a passively objective receptor of the way things are. Each person has certain
characteristic contexts for seeing things and certain characteristic ways of trying to put things together, even and
especially when he or she is experiencing a thing, an event, a field for the first time. He called these characteristic
ways Vorstellungsarten, ways or manners or types of conceiving, presenting, and representing things let me
refer to them simply as Vorstellungsarten. The intuitions of truth are always accommodated in the experience of
the individual to that individuals Vorstellungsart.
184
Ibid., p. 221.
185
Cf. Brian C. Goodwin, Toward a Science of Qualities, in New Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Science, ed. W. Harman and J. Clark (Sausalito: Institute of Noetic Sciences, 1994), p. 243: Truth is thus itself
the result of a generative process. It is neither given in the empirical evidence, nor is it the result of pre-existing
forms of intuition and understanding in the Kantian sense.
186
Cf. Vitor (1950), p. 143 (JA 34: 12): Where the rare, supreme achievement takes place, and the healthy
nature of man is realized as a whole, there the universe, says Goethe, if it could have a sensation of itself,
would believe it had reached its goal and would admire the peak of its own becoming and be-ing.
187
Goethe, Conversation with Riemar 02/08/1807 (FA 6 (33): 218).
183

59

simultaneously the depths of nature.188 As Goethe puts it, Human beings know themselves
only in so far as they know the world; they perceive the world only in themselves, and
themselves only in the world.189
As we saw in the last section, for Goethe experiment and the extensive observation of the
phenomena being studied do not have the purpose of providing evidence for a theoretical
hypothesis. If one can speak of Goethes method involving a kind of intuitive induction, it is
in a very different sense from the mechanical, enumerative induction familiar today. As I
noted in the introduction, Hjalmar Hegge writes:
Goethe is altogether closer . . . to the Aristotelian tradition in science than to the GalileanNewtonian. His view of induction recalls Aristotles intuitive induction, though Goethe has
also applied his view extensively in practical research, and at the same time formulated it more
precisely than did Aristotle on just this point.190

Thus, in a sense, whether we speak of Goethes method as inductive depends on whether we

use the word in its modern sense, or in its traditional sense, where the latter presupposes
intuitive thinking as the source of the insight necessary to grasp the principle operative in the
phenomena. For the sake of clarity I will continue to refer to Goethes method as noninductive, in the modern sense of induction.
One of the clearest presentations of this aspect of Goethes thought is that of Rudolf
Steiner.191 Apart from providing one of the best philosophical interpretations of Goethes
epistemology, Steiner also provides a very illuminating account of the relationship between
Goethes science and the modern understanding of induction. Steiner begins by noting that
Goethes scientific method never leaves the phenomena. Where it differs from empiricism is
in recognizing the intuitive power of thinking. For Goethe ideas are neither representations
188

Goethe, in R. H. Stephenson, Goethes Wisdom Literature (New York: Peter Lang, 1983), p. 92 (HA XII:
435): Search within yourselves and you will find everything; and be glad if out there, however you choose to
name it, a nature lies which says Yes and Amen to everything that you have found within yourselves. Cf.
Goethe, Conversation with Eckermann 26/2/1824, in H. J. Weigand, Wisdom and Experience (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 124 (FA 12 (39): 98): Had I not harboured the world within me by
anticipation, I would have remained blind with seeing eyes, and all research and experience would have been a
lifeless and futile effort.
189
Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, in Scientific Studies, p. 39 (HA XIII: 38).
190
Hegge (1987), p. 213. Cf. Goethe, Letter to Zelter 5/10/1828, in Goethes Letters to Zelter, trans. A. D.
Coleridge (London: George Bell and Sons, 1892), p. 334 (HA XII: 440): When one considers the problems of
Aristotle, one is astonished at his gift of observation, and at all that the Greeks had an eye for; only they err in
being over-hasty, for they go directly from the phenomenon to the explanation . . . .
191
Cf. Roger Smook, Rudolf Steiner on the Presuppositions of Goethean Science, Idealistic Studies 22 1
(1992), pp. 68-81. Although Steiner is sometimes overlooked in the literature, I agree with Smook, who writes: I
believe there is no philosopher who has entered more thoroughly into the spirit of the Goethean scientific
enterprise, or tried harder to spell out its presuppositions, than Rudolf Steiner. Steiners basic works on Goethe
are: Rudolf Steiner, The Science of Knowing: Outline of an Epistemology Implicit in the Goethean World View,
trans. William Lindeman (New York: Mercury Press, 1988b); Rudolf Steiner, Goethean Science, trans. William
Lindeman (New York: Mercury Press, 1988a); Rudolf Steiner, Goethes World View, trans. William Lindeman
60

that are caused by a hidden thing in itself, nor subjective constructions by means of which the
human knower attempts to legislate for nature. On the Goethean view, according to Steiner,
science is

. . . a matter . . . of connecting sense perceptible facts. These connections, however, are precisely
what manifest themselves so unclearly, so untransparently, in experience. One fact a confronts
us, but at the same time numerous other ones do also. As we let our gaze sweep over the
manifoldness presented here, we are totally in the dark as to which of the other facts have a
closer relationship to this fact a and which have a more remote relationship. Some facts may be
present without which the event cannot occur at all, and others are present that only modify it;
without these the event could indeed occur, but would then, under different circumstances,
assume a different form. 192

We can see here many of the elements from Goethes Empirical Observation and Science.
In order to grasp the pure phenomenon, the phenomenon certain and definite by nature we
must strip away the inessential phenomena surrounding it. This may be done either physically,
by simplifying the conditions under which the phenomenon occurs, or in imagination. In order
to make the pure phenomenon visible we usually need to alter the order of the phenomena or
the perspective from which we view them. This is the task of experiment as Goethe describes
it. Ultimately, says Steiner, We have to create conditions such that a process will appear to us
with transparent clarity as the necessary result of these conditions.193
Although I will discuss parallels between the Goethean and the Aristotelian perspectives in
subsequent chapters, it is worthwhile noting that Steiners interpretation of Goethe here seems
to draw on Aristotelian examples.194 Bernard J. Lonergan writes, that for Aristotle grasping
the cause is, not an ocular vision, but an insight into the sensible data.195 Longergan mentions
Aristotles illustration of this in relation to geometrical examples in the Metaphysics.196 Such
problems, writes Lonergan,

(New York:Mercury Press, 1985).

192
Steiner (1988b), pp. 75-76.
193
Ibid., p. 76.
194
Steiner (1988b), p.81: Every law of nature therefore has the form: When this fact interacts with that one, then
this phenomenon arises . . . . When one object is standing between a source of light and another object, it will
cast a shadow upon this other object [italics added]. Whatever is not mere description in mathematics, physics,
and mechanics must be archetypal phenomenon. This seems to be a reference to the example of the lunar eclipse
found in various places in the Posterior Analytics.
195
Cf. Bernard J. Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David B. Burrell, C. S. C. (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), p. 14.
196
Met. 9.9.1051a21-27: It is by actualization also that geometrical relations are discovered; for it is by dividing
the given figures that people discover them. If they had been already divided, the relations would have been
obvious; but as it is the divisions are present only in potency. Why are the angles of the triangle equal to two right
angles? Because the angles about one point are equal to two right angles. If, then, the line parallel to the side had
been already drawn, the theorem would have been evident to any one as soon as he saw the figure. (Ross,
slightly altered).
61

. . . are difficult when the construction is merely in potency; but draw in the construction, and
one solves the problem almost by inspection. Stare at a triangle as long as you please, and you
will not be any nearer seeing that its three angles must equal two right angles. But through the
vertex draw a line parallel to the base, and the equality of alternate angles ends the matter at
once. The act of understanding leaps forth when the sensible data are in a suitable constellation
[italics added].197

Steiner gives virtually the same example, and the point is identical to Lonergans.198 We
have to create such conditions, i.e. bring the phenomena into such a constellation that the act
of understanding will leap forth, and a given phenomenon will appear to us with transparent
clarity as the necessary result of these conditions. Now this is not very controversial in the
case of simple geometrical examples. More radically, both Goethe and Aristotle see this kind
of insight into sensible data as the essence of scientific method not only in formal sciences like
geometry, but also in the science of nature.199 As will become increasingly clear throughout
the thesis, both Goethe and Aristotle think of the scientific study of nature as a rigorous
science of the sensible real with respect to the intelligibility immanent in this sensible real.200
This insight into the sensible data cannot be achieved by sense observation alone. Goethe is
not promoting a mere cataloguing of individual empirical facts. The Urphnomen is seen by
intuition in the sensible phenomena. The process leading up to the perception of the
Urphnomen also involves thinking. Nevertheless the relationship between thinking and
perception has a specific meaning here. It is not the synthetic activity of thinking alone that
gives knowledge of some phenomenon of the natural world. Thinking initially makes a
proposal, removes certain conditions and orders the phenomena in a certain way. However, if
the phenomenon is unable to reveal its nature through that proposal no intelligibility will
result.201 This does not mean that knowledge is not gained in the act of insight. It is not that
197

Lonergan (1967), p. 14.

Steiner (1988b), pp. 77-78: If I have a triangle a b c before me, I definitely do not see at first glance that the
sum of the three angles is always equal to a straight angle.
199
Cf. Groarke (2009), p. 317. Groarke provides an example of how this kind of method relates to a natural
example. He considers Aristotles use of h|/ or qua to express the focus on a phenomenon in a certain regard
relevant to what one is investigating. Groarke discusses, by way of example, the question Why does a cat fall to
earth? He writes: A cat falls to the Earth not because it is a cat, not because it is composed of DNA and carbon,
not because it is coloured black, not because it is three oclock in the afternoon, not because the person throwing
it has just committed a crime, not because it is my cat, and not because it is named Leo. . . . The characteristics of
the cat qua physical mass determine the nature of the event. By paring down the event to its most basic elements
and disregarding the accumulated aspects that distract us, we can eventually arrive at one of the first principles of
physics, the law of gravity.
200
Joseph J. Sikora, The Christian Intellect and the Mystery of Being: Reflections of a Maritain Thomist (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), p. 94.
201
Rudolf Steiner, Truth and Science, trans. William Lindeman (New York: Mercury Press, 1993), p. 36: By
establishing a relation between two distinct parts of the world content, thinking of itself has determined
absolutely nothing about them. Thinking waits for what comes to light of its own accord as a result of restoring
the relationship. It is this result alone that is knowledge of that particular section of the world content . . . . If this
particular section of the world content were unable to express anything about itself through that relationship, then
this attempt by thinking would fail, and one would have to try again. In other words, knowledge is found not
198

62

one creates a hypothesis which must be proved by observation. Subsequent observation does
not prove the hypothesis; rather, it makes the principle visible, or it does not. In other words, it
either does or does not result in intelligible phenomena. It is always seeing that is
authoritative. At the same time, it is important not to interpret the role of thinking in some a
priori sense. We do not gain knowledge of nature a priori, solely by means of a consideration
of the structures of pure thinking.202 Steiner continues as follows:
Such a phenomenon, now, in which the character of the process follows directly and in a
transparently clear way out of the nature of the pertinent factors, is called an archetypal
phenomenon (Urphnomen) or a basic fact (Grundtatsache). This archetypal phenomenon is
identical with objective natural law. For in it is expressed not only that a process has occurred
under certain conditions but also that it had to occur. Given the nature of what was under
consideration there, one realizes that the process had to occur.203

Here Steiner develops the identity of the Urphnomen and the natural law mentioned by
Schiller. We can see from Steiners formulation how radically the Goethean perspective brings
into question the incompatible assumptions of traditional empiricism and rationalism. We can
begin to see that Goethes position is not some forced amalgam of the two, but a middle way,
representing a position in a sense prior to the split between empiricism and rationalism. We
have here a science of nature that stays strictly with the phenomena and involves no
hypothetical explanatory entities, but which nevertheless aims at necessary truths. Steiner
continues:
We see that we can remain completely within the phenomena and still arrive at what is
necessary. The inductive method adhered to so much today can never do this. Basically, it
proceeds in the following way. It sees a phenomenon that occurs in a particular way under the
given conditions. A second time it sees the same phenomenon come about under similar
conditions. From this it infers that a general law exists according to which this event must come
about, and it expresses this law as such. Such a method remains totally outside the phenomena
merely in the formal structure of thought, or in its synthetic activity, but in the realisation of the phenomenon that
is intelligible in potency such that it becomes actively intelligible.
202
Cf. Jeremy Naydler, The Poverty of Popperism, Thomist 46 (1982), pp. 92-107. This article includes an
illuminating discussion of the changing concept of the a priori, in relation to the contrast between modern and
ancient thought. Naydler discusses Kants definition of the difference between the a priori and a posteriori, and
argues that the making of such distinctions need not be and historically has not been the only way of
approaching an understanding of how the acquisition of knowledge takes place. One need only consider the term
a priori in its historical context to realize that it originally indicated that which is prior in NATURE, rather than
that which is gained by the mind independently of experience. Thus for Aristotle: The path of investigation must
lie from what is more immediately cognisable and clear to us (a posteriori) to what is clearer and more intimately
cognisable in its own nature (a priori) . . . . That the a priori came to acquire the meaning which it did in Kants
philosophy points to the state of affairs that had come to prevail in the consciousness of civilized Europeans by
the 18th Century: namely, that the ideas which men conceive are not felt to have an ontological foundation in
nature, that what is prior in the human mind can have no correspondence to that which is prior in nature, and
that the latter is something from which, according to Kant, the human mind is irrevocably estranged.
203
Steiner (1988b), p. 80.
63

. . . . Its laws are the generalizations of individual facts. It must always wait for confirmation of
the rule by the individual facts. Our method knows that its laws are simply facts that have been
wrested from the confusion of chance happening and made into necessary facts [italics
added].204 We know that if the factors a and b are there, a particular effect necessarily takes
place. We do not go outside the phenomenal world. The content of science, as we think of it, is
nothing more than objective happening. Only the form according to which the facts are placed
together is changed.205

Steiner makes a number of important points here. It may seem that Goethes method is akin
to the inductive method as Steiner describes it. Have I not said that Goethes method involves
observing a number of instances of a given phenomenon, in order to determine the conditions
under which the phenomenon necessarily occurs? Is this not a case of seeing that the same
phenomenon has occurred on a number of occasions and from this inferring that a general
law exists according to which this event must come about? Not at all; the crucial difference
lies in the role that intuitive understanding plays in the Goethean method. The inductive
method proceeds solely by observing that a certain phenomenon repeatedly occurs in a certain
way. From a sufficiently large number of such observations it derives a general law, a law
which is a generalization made on the basis of these particular observations, e.g. all swans are
white.
In this classic example the generalization is based solely on the fact that a certain number of
swans have been seen to be white. The force of the inductive generalization derives solely
from the large number of observations and a presumption about the regularity of nature. Of
course the crux of the problem is determining what amounts to a sufficiently large number of
such observations. Strictly speaking no finite number of observations will be sufficient. No
amount of appearances will ever justify an inference to a reality hidden behind appearances.
Similarly, the assumption about the regularity of nature is itself open to the objection that
since its ultimate warrant can, on an empiricist view, only be empirical, i.e. inductive, it is
itself based on the uncertain foundations of the observed regularity of nature.
In preparing for the perception of the Urphnomen the researcher may initially have nothing
to go on but recurring patterns.206 But this is less a matter of inferring inductively, and more a
204

It is probably not necessary to italicize this phrase in order for its radical challenge to contemporary ways of
thinking to be felt. For many philosophers the idea of a necessary fact is a contradiction in terms. The type of
necessity Steiner is referring to may be illustrated as follows: while it may or may not be necessary that there are
triangles, given that there are triangles, it is a necessary fact that a triangle has three sides. It is interesting that
Groarke (2009), whose account of Aristotles theory of induction is in many ways so compatible with the
Goethean perspective, also uses the phrase necessary fact(p. 401): On Humes account, the problem of
induction subverts future predictions. Relations of ideas follow necessarily; matters of fact are contingent . . . As
the new essentialists indicate, modern science has discovered necessary facts about the physical world.
205
Steiner (1988b), p. 80. Cf. also p.83: rational empiricism . . . takes nothing other than objective processes as
content for science; these objective processes, however, are held together by a web of concepts (laws) that our
spirit discovers in them. Sense perceptible processes in a connection with each other that can be grasped only by
thinking that is rational empiricism.
206
Goethe, Excerpt from Toward a Theory of Weather 1825, in Scientific Studies, p. 148 (HA XIII: 311): In
64

matter of seeing patterns. The Urphnomen is not derived, or inferred from empirical
observations, nor is it a generalization from them. It is seen in and through them. It is because
Goethes method is based on the intuitive seeing of the idea in the phenomena, that he avoids
the insoluble problems that plague the modern notion of induction. It is because of this seeing,
facilitated for instance by the observation of analogies, that we do not
. . . fail to recognize in a single doubtful case a truth which has stood the test in many other
instances, but may instead pay due respect to the law even when it seeks to elude us in the
phenomenal world.207

In other words, unlike an inductive generalisation in the modern sense that is refuted by
even a single counter instance, the Goethean method can integrate the doubtful case because it
is seen in the context of the law. The relationship between particular observations and the idea
seen in the phenomena is expressed very aptly by Goethe when he writes: To grasp that the
sky is blue everywhere, one does not have to travel around the world.208
In attempting to relate his scientific ideas to the philosophy of his time, Goethe made a
valiant attempt to tackle the philosophy of Kant. The most crucial difference between Goethe
and Kant is in regard to the question whether human beings are capable of intuitive thinking.
Goethe discusses this issue in the short piece Judgment through Intuitive Perception.209 Here
Goethe quotes and comments on the following passage from the Critique of Judgement:
But we can also conceive of an understanding that, unlike ours, is not discursive but intuitive,
and hence proceeds from the synthetically universal (the intuition of a whole as a whole) to the
particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts. . . . And [to make these points] we do not have to
prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible. Rather, we must prove only that the
contrast [between such an intellect and] our discursive understanding an understanding which
requires images (it is an intellectus ectypus) and the contingency of its having this character
lead us to that idea (of an intellectus archetypus), and we must prove that this idea does not
involve a contradiction.210

Goethe notes that Kant seems to be making a distinction between divine reason and
human reason. Goethe, however, rejects Kants restriction of human thinking to the
discursive.211 In the present fragment this rejection is only briefly stated, and more as a
dealing with a phenomenon and attempting to grasp its inner law, . . . we think it right to start with its clearest
aspect, i.e., the aspect most frequently repeated under similar conditions, the one which points to a constant
regularity.
207
Goethe, in Nisbett (1972), p.15 (LA I: 10).
208
Goethe, in Stephenson (1983), p. 188 (FA XIII: 47).
209
Goethe, Judgment through Intuitive Perception, in Scientific Studies, pp. 31- 32 (HA XIII: 30-31).
210
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), pp. 291-293.
211
Heinemann (1934), p.71: The complex and difficult question Goethe and Kant cannot be solved in an
incidental manner. But it is important to recognize that . . . the two move on entirely different planes, have
different aims, directions and interests. According to Heinemann, one crucial difference between Goethe and
65

question than a definitive view:

In the moral area, however, we are expected to ascend to a higher realm and approach the primal
being through faith in God, virtue, and immortality. Why should it not also hold true in the
intellectual area that through intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become
worthy of participating spiritually in its creative processes?212

Here Goethe expresses an idea that will prove important in my interpretation of Aristotle,
namely that corresponding to the development proper to the moral realm, there is a cognitive
development possible through which the human knower draws near to the divinity expressed
in nature. It will be shown that an adequate understanding of Aristotles theory of knowledge,
and in particular his conception of nou`~, presupposes the possibility of such a cognitive
development.
Hjalmar Hegge has said that in his Theory of Color, Goethe was aiming at an axiomatizing
of the domain of colour qualities. . . . a deductive system for the phenomena of light and
colour, but without quantification of the phenomena.213 Hegge mentions some basic
differences between Goethes approach and that of mainstream science. Firstly, unlike the
traditional physical theories of colour which deal with a mathematized or quantified
representation of the phenomena, Goethe never quantifies the phenomena. Secondly, he avoids
incorporating the colour qualities within a causal schema in which the causes lie outside the
domain of the colour qualities themselves.214 This is because, for Goethe, an explanation of
colours in terms of underlying causes of a different kind gives no truly scientific
understanding of them. The goal of a science of nature is the understanding of given
phenomena in the necessity of their appearance and inter-connections within their own
determinate sphere. For Goethe, the ultimate goal of science is not the grasp of separate,
underlying, causes.215 As Goethe says, here it is not a question of causes, but of the
conditions under which the phenomena appear; their consistent sequence, their eternal return
under thousands of circumstances. . .216 Thirdly, Goethe rejects the subjectivisation of
Kant is Goethes rejection of the claim that intuitive thought is impossible. Cf. also, Walter Heitler, Goethean
Science, in Goethes Way of Science: a Phenomenology of Nature, p. 65.
212
Goethe, Judgment through Intuitive Perception, in Scientific Studies, p. 31 (HA XIII: 30-31).
213
Hegge (1987), p. 202.
214
Ibid., p. 196. Aristotle shares the conviction that it is illegitimate to try to explain phenomena within a given
science by drawing on principles from a different science, except in those instances where the science one draws
on is more fundamentally related to the principles in question. For instance, it is legitimate to draw on geometry
in the study of optics. Aristotle however, would have agreed with Goethe that the study of colour cannot be
reduced to quantitative and geometic concepts. Quality is never reducible to quantity. For Aristotle, as for
Goethe, quality is an irreducible aspect of the world.
215
Cf. Translators Note in Heitler (1998), p. 68. The translator notes that the German word for cause
(Ursache) is a compound of sache meaning matter, affair and the prefix Ur- which has the sense of
primal, or archetypal. Thus the etymology of the word cause in German contains the idea of a primal
fact.
216
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 25).
66

sensory qualities based on the ontological interpretation of the distinction between primary
and secondary qualities.
According to Hegge, it was precisely this combination of factors that led prominent critics
of Goethes Theory of Color, like Emil Du Bois-Reymond217 and Hermann von Helmholtz,218
to reject it. Goethes theory was denied the status of science by these interpreters because, in
their eyes, he had simply failed to grasp what scientific explanation means, since for them it
meant precisely the tracing back of sense-qualities such as light, colour, etc., to mechanical
properties (impact, movement, etc.)219
What does Hegge mean by an axiomatization of the domain of color qualities? Hegge
notes that Goethe sought to emulate the method of the mathematician in a certain regard. What
attracted Goethe to mathematics was not the quantitative content, but the logical form, and the
rigor, precision, and certainty attaching to the steps involved in a mathematical proof. Hegge
writes that Goethes aim is to
. . . arrive at a comparatively small number of simple, well-defined elements, corresponding to
the axioms of geometry, that is, expressions which are not further reducible to others, but
express basic concepts in the system from which the other elements are derived. Goethe calls
these Urphnomene, or primal phenomena and he describes them and their use as follows:
These [primal phenomena] can be formulated in short, pregnant sentences, compared and as
they are developed arranged and brought into such a relationship with one another that they,
just like mathematical statements, regarded individually or in their interrelationships, remain
firm.220

Hegge asks whether Goethe would have been willing to accept the idea that his perspective
and the Newtonian one against which he argued represent two different, but equally valid,
approaches that deal with different aspects of the world. Hegge argues that Goethe would have
rejected such reconciliation because Goethe thought of his own conception of scientific
explanation as superior to the mainstream one. It is generally regarded, within modern theory
of science that outside of formal sciences like mathematics, scientific theories are in principle
hypothetical and cannot be proved to be definitively true. In contrast, Goethes Theory of
Color is

217

Emil du Bois-Reymond, Goethe und sein Ende (Berlin: Buchdrukerei de Koenigl, 1882), p. 21.
Hermann von Helmholtz, On Goethes Scientific Researches, in Popular Scientific Lectures, trans. E.
Atkinson (London: Green & Co., 1893), p. 45: . . . a natural phenomenon is not considered in physical science to
be fully explained until you have traced it back to the ultimate forces which are concerned in its production and
maintenance. Because Goethe looked only at the subjective effects, and did not search for the real underlying
causes, Helmholtz concluded (pp. 45-46) that . . . It must be obvious to every one that the theoretical part of the
Theory of Colour is not natural philosophy at all. For a discussion of the relationship between Goethe and
Helmoltz see: Barnouw (1987).
219
Hegge (1987), p. 198.
220
Ibid., p. 202.
218

67

. . . based upon statements ( referring to primal phenomena) which are alleged to be both true
and primary, and also upon the assumption that the connections between the various elements
are necessary.221

For Goethe a science that does not aim for such primary and necessarily true basic elements,
and which does not demonstrate the necessity of their interconnections, is deficiently
scientific. Goethe aims to integrate the phenomena into an order based on a few selfexplanatory, basic, and necessarily true phenomena, or necessary facts, and through this to
enable the demonstration (in the sense of the making visible) of the necessary connections
between the phenomena of that particular science. Goethe expresses this movement from the
particular to the universal and from the universal to the particular as follows:
In general, events we become aware of through experience are simply those we can categorize
empirically after some observation. These empirical categories may be further subsumed under
scientific categories leading to even higher levels. In the process we become familiar with
certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point everything gradually
falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to our reason through words and
hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception through phenomena. We call these phenomena
archetypal phenomena because nothing higher manifests itself in the world; such phenomena, on
the other hand, make it possible for us to descend, just as we ascend, by going step by step from
the archetypal phenomena to the most mundane occurrence in our daily experience.222

Accourding to Hegge, what is striking about Goethes approach is the combination of the
systems apodeictic necessity and the fact of its being built upon empirical observation223 As
I will show in subsequent chapters Aristotles conception of science involves the same
combination of the empirical and the apodeictic. Goethes approach goes against the grain of
certain widespread philosophical assumptions which derive, in part from the empiricist
tradition, and in part from the Kantian. It is generally assumed that
. . . the a posteriori element in cognition is contingent and that only the a priori is apodeictic,
necessary. Or in other words, inasmuch as there are apodeictic elements in cognition, these it
[the prevailing view] takes to be a priori, whether understood as forms of our understanding, as
conditions of the very possibility of experience in Kants sense, or in a more empiricist vein as
conventions.224

In contrast, Goethe thought that an apodeictic, phenomenological science of nature could be

developed by means of a long, careful training, involving painstaking observation, experiment
and the systematic organization of a given realm of phenomena.
Eckart Frster discusses the relation between Goethe and Spinoza. It is well known that
221

Ibid., p. 205.
Goethe, Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, pp. 194-195 (FA XXIII/1: 80-81).
223
Hegge (1987), p. 207.
224
Ibid., p. 210.
222

68

Spinoza was an important philosophical influence on Goethe. Frster discusses Goethes

scientific methodology by comparing it with Spinozas scientia intuitiva. Frsters account
centers on the difference between Spinozas typically mathematical examples and Goethes
desire to extend an intuitive approach to the study of the natural world. Frster begins by
noting that there is an important difference between the kind of mathematical examples given
by Spinoza, and Goethes own scientific method. Frster writes:
In the case of mathematical objects like, e.g. a circle, we know the underlying essence or idea,
and the task is to give an adequate definition of it so that the properties of the object can be
derived from it. With a natural kind, however, we do not know the idea but have to find it.225

Frster notes that since the idea of the natural phenomenon is not grasped at the beginning,
unlike simple mathematical concepts,226 the extension of such an intuitive and apodeictic
method to the natural world means that
Spinozas procedure thus has to be reversed! Instead of deriving all essential properties from the
idea, the idea has to be discerned from all properties. In the case of natural objects, if an idea
underlies the object, this idea can only be known at the end of the investigation.227

Frster discusses Goethes understanding of the idea in terms of the relationship between
parts and wholes, and mentions the importance for Goethe of Kants Critique of Judgement.
Kant argued that there is a fundamental difference between machines and natural organisms, a
difference pertaining to the relation between part and whole. Whereas the parts of a machine
can exist independently of the constructed whole of which they are part, the parts of a living
organism cannot exist outside of the whole without losing their identity as parts. In the case of
a natural organism parts and whole are mutually cause and effect of each other: no whole
exists without the parts, but also no parts without the whole.228 Kant argued that whereas we
can understand how parts go together to make up a mechanical whole, we cannot understand
an organic whole, a whole which in some sense precedes and produces its own parts. The
225

Eckart Frster, Goethe as German Idealist, Paper presented at the American Philosophical Association,
Eastern Division Meeting, December 2008, p. 4. Cf. Stephen Nadler, Spinozas Heresy: Immortality and the
Jewish Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 118: At one point Spinoza suggests that the difference
between an adequate idea of a thing and an inadequate one is not unlike the contrast between knowing a
conclusion versus seeing how the conclusion follows from specific premises. Nadler also discusses the
relationship between Spinoza and Aristotle through Maimonides and Gersonides.
226
Aristotle would say that these are also reached by ejpagwghv. For Aristotle there is no a priori knowledge, not
even in mathematics. Cf. APo. 1.18.81b2-5: . . . it is possible to familiarize the pupil with even the so-called
mathematical abstractions only through induction i.e. only because each subject genus possesses, in virtue of a
determinate mathematical character, certain properties which can be treated as separate even though they do not
exist in isolation . . . . Nevertheless, it is clearly easier to grasp basic mathematical concepts than the ideas of
natural phenomena.
227
Frster (2008), p. 7.
228
Ibid., p. 5.
69

organic whole precedes its parts not only in the sense that they are inexplicable as parts except
with reference to the whole and their place in it, but also in the sense that the whole seems to
ontologically precede the parts and determine the growth of the organism towards a whole not
yet in empirical existence.229
As Frster notes, the only instance in which it is normally possible for us to grasp the idea
in advance is when the idea of a whole precedes its realization as an end or purpose i.e. in
the production of artefacts.230 This kind of grasp, however, is of no use to us in our attempt to
grasp the phenomena of organic nature because organisms are not the artifacts of a craftsman
standing outside of them and ordering them according to a prior idea. Organisms are selforganising. Because, according to Kant, human beings lack an intuitive intellect we are simply
incapable of grasping the ideality that manifests in the organic world.
As I mentioned earlier, Goethe rejects Kants claim that human beings are incapable of
intuitive thinking, but, characteristically, he rejects it not by means of philosophical argument,
but in practice. In other words, Goethe transcends the boundary set down by Kant
experientially rather than merely theoretically.
In order to grasp a phenomenon of nature in its essence we need to grasp a whole that is not
simply the assemblage of its parts. However, unlike in the case of simple mathematical
concepts we do not start with the idea at the beginning and from there demonstrate the
essential attributes, in the case of natural phenomena we first have to discover the idea. In
attempting to derive the whole from observation of the parts do we not find ourselves
precisely in the bind that Kant claimed was a necessary consequence of the discursive nature
of our mind? Do we not find ourselves in a similar situation with the problem of induction? Is
not the problem precisely that we have no way of inferring from the parts to the whole?
To resolve these questions we need to get away from the idea that the whole is inferred, or
derived from the parts. The Goethean procedure does not involve inference. Rather, it is a
matter of seeing the whole through the parts. Goethe is aware that in the case of natural
phenomena we do not begin with the whole, nor can the whole be intuited a priori. Goethe
recognizes, in other words, that the idea of a natural phenomenon is neither perceptible to the
senses qua whole, nor able to be intuited by thinking independently of experience. The way
forward through this aporia is provided by the insight that

229

Brady (1998), p. 91: In its earliest stages, in fact, the organism had yet to develop the organs by which its
later existence would be supported, making the inward unity antecedent to the developing parts, a whole which
makes its own parts necessary rather than a result of the combination of the parts.
230
Frster (2008), p. 6. Cf. Pierre Rousselot, The Intellectualism of St. Thomas, trans. Father James E. OMahony
(New York: Sheed & Ward, 1959), p. 108. Rousselot argues, in a rather Kantian way, that, for Aquinas, the
human mind (due to the weakness of mans participation in the light of the intellect) does not have an intuitive
grasp of the ideas of nature, but instead has a true and adequate idea only of those things . . . of which it is
itself the measure, namely the artificiata. The connection between Kants denial to human beings of an
intellectus archetypus and medieval thought would be a fascinating topic in itself.
70

I must first collect (discursively) all those phenomena that belong together and make up the
object under investigation. I must then, subsequently, intuit the whole as a whole in order to
discern the idea that is manifested in all phenomena that constitute the object.231

There are two steps here: first, the gathering together of relevant phenomena, whether
through experiment or in memory and imagination; secondly, the intuiting of the whole or idea
which governs the phenomena. Both steps are essential. The first step is not sufficient because
the mere collection of all the individual phenomena of a given type does not of itself give rise
to the whole, or the idea. The whole is not given in sense perception as such, nor is it some
kind of mechanical result of the procedure of gathering together the parts. Intuition is
necessary. Nevertheless, the second step alone will also not suffice. We cannot simply
rationally intuit the whole completely independently of experience.
Frster states that Goethe was not naively optimistic about the possibility of reconciling the
idea and observation. A problem arises in relation to The Experiment as Mediator between
Subject and Object. This essay presents the task of experiment as the linking together of
individual experiments into a sequence that becomes a single experiment, a single empirical
phenomenon. In this formulation the relation between the parts of the sequence seems to
disappear and the single higher experiment attempts to capture the simultaneity of the
elements in the idea, a simultaneity that is independent of the conditions of temporal
unfolding.
In the fragment Doubt and Resignation Goethe faces the possibility that between idea
and experience there inevitably yawns a chasm which we struggle to cross with all our might,
but in vain.232 The problem is elsewhere described by Goethe as follows:
The difficulty of uniting idea and experience presents obstacles in all scientific research: the idea
is independent of space and time while scientific research is bound by space and time. In the
idea, then, simultaneous elements are closely bound up with sequential ones, but our experience
always shows them to be separate; we are seemingly plunged into madness by a natural process
which must be conceived of in idea as both simultaneous and sequential. Our intellect cannot
think of something as united when the senses present it as separate, and thus the conflict between
what is grasped as experience and what is formed as idea remains forever unresolved.233

Frster suggests that a resolution of this problem involves three steps. Firstly, one needs to
gather a sequence of the parts pertaining to a certain phenomenon, whether this means literally
the parts of the empirical phenomenon, or also the individual phenomena of a given type
which are the parts making up that ideal whole. Secondly, one needs to consider the relations
between the parts, the transitions between the individuals in the sequence. The combination of
231

Frster (2008), p. 7.
Goethe, Doubt and Resignation, in Scientific Studies, p. 33 (HA XIII: 31).
233
Ibid., p. 33 (HA XIII: 31-32).
232

71

these two steps approximates the simultaneous presence in the idea of simultaneous and
sequential elements. By gathering together all of the parts of the whole, as in the sequence of
contiguous experiments, we construct the whole, the individual elements becoming a single
experiment, a single experience. However, this approximation of the simplicity and
simultaneous presence of parts within the whole does not suffice. We need also to understand
the relation between the parts. This is gained not solely by considering them as making up a
single static whole, but in grasping what can be called their formative movement.234 The
combination of these two elements presents the unity, within the idea, of the atemporal
simultaneity of the parts and of their dynamic and lawful unfolding from the whole. The third
step, the intuition of the whole as such, arises from these two steps together. Goethe suggests
this in the following statement:
When I see a natural object in front of me and inquire into how it came into being by retracing
its history as far as I can get, I first notice a series of steps [the individual parts] which I do not
see side by side but which I must visualize in my mind as a certain ideal whole. At first I am
inclined to represent a number of steps, but nature makes no leaps. Thus in the end I am required
to visualize an uninterrupted activity as a whole, by cancelling the particular [as a particular]
without destroying the overall impression.235

2.4 Goethe and the Transformation of the Scientist

An important aspect of Goethes theory of knowledge is his conviction that the ability to
discern Urphnomene is a capacity developed by engagement with the phenomena. As we will
see this idea is also important in Aristotles theory of knowledge. Aristotle, like Goethe, thinks
234

Cf. Ronald H. Brady, The Causal Dimension of Goethes Morphology, Journal of Social and Biological
Structures 7 4 (1984), p. 336 and p. 339.
235
Goethe, in Frster (2008), pp.14-15 (LA I 10: 131). The experience of the ideas of organic nature as
dynamically active is captured also in Goethe, in Naydler (1996), p. 119 (MA XII: 353-354): I had the ability,
with my eyes closed and my head lowered, to evoke the image of a flower in the centre of my organ of
visualization; and to perceive the flower in such a way that it did not remain in its original form for a single
moment, but spread out, and from within there unfolded again new flowers with coloured as well as green leaves.
They were not natural flowers by any means, but products of the imagination, albeit as regularly shaped as stonemasons rosettes. . . . Perhaps these offered themselves so readily because they had their roots in many years of
contemplation of the metamorphosis of plants. Cf. Rousselot (1959), pp. 124-131: Rousselot states that for
human beings to be . . . fully intelligent [i.e. to have a truly intuitive thinking] it would be necessary to be able to
perceive the esse as it is, that is, as actuating its essence. It would be necessary to be like the angel who in one
comprehensive idea of the species is able to perceive the temporal unfolding of the individuals that it contains.
Here we have the true handling of the self, where each things is known as it is in act and where the actuality of
the object is its light. . . . Now if it were possible to perceive all these rhythms within the species, if what floats
before the mind as the mirage of an ideal were to become actual scientific knowledge, and if it were possible to
follow the ordered trace of harmonious development . . . of all the determinations of the essence through its many
types which represent and limit it at one and the same time, then in this panorama of a vast but vigorous unity,
with its ordered undulations that go in all directions, we should have an image in miniature of the divine Idea, or
better still a shadow of those angelic ideas which reveal the immense number of individuals that belong to a
nature and constitute it. I leave it as an open question to what extent this mirage of an ideal became, for
72

that the ability to see the ajrcaiv is developed by long experience, and is not innate in a finished
form. The Goethean account of this transformation can help us to discern the same
transformation in Aristotles theory of knowledge. Goethe expresses this idea that the human
knower is shaped by engagement with the phenomena in the following passage:

To grasp the phenomena, to fixate them into experiments, to order ones experiences, and to
come to know all the ways in which one might view them; to be as attentive as possible in the
first case, as exact as possible in the second, to be as complete as possible in the third, and to
remain many-sided enough in the fourth, requires that one work through ones poor ego in a way
I had else hardly thought possible.236

This transformation involves developing a new organ of perception, which Goethe

occasionally calls the eye of the mind. Frster has discussed this aspect of Goethes
thought.237 He argues that the eye of the mind is a capacity for seeing the idea in nature that
needs to be developed. In those who have failed to develop this organ the corresponding
phenomena will be invisible.238 In other words, the eye of the mind is not an innate capacity
universally present in all people.239 Frster rejects two interpretations of the eye of the mind.
The first interpretation derives from Goethes claim that the eye does not perceive shapes,
but only differences in colour, light and darkness.240 This interpretation suggests that the
ability to determine a given sensible manifold as an object requires an act of the mind in
addition to perception. Frsters reason for rejecting this interpretation is that it contradicts
Goethes claim that the eye of the mind needs to be developed and indeed that in many
people it is not developed. This cannot be said in relation to the ability to distinguish objects
by conceptualizing their unity. Unlike the eye of the mind this kind of mental activity is
active in virtually everybody, since everybody who is not suffering from some serious
disturbance is able to recognize and distinguish objects.
The second interpretation Frster rejects understands the eye of the mind as akin to the
ability to see aspects, as in the famous duck/rabbit image. This interpretation is motivated by
the insight that the difference between seeing the image as a duck or as a rabbit is not a
Goethe, actual scientific knowledge.
236
Goethe, Letter to Jacobi 27/12/1794, in Frederick Amrine, The Metamorphosis of the Scientist, in Goethes
Way of Science: a Phenomenology of Nature, p. 46 (FA IV (31): 51).
237
Eckart Frster, Goethe and the Auge des Geistes,Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fr Literaturwissenschaft
und Geistesgeschichte 75 1 (2001), pp. 87-101.
238
Ibid., p. 87.
239
I will argue subsequently that this corresponds to Aristotles view of nou`~. As I will show, this approach
enables us to understand what Aristotle is saying in APo. 2.19 in a way that respects the roles of perception and
nou`~ equally, as well as avoiding the sort of a priori rationalism that Aristotle rejects.
240
Goethe, Theory of Color: Introduction, in Scientific Studies, pp. 163-164 (FA XXIII/1: 24): Though it may
sound a bit strange, we will now assert that the eye does not see shape as such, since brightness, darkness, and
color operate together as the sole means for the eye to distinguish among objects or parts of objects. Thus we
73

difference in the sensory input, since nothing physically changes when the image is seen in its
two distinct aspects. There is a mental act over and above the sensory content which
determines which aspect is seen. Frster explains his rejection of this interpretation as follows:
I want to maintain that the aspect or unity accessible to the Auge des Geistes is not a
conceptual unity that the understanding contributes, but a unity that is the objects own.241
As we will see later, very similar problems arise in interpreting Aristotles nou`~. Aristotle
sees nou`~ as a capacity that emerges from an engagement with the phenomena. He seems to
think that the synthesis of sense perceptions in the strict sense (like Goethe, Aristotle believes
that vision sees only light, darkness and colour) into objects is a function of sensibility in the
broad sense, as including imagination and the so-called sensus communis.
While it seems implausible to say that nou`~, or in Goethes case the eye of the mind, has
nothing to do with the ability to recognise objects, or to perceive aspects,242 I agree with
Frster that seeing a unity that is the objects own, especially in relation to natural, and
particularly living beings, goes beyond the seeing operative in the recognition of objects, or
aspects. The sort of phenomenology of nature Goethe practiced involves what one might call
(to borrow a term from Jean-Luc Marion) a counter-intentionality.243 The unity of natural
entities is not constituted by the subject; rather, it is a unity that the knower suffers. Indeed,
many of Goethes statements suggest that this ideality always to some extent exceeds the
capacities of the subject. Although Frster makes many good points in this article, in particular
in relation to the development of a mode of thinking adequate to the intuition of the ideas of
organic entities, the most relevant point for our present purposes is his idea that the
transformation of a discursive to an intuitive and holistic way of thinking requires continuous
effort and practice.244
construct a world out of these three elements. . . .
241
Frster (2001), p. 90. Cf. Heinrich Henel, Type and Proto-Phenomenon in Goethe's Science, PMLA 71 4
(1956), pp. 658-659: Goethe says that the phenomena fall naturally into certain groups . . . Goethe in his
Beitrage attempted to find out what phenomena belong together in nature [italics added].
242
This is a difficult issue. I think it would be an exaggeration to suggest that the ability to recognize objects or
see aspects is completely unrelated to the eye of the mind. Even if such perceptual recognition can be
understood as a function of human sensibility, human sensibility is crucially transformed by its relationship to
language, discursive thinking, and intuitive thinking. Cf. Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in
Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 25). Here, Goethe argues that the movement towards the pure phenomenon
cannot be called speculative because . . . in the end these are just the practical and self-distilling processes of
common human understanding as it ventures to apply itself to another sphere. I would suggest that what
distinguishes the developed eye of the mind is the ability to see necessary and universal connections, to discern
the Urphnomen, and not merely to distinguish individual sensible objects.
243
Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002),
p. 113. Marion describes phenomena that involve counter-intentionality as being akin to the icon as opposed to
the idol. He writes, I cannot have vision of these phenomena, because I cannot constitute them starting from a
univocal meaning, and even less produce them as objects. What I see of them, if I see anything of them that is,
does not result from the constitution I would assign to them in the visible, but from the effect they produce on
me. And, in fact, this happens in reverse so that my look is submerged in a counter-intentional manner. Then I am
no longer the transcendental I but rather the witness, constituted by what happens to him or her.
244
Frster (2001), p. 98.
74

In an essay entitled The Purpose Set Forth Goethe writes,

The Germans have a word for the complex of existence presented by a physical organism:
Gestalt [structured form]. With this expression they exclude what is changeable and assume that
an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in its character.
But if we look at all these Gestalten, especially the organic ones, we will discover that nothing
in them is permanent, nothing is at rest or defined everything is in a flux of continual motion.
This is why German frequently and fittingly makes use of the word Bildung [formation] to
describe the end product and what is in the process of production as well. Thus in setting forth a
morphology we should not speak of Gestalt, or if we use the term we should at least do so only
in reference to the idea, the concept, or to an empirical element held fast for a mere moment of
time. When something has acquired a form it metamorphoses immediately to a new one. If we
wish to arrive at some living perception of nature we ourselves must remain as quick and
flexible as nature and follow the example she gives.245

Just as there is a Bildung at work in nature, so also there is a Bildung at work in the
researcher. In fact, given the participative character of knowledge, this is one process. The
researcher is shaped and formed by the Bildung, the formative activity, at work in the
phenomenon. As Ronald Brady says,
The older meaning of the term Bildung a natural shape had been overshadowed in the latter
half of the eighteenth century with the notion of a development towards an ideal. The word now
carried notions of culture and cultivation; the Bildungs-Roman was a novel of education and
development. . . . Goethes text, in its emphasis on the contrast with Gestalt, reflects the same
concerns. To portray form as Bildung rather than Gestalt suggests an informing power placed
within a context of becoming.246

Brady relates this distinction to the Aristotelian distinction between artifacts and natural
organisms, between objects that are changed by another and objects that are self-changed.
For Aristotle what distinguishes natural entities from artifacts is that the former have the
source of their motion within themselves, whereas the latter are brought to manifestation by
another, i.e. the human maker who begins with an antecedent idea of the artifact to be made.
Artifacts have the character of Gestalten insofar as The Gestalt . . . is fixed because it is
finished it no longer possesses a connection to the antecedent unity and is no longer
becoming.247 Because natural entities are continuously arising from the source of their
motion which is none other than their essence as active they are able to shape the cognitive

245

Goethe, The Purpose Set Forth, in Scientific Studies, pp. 63-64 (MA XII: 13).
Brady (1998), p. 100.
247
Ibid., pp. 100-101: Brady gives as an example of a natural phenomenon our perception of a smile. He notes
that Our normal perception of a human face comprehends a type of form that is not fixed and cannot be, since it
is a visible manifestation of the self-changed. The configuration of shapes forms a representative whole that is
continually brought forth, that is, continually becoming, since it is an immediate expression of the informing
power.
246

75

capacities of the researcher who dwells with them over a long period of time.248
The process of engaging with the phenomena is itself a process of being in-formed by them.
This is not to be understood as some kind of efficiently causal impact on the observer from
hidden things in themselves. What is involved here is a rigorously phenomenological
engagement with what gives itself in experience. The Goethean researcher is not satisfied with
some a priori determination of what is or is not a possible experience. Experience brings to
actualization new cognitive capacities.249
This point is of course so obvious in the case of the arts that it hardly needs stating.250 Even
such lesser arts as e.g. wine tasting involve the development of refined capacities that allow
the connoisseur to discern things which are simply invisible to the average person. This is
developed not by theorizing about the objects, but by letting ones contemplation evolve out of
a phenomenological dwelling with the objects. Goethe characterises the relationship between
his thinking and the phenomena as follows:
. . . my thinking is not separated from the objects . . . the elements of the object, the perceptions
of the object, flow into my thinking and are fully permeated by it . . . my perception itself is a
thinking, and my thinking a perception.251

As I will argue in subsequent chapters, Goethes conception of this transformation of the

knower in relationship with the phenomena can help us to understand how Aristotle can
reconcile various apparently incompatible elements in his theory of knowledge, in particular:
the timeless character of noetic seeing and the temporal process involved in gaining
knowledge; the non-sensuous character of noetic seeing and the thoroughly empirical and a
posteriori character of his scientific methodology. For Aristotle, becoming intelligible is the
fulfilment and realisation of the natural entity. The natural entity is fulfilled in being known in
a way which is not possible for it outside of cognition.252 It is the natural entity itself that is
248

Ibid., p. 109: For such an outlook, a gap between experience and theory reveals a limit on our own
development and a growing point. The somewhat drowsy acceptance of perception and therefore phenomena
as fixed, merely to be explicated by theories that expand upon a Kantian or even Platonistic metaphysics of the
imperceptible, cloaks a failure to grasp our human responsibility for the phenomenal world. If we would assume
this responsibility, Nature must be approached as the humanities are approached, not as a means to empower
what we already are but as a means to grow beyond ourselves. Taken seriously, Nature in direct experience is a
moving power, capable of forming human souls . . . .
249
Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, in Scientific Studies, p.39 (HA XIII: 38):
Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.
250
Goethe, Ernst Stiedenroth: A Psychology in Clarification of Phenomena from the Soul (Part One, Berlin:
1824), in Scientific Studies, p. 46 (HA XIII: 42): Thus a man born and bred to the so-called exact sciences, and
at the height of their ability to reason empirically, finds it hard to accept that an exact sensory imagination might
exist, although art is unthinkable without it.
251
Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, p. 39 (HA XIII: 38).
252
Cf. Kerr (2002), p. 31: We are inclined to assume that the objects of our knowledge remain totally
unaffected. To be known, for an object unaware of it, is as if nothing had happened. This surely misses
something. On Thomas's view, articulating as it does the doctrine of creation in terms of the metaphysics of
76

active in the cognitive activity of the human knower. Aristotle would be in full agreement with
Goethe when the latter writes that experiences, in particular of the phenomena of nature, must
become part of the tissue of our inner life from the outset, creating a new and better self
within us, continuing forever as active agents in our Bildung.253 This better self,as I will
show subsequently, is essentially the same as Aristotles nou`~ the God within us.254 For
Goethe, as for Aristotle, the best way to God seems to be through the contemplation of
nature.255
2.5 Goethe and the Limits of Human Knowledge
Earlier, I mentioned that experiments are not intended to provide evidence for a theory. This
is connected to an important issue, namely the question whether Goethe placed limits on
human knowledge. An account of where Goethe stands on this issue will be helpful for
understanding how Aristotle can combine a phenomenological method, with an ontology that
affirms the independent being of God and nature, but without falling into metaphysical
dualism.
I have already argued that Goethes scientific method is not inductive. For thinkers like
Locke and Hume the unknowable substratum of nature is physical. Yet if the fundamental
reality of things is physical, then theory can only ever be a representation of this reality. If
theory is merely a representation of reality, then its epistemological status will depend on the
extent to which it accurately represents reality. Theory as such will not constitute knowledge,
because it will need to be supported by evidence, i.e. by being shown to accurately describe
reality. However, according to this dualistic metaphysics reality is in principle inaccessible.
Although theory is an attempt to describe reality, the evidence available to us is necessarily
indirect. We can never show conclusively that our theory accurately represents reality; all we
can do is show that it predicts the behaviour of the effects of the underlying substratum better
than some competing theory.256
participation, the object, in being known by the subject, is brought more clearly into the light and to that extent its
nature and destiny are fulfilled.
253
Goethe, Conversation with von Mller 4/11/1823, in Weigand (1949), p. 154 (FA X (37): 120).
254
Prt. B 110: For nou`~ is the god in us . . . and mortal life contains a portion of some god. (Barnes and
Lawrence). Cf. Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 136 (FA XIII: 78): Kepler said: My wish is that I may perceive
the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside me. The good man
was not aware that in that very moment the divine in him stood in the closest connection with the divine in the
Universe.
255
Prt. B 44: For as we travel to Olympia for the sake of the spectacle itself, even if nothing more were to
follow from it . . . . so too the contemplation of the universe is to be honored above all things that are thought
useful. Cf. also Prt. B 48-50, But it is clear that to the philosopher alone among craftsmen belong laws that are
stable and actions that are right and noble. For he alone lives by looking at nature and the divine.
256
Cf. Groarke (2009), p. 38: . . . Aristotelian induction is about causality. The main focus is not, as in modern
philosophy, on predicting when (or how often) something will occur. The focus is squarely on understanding
what is happening. This is where induction derives its logical force. Once we understand what exactly is
77

Goethes position is very different, although a superficial reading of certain passages might
suggest that he supported some such dualistic conception. Let us consider a selection of these
passages and clarify what Goethe is saying. For example, in a letter dated January 6, 1798
Goethe writes: I willingly admit that it is not nature that we perceive, but that it is
comprehended by us merely according to certain forms and faculties of our mind.257 In
another place Goethe writes, It is my opinion that humanity must assume an unknowable
element . . .258 However, for Goethe, this unknowable element is not a physical, nor even an
objective substratum. It makes all the difference whether one conceives of the unknowable
element as an objectified physical substratum, or, as Goethe does, as an unobjectifiable divine
reality manifesting itself in the appearances.
The conception of reality as an objectified substratum leads to the view that knowledge
must in some sense be an all or nothing affair. Either a theory represents reality accurately or it
doesnt; and of course, on this view, we can never know if it does. For Goethe, on the other
hand, reality is not an objectified substratum; rather, sensible nature is the expression of unobjectifiable unity.259 It is not that we cannot ever know if we have accurately represented
nature. Knowledge is not representation. Rather, we can never exhaust or completely fathom
nature, just as we cannot ever completely fathom ourselves. For Goethe, natures
unfathomable depths are also our unfathomable depths. This is very forcefully expressed in A
Friendly Greeting where Goethe writes:
Must I not acknowledge and postulate myself without ever knowing my own nature? Do I not
endlessly study myself without ever achieving a grasp of myself, or myself and others? Yet we
cheerfully continue to press forward.
The same is true of the world! It may lie before us without beginning or end, the horizon
boundless, our surroundings impenetrable so be it. No limit, no definition, may restrict the
range or depth of the human spirits passage into its own secrets or the worlds.260
happening, we can, for example, know how and when something will occur. Although Goethe rejects the term
induction this account is also quite compatible with his conception of scientific method.
257
Goethe, Letter to Schiller 06/01/1798, in Schmitz (1909), vol. 1, p. 8 (FA IV (31): 476).
258
Goethe, in Naydler (1996), p. 128 (WA II 9: 195).
259
Cf. McNeill (1999), pp. 245-246. McNeill notes notes how the two-foldness of the sensible and intelligible
came to be seen in hierarchical and metaphysical terms, under the influence of Christian interpretations of Greek
thought. On this reading, The world is seen and projected as one homogenous world, from the perspective of a
single, supersensible truth and origin beyond the world a schema that also pretends to survey the world in its
entirety, occluding and homogenizing the radical finitude of worldly origins, the unforeseeable and unsurveyable
multiplicity and plurality of human praxeis. Goethe is certainly not guilty of objectifying the One. The One is
not separate from the many, the sensible phenomena, but is revealed, though never fully, through them, and
particularly insofar as they manifest in human cognition and art.
260
Goethe, A Friendly Greeting, in Scientific Studies, p. 37 (HA XIII: 34-35). This statement is followed by an
even more forceful expression of this idea in the following poem: Spontaneous Outburst / Into the core of
Nature / O Philistine / No earthly mind can enter./ The maxim is fine; / But have the grace / To spare the
dissenter, / Me and my kind. / We think: in every place / Were at the centre. / Happy the mortal creature / To
whom she shows no more / Than the outer rind, / For sixty years / Ive heard your sort announce. / It makes me
swear, though quietly; / To myself a thousand times I say: / All things she grants, gladly and lavishly; / Nature
has neither core / Nor outer rind, / Being all things at once. / Its yourself you should scrutinize to see / Whether
78

If we approach other passages where Goethe seems to draw limits to human knowledge
with this in mind, we will be able to avoid misinterpreting him in a dualist manner. Nature is
unknowable only in the sense of being an infinite task. If we look at the rest of the quote in
which Goethe speaks of an unknowable element we find the following,
. . . we should not set limits to our quest [italics added]. For even though Nature has the better of
us, seeming to keep many of her secrets from us, we have an advantage of our own in that our
thoughts may soar beyond Nature while yet not fully comprehending her. We go far enough
when we come to the archetypal phenomena, seeing them face to face in their unknowable glory
and then turning back to the world of their phenomena. The incomprehensible, in its simplicity,
manifests itself in thousands upon thousands of variations, unchanged despite its inconstancy.261

Eugenio Benitez, writing of the place of aesthetics in Platos philosophy, has expressed
ideas that are, with slight modification, equally applicable to Goethe. Benitez writes:
Because the relationship of the world to eternity is one of likeness, the status of the world as
image implies that the appearancereality distinction is, for Plato, an aesthetic one. Reality does
not underlie the appearances like some sort of primary substance; it is represented in them, as in
a work of art. On this view there is not any fundamental difference between the way one
discovers reality through art or through natural science in either case one is finding the real in a
reflection.262

Goethe would agree wholeheartedly with the idea that scientific discovery presupposes an
aesthetic intuition,263 as we he would agree that aesthetics is based on cognition, not mere
feeling. On at least one occasion he expresses himself in very similar terms, referring to seeing
the true in reflection.264 He would, I suggest, want to be careful to avoid an objectified
interpretation of the relation of representation. In other words, he would want to avoid a
dualistic metaphysics which sees the phenomena of nature as mere re-presentations of some
underlying ideal realm. One might say that for Goethe, the unknowable element is presented
rather than re-presented in the phenomena of nature, always finitely, without thereby being a
re-presentation of some hidden reality, as it were, already there. The dominant tendency of
Goethes science of nature is essentially non-metaphysical.
David Schindler has discussed the metaphysical notion of participation in a way that is
youre centre or periphery.
261
Goethe, in Naydler (1996), p. 128 (WA II 9: 195).
262
Eugenio Benitez, Aesthetics, forthcoming in Continuum Companion to Plato, ed. Gerald Press (London:
Continuum, 2012).
263
Brady (1972) has discussed extensively the connection between aesthetics and science in relation to Goethes
and Schillers thought.
264
Goethe, Excerpt from Towards a Theory of the Weather, in Scientific Studies, p. 145 (HA XIII: 305): We
can never directly see what is true, i.e., identical with what is divine; we look at it only in reflection, in example,
in the symbol, in individual and related phenomena.
79

relevant here. Schindler writes,

The metaphysical notion of participation expresses the ontological dependence of things in the
world on spiritual/intellectual realities, and ultimately on God. While the notion brings clearly to
light Gods presence in things, it tends, for the same reason, either to collapse into pantheism or,
what amounts to the same, to deprive the world of any substantial reality of its own.265

This traditional conception may be said to place emphasis on the dependence of the sensible
(i.e. nature) on a spiritual ground, whether a realm of Ideas, a realm of hierarchically ordered
spiritual intelligences (e.g. angels), or ultimately on God. On this participational view, the
sensible exists in a sense, but only with and indeed after and in pursuit of, another: it has its
reality . . . by virtue of something other than itself.266
The central problem for a participational conception is, according to Schindler, explaining
the difference between the sensible and the intelligible, between image and reality, between
what participates and what is participated; for it is an account of the difference that allows us
to understand the being of the sensible. We need a positive account of the difference, an
account which grants a positive principle to the sensible as distinct from the intelligible.267
The Platonic tendency, as he points out, is to understand the difference rather in terms of
the lack of a principle, in terms of privation. The existence of the sensible is seen as in some
sense a fall from perfection, a fall that is ultimately unintelligible precisely because it involves
a privation of the primary intelligibility of the intelligible realm. Schindler argues that the only
way to think the difference in a positive sense is to understand that the expression of the
intelligible in the sensible in some sense exceeds and goes beyond the intelligible alone. In
other words, the sensible world would have to exceed the intelligible in some positive way,
and not simply by virtue of a progressive dilution.268 As Schindler admits:
The problem is excruciating: on the one hand, it seems we cannot affirm the excess of the
participans in relation to the participatum without simply exploding the structure of participation
(if x receives from y, how can it end up with more than y?) On the other hand, if we deny the
excess then we will ultimately be without a ground for the genuine and good difference of the
participans.269

Goethe seems not to have held the view that the phenomenon is less than the idea of which
it is the realization.270 He says for instance, The Begotten is not less than the Begetter;
265

David C. Schindler, What's the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation in a Christian Context, The
Saint Anselm Journal, 3 1 (2005).
266
Ibid., p. 1.
267
Ibid., p. 3: In order to avoid thinking of the images as simply unreal, or affirming their multiplicity as a fall
from unity and just so far as imperfect, we need to discover a positive principle for their difference.
268
Ibid., p. 14.
269
Ibid., p. 14
270
Vitor (1950), p. 63.
80

indeed it is the advantage of living procreation that the Begotten can be more excellent than
the Begetter.271 The phenomenon is not a copy of the idea, but its expression.
In one poem, Goethe refers to Nature as a serious game; a statement reminiscent of
Heraclitus aijwvn pai`~ ejsti paivzwn, which might be translated life is a child playing.272
Hans-Georg Gadamer developed the notion of play (so important for Schiller) in a way that
illuminates the non-metaphysical character of Goethes thought. Gadamer writes that Play is
really limited to presenting itself. Thus its mode of being is self-presentation. But self
presentation is a universal ontological characteristic of nature.273 Gadamer emphasizes that
the self-presentation characteristic of play is not subjective: The players are not the subjects
of play; instead play merely reaches presentation (Darstellung) through the players.274 This
expresses well Goethes sense that nature reaches manifestation through particular sensible
things, and in particular through human art and cognition. Gadamers description of the
relation between the musical or dramatic work and its performance is also very illuminating as
a way of understanding the Goethean conception of the relation between an idea, especially
the idea of a living entity, and its empirical manifestation. As Gadamer puts it: it is not the
case that the work exists an sich and the effect varies: it is the work of art itself that displays
itself under various conditions.275 Similarly, for Goethe, it is the idea itself that presents itself
under various conditions.
Goethes philosophy might be described as kind of dynamic monism. What Goethe in one
place refers to as the One, the unity of God-Nature, appears forth in the phenomena; it is not
some kind of object standing behind the phenomena. It cannot be separated from its
manifestation, just as its manifestation cannot be separated from it.276 Goethe is hostile to
271

Goethe, in Vitor (1950), p. 63 (JA 35: 318). Cf. also, Goethe, Ernst Stiedenroth: A Psychology in
Clarification of Phenomena from the Soul, in Scientific Studies, p. 45 (HA XIII: 41): In the human spirit, as in
the universe, nothing is higher or lower. . . .
272
The translation of aijwvn as eternity is problematic. This word originally meant a definite period of time: a
generation, epoch, era, age, a life etc., and not either an indeterminate length of time, or a purely timeless state. I
discuss this concept in the context of Aristotles thought in Chapter 4.
273
Gadamer (1989), p. 108. It is interesting to note that in this context Gadamer refers to the work of Adolf
Portmann, a zoologist influenced by Goethe, who argued for the legitimacy of the morphological approach.
274
Ibid., p. 103.
275
Ibid., p. 148.
276
Goethe expresses his conviction concerning the unity of God and Nature in many places. Goethe, in Weigand
(1949), p. 74 (JA 30: 265): Jacobis book On Divine Matters made me feel ill at ease. Dearly beloved friend that
he was, how could I welcome the development of the thesis that Nature conceals God? My own purer, deep,
innate and schooled view of things had taught me without fail to see God in Nature, Nature in God, and this view
was the foundation of my very existence. Goethe, Letter to Jacobi, 9/6/1785, in Weigand (1949), p. 78 (FA
XXIX: 583): Forgive me for preferring to keep silent when you talk of a divine being. I discern such a one only
in and by means of the res singulars. Goethe, Doubt and Resignation, in Scientific Studies, p.33 (HA XIII:
31): When we consider the structure of the universe in its fullest expanse and minutest detail we cannot help but
think that the whole rests upon an idea which sets the pattern according to which God creates and works in
nature, and nature in God, throughout all eternity. Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 110 (MA XVII: 761): Of the
Absolute in the theoretical sense, I do not venture to speak; but this I maintain: that if a man recognises it in its
manifestation, and always keeps his gaze fixed upon it, he will experience very great reward.
81

metaphysics, but it is a dualistic, objectifying metaphysics he objects to, not the idea that there
is something more to nature than its sensible manifestation.277
The understanding of nature as a work of art whose diction278 one strives to understand is
prominent in Goethe, though at times he draws an even stronger analogy. For instance, Goethe
writes:
In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What we perceive are
effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass this inner nature. We labour
in vain to describe a persons character, but when we draw together their actions, their deeds, a
picture of their character will emerge.279

It is not that we cannot have any insight into the inner nature of things, as if this nature were
something hidden behind them. Rather, what is fruitless is the attempt to express this inner
nature a priori independently of the ongoing engagement with things. In another sense, we
cannot express the inner nature of things because as Goethe puts it elsewhere, things are
infinite in their natures.280 A persons actions, facial expressions, etc., are not representations of their inner states. Rather the person is manifested directly through their
actions, facial expressions, etc. For Goethe, nature, like a person, shows itself in its
manifestations. The picture that emerges, from our attentive engagement with the phenomena,
is not false for being incomplete.
Human attempts to reveal the phenomenon are always finite. What we grasp of nature is
always something specific, that is, it is something real, something actual.281 However,
Goethe rejects the dualistic idea of things-in-themselves as entities hidden behind phenomena
and forever inaccessible. As Goethe says, We should not speak of things-in-themselves, but
rather of the One-in-itself. For things exist only from the human point of view, which posits
277

Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 192 (FA XIII: 45): One cannot properly speak of many problems in the
natural sciences if one does not draw on metaphysics for help; but not that school-and-word wisdom; rather that
which was, is and shall be before, with and after physics.
278
Brady (1972), p. 49: The scientist, it would seem, must reach what seems to be an aesthetic state in order to
appreciate the nature of his perceptions, even as the gallery-visitor must attempt to put himself in tune with
the paintings by discovering their diction. Cf. Konrad Oberhuber, in Postcript, in Goethe and the Sciences:a
Reappraisal, p. 382. Oberhuber makes a comparison between the activity of an art connoisseur and Goethes
scientific method. In the case of the former his activity is nothing but recognizing, let us say, the archetype of
Rembrandt, which allows one to attribute a hitherto unknown work and insert it into a series of known works at a
given point in an artists evolution. Goethe did just this: through a lifetime of experience in viewing phenomena,
he schooled a faculty that ultimately allows one to recognize, let us say, a species, and that allows us to recognize
a human being in a great variety of manifestations. We are not wont to call this science today: we call it
something else. The connoisseur is usually considered a witch who can predict certain things. But I think that the
method is something that can become scientific; it can become so clearly defined and expressed that ultimately
one will have to recognize it as a science that the humanities can become scientific in this way, just as an
artistic element has to be brought into the natural sciences.
279
Goethe, Theory of Color: Preface, in Scientific Studies, p.158 (FA XXIII/1: 12).
280
Goethe, Conversation with Riemar 02/08/1807, in Naydler (1996), p. 125 (FA VI: 217).
281
Ibid.
82

a diversity and a multiplicity.282

Earlier I mentioned Alan P. Cottrells rejection of Cassirers assimilation of Goethe to Kant.
Cassirer expresses this in the following statement: According to Goethe, the greatest
happiness of the thinker is to have inquired into what can be known and to revere in silence
what cannot be known. Kant thought and felt likewise.283 What Cassirer fails to appreciate is
that Goethes conception of what can be known extends beyond Kantian limits precisely
because Goethe recognizes the capacity for intuitive thinking. For Goethe the Urphnomen
represents a certain boundary, it is the limit of what can manifest in the sensible world, and it
does so through the mediation of human beings. Once one has gained a glimpse of the
Urphnomen there is no further to go, and all one can do is contemplate it. This goal involves
a kind of cognition that goes beyond explanation of one thing in terms of another. It is not a
theorizing about the phenomenon, but simply the contemplation of the phenomenon showing
itself through the knower, in its most essential aspect. Cottrell is right when he argues that
Goethe recognizes certain limits to the scientists activities, but for him it is just in the
contemplation of natures activities within these limits that truth manifests itself directly to
cognition. . . . The Urphnomen stands at the limits of cognition and reveals that aspect of
truth which cannot be grasped intellectually, but which can be understood through reverent
contemplation.284

Our study of nature leads us to necessary facts, or Urphnomene. These are not further
reducible, and to seek for something more basic beneath or behind them is a sign of
misunderstanding. The Urphnomene are simultaneously boundaries of humanity and of
sensible nature, but they are not the boundaries of some everyday, narrow, untransformed,
lowest common denominator conception of the human mind.285 In a sense, the limits of
sensible nature are the same as the limits of our own being. But to think that such a limit
implies that nature is unknowable is to continue thinking of reality as a determinate substratum
hidden behind the phenomena, and to conclude that since we cannot have a comprehensive
282

Ibid. p. 125 (FA VI: 217): What one is able to express of nature is always something specific, that is, it is
something real, something actual, namely something in relation to oneself. But what we express is not all that is;
it is not its whole nature. This may serve as an explanation, and concession to those who still speak of things-inthemselves. Although they can say nothing of things-in-themselves just because they are things-in- themselves,
that is, are out of relation to us and we to them, and because we recognize everything that we say to be our own
mode of representation . . . it is evident that they at least agree with us that what human beings can predicate of
things does not exhaust their nature. . . . In other words, things are infinite in their natures. The human being, in
expressing the object, is below and above it, humanity and God reconciled in one nature. We should not speak of
things-in-themselves, but rather of the One-in-itself. For things exist only from the human point of view, which
posits a diversity and a multiplicity.
283
Cassirer (1945), p. 80.
284
Cottrell (1976), p. 133.
285
Goethe, in Sepper (1988), p. 174 (FA XIII: 49): If ultimately I rest content with the Archetypal Phenomenon,
it is, after all, but a kind of resignation; yet it makes a great difference whether I resign myself at the boundaries
of humanity, or within a hypothetical narrowness of my small-minded individuality.
83

Gods eye view of this fixed, underlying reality, we are therefore unable to know reality at all.
This underlying reality is a phantom. For Goethe, nature is the never mastered, never fully
grasped, never fully explicit, origin both of the sensible phenomena we perceive and of our
own being.286 So while there is a boundary, it is crucially a mobile and permeable boundary.
What we are able to discern in nature is correlative with our own development as knowers.
Both science and philosophy depend on these indemonstrable, irreducible, Urphnomene.287
They provide thinking with its beginning and its immediate connection to reality, something
which thinking in its merely formal aspect, i.e. logic and logical argument, can never achieve.
Goethe says that we cannot directly see the divine that manifests in the Urphnomen: we
can only divine him, not see him.288 Nevertheless, cognitive participation in the processes of
nature, the synthesis of mind with the external world289 that is open to us, gives us the
clearest intimation of our kinship with God.290
A dualistic metaphysics, such as the one that still dominates much philosophy today,
imagines a hidden world behind the world and makes the world forever inaccessible to us, thus
undermining the world that is given to us. Goethean science, conversely, does not aim for
mastery over nature, or a comphrehensive, God-like certainty. The archetypal phenomenon is
both the ultimate phenomenon we can know and the mobile, permeable boundary of what is
unknowable, not as hidden behind the phenomenon, but as its inexhaustible depth. Cognition
and reverence here unite, and do not exclude each other. As Goethe writes:
The highest thing a person can attain to is to marvel. When the Archetypal Phenomenon makes
one marvel, let one be content. It cannot afford one an experience beyond this, and to seek
something else behind is futile. Here is the limit. But as a rule people are not satisfied to behold
286

Cf. Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. vii. Taylor
speaks about the errors underlying the modern epistemological project, which attempts to justify knowledge prior
to any engagement with the world: It assumes wrongly that we can get to the bottom of what knowledge is,
without drawing on our never-fully-articulable understanding of human life and experience. There is a temptation
here to a kind of self-possessing clarity, to which our modern culture has been almost endlessly susceptible. The
kind of contemplation of the Urphnomen practised by Goethe does not imply a detached, merely theoretical
looking. Cf. Goethe, in Scientific Studies, p. 305 (HA XII: 420): . . . at this higher level we cannot know, but
must act, just as we need little knowledge but much skill in a game. We should not interpret this as leading to
some kind of pragmatism. Pragmatism is at bottom also dependent on the objectified notion of a reality behind
appearances, insofar as it suggests that we must resign ourselves to accepting truth as what is useful for us. The
Goethean method is the opposite of a mere detached theoretical looking at things. But just because we cannot
make completely reflectively explicit, i.e. discursively explain, the ground of our knowledge does not mean that
our cognition is based in something non-cogntitive. Cognition is not the same thing as mastery.
287
Goethe, Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, p. 195 (FA XXIII/1: 81-82): It is proper for the natural
scientist to leave the archetypal phenomenon undisturbed in its eternal repose and grandeur, and for the
philosopher to accept it into his realm. There he will discover that a material worthy of further thought and work
has been given him, not in individual cases, general categories, opinions and hypotheses, but in the basic and
archetypal phenomenon.
288
Goethe, Conversation with von Mller 7/5/1830, in Naydler (1996) p. 109 (GWBG XXIII: 692).
289
Goethe, in G. A. Wells, Goethe and the Development of Science 1750-1900 (Alphen: Sijthoff & Noordhoff,
1978), p.24 (HA 12: 414).
290
Ibid.
84

an Archetypal Phenomenon. They think there must be something beyond. They are like children
who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on the other side.291

Ultimately, Goethe is far less susceptible to a metaphysical interpretation than Aristotle. In

Aristotle we find a nascent metaphysical tendency, a tension between a phenomenological and
dynamic monism and a metaphysical dualism that places God above and beyond nature as a
cause. Goethes perspective is in this sense more satisfying phenomenologically. There is
nothing behind the mirror, no world behind the world. At times this is expressed most
radically, as when Goethe refers to the phenomenon as a consequence without a ground, an
effect without a cause.292
Goethe has no doubts that nature exists independently of individual human knowers and
that natural entities have natures that are not simply correlates of the interpretative categories
of human beings. Nevertheless, he does not make the mistake of interpreting this realism
metaphysically and dualistically. Though it can never be mastered or made fully explicit in
human cognitive practices, it is nature itself that comes to manifestation in human art and
science. Indeed, art and science are not for Goethe opposed in the way they are typically
assumed to be today. As Miller notes, Goethe suffered accusations of dilettantism from his
scientific readers and . . . disapproval from his literary audience293 because his critics failed to
appreciate the unity of his vision. This unity of vision is expressed in the following statement:
They forgot that science arose from poetry, and did not see that when times change the two
can meet again on a higher level as friends.294
2.6 Knowledge as the Perfection of Nature
Perhaps the most condensed and profound statement of Goethes epistemology and theory
of science is the following: The ultimate goal would be: to grasp that everything in the realm
of fact is already theory. . . . Let us not seek for anything behind the phenomena they
291

Goethe, Conversation with Eckermann 18/2/1829, in Naydler (1996), p. 108 (FA XII (39): 311). Cf. Lonergan
(1967), p. 163: . . . intellect directly knows not phantasm but the thing that phantasm represents; accordingly,
insight into phantasm is like looking in, not looking at, a mirror.
292
Goethe, in Zajonc (1998), p. 26 (HA XIII: 446). Although beyond the scope of this thesis, much work remains
to be done on the connection between Goethe and phenomenology. In particular, there are very suggestive links
between the Urphnomen and Jean-Luc Marions notion of the saturated phenomenon. Cf. Jean-Luc Marion,
Being-Given: Toward A Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Koskym (California: Stanford University
Press, 2002), p. 159: . . . it appears starting from its own depths and from depths that burst forth only on the
surface, without background. Cf. also, Marion (2002), p. 152: One sees here what distinguishes metaphysics
and phenomenology: the first devalues phenomenality, even indisputable and overabundant phenomenality (like
the incident) because it is free of a cause, the operator of objectifying intelligibility; in short, it disqualifies the
phenomenon in the name of an instance without relation to appearing. On the other hand, the latter accepts all
phenomenality, provided only that it appear, without reason or objectness.
293
Douglas Miller, Introduction to Scientific Studies, p. xix.
294
Goethe, in Scientific Studies, p. xix (HA XIII: 107).
85

themselves are the theory.295 Although Goethe does refer to his approach as a delicate
empiricism, this is not the passive, sense-bound empiricism of Locke or Hume. Goethes
rational empiricism is one which makes itself utterly identical with the object, thereby
becoming true theory.296 Goethes rational empiricism is based on a participation in the being
of the phenomena, not on a passive reception of them by means of the senses.297
Goethe is not saying that the phenomena are already theory prior to their mediation by
knowledge. We begin with phenomena which are not intelligible. For us, reality is reached at
the end of investigation, although of course there is no end absolutely speaking. Because the
phenomenon is not separated from the observer, but is interwoven and entangled in his
individuality,298 it can only be given as mediated.299 This mediation is not the mere transfer
into the mind of something which is already present in the phenomenal world. It is not the
making visible of something already there but hidden.300 But neither is this mediation sheer
creation. One might sum this up by saying that for Goethe, the phenomenal world achieves its
full realisation or perfection through human cognition. Steiner sums up this profound
conception of knowledge in the following words:
The human being is therefore called upon to bring into the realm of manifest reality those
fundamental laws of the world which otherwise do indeed govern all existence, but which
themselves would never come into [manifest] existence. This is the nature of knowing: that in it
the ground of the world, which can never be discovered in objective [i.e. sensible] reality,
presents itself.301
295

Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 307 (HA XII: 432).
Ibid., p. 307 (HA XII: 435).
297
Amrine (1998), p. 40: The source and guide of ones thinking is the energeia of the phenomena. As in
Aristotles theory of perception, there is a real sense in which one becomes what one perceives.
298
Goethe, in Heinemann (1934), p. 79 (FA XIII: 91).
299
Goethe, in Zajonc (1998), p. 26 (HA XII: 366): The True is god-like: it does not appear unmediated, we must
guess it from its manifestations. . . . Only in the highest and most general do the Idea and Appearance meet.
From what we have seen so far two things should be clear: firstly, in saying that the True does not appear
unmediated Goethe is not saying that it does not appear; secondly, the guessing involved here is not inference
from experience to something hidden beyond experience. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans.
Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Sheed and Ward, 1989), p. 117: What we have called a
structure is one insofar as it presents itself as a meaningful whole. It does not exist in itself, nor is it encountered
in a mediation (Vermittlung) accidental to it; rather, it acquires its proper being in being mediated. Cf. also,
Hegge (1987), p. 203: As immediate experience the phenomena of colour represent only a half reality; their
nature can only appear mediately, as the result of the researchers organizing activity. This latter bestows form
and connectedness upon the given material. And this form, for Goethe, is not something that is linked
accidentally or contingently that is, in an external manner to the objects of sense, according to subjectively
conditioned principles, but is something that appears as the real nature of the phenomena, as a kind of higher
nature within nature. . . .
300
Amrine (1998), p. 40: As the Urphnomen is not an abstract terminus (in either sense of the word) but a pure
activity, it can be accessed and realized only through practice.
301
Steiner (1993), p. 59. A version of this idea can be found in certain interpretations of Thomas Aquinas. Cf.
Oliva Blanchette, The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas: A Teleological Cosmology
(Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), p. 271. Blanchette develops the idea that for
Aquinas intellectual creatures are necessary for the full perfection of the material universe to manifest itself. The
human being, as the only rational being who spans the gap between the intelligible and the sensible realms, is
296

86

For Goethe the two-foldness of our experience of the world (through perception and
thinking) and indeed the multiplicity of things manifest in the sensible world, is a condition of
manifestation. As he writes, Whatever appears in the world must divide if it is to appear at
all.302 However, this two-foldness is not a metaphysical duality:
What has divided seeks itself again, can return to itself and reunite. This happens in a lower
sense when it merely intermingles with its opposite, combines with it; here the phenomenon is
nullified or at least neutralized. However, the union may occur in a higher sense if what has been
divided is first intensified;303 then in the union of the intensified halves it will produce a third
thing, something new, higher, unexpected.304

Human knowledge seems to be precisely such a third thing which works creatively in
reconciling the duality of experience to produce a new, higher realisation of the sensible.

central to this perfection: Without knowing beings in the universe this perfection would be lacking. The universe
would be less of a universe, and more like a mere juxtaposition of beings, each perfect in itself, perhaps, but
always imperfect in comparison to others and to the whole of which it is only a part. The universe had to be
thought of as somehow relating to human sense and intelligence in its ultimate perfection. Cf. also, p. 300:
Without the human beings knowing activity, nature remains essentially incomplete.
302
Goethe, Polarity, in Scientific Studies, pp. 155-156 (WA II: 11).
303
Here Goethe is referring to his ideas of polarity and intensification. Cf. Goethe, A Commentary on the
Aphoristic Essay Nature (Goethe to Chancellor von Mller), Scientific Studies, p. 6 (HA XIII: 48): Polarity
is a state of constant attraction and repulsion, while intensification is a state of ever-striving ascent. Since,
however, matter can never exist without spirit, nor spirit without matter, matter is also capable of undergoing
intensification, and spirit cannot be denied its attraction and repulsion. Similarly the capacity to think is given
only to someone who has made sufficient divisions to bring about a union, and who has united sufficiently to
seek further divisions.
304
Goethe, Polarity, in Scientific Studies, p. 156 (WA II: 11).
87

Chapter 3. The Meaning of ejpisthvmh and the Need for ajrcaiv

3.1 Introduction
In this chapter I discuss how Aristotles conception of ejpisthvmh is connected to the demand
for a prior grasp of principles as well as the nature of these principles. Because my focus is on
the cognitive process leading to the ajrcaiv, rather than with the logical aspect of ejpisthvmh as a
kind of knowledge reached through demonstration, I will only say as much as is needed in
order to contextualize my subsequent interpretation of Posterior Analytics 2.19.
I interpret Aristotles theory of knowledge phenomenologically as a description of the
nature of the cognitive process leading to scientific knowledge. Because Aristotles theory of
scientific knowledge is so closely tied to his logic it is easy to reduce the issues involved to
logical or linguistic categories. In other words, it is easy to think that the ajrcaiv are primarily
linguistic entities, i.e. the premises of scientific demonstrations or the propositions expressed
in those premises. But the ajrcaiv cannot possibly be primarily linguistic or logical entities. For
Aristotle language is a symbol of thought, and actual thought is a state of identity with the
object known.305
The value of the Goethean perspective is that it can help us to discern this
phenomenological dimension of Aristotles theory of knowledge. One of my primary
arguments is that the nature of the Aristotelian ajrchv can be illuminated by considering it in
relation to the Goethean Urphnomen. Indeed, I argue that Aristotles ajrchv is an
Urphnomen; that is, simultaneously a phenomenon and an activity of realization in which an
essence is made manifest.
Aristotle says that Without a presentation intellectual activity is impossible.306 This idea
is echoed in various places. In On the Soul 3.7, Aristotle says that the soul never thinks
without an image.307 In On the Soul 3.8 he writes that (1) no one can learn anything in the
absence of sense, and (2) when the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware
of it with an image.308 This can certainly be interpreted in epistemological terms, but I think
that there is a more profound ontological issue at stake. Aristotle also writes that the soul is in
a way the existing things.309 He clarifies this by saying: for all the things that exist are either
sensibles or intelligibles.310 The world is made up exclusively of sensibles and intelligibles.
There is no room in this ontology for any underlying thing-in-itself which is neither sensible
305

Int. 1.16a1-8.
Mem. 1.449b31-450a1 (Beare).
307
DA 3.7.431a15-16 (Smith).
308
Ibid., 3.8.432a6-8 (Smith).
309
Ibid., 3.8.431b21: hJ yuch; ta; o[nta pwv~ ejstin.
310
Ibid., 3.8.431b21-22: pavnta ga;r h] aijsqhta; ta; o[nta h] nohtav.
306

88

nor intelligible. This is not meant to imply some kind of subjective idealism, according to
which everything is reduced to a sensible or noetic object relative to a human knower.
Aristotle makes this clear in the Metaphysics:
And, on the whole, if the sensible alone exists, there would be nothing if ensouled entites were
not; for there would be no sensing. The view that neither the objects of sensation nor the
sensations would exist is doubtless true (for they are affections of the one perceiving), but that
the substrata which cause the sensation should not exist without sensing is impossible. For
sensation is surely not the sensation of itself, but there is something beyond the sensation, which
must be prior to the sensation . . . 311

Aristotle does not subscribe to the view that only the sensible exists. The substrata he refers
to here are the oujsivai making up the world.312 A natural oujsiva is not a fortuitous combination
of a sensible element and an intelligible element. It is nothing other than the sensible
manifestation of the essence. I cannot go into the notoriously difficult question of Aristotles
conception of matter here (specifically the question whether he is committed to prime
matter).313 Suffice it to say that in my view there is no place in Aristotles ontology for the
idea that underlying the sensible qualities and intelligible essence of a being both of which
can be given in cognition there is some extra unknowable element, which is neither sensible,
nor accessible to intuitive thinking.314 The intelligible essence and its sensible presentation
constitute the whole of any natural oujsiva, and both of these are cognitively accessible. As
Stephen Clark puts it The world of sense is not an effect of material motion in the abstract
311

Met. 9.5.1010b30-1011a1. (Ross, slightly altered).

The issue of translating the word oujsiva is notoriously difficult. Cf. Sachs (2001), p. 201. Drawing on the work
of Owens, Sachs argues that the translation of oujsiva as substance derives from a Christian misrepresentation of
Aristotles meaning. As Sachs says, oujsiva . . . denotes a fullness of being and self-sufficiency which the
Christian thinker Augustine did not believe could be present in a created thing (City of God Book XII, Chapter 2);
he concluded that, while ousia meant essentia, things in the world possess only deficient kinds of being.
Substantia, the capacity to have predicates, became the standard word in the subsequent Latin tradition for the
being of things. Sachs suggestion of thinghood is quite good, although it would lead to such infelicitous
formulations as natural thinghoods. For this reason I will leave the word untranslated.
313
Admittedly, there is strong tradition of interpretating Aristotle as committed to Prime Matter, although an
alternate view has been defended. Some examples of the traditional interpretation include: Friedrich Solmsen,
Aristotle and Prime Matter: A Reply to Hugh R. King, Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958), pp. 243-252;
H. M. Robinson, Prime Matter in Aristotle, Phronesis 19 (1974), pp. 168-188; Russell Dancy, On Some of
Aristotles Second Thoughts about Substance: Matter, The Philosophical Review 87 (1978), pp. 372-413. For
the alternative view see: Hugh R. King, Aristotle without Prima Materia, Journal of the History of Ideas 17
(1956), pp. 370-389; W. Charlton, Aristotles Physics: Books I and II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970);
Barrington Jones, Aristotles Introduction of Matter, The Philosophical Review 83 (1974), pp. 474-500. For a
view which attempts to combine aspects of both traditions cf. Sheldon Cohen, Aristotles Doctrine of the
Material Substrate, The Philosophical Review 93 2 (1984), pp.171-194. For a view that sees Aristotles notion of
matter as hopelessly paradoxical cf. Daniel W. Graham, The Paradox of Prime Matter, Journal of the History
of Philosophy 25 4 (1987), pp. 475-490.
314
W. Wieland, Aristotles Physics and the Problem of Inquiry into Principles, in Articles on Aristotle: 1.
Science, ed. Barnes et al. (1975), p. 137: Matter in the sense of a cosmic stuff, a persisting universal substratum,
cannot be found anywhere in Aristotle.
312

89

void; it is the actualisation of potential . . . in accordance with the intelligible principles which
exist eternally as nous.315
The empiricist notion of an unknowable material substrate is very different from Aristotles
view.316 Groarke has seen clearly that this un-Aristotelian conception of substance is related to
a certain understanding of the essence/existence distinction. Groarke writes:
It is as if the empiricists separate out the bare existence of the brick from its perceptible
manifestations and treat it as a separate, underlying thing. . . . The empiricist model reifies an
objects existence, turning it into a second (unknowable) nature underlying the first (knowable)
one.317

Groarke may be right that in medieval thought the act of existence is not a substratum or
bearer of properties. However, the notion of bare existence, as a kind of addition to the
cognitively accessible sensible and intelligible aspects of an entity is made possible by the
doctrine of creation. This point is supported by Charles Kahn.318 It is only when the world is
thought of as a radically contingent actualization of what is otherwise a pure possibility in the
divine mind that it becomes possible to separate out the idea of bare existence. Even if this
perspective differs profoundly from the empiricist one, it makes possible the objectivism of
the latter. In contrast, according to Kahn: for Aristotle as for Plato, existence is always ei\nai
ti, being something or other, being something definite. There is no concept of existence as
such, for objects of an indeterminate nature.319
Hence, there cannot be a purely abstract ajrchv. Although the ajrchv can be symbolized in
language, it cannot be understood as primarily linguistic, at least not in the dualistic,
nominalistic sense typical today; nor can it be merely logical, i.e. formal.320
315

Stephen R. L. Clark, Aristotles Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 199. Clark is right when he says (p.
199) that Aristotle does not fit . . . the internal-mental and the external-physical together by philosophical fiat,
for the whole notion of the abstract external, the world constructed for special purposes by technicians and since
hypostatised as ultimate reality, is alien to his thought . . . .
316
Groarke (2009), p. 74: Unlike Locke and Hume, Aristotle does not conceive of substance as an occult cause
or a hidden nature. Substance does not lie under, over, or behind the object; it is the object. When we observe it,
its existence and essence are both on display. Cf. also p. 87.
317
Ibid., pp. 92-93.
318
Charles Kahn, Why Existence does not Emerge as a Distinct Concept in Greek Philosophy,Archiv fr
Geschichte der Philosophie 58 (1976), pp. 323-324: My general view of the historical development is that
existence in the modern sense becomes a central concept in philosophy only in the period when Greek ontology is
radically revised in the light of a metaphysics of creation: that is to say, under the influence of Biblical religion
. . . . The old Platonic contrast between Being and Becoming, between the eternal and the perishable (or in
Aristotelian terms, between the necessary and the contingent) now gets reformulated in such a way that for the
contingent being of the created world (which was originally present only as a possibility in the divine mind) the
property of real existence emerges as a new attribute or accident, a kind of added benefit bestowed by God
upon possible beings in the act of creation.
319
Ibid., p. 333.
320
Of course, the matter looks very different if we share the view, presented in Gadamer (1989), p. 487, . . . that
being is language i.e., self-presentation as revealed to us by the hermeneutical experience of being. . . . Most
English language literature on Aristotle, however, presupposes a very different conception of language.
90

Before proceeding, I want to draw attention to one more important feature of Aristotles
theory of knowledge that will be central to the subsequent chapters. Aristotle sees the relation
between particulars and universals in terms of the relation between parts and wholes.321 This is
not metaphorical. It is not that he illustrates the idea of the particular/universal relation by
means of the part/whole relation. Rather, the particular/universal relation is a special kind of
part/whole relation, as is suggested even in the terms Aristotle uses, i.e. kaq eJkavston (from
katav eJkavston, which means something like according to each) and kaqovlou (from katav
o{lon) which means something like in respect of the whole. Heidegger draws attention to
this, and following him Walter Brogan and Mark Faller among others.322
This aspect of the meaning of Aristotles terms is apt to be obscured if we translate them as
particular and universal. The difficulty in understanding this conception of the universal/
particular relation is associated with the fact that the noetic whole is not strictly identical to the
whole given in sense perception, but is nevertheless not separate from it. For Aristotle there is
a dimension of wholeness that is indeed the wholeness of those sensible parts that belong to it,
although it cannot be seen by the senses as such. This talk of wholeness as a dimension is
intended to emphasize that for Aristotle the relation between what we would call universal and
particular cannot be thought of independently of the relation between divine noh`si~ and the
sensible world, and further the relation between these and human noetic acts. A universal is
not a kind of mental object, rather it is a way of seeing, a view of the whole. This idea will be
developed extensively throughout the remainder of the thesis.

321

The idea that Aristotelian universals are real universals understood as wholes is developed in: Mark. R.
Wheeler, Real Universals in Aristotles Organon, (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1995). See, for example,
p. 13: My central thesis is the claim that, according to Aristotle, there are real universals that are spatially and
temporally discontinuous wholes having for parts the essences or the parts of the essences of real particulars.
322
Martin Heidegger, Platos Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz & Andr Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1997), p. 57: The term kaqovlou is composed out of katav and o{lon. The concept of o{lon will
be our path to a closer elucidation of the Being of kaqovlou. Cf. Mark Faller, The Split Gaze of the Soul: Parts
and Wholes in Aristotles Model of Epagoge, paper presented at the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy,
Central APA, April 2005. Cf. also, Walter Brogan, Heidegger and Aristotle: The Twofoldness of Being (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2005), p. 27: Epagg means the ability to hold together the seeing (nous)
of the whole and the seeing (aisthsis)) of the individual that is constituted by this whole. It is because human
being is the site of the correlation that we can see beings in their being and understand the being of beings. . . .
Knowledge of the whole is not arrived at by abstracting one common characteristic from a series of individuals. It
is the individual that manifests in its being its common ground with other beings. The individual man Callias,
Aristotle says, appears, but he shows himself as a man and thus we see the whole.
91

3.2 Aristotles Conception of Scientific Knowledge

I will now give a rough account of the meaning of ejpisthvmh in the Posterior Analytics.323
The word ejpisthvmh has two main senses for Aristotle: firstly, non-demonstrative ejpisthvmh,
which is the grasp of the immediate premises of demonstration; secondly, demonstrative
ejpisthvmh, which is the knowledge that one has through demonstration. Most of the time
ejpisthvmh refers to demonstrative knowledge, in contrast to the immediate cognition
characteristic of nou`~. I will not deal with the logical aspects of demonstrative ejpisthvmh in
what follows. As already mentioned, my focus is on the pre-discursive relation to reality that
provides the material for demonstration.
However, a few points need to be made. Demonstration (ajpodeivxi~) is not simply
equivalent to logical argument.324 Demonstration is a syllogistic argument that yields scientific
knowledge. While Aristotle recognizes that arguments can be valid in virtue of their form
alone, demonstration is not equivalent to the giving of a valid argument. Nor is it enough to
have a valid argument of which the premises and the conclusion are true. As we will see, the
premises have to fulfill other requirements, one of which is that they must be statements
expressing universal and necessary facts/truths.325 Demonstration is a form of argument that
depends on form and content. What distinguishes demonstration, in contrast to mere logical
argument, is the specific character of the content expressed in the argument, since it is the
necessity of the content itself that makes demonstration productive of scientific knowledge.
Furthermore, true for Aristotle does not mean, at least not primarily, true by
correspondence. There appears to be some ambiguity in Aristotles statements, in so far as
some of them may seem to support a correspondence theory of truth. For example, Aristotle
writes in the Metaphysics: To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false,
while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.326 Here, truth seems
to be defined as a property of statements about the world, i.e. if the statement correctly
describes something in the world then it is true, if not then it is false. This seems to be
corroborated the Categories:

323

LSJ vs ejpisthvmh: A. acquaintance with a matter, skill, experience, as in archery, II. generally, knowledge,
2. scientific knowledge, science.
324
Wheeler (1995), p. 11: The idea that we might possess a demonstration without having considered universals
is wholly foreign to Aristotle's conception of demonstration.
325
Aristotle clarifies the difference between syllogistic, demonstrative and dialectical premises in APr. 1.1 24a2824b12: Therefore a syllogistic premise without qualification will be an affirmation or denial of something
concerning something else in the way we have described; it will be demonstrative, if it is true and obtained
through the first principles of its science; while a dialectical premiss is the giving of a choice between two
contradictories, when a man is proceeding by question, but when he is syllogizing it is the assertion of that which
is apparent and generally admitted, as has been said in the Topics. (Jenkinson).
326
Met. 4.7.1011b25-27 (Ross).
92

Now, those facts which form the matter of the affirmation and denial are not propositions; yet
these two are said to be opposed in the same sense as the affirmation and denial. . . . For as the
affirmation is opposed to the denial, as in the two propositions he sits, he does not sit, so also
the fact which constitutes the matter of the proposition in one case is opposed to that in the other,
his sitting, that is to say, to his not sitting.327

In other words, there is a correspondence or match between affirmative and negative

statements and their corresponding facts. Again, in On Interpretation, Aristotle seems to imply
that truth can only be found in the case of statements that say something about something, i.e.
propositions: As there are in the mind thoughts which do not involve truth or falsity, and also
those which must be either true or false, so it is in speech. For truth and falsity imply
combination and separation.328
A few things should be noted however. There is no indication in any of these statements
that truth involves a correspondence between statements and extra-experiential things in
themselves. The correspondence is between two phenomena, e.g. the statement Socrates is
sitting and the actual Socrates sitting. I am not denying that this basic kind of correspondence
theory is present in Aristotle. What is not present is the modern idea that the truth-makers of
statements are outside consciousness in the external world. Aristotle has no conception of
consciousness or of a world external to consciousness in this way.329 While the
commonsense notion of truth as the correspondence between statements and phenomena is
present in his thought, it presupposes a more basic level of truth. There can be no talk of a
correspondence between statement and fact without an intelligibly structured world being
given in the first place.
This is the dimension of truth Aristotle refers to when he says that nou`~, like perception by
the senses of their primary objects, is always true.330 Nou`~ does not involve any combination
or separation. Nou`~ is a simple realization or seeing of indivisible wholes that are not the
result of our synthetic activity, even if a synthetic activity (e.g. ejpagwghv) prepares for, or
mediates, our seeing of them.331 Thus, the truth of nou`~ must be different from the truth that
applies to combination and separation. To reduce all truth to propositional truth is reductive
and obscures essential features of Aristotles philosophy. Indeed, as we will see it is
327

Cat. 10.12b8-15 (Edgehill).

Int. 1.16a9-12 (Edgehill).
329
Cf. Irving Block, Aristotle and the Physical Object, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 21 1
(1960), p. 93: . . . one question that has persistently plagued modern philosophy was never explicitly discussed
by Aristotle, namely how and in what manner we perceive or come to be aware of the concrete, physical objects
to which sense-qualities belong. Aristotle, it seems, never considered this an important philosophical question; he
nowhere discusses it directly. No Greek, for that matter, ever addressed himself to this question. Protagoras
relativism was an objective relativism. It was the physical world that constantly changes, and we could have no
objective knowledge of it.
330
APo. 2.19.100b7-8: . . . scientific knowledge and nou`~ are always true (ajlhqh` d ajei; ejpisthvmh kai; nou`~).
331
DA 3.6.430a26-27: The process of thinking indivisible wholes belongs to a sphere from which falsehood is
excluded. (Hicks).
328

93

impossible to make sense of his theory of knowledge without a notion of ontological truth.332
On the other hand, the concept of ontological truth can accommodate that of propositional
truth.
The difference can be put thus: The world as a whole, as intelligible, is held in a simple
divine novhsi~ (activity of thinking). Because the intelligible content of the world is identical
with divine novhsi~ the seeing of this in an act of noetic insight involves a notion of ontological
truth.333 Noetic acts are not true by correspondence because the activity in which a finite
noetic act participates just is the deepest reality of the object contemplated. This does not
imply that the intelligibility of the object is exhausted, but that it really is the thing itself, and
not its representation with which the noetic act identifies itself. And it can identify itself in this
way because the thing itself, in its intelligible core, is dependent on a (divine) noetic activity.
Human beings can never realize the intelligible, i.e. divine novhsi~, as a whole, which is
equivalent to saying that we cannot grasp the intelligible structure of the cosmos as a whole.
We have, at most, partial noetic views of the intelligible activity structuring the world.
What is primary is the direct realization or seeing of an essence or of the necessity of a
universal connection between phenomena. What is grasped in thought is the same for all. The
expression of this in language is secondary.334 Thus, in order to understand Aristotles
conception of knowledge, we need to remember that even in the case of demonstrative
ejpisthvmh Aristotle presupposes that what is being demonstrated are what we might call
objective essences or ontological relations and not merely relations between linguistic
statements. For Aristotle such objective ontological connections are at the same time
intelligible connections, the intelligibility of which is grounded, ultimately, in their actively
being thought by God. When they are realized or seen in nou`~ this is not a case of their being
represented. Nor is it the case that there are objective physical connections that are
represented as ideal connections. The objective connections just are ideal connections.
According to LSJ, some of the basic meanings of ajpovdeixi~ are: showing forth, making
known, and exhibiting. Recall Seppers statement that Goethean science

332

Cf. Catherine Pickstock, Truth and Correspondence, in Truth in Aquinas, ed. John Milbank and Catherine
Pickstock (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1-18.
333
Cf. Joseph Pieper, Living the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), p. 35: . . . truth is predicated of
everything inasmuch as it has being. And this truth is seen as actually residing in all things, so much so that
truth may interchangeably stand for being. And further, the truth of all things is coextensive with the being of
all things; for there is no being at all that would not, by necessity, also be true . . . every being, as being, stands in
relation to a knowing mind. This relational orientation toward a knowing mind represents the same ontological
reality as the very being of a thing. To be, therefore, means the same as to be oriented toward a knowing
mind.
334
Int. 1.16a3-8: Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience [of affections in the soul: ejn th`/ yuch`/
paqhmavtwn] and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all
men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences which these directly symbolize are the same
for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.(Edgehill, slightly altered).
94

. . . aims at an original experience, original in the sense not so much of being unprecedented as
of taking or referring things back to their origins and placing them in fundamental relations to
other things in the relevant field of interest.335

This provides us with the key to interpreting ajpovdeixi~. When Aristotle says that we know
by demonstration he uses ejidevnai, which means to know, but also, importantly to see,
perceive, behold and other senses involving reference to vision.336 This interpretation draws us
away from a more narrowly logical and linguistic interpretation, towards the realisation that
what Aristotle is talking about is a rigorous way of showing forth, or exhibiting, the basic
phenomena of a given field of knowledge, in such as way as to enable other basic phenomena
to be grasped on the basis of the original phenomena.337
M. F. Burnyeat has suggested that the word ejpisthvmh is ambiguous because it can mean
knowledge in the sense of the cognitive state of a person who knows x, and also in the sense of
a body of knowledge independent of knowers and able to be learnt.338 Burnyeat suggests that
Aristotle does not clearly distinguish between these.
However, the reason for this is clear. A body of knowledge is derived from, and cannot
exist independently of, the cognitive states of some knower. This is because the intelligible
structure of the world as revealed in ejpisthvmh is ultimately realized in the cognitive state of
the knower, God. So, for Aristotle the sense of ejpisthvmh as a cognitive state is decidedly
primary; a body of knowledge cannot exist independently of a knower, because the intelligible
structure that demonstrative ejpisthvmh lays out, is itself not something objective in the sense
of existing independently of being thought (by God). It is, of course, objective in the senses
335

Sepper (2005), p. 215.

APo. 1.2.71b16-17: . . . but we say now that we do know through demonstration (fame;n de; kai; di
ajpodeivxew~ eijdevnai). (Barnes).
337
The only author I have been able to find who approaches ajpovdeixi~ in the same way is L. A. Kosman,
Understanding, Explanation and Insight in Aristotles Posterior Analytics, in Exegesis and Argument: Studies
in Greek Philosophy Presented to Gregory Vlastos, ed. E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos and R. M. Rorty (Assen:
Van Gorcum, 1973), p. 378: But although ajpovdeixi~ in some contexts clearly does mean proof, that is not its
focal sense. The root meaning of the term is showing forth, and its most common occurrences in nonphilosophical Greek embody the sense of showing as revealing or uncovering as much as that of showing as
proving. Hence, What we need to render ajpovdeixi~ is a term answering to the concept of something being
revealed for what it is. Just as discourse for Aristotle is ajpov-fansi~, the activity in which the world through the
agency of another makes its appearance, so the activity of science is ajpov-deixi~, the activity in which the world is
revealed, in which the implicit is unfolded and made manifest.
338
M. F. Burnyeat, Aristotle on Understanding Knowledge, in Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics,
ed. Enrico Berti (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1981), p. 97: Aristotles Posterior Analytics makes a single project
out of two things which present day philosophy segregates into distinct areas of inquiry. On the one hand, there is
a theory of the structure of a science, an account of the conditions for a proposition to belong to a body of
systematic knowledge like geometry, physics or botany. For us this would be a contribution to the philosophy of
science. On the other hand, Aristotle presents his theory from the outset in terms we would take to be
epistemological, as an account of the cognitive state of the individual person who has mastered a body of
systematic knowledge. Aristotles own word for what he is analyzing is ejpisthvmh, and this, like our word
knowledge, can refer either to the cognitive state of the knowing person or to a body of knowledge, a science
a system of propositions which can be learned and known.
336

95

of being inter-subjective and non-arbitrary. To think that a body of knowledge is really

independent of actively being thought (by someone) is to fail to grasp what knowledge
primarily means. Knowledge is not content alone but insight into content. A book lying unread
contains knowledge in potency. But if a book existed in the complete absence of any
intellectual beings, then in Aristotelian terms, it would not even contain knowledge in potency.
Aristotelian potency presupposes activity and makes no sense without it. Knowledge is the
more or less adequate participation in the intelligible structure of the world which as actively
realised is identical with divine novhsi~.
Keeping this in mind also helps to resolve another issue Burnyeat raises. According to
Burnyeat, the ambiguity just mentioned, leads to some unfortunate translations, for instance in
relation to the premises of demonstrated knowledge. He singles out Mure as problematic in
this regard:
At this point Mures translation falls apart. He speaks of the premises of demonstrated
knowledge, but a cognitive state cannot be said to be demonstrated, nor does it have premises;
these attributes belong to knowledge in the other sense of what is known, to the propositions
making up the body of a science. The things which are true, primary, etc. are indeed expressed
as the premises of demonstration, but the dependence in question here is the epistemological
relation of a cognitive state (demonstrative ejpisthvmh) to its grounds, not the logical relation of
conclusion to premises.339

Burnyeat is failing to take into account the place of God in the picture. The intelligible
structure of reality just is a structure of cognitive states, or more accurately, in view of the
simplicity of divine novhsi~, it is a single internally structured but non-composite, cognitive
activity. Given the nature of Aristotles world, the primary meaning of ejpisthvmh must be that
of a cognitive activity in which the necessity of the phenomena reveals itself. Because of the
fundamental principle of the identity of active knowledge with its object, this means that the
structure of cognitive states is also a system of phenomena that in view of the character of
ejpisthvmh as grasping necessary and universal truth, is the system of phenomena, the structure
which expresses the relations among phenomena in accordance with their nature.340 The
difference being, that while the intelligible structure of the world is present in divine novhsi~ in
339

Ibid., p. 99.
The conception of God as comprehensive knower, who grasps the totality of what is knowable in advance, is
constantly open to a metaphysical interperetation that objectifies the world. Aristotle was too much of realist and
too involved with the phenomena to believe that the human being could ever achieve such a comphrehensive,
systematic grasp of reality. Nevertheless, his conception of God, which is torn between a more dynamic monist
tendency like Goethes and a more hierarchical metaphysical conception, is open to this kind of development.
Goethe was fundamentally opposed to the systematizing tendency. Cf. Goethe, Problems, in Scientific Studies,
p.43 (HA XIII: 35): Natural system: a contradictory expression. Nature has no system; she has she is life and
development from an unknown centre toward an unknown periphery. To be fair to Aristotle, we should
remember that he affirms the simplicity of divine novhsi~. God is not a philosopher who has a discursive system
before his gaze.
340

96

a simple and immediate form, ejpisthvmh is reached via the cooperation of nou`~, sense
perception, ejpagwghv etc.
Clearly, a cognitive state does not have premises in the sense in which an argument has
premises. What then, is the relation between demonstrative ejpisthvmh and the things that are
true, primary, etc.? To answer this question we need to realize that the fundamental distinction
at work in the Posterior Analytics is the distinction between discursive and non-discursive
knowing. In fact, this distinction is signaled at the very beginning of the Posterior Analytics:
pa`sa didaskaliva kai; pasa` mavqhsi~ dianohtikh; ejk prou>parxouvsh~ givgnetai gnwvsew~.341
Mure translates this sentence as follows: All instruction given or received by way of
argument proceeds from pre-existent knowledge. One problem with Mures translation is the
phrase by way of argument. I would argue that the correct translation of dianohtikh; in
this context is discursive. Given the fundamental importance of the distinction between
discursive and non-discursive knowing in the Posterior Analytics, it makes sense that this
would be stated at the beginning of the text.
Goethes view about human thought is helpful here. For Goethe human thought does not
create its own content. Discursive thinking is not autonomous and self-sufficient. It is
fundamentally grounded in a non-discursive participation in reality that provides it with with
all of its content. According to Goethe, all of the analytic and synthetic work of the discursive
intellect depends on this primary givenness, this primary synthetic whole, the unity of God and
nature, which precedes any act of the human mind. In a letter to Goethe, Schiller wrote:
Philosophy can merely dissect what is given it, but the giving itself is not the work of the
analyzer but of genius. . .342 If we replace genius with nou``~ (working together with
perception and ejpagwghv) and philosophy with discursive thinking then we have a good
description of Aristotles view.
In translations of the Posterior Analytics, the word ejpisthvmh is translated variously, e.g. as
scientific knowledge (Mure), understanding (Barnes) and unqualified knowledge
(Tredennick). To have ejpisthvmh of a thing is to have unqualified scientific knowledge of a
thing (Mure), or to understand a thing simpliciter (Barnes). However, the translation of
ejpisthvmh as scientific knowledge needs to be handled carefully for a few reasons. Firstly, as
Michael Ferejohn says:
If by a science one means to denote a scientific discipline, that is, a discrete area of
investigation or expertise delineated from others by having both a distinct subject matter and its
own characteristic methods of investigation, then it is simply wrong to think that any such highly

341

APo. 1.1.71a1-2: All teaching and all learning that involves the use of reason proceeds from pre-existent
knowledge. (Tredennick); All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing
knowledge. (Barnes).
342
Schiller, Letter to Goethe 23/08/1794, in Schmitz (1914), vol. 1, p.6 (FA IV (31): 15).
97

specialized concept is present from the outset of the Posterior Analytics.343

Ferejohn argues that Aristotle is working towards the very concept of scientific knowledge
in general.344 Secondly, as Gerson suggests, this translation may seem to imply that Aristotle
is dealing with a particular kind of knowledge, i.e. scientific knowledge, as opposed to nonscientific knowledge.345 One might conclude that Aristotle leaves open the possibility of an
everyday, non-scientific knowledge.
However, this is not the case. Everyday knowledge is not ejpisthvmh for Aristotle. That my
perception of a cup on the table is not knowledge does not make it doubtful. Aristotle is not a
sceptic about this kind of empricial cognition. One can only be a sceptic about such things if
one holds onto the dualistic notion of a cup behind the cup, a world behind the world. There is
no cup behind the cup. As Louis Groarke states:
Unlike Locke and Hume, Aristotle does not conceive of substance as an occult cause or a hidden
nature. Substance does not lie under, over, or behind the object; it is the object. When we
observe it, its existence and essence are both on display. . . 346

Both are on display, for Aristotle, precisely because human beings have an intuitive
intellect, we have direct access not only to the existence of the sensible fact through
perception, but also to the essence through ejpagwghv and nou`~. This is itself grounded in the
fact that Each thing . . . and its essence are one in no merely accidental way.347
The goal of knowledge is not certainty concerning empirical instances, but realization of the
essential character of things. Science aims for universality and necessity. The distinction
between opinion and knowledge is not a distinction between the cognition of phenomena
understood as mere appearances and cognition of noumena existing behind the scenes. The
objects of opinion and knowledge differ because they are seen in a different way, not in the
sense that there are two objects, the phenomenon and the noumenon. From now on I will
mostly translate ejpisthvmh as scientific knowledge with the qualifications that it means
knowledge strictly speaking and in general, and does not refer to some distinct domain of
knowledge, or any particular scientific discipline.
Aristotles conception of scientific knowledge does not subscribe to the standard conception
343

Ferejohn (1991), p. 2.
Although I think there is some truth to this, it should not be taken to imply that Aristotle is interested in
developing an a priori concept of science in general, which will then be normative for all particular sciences.
As I have already said, there is no knowledge a priori for Aristotle, since the ajrcaiv on which all discursive
knowledge is based, including those principles or axioms common to all the disciplines (e.g. the principle of noncontradiction), are reached through ejpagwghv and nou`~, and this presupposes a perceptual engagement with the
phenomena. Aristotle is developing his conception of ejpisthvmh on the basis of existing cognitive practices. His
purpose, in a sense, is to make more conscious and explicit a conception of knowledge already present.
345
Gerson (2009), p. 63.
346
Groarke (2009), p. 74.
344

98

of knowledge as justified true belief. For Aristotle, scientific knowledge is not justified true
belief. Indeed it is not belief at all, but a state distinct from belief. Knowledge is a state you are
either in, or not. No amount of justification will turn a belief into knowledge. Indeed it is
strictly impossible simultaneously to have knowledge and belief in relation to the same
thing.348 The primary reason why Aristotles epistemology cannot conceive of knowledge as
justified true belief is because for him all discursive scientific knowledge is based on an
immediate, pre-discursive cognitive identity with the object known.
Knowledge in contemporary epistemology is typically understood as a matter of having a
justified belief in a proposition. Goethes theory of knowledge helps us to see why Aristotle is
able to reject every part of this conception. Knowledge is not a matter of belief, it is not an
attitude in relation to a proposition, and it does not require justification. I discussed issues
related to this in chapter 2 when I described how for Goethe observation and experiment are
not evidence for a hypothesis.What is seen or realized in nou`~ is not a representation of the
object (as a proposition would be) but simply the object itself qua intelligible. Justification is
of no relevance here because we are not dealing with a relation to an object that transcends
knowledge, such that the correspondence between the object and the state of the knower needs
to be justified or based on some evidence distinct from the knowing act itself.349 Justification
is essentially external; it is what is necessary in the absence of knowledge, or when one is
trying to convince others that one knows something.
However, we should be careful about saying that nou`~ is self-justifying. This implies a
reflective character that is not appropriate to nou`~. Nou`~ is not a foundation that imposes itself
on the knower in a non-cognitive way. In other words, the role of nou`~ as the ajrchv (governing
origin) of ejpisthvmh has nothing to do with the feeling of certainty.350 The necessity seen in
347

Met. 7.6.1031b18-19 (Ross).

APo.1.33.89a39-40: Fanero;n d ejk touvtwn o{ti oujde; doxavzein a{ma to; aujto; kai; ejpivstasqai ejndevcetai.
Literally translated, this is: It is clear from these [considerations] that it is not possible to opine and to know the
same thing at the same time. Knowledge is not a matter of knowing that, it is not a matter of having an
opinion which turns into knowledge when it has the right features.
349
Despite their differences, Aristotles view in this regard is close to Spinozas. Cf. Benedict de Spinoza, The
Ethics, II, P43, in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Edited and Translated by Edwin Curley.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 142. Spinoza notes that those who think that the person in
possession of a true idea needs an extrinsic standard of truth, i.e. correspondence with an object, are mistaken
because they understand the idea as . . . something mute, like a picture on a tablet, and not a mode of thinking,
namely, the very (act of) understanding. He continues, And I ask, who can know that he understands some
thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first
certain about it? What can there be which is clearer and more certain than a true idea, to serve as a standard of
truth? As the light makes both itself and the darkness plain, so truth is the standard both of itself and of the false.
350
Plotinus is very clear on the need to distinguish between certainty and persuasiveness as psychological
phenomena on the one hand and the necessity accompanying nou`~ on the other. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, trans. A.
H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 5.3.6.9-19: Has then our argument demonstrated
something of a kind which has the power to inspire confidence? No, it has necessity, not persuasive force; for
necessity is in Intellect but persuasion in the soul. It does seem that we seek to persuade ourselves rather than to
behold truth by pure Intellect. For while we were above in the nature of Intellect, we were satisfied and [really]
thought and saw, gathering all things into one; for it was Intellect thinking and speaking about itself, and the soul
348

99

novhsi~ (the activity of thinking) is grounded in understanding. It is not simply that we reach
some bedrock where we are compelled to recognize the truth of something without
understanding. It is understanding and not any sense of compulsion that grounds the necessity.
As I will argue extensively in Chapter 4, for Aristotle the primary reality is the divine thinking
of thinking that is identical with the active intelligibility of the world. Active knowledge is not
a privileged representation of reality, it is reality.
Aristotle presents his initial definition of scientific knowledge in Posterior Analytics 1.2:
We consider ourselves to know a thing/part in the strict sense, and not in the sophistical way
with respect to the accidental, when we consider ourselves to recognize the cause [aijtiva]
through which the thing is, that it is the cause of this, and that it is not possible for this to be
otherwise.351

Barnes translates aijtiva as explanation. This is potentially problematic, depending on how

one understands explanation. It is odd to say that the explanation of a fact is responsible
for the fact, whereas it is natural to say this with respect to a cause. We may explain something
in terms of its cause, but Aristotle is saying that we are seeking the aijtiva through which the
thing is. The aijtiva is explanatory of the occurrence of the thing, but it is explanatory because
it is what is responsible for the thing being what it is. In this regard, Mures translation is
preferable the aijtiva is the cause on which the fact depends. I translate di jh}n to; pra`gmav
ejstin as through which the thing is.
The notion of aijtiva should, I propose, be thought of in Goethean terms as the conditions
under which a phenomenon necessarily occurs.352 The crucial thing here is to avoid two
extremes. Firstly, we need to avoid thinking of the aijtiva as a cause in the sense of a factor that

kept quiet and went along with the working of Intellect. But since we have come to be here below again and in
soul, we seek for some kind of persuasion, as if we wanted to contemplate the archetype in the image. Cf.
Spinoza, The Ethics, II, P49, p. 148: Therefore, however stubbornly a man may cling to something false (NS: so
that we cannot in any way make him doubt it), we shall still never say that he is certain of it.
351
APo. 1.2.71b9-13: ejpivstasqai de; oijovmeq j e{kaston aJplw'~, ajlla; mh; to;n sofistiko;n trovpon to;n kata;
sumbebhkov", o{tan thvn t j aijtivan oijwvmeqa ginwvskein di j h}n to; pra`gmav ejstin, o{ti ejkeivnou aijtiva ejstiv, kai; mh;
ejndevcesqai tou`t j a[llw" e[cein. Mure translates this as follows: We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified
scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when
we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further,
that the fact could not be other than it is. Barnes translates: We think we understand a thing simpliciter (and not
in the sophistic fashion incidentally) whenever we think we are aware both that the explanation because of which
the object is is its explanation, and that it is not possible for this to be otherwise.
352
Henel (1956), p. 656: Now, says Goethe, let us continue to eliminate conditions until we arrive at a point
where only the minimum conditions are operative and where, if we remove another condition, no phenomenon
will appear. The last, simplest phenomenon, subject to the fewest conditions, is the protophenomenon. It is the
most inclusive, because once it is found we can reverse our procedure, add conditions, and thus derive all other
phenomena from it. Cf. Kosman (1973), p. 376: Here as generally in Aristotles writings, the notion of cause
must be understood delicately. An ai[tion is for Aristotle whatever is one of a group of factors which together are
responsible for that of which they are the ai[tia, the conditions determining it as what it is.
100

physically makes something else happen by some kind of transfer of force.353 Secondly, we
need to avoid thinking of the aijtiva as merely the explanation, in other words, as a theoretical
representation of some underlying cause, which is ultimately of a physical sort. Finally, we
need to avoid thinking of the aijtiva as an objectified cause behind the scenes, something that
precedes its effect. The aijtiva is not different from the phenomenon, rather it is the
phenomenon grasped in a cognitive activity identical to the conditions of manifestation of the
phenomenon. We can see this more clearly if we consider Aristotles use of the word pra`gmav.
The word pra`gma has a number of senses.354 Importantly, it has a connection to pravssw,
to achieve, bring about, effect, accomplish, which gives pra`gma the sense of that which has
been done, a deed.355 This suggests the distinction between the perceived phenomenon as
something that been effected, i.e. as something finished and the grasp of the aijtiva as that
which is effecting, i.e. is active in bringing the phenomenon to manifestation.356 Nou`~ sees not
only the phenomenon as finished, as brutely there, but also grasps the phenomenon as arising
from the conditions which bring it to manifestation. By participating in novhsi~ the human
knower steps back into the always already active intelligibility of the phenomenon, which is
the original and effective source of the apparently finished phenomenon given to the senses.
In novhsi~ one participates in the happening of the world.
The aijtiva is both what makes intelligible the necessary arising of the phenomenon being
investigated from certain conditions and what, ontologically speaking, gives rise to the
phenomenon. The cause that is sought is always something intelligible. The word
explanation has a sense of representational distance from the phenomenon explained that is
not in tune with Aristotles conception. The cause is not a theoretical explanation distinct from
the phenomenon explained.357 Aristotle would be in full agreement with Goethes claim that
353

Brogan (2005), p. 122: In order to understand causality, we need to distance ourselves from the reduction of
causality to the model of cause-effect. We tend to view cause in terms of a mechanistic transfer of force onto an
object. Instead Heidegger says cause and effect need to be seen as mutually and reciprocally binding each other
. . . . Moreover, cause and effects co-determine each other and cannot be thought apart from each other. What
Heidegger wants us to think about is this relationality, this prior causality that is presupposed in the discussion of
cause and effect. This is not only true with regard to Aristotle, but also very similar to Goethes understanding
of causality. Cf. Zajonc (1998), p. 26: Goethe is . . . uninterested in causes as such [i.e. causes in the mechanical
sense] and goes so far as to state that to separate effect from cause is an error. Rather, the phenomenon should be
taken as a whole. Instead of causes, one searches for the essential circumstances under which the phenomenon
occurs. Cf. Goethe, in Zajonc (1998), p. 26 (HA XIII: 446): . . . man in thinking errs particularly when
inquiring after cause and effect; the two together constitute the indissoluble phenomenon.
354
LSJ vs pra`gma: II. occurrence, matter, affair, 2. thing, concrete reality.
355
LSJ.
356
Steiner (1993), p. 76. Here Steiner argues that in thinking . . . we are given not only the completed process,
what has been effected, but also what is at work. It seems very likely that he is alluding to the Aristotelian idea
of ejnevrgeia.
357
Kosman (1973), p. 376. Kosman makes clear that in order to understand Aristotles conception of cause we
must overcome the modern assumption that there is a distinction between what a thing is and why a thing is. We
are inclined to believe that the answer to the why question, the cause, is something distinct from the thing in
question. In the context of Aristotles work, however, we must . . . understand cause to refer not to something
other than the entity in question, but to the entity itself under that description which reveals certain of its kaq
101

the phenomena themselves are the theory, where theory does not mean a proposition or set of
proposition about the phenomena, but rather the qewriva or contemplation of the phenomena
as intelligible. In order to avoid confusion I will usually leave the term aiJtiva untranslated
from now on.
From this we can extract the first condition that must be met in order for us to have
scientific knowledge of a phenomenon: (a) To have scientific knowledge of a phenomenon is
to recognize the aijtiva through which the phenomenon manifests and without which it would
not become manifest, and to recognize that given this aijtiva the phenomenon necessarily
arises.
The next two conditions involve the claim that we need to know that the aijtiva of the
phenomenon is its aijtiva, and that this cannot be otherwise. Mures version shows that to know
the aijtiva of x is to know not only an aijtiva of x, but the appropriate aijtiva of x.358 Thus, the
first part of the second condition can be formulated as follows: (b) To have scientific
knowledge of a phenomenon is to recognize the aijtiva appropriate to it.
According to Barnes, there is an ambiguity in the way Aristotle expresses himself that leads
to two incompatible interpretations of the necessity involved.359 In fact Barnes opposition is
only apparent. Certainly, relative to a human knower, the ontological necessity of x is primary,
since the knower can only understand x simpliciter because x cannot be otherwise. But for
Aristotle ontological primacy is simultaneously primacy in intelligibility, grounded in divine
novhsi~. Hence it makes no sense to say that the necessity of x plays a non-cognitive role in
understanding x simpliciter. The object of scientific knowledge is necessary, and it is
simultaneously realized as necessary.This identity is essential to Aristotles position because
the necessity of x is identical with its being unchangingly thought by God.
There is, however, another ambiguity here that is of more significance. It is initially unclear
what is necessary, namely, whether it is the thing or the ajitiva of the thing. Mure translates the
relevant passage as, and further that the fact could not be other than it is. As I have already
suggested, the aijtiva is not different from the fact, just as the qewriva is not different from the
phenomenon. We have scientific knowledge when we see the fact (the phenomenon) in such a
way that it becomes a necessary fact.360
Aristotle distinguishes between what is predicated of every instance of a subject and what
aJutov predicates. Thus it is clear, Aristotle claims, that what something is and why it is are the same (to; ajutov
ejsti to; tiv ejsti kai; dia; tiv ejstin, II.1.90a15). The why in terms of which scientific understanding is defined is
simply the nature of the phenomenon in question.
358
APo. 1.2.71b11-12: . . . when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that
fact and of no other. (Mure). At the same time, Mures translation is not ideal. For the aijtiva clearly is not the
cause of this fact and of no other. Indeed, it is the aijtiva of every phenomenon of a certain type.
359
Barnes (1975b), p. 97: The second conjunct is ambiguously expressed: the clause that it is not possible . . .
may depend either on we think or on we are aware, yielding in the first case: (2a) a understands X only if X
cannot be otherwise, and in the second: (2b) a understands X only if a knows X cannot be otherwise.
360
Steiner (1988b), p. 80. Cf. Groarke (2009), p. 401.
102

applies to that subject kaq aJutov (with respect to itself). He defines the kaqovlou as what
belongs both to every instance of the subject, and to that subject kaq aJutov. The clearest
example he gives of an appropriate cause is in relation to a triangle having the sum of its
angles equal two right angles. From now on I will symbolize this attribute as 2R. 2R is a
kaqovlou attribute of triangle in that it holds both of every instance of triangle, i.e. every
chance instance of triangle will have 2R, and is an attribute of triangle qua triangle. It is qua
triangle and not qua isosceles triangle or qua figure that this attribute holds of this subject, i.e.
this particular triangle, kaqovlou (in respect of the whole). As long as we do not realize this we
do not understand why this attribute holds with respect to this particular figure.
While we can ask why this particular triangle, e.g. this isosceles triangle, has 2R, for
Aristotle the question Why does triangle as such have 2R? is not a meaningful one. There is
no explanation of why something primary has the essential attributes it has. At this level
there is only seeing. All we can do is explain why something has certain attributes by showing
that they are necessary attributes that pertain to it kaqovlou, i.e. both to any instance of it and
per se, or by showing that they are attributes that are necessarily related to attributes which in
turn are kaqovlou.
The nature of the kaqovlou is clarified by considering what Aristotle says in Posterior
Analytics 1.5, where he characterizes the kind of universal grasp that is required for ejpisthvmh.
Aristotle begins by saying:
It is necessary for it not to escape our notice that it often happens that we are mistaken and what
is being brought to light [to; deiknuvmenon] does not belong primarily and in respect of the whole
[kaqovlou], in the sense in which it seems to us to be brought to light [deivknusqai] primarily
and in respect of the whole [kaqovlou].361

He then suggests some cases in which this occurs,

We are deceived in this way whenever either there is nothing beyond the part or parts to be
grasped, or on the other hand when there is, but it is nameless in reference to matters different in
kind [ei\do~]; or when that in relation to which it is demonstrated happens to be a partial whole.
For while the demonstration [ajpovdeixi~] will hold in the parts, and will be in relation to all of it,
nevertheless it will not be the demonstration of this primitively and in respect of the whole
[kaqovlou]. I say a demonstration is of this primitively and as such whenever it is of this
primitively and in respect of the whole.362
361

APo. 1.5.74a4-6. Here are some standard translations: We must not overlook the fact that a mistake often
occurs, and the attribute which we are trying to prove does not apply primarily and universally in the sense in
which we think that it is being proved. (Tredennick); It must not escape our notice that it often happens that we
make mistakes and that what is being proved does not belong primitively and universally in the way in which it
seems to be being proved universally and primitively. ( Barnes); We must not fail to observe that we often fall
into error because our conclusion is not in fact primary and commensurately universal in the sense in which we
think we prove it so. (Mure).
362
Ibid., 1.5.74a7-14.
103

In order to understand why a particular instance, e.g. this isosceles triangle, has a certain
attribute, we need to see it in the context of the appropriate whole. If, for example, there were
no triangles other than isosceles triangles, then in relation to any given isosceles triangle
having 2R would seem to belong to it qua isosceles. However, even if this were the case, the
man who had shown the attribute to belong to any particular isosceles, or even to all of them,
would only seem to know. Aristotle continues:
For this reason, even if you prove [show] of each triangle either by one or by different
demonstrations that each has two right angles separately of the equilateral and the scalene and
the isosceles you do not yet know of the triangle that <it has> two right angles, except in the
sophistic fashion, nor <do you know it> of triangle universally, not even if there is no other
triangle apart from these. For you do not know it <of the triangle> as triangle, nor even of every
triangle (except in respect of number, but not of every one in respect of sort, even if there is none
of which you do not know it.)363

Even if there were no triangles other than e.g. isosceles triangles, and you knew of every
single one that it has 2R, in other words, even if you could make a generalization on the basis
of a complete induction, still you would not know this except sophistically, and in respect of
number. This will prove important subsequently because Aristotle here makes it very clear
that what we would think of as a complete induction is not sufficient for scientific knowledge.
Aristotle is not interested in a generalization on the basis of enumerative induction. Knowing
that the attribute applies to every existing instance of a particular kind of triangle would be
equivalent to knowing in the strict sense only if it were the same thing to be a triangle and to
be equilateral.364 But these are not the same. We see particularly clearly here the ambiguity
between two senses of whole. A complete induction would give us a certain whole, i.e. it
would give us the complete set of all the things of a certain type sensibly (or for that matter
imaginatively) existing. This would be sufficient only if the sensible whole were identical with
the intelligible whole. Although even in this case we would know not because of the number
of instances seen, not even if they were all the instances, but because the concept of equilateral
triangle would be identical to that of triangle.
Aristotelian ajpovdeixi~ must proceed from starting points that are true, primary, immediate,
better known then, prior to, and causative of the conclusion.365
363

Ibid., 1.5.74a26-33 (Barnes).

This does not mean: if the word triangle meant the same as the word equilateral. We are closer to the mark if
we say, if the concept of triangle were the same as the concept of equilateral triangle, as long as we remember
that the concept is not a subjective or arbitrary mental representation but simply the being of the thing as known.
365
APo. 1.2.71b21-23 (Tredennick). Cf. Mures translation: . . . the premises of demonstrated knowledge must
be true, primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as
effect to cause. The full Greek sentence is ajnavgkh kai; th;n ajpodeiktikh;n ejpisthvmhn ejx ajlhqw'n t j ei\nai kai;
prwvtwn kai; ajmevswn kai; gnwrimwtevrwn kai; protevrwn kai; aijtivwn tou` sumperavsmato~.
364

104

Truth here cannot mean primarily truth in the sense of combination and separation, or truth
in the sense of correspondence, since the ajrcaiv are pre-discursive wholes. Even as premises,
i.e. as expressed in statements, they are the expression of necessary relationships or essences
implicit in the phenomena as illuminated by nou`~, and not products of discursive thinking.
This is made clear when Aristotle says: It is necessary for them to be true, because there is no
knowledge of non-being, e.g. that the diagonal of a square is commensurate with the sides.366
Tredennicks translation (it is impossible to know that which is contrary to fact) misses
something. Aristotle is saying that the state of affairs described is impossible, i.e. it is
something that does not and cannot exist. Again the identity of the intelligible and the real is
presupposed. This putative fact cannot be known because it does not and cannot exist, which
is to say that it is unintelligible. It is like the expression goat-stag we might be able to
understand the component words, but the expression itself combines elements that do not and
cannot go together intelligibly.367
When Aristotle says that the starting points must be primary (prw`to~), this cannot refer
merely to the statements in which the ajrcaiv are expressed, since the former are not primary,
being dependent for their content on the ajrcaiv of which they are the expression. The starting
points are primary ontologically and in terms of intelligibility. Here Goethes idea of the
Urphnomen is very illuminating. The Urphnomen has the same place in Goethes science as
the ajrchv in Aristotles. It is primary both cognitively and ontologically. However, Goethe is
very clear that the Urphnomen is a phenomenological given and not an explanatory posit, or
a principle of some linguistic sort. Goethe expresses these aspects of the Urphnomen in the
following statement Archetypal phenomenon: ideal as the ultimate we can know, real as
what we know, symbolic, because it includes all instances, identical with all instances.368
This perspective helps us to see that Aristotles ajrcaiv are not primary propositions, but
primary, necessary facts, or Urphnomene.
The ajrcaiv must be immediate (a[meso~). This means that they must be grasped without the
mediation of a middle term. Now the middle term is always the aijtiva. Hence, the starting
points are not amenable to further questioning. For example, we grasp that triangle as such, T,
has 2R, without a middle term, because there is no reason why 2R belongs to this shape more
basic than its being a triangle. The primary thing is not that the statements that express the
ajrcaiv are grasped without needing to demonstrate them by means of a middle term, but rather
that the statements are expressions in language of necessary facts, immediately intelligible
features of the world not further explicable.

366

Ibid., 1.2.71b26-27: o{ti oujk e[sti to; mh; o]n ejpivstasqai.

Given his use of the example, Aristotle presumably thinks that it is ontologically impossible for there to be a
goat-stag.
368
Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 303 (HA XII: 316).
367

105

When Aristotle says that the starting points must be responsible for (a[itio~)369 the
conclusion, this means more than that if the premises are true the conclusion follows.
Demonstration does not prove a conclusion merely on the assumption that the premises are
true. The premises must be true and known to be true independently of demonstration. In a
demonstration, the necessary relation between premises and conclusion is one of form and
content. The fact that all isosceles triangles have 2R follows necessarily from the two
necessary facts: that all isosceles triangles are triangles, and that all triangles have 2R. This is
not simply a matter of the meanings of words. It is a necessary fact about how certain things in
the world (i.e. triangles) are.
The ajrcaiv must be prior inasmuch as they are a[itio~, responsible for the fact expressed in
the conclusion. They must also be better known than or more familiar than, the conclusion.
Aristotle makes it clear that he is referring to priority in intelligibility per se, not relative to
us.370 In other words, the ajrcaiv must be more actively intelligible. Finally, we need to already
be aware of them, prior to demonstration; this antecedent knowledge being not our mere
understanding of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well.371 This last statement
further strengthens my point: to know the ajrcaiv is not simply to know the meanings of words
or statements, it is to know necessary facts.
In Chapter 1, I noted the accusation that Aristotle restricts knowledge to analytic truths. As
Goldin put it:
It is not often recognized, however, that, as it is usually interpreted, the syllogistic structure of
Aristotles theory of explanation binds scientific explanation so radically that it excludes every
nontautologous proposition from scientific explanation.372

We can now see how this is based on a misunderstanding. Analytic truths, in Goldins
sense, tell us nothing about the world. But the statement that all triangles have 2R, in other
words, that any triangle qua triangle has this property, does tell us something about the world,
namely that there is something that necessarily and universally has a certain attribute. The
definition of e.g. a triangle is not arbitrary, but is simply the linguistic expression of what is
discovered through perception, ejpagwghv and nou`~. We dont stipulate that this is what
triangle is to mean, rather we discover what triangle is, and express this in language.
Now we come to a fact of fundamental importance. Aristotle does not see any essential
difference between the way in which we come to know a necessary fact such as the above, and
369

Tredennick translates this as causative, while Barnes has explanatory.

APo. 1.2.71b35-72a6: That which is prior in nature is not the same as that which is prior in relation to us, and
that which is <naturally> more knowable is not the same as that which is more knowable by us. By prior or
more knowable in relation to us I mean that which is nearer to our perception, and by prior or more
knowable in the absolute sense I mean that which is further from it. (Tredennick).
371
APo. 1.2.71b32-34 (Mure). Literally we need to have seen that it is (eijdevnai o{ti e[stin).
372
Goldin (1996), p. 2.
370

106

the way in which we come to know necessary facts pertaining to the empirical sciences. In
Chapter 1, I quoted a complaint in regard to this voiced by Ferejohn.373
We are now in a position to see this issue more clearly. Ferejohn is right, Aristotle does
think that both the formal and the empirical sciences deal with necessary truths (which are
simultaneously necessary facts), and that both are reached in the same way starting from
perception and proceeding by way of ejpagwghv towards noetic insight. Ferejohn sees this as a
problem because he presupposes that the empirical or natural sciences should be searching for
those logically contingent, but highly probable, generalizations thought to express natural
causal connections.374
We have seen that Goethe begs to differ, and has his own distinctive conception of science.
Approaching Aristotle from a Goethean perspective, allows us to see that his conception is
quite coherent in its own terms. Aristotle is not interested in merely logical necessity, in the
sense of a necessity of form alone. He is interested in ontological necessity.375 The problem
with Ferejohns complaint is that it fails to recognize that Aristotle (like Goethe) has a very
different conception of science. To suggest that he fails to fit the criteria of contemporary
science is beside the point, especially since Aristotle would be certain to reject the views
expressed in the above quote as expressing a point of view that is scientifically deficient.
Science is about making intelligible the connections between phenomena by making their
necessity manifest. Science seeks neither logically contingent nor for that matter logically
necessary generalizations, if by logical one means something merely formal. Science seeks
to discover a necessity operative in the natural world.
Aristotle seems to be presenting a conception of science as a deductive system. But if we
approach the text with modern assumptions about what this should involve we are faced with
certain puzzles. Kahn writes:
In modern theory and practice, an axiomatic system begins with a list of primitive, undefined
terms, by means of which other terms will be defined, together with a list of primitive, unproven
propositions, from which, together with the definitions, the subsequent propositions or theorems
will be proved.376

373

Ferejohn (1991), p. 117: From the standpoint of modern philosophers of science, a theory of scientific
explanation that took such a narrow view of the scientific domain would be utterly intolerable, since it would
exclude precisely the sort of statements with which scientists are most concerned: those logically contingent, but
highly probable, generalizations thought to express natural causal connections. Indeed, the only kind of premises
countenanced by such a theory, those whose truth follows from the definitions of the terms they contain, are the
concerns of such exact disciplines as mathematics and logic, which are generally classified as sciences only in a
very special sense of that term.
374
Ferejohn (1991), p. 117.
375
Groarke (2009), p. 405: Contemporary analytic philosophy is focused on language. Aristotle is not interested
in linguistic definitions; he is interested in scientific definitions, in definitions that exhibit the objective nature of
things.
376
Kahn (1981), p. 387.
107

It would seem that Aristotle should give some account of how we come to knowledge of
such propositions. Unfortunately, when we look at Posterior Analytics 2.19, we are
disappointed to discover that, instead, he offers only an account of our acquiring universal
concepts like man and animal.377 Kahn argues that a focus on this issue leads us away from
an understanding of Aristotles project. The relevant distinction for Kahn is the distinction
between what he calls vulgar and scientific conceptualization.378
According to Kahn, Aristotle recognises only two kinds of ajrcaiv: (1) definitions, or
statements of what X is, and (2) hypotheses or assumptions that X is, that is to say, the
existence claims corresponding to the primary definitions.379 For Aristotle, on the
interpretation I am suggesting, (2) is implied in (1), since you cannot grasp the essence of what
does not exist. The recognition of the essence of something, say a horse, presupposes
already being aware of its existence; and being aware of its existence is already a matter of
being aware of what it is in some limited way.380 Aristotle has no notion of bare existence. To
say that something is, is to say that it has a specific nature. The basic elements of any science
are the ajrcaiv, or universal principles that constitute its distinctive domain. Although these are
expressed in definitions it would be a mistake to assume that they are definitions, or that they
are propositional. Propositional truth is dependent on ontological truth. The propositional
expression of a kaqovlou in a definition only expresses discursively what is implicitly
contained in the kaqovlou itself, the seeing of which is non-discursive. Thus, says Kahn, to
explain our knowledge of the archai of science is simply to account for our knowledge of the
set of essences or universal concepts that define the subject of study.381
Unlike many modern philosophers, Aristotle thinks that scientific knowledge of nature
presupposes our ability to grasp universal and necessary truths about the world, and that not
only nou`~, but also perception, imagination, and memory, play a role in this by means of the
process Aristotle calls ejpagwghv. Although ejpagwghv is usually translated as induction, it is
not at all clear that this is the right translation, given the way in which induction has long been
understood. Kahn notes that
Even if Aristotle's inductive account may pass muster as an explanation for our common-sense
grasp of universal principles, that is, for the kind of tacit knowledge of universals that is implicit
in our mastery of a language, how can it explain the deeper grasp of essences required as an
adequate basis for science? If I may put this problem in somewhat anachronistic terms: the
inductive grasp of universals seems to account for what Locke would call our knowledge of
nominal essences whereas what Aristotles theory of science requires is a knowledge of real
377

Ibid., pp. 387-388.

Ibid., p. 395.
379
Ibid., p. 391.
380
Ibid., p. 395: Knowledge of the existence claims will go hand in hand with recognition of the species or
essences that constitute the domain . . . . In the very process of coming to recognise and distinguish dogs, cats and
horses, we come to know that they exist.
381
Ibid., p. 386.
378

108

essences.382

Aristotle's science clearly requires more than the everyday ability to recognise a horse, or a
man. Aristotle believes that we can grasp real essences. What is striking is that the only
means Aristotle provides for getting to these essences cuts across many dearly held modern
assumptions. On the one hand he gives a central place to nou`~, which if it is understood as a
kind of intellectual intuition seems to put him squarely in the rationalist camp. Read in this
way Aristotle seems to be claiming that we have some direct a priori access to the essences of
the world without recourse to experience. On the other hand, there are his clear statements
concerning the importance of experience for knowledge. Then there is the doctrine of
ejpagwghv which seems to involve the claim that we can reach necessary and universal truths on
the basis of an inductive generalization from sensible particulars. Taken together these
elements present us with the incongruous mixture of empiricism and rationalism described in
Chapter 1.
If ejpagwghv is induction in the modern sense, how can it ever lead to a grasp of universal
and necessary truths? What seems clear is that for Aristotle scientific conceptualisation is not
radically distinct from ordinary conceptualisation; rather it is a refinement of the latter, and
continuous with it. But it is not at all clear how all of this is supposed to hang together. We can
begin to see how it hangs together by being willing to let go of some of the historical
assumptions that make these elements seem incongruous. However, before we turn to looking
more closely at ejpagwghv and the cognitive process described in Posterior Analytics 2.19 it is
necessary to consider nou`~. On my reading, nou`~ is both the ajrchv (governing origin) and the
tevlo~ (goal and fulfilment) of knowledge. It is the ajrchv not in relation to us, but in itself,
namely in so far as nou`~ is divine and is identical with the intelligible structure of the world as
ejnergov~ (active or at-work). Thus, although in the context of the human cognitive process
nou`~ is for the most part presented as the culmination and goal of the process, ontologically it
must be presupposed as the ontological activity that makes the cognitive process possible. It is
this which I will now discuss.

382

Ibid., p. 386.
109

Chapter 4. The Meaning of nou`~

I do not ask whether this highest being has understanding or reason. I feel it is understanding, it is reason.
All creatures are permeated with it, and man has a sufficiently large share of it to let him discern the AllHighest in part.383

4.1 Introduction
In this chapter I discuss the meaning of nou`~, a concept of central importance both in
Aristotles ontology and in his theory of knowledge. The chapter is divided into two main
parts. In the first part, which constitutes the bulk of the chapter, I argue that, for Aristotle,
nou``~ is a divine activity that makes possible the cognitive process described in Posterior
Analytics 2.19. I also describe the nature of nou`~ and of novhsi~ (the activity of nou`~). I argue
that these terms refer to a dimension of cognitive activity that is intrinsically divine, and is
characterised by a distinctive unity, wholeness, simplicity and pre-temporality.384 The first
main part of the chapter is divided into a number of sub-sections in which I discuss these
various aspects of the meaning of nou`~. In the second main part of the chapter, which covers
the last two sections, I discuss the meaning of nou`~ in the context of earlier Greek thought in
order to draw attention to a more archaic conception of nou`~ that is still to some extent
visible in Aristotles thought.
The two main parts of the chapter complement each other. My interpretation of Aristotles
nou`~ is guided by the Goethean theory of knowledge presented in Chapter 2. I argue that the
seeing-thinking operative in Goethes science is helpful in understanding a dimension of
Aristotles nou``~ that is often overlooked in standard accounts.385 In particular, a Goethean
interpretation can help us to see beyond the confines of an influential tradition of interpretation
which I argue obscures this more archaic dimension of Aristotles conception of nou`~.
There is a long tradition of interpretation that sees nou`~ as a strictly immaterial intellect. In
the context of Aristotles psychology this raises the question whether the idea of an immaterial
intellect commits Aristotle to a problematic dualism of a Cartesian sort. While nou`~ seems
sometimes to refer to a human intellect, in other contexts it unambiguously refers to God. The
problem of dualism in the psychological context seems to be mirrored in a corresponding
ontological dualism. At times Aristotle seems to suggest that divine nou`~ is immanent in the
cosmos as its intelligible structure, while other statements suggest that nou`~ is a purely
383

Goethe, Conversation with Eckermann 23/02/1831, in Goethe and the Sciences: a Reappraisal, p. vii (FA XII
(39): 449).
384
My reasons for using the admittedly awkward term pre-temporality rather than non-temporality or atemporality will be explained in this chapter. The basic idea is that I want to avoid characterizing the
relationship between nou`~ and time in terms of a dualistic opposition.
385
Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, in Scientific Studies, p. 39 (HA XIII: 37):
110

intelligible or formal activity that exists outside of the sensible cosmos considered as a whole.
Indeed, the ambiguous relationship between nou`~ and the ensouled body seems to mirror the
equally ambiguous relationship between divine nou`~ and the body of the cosmos.386
I argue that the same nascent metaphysical dualism is evident in both contexts and that both
the psychological and the ontological forms of this dualism are symptoms of a single
transformation occurring in Greek thought of which Aristotles philosophy is perhaps the most
explicit manifestation. This transformation can be characterised in general terms as involving
an internalisation and elevation of a divine activity (nou`~) that in archaic Greek thought is seen
as manifested externally387 in sensible nature.
One of Aristotles central criticisms of his pre-Socratic predecessors is that they failed to
distinguish between perception and thinking.388 The relation between nou`~ and perception, and
the relation between divine nou`~ and the sensible cosmos mirror one another. Aristotles
attempt to distinguish clearly between perception and nou`~ in the context of human knowledge
is mirrored in his conception of God as a pure thinking separate from the sensible cosmos, and
vice versa.
Aristotles conception of nou`~ is torn between two tendencies: on the one hand, he retains
aspects of the earlier conception of nou`~ as the active intelligibility of the cosmos itself, an
intelligibility that is suffered rather than actively achieved; on the other hand, he seems to be
struggling towards a more individually active, internalised and spiritualised conception of
nou`~ as a kind of cognitive self-identity achieved in a pure thinking absolutely independent of
the senses. Although Aristotle seems mostly to think that only Gods self-knowledge fully
realises this kind of self-identity, it nevertheless serves as an ideal also for human beings who
are perhaps able to realise it intermittently and for brief moments.
A good description of the more archaic tendency is found in Werner Marxs interpretation
of Aristotle. Marx argues that for an earlier thinker like Parmenides the role and task of man
[is] to assist in the unveiling of the order, to bring about the self-transparency of the
kosmos.389 This, argues Marx, was also Aristotles view: Man fulfils his role of assisting in
the unveiling of the kosmos only if and when he actually thinks, i.e., intuitively
apprehends.390 An example of the second tendency is found in those interpreters who argue
. . . my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking a perception.
386
A very interesting take on the relation between God and the world is found in Reeve (2000), who suggests that
the first heaven is the body of God. See especially p. 220: God is an understanding; he doesnt have one. What
has the divine understanding is the primary heaven, which, in turn, is the body that God (who is that
understanding) has.
387
By externally I mean that, on the view I am defending, the archaic experience was characterized by a basic
receptivity. The archaic Greek, on this view, did not have any clear conception of a self, and did not experience
the locus of divine manifestation in his own inner activity of thinking. Instead, the locus of divine manifestation
was the the sensible-intelligible encounter with the cosmos.
388
This is discussed in DA 3.3.
389
Werner Marx, The Meaning of Aristotles Ontology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), p. 12.
390
Ibid., p. 12.
111

that Aristotles God has no knowledge of the world, but is instead engaged in a perpetual selfcontemplation.391 An example of a view transitional between these two is suggested by Kahn
who argues that Aristotles God is simply the formal-noetic structure of the cosmos as
conscious of itself.392
In the literature on the subject of Gods relation to the world, the tendency is to argue for
one of two mutually exclusive positions: either God knows the world (typically this is thought
of in terms of God knowing the world in knowing himself),393 or God knows only himself. In
my view, a comprehensive account of the meaning of nou`~ in Aristotles thought would need
to do justice to these competing tendencies by presenting the tension between them as
essential to the character of Aristotles thought. It is not that Aristotle holds one or the other
view exclusively. Rather, he can be seen as engaged in a struggle to move from the earlier
conception of nou`~ as the intrinsic intelligibility of the cosmos that is suffered rather than
391

See, for example, W. D. Ross, Aristotle (London: Routledge, 1923), p. 183: Ross sees the issue as a simple
either/or, For him [Aristotle], that God should know Himself, and that He should know other things, are
alternatives, and in affirming the first alternative he implicitly denies the second. Eduard Zeller, Aristotle and
the Earlier Peripatetics, Vol. 1, trans. B. F. C Costelloe & J. H. Muirhead (London: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1897), p. 401: Aristotle conceives of God as . . . self-conscious Spirit . . . and confines his thought within the
limits of an isolated self-contemplation. . . . Roopen Majithia, The Relation of Divine Thinking to Human
Thought in Aristotle, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73 3 (1999), p. 380: I argue that Thought
Thinking Thought is not thinking in the sense that requires an object in any ordinary sense, but is in fact the
activity of pure unconditioned consciousness. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London:
Routledge, 1961), pp. 180-181: God does not have the attributes of a Christian Providence, for it would derogate
from His perfection to think about anything except what is perfect, i.e. Himself . . .We must infer that God does
not know of the existence of our sublunary world. Klaus Oehler, Aristotle on Self-Knowledge, Proceedings of
the American Philosophical Society 118 6 (1974), p. 501: The text of chapter 9 [of the Metaphysics] clearly
excludes from the Prime Mover any knowledge of something which is not itself. This appears to exclude from the
Prime Mover all knowledge of the world.; W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greek Philosophers:From Thales to Aristotle
(London: Methuen, 1976), p. 139: The conclusion is that the only possible object of the eternal thought of God
is himself, the one full and perfect being . . . He is wrapped in eternal self contemplation.
392
Charles Kahn, On the Intended Interpretation of Aristotles Metaphysics, in Werk und Werkung, ed. by
Jrgen Wiesner (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1985), pp. 327-328: . . . Aristotles god is . . . identical with the
formal structure of the world considered sub specie aeternitatis, that is, under the aspect of unqualified actuality,
where there is no real distinction between cognition and its object.; cf. also p. 127: Drastically put, the Prime
Mover is simply the formal-noetic structure of the cosmos as conscious of itself.
393
This view is held by the following interpreters: Thomas De Koninck, Aristotle on God as Thought Thinking
Itself, Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994), pp. 471-515. Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 292-293: There is, then, an internal demand, within
Aristotles world, for there to be a mind that is form at the highest level of actuality. Such a mind must exist if
Aristotle's theory of substance is ultimately to be consistent. And this mind cannot be a (subjective) ability to
learn and think about the (objective) world. If substance is to be mind actively contemplating, it cannot have the
potentiality to think anything: its essence must consist entirely in its activity of thinking. Active understanding
cannot be just a part of reality; it must play a constitutive role in the overall structure of reality. David
Bradshaw, A New Look at the Prime Mover, Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (1) (2001), p.20: By its
single perpetual ejnevrgeia it constitutes the forms, both in the sense of causing them to be (though without any
temporal priority) and in that of making up the content of their being. It thus imparts order to the cosmos and
renders itself the final cause of all natural change. Leo Elders, Aristotles Theology: A Commentary on Book
Lambda of the Metaphysics (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), p. 257: Since God knows himself, he knows all things,
since he is their principle.
112

actively brought forth, to a more individualised conception of nou`~ in which nou`~ is

appropriated by the individual in an inner activity independent of the ensouled body and the
senses.
In section 4.2, I give a brief description of this latter aspect of Aristotles conception of
nou`~ both because it is a crucial feature of his thought, and also in order to put the more
archaic (and also more Goethean) aspect into sharper relief. My primary focus, however,
will be on drawing out and clarifying the former aspect of Aristotles conception of nou`~,
which tends to be obscured in traditional interpretations, particularly those influenced by
Biblical theism, in which the idea of the absolute transcendence of God with respect to the
created world is central. This means that in a certain sense I am reading Aristotles conception
of nou`~ against the grain of what I consider to be the developmental tendency of his thought.
Goethes phenomenological approach to nature is very useful in the attempt to discern this
non-metaphysical undercurrent in Aristotles thought. Goethes thought is characterised by a
strong aversion to metaphysical dualism and a certain sort of naturalism, that is exemplified
in the following statement to Jacobi:
God has punished you with metaphysics and set a thorn in your flesh but has blessed me with
physics. . . . I will stick to the reverence for God of the atheist [Spinoza] and leave to you
everything you call, and would like to call, religion. You are for faith in God; I am for seeing.394

Vitor writes that Goethe once criticised Aristotle for not yet having come to the
recognition of how oneness separates into twoness (Zweiheit) i.e., the phenomenon of
polarity.395 Given the prominence of polarity in Aristotles thought (form/matter, potency
activity etc.) this criticism is rather puzzling if taken at face value. What Goethe seems to be
suggesting is that Aristotle failed to fully appreciate the fact that a necessary division is
inseparable from the manifestation of oneness. Goethe expresses this idea elsewhere when he
writes: Whatever appears in the world must divide if it is to appear at all.396 As Vitor
argues, Goethe was opposed to the idea of an opposition between the sensible and intelligible.
There is a dynamic polarity, but not a metaphysical opposition. This idea that being is
appearing and that the essence is to be grasped nowhere but in the flux of becoming is
expressed by Goethe when we writes: Seeming [Schein] what is it without the essence
[Wesen]? / Would the essence be were it not to appear?397 I argue that the Goethean
perspective is particularly apt to illuminate a similarly holistic, non-metaphysical dimension
still evident in Aristotles thought despite the nascent metaphysical dualism already
mentioned.
394

Goethe, Letter to Jacobi 5/5/1786, in Cassirer (1945), p. 77 (FA II (29): 628-629).

Vitor (1950), p. 61.
396
Goethe, Polarity, in Scientific Studies, pp. 155-156 (WA II: 11).
397
Goethe, Die natrliche Tochter, trans. Luke Fischer (FA VI: 336).
395

113

I approach this interpretation of nou`~ from two sides: on the one hand, from the Goethean
side; and on the other hand, from the side of earlier Greek thought. This approach is guided by
the conviction that Goethes thought shares certain central features with earlier Greek thought;
in particular Goethes science is based on a non-dualistic, non-metaphysical, and nonsubjective encounter with nature. In Goethes understanding of this encounter, nature is not
objectified and brought into a hierarchical relationship with God or with an ontologically
superior realm of intelligible essences. Goethe presents us with a modern and more
reflectively conscious reappropriation of an experience of nature evident in a more naive
form in early Greek thought. Taken together, these two perspectives bring to light aspects of
Aristotles conception nou`~ that are important for an undertstanding of his conception of
scientific knowledge.
In his phenomenological study of the early Greek understanding of light and vision,
Raymond Adolf Prier argues that the primary experience of an archaic Greek was of nature as
a qau`ma ijdevsqai, a wonder to behold.398 Prier argues, on the basis both of philosophical
and philological considerations that the archaic Greek experience of nature occupied a space
between the realms that what we would think of as subjective and objective. Prier writes,
. . . although unreflected inner intention is present, conscious inner activity, the self, and its
cognitive functions are not part of an archaic Greek. Without this cultivated experience the
oppositions of subject and object cannot be fully sensed.399

According to Prier, the archaic Greeks did not experience a world of objects, and certainly
not the world as an object, because they were not yet subjects. Prier offers an interpretation of
the archaic experience of vision that is defined by a primal relationality. Using the terms this
and the other/that in order to avoid the confusion generated by using later terms like subject
and object, Prier writes:
While we cannot describe the archaic worldview in terms of a conscious subject against a
derived, abstracted, intentioned object, it is possible to describe the places and at least partial
parameters of experience in terms of the relational projections from the point or intention of the
this and the relational projections emanating from the other or that. The this and the
other/that represent, as I have said, the primary polarity on which archaic language is based.400

398

Raymond Adolph Prier, Thauma Idesthai: The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek
(Tallahassee: The Florida State University Press, 1989).
399
Ibid., p. 19.
400
Ibid., p. 19.
114

Elsewhere, he further specifies this relational polarity as follows:

Hence, I have ventured a reduction of the this to its particular characteristics of grasping and
darting sight (seeming); the that to its divine, outer appearance; and the wonder that is
vision, to what we might designate as both subjective and objective.401

According to Prier, Greek experience in its origins is unreflective, turned primarily toward
nature. The place where nature appears, the place of vision, is neither subjective nor objective.
This in-between, this middle place of vision, is the meeting point of two origins: on the one
hand, the realm of what we would call human interiority (this), projected outward at times in
acts of vision, sensory or noetic (or sensory-noetic), which is also the place of seeming; and
on the other hand, the overwhelming radiance shining from what we would call the world (the
other/that), which is experienced as divine and as communicating a basic givenness of
meaning. In this polarity, the other (the world) clearly predominates; there is a primary
passivity characteristic of the archaic Greek experience.402
Earlier in this introduction I said that I interpret nou`~ as a dimension of divine activity that
is characterised by a distinctive unity, wholeness, simplicity and pre-temporality. The overall
context for what might otherwise seem like disparate themes is provided by the fact that, on
my interpretation, the non-metaphysical dimension of Aristotles conception of nou`~ and its
relationship to the sensible cosmos can be characterised as organicist. This does not mean that
Aristotle literally thought of the cosmos as an organism. Rather, my argument is that key
elements in Aristotles account of the relation between nou`~ and the sensible cosmos have the
character of concepts appropriate to the organic realm. In relation to this organicist element in
Aristotles thought, the Goethean perspective will again prove illuminating.
4.2 Novhsi~ as Pure Activity and as Self-Knowledge
For Aristotle nou`~ and novhsi~ are the words that most essentially characterise the being
of God.403 Indeed, Aristotles central description of God is noetic without remainder. Gods
401

Ibid., p. 116.
Cf. Gadamer (1989), pp. 124-125: Theoria is true participation, not something active but something passive
(pathos), namely being totally involved in and carried away by what one sees.
403
Cf. Stephen Menn, Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good, Review of Metaphysics 45 (1992),
p. 546: . . . it is easy to show that Aristotle takes both the Good and nous to be names of the essence of God.
Cf. ibid., p. 553: Aristotle tries to express what the first principle is by saying that it is nous . . . Aristotle does
not mean to say that God is simply one instance of nous among others, even the first and highest instance . . . God
must be nous in such a way that God is the only being which can be called nous in that sense of the word. Cf.
also EE 1.8.1217b30 where Aristotle writes, . . . the good is found in each of these modes, in substance as mind
[nou`~] and God . . . . (Solomon). In Greek, the second part of this sentence runs, ejn oujsiva/ me;n oJ nou`~ kai; oJ
qeov~. There is a parallel formulation at EN 1.6.1096a24-25: Further, since things are said to be good in as many
ways as they are said to be (for things are called good both in the category of substance, as God and reason [oJ
qeov~ kai; oJ nou`~] . . . . (Ross). Menn (1992), p. 551, notes that . . . the kai is epexegetic, connecting two names
402

115

thinking is described as follows: hJ novhsi" nohvsew" novhsi".404

The question of how to translate nou`~ and novhsi~ is difficult. I agree with Stephen Menn
that the translations of nou`~ as mind and intellect can be misleading.405 Firstly, these
translations are misleading because nou`~ simply does not have the subjective connotations that
mind and intellect do today, and secondly, because it is not at all clear that the presence of
nou`~ in human cognition can be thought of in terms of a reified mind. In the case of novhsi" the
best translation is probably thinking, although it should be kept in mind that there is no
suggestion of discursive movement involved. Given that the activity of nou`~ is also described
by Aristotle as qewriva (beholding), one could also translate novhsi~ as thinking-in-beholding,
or seeing-thinking.
Literally translated hJ novhsi" nohvsew" novhsi" says: the thinking [is a] thinking of
thinking.406 There is no explicit qualification of novhsi~ as divine and hence no explicit
terminological differentiation between human and divine novhsi~. This novhsi~ is not the
activity of nou`~, as if there were first some substantial divine nou`~ that subsequently engages
in activity. There is no nou`~ distinct from the activity of novhsi~ since such an objectified nou`~
would be in potency relative to the activity of novhsi~, whereas God is nothing but noetic
activity. God for Aristotle is neither an immaterial object nor an immaterial subject.407 Rather,
God is noetic activity.
Aristotle does not say that thought is the thinking of thinking. In other words, he does not
isolate a reified faculty of the activity of thinking.408 Nor does he say that the thinker is the
thinking of thinking. In other words, he does not posit a reified subject of thought. Nor again
does he say that thinking is the thinking of thought, or of thoughts. In other words, he does not
isolate a reified object of the activity of thinking. Aristotle conceives of God as sheer cognitive
activity without any underlying objective basis.409 This means that primary oujsiva, i.e. God,

for the same entity rather than two entities.

404
Met. 12.9.1074b34-35.
405
Menn (1992), p. 554. Menn notes the linguistic fact that the plural of nou`~ is . . . so rare that it is unclear
whether the classical nominative would have been noi or noes. I think Menn is right in implying that this points
to a more substantial fact, namely that nou`~ in the time of Plato and Aristotle was not thought of as something of
which there could be more than one. Menn also says, on p.554: You and I each have a mind, and we together
have two minds, but it would be extremely unusual to say that we have two nouses.
406
Elders (1972), p. 259. Elders suggests that it is best to interpret the genitive nohvsew" as . . . a genitive of
contents (consisting of thinking) or an objective genitive (concerning thinking).
407
Here I mean a subject in the sense of a reified self. God can certainly be a subject if we have a more
dynamic conception of the subject as an in principle unobjectifiable activity.
408
Elders (1972), pp. 259: The term novhsi~ is well chosen: it signifies the actuality of the thinking of the
supreme nous. Aristotle does not write hJ aujtou` novhsi~ [the thinking of itself], probably to avoid creating the
impression that the first being is composed of a thinking subject and its activity.
409
This feature of Aristotles conception leads to understandable misunderstandings. Cf. Deborah K. W. Modrak,
The Nous-Body Problem in Aristotle, Review of Metaphysics 44 (1991), pp. 772-773: Since on Aristotles
model of cognition, the character of a cognitive activity and the character of the reflexive awareness of that
activity are determined by the first-order object, the elimination of an antecendent cognitive object has the
116

is activity and not some underlying objective substratum, whether material or immaterial. 410
This formulation represents the summit of Aristotles thinking of nou`~, and takes him in a
direction quite different from that aspect of his thought that connects him to Goethe on the
hand, and the archaic Greeks on the other. The purpose of briefly sketching this aspect of
Aristotles conception of nou`~, is to bring into clearer relief the other more Goethean aspect
of this thought discussed in the remainder of this chapter. The difference between these two
tendencies can be illustrated by means of the following statement:
Just because Goethes thinking was continuously filled with the objects of perception, because
his thinking was a perceiving, his perceiving a thinking, he could not come to the point of
making thinking itself into an object of thinking. . . . Goethe did not make the distinction
between thinking about thinking and looking at thinking. . . . Man is uninvolved in the coming
about of everything else he sees. The ideas of what he sees arise in him. But these ideas would
not be there if there were not present in him the productive power to bring them to manifestation.
Even though ideas are the content of what works within the things, they come into manifest
existence through human activity. Man can therefore know the intrinsic nature of the world of
ideas only if he looks at his activity. With everything else he sees he penetrates only into the idea
at work in it; the thing, in which the idea works, remains as perception outside of his spirit.
When he looks at the idea, what is working and what is brought forth are both entirely contained
within his inner life.411

This beholding of thinking by means of thinking, rather than the discursive thinking about
thinking, is, I argue, precisely what characterises the new element in Aristotles conception of
nou`~ and which ultimately takes him in a direction quite different from that of his pre-Socratic
philosophical predecessors as well as archaic Greek thought in general. In working his way
towards a sharp differentiation between perception and thinking, Aristotle was able to realize
that the thinking of thinking is the active identity of being and thought. 412 In the thinking of
thinking there is no longer a distinction between being and appearance. Even though the
activity of perception is also a single realisation of two potencies (the perceiver and the thing
perceived), nevertheless at a certain level they remain distinct sensible entities. As Aristotle
puts it, it is not the stone which is present in the soul but its form.413 This cannot be said in
the case of thinking of thinking. One cannot say in relation to active thinking that it is not the
consequence that divine thought, having itself as object, does not seem to have a cognitive content as such or,
strictly speaking, to be a cognitive activity at all.
410
Cf. Gunther Patzig,Theology and Ontology in Aristotles Metaphysics, in Articles on Aristotle: Vol.3
Metaphysics, ed. Jonathan Barnes, Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 195:
. . . theology, properly and rigorously understood, is at the same time nothing but the study of being qua being,
or ontology.
411
Steiner (1985), pp. 70-71.
412
Cf. Elders (1972), p. 260: The expression thinking of thinking is more precise than the first being thinks
itself, for in the latter formulation the distinction between the ontological order and the order of thought is not
suppressed, whereas nohvsew~ novhsi~ intimates that the very being of the first principle is thinking, and its
thinking is being.
413
DA 3.8.431b29.
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thought itself that is in thinking but its form. This is because thinking of thinking is not
representational.
This point is the key to the interpretation of a phrase that some interpreters have found
puzzling. In Metaphysics 12.9, Aristotle writes: Ta; de; peri; to;n nou`n e{xei tina;~ ajporiva~:
dokei` me;n ga;r ei\nai tw`n fainomevnwn qeiovtaton, pw`~ d e[cwn toiou`to~ a]n ei[h, e{cei tina;~
duskoliva~.414 Translated this reads: The matters concerning nou`~ involve certain impasses,
for while it [nou`~] is held to be the most divine of the phenomena, the question what it must be
in order to have that character involves difficulties. Aristotles description of nou`~ as a
phenomenon has puzzled Elders, who writes:
In Aristotelian terminology ta; fainomevna are the visible things and observed facts. Since the
first principle is mind [i.e., nous], which has itself as its object, it is strange that these lines seem
to consider it as one of the visible things.415

Reeve has also commented on this passage as follows: God is an intelligible substance, the
activity of understanding, a matterless form or essence. How, then, can he be a visible thing at
all?416 Reeve suggests that the answer lies in the realization that the first heaven is Gods
body: We are visible because we have visible bodies. God is visible because the [primary]
heaven, which is his body, is the most divine of visible things.417 While I find Reeves
suggestion that God is embodied in the first heaven plausible as an aspect of the more
archaic dimension of Aristotles thought, I do not think it is the right answer in this instance.
Instead, I argue that Aristotle can say that nou`~ is the most divine of the phenomena,
because novhsi~ is immediately manifest in human noetic activity. In the case of novhsi~ there
is no distinction between being and appearance. Active thinking is the most divine
phenomenon because it is the one place in the phenomenal world where the divine is
immediately present.
Joseph Owens has noted that from
. . . both epistemological and ethical viewpoints, the notion of self is exceptionally difficult to
clarify in Aristotle. With him there is no term for person. Likewise he has, strictly speaking,
no noun for self, even though his phraseology may come close to it at times.418

What Owens points to is that the notion of the self as subject is virtually non-existent in
Aristotles thought. However, if there is any place in Aristotles thought were, to borrow from
Hegel, substance is on the verge of becoming subject, then it is in the thinking of thinking.
414

Met. 12.9.1074b15-17.
Elders (1972), pp. 248-249.
416
Reeve (2000), p. 220.
417
Ibid., pp. 220-221.
418
Joseph Owens, The Self in Aristotle, Review of Metaphysics 41 (1988), p. 707.
415

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Two interpreters who have seen this clearly are Mure and Lear.
Mures reading goes a little too far in the direction of Hegel, but is nevertheless
illuminating. The ontological identity of divine novhsi~ and being grounds the possibility of
human cognition.419 Although for us the world appears, for the most part, as something other
than novhsi~, the place of God in Aristotles philosophy implies that the ultimate goal of
cognition is, in a sense, self-knowledge.420 Obviously this does not mean that the goal of
knowledge is the human beings knowledge of himself as empirical subject. The point is rather
that qua knower the human being is not merely an empirical subject, but is simultaneously, as
Mure puts it, a universal subject.421
The concrete content of an act of perception is a tovde ti, which, as Smith puts it is both (a)
singular and so signifiable by this and (b) possessed of a universal nature, the name of which
is an answer to the question ti; ejsti in the category of oujsiva.422 The Aristotelian oujsiva is a
unity of the sensible and intelligible, of particularity and universality, and is not simply the
concrete natural entity as a sensible particular. Because actual knowledge is identical with its
object, the actual knower is also a tovde ti, indeed, in some sense the same tovde ti. As Mure
writes,
If so, the this is equally and also this momentarily active I, and the such is equally and also
a universal subject. Hence the perceptive function of a conscious subject is not a casual
multiplicity of separate acts, and the privacy of the percipients function is less inviolable than
common sense is apt to suppose. The whole world of possible total perceptum, and a correlative
universal subject capable in principle of perceiving it, are implied and operative in any
supposedly separate and private act of sense-perception.423
419

Kahn (1981), p. 410: . . . if the formal structure of the Intellect were not identical with the formal structure of
the world, we could not acquire true scientific knowledge . . . . Cf. Rosen (1980), p. 59: Being is knowable
because of an underlying unity between the knower and the known . . . . Cf. also Gerson (2009), p. 150:
Plotinus seems to be offering a sort of transcendental argument: understanding is possible only if certain
conditions obtain. Among these are: the existence of paradigmatic intelligible reality with which the intellect is
actively cognitively identical, the existence of an ability in us to access this activity and hence its contents
. . . .[this] is also what Aristotle suggests in his identification of intellection with primary being and in his claim
that embodied thinking must be able to access intellect.
420
This idea is of course reminiscent of Hegel. Cf. G. W. F Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets,
W. A. Suchting, and H. S. Harris (Indiana: Hackett, 1991), p. 296: The finitude of cognition lies in the
presupposition of a world that is found to be there already, and the cognitive subject appears here as a tabula rasa.
People have ascribed this representation to Aristotle, although there is no one further removed from this external
interpretation than Aristotle himself. Finite cognition does not yet know itself as the activity of the Concept,
which it is only in-itself but not for-itself. Its behaviour appears to itself as passive, but it is in fact active.
421
G. R. G. Mure, An Introduction to Hegel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 40.
422
J. A. Smith, TODE TI in Aristotle, The Classical Review 35 1 (1921), p. 19.
423
Mure (1940), p. 40: In explicitly perceiving this and (incidentally) myself, I implicitly perceive this-such,
and recognise it as this-such for any percipient. For this clearly implies more than this-for-me; it is deictic,
and to point is to assume the identity of other percipients with oneself. Indeed if this were not so, senseperception could never develop into imagination and thought. For the universality of the subject becomes more
explicit in imagination and still more explicit in thought; and clearly this development is only possible if the
subject of sense-perception is already in posse universal. The other condition of its possibility is that on each
119

Lear also sees clearly that, for Aristotle, thinking of thinking involves a kind of selfknowledge. To understand something for Aristotle is to grasp its essence. On Lears
interpretation, the essences of natural entities acquire a higher realisation in active human
thinking than they possess as embodied forms. In coming to understand the essences embodied
in the world, we come to understand the divine novhsi~ at work in them. But in thinking of
thinking, in other words, in contemplating our own contemplative activity, we grasp this
divine activity itself in its highest manifestation. However, the active thinking by which we
understand active thinking is itself divine. Hence active thinking is not only a divine activity
that we grasp, but also the means by which we grasp it. Now the highest and most essential
activity of the human being is active thinking. Hence in thinking of thinking we also
understand our own essence as human beings, which is primarily to be active knowers actively
understanding the world. As Lear puts it:
It is only through investigating the world and coming to understand it that one comes to
understand what mind is. Such investigation and understanding, the complete satisfaction of the
desire to understand, ultimately constitute the highest form of self understanding. That is, once
we have penetrated deeply into the worlds intelligible structure, we come to understand God
or, equivalently, Gods understanding. But divine understanding simply is the divine ground of
the world.424

In Aristotles view the ultimate ajrchv and tevlo~ of cognition is the activity of cognition, not
an object of cognition. It it this, ultimately, that underpins Aristotles epistemological
optimism. Any philosophy that conceives of ultimate reality as an object distinct from
cognition must be representationalist, and thus must lead to skepticism if it is consistent.
Conversely, a philosophy like Aristotles that founds the possibility of human knowledge on
the ontological identify of being and divine thinking means that while human beings may
never grasp more than a fraction of the intelligible content of the world, in other words, while
the world may be necessarily inexhaustible for human knowledge, there are, in principle, no
limits to human knowledge. The world is intelligible through and through and without
remainder.

level of conscious function there is some imperfection: the union of subject and object is not complete, and
function at the higher level can never quite dispense with function at the lower.
424
Lear (1999), pp. 316-317. Cf. also pp. 302-303: . . . it is by the very activity of understanding the world that
we come to understand ourselves. We could never understand ourselves simply by turning our intellectual gaze
inward. It is only in understanding and contemplating the essences found in the world that we can come to
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4.3 Nou`~ and the Ontological Context of the Cognitive Process

The idea that divine novhsi~ grounds the possibility of knowledge is important in relation to
the account of the cognitive process given in Posterior Analytics 2.19. The cognitive process
recounted there can be described as a process of increasing unification and in-formation.
Starting from a relatively vague and indeterminate sensible manifold it moves through stages
of progressively greater articulation and unification.
In speaking of a movement and a process one should not overemphasize the idea of
temporal movement or of an empirical process of synthesis. It is doubtful that Aristotle thinks
that the essentially fragmentary objects of the special senses (e.g. colour, light and dark for
vision) are really empirically or temporally prior to the perception of concrete sensible
objects like Socrates, a tree, a horse. The priority of activity in Aristotles thought implies a
logic whereby the material parts discernible in e.g. perception are not really separable from it,
but are distinguishable within it only in potency.425
This means that the process described in Posterior Analytics 2.19 is not constructive, but
re-constructive. Cognition is, ultimately, the re-integration of the cogniser into a world that
appears initially fragmented, and in which the intelligible order is initially veiled, but which is
always already actively thought by God. The increasing clarity, structure and unity that
characterize the progressive stages of the cognitive process are, ultimately, the progressive
unveiling (from a human point of view) of an intelligibility which is always already active.
This is the deeper meaning of the military image Aristotle uses when he describes the way
in which the cognitive e{xei~ (active states) wherein the universal is known arise: they arise
from sense perception, just as, when a retreat has occurred in battle, if one man halts so does
another, and then another, until the original position is restored.426 I will have more to say
about this simile in Chapter 5, but for now I want to make a few points. This statement should
be read in relation to the following: We must consider also in which of two ways the nature
of the universe contains the good and the highest good, whether as something separate and by
understand who we are.
425
The best formulation I know of this idea is in Jonael Schickler, Aristotle: Man and Metaphysics (Unpublished
Manuscript), p. 35: The heart of Aristotle's theory of perception is his claim that the highest actuality of the
perceived object (qua perceptible as opposed to intelligible entity) is attained when it is actually perceived by an
appropriately placed perceiver. The tree that I have in front of me participates in a higher form of reality qua
perceptible entity when I perceive it, than when I do not. This means that the components of perception its
object, its organ and the medium that relates them must be understood relative to the actual process of
perceiving. They stand to it as matter stands to form and potentiality to actuality. This is a profound and difficult
thought, and it runs directly counter to the widespread modern assumption that the conscious content of
perception is a derivative product of the interaction between for example information-carrying light, the eye and
the central nervous system. To claim that perceiving is the (emergent) actuality of the different elements of
perception reverses the terms of the discussion by relegating especially the physical events involved in the
perceptual process to the ontological status of the merely potential or that which is relative to something more
fundamental.
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itself, or as the order of the parts.427 To this Aristotle answers: Probably in both ways, as an
army does; for its good is found both in its order and in its leader, and more in the latter; for he
does not depend on the order but it depends on him.428
The leader is God as nou`~. The intelligible order of the world, here represented in the
image of the disciplined (and hierarchical) order of an army, ultimately depends on divine
novhsi~, while divine novhsi~ does not depend on it. This is another way of saying that God
does not have an object distinct from his own cognitive activity because the intelligible
structure of the world as active is none other than divine novhsi~.
The two texts, both using a military image, can thus be related as follows: the ajrchv or
original formation429 mentioned in the Posterior Analytics passage refers to the always
already achieved harmonious order of the world as known by God. The ongoing unification of
a manifold that characterises the cognitive process does not involve the construction of a
whole out of atomic parts really separable from that whole. Rather, it involves the reunification of a sensible manifold that is ontologically speaking derivative, by re-integrating it
into the intelligible structure of divine novhsi~.
Given what Aristotle says about the nature of the sense organs, and of the psycho-physical
constitution of the human being, it is plausible to suggest that the initially fragmented and
noetically opaque character of the sensible world is a function of the conditions of human
embodiment. As Clark has also argued, the real world is neither the world first given to us as
cognitively opaque and fragmented, nor some purely objective world behind the world; rather,
the real world is the world realized in cognition, which is simultaneously a participation in the
world as known by God.430
It may be objected that this seems to imply a view akin to the Platonic theory of
recollection, which Aristotle opposes. Am I not supposing that the cognitive process is a
process whereby the soul remembers the intelligible world which it knew prior to its
embodiment, and which is obscured for it by its embodiment? Is this interpretation of ajrch;n
as meaning original formation not incompatible with Aristotles empiricism, as Biondi
suggests, referring to Barnesemendation of the text, which involves reading ajlkhvn for ajrch;n,
and translating the relevant phrase as until a position of strength is reached?431
426

APo. 2.19.100a10-13 (Tredennick).

Met. 12.10.1075a12-16 (Ross).
428
Ibid., 12.10.1075a13-15 (Ross).
429
This is Mures translation. It is preferable to Tredennicks original position because it suggests not only a
return to an origin, but a return to an original structure.
430
Clark (1975), p. 197: This intuition, this audience with the god, this increasing seeing from the god as centre
. . . defines the sort of world and thereby the sort of man who may justly be taken as standard . . . . In seeing with
the god, we see with our own eyes but in a certain way, and in seeing thus, momentarily, we meet not a self world
ordered by our pleasures and pains, but the World. Not as an object over against us, but enthusiastically for
enthousiasmos is in origin inspiration and possession by the god. Reality is not the dead world of myth (II. 3.29)
but the realized, actualised world of human living, and its core is the realization of the divine.
431
Biondi (2004), p. 48.
427

122

These objections, while understandable, are misguided. Firstly, my view is incompatible

with Aristotles position only if one assumes that he is an empiricist. In my view he is a
rational empiricist, which as we have seen is a quite different position. Secondly, the position I
am describing is not Platonist in a sense that would be problematic for Aristotle for the
following reasons: firstly, it affirms the priority not of Ideas, which are, arguably, intelligible
objects,432 but of novhsi~; secondly, I make no claim that the human being knows the
intelligible content of the world prior to embodiment. Indeed, I make no claims whatsoever
about the human soul independently of the conditions of embodiment.
The original formation described is original not in the sense that it was previously cognized,
but in the sense that it is always already cognized by God. It is original in itself, not in relation
to us. This view is fully compatible with the claim that the human being knows nothing prior
to engaging with the world, and that all insight into the intelligible structure of the world is
essentially mediated, for human beings, by means of the process described in Posterior
Analytics 2.19. Finally, and crucially, the original formation is identical with novhsi~, not soul.
Nou`~ is essentially divine in all it forms, including as it functions in human cognition. In
other words, nou`~ is not a stable possession of the human being, in the sense of modern
notions like mind, or consciousness. Aristotle has no notion corresponding to the Cartesian
idea of consciousness as a private realm which may or may not be in contact with a world
outside of it.
I agree with Kahns view that what we call mind or consciousness is an attribute of the
ensouled body.433 This does not mean that one absolutely cannot speak about a person having
an individual nou`~. The essentially first-personal character of thinking means that it is
impossible to participate in novhsi~ in some external, merely causal sense. What it does mean,
however, is that thinking is first and foremost a single universal ontological activity, which,
even if it is necessarily first-personal, is not thereby subjective.434 Thinking, as such, is
432

Part of Aristotles criticism of Platonism (leaving aside the question whether this is fair to Plato himself) is
arguably that the Ideas are really just sensible objects transplanted to an intelligible world. Cf. Met. 3.2.997b1012: For they are positing nothing but eternal men, nor are they making the Forms anything other than eternal
sensible things. (Ross). One way of reading this criticism is that Aristotle is objecting not to the idea that there is
something supersensible, but rather to the inappropriate understanding of it. Met. 7.16.1040b27-1041a5 suggests
that the Forms are based on a lack of knowledge concerning the true nature of separate oujsivai, and on a
misguided attempt to define them on the model of the sensible objects available to us. Aristotles view is that
intelligibles are not objects but acts of understanding.
433
Kahn (1992), pp. 362-363: It is not the disembodied principle of nous that requires phantasms; it is our use of
nous, the penetration of nous into our embodied activity as sentient animals, which must take place through the
neurophysiological mechanism of sense and the mental imagery of conscious thought.
434
Lear (1999), pp. 310-311: . . . Since God is a principle of all things and is constituted by self-understanding,
it follows that this understanding is itself a cause or principle of all things. Thus the understanding of first
principles . . . is not an understanding of something which exists independently of that understanding . . . when
man fully satisfies his desire to understand, when he comes to understand the principles and causes of the world,
he is not acquiring understanding of a distinct object which, as it turns out, is divine. The understanding is itself
divine. On the unity of nou`~ see Menn (1992), p. 554.
123

individualized by its relationship with the ensouled body, which is the real locus of empirical
consciousness, and empirical self-consciousness.435
This position admits of a wide degree of variation in terms of the proximity between divine
novhsi~ as such, and novhsi~ as active in human cognition. It is compatible with this view to
argue that, to put it in scholastic terms, human beings participate to only a small extent in the
light of the divine intellect. However one accounts for the details, the crucial thing is that
Aristotles position is not compatible with any view that suggests that the relation between
divine novhsi~ as such and novhsi~ as active in human cognition is in any sense disrupted by a
representational discontinuity. However distant the feeble light of human nou`~ may be from
the full blaze of the divine novhsi~, it must nevertheless be seen as in uninterrupted continuity
with its source.
If this direct, though distant, link between the divine and human poles of noh`si~ is not
maintained, if, in other words, the vision of the whole enjoyed by God is not implicated in the
human cognitive process as both origin and guiding tevlo~, then the cognitive process becomes
fundamentally mysterious. There is no way of accounting for the structure that emerges in the
cognitive process (which is none other than the world becoming intelligible) except on the
assumption that the synthesis is guided by an ontologically prior pre-synthetic unity. This
unity cannot be provided by the senses, since, as Aristotle makes very clear, the senses give at
most a very limited and fragmented sensory manifold. Concrete objects like a chair, a tree, or
the son of Diares are for Aristotle not strictly speaking sensible objects at all.436
Aristotle cannot be characterized as having a nave realist view of the natural world.437 The
synthesis involved in the cognitive process cannot be guided by a vision of the so called
external world, to which it seeks to correspond, if this world is thought of as a certain
sensible whole. There is obviously no independent access to a sensible world except through
the senses, which, in and of themselves, do not give us access to a world at all. The sensible
world of our actual experience the world made up of concrete things, of trees, mountains,
animals etc. is not strictly sensible at all, since not one of these things is an object of sense
perception considered independently. What this means is that the very idea of a world
435

Kahn (1981), p. 413: We can grasp the active intellect, if we grasp it at all, only in its activity in us, and this
in turn only by reflection upon its objective realization in actual knowledge. Hence the Agent Intellect is not a
principle of which we can be directly conscious at all (cf. 430 a 23 f. we do not remember ).
436
DA 2.6.418a23-24: Because this [the son of Diares] is only incidentally an object of sense, it in no way as
such affects the senses.(Smith)
437
Cf. Kerr (2002), p.30: For the nave realist the world (reality) is altogether independent of our knowledge of
it, in the sense that our minds simply reflect things just as they are, over against us, in a wholly passive way.
Against this view the Thomist wants to say that knowledge is the product of a collaboration between the object
known and the subject who knows; the knower enables the thing known to become intelligible, thus to enter the
domain of meaning, while the things becoming intelligible activates the minds capacities. Knowing is a new
way of being on the knowers part; being known is a new way of being on the part of the object known. For
Thomas, meaning is the minds perfection, the coming to fulfilment of the human beings intellectual powers;
simultaneously, it is the worlds intelligibility being realized.
124

implies a sensible manifold formed into a structured whole by thinking, which, given that it
accounts for the structure and unity of the world as a whole is novhsi~ and not discursive
human thinking.
Since Gods knowledge does not emerge in relation to a prior independent object, it is better
to say that the world is a pre-synthetic sensible-intelligible whole. There is no independent
sensible manifold that is subsequently structured by divine novhsi~. The sensible manifold that
constitutes the first stage of the cognitive process is a potential, not an actual manifold,
contained implicitly within the world considered as a sensible-intelligible whole whose
wholeness precedes any possible synthetic activity.
Joseph Owens has argued that the Aristotelian knower, unlike a Cartesian mind . . . does
not have . . . [his mind] as an object independently of the cognition of sensible things.438 I
think Owens is partly rightly and partly wrong here. The reason for this is to be found in the
tension between two aspects of Aristotles conception of nou`~ to which I have drawn attention.
On the one hand, Aristotle does seem to think that the human being can achieve, even if only
intermittently and briefly, a thinking of thinking in which he directly participates in a divine
activity that grasps itself, and is thus in a sense a kind of self-knowledge. On the other hand,
Aristotle does not present the path to this thinking of thinking as involving an immediate
reflection on the activity of thinking considered in isolation from a cognitive engagement with
the sensible world. If we imagine nou``~ figuratively as a source of light, Aristotle is not of the
view that the human being faces the light directly and sees the intelligible essences of things
there.
While the idea of thinking of thinking is foreign to Goethes thought, the idea that the
human being gains self-knowledge only via the mediation of his engagement with the world is
very much a part of the Goethean perspective. Hence, Goethe can serve to clarify this aspect
of Aristotles thought.
As Karl Vitor says, paraphrasing Goethe, Primal concepts like the true, the divine, we
cannot recognise directly; just as we cannot perceive light itself, but only the things
illuminated by it.439 But this does not mean that the light is not directly implicated in our
seeing things illuminated. Claude Gandelman has suggested that for Goethe
. . . colors are not properties of light. The Farbenlehre is the assertion of the ontological
difference between light and colors. For Goethe, the colors are the middle term in a trilogy
which constitutes visibility and whose first and third terms are, on the one hand light and
clarity (Licht und Helles) and, on the other obscurity and darkness (Finsternis und das
Dunkl). It is within such polarity that the colors come to appearance.440
438

Joseph Owens, The Aristotelian Soul as Cognitive of Sensibles, Intelligibles, and Self, in Aristotle: The
Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), p. 97.
439
Vitor (1950), pp. 174-175. Cf. Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 140 (HA XII: 399): There is no sadder sight
than the direct striving after the unconditioned in this thoroughly conditioned world.
440
Claude Gandelman, Goethe as the Precursor of the Phenomenological Approach to Colour, in Goethe in the
125

We can extend this to suggest that the world comes to appearance in the interplay between
two elements that are not actually given in experience as objects: the pure activity and light
of divine thinking, and the pure potentiality of matter.441 Vitor also recognizes that Goethe
is of the conviction that God and existence are one, and that they relate to one another as
inside and outside, but in such a way that the one can never exist without the other.442 I argue
that Aristotles conception of the relationship between God as nou`~ and the sensible world is
akin to Goethes in this respect.
Jonathan Lear is right in calling Aristotle an objective idealist.443 Goethe has also been
referred to as an objective idealist.444 Indeed, I think both share the same kind of objective
idealism. It is characterized by a combination of idealism with an intense realism and
appreciation of the being of sensible nature and a rich grounding in experience.445
Joseph Owens writes: All human knowledge for Aristotle has accordingly its origins in the
objects provided by sensation.446 The problem with this formulation is that sensation, for
Aristotle, does not grasp objects. Without the assumption of nou`~ as providing the ontological
context for the cognitive process, each step in that process must be characterized by
miraculous, and rationally inexplicable, leaps in which a new level of organization emerges
which can in no way be derived from what came before.
The problem of induction is a good example of a problem that becomes insoluble without
the assumption of an intelligible context of the sort provided by nou`~. If one assumes that the
manifold of distinct sensible particulars is ontologically primary, as opposed to merely
epistemologically primary in relation to us (and even then only in relation to the early stages
Twentieth Century, ed. Alexej Ugrinsky (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 124.
441
Cf. Christoph Ggelein, The Theory of Colour as the Symbolism of Insight, in Goethe and the Sciences: A
Re-Appraisal, p. 247.
442
Vitor (1950), p. 174.
443
Lear (1999), p. 308: Aristotle is thus, one might say, an objective idealist. He is an idealist in the sense that
the order of the physical world is ultimately dependent on mind. Yet there is not a trace of subjectivity in his
idealism. Objects must conform to knowledge, but that does not in the least reveal them to be constituted by any
contribution from us . . . . Since, for Aristotle, there is nothing distinctively human about the mind to which
objects are conforming, there is no basis for saying that the essences we contemplate are mere appearances.
444
Allegra de Laurentiis, Aristotle in the Nineteenth Century: the Case of Goethe's Study of Life, Idealistic
Studies 30 2 (2000), p. 112. De Laurentiis speaks of Goethes objective-idealistic tendencies. Cf. Steiner
(1988a), p. 93: . . . objective idealism in its basic features permeates the Goethean world view. Cf. also Vitor
(1950), p. 57: If one would call to aid the terminology whereby definite types of Weltanschauung are
distinguished, in this case one might perhaps speak of objective idealism.
445
Cf. Steiner (1988a), p. 92. Steiners characterization of Goethes idealism is equally illuminating with respect
to Aristotle: Todays science of sense experience follows the altogether correct method of holding fast to the
given; but it adds the inadmissible assertion that this method can provide only facts of a sense-perceptible nature.
Instead of limiting itself to the question of how we arrive at our views, this science determines from the start what
we can see. The only satisfactory way to grasp reality is the empirical method with idealistic results. That is
idealism, but not the kind that pursues some nebulous, dreamed-up unity of things, but rather of a kind that seeks
the concrete ideal content of reality in a way that is just as much in accordance with experience as is the search of
modern hyper-exact science for the factual content.
446
Owens, The Aristotelian Soul as Cognitive of Sensibles, Intelligibles, and Self, p. 97.
126

of the cognitive process), and that the inductive process is constructive, then one will be
inclined to see the process as involving a leap over a gaping rift.
As Barnes puts it, characterizing a reading to which he opposes his empiricist one, since
there is a chasm which induction will not leap we must fly over it on the back of
intuition.447 Barnes suggests that nou`~ is an ad hoc solution to the problem of induction,
which is itself a specific instance of the more general problem of the relationship between
particulars and universals. But Barnes talk of flying over a chasm is misleading. Nou`~ has
always already spanned the chasm, or rather, there is no chasm from the perspective of nou`~,
the chasm exists only from the perspective of sense experience, to the extent that it has not
been integrated into the intelligible activity that structures and unifies the sensible world.448
My interpretation implies that just as any particular view of the whole is related to the
particulars comprehended within it as a whole in relation to its parts, so the intelligible world
as a whole, i.e. divine novhsi~ as a single simple activity, is related to the entire manifold of the
sensible world as an intelligible whole to its sensible parts. However this relation of part to
whole must not be understood on analogy with the relation between a sensible whole and its
sensible parts. Aristotle says that God is present in the world like a general in an army, both as
its order and as its leader. Aristotle is not a crude pantheist. God is not identical with the
sensible particulars, nor is the intelligible world a whole composed out of the sensible
particulars. In order to understand the relation of part and whole it will be helpful to consider
the question how it is possible for God to think many forms without sacrificing his simplicity.
4.4 The Simplicity of Divine Thinking and the Notion of ajiwvn
In the introduction to this chapter I noted that, on my interpretation, certain key elements of
Aristotles account of the relationship between nou`~ and the sensible world have an organicist
character. The first such element I discuss is the notion of ajiwvn. This notion is central to
Aristotles account of the simplicity of divine thinking and of its relationship to change and
time. As I argue, ajiwvn names not an absolutely a-temporal eternity, but rather what I call a
pre-temporal dimension of wholeness. I argue that the relationship between the ajiwvn and time
447

Barnes (1975b), p. 257.

Cf. H. F. Hallet, Creation, Emanation and Salvation: A Spinozistic Study (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1962), p. 10: Hallet is quite close to my own views regarding Aristotles account of the cognitive process when
he writes, Each stage in successful investigation is a movement from problem to understanding, from
disordered, distorted, and pulverulent appearance towards the real in the order of the intellect. Truth does not
arise as a separate question to be independently determined by comparison of theory with fact, or by any other
form of extrinsic test. Resolution of a problem is a movement towards truth, which thus reveals and certifies itself
and falsity. Truth, in other words, lies not at the beginning of . . . inquiry (for then inquiry would be otiose) but at
the end, not in problematical data but in understanding . . . . even natural science, i.e. pure science, depends for its
interim truth, not on verification (which does but widen its problematical bases) but on approximation to
intelligibility.
448

127

is akin to the relationship between an organic idea in the Goethean sense and its spatiotemporal expression. The unity of the idea of an organism is not the unity of a static, atemporal one standing over against the many; rather the organic both comprehends and
expresses itself in its parts.
Aristotle raises the issue of the simplicity of divine thinking at the end of Metaphysics 12.9:
A further question is left whether what is thought [to; noouvmenon] is composite; for if it were,
thought would change in passing from part to part of the whole. We answer that everything
which has not matter is indivisible. As human thought [nou`~], or rather the thought of composite
objects, is in a certain period of time (for it does not possess the good at this moment or at that,
but its best, being something different from it, is attained only in a whole period of time), so
throughout eternity is the thought which has itself for its object.449

A few things need to be pointed out regarding this translation, especially the last part. The
Greek is ou{tw~ d e[cei aujth; auJth`~ hJ novhsi~ to;n a{panta aijw`na. Firstly, Aristotle is talking
about thinking (novhsi~) and not thought. Secondly, the translation of to;n a{panta aijw`na as
throughout eternity is problematic. A literal translation might be: thus noesis itself holds
itself for all eternity. But what kind of eternity are we talking about? A very good
discussion of this issue can be found in Wolfgang von Leyden:
The traditional account of Platos and Aristotles views on time and eternity is in brief that (1)
there are two meanings of the word eternal which Plato was the first to use in the sense of a
mode of existence unconditioned by time and therefore allowing no distinction between past,
present, and future, while Aristotle employed it to express the notion of everlasting existence or
sempiternity; (2) in keeping with these two uses Plato and Aristotle likewise arrived at two
different notions of time in that Plato contrasted it with eternity and thought of it as having a
beginning, while for Aristotle the two concepts merged into one, that of everlasting time.450

Von Leyden is concerned to show that the views of Plato and Aristotle are not as disimilar
as has often been thought. Von Leyden argues that Aristotles conception of ajiwvn needs to be
understood in the context of his view that the cosmos is ungenerated,451 as well as being one,
unique and complete.452

449

Met. 12.9.1075a5-10 (Ross, altered slightly).

Wolfgang von Leyden, Time, Number and Eternity in Plato and Aristotle, The Philosophical Quarterly 14
54 (1964), p. 35.
451
Cael. 1.12.281b26-28: Anything then which always exists is absolutely imperishable. It is also ungenerated,
since if it was generated it will have the power for some time of not being.
452
Von Leyden (1964), p. 45. This is a direct reference to Cael. 1.1. 279a9-11: So that neither are there now, nor
have there ever been, nor can there ever be formed more heavens than one, but this heaven of ours is one and
unique and complete. I use the term cosmos rather than Aristotles the heaven because it more clearly
indicates that I mean the world as a whole (not in the sense of all the things that exist, but in the sense of the
world qua whole. Of course, the particular earthly substances are not ungenerated in this sense, but are eternally
coming into being and passing away. The meaning should be clear from what follows.
450

128

The first distinctive feature that characterizes Aristotles view of the cosmos is that it is a
single, unique and perfect whole that contains, as Aristotle puts it all its appropriate
matter.453 However, the cosmos is a very peculiar type of whole that cannot be identified with
wholeness as it manifests sensibly. In the case of a sensible whole we are faced with a
container that comprehends parts while being itself bounded. This is not true of the cosmos. It
is not possible to grasp sensibly, i.e. imagine, the wholeness that characterizes the cosmos.
Outside of the cosmos, there is no body, place, void, or time. Since, as Aristotle puts it,
whatever is there, is of such a nature as not to occupy any place,454 it is not really possible to
speak of an outside. This is another way of saying that the cosmos as a whole has no spatial
location, and one cannot think of the cosmos objectively as a container which is itself
bounded.
Von Leyden notes that Aristotle describes the nature of what transcends the intra-cosmic
realm by using the word ajiwvn, and that this has given rise to some confusion. It is not clear
whether the characteristics Aristotle ascribed to the things beyond referred to the prime
mover or to the first heaven, i.e. the outermost sphere of the fixed stars.455 As von Leyden
argues, this ambiguity is connected to the fact that Aristotles descriptions of what is beyond
suffice to distinguish it from what is intra-cosmic but not from the cosmos as a whole. While
what is beyond can be distinguished from the things that are within the cosmos both in relation
to space and time, it cannot be distinguished from the cosmos itself as a whole. In relation to
space, what is outside is not any body, nor a void, and since the first heaven is not bounded by
anything it is also not in any place. In relation to time, von Leyden writes:
. . . in maintaining that transcendence lacks the properties of time, he [Aristotle] asserts not that
it is timeless but that it endures unalterably through all time, though in this capacity it can differ
only from all that comes-to-be and passes away, but not from the first heaven and the world as a
whole, which are everlasting too.456

Thus, in regard to non-spatiality and non-temporality, both what is beyond the intra-cosmic
realm and the cosmos as a whole have the same characteristics. This is significant in relation
to the statement quoted above (ou{tw~ d e[cei aujth; auJth`~ hJ novhsi~ to;n a{panta aijw`na),
because Aristotle uses the same phrase to;n a{panta aijw`nav in the passage from On the
Heavens we are discussing. Ross translation (throughout eternity) if it does not actually
refer to endless temporal duration, nevertheless suggests that the eternity characterizing
Gods thinking is like an endless temporal expanse. Even the translation for eternity has
something of this sense, as in I read Aristotle for two hours yesterday. But the aijwvn cannot
453

Cael. 1.9.279a8.
Ibid., 1.9.279a19-20.
455
Von Leyden (1964), p. 45.
456
Ibid., pp. 45-46.
454

129

be characterized solely by endless duration. This would be to think of the aijwvn as akin to the
infinite, a kind of endless temporal continuum.
Nevertheless, the word does not suggest a sheer a-temporality. Just as Aristotle opposes the
dualistic notion of the universal as a distinct one separate from the many (which is thus both
radically distinct from them, and of the same character, in so far as it is an object) so the
aijwvn is neither the sheer negation of temporality, nor sempiternity or everlasting time. As von
Leyden notes:
In the early language of the Greeks the word ajiwvn never stood for eternity. It was used by
Homer of human life as a span allotted to each man and in a narrower sense may have signified
the living force of human life or the source of vitality, so that Homer could in fact couple ajiwvn
with yuchv, by which it was later superseded . . . When the distinction between sempiternity and
eternity in the sense of timelessness originated among the Eleatics, none of them expressed the
latter notion by the word ajiwvn.457

The word aijwvn in this earlier sense refers neither to an infinite time,458 nor to sheer
timelessness, but to a definite period of time, a certain whole. As Aristotle puts it, the word
ajiwvn possessed a divine significance for the ancients, for the fulfillment which includes the
period of life of any creature, outside of which no natural development can fall, has been
called its ajiwvn.459 The ajiwvn is not the sheer negation of time because this would be to
objectify it and define it purely negatively. As Aristotle suggests in On the Soul 3.6, that
which itself knows itself, is in activity and separately existent has no contrary.460 Hence, it
cannot be defined as merely the opposite of time. Whatever its separate existence signifies,
it is not the separate existence of something over-against the intra-cosmic realm.
Von Leyden is exactly right when he says that the Aion is a container and infinite time the
contained.461 Just as the period of lifeof any organism is the encompassing term (to;
perievcon tevlo~) of the multiplicity of its spatio-temporal (i.e. sensible) manifestations, so the
ajiwvn is the encompassing whole, both as limit and perfection, of the sensible cosmos as a
whole considered both in terms of its potentially infinite temporal duration, and its potentially
infinite spatial extension and divisibility. Von Leyden sums this up nicely when he writes:
. . . the etymology of the word ajiwvn for Aristotle, is that Aion is always, while that of Aither,
the fifth element, of which the first heaven is composed and whose nature it is to move in a
circle, is for him that the Aither runs always. The distinction is significant. Aion as a Telos, as
an encompassing form, stands for the complete actualization of the process of circular revolution
and recurrent periods. Motion and time, no matter whether finite or infinite, are incomplete
457

Ibid., p. 36.
Ibid., p. 46. Von Leyden agrees that . . . the word ajiwvn stands for something different from infinite time or
everlastingness.
459
Cael. 1.9.279a23-25.
460
DA 3.6.430b25-26.
461
Von Leyden (1964), p. 46.
458

130

processes: they are incomplete and imperfect not only if conceived in terms of a straight line . . .
but even if conceived as cyclical, for in this case they have no end. It is only on account of the
total form of their duration and this is what the term Aion stands for that the infinite cycle of
revolutions attains perfection and unity.462

Nevertheless, some problems remain. Clearly, the ajiwvn cannot be thought of as a kind of
cosmic container in which divine novhsi~ unceasingly moves. The expression throughout
eternity suggests this kind of spatialisation of eternity as endless time. But outside the
cosmos the conditions for the possibility of distinguishing between novhsi~ and ajiwvn are
lacking. If novhsi~ characterizes divine activity as essentially cognitive, ajiwvn characterizes that
same activity in regard to the peculiar simplicity and wholeness pertaining to it. Thus, ajiwvn
seems to be another term for God understood as an encompassing term (to; periecon tevlo~),
even when applied to the infinity of the world's duration.463
That Aristotle identifies the ajiwvn and God understood as thinking of thinking is suggested
when he writes:
According to the same logos, the telos of the whole heavan and the encompassing telos with
respect to all time and infinity is the aion a name based upon the fact that it is always being
immortal and divine. Upon it depend, in some cases more distinctly, while in others more dimly,
the being and life of other things.464

This description echoes Metaphysics 12.7, where Aristotle explicitly refers to God: Upon
such a principle, then, depend the heaven and nature. 465 The meaning of tevlo~ here cannot be
captured by one English word. What I want to suggest is that God, as novhsi~ and ajiwvn is
simultaneously the goal, the fulfillment or perfection, and the boundary of the world
considered as a whole.
With this in mind, I would explicate the meaning of the passage quoted above (ou{tw~ d
e[cei aujth; auJth`~ hJ novhsi~ to;n a{panta aijw`na) as follows: Thus thinking itself holds itself
always within the pre-temporal whole which it itself is.466

462

Ibid., p. 47.
Ibid., p. 46.
464
Cael. 1.9.279a30-31. I want to draw attention to the fact that there is something puzzling in this sentence,
which is also present in the translation by J. L. Stocks: From it derive the being and life which other things,
some more or less articulately but some others feebly, enjoy. It is not immediately clear how something can
enjoy life more or less articulately or distinctly. I will return to this below.
465
Met. 12.7.1072b13-14.
466
I use pre-temporal here to suggest that it is not simply a-temporal, but that it is both different from
temporality, being prior in being, and also intimately connected to it as the overall whole within which change
and temporality occur.
463

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4.5 Living Thinking: Novhsi~ as zwvh

Connected to the notion of ajiwvn is another important term Aristotle uses to refer to God,
namely life (zwhv). One basic difficulty in understanding Aristotles conception of divine
novhsi~ is that whereas God does not move, or change, he is nevertheless active. Divine
activity is ejnevrgeia, not kivnhsi~. The primary difference between kivnhsi~ and ejnevrgeia is
that whereas the former is a process of movement towards a tevlo~ external to it, the latter is
complete at every moment. In Aristotles application of the term zwhv to God we again see an
instance of his organicism. This can be illustrated by a passage from Metaphysics 12.7 in
which Aristotle describes divine nou`~:
For that which is capable of receiving the object of thought, i.e. the essence, is thought [nou`~].
467
And it is active [ejnergei`] when it possesses this object. Therefore the possession rather than
the receptivity is the divine element which thought seems to contain, and the act of
contemplation [qewriva] is what is most pleasant and best. If, then, God is always in that good
state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better this compels it yet
more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the activity of thought
[nou`~] is life, and God is that activity; and Gods self-dependent activity is life most good and
eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration
continuous [ajiw;n sunech;~] and eternal belong to God; for this is God [italics added].468

This passage contains a number of important features. Firstly, it says that thinking is divine
insofar as it is active and possesses its object. In other words, this passage supports the
primacy of thinking as pure activity for which I have argued. The feature I want to draw
attention to is the identification of thinking with life. Aristotle says that life (zwhv) belongs to
God. However, as with thinking, life is not a mere attribute of God. As Aristotle says: hJ ga;r
nou` ejnevrgeia zwhv the activity [literally the being at work] of nou`~ is life. God is, one
might say, a living thinking.
W. Kneale, who argues that Aristotle has a doctrine of sempiternity, thinks that the idea of
eternal life is problematic because it involves running together two incompatible notions,
namely that of timelessness and that of life. For I can attach no meaning to the word life
unless I am allowed to suppose that what has life acts.469
Here Kneale fails to grasp what I have called the organicist element in Aristotles
conception of God. Life is neither radically a-temporal, nor temporal in the manner of
kivnhsi~. This organicism is evident in Aristotles identification of thinking, life and the ajiw;n
sunech;~. The word sunech;~ means holding together. Novhsi~ unceasingly and without
467

This phrase translates the single present participle e[cwn. This should not be understood as saying that nou`~
is active as a consequence of possessing its object; rather its having of its object is its activity, since its activity is
nothing other than the having of itself.
468
Met. 12.7.1072b22-29 (Ross, slightly altered).
469
W. Kneale, Time and Eternity in Theology, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 61 (1960-1961), p. 99.
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effort holds itself together, constitutes a unity, and in so doing unifies the cosmos. Elders notes
that sunech;~ signifies in the first place an attribute of bodily being, viz. to be one to such an
extent that ones parts coalesce (Phys. 219a12), but it can also denote a duration which is
entirely one and never interrupted.470
Now, the combination of these two factors is what characterizes a living organism. A living
being is continuous, it holds its parts together, not only in the sense that its parts coalesce into
one, but also in the sense that its life, i.e. its soul, is an uninterrupted activity that is entirely
one, at least for so long as the being is alive. In the absence of life, i.e. when life is not
continuously unifying and animating the parts of the body, the body disintegrates.471 The
cosmos as a whole, whether considered as ajiwvn, as life, or as divine thinking, is an
encompassing activity that cannot be seen from outside and hence is unobjectifiable. It is an
intensive dimension of wholeness that contains change, without itself changing.472
4.6 Simplicity and Indivisibility
This whole the cosmos as realized in divine thinking is initially other than the human
being. The human being achieves her highest good, contemplation, only in a certain whole. As
Aristotle puts in: human thought, or rather the thought of composite objects . . . does not
possess the good at this moment or that, but its best, being something different from it, is
attained only in a whole period of time. 473 This could conceivably mean over the course of a
whole life of inquiry. But I think the overall sense lies in the idea that we cannot have a stable
and complete grasp of the whole at this or that moment. The whole as realized in us is reached
only via a process, involving finite acts of indivisible thinking; a process that, from an
empirical point of view, is synthetic. From the empirical perspective we put together, what
from the noetic perspective already holds together. The whole that is the divine thinking of the
cosmos is absolutely prior to any synthesis.
470

Elders (1972), p. 200.

DA 1.5.411b25: What is it then which holds the soul together [sunevcei], if naturally divisible? Assuredly it is
not the body: on the contrary, the soul seems rather to hold the body together [sunevcein]; at all events, when it
has departed, the body disperses in air and rots away. (Hicks). This does not imply that nou`~ is a permeating
soul. Aristotle opposes the view that soul permeates everything: cf. DA 1.5.411a17-21. I am only suggesting that
the organic conception of wholeness characteristic of the biological context is also found in Aristotles broader
ontological views. Cf. Goethe, The Formative Impulse in Scientific Studies, p. 36 (HA XIII: 32-34). Here
Goethe includes a very interesting diagram that presents life as the unified activity mediating between form and
matter and in a sense uniting them. Cf. also Goethe, Conversation with Parthey 28/8/1827, in Weigand (1949), p.
136 (FA X (37): 521): Where object and subject touch, there is life.
472
Bortoft (1996), p. 85. The expression intensive dimension is used by Bortoft to characterize the distinctive
being of the whole, or One, in contrast to the parts, or the many. He uses the terms extensive and intensive in the
sense in which extension and intension are used in philosophy: i.e. the intension of the word rose is its meaning
and the extension is the set of all existing roses. However, the sense of intensive as suggesting focused activity
is also useful. The dimension of wholeness or oneness is characterized by undivided activity.
473
Met. 12.9.1075a7-10.
471

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David Bradshaw fleshes out Aristotle's argument concerning the indivisibility of divine
thinking as follows:
Everything that lacks matter is indivisible, but not everything that lacks matter is incomposite.
Human intellect is a case in point: it is indivisible as lacking matter, yet because it requires a
period of time to attain its good it may be regarded as a composite of its states or activities over
many different moments. The divine intellect, however, is its own good, for it has no aim other
than to think itself. It is therefore incomposite in the sense of being at any moment fully that
which it is at any other moment, or at all other moments put together; there is no need to sum its
states over time, so to speak, in order to arrive at a full description of what it is.474

Bradshaw argues that Metaphysics 12.9.1075b5-10 shows only that there is no temporal
sequence in Gods thinking.475 It does not rule out the possibility that God thinks many forms
simultaneously. It may be that Gods thinking is incomposite in the sense of not being
composed of a multitude of thoughts in temporal sequence, but is composite in the sense of
being simultaneously identical with a multitude of forms. Bradshaw points to On the Soul 3.6
as providing a possible solution to this problem. In Smiths translation, the beginning of 3.6
reads as follows:
The thinking then of the simple objects of thought is found in those cases where falsehood is
impossible: where the alternative of true or false applies, there we always find a putting together
of objects of thought in a quasi-unity.476

Hugh Lawson-Tancreds translation is:

The thinking, then, of indivisibles is to be counted among those things with which falsity has no
connection. In things, however, to which falsity and truth apply, there is already some synthesis
of thoughts, which are treated as though they were one.477

Lawson-Tancreds translation seems to suggest that neither falsity nor truth apply to the
thinking of indivisibles. It is only where we have a synthesis of thoughts that we can speak of
truth or falsity. Smiths translation makes it clearer that Aristotle is distinguishing between
intuitive and discursive thinking. There is a kind of thinking that thinks simple objects, and
such thinking is always true. There is another kind of thinking, discursive thinking, which
involves the synthesis of thoughts, and which may be either true or false. This is the
distinction between propositional and ontological truth that we have already met.
Intuitive, non-discursive, non-propositional thinking is always true, because it is not
representational, and so cannot fail to be of its object. The object of novhsi~ is nothing
474

Bradshaw (2001), p. 15.

Met. 12.9.1075a5-10.
476
DA 3.6.430a26-28 (Smith).
475

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other than novhsi~. Discursive thinking can be either true or false. However, the truth of
discursive thinking is directly dependent on the unalterable truth of novhsi~. Error is always
caused by the combination of incompatible elements in discursive thinking. As Aristotle says,
falsehood always involves a synthesis.478 Only in a human synthesis can the intelligible
simples be combined in incongruous ways. Synthesis here clearly means human synthesis;
divine thinking is not a synthesis of separately existing objects.
Falsehood is possible only when we are not actually participating in the simple presynthetic unity of novhsi~. In this state, which characterizes the majority of our cognitive life,
we have access only to the disconnected bits and pieces of experience. We may have certain
primitive concepts, but we do not necessarily know how they fit together. In our discursive
theorizing we may synthesize our concepts with each other, or with sensible percepts in ways
that do not correspond to their actual connections within the novhsi~ actively structuring the
world.
In this sense, Aristotle is certainly a realist human cognition qua discursive is indeed
measured by reality. But there is never any comparison between a phenomenon and some
extra-experiential noumenon. It is simply that false syntheses do not result in intelligible
phenomena. What makes Aristotle an objective idealist is that the reality by which human
cognition is measured, is neither the imagined external world of modern epistemology, nor
some primitive sensuous given, but rather the noetically illumined world revealed through
cognition.479 Truth or reality is found, as Hallet rightly says, not at the beginning of . . .
inquiry . . . but at the end.480
Next, Aristotle turns to a discussion of central importance in regard to the question of Gods
thinking of multiple objects, a discussion of the various meanings of the word simple:
Since the word simple has two senses, i.e. may mean either (a) not capable of being divided
or (b) not actually divided, there is nothing to prevent mind from knowing what is undivided,
e.g. when it apprehends a length (which is actually undivided) and that in an undivided time; for
the time is divided or undivided in the same manner as the line. It is not possible, then, to tell
what part of the line it was apprehending in each half of the time: the object has no actual parts
until it has been divided; if in thought you think each half separately, then by the same act you
divide the time also, the half lines becoming as it were new wholes of length. But if you think it
477

Ibid., 3.6.430a26-28 (Lawson-Tancred).

Ibid., 3.6.430b1-2 (Smith).
479
Cf. Lear (1999), pp. 307-308: For Aristotle, by contrast [with Kant] objects must conform to our knowledge
not because they must conform to the human mind, but because they must conform to God or Active Mind.
480
Hallet (1962), p. 10. Cf. Steiner (1988a), pp. 106-107: . . . [a] distancing of oneself from the sense world in
its directness is indicative of Goethes view of real knowing . . . . In order to know nature in the Goethean sense
we must not hold onto it in its factuality; rather, nature, in the process of our knowing, must reveal itself as
something essentially higher than what it appears to be when it first confronts us. . . . A true knowing must
acknowledge that the direct form of the world given to sense perception is not yet its essential one, but rather that
this essential form first reveals itself to us in the process of knowing. Cf. also Wieland (1975), p. 135: The
principles stand at the end, not at the beginning of investigations.
478

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as a whole consisting of these two possible parts, then also you think it in a time which
corresponds to both parts together. (But what is not quantitatively but qualitatively simple is
thought in a simple time and by a simple act of the soul.)481

Aristotle here makes some important points about the nature of thinking and the relation
between unity and plurality. He asks us to consider any given line. Any line can, potentially be
divided ad infinitum. I can divide my original line in half, then each of the halves in half again
and so on. The question is in what sense are these parts contained in the original line?
De Konnick and Bradshaw have both provided very helpful interpretations of this.
According to Bradshaw, Aristotle is distinguishing between actual and potential indivisibility.
A line is actually indivisible if it is being thought by a mind that considers the line as a
whole.482 Note that the line is not only actually undivided, but actually indivisible. But isnt
the line always actually divisible, though perhaps only potentially divided? Aristotle would
answer no, and for the following reason: unity is not an objective property of the line any more
than multiplicity. The line is one line because it is actively thought as one line. It is the act of
thinking the line as a unity that confers actual unity on the line. Insofar as it is thought as a
unity, or in other words, as long as it is thought as simple and by a simple noetic act, it is both
actively simple and actively indivisible.483
4.7 The Goethean Conception of Oneness
We can come to a better understanding of the kind of simplicity, indivisibility and oneness
that characterise novhsi~ by interpreting them in terms of the Goethean conception of oneness
or unity. Henri Bortoft discusses the relation between unity and multiplicity in a way that is
very helpful in this regard.484 He argues that Goethe, philosophically and in practice, works
with a distinctive conception of unity. Bortoft distinguishes between what he calls unity
within multiplicity and multiplicity within unity.
One way to approach this issue is in relation to the transition from particulars to universals.
The common view that universals are reached by abstraction from particulars suggests that the
unity that characterizes universals is one that negates multiplicity; in other words, that
universals are generalizations. This conception is inherently dualistic or metaphysical.
Because it assumes that unity and multiplicity are independent and are related to each other
externally, it can neither explain how we get from multiplicity to unity (i.e. how we grasp
universals) nor give an adequate account of the nature of unity. As Madden notes:
481

DA 3.6.430b6-15 (Smith).
Bradshaw (2001), p. 14.
483
Ibid., pp. 14-15: . . . the act of thinking brings the form resident in the line to a level of actuality higher than it
possesses in the line alone . . . so that at this level of actuality the line is actually indivisible.
484
Bortoft (1996), pp. 82-89.
482

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Empricist accounts of concept formation that rely on a process of induction to fill the gap
between experience of individuals and understanding universals are typically plagued by a
concern that such a process must presuppose the very concepts that it is supposed to ground.485

Madden isolates two problems that any account of the relationship between particulars and
universals must tackle. The first problem is what he calls the Problem of Preconceptual
Recognition: this is basically the problem of explaining how we can recognize an entity of a
given type without already having a concept of that entity.486 Any account that claims that we
abstract concepts from entities already recognized seems to presuppose the concepts at issue.
The second problem Madden calls the Problem of the Object of Perception: this is basically
the problem that whereas the objects of perception that figure in ejpagwghv are concrete
sensible entities like a triangle, or the moon, Aristotles account of perception suggests that the
raw data of perception does not present us with objects. Hence, perception as such cannot be
the material from which universals are derived, since there is a gap between the perception of
sense data and the recognition of sensible objects. As Madden notes, even the recognition of a
sense-datum, e.g. a patch of red, presupposes some conceptual element. The attempt to reach
the universal by means of isolating what is common among a number of particulars, or else
what is essential to a particular as an instance of a type, faces similar problems. One cannot
determine what is common without already recognizing the feature at stake. Nor can one
recognize what is essential without having a way of distinguishing what is essential from what
is accidental.
We can imagine the relation between the two types of unity described by Bortoft,
metaphorically, as follows: The perspective of unity in multiplicity is one where we start, as
it were, from a point within the world. We are faced with a number of particulars and we
attempt to grasp the whole which accounts for their being what they are. It is as if we were
trying to reach the circumference of a sphere that contains the particulars and gathers them
into one whole. But since the particulars are potentially infinite in their variety, attempting to
reach the whole from the point-like character of the particulars means that we are aiming for a
periphery that is infinitely distant. The Goethean one, conversely, is a way of seeing.
Extending the metaphor, in this way of seeing we become the periphery, and we see the
particulars from the periphery looking in.
Now in a sense this is just a picturesque way of saying that our grasp of the whole (as a
kind of condition for the possibility of the parts) just is the whole. But in another sense, this is
precisely how Aristotle characterizes the relation between the whole, i.e. the cosmos, and what
is intra-cosmic. Because there is nothing outside the cosmos, the periphery of the cosmos is
485
486

Madden (2004), p. 35.

Ibid., p. 42.
137

indistinguishable from what is outside it. At the same time, the cosmos is finite for Aristotle.
However, it is finite not in the sense of being of a determinate size considered as a whole (for
this would imply that it is located in space), but in the sense that it is one, complete, perfect
whole. When we look from within the cosmos out, we imagine an actually infinite expanse,
both spatially and temporally: both in the sense that it is infinitely spatio-temporally extended,
and in the sense that it is infinitely divisible. But on Aristotles view, all this is contained
within the cosmos considered as a finite whole. The cosmos as a whole, which on my
interpretation is in a certain sense identical with divine novhsi~ is thus less like an abstract
universal or law standing over against the many particulars falling under it, and more like an
organic whole that is internally self-differentiating.
Bortoft gives two examples to illustrate the characteristics of this kind of unity. The first
example is the holographic image. Bortoft writes:
A model for multiplicity in unity is provided by the hologram. There are several unusual
features of the hologram but the one which is relevant here concerns what happens if the film is
divided into, say, two parts. With a conventional photograph the picture would be divided, with
a different part of the photographed object appearing on each bit of the film. But when a
hologram film is divided, the whole object is optically reconstructed through each part. The
division of the hologram materially is an extensive operation each part getting smaller and
smaller. But the division of the hologram optically is intensive it is divisible and yet remains
whole, producing multiplicity in unity.487

This is a one that is extensively many but intensively one, because each one (qua part) is
the same one (qua whole).488 While this kind of unity is particularly applicable to the cosmos
as a whole, it also characterises Aristotles conception of the wholeness of particular natural
entities. This organic, Goethean type of wholeness and unity is characterised by the fact that it
is present at many levels simultaneously. The subordinate parts of an organic whole are
themselves organic wholes.
Bortoft notes that as the holographic plate is fragmented the quality of the image
deteriorates. This is an extremely suggestive image for the relation of dependence between
487

Bortoft (1996), p. 86. A strikingly similar idea is described in Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of
Metaphysics, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), pp. 49-51. Here
Heidegger is talking about space: Space . . . is not a discursive representation. The unity of space is not
obtained by reference to the plurality of individual spatial relations and is not constructed by way of a comparison
of these relations . . . . The many spaces are only limitations of the one unique space . . . . Space as one and
unique is wholly itself in each one of its parts. . . . It precedes all its parts as the unique and limitable whole.
Unlike the generality of a concept, this totality does not have the many particulars under itself but, as already
co-intuited, in itself so that this pure intuition of the whole can deliver up the parts at any time.
488
For Goethe, you can only reach the whole through the parts, because the whole is not something over against
the parts. Cf. Goethe, in Nisbet (1972), p. 20 (WA I 2: 216): If you would seek comfort in the whole, you must
learn to discover the whole in the smallest part. At the same time, the part can serve as a revelation of the whole;
cf. Goethe, in Stephenson (1983), pp.45-46 (FA XIII: 46): What is the universal? The single case. What is the
particular? Millions of cases.
138

God and world which Aristotle refers to in saying: Upon it depend, in some cases more
distinctly, while in others dimly, the being and life of other things. The Greek here is: poqen
kai; toi'" a[lloi" ejxhvrthtai, toi'" me;n ajkribevsteron toi'" d ajmaurw'", to; ei\naiv te kai; zh'n.
The word ajkribevsteron is a comparative adverb derived from ajkribhv~ which means exact,
accurate, precise.489 A relevant example of Aristotles use of a comparative form of ajkribhv~
is at Posterior Analytics 2.19.490 Mure translates the word here as more accurate. I would
suggest that the sense here clearly relates to nou`~ as a form of seeing, so that Aristotle is
referring to a kind of sharpness of vision. The correlate on the side of the object (the image),
is, as it were, its resolution. The second word Aristotle uses is ajmaurw'", an adverb
deriving from the adjective ajmaurov~, meaning hardly seen, dim, faint.491
On the face of it this rather visual and cognitive sense does not go well with the idea of
entities depending on God for their life and being, or deriving their life and being from God.
However, once we realize that life and being are nothing other than divine thinking, things
become clearer. On the one hand, we might interpet the relation in terms of imitation, the
suggestion being that particular entities are like more or less sharp and distinct images of their
origin. On the other hand, we can interpret the same relation as their more or less sharp vision
of the divine. In the case of entities that imitate God non-cognitively the former seems to be
the most appropriate. One might then write: Upon it depend the being and life of other things,
both of those which imitate it more distinctly, and those which do so faintly.
Another example Bortoft gives to illustrate multiplicity in unity is that of looking at the
night sky:
We see this nighttime world by means of the light carrying the stars to us, which means that
this vast expanse of sky must all be present in the light which passes through the small hole of
the pupil into the eye. Furthermore, other observers in different locations can see the same
expanse of night sky. Hence we can say that the stars seen in the heavans are all present in the
light which is at any eye-point. . . . The night sky is a space which is one whole, enfolded in an
infinite number of points and yet including all within itself.492

This latter example suggests more clearly than the former that the whole, the one which is
identically present in all the particular ones, is not an original, reified one that can be
separated from the many. In the hologram example, we have an original image that is
fragmented. But in the latter case it is impossible to objectify a whole, because there is no
possibility of having an objective view of the night sky from nowhere. The relationship
between parts and whole here is such that the many are contained within unity in such a way
489

LSJ vs ajkribhv~: A. exact, strict, precise, of persons precise, strict . . . sharp sighted.
APo. 2.19.100b8-9: And no other kind of knowledge except intuition [nou`~] is more accurate
[ajkribevsteron] than scientific knowledge. (Tredennick).
491
LSJ vs ajmaurov~: 1. hardly seen, dim, faint, 2. having no light hence, blind, sightless, of a man.
492
Bortoft (1996), p. 5.
490

139

that they derive their distinctive character from the whole, while at the same time retaining
their being as a multiplicity on their own level. They are not merely reduced to the one, such
that their independent being is denied. Goethe points to such a model of the relation between
particulars and universals when he writes, Weak minds make the error of leaping straight
from the particular to the general when, in fact the general is to be found only within the
whole.493
Organic life is the pre-eminent everyday example of this kind of unity, something of which
both Goethe and Aristotle were keenly aware. An animal, e.g. an elephant (this is De
Konincks example) is a certain whole. The elephant is not composed of a head, a trunk, tusks
etc. As Aristotle repeatedly says, a part of any organic body is only a part when it is a part of
its proper whole. A severed hand is not a hand, or is a hand only in name.494 It is the form of
the elephant as a whole that gives the parts their being as parts. The form of the elephant is in
a sense prior to the parts. But the form is not an abstract unity. The form of the elephant does
not swallow up its parts into some kind of void of oneness where they simply disappear. The
parts remain parts at their own level. When we think the form of the elephant as a whole,
however, the parts are only present in potency. Insofar as the elephant is thought as a whole it
is actively indivisible just as the line is, indeed even more so.
It is not difficult to see how this way of thinking helps us to understand the relationship
between divine thinking and the multiplicity of the forms of natural things. As Bradshaw says:
The many forms contemplated by the divine mind are apprehended by that mind as a unity. They
therefore exist at that level as a unity, despite the fact that our own minds necessarily apprehend
them as a plurality.495
493

Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 307 (HA XII: 433). Cf. Frederick
Gustav Weiss, Hegels Critique of Aristotles Philosophy of Mind (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), p. 10:
As Hegel, I think, understands this, a being is real when we are able to give an account of it, or better, when it
can, as it were, give an account of itself; thus we truly apprehend the Being of things when we see them as
presupposing and including the conditions for their possibility, i.e. as unities of differences. Hegel will tell us in
this respect that a true unity can only be one in which the diversity of that which is unified is maintained if this
were not the case, we would have not a unity, but an identity. . . . An actuality, a Being in the true sense above,
is a kind of stage, or, as Hegel would say, a moment, in a progressively developing wider scheme of activity or
energy . . . . Aristotle often seems more concerned, however, with the developments (finite substances) than with
the developing, whereas for Hegel, the only unqualifiedly real entelecheia is the totality of energeia.
494
Met. 12.11.1036b31-33: For it is not a hand in any state that is a part of man, but the hand which can fulfil its
work, which therefore must be alive; if it is not alive it is not a part. Cf. Mete. 4.12.389b31-390a12: . . . a dead
man is a man only in name. And so the hand of a dead man, too, will in the same way be a hand in name only,
just as stone flutes might still be called flutes: for these members, too, are instruments of a kind . . . . What a thing
is is always determined by its function: a thing really is itself when it can perform its function; an eye, for
instance, when it can see. When a thing cannot do so it is that thing only in name, like a dead eye or one made of
stone, just as a wooden saw is no more a saw than one in a picture. (Webster).
495
Bradshaw (2001), pp. 14-15. Cf. Goethe, in Naydler (1996), p. 125 (FA VI: 217): We should not speak of
things-in-themselves, but rather of the One-in-itself. For things exist only from the human point of view, which
posits a diversity and a multiplicity.
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4.8 Time, Indivisibility and Gods Knowledge of oujsivai

De Koninck provides a lucid account of the relationship between thinking and time, and the
sense in which the thinking of indivisible wholes is not in time. On the Soul 3.6 argues that all
thinking, in so far as it is intuitive, is a thinking of indivisibles. Such thinking is not in time.
How are we to understand this?
Let us return to the example of the line. De Koninck asks us to Divide the line AB at C
into two halves AC and CB.496 The point C is what allows us two distinguish between the
two halves into which we have divided the line. C is both the terminus of the line AC and the
start of the line CB. In this sense it is twofold. It is simultaneously what divides and what
unites the two lines. The same can be said of to; nu'n, the now discussed by Aristotle in the
Physics:
So the now; also is in one way a potential dividing of time, in another the termination of both
parts and their unity. And the dividing and the uniting are the same thing and in the same
reference, but in their essence [ei\nai] they are not the same.497

In other words, just as the point in the above example serves both to divide the lines
(thereby itself becoming twofold), and to unite them into a continuum when the line is thought
as a whole, so the now serves both to divide time (when we think each of the half lines
separately) and to unite time (when we think the line as a whole). Here the now seems to
have the characteristics of the organic parts referred to above. The now is both a part (in this
sense there are many nows) and at the same time a dimension of wholeness and unity which
is present in every now.
Anyone who has thought intensively and with concentration knows how undivided attention
in thinking alters the experience of time. An hour of active thinking can pass in the blink of
an eye.498 In the case of human beings, this pre-temporal dimension is divided up by our
inability to be perpetually noetically active. Time is deeply connected with the discursivity of
human thinking, which, even when it reaches the level of novhsi~, cannot but grasp fragments
of the intelligibility of nature.
496

De Koninck (1994), p. 500.

Ph. 4.13.222a17-20 (Hardie & Gaye).
498
Aristotle discusses just this point at Ph. 4.11.218b21-219a1: But neither does time exist without change; for
when the state of our own minds does not change at all, or we have not noticed its changing, we do not realize
that time has elapsed, any more than those who are fabled to sleep among the heroes in Sardinia do when they are
awakened; for they connect the earlier now with the later and make them one, cutting out the interval because of
their failure to notice it. So, just as, if the now were not different but one and the same, there would not have
been time, so too when its difference escapes our notice the interval does not seem to be time. If then, the nonrealization of the existence of time happens to us when we do not distinguish any change, but the soul seems to
stay in one indivisible state, and when we perceive and distinguish we say time has elapsed, evidently time is not
independent of movement and change.
497

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Now, the example of the line is an example of something that is indivisible in quantity.
However, Aristotle points to another, more fundamental kind of indivisibility: That which is
undivided not with regard to quanitity but in form nou`~ thinks in an indivisible time and with
an indivisible active state of the soul.499 We can understand unity in terms of a continuum or
in terms of form. The difference is that whereas a continuum like a line is made up of parts
that are strictly homogeneous, and are distinct from each other only in quantity, a substance,
e.g. an elephant, comprises parts which are both heterogeneous and themselves indivisible
wholes. On the one hand these parts are different from each other and from the whole; while
on the other hand the whole makes of them a unity such that it is only in the context of the
whole that they are themselves.
An elephant is a certain whole comprising a trunk, tusks, various organs etc. One can of
course take this process of analysis further and further. As we divide the elephant up we find
that each part (at least as long as we stay in the realm of the organic) is itself an essential
whole having its own character, and not merely like the lines into which our original line can
be divided, which are all identical in being lines, differing only in quantity. But how, asks De
Koninck, can one reconcile this with the indivisible grasp of the indivisible form elephant
in an indivisible time?500
This issue is important for any attempt to account for Gods knowledge of the world. If God
knows anything, God knows organic oujsivai. However, organic oujsivai are not, like the line,
continua containing only homogeneous parts. They are not one merely by continuity, but more
importantly by unity of form.501 This form is both spatially and temporally extended in
regard to its manifestation. Form is ejnevrgeia or activity. Organic oujsivai are indivisible
wholes that contain, in potency, heterogeneous parts that are themselves indivisible wholes. If
God is to know the many oujsivai making up the world, does he not need to know, in a single
indivisible activity both many oujsivai, many distinct indivisible wholes, but also and at the
same time the multiplicity of heterogeneous and equally indivisible parts which those oujsivai
contain? And if God does know oujsivai, does that not mean that the primary oujsiva, God,
contains many actual oujsivai? It would seem that this is impossible, because, as Aristotle
writes:
An oujsiva cannot consist of oujsivai present in it in complete realisation [ejnteleceiva/]; for things
that are thus in complete realisation two are never in complete realisation one, though if they are
in potency two, they can be one (e.g. the double line consists of two halves in potency; for the
complete realization of the halves divides them from one another); therefore if the oujsiva is one,
499

DA 3.6.430b14-15.
De Koninck (1994), pp. 502-503.
501
Met. 5.6.1016b11-16: While in a sense we call anything one if it is a quantity and continuous, in a sense we
do not unless it is a whole, i.e. unless it has unity of form; e.g. if we saw the parts of a shoe put together anyhow
we should not call them one all the same (unless because of their continuity); we do this only if they are put
together so as to be a shoe and to have already a certain single form.
500

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it will not consist of oujsivai present in it in this way. . . 502

The oujsiva elephant is not in itself divisible. Considered as a whole it is indivisible. This
is not to suggest that it is only indivisible insofar as it is thought as a whole by a human
knower. We clearly cannot in the same indivisible instant be simultaneously in actuality all
the heterogeneous and homogeneous parts of the elephant.503 In one sense, human knowledge
is discursive; it proceeds step by step in time and involves a synthesis of elements. It is this
synthesis, which includes also assertion, or the saying of something about something, which is
the source of all error, whereas the thinking of the definition in the sense of the constitutive
essence is never in error nor is it the assertion of something concerning something.504 The
wholeness of an organic entity is one that precedes any human synthesis.
What characterises the levels of wholeness in an organic entity is the fact that the
subordinate wholes are comprehended by the superordinate wholes without ceasing to be
wholes at their own level. This suggest an answer to the question how divine novhsi~ can
comprehend all of the oujsiaiv of nature without sacrificing its simplicity and indivisibility. The
relation between divine novhsi~ and subordinate oujsiai is like the relation between an
organism considered as an ideal whole and its parts, which are themselves subordinate
wholes. Just as an organism is composed of parts only when we consider its internal structure
in abstraction from the uninterrupted formative activity that enlivens it, so natural oujsiaiv are
not really parts of divine novhsi~ because divine novhsi~ is not composed of parts present in it
in full realisation. At the level of divine novhsi~ the parts are present only in potency.
The organic wholeness and unity characterising novhsi~ is significant for understanding
Aristotles conception of the nature of human cognition. Christoph Ggeleins epistemological
interpretation of Goethes Theory of Color provides a key to understanding the relationship
between divine novhsi~ and the human cognitive process. Ggelein has argued that Goethes
Theory of Color does not so much presuppose a theory of knowledge, as present one. Ggelein
attempts to explicate the theory of knowledge implicit in the very terms of Goethes Theory of
Color. He writes:
. . . an analogy exists between the way in which color appears (i.e. the content of the theory of
color) and the way in which Goethe understands insight (i.e. the act of cognition). . . . This is at
the same time a pronouncement about the human beings situation within the world (i.e. upon
the relationship human being/world) and upon the human beings vocation. It follows that in
502

Ibid., 7.13.1039a2-10 (Ross, slightly altered).

De Koninck (1994), p. 504.
504
DA 3.6.430b26-28 (Smith). The only problem with this translation is the use of of the definition to translate
tou` tiv ejsti, literally of the what it is. The problem is with the suggestion that the noetic grasp at issue is of
the definition, rather than of the essence. This cant be right. It is not the definition that is the cause of the being
of the entity, i.e. is not a definition that holds together the body of a natural organism, keeps it growing within
certain limits etc. The definition is simply the expression of the essence in language.
503

143

defending his theory of color, Goethe defends not only a truth . . . but at the same time his
concept of truth itself. 505

Ggelein relates the simplicity of light, which does not consist of individual finished
colours to the simplicity of the Idea, or One, which does not consist of individual finished
appearances (ideas, parts). On this view, the cognitive process becomes the generation, the
creation of the appearances and their reembodiement in the idea.506 In other words, human
cognition is the place where individual phenomena appear and are re-integrated into the whole
in an explicit way (as knowledge), where they had previously existed as not fully realised in
their differentiation.
An example of this process of differentiating and then reintegrating parts within a whole is
given at the beginning of the Physics, where Aristotle describes how we come to knowledge of
the first principles and simplest elements of nature. He proposes that the best way of
reaching these principles is to start from the things which are more knowable and clear to us
and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature.507 But what is it
that is more knowable and obvious to us? Aristotle is usually taken to mean by this a
distinction between sensible particulars and universals. In the Metaphysics, speaking of the
characteristics of the wise man, Aristotle writes:
That of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal
knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the subordinate objects. And these things, the most
universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are the furthest from the
senses.508

Nevertheless, at the beginning of the Physics, Aristotle seems to suggest a method which is
the opposite of this, when he writes that we must advance from generalities to particulars.509
How are we to account for this apparent contradiction? I will return to this issue in Chapter 6,
but for now I will make a few points relevant to the present theme. In Physics 1.1 Aristotle
writes:
Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements of which
become known to us later by analysis . . . for it is a whole that is best known to sense perception,
and a generality is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts.510

Neither universal nor particular means what we might initially assume. The generalities
505

Ggelein (1987), p. 247.

Ibid., p. 252.
507
Ph. 1.1.184a16-18.
508
Met. 1.2.982a20-25.
509
Phys. 1.1.184a24-25.
510
Ibid., 1.1.184a23-184b10.
506

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we start from are certain wholes that have the character of confused masses. What is the
relationship between the initial confused whole, the parts that are brought to light within it by
analysis, and the differentiated whole progressively revealed through this process?
In bringing to light, for example, the parts into which an elephant is divisible we are not
actually dividing the indivisible form. The form as such is indivisible, it is divisible only
incidentally. What we are doing is bringing into full realisation what is contained in the form
in potency. In other words, the undivided form, elephant, does contain potentially all that
can be said of it: propositions, differences, similarities and the like.511 The whole contains all
the parts that subsequent analysis reveals within it.512 The parts are contained in the whole in
potency, not in full realisation. The original whole grasped is not, the reference to sense
perception notwithstanding, a purely sensible phenomenon. For Aristotle human perception is
always informed by thinking. The generality with which we start is the correlate of an
inadequate noetic vision. As we deepen our understanding of the elephant, we reach a more
differentiated view of the essence.
4.9 Novhsi~, Unity and Wholeness in Relation to Consciousness
Aristotle has a non-dualistic and non-reified conception of the kaqovlou. The relationship
between the sensible particulars and the holistic dimension that structures and unifies the
particulars is such that the intelligible whole cannot be considered independently of the
particulars as an intelligible object over against them. The unobjectifiable character of the
intelligible is connected to the relationship between novhsi~ and consciousness. The nature of
this relationship is discussed in On the Soul 3.6, where Aristotle writes:
Points and similar instances of things that divide, themselves being indivisible, are realized in
consciousness in the same manner as privations. A similar account may be given of all other
cases, e.g. how evil or black is cognized; they are cognised, in a sense, by means of their
contraries. That which cognizes must have an element of potency in its being, and one of the
contraries must be in it. But if there is anything that has no contrary, then it knows itself and is
active and possesses independent existence.513

This passage gives a clue to the relationship between the indivisible wholeness that
511

De Koninck (1994), p. 504.

Cf. Goethe, Analysis and Synthesis, in Scientific Studies, p. 49 (HA XIII: 51-52): An important point is
often overlooked when analysis is used alone: every analysis presupposes a synthesis. A pile of sand cannot be
analyzed but if the pile contains grains of different materials (sand and gold for instance), an analysis might be
made by washing it: then the light grains will wash away and the heavy ones remain . . . . What higher synthesis
is there than a living organism? Why should we submit ourselves to the torments of anatomy, physiology, and
psychology if not to reach some concept of the whole, a concept which can always restore itself to wholeness no
matter how it is torn to pieces?
513
DA 3.6.430b20-26 (Smith, slightly altered).
512

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characterises the novhsi~ of indivisible essences, and the discursive thinking of which we are
ordinarily conscious. In defining a point we proceed by means of negation, we define it e.g. as
that which has no part.514 Aristotle compares the point with evil and black. These latter are
cognised by means of their contraries. De Koninck notes that for Aristotle, contraries, like
sickness and health, in a way have the same form,
. . . for the substance of a privation is the opposite substance, e.g. health is the substance of
disease; for it is by its absence that disease exists; and health is the formula and the knowledge in
the soul.515

There is a parallel between the way in which sickness is cognised by means of health, and
the way in which the indivisible is cognised in terms of the divisible.516 At first glance it is not
clear what Aristotle means here, because unlike sickness and evil, both of which are
privations, the indivisible is not a privation at all. As we have seen, indivisibility characterises
form and the thinking of form, whereas divisibility always occurs at the level of the sensible
and matter. What Aristotle is saying is that whereas sickness and evil, as privations, are known
through form, indivisibility is known through its absence, or privation. In this case the priority
is in relation to our knowledge, not in nature. What Aristotle is referring to is not so much how
the indivisible is known when it is actively thought in novhsi~, but rather how we are conscious
of it, and how we approach it from the side of discursive thinking and sensibility.517
This is connected to the view, found in On Memory and Recollection, that we cannot
exercise the intellect on any object absolutely apart from the continuus, or apply it even to
non-temporal things unless in connexion with time.518 From the perspective of plurality and
divisibility which is our perspective as sensible beings and empirical subjects unity,
wholeness, the indivisible, is as a no-thing, a kind of absence, or privation.519 From the
perspective of the parts the whole is invisible. Plurality and divisibility are prior to unity and
514

De Konnick (1994), p. 505.

Met. 7.7.1032b2-5 (Ross).
516
De Koninck (1994), p. 506: Sickness or evil no more possesses a form thanks to which one could think them
directly than does the absolutely indivisible.
517
Met. 10.3.1054a26-9: And the one gets its meaning and explanation from its contrary, the indivisible from the
divisible, because plurality and the divisible is more perceptible than the indivisible, so that in formula [lovgo~]
plurality is prior to the indivisible, because of the conditions of perception. (Ross).
518
Mem. 1.450a8-10.
519
Bortoft (1996), pp. 14-15: Our everday awareness is occupied with things. The whole is absent to this
awareness because it is not a thing among things. To everyday awareness, the whole is no-thing, and since this
awareness is awareness of something, no-thing is nothing. The whole which is no-thing is taken as mere nothing,
in which case it vanishes. When this loss happens, we are left with a world of things, and the apparent task of
putting them together to make a whole. Such an effort disregards the authentic whole. The other choice is to take
the whole to be no-thing but not nothing.This possibility is difficult for our everyday awareness, which cannot
distinguish the two . . . . The whole becomes present within parts, but from the standpoint of the awareness which
grasps the external parts, the whole is an absence. This absence, however, is not the same as nothing. Rather it is
an active absence inasmuch as we do not try to be aware of the whole, as if we could grasp it like a part, but
515

146

indivisibility in relation to us, whereas unity and indivisibility are prior by nature.
We gain here a further insight into one of Aristotle's crucial points about the nature of
thinking. Thinking in itself is a pure activity that is identical with its objects. Thinking is not
equivalent to consciousness. Indeed, thinking in its essential nature can be characterized as
what Jacques Maritain called a spiritual preconscious.520 We cannot see active thinking by
so-called introspection because it is not an object, and is not a part of the stream of
consciousness. It is not part of the contents of the mind at all.521 Like the point and the now,
other indivisibles are realized in consciousness as privations. The whole also appears in
consciousness as a kind of absence. It is present unmistakably in particular wholes but when
we try to make it thematic, when we try to turn our gaze directly onto it, it vanishes and we are
left with a number of parts. This is the case with thinking itself.
To participate in novhsi~ is not to be in time. Novhsi~ as such cannot be remembered, as
Aristotle says in On the Soul 3.5.522 While this statement has often featured in arguments
concerning personal immortality, as suggesting that after death there is no memory of this life,
I think it applies to this life. Because of the character of novhsi~ there can be no reflective
consciousness of it as such.523 Novhsi~ is a background of activity that constitutes world and
empirical consciousness simultaneously. It is characterized by being pre-temporal and
unchanging, and by an organic unity, indivisibility and wholeness.
4.10 Finitude and Perfection
The organicist character of Aristotles ontology is also evident in his conception of nou`~
and of the cosmos as finite. De Koninck has made some very pertinent points, in this regard,
in criticising the view of Joseph Owens that God does not know the world. In the relevant
instead let ourselves be open to be moved by the whole.
520
Cf. Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: New American Library, 1953), pp. 66:
It is enough to think of the ordinary and everyday functioning of intelligence, in so far as intelligence is really in
activity . . . to realize that there exists a deep nonconscious world of activity, for the intellect and the will, from
which the acts and fruits of human consciousness and the clear perceptions of the mind emerge, and that the
universe of concepts, rational discursus and rational deliberation, in which the activity of the intellect takes
definite form and shape, is preceded by the hidden workings of an immense and primal preconscious life.
521
Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, 5.3.2.9-10: Regarding the reasoning power, Plotinus writes, . . . and as for the things
which come to it from Intellect, it observes what one might call their imprints. Cf. also 5.3.3.12-13: . . . this is
the pure part of the soul and receives the reflection of intellect coming down upon it.
522
DA 3.5.430a23-25: But we do not remember because this is impassible, while the intellect which can be
affected is perishable and without this does not think at all. (Hicks).
523
Cf. Plotinus, Enneads, 4.3.30.8-117: The intellectual act is without parts and has not, so to speak, come out
into the open, but remains unobserved within, but the verbal expression unfolds its content and brings it out of the
intellectual act into the image-making power, and so shows the intellectual act as in a mirror, and this is how
there is apprehension and persistence and memory of it. Therefore, even though the soul is always moved to
intelligent activity, it is when it comes to be in the image making power that we apprehend it. The intellectual act
is one thing and the apprehension of it another, and we are always intellectually active but do not always
apprehend our activity.
147

passage Owens writes:

If as with Aristotle a separate substance is a finite form, it is obviously not all other things or any
other thing. It is limited to itself. To become and be anything else in cognition, it would have to
undergo change. But it has no potentiality for change whatever. Accordingly it is unable to know
anything other than itself. . . . Because of its complete actuality it is limited to its own form and
consequently to cognition of itself alone. . . . But is not separate substance the primary instance
of being? In knowing itself, then, should it not thereby know all the secondary instances that
exemplify it and imitate it? Does it not as primary instance contain all the perfection that is
merely shared by the secondary instances? This reasoning would hold if Aristotelian separate
substance were infinite in being. As infinite, it would contain within itself all other beings. In
knowing itself it would know them. But in point of fact it is finite. It contains only its own
perfection, not the perfections of other things. In knowing itself it does not know them.524

De Koninck responds: One could not, I submit, be more completely mistaken.525 In

explaining his disagreement he discusses the Aristotelian conception of finitude, and makes it
clear that finitude, unity, wholeness and perfection are all closely related. The core of Owens
argument is the idea that Aristotles God is finite. In order to know all things in knowing
himself God would have to be infinite. De Koninck argues that Owens reasoning is based on
a misunderstanding of the meaning of finite (tevleion) in Aristotles work. Owens has been
misled by modern usage into supposing that the finite cannot contain all things and that the
finite is that which has something outside it. In fact, Aristotle asserts the exact opposite. As De
Koninck says:
One ought not to be misled by the connotations of the word finite or its equivalents in modern
languages. If you translate tevleion or its synonyms here by finite, you must keep in mind that
what is meant is perfect, namely, again, that from which nothing is wanting. For Aristotle,
Parmenides, who claimed that being was finite (peperasmevnon), spoke better than Melissus,
who claimed that being was infinite (a[peiron).526

The clearest refutation of Owens argument can be seen in the Physics where Aristotle
discusses the infinite in some detail. In Physics 3.5 Aristotle argues that it is impossible that
the infinite should be a thing which is itself infinite, separable from sensible things.527 He

524

Joseph Owens, The Relation of God to World in the Metaphysics, in tudes sur la Mtaphysique dAristote:
Actes du VIe Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. Pierre Aubenque (Paris: J. Vrin, 1979), pp. 219-220.
525
De Koninck (1994), p. 496.
526
Ibid., pp. 497-498. Cf. Oliva Blanchette, The Logic of Perfection According to Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas
and his Legacy: Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, vol. 28, ed. David M. Gallagher
(Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), p. 110: In Greek the idea of perfection is
associated with the idea of telos, from which the adjective teleion, meaning perfect, and the substantive
teleisis, meaning perfection were formed. Now the usual translation of telos is end, but the more exact
translation should include some idea of fulfillment or completion.
527
Ph. 3.5.204a8-9 (Hardie & Gaye).
148

also argues that there is no body which is actually infinite.528

When we come to Physics 3.6 Aristotle has already argued that the infinite cannot exist as
some distinct, fully realised object, either sensibly or intelligibly. He begins Physics 3.6 by
saying that while the infinite cannot exist actively, the claim that it does not exist in any way
leads to various problems. Being is spoken in many ways, and is can mean either is in
potency, or is actively. Aristotle proposes that the infinite is in potency.
He then proceeds to clarify what he means by existing in potency. We might speak of a
statue as existing in potency in a block of marble, in the sense that if the sculptor conceives of
the form of the statue and carves the stone the statue will be realised. The infinite does not
exist in potency in this way. There will never be an actively realised infinite. The infinite is
sheer unending succession, and its mode of existence is such that one thing is always being
taken after another, and each thing that is taken is always finite, but always different.529
Those who think that the infinite is that which has nothing outside it have misunderstood what
the infinite is. In fact, The infinite turns out to be the contrary of what it is said to be. It is not
what has nothing outside it that is infinite, but what always has something outside it.530
We can now consider what significance these ideas have for our discussion of the simplicity
of Gods knowledge of the world. As we have already seen, the unity that characterises Gods
thinking (indeed that characterises all active wholes) is not a unity gained by adding together a
number of parts, but rather a unity that ontologically (and in some cases temporally) precedes
the parts, while simultaneously expressing itself in them. We can see that the finite, the
perfect, the complete, has features that relate it very closely with this conception of unity. Any
given whole qua whole is complete and has nothing outside it:
For thus we define the whole that from which nothing is wanting . . . What is true of each
particular is true of the whole as such the whole is that of which nothing is outside. On the
other hand that from which something is absent and outside, however small that may be, is not
all. Whole and complete are either quite identical or closely akin. Nothing is complete
(tevleion) which has no end (tevlo~); and the end is a limit.531

We are dealing here with a case of multiplicity within unity, not unity within multiplicity.
One of Aristotles main criticisms of his predecessors, in this section, is that they have made
the infinite into something that contains the finite. This is part and parcel of Aristotles larger
argument that it is wrong to attribute determination to matter. In a sense, the infinite is matter,
as Aristotle explicitly says: In the fourfold scheme of causes; it is plain that the infinite is a
cause in the sense of matter, and that its essence is privation.532
528

Ibid., 3.5.206a7-8 (Hardie & Gaye).

Ibid., 3.6.206a26-30 (Hardie & Gaye).
530
Ibid., 3.6.207a1-2 (Hardie & Gaye).
531
Ibid., 3.6.207a9-14 (Hardie & Gaye).
532
Ibid., 3.7.207b35-36 (Hardie & Gaye).
529

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Aristotle criticizes those who think of the infinite as a material substratum out of which
things emerge, because they make matter what contains determinate entities, when in fact it is
what is contained. You cannot derive the multiplicity of the world from such a principle
because, being intrinsically indeterminate, it cannot be the source of even one determinate
thing, let alone a multiplicity of them. Nor can it be said to contain all things, since it is no
whole in any sense. It is, as Aristotle says, absurd and impossible to suppose that the
unknowable and indeterminate should contain and determine.533
Determinacy and limit are inseparable. However, determinacy and limit do not imply
exclusion or imperfection. The degree of completeness and perfection of a whole is defined
not in terms of what it excludes but in terms of what it includes without ceasing to be the
whole that it is. Novhsi~ is perfect, complete, whole and simple, in the strictest sense; thus, it
by definition includes everything. The partisans of the infinite ascribe to it a dignity which it
does not have in its own right: for it is from this they get the dignity they ascribe to the
infinite its containing all things and holding the all in itself from its having a certain
similarity to the whole.534 They fail to see that the infinite has this property only as an
imperfect reflection of what is perfect, whole, and complete. The infinite is only
. . . in potency a whole, though not in the full sense. . . . It is whole and limited; not however in
virtue of its own nature, but in virtue of what is other than it. It does not contain, but in so far as
it is infinite, is contained. Consequently, also, it is unknowable, qua infinite; for the matter has
no form.535

The infinite, or matter, has no determinate nature in and of itself. It is a whole and limited,
in other words, exists actively, not in virtue of itself, but in virtue of form. If we falsely
understand matter as some kind of stuff it can seem plausible to suggest that matter contains
the determinate beings that make up the world.536 If we imagine that this stuff is all there is
then we can imagine the beings that make up the world as parts of this material substratum.
But this is only because we have falsely ascribed to matter the property of being some
determinate thing. In fact, it is plain that the infinite stands in the relation of part rather than
of whole. For the matter is part of the whole, as the bronze is of the bronze statue.537

533

Ibid., 3.6.207a30-31 (Hardie & Gaye).

Ibid., 3.6.207a19-21 (Hardie & Gaye).
535
Ibid., 3.6.207a23-26 (Hardie & Gaye, slightly altered).
536
In other words, if we think of a number of distinct material entities as being parts of, and thus contained in,
matter considered as a whole. Cf. Mure (1940), p. 4: Matter is thus not the solid abiding stuff of the classical
physicists atom; not what Dr. Johnson thought he was kicking when he refuted Berkeley. Matter is never
matter in its own right: it goes with form to constitute a pair of strictly correlative terms.
537
Ph. 3.6.207a26-28 (Hardie & Gaye).
534

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4.11 Being and Becoming

For Aristotle, the ceaseless becoming that characterises the sensible world is a manifestation
of its striving to manifest the unchanging and indivisible unity and wholeness of divine
novhsi~. As Aristotle says in On Generation and Corruption:
Now being . . . is better than not-being: but not all things can possess being, since they are
too far removed from the originative source [th`~ ajrch`~]. God therefore adopted the remaining
alternative, and fulfilled the perfection of the universe by making coming-to-be uninterrupted:
for the greatest possible coherence would thus be secured to existence, because that coming-tobe should itself come-to-be-perpetually is the closest approximation to eternal being.538

Having considered the various organicist elements in Aristotles conception of the relation
between novhsi~ and the sensible cosmos we are in a better position to understand what is
meant by eternal being. Aristotle is not drawing a sharp contrast between temporal
becoming and a-temporal, static being. The contrast is rather between the active unity and
wholeness characterising the novhsi~ that comprehends and holds together the cosmos and the
intra-cosmic subordinate wholes, of which the most important earthly representatives are
organisms. Indeed, Aristotle presents this relation in positive terms, rather than in terms of a
metaphysical hierarchy where becoming is defined merely by privation. Aristotle literally says
that God completed or filled up [suneplhvrwse539] the whole [to; o{lon] by making becoming
[gevnesin] continuous and perpetual [ejndelech`]. The whole (the cosmos) is completed and
made full by the uninterrupted becoming of the parts comprehended within it.
One example of such a relation between the noetic whole and the uninterrupted becoming of
its sensible realisations is found in reproduction. Aristotle explicitly describes reproduction as
a process whereby natural entities strive to express the pre-temporal wholeness and unity of
divine novhsi~. He writes:
For it is the most natural function in all living things, if perfect and not defective or
spontaneously generated, to reproduce their species; animal producing animal and plant plant, in
order that they may, so far as they can, share in the eternal and the divine. For it is that which all
things yearn after, and that is the final cause of all their natural activity. . . . Since, then,
individual things are incapable of sharing continuously in the eternal and divine, because nothing
in the world of perishables can abide numerically one and the same, they partake in the eternal
and divine, each in the only way it can, some more, some less. That is to say, each persists,
538

GC 2.10.336b28-36 (Joachim). Cf. Goethe, One and All, in Goethe: Selected Verses, trans. David Luke
(London: Penguin, 1964), p. 275 (HA I: 368-369): And an eternal, living Activity / works to create anew what
has been created / lest it entrench itself in rigidity. / And that which has not yet been / seeks now to come into
being / as pure suns and many-coloured earths: / none of it may remain at rest. / It is intended to move, to act and
create / first to form and then to transform itself; / its moments of immobility are only apparent. / In all that
lives the Eternal Force works on; / for everything must dissolve into nothingness / if it is to remain in Being.
539
LSJ vs sumplhrovw: A. help to fill, fill up or completely, 2. complete, 3. fulfil, attain, 4. finish.
151

thought not in itself, yet in a representative which is specifically, not numerically, one with it.540

In the case of natural entities lacking a cognitive participation in nou`~, i.e. plants and
animals, their only way to express the divine is by the uninterrupted circle of reproduction. No
individual member of the species can remain in being. But the endless process of reproduction
can be seen as a sensible expression of the intelligible unity of the species. For human beings,
who do have a share in nou`~, a way is open for a direct, if partial and intermittent, sharing in
divine novhsi~. Just as in reproduction there is an attempt on the part of individual organisms to
sensibly approximate the unity of the species, so in the cognitive process there is an attempt to
approach, through the stages of greater and greater unification characterisitic of perception,
imagination, memory, experience, and ejpagwghv the unity ultimately realised only in noetic
insight.
4.12 The Meaning of Nou`~ in Earlier Greek Thought
In the last two sections of this chapter I discuss the meaning of nou`~ in earlier Greek
thought. As mentioned in the introduction, this approach complements the Goethean
perspective informing the preceding sections of this chapter. The purpose of these last two
sections is to provide the historical context for Aristotles attempt to think the distinction
between thinking and perception, between the intelligible and the sensible. When seen against
the thoroughly non-dualistic and non-metaphysical character of earlier conceptions of nou`~ the
non-metaphysical aspects of Aristotles thought, to which I have drawn attention, become
more comprehensible as the echoes of an earlier experience of nou`~.
James Lesher argues that given what is known about the meaning of nou`~ in earlier Greek
thought, it is not plausible, in relation to the Posterior Analytics, to view it as as a contrived
solution541 to the problem of how we know the ajrcaiv. He suggests, based on a consideration
of the earlier meanings of the term, that we should not think of intuition and intellectual
intuition as simple equivalents of nou`~ or novhsi~.542 He argues that nou`~ should be
understood not as a special faculty limited to grasping first principles, but more generally as
insight, or the grasping of a universal principle.543 He writes that nou`~ is not properly
thought of as intuition or intellectual intuition, at least in any sense of these terms which
would force us to distinguish nou`~ from ordinary empirical knowledge.544 Although Lesher
makes some steps towards the rational empiricist interpretation of Aristotle, on the whole he
seems not to be aware of the implications of some of his ideas. Perhaps the most important of
540

DA 2.4.415a26-415b7 (Hicks).
Lesher (1973), p. 45.
542
Ibid., p. 45.
543
Ibid., p. 45.
544
Ibid., p. 45.
541

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his statements in this regard is the following:

While it is true that novhsi~ and noei`n seem on some occasions best understood simply as
thinking or conceiving, these passages seem to mark off a particular kind of mental activity
which is perhaps best characterized as perceptual intuition, the intelligent discrimination of
some feature of a perceived object or situation. . . 545

The phrase perceptual intuition is suggestive of the Goethean concept of anschauende

Urteilskraft. It is significant that in the essay where Goethe discusses Kants views concerning
intellectual intuition, Goethe uses the phrase anschauende Urteilskraft, rather than
intellektuelle Anschauung.546 Miller translates the former as judgement through intuitive
perception. The reference here is not to judgment in the linguistic sense. Rather, Goethe is
referring to an intuitive power of discrimination that is active within perception. This idea of a
power of intelligent discrimination which, while not identical with sense perception, is
intimately implicated in perception, is also found in early conceptions of nou`~.
Lesher is attempting to express a notion for which he seems to lack the right conceptual
framework. He wants to emphasize that the most basic sense of nou`~ and its derivates, is not
thinking or conceiving understood as an activity absolutely removed from the senses, but
a kind of seeing-thinking. The ambiguity of Leshers position is bound up with his use of the
term empirical. Lesher seems not to realize that what he refers to as insight into a situation
cannot be a case of empiricist knowledge. Empiricism, both in its historical origins, and in its
later developments, tends towards a reduction of lived experience to the passive reception of
sense-data. There is simply no place in a consistent empiricism for anything like the
perceptual intuition that Lesher describes.
For readers familiar with phenomenology the problem will be glaringly obvious: the
empiricist picture is simply an inadequate description of the actual character of lived
experience.547 Empiricism is, in fact, far from empirical; it involves the reduction of lived
545

Ibid., p. 56.
Goethe, Judgement through Intuitive Perception, in Scientific Studies, p. 31 (HA XIII: 30-31).
547
Cf. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy:
First Book (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998). Husserl is eager to distance the project of phenomenology from any sort
of philosophical speculation, or the mere construction of a system on the basis of pre-existing doctrines. He wants
to make a radically fresh start, basing himself solely on a description of experience. However, his
characterization of his project as a science of essences and his claim that in his work he only expresses
<eidetic> differences that are directly given to us in intuition may well make a traditional empiricist frown in
puzzlement. Clearly, Husserl means by experience something rather different from the empiricist. On p. 34,
Husserl starts his critique of empiricism as follows: The situation forcing the controversy upon us is that ideas,
essences, cognition of essences, are denied by empiricism. Husserl acknowledges that empiricism springs
from the most praiseworthy motives in wanting to free itself from all idols, from tradition and supersitition. The
problem with the empiricist position is that it does not describe experience, but instead replaces it with a realm of
mere particulars, or even worse, of mere sense data. Husserl, in contrast to this unjustifiable restriction, wants to
replace the limited conception of experience with something more universal: intuition (p. 36). Since the
empiricist picture of experience is a distortion, Husserl is justified in saying, on p. 39, that: If positivism is
546

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experience to a level of passive sensation which has no place in ordinary empirical experience
at all. The level of passive reception of sense-data is a kind of abstraction, a theoretical posit,
not a description of experience.
Lesher seems to be guilty of positing the same opposition between nou`~ and sense
perception that he seems eager to oppose. The benefit of the rational empiricist position is that
it makes clear that the eye of the mind, or in Aristotles terms nou`~, is an integral part of
experience. The full realization of this seems to be hampered, in Leshers case, by a residue of
the empiricist dogma that experience is exclusively sensual.
On this score Lesher has subtly misinterpreted the significance of von Fritzs investigations
into the meaning of nou`~ in earlier Greek thought. Hence, I would like to turn to this now. Von
Fritz presents evidence in favor of the view that the experience of nou`~ undergoes a historical
transformation. Broadly speaking this movement is from an unreflective immersion in the
phenomena of a less differentiated domain of seeing where there is no strong opposition
between sensory seeing and noetic seeing, to the drawing of an increasingly conscious and
hierarchical distinction between the two. This movement is associated with a changed
understanding of the realm of sensory phenomena as hiding or obscuring a reality only
accessible to nou`~. I argue that even with Aristotle nou`~ never fully loses this connection with
a kind of seeing-thinking that is not opposed to the senses, although it cannot be reduced to
sense perception. The purpose of considering the older conceptions of nou`~, therefore, is to
show that something like the rational empiricism we find in Goethe, and which I am ascribing
to Aristotle, is indigenous to Greek thought from its beginnings.
4.13 Kurt von Fritz on nou`~ in Homer and the Pre-Socratics
Kurt von Fritz presents his investigations into the meaning of nou`~ and noei`n (this is the
infinitive form of the verb) in three articles, the first dealing with the Homeric poems and the
remaining two covering the pre-Socratic philosophers up to Democritus.548 I will restrict
myself to presenting some of von Fritzs main conclusions. In the first article, von Fritz takes
issue with the views of Joachim Boehme.549 According to von Fritz, Boehme suggests that

tantamount to an absolutely unprejudiced grounding of sciences on the positive, that is to say, on what can be
seized upon originaliter, then we are the genuine positivists. This radically experiential method is to be based on
something wider than the narrow, empiricist notion of experience. As Husserl says (p. 36): Immediate seeing,
not merely sensuous, experiential seeing, but seeing in the universal sense as an originally presentive
consciousness of any kind whatever, is the ultimate legitimizing source of all rational assertions.
548
Kurt von Fritz, NOOS and Noein in the Homeric Poems, Classical Philology 38 2 (1943), pp. 79-93. Kurt
von Fritz, Nous, Noein and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras): Part I,
Classical Philology 40 4 (1945), pp. 223-242. Kurt von Fritz, Nous, Noein and their Derivatives in Pre-Socratic
Philosophy (Excluding Anaxagoras): Part II, Classical Philology 41 1 (1946), pp. 12-34.
549
Joachim Boehme, Die Seele und das Ich im Homerischen Epos (Berlin: Teubner, 1929).
154

. . . nou`~ in Homer always means something purely intellectual or rather purely mental . . . he
[Boehme] adds by way of explanation that noei`n can in no case be identified with any kind of
sensual perception and that the nou`~ is always put in contrast with emotion.550

The relevance of this to our discussion is clear: Boehme seems to fall into the category of
those who interpret nou`~ as intellectual intuition in the sense of a pure thinking absolutely
distinct from sense-perception. This is what Lesher refers to as a faculty that operates
independently of sensory observation and yet enjoys an immediate and infallible vision of the
real world.551 Lesher is right to argue that this conception of nou`~ is not adequate to
Aristotles position. He goes wrong in not seeing that the view von Fritz opposes to that of
Boehme does not, as a consistent empiricist would, reduce nou`~ to the level of senseperception. Indeed, it is a crucial part of von Fritzs argument that there is a distinction to be
made between the activity of nou`~ and sense perception strictly speaking; even though they
can enter into the closest fusion, and even though the tendency for the Homeric Greek is not to
distinguish sharply between them. Importantly, von Fritz suggests that in the Homeric poems
in particular, and throughout much of pre-Socratic philosophy, nou`~ is opposed not to senseperception, but rather to reasoning, or discursive thinking. Thus, for example, von Fritz writes:
While, therefore, as pointed out above, noei`n is always distinguished from purely sensual
perception, it is not conceived of as the result of a process of reasoning, much less as this process
itself but rather as a kind of mental perception [italics added]. . . 552

Von Fritz comes to the following fundamental conclusions:

(1) [T]here are two basic meanings of the word noei`n: to realize a situation and to plan or to have
an intention.553
(2) Without exception, in all those cases in which the verb noei`n has a direct and concrete object
violent emotion is caused by the noei`n.554
(3) All the cases in which the verb noei`n occurs and in which it has no direct and concrete object
can be brought under one of two heads: the object of the verb noei`n, whether it be expressly
mentioned or merely to be understood, either is a situation rather than a concrete thing or else it
is an intention or a plan.555
(4) In most cases, even when the verb does have a direct and concrete object the object is only the
incident through which a character suddenly realizes the full meaning of a situation.556 This

550

Von Fritz (1943), p. 80.

Lesher (1973), p. 45.
552
Von Fritz (1943), p. 90.
553
Ibid., p. 85.
554
Ibid., p. 84.
555
Ibid., pp. 84-85.
556
We meet this idea both in Goethe and Aristotle. For Goethe the single, exemplary instance can become
symbolic of the whole. Similarly, Aristotle thinks that sometimes one instance is sufficient to see the whole or
universal.
551

155

situation is the real object of the mental act designated by the verb noei`n.557
(5) In the significant majority of cases in which the verb appears in Homer noei`n means to realize
a situation.558 Von Fritz concludes that this meaing is more basic than the second sense of to
plan or to have an intention. Von Fritz notes that this is less clear in the case of the noun,
where it is much harder to distinguish clearly the intellectual and volitional elements. He notes
however that
(6) that one of the meanings of novo~ in which the volitional element is strongest, namely, wilfull
attention, is still very rare in Homer and becomes more frequent only in later writers.559

I want to discuss this idea of realizing a situation, with the focus being on making it clear
that while this idea makes perfect sense in the context of a phenomenological position like
Goethes rational empiricism, it is fundamentally incompatible with empiricism strictly
speaking. Given the nature of the phenomenon, the best way to present it is by way of some of
von Fritzs examples. The first example comes from book 3 of the Iliad, a passage that
describes the encounter of Menelaos and Paris.560 Von Fritz emphasizes the irreducibly
meaningful and immediate character of the seeing involved:
. . . Paris sensual perception of Menelaus and his realization of the dangerous situation in
which he finds himself happen in his mind at the same instant and are psychologically hardly
separable. This is the reason why what is actually the object of sensual perception or of
recognition can grammatically become the object of the verb noei``n.561

Menelaos is simultaneously the object of sensual perception, and, as the object of the verb
noei`n, of noetic seeing. This suggests that noei`n involves the seeing of a dimension of the
sensible that is visible only to nou`~. Nou`~ here is not a purely intellectual intuition. Indeed von
Fritzs examples support the view that in Homer there is no sharp opposition between novhsi~
and perception (ai[sqhsi~). Nevertheless, although there is no opposition, this does not mean
there is no distinction. We will return to this issue after considering the example.
In this passage a form of noei`n appears twice: firstly, when warlike (literally dear to Ares)
Menelaos catches sight of Alexandros (Paris)562; and secondly, when Alexandros sees

557

Von Fritz (1943), p. 85.

Ibid., p. 86.
559
Ibid., p. 86.
560
Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.), pp.
100-101: Now as soon as Menelaos the warlike caught sight of him / making his way with long strides out in
front of the army, / he was glad, like a lion who comes on a mighty carcass, / in his hunger chancing upon the
body of a horned stag / or wild goat; who eats it eagerly, although against him / are hastening the hounds in their
speed and the stalwart young men: / thus Menelaos was happy finding godlike Alexandros / there in front of his
eyes, and thinking to punish the robber, straightaway in all his armor he sprang to the ground from his chariot. /
But Alexandros the godlike when he saw Menelaos / showing among the champions, the heart was shaken within
him; / to avoid death he shrank into the host of his own companions.
561
Von Fritz, p.85.
562
Now as soon as Menelaos the warlike caught sight of him (to;n d wJ~ ou\n ejnovhsen ajrhi?filo~ Menevlao~)
. . . .
558

156

Menelaos showing among the champions and his heart is shaken within him.563 We find
in this scene a beautiful symmetry.
First, Menelaos sees Alexandros coming out in front of the throng (the army) with great
strides. Alexandros approach is described by the participle ejrcovmenon (making his way)
we get a strong sense of the motion by which Alexandros emerges or becomes manifest,
presenting himself out of the indeterminate crowd of the army. He comes out in front of it. He
is described as qeoeidh;~, which Lattimore translates as godlike, but which could also be
translated as of divine aspect. Alexandros ei\do~, the visible form he presents, is divine.
Menelaos sees him this does not mean he merely registers a sensation and immediately
experiences intense emotion: he rejoices greatly, like a lion that has come upon a mighty
carcass, and in eagerness to punish Alexandros he leaps from his chariot to the ground. The
phrase w}~ ejxavrh Menevlao~ Alevxandron qeoeideva ojfqalmoi``sin ijdwvn, which Lattimore
translates as thus Menelaos was happy finding godlike Alexandros there in front of his eyes,
is also significant. Although the aorist participle used is seeing (ijdwvn) not finding,
Lattimores translation brings out the sense in which Alexandros is given to Menelaos eyes.
Menelaos does not spot him after actively searching for him. Rather, Alexandros emerges,
comes forth from the crowd and becomes visible in a sudden and decisive manner. This noetic
seeing is hardly distinguishable from the appearing of the sensible phenomenon.
This is mirrored in a beautiful way in the case of Alexandros. Alexandros likewise sees
(ejnovhsen) Menelaos; and here the sense in which this is not an active looking, but a passive
reception of something that shows itself is even clearer: he sees Menelaos showing, or coming
to manifestation (fanevnta564), among the champions. This is not a case of an active looking
which grasps an object, but rather of a sudden event of being struck by something that appears,
and that is irreducibly meaningful and significant for the one to whom it appears. Alexandros
does not merely sensibly register a certain object, to which he then ascribes a meaning, he sees
immediately the warlike aspect of Menelaos, standing out from the other champions, and sees
in this moment his own death approaching. At this very moment: the heart was shaken within
him; / to avoid death he shrank into the host of his own companions.565
A number of things are striking here. Firstly, there is a powerful impression of meaning,
accompanied immediately by strong emotion, described in characteristically non-subjective
terms (not he felt afraid of Menelaos but the heart was shaken within him), and also
awareness of the possible implications extending into the future, in this case immediately
issuing in action retreat. Secondly, there is the very suggestive second line, which literally
563

But Alexandros the godlike when he saw Menelaos / showing among the champions, the heart was shaken
within him (to;n d wJ~ ou\n ejnovhsen Alevxandro~ qeoeidh;~ / ejn promavcoisi fanevnta, kateplhvgh fivlon hjtor.)
564
LSJ vs fainw: B. Pass., come to light, appear.
565
The Greek is, kateplhvgh fivlon h\tor, / a]y d eJtavrwn eij~ e[qno~ ejcavzeto kh`r ajleeivwn.
157

reads back again into the host of his companions he was caused to retire avoiding, shunning,
or shrinking from kh`r (the goddess of death).
We have here a meeting of two divine aspects the beautiful, divine aspect of Paris,
favorite of Aphrodite, and the warlike aspect of Menelaos who comes as a herald of death
through the human figures who manifest them. In each case, the man emerges as a named
individual and distinguishes himself by stepping out from the throng, as he presents the
aspect of a god or goddess. Alexandros sees the goddess approaching in the form of Menelaos,
in a seeing which is obviously not merely sensory. And seeing, he is forced to retire, to shrink
away from the superior excellence (ajrethv) of Menelaos. Alexandros responds to the impact of
an overwhelming impulse from outside, which causes him to fade back into the anonymity of
his people (e[qno~). We can almost feel how, in this moment, the divine radiance leaving him
Alexandros shrinks, becoming merely one of an indeterminate multitude.566 He fulfills his
individuality in being seen as manifesting something more than human, in appearing in the
noetic seeing of another, in being recognized by his peers, and his shrinking is likewise related
to how others see him, how he shows himself in relation to them. In this moment, he loses
face.
Another example given by von Fritz comes from book 4 of the Odyssey, where Menelaos
describes to Telemachus his travels and mentions Odysseus, at the sound of whose name
Telemachus weeps. The text then reads: Novhse dev min Menevlao~. This could be translated
as Menelaos saw him. However, as von Fritz rightly argues, it makes no sense here to
suggest that Menelaos merely sees Telemachus by means of his eyes, that he only now notices
him, since he has in fact been talking to him already for some time. Rather, he sees how
Telemachus is affected, he sees him weeping in response to mention of Odysseus.
Subsequently, when Helen arrives and expresses her amazement at the resemblance between
Telemachus and Odysseus, Menelaos says:
Even so do I myself now note it (ejgw; noevw), wife, as thou markest the likeness (wJ~ su; ejivskei~).
Such were his feet, such his hands, and the glances of his eyes, and his head and hair above.567

The text gives us to understand that Helens words conjure up in Menelaos mind memories
of Odysseus form. Helen here makes a judgment, but it is not a propositional judgment; it is
566

The subsequent action is also very interesting: Alexandros is rebuked by Hector who says: Were you to face
Menelaos . . . the lyre would not help you then, nor the favours of Aphrodite. To which Alexandros replies that
Hector has scolded him rightly and not without measure, but he adds: . . . yet do not / bring up against me the
sweet favours of golden Aphrodite. / Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods, magnificent, / which they
give of their own will, no man could have them for wanting / them. In other words, he is saying that whether the
favor of Aphrodite is with him or not is not in his power.
567
Homer, The Odyssey, trans. A. T. Murray (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1919). The verb ejivskein
also means to deem, i.e. to judge. Here Helen makes an intuitive judgement, and in so doing enables
Menelaos to see.
158

an intuitive judgment, noting similarities. In so judging she brings to Menelaos mind the
vision both of Odysseus form his feet, his hands, the glances of his eyes, his head and hair
and of Telemachus, and Menelaos sees the family resemblance.
We can see here a connection with Aristotelian ejpagwghv in that sense in which it means
leading someone else towards the realization of the universal. Although characteristically, in
the Aristotelian picture the relationship beween nou`~ and sense perception, while it is not in
outright opposition, is nevertheless in a tense polarity. In the Topics, Aristotle discusses the
value of the presentation of like cases for getting someone to see the universal:
The examination of likeness is useful . . . for inductive arguments, because it is by means of an
induction of individuals in cases that are alike that we claim to bring the universal in evidence:
for it is not easy to do this if we do not know the points of likeness.568

Aristotle speaks of the qewriva or contemplation of likenesses. As we know, qewriva is the

contemplation characteristic of nou`~. It would seem that even the initial seeing of
resemblances or likenesses, is not a merely sensory experience, but already involves noetic
seeing. The presentation of likenesses in arguments from ejpagwghv would be of no use if the
person with whom one was conversing, e.g. a young student, did not already see by means of a
provisional and not fully conscious contemplation, the likeness of the like cases. The
contemplation of likenesses is of value because it is through an ejpagwghv from the particulars,
the parts (kaq e{kasta), that we bring (ejpagein) the kaqovlou. The duality in the meaning of
ejpavgein as both a bringing in, and a leading on (e.g. inducing someone to do something by
persuasion), is important. Since the seeing of the kaqovlou is an instance of immediate
cognitive identity, one is simultaneously leading someone towards the kaqovlou and bringing
the kaqovlou towards them in and through the presentation of like cases.
Aristotle states that it is not easy to bring on/lead towards if we have not seen the likenesses
(mh; eijdovta~ ta; o{moia.) Here, eijdovta~ is the perfect participle of oi\da (I know). However,
oi\da is the perfect of ei[dw (I see), so although oi\da is used as a present and means I know
(literally I have seen), it still contains the reference to seeing. The perfect tense here implies
completion with a permanent result, not a reference to past completed acts of perception.
Seeing, unlike e.g. building a house, is complete at every moment.569 Aristotle is not speaking
568

Top. 1.18.108b7-14 (Pickard): H de; tou` oJmoivou qewriva crhvsimo~ prov~ te tou;~ ejpaktikou;~ lovgou~ . . .
pro;~ me;n ou\n tou;~ ejpaktikou;~ lovgou~, diovti th`/ kaq e{kasta ejpi; tw`n oJmoivwn ejpagwgh`/ to; kaqovlou ajxiou`men
ejpagein: ouj ga;r rJav/diovn ejstin ejpavgein mh; eijdovta~ ta; o{moia.
569
This is Aristotles famous distinction between motion (kivnhsi~) and activity or being-at-work (ejnevrgeia). Cf.
Met. 9.6.1048b18-25: Since of the actions [tw`n pravxewn] which have a limit [pevra~] none is an end [tevlo~] but
all are relative to the end, e.g. the process of making thin is of this sort, and the things themselves when one is
making them thin are in movement in this way (i.e. without being already that at which the movement aims), this
is not an action or at least not a complete one (for it is not an end); but that in which the end is present is an
action. E.g. at the same time we are seeing and have seen, are understanding and have understood, are thinking
and have thought: but it is not true that at the same time we are learning and have learnt, or are being cured and
159

of some past knowledge of propositions that is applied in a new situation, but rather the pretemporal seeing-knowing of the likenesses. As in the case of Menelaos recognition, the seeing
of the kaqovlou happens simultaneously with the seeing of like cases.570 The difference
between the Homeric example of recognition, and ejpagwghv in Aristotles scientific sense, is
that in the former case the resultant insight is not a universal one.
Nevertheless, even in Aristotle we can see that the seeing of the kaqovlou is closely related
to the more common and apparently non-universal forms of recognition. Consider for instance,
Aristotles discussion of ajgcivnoia.571 Tredennick translates this word as quickness of wit,
Barnes as acumen, and Mure as quick wit. In the context of contemporary usage this
obscures the deeper meaning. In fact, ajgcivnoia is derived from ajgciv-noo~, literally near-tonou`~. Thus a literal translation of ajgcivnoia would be something like nearness-to-nou`~. As
examples of ajgcivnoia Aristotle presents the following:
A man sees that the moon always has its bright side facing the sun, and immediately realizes the
reason: that it is because the moon derives its brightness from the sun; or he sees someone
talking to a rich man, and decides that it is because he is trying to borrow money; or he
understands why people are friends, because they have a common enemy.572

Aristotle speaks of ajgcivnoia as a kind of euvstociva, literally skill in shooting at a mark,

good aim. This is a skill at hitting the middle term, i.e. the reason why (the dia; tiv) ajskevptw/
crovnw/. The phrase ajskevptw/ crovnw/ is translated variously: instantaneously (Mure),
without a moments hesitation (Tredennick), in an imperceptible time (Barnes).573 I would
suggest that the best translation here is immediately. The basic sense is clear: the seeing
involved is immediate, both in the sense of occurring in an undivided/indivisible time, and in
the sense of not being the result of any discursive acitivity, although it is mediated by the
perception of nominally discrete objects which are seen to be in a certain relation to each
other, or in a certain whole.
The man in Aristotles example, seeing (ijdw;n) that the moon always has its bright side
towards the sun, immediately sees in nou`~ (ejnenovhse) why this is, that it is because the moon
receives light from the sun. Now, while this example is one that is more easily seen as
implicitly universal, the other cases are much more akin to the recognition of a specific
contextual meaning; e.g. seeing someone talking to a rich man, one realizes that he is
have been cured . . . . Of these processes, then, we must call the one set movements [kinhvsei~], and the other
activities [ejnergeiva~]. (Ross, slightly altered).
570
Cf. Carbone (2004), p. 36, where Carbone speaks of Merleau Pontys development of a non-Platonic theory of
ideas, centred on the the notion of the sensible idea: The sensible idea is, therefore, a dimension which
opens up simultaneously with our encounter with its samples . . . .
571
Apo. 1.34.89b10-21.
572
Ibid., 1.34.89b11-15 (Tredennick).
573
LSJ vs a[skepto~: A. inconsiderate, unreflecting, II. unconsidered, unobserved.
160

borrowing money.
Clearly there are degrees here. It would be difficult to argue that the latter example involves
the grasp of a universal principle, namely, that all people seen talking to rich men are
borrowing money. On the other hand weeping, as in the Odyssey example, is normatively a
sign of sadness or distress, and in this sense has a certain universal meaning that is seen;
although, of course, in human affairs the external form can be deceptive.
The recurrence of examples based on the relationship between the sun and moon in the
Posterior Analytics is suggestive. The significance of the sun and moon as cosmic symbols
in Homeric Greece has been beautifully discussed by Prier.574 Prier speaks of the sun as the
primary origin of light, which as light regulates the bounds of the physical world as perceived
and known by mortals,575 and thus, is a symbolic representation of the whole experienced
world.576 In this regard, he makes the following statement:
For them this sun shines forth as a bright light . . . and in its powerful affectiveness, that is elios
as phaos, we see the experiential relationship to phainesthai, to appear. Hence, as a god
translated into a conceptual mode, if one might wish to nominalize into an abstraction the
presence (generally a mistake, but in this case somewhat appealing and elucidating for us),
Helios could easily be Appearance itself.577

It is interesting that the example of the sun and moon, used by Aristotle to illustrate
closeness-to-nou`~, presents in a symbolic manner the relation of nou`~ to the human being. Just
as the moon receives its light from the sun, so the human being may be said to be enlightened
by nou`~.
In all the examples given here what is realized is a situation, a whole context of relations,
and not an object. So, on the one hand, nou`~ may be said to be active both in seeing the
meaning of concrete expressions such as weeping, of concrete cases of what one might call
contextual meaning, as in the case of the men talking, as well in cases where the kaqovlou is
seen through the seeing of likenesses. However, the use of likenesses is distinguished by
Aristotle from ejpagwghv in its stricter scientific sense:
For in induction it is the universal whose admission is secured from the particulars, whereas in
arguments from likeness, what is secured is not the universal under which all the like cases
fall.578

However, even here, Aristotle is not saying that no kaqovlou is involved. Rather, he says
that in cases where one gets someone else to admit a point based on likenesses, the kaqovlou
574

Prier (1989), pp.42-46.

Ibid., p. 45.
576
Ibid., p. 45.
577
Ibid., p. 44.
575

161

escapes notice to a greater extent (lanqavnei ma`llon to; kaqovlou); in other words, it is more
hidden. Thus, nou`~ in the context of ejpagwghv would seem to be a refinement of a seeing
which is already operative in ordinary experience.
But let us return to von Fritz. So far, the main point I have emphasized in von Fritzs
argument is the idea that in the Homeric poems noei`n predominantly means to realize a
situation. Although it can have a direct and concrete object, that object is typically an
exemplar of the significance of a whole situation, of a certain synthetic and relatively speaking
comprehensive view of the whole, extending both beyond the immediate visual field, and the
immediate temporal moment at which it occurs.579 This is of particular relevance to the
interpretation of Aristotle because a number of scholars have been troubled by the fact that
while Posterior Analytics 2.19 can be read as an account of concept formation, certain
examples Aristotle gives elsewhere do not fit well with this interpretation, since they describe
situations where what is grasped is a necessary relation between elements of a complex
phenomenon, like an eclipse. Typically, interpreters overplay the logical expression of this
noetic seeing and argue that it is a matter of seeing the necessary relation between subject and
predicate. But as we will see, this is problematic.
I noted earlier that although there is no strong opposition between nou`~ and sense
perception in the Homeric poems, there is a distinction. Von Fritz develops this distinction by
drawing on the analysis of Bruno Snell.580 Snell presents an analysis of the difference between
ijdei`n and gignwvskein. Von Fritz summarizes this analysis as follows:
The term ijdei`n covers all the cases in which something comes to our knowledge by the sense of
vision, including the case in which this object is indefinite: for instance, a green patch or a
brown patch the shape of which we cannot quite distinguish. The term gignwvskein, on the other
hand, designates specifically the recognition of this object as something definite: for instance, a
shrub, or a mound, or a human being.581

578

Top. 8.1.156b15-18 (Pickard).

As already noted, the idea that a representative particular, can serve as a privileged locus for the manifestation
of the universal, is very important for Goethe. Cf. Carl Friedrich Von Weizscker, Goethe and Modern
Science, in Goethe and the Sciences: a Reappraisal, p. 122: . . . what logic means by the universal, namely the
essence or the idea, is perceived through the senses in each individual case. When I see a plant as plant, I see the
plant.
580
Bruno Snell, Die Ausdrcke fr den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie Philologische
Untersuchungen 29 (1924), pp. 24-39.
581
Von Fritz (1943), p. 88: The Homeric language has, of course, no special word which designates exclusively
the perception of indefinite shapes or color patches which have not yet been identified or classified as definite
objects. As in all languages, the word which designates sensual vision is also used for the perception of a
definite object. But whenever the act of recognition as a definite object is distinguished from or added to the mere
perception of a yet unidentified shape the word gnw`nai is used. He also raises the very interesting suggestion
made by Snell, that . . . if there is an etymological connection between gignwvskein and givgnesqai it may be
explained by the fact that only when the indefinite something is classified does it come into being, so to speak, as
a definite object.
579

162

Of course, this classification cannot be the discursive procedure of applying a word to an

already distinguished object. Rather, it refers to a cognitive state in which the object becomes
visible for the first time. Von Fritz extends Snells analysis by suggesting that noei`n represents
the next step in this process of getting a clearer view of something. Firstly, I see a brown patch
at a distance; then I recognize or discern a human being; finally, I realize, or see noetically that
e.g. this brown patch is not only a human being but an enemy lying in ambush.582 Von Fritz
argues that although we would say that the latter is a purely mental act, the Homeric Greeks
did not conceive the situation so abstractly these distinctions are found already in the most
everyday experience. Snell also makes a few brief points about nou``~ elsewhere, which support
von Fritzs account.583 Snell writes:
Noos is akin to noei`n which means to realize, to see in its true colors; and often simply to see
. . . Frequently it is combined with ijdei`n, but it stands for a type of seeing which involves not
merely visual activity but the mental act which goes with the vision. This puts it close to
gignwvskein. But the latter means to recognise; it is properly used of the identification of a
man, while noei`n refers more particularly to situations; it means: to acquire a clear image of
something.584

The repeated reference to the notion of clarity in both Snell and von Fritz is worth noting.
This phenomenologically accurate description points to another aspect of nou`~. While the
examples von Fritz gives often involve the realization of immediate danger that have a
powerful affective force,585 they also suggest that the noetic state is characterised by an
unusual clarity. In the noetic state one is raised above ones normal, everyday awareness.
The main points so far are: (1) no`ien is not opposed to sense perception, although it is not
identified with it; (2) noei`n primiarly means to grasp a situation, rather than simply to
recognize an object; and (3) noei`n is not the result of any discursive process although it may
be related both to individual perceptions, and to discursive thinking. These elements are nicely
summed up by von Fritz:
While, therefore, as pointed out above, noei`n is always distinguished from purely sensory
perception, it is not conceived of as the result of a process of reasoning, much less as this process
itself, but rather as a kind of mental perception . . . It is also very important to be aware of the
fact that originally, and in Homer, nou``~ never means reason and noei`n never to reason,
whether deductively or inductively.586
582

Ibid., p. 88.
Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (New York: Harper & Row,
1960).
584
Ibid., p. 13.
585
Von Fritz (1943), p. 87: The realization of a situation, even when it strikes us with a sudden impact which
causes strong emotion, often raizes us above our ordinary abilities, makes us see all the implications and
consequences of the situation with unwonted clarity, and makes us act with unusual determination and foresight.
586
Ibid., p. 90.
583

163

The relatively simple cases of realization discussed so far, differ from the more complicated
case where, for example, someone who approaches with friendly gestures is subsequently seen
to be an enemy. Von Fritz also gives the example of Helens subsequent recognition that the
old woman she meets is actually Aphrodite. Here we have an initial grasp being corrected by a
subsequent one. Von Fritz notes that such cases are much less frequent in Homer than the
simpler, uncorrected realizations mentioned above.587 This lends support to the idea that the
more complicated notion of a second, corrective seeing represents a later understanding. It is
also connected by von Fritz to the development of the idea of one, rational truth underlying all
appearances:
Where novo~ and noei`n mean the recognition of the true nature or essence of a thing as against its
surface appearance, there is no room for a difference in the novoi of different people, since the
truth is but one. But when and where novo~ and noei`n mean the way in which a situation is
perceived or considered (one may also say, what a situation means to a person) . . . it is quite
natural that we should find different novoi in different individuals and nations.588

In cases of misrecognition, there is the beginning of an awareness of the difference between

the object as experienced and the object as transcendent. We can see here the beginnings of a
potential objectification of truth as related to a fixed reality already present behind the surface
appearance. Something like this experience is posited by von Fritz as a nave anticipation of
the distinction . . . between a phenomenal world which we perceive with our senses but
which may be deceptive and a real world which may be discovered behind the phenomena.589
Von Fritz isolates, as particularly significant for later developments, a sense of noei`n
connected to such instances of a second look, correcting a first one. In such cases
. . . the second and more correct identification of the object is not the result of a clearer vision of
its external form . . . but rather of a deeper insight into its real nature, which seems to penetrate
beyond its outward appearance.590

What von Fritzs articles illustrate very clearly is a transformation in the Greek
understanding of nou``~. Initially understood as a form of realization or seeing closely related to
sense perception, nou`~ undergoes an increasing unification and, one might say,
spiritualization. In some early contexts noei`n seems almost like a form of imagination.591 An
example of this is found in Book 15 of the Iliad, where Homer compares Heras speeding to
587

Ibid., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 90.
589
Von Fritz (1945), p. 224.
590
Ibid., p. 224.
591
Ibid., p. 224: In this connection novo~ seems to designate the imagination by which we can visualize situations
and objects which are remote in space and time.
588

164

Olympus to the nou`~ of a man when it darts its glance upon the many lands he has
traversed.592 Here noei`n is clearly not some pure imageless thinking, but an imagining of
places seen. The simile goes both ways: the divine character of nou`~ can be seen in its ability
to dart immediately to a place physically far off, in the way that the goddess is able to speed
to Olympus. Such a nou`~ makes far off things present.593 As von Fritz puts it:
Here, then, we have a novo~ which sees or is aware of things which are not present in such a way
that we can see them with our bodily eyes. . . . Any full realization of a situation implies a
mental vision, which not only penetrates deeper but also sees farther both in space and in time
than our eyes.594

Von Fritz also refers to the idea of a man having a god-fearing nou`~. He suggests three
stages in the development of this notion. Firstly, there is the notion of a novo~ which is struck
by the presence of a god and realizes its importance.595 This may be understood as a stable
disposition to be thus struck, to see the significance of such divine manifestations.
Nevertheless it is tied to particular instances of such manifestation. Secondly, there is the
notion of a novo~ which is always in some way aware of the watchfulness of the gods.596 This
development is connected by von Fritz with the development of the idea that the gods are
ever-present and always watching over mortals. Of course, it is not possible for a senseperceptibly imagined god to be thus present in many places at once. This, points to the
connection between the more unified and the more intellectual, or supersensible,
conceptions of nou`~.597 Thirdly, and this sense is very rare in Homer, we have the idea of nou`~
as being intentionally turned towards the gods.
The development away from a sensible conception of God is discussed by von Fritz in
relation to Xenophanes, in particular Frag. B24,598 where Xenophanes says: He sees (oJra`/)
wholly, he noei` wholly, he hears wholly.Although, in Xenophanes noei`n is still presented
592

Lattimore (1951), p. 311: As the thought flashes in the mind of a man who, traversing / much territory, thinks
of things in the minds awareness, / I wish I were this place, or this, and imagines many things; / so rapidly in
her eagerness winged Hera, a goddess.
593
Von Fritz (1943), p. 91.
594
Ibid., p. 91. Von Fritz suggests that this is connected to the sense of noei`n as meaning to form a plan. What
is primary is a kind of extended seeing of a situation that projects forward and backward in time, and outwards in
space. It sees both the significance of the present as a consequence of past events, and envisages future
consequences and ways of responding to them. In other words, it grasps a whole that both transcends and
includes the multiplicity present to the senses.
595
Ibid., p. 91.
596
Ibid., p. 91.
597
In this regard, von Fritz notes that there is a difference in the Homeic poems between Zeus, who is never
personally present to mortals but always intervenes through intermediaries, and the other gods who appear
personally. The image of Zeus looking down upon the world from Olympus, and thus having a panoramic view
of the whole, transforms into the idea of a God who is all-seeing in a purely intellectual sense. As von Fritz says
on p. 91, The ever-presence of a god which nevertheless is somewhat far off seems to have been developed first
in Zeus and later extended to other divinities.
598
Xenophanes, Fragment B24: ou\lo~ oJra`/, ou\lo~ de; noei`, ou\lo~ de;; t ajkouvei.
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together with sense perception without a sense of sharp opposition,von Fritz suggests that
Xenophanes is critical of anthropomorphic conceptions of the gods which tie them to one
place, and make their seeing dependent on having particular sense organs. Von Fritz suggests
that the earlier sense of multiple and particular views each of which involved the seeing of a
situation as a whole that is spatio-temporally extended, is transformed subsequently into the
notion of a single, superhuman nou`~ that sees a single realm of truth. This in turn can lead to a
notion of the real essence, or the object as it really is, independently of its appearance an
objectified notion of the object.
To sum up, what characterizes the archaic experience of nou`~ is a receptivity that is also
found, in a modified form, in Aristotles conception of nou`~. Aristotle is at pains to distinguish
sense perception and noei`n, but his account of novhsi~ is connected to his structurally similar
account of perception. The receptivity characteristic of perception is also to be found in
novhsi~. The account presented by von Fritz suggests that rather than seeing the similarities
between Aristotles account of sense perception and novhsi~ as a case of metaphorical
extension of the experience of sense perception to thinking, it is far more plausible to suggest
that this parallelism is an echo of an earlier Greek experience in which perception and novhsi~
were not opposed to each other as sharply as they later came to be.

166

Chapter 5. Aristotles Account of the Cognitive Process in Posterior Analytics

2.19
5.1 Introduction
We are now in a position to examine Posterior Analytics 2.19 in some detail. I will argue
that Aristotles account of the cognitive process leading to the noetic seeing of an ajrchv can be
understood in terms of Goethes account particularly in The Experiment as Mediator
Between Object and Subject of the process leading to the seeing of the Urphnomen. My
intention is to show that the best interpretation of Aristotles account is a rational empiricist
one.
5.2 The Meaning of e{xi~
Aristotle begins Posterior Analytics 2.19 as follows:
But as for the principles how they become familiar and what is the state [e{xi~] that becomes
familiar with them that will be clear from what follows, when we have first set down the
puzzles.599

Aristotle uses a plural form of the adjective gnwvrimo~, which means, among other things,
well-known or familiar.600 This echoes Aristotles oft repeated claim that we begin with
what is more familiar and intelligible to us, and attempt to reach what is more intelligible in
itself. Aristotle wants to explain how the ajrcaiv become familiar, how we become acquainted
with them. 601
Aristotle asks what the e{xi~ is that knows the ajrcaiv. This common Aristotelian term is so
familiar that scholars often fail to consider its significance in contexts like these. Barnes
translates this word as state, Tredennick as faculty, and Mure as developed state of
knowledge. The word is connected to e[cein (to have or hold), and is perhaps most literally
translated as a having or grasping. Of the meanings given by LSJ, the most relevant are
the following: a having, possession; a habit of body; a good habit; a habit of mind; a being in
a certain state, a permanent condition as produced by practice. Goethes idea of Bildung is
599

Apo. 2.19.99b18-20: peri; de; tw`n ajrcw`n, pw`~ te gignontai gnwvrimoi kai; tiv~ hJ gvnwrizousa e{xi~, ejnteu`qen
e[stai dh`lon proaporhvsasi prw`ton.
600
LSJ vs gnwvrimo~: A.well-known, familiar, subst. acquaintaince, II. notable, distinguished.
601
Recall how far Goethe pushed the analogy between our knowledge of the idea of the natural phenomenon on
the basis of a relatively comprehensive knowledge of its visible manifestations and our knowledge of a persons
character on the basis of a relatively comprehensive presentation of their actions. Cf. Goethe, Theory of Color:
Preface, in Scientific Studies, p.158 (FA XXIII/1: 12): We labour in vain to describe a persons character, but
when we draw together their actions, their deeds, a picture of their character will emerge.
167

illuminating here: e{xi~ is not merely an achieved form, a Gestalt, but simultaneously a power
for further development. In other words, e{xi~ should be understood as both stable and
intrinsically plastic.
Earlier, I mentioned, Eckart Frsters argument that Goethes Auge des Geistes is a
developed ability, and not simply the more or less universal ability to recognize objects, or to
see aspects. His argument was based, among other things, on Goethes claim that the Auge
des Geistes is not something universally present in human beings, but must be developed. A
similar idea is found in Fredes interpretation of Aristotle.602 Frede suggests that the human
being can, for all practical purposes, get by solely on experience, not needing nou`~ at all:
That Aristotle, in introducing reason [nou`~], primarily means to introduce a highly specific
ability, namely the ability to grasp certain features and the necessary relations between them,
rather than our ordinary, everyday ability to think and to argue, is borne out, I think, by
Aristotles claim that his predecessors tended to overlook reason or the intellect (nous), or at last
to fail to distinguish it as a separate ability. Clearly, Aristotle does not think that his
predecessors, apart from Plato, overlooked our ordinary ability to think and to reason.603

According to Frede, nou`~ is to be distinguished both from the ability to perceptually

discriminate, and from our ordinary discursive thinking or reasoning. It is a more specific
ability to see necessary connections between phenomena. Frede concludes:
I infer from this, though the conclusion seems striking and surprising (given our intuitions about,
and our understanding of, reason), that Aristotle assumes that we are not born with reason, but
only acquire it. . . 604

Charles Kahn notes that in Nicomachean Ethics 6.6, the cognition of the principles of
demonstration, as basis for science (epistm), is assigned to nous understood as an
intellectual virtue or hexis, that is, a natural capacity perfected by training.605 Kahn suggests
that
. . . perhaps in this notion of the intellect as a hexis, an habitual disposition or trained capacity,
lies some further clue to Aristotles view on the progression from vulgar to scientific
conceptualization.606

Kahn is right here the idea that nou`~ is a developed capacity to see the intelligible in the
602

I speak of a fairly general similarity here. My sense is that Frsters discussion pertains mostly to the ability to
think the organic.
603
Frede (1996), p. 165.
604
Ibid., p. 169. Cf. EN 6.11.1143b7-9, where Aristotle seems to suggest that the emergence of nou`~ corresponds
naturally to a certain time of life. Aristotle does not make clear here whether nou`~ emerges in all people at a
certain time of life.
605
Kahn (1981), p. 398.
168

sensible formed by long dwelling with the phenomena of nature is important for understanding
how Aristotles epistemology differs from both empiricism and rationalism. It is precisely this
inextricable link between experience (as a kind of culmination of sense-based cognition) and
noetic seeing that distinguishes Aristotle as a rational empiricist. An empiricist wants to deny
noetic seeing altogether, and to understand the culminating insight into the ajrcaiv as somehow
purely sensory and as a mechanical result of the cognitive process. The rationalist would
prefer to claim that nou`~ has some direct grasp of the ajrcaiv independently of experience. But
neither option matches Aristotles actual views.
We can see how closely the Aristotelian position fits with Goethe by considering two
passages. In the introduction to his Theory of Color Goethe writes:
The desire for knowledge first stirs in us when we become aware of significant phenomena
which require our attention. To sustain this interest we must deepen our involvement in the
objects of our attention and gradually become better acquainted with them. Only then will we
notice all manner of things crowding in upon us. We will be compelled to distinguish,
differentiate and resynthesise, a process which finally leads to an order we can survey with some
degree of satisfaction. To achieve this even partially in any field of knowledge requires constant
and rigorous effort. Therefore we find that many would prefer to dismiss the phenomena with a
general theoretical precept or a quick explanation without taking the trouble to study them in
detail and achieve knowledge of the whole over a longer period of time.607

We proceed not by theorizing about the phenomena, but by going more deeply into them,
by observing them closely, by becoming, as Aristotle puts it gnwvrimo~ (familiar) with them.608
There is a movement from intense perceptual engagement with the phenomena leading
through a process where an overwhelming multiplicity becomes gradually sorted, structured,
analysed and resynthesised, until it leads to an order which we are able to survey, i.e. of
which have some relatively comprehensive and stable view. Now compare this with the
following passage from Aristotles On Generation and Corruption:
Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts.
Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and
more able to formulate, as the foundations of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide
and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered
unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatise on the basis of a few observations.609

606

Ibid., p. 338.
Goethe, Theory of Color: Introduction, in Scientific Studies, p. 163 (FA XXIII/1: 23).
608
Elizabeth M. Wilkinson, Goethes Conception of Form, Proceedings of the British Academy 37 (1951), p.
189: Wilkinson speaks evocatively of the Goethean method as a process whereby the mind becomes sufficiently
saturated with individual forms for an archetype to emerge.
609
GC 1.2.316a5-14 (Joachim): Ai[tion de; tou' ejp e[latton duvnasqai ta; oJmologouvmena sunora'n hJ ajpeiriva.
Dio; o{soi ejnw/khvkasi ma'llon ejn toi'" fusikoi'" ma'llon duvnantai uJpotivqesqai toiauvta" ajrca;" ai} ejpi; polu;
607

169

Lack of experience diminishes ones ability ta; oJmologouvmena sunora'n. The word
sunora`n literally means to see together and it can also mean to have within ones field
of vision, hence to be able to make out. The oJmologouvmena are the things that are granted
or agreed upon by common consent, i.e. the phenomena, in the broad sense including both
what we would think of as the perceptual phenomena and the noted opinions of experts. This
seeing-together, or view of the whole, gives one a grasp of the kind of ajrcaiv that are able to
string together into a whole (suneivrein) many facts. In other words, this seeing-together is the
noetic seeing of the universal principle, the kaqovlou which is not an object but a view of the
whole.
Goethe repeatedly warns of the danger of making premature judgements on the basis of
inadequate experience of the phenomena.610 The danger lies not in making generalizations on
the basis of inadequate evidence. Rather, the drawing together of as comprehensive as possible
a survey of the relevant phenomena is necessary because of the nature the Urphnomen one is
seeking to discern. The Urphnomen is not separate from the phenomena. It is not an object
over against them, which can be isolated from the phenomena and considered independently.
It is a dimension of wholeness enveloping the phenomena. Although it cannot be seen by the
senses as such, there is no way to reach the Urphnomen other than through the phenomena.
There is no direct, a priori route to it. And this is just what Aristotle is saying.
Science seeks knowledge of the universal and necessary interconnections between
phenomena. On the interpretation I am proposing, Aristotelian science is based on
Urphnomene (ajrcaiv) that string together many phenomena. According to LSJ, suneivrein
can also mean to connect them with their roots and to lead them on connectedly from a
point. Recall the following statement of Goethes, quoted earlier:
My whole method relies on derivation, I persist until I have discovered a pregnant point from
which several things may be derived, or rather since I am careful in my work and observations
one which yields several things, offering them up of its own accord.611

For Aristotle, likewise, the student of nature seeks for an ajrchv which is just such a pregnant
point from which the individual phenomena comprehended within it can be derived.
duvnantai suneivrein: oiJ d ejk tw'n pollw'n lovgwn ajqewvrhtoi tw'n uJparcovntwn o[nte", pro;" ojlivga blevyante",
ajpofaivnontai rJa'/on.
610
Cf. Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 308 (HA XII: 440):
Throughout the history of scientific investigation we find observers leaping too quickly from phenomenon to
theory; hence they fall short of the mark and become theoretical. Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator Between
Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 14 (HA XIII: 15-16): Man takes more pleasure in the idea than in
the thing; or rather, man takes pleasure in a thing only insofar as has has an idea of it. The thing must fit his
character, and no matter how exalted his way of thinking, no matter how refined, it often remains just a way of
thinking, an attempt to bring several things into an intelligible relation which, strictly speaking, they do not have.
Thus the tendency to hypotheses, theories, terminologies, and systems . . . .
611
Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, in Scientific Studies, p. 41 (HA XIII: 40).
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Goethe speaks approvingly of the characterization of his method as involving objective

thinking:
. . . my thinking works objectively . . . my thinking is not separate from the objects . . . the
elements of the object, the perceptions of the object, flow into my thinking and are fully
permeated by it . . . my perception itself is a thinking, and my thinking a perception.612

We can apply this readily to Aristotle. For Aristotle cognition is akin to an organic process.
The initial seed planted in the soul by perception grows and changes as it passes through
different stages, but it is throughout a seed of the natural thing itself.
Goethe expresses an important feature of this process of formation when he writes: If we
wish to arrive at some living perception of nature we ourselves must remain as quick and
flexible as nature and follow the example she gives.613
It is illuminating to apply this to Aristotles description of the nature of the poet in Poetics
17. Here Aristotle says that in composing a plot the poet should as much as possible place the
scenes before his eyes and even to act out the gestures of the characters. In this way he will be
able to discern what is appropriate and be least likely to overlook incongruities.614 Now a
good plot in a tragedy has a distinctive universality, it shows what might happen, whether as
likely or as necessary, given a certain type of character. The act of imaginatively recreating the
action of the play thus serves the poets discernment of the immanent lawfulness of the plot
and enables him to determine the extent to which the action is in accordance with this. The
composition of an effective plot requires a participative approach, an intimate dwelling in the
sensuous enactment of actions. It does not suffice to construct a plot in the abstract.
For this reason poetry needs someone who is either eujfuhv~ or manikov~. This is not simply
the clich that there is a fine line separating genius from madness. The word eujfuhv~ can mean
a man of genius, and manikov~ can mean mad or inspired. However, whereas the latter
has the sense of an excessive, unbalanced tendency to lose ones senses and become
ecstatically immersed in things or emotions, the former has the senses of being well grown,
shapely, suitably formed or graceful. The contrast between these tendencies is repeated
when Aristotle says: For of these [the poets] some are easy to mould while others are inclined
to depart from their senses.615
The idea of perception as the reception of form into something plastic is found, e.g. in On
Memory and Recollection where Aristotle says The process of movement [involved in
perception] stamps in, as it were, a sort of impression of the percept, just as persons do who

612

Ibid., p. 39 (HA XIII: 37).

Goethe, The Purpose Set Forth, in Scientific Studies, p. 64 (MA XII: 13).
614
Poet. 17.1455a22-26.
615
Ibid., 17.1455a33-34.
613

171

make an impression with a seal.616 Goethes scientific practice involves an attempt to develop
this poetic ability to be moulded by and become one with the phenomena, through a long and
disciplined training, so that these plastic poetic faculties can become a medium for scientific
knowledge. This idea of continuity between the receptive poetic encounter with nature and
the contemplation of its ultimate elements and principles is also found in Aristotles account of
the cognitive process.
There is a great difference between a principle derived from such rich perceptual and
imaginative engagement with the phenomena, and one that is derived from abstract principles
not gained from the appropriate phenomena.617 Aristotles complaint against those who too
easily make judgements on the basis of inadequate engagement with the phenomena shows
how close he is to Goethe.
Indeed, being excessively concerned with discursive arguments and theories can actually
impair ones ability to contemplate the ajrcaiv of nature. Aristotle criticizes those whose
excessive attention to abstract argument has made them ajqewvrhtoi concerning the things of
nature. Joachim translates this as unobservant, but it might be better translated as uncontemplative. Such people are incapable of, or at least unskilled in, the contemplation
(qewriva) that sees the intelligible principles of nature in the phenomena.
Aristotle sees nou`~ as a capacity that is progressively developed. In one sense we are
dealing with a cognitive state of the knower, for Aristotle is speaking about the acquisition of
the ajrcaiv. However, although the cognitive e{xi~ once acquired is a stable possession (e.g. one
does not suddenly forget how to play the piano, or do long division) this does not mean that it
is static or fixed. It is undoubtedly possible for such a state to deteriorate through lack of
appropriate practice. A e{xi~ is not a thing had, but a having, and in so far as it is stable, it is a
stable possessing, not a stable possession. In view of the active-passivity, or receptive-activity
characteristic of knowledge from the human point of view, it might be characterised as a stable
activity of holding oneself open to the essential nature of the phenomena one is studying. A
person who has acquired by long practice and formation a positive e{xi~ (and Aristotle is
undoubtedly speaking of a positive capacity, not a defect which could also become fixed
through habit) does not act mechanically. While they are able to engage in certain actions

616

Mem. 1.450a30-45b1.
Cf. Irwin (1988), p. 213: A science organises and explains the appearances (phainomena) . . . in a
particular area of experience; and it will do that best if its principles stay close to its area, and reflect the real
complexity of the appearances.Those who strain for universality find only abstract and empty principles
explaining nothing (GC 316a5-13). That is why Aristotle insists on autonomous sciences with no higher
principles (Apo 75a38-b20, 76a16-25, 84b14-18, 88a30-b29, 92b12-14; cf. Top. 121a14-19, 127a26-38, SE
172a13-15, Met. 998b19-27. Since for Aristotle all principles are drawn from the phenomena, there are no
totally abstract a priori principles. The issue is about finding the principles appropriate to the phenomena being
studied precisely in the midst of those phenomena, rather than imposing inappropriate principles from outside the
realm of the phenomena in question.
617

172

relatively effortlessly and without conscious oversight, they are also able to accommodate
themselves to the unexpected. A fixed noetic capacity would be incapable of learning.
The plasticity of our cognitive e{xi~ is a function of our imperfection. At the very beginning
of the Metaphysics Aristotle writes: pavnte~ a[nqrwpoi tou` eijdevnai ojrevgontai fuvsei.618 Joe
Sachs has translated this as All human beings, by nature stretch themselves out towards
knowing.619 Sachs sees that Aristotle is expressing a fundamental ontological characteristic of
human beings, and is not simply referring to a desire for knowledge as a psychological
state.620 As imperfect, we are essentially open and our very nature is to stretch ourselves out
towards a fulfilment that is beyond us. This then, is how I understand the idea of e{xi~.621 I now
turn to a consideration of the remainder of Aristotles account of the cognitive process.
5.3 The Role of Perception in the Cognitive Process
In the last section I clarified the meaning of the term e{xi~ and its significance in the
Aristotelian account of the cognitive process. I now turn to consider the first step in the
process, perception. Aristotle continues his account in Posterior Analytics 2.19 as follows:
Now, we have said earlier that it is not possible to understand through demonstration if we
are not aware of the primitive, immediate, principles.622 Demonstration, as a form of
discursive activity, depends on a non-discursive cognition of the ajrcaiv. Aristotle asks whether
the e{xei~ (active states) by which we know the ajrcaiv are already present in us, or come to be
present through some form of development.
It is absurd, says Aristotle, that we should have these e{xei~ without being aware of this,
because we would then have apprehensions623 more precise than the knowledge gained by
means of demonstration without knowing it. However, it is also not possible that we develop
618

Met. 1.1.980a1.
Joe Sachs, trans., Aristotles Metaphysics, (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999).
620
Ross translates this sentence as All men by nature desire to know.
621
This incidentally helps to resolve a problem raised by Barnes (1975b), pp. 249-250. Barnes objects to the
interpretation of e{xi~ as faculty throughout 2.19. His main argument is that Aristotle uses the plural e{xei~,
which would mean that we acquire many faculties, presumably as many as there are ajrcaiv. If we interpret
faculty in a reified way this is absurd. Also, since the primary faculty that grasps the ajrcaiv turns out to be
nou`~ this would imply that we acquire many nouses, and I have already noted the views of Menn (1992) on this
subject. The answer is to avoid any reification, and to recognise that cognitive states are not inert mental objects,
but simultaneously havings or graspings (which are incidentally two of Barnes translations of e{xei~).
Further, the correlate of any mental state (i.e. the object pole of the unified event of cognition) is necessarily an
act that is simultaneously a capacity. The human being does not constitute the ajrcaiv but rather suffers them to
come forth. Cf. Goethe, Significant Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase, in Scientific Studies, p. 39
(HA XIII: 38): Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.
622
Apo. 2.19.99b20-22 (Barnes).
623
The Greek word is gnwvsei~. Some translations of this include: powers of apprehension (Tredennick);
pieces of knowledge (Barnes); apprehensions (Mure). Mures translation is preferable here. These are not
pieces of knowledge in the sense of mental or linguistic items which are part of a discursive system of
knowledge. They are not piece of knowledge, but individual acts of knowing.
619

173

these e{xei~ without some pre-existent power of apprehension (prou>parcouvsh~ gnwvsew~.)624

This power of apprehension is sense perception: Clearly this is a property of all animals.
They have an innate power of discrimination [duvnamin suvmfuton kritikhvn], which we call
sense-perception.625
A proper understanding of the relationship between thinking and perception, and of the
specific doctrine of ejpagwghv proposed by Aristotle, depends on clearly distinguishing what is
given to the senses strictly speaking. Aristotle distinguishes three objects of sense, as follows:
1) Special objects: I call by the name of special object of this or that sense that which cannot be
perceived by any other sense than that one and in respect of which no error is possible; in this
sense color is the special object of sight, sound of hearing, flavor of taste.626
2) Common sensibles: Common sensibles are movement, rest, number, figure, magnitude; these
are not peculiar to any one sense, but are common to all.627
3) Incidental objects: We speak of an incidental object of sense where e.g. the white object
which we see is the son of Diares; here because being the son of Diares is incidental to the
directly visible white patch we speak of the son of Diares as being incidentally perceived or seen
by us. Because this is only incidentally an object of sense, it in no way as such affects the
senses.628

Sense perception in the strictest sense is restricted to the direct objects of the special senses:
colours, sounds, smells etc. The relationship between sense and the so called incidental
sensibles is more complicated. The incidental object is the concrete sensible particular, e.g.
Socrates. These objects do not, as such, affect the senses. To see the son of Diares is not a
purely sensible act, but presupposes that some kind of systematizing and structuring activity is
624

Barnes translates this as pre-existing knowledge, while Tredennick has pre-existent power of
apprehension. I prefer Tredennicks translation because Barnes implies that what are at stake here are preexistent items of knowledge. But, as I have argued, such items are discursive, and if Barnes is right than
Aristotle would after all be basing discursive knowledge on a pre-existing body of discursive knowledge.
625
Apo. 2.19.99b34-36 (Tredennick, altered slightly). Barnes (1975b), p. 252, notes that . . . Aristotle frequently
says that perception is krinei or is kritikos (e.g. An B 6, 418a14-16; 11, 424a5-10; G 2, 426b8-14). Krinein may
mean either judge or discriminate, and to say that perception is kritik is to say either that perception makes
judgments or that it can discriminate. The texts do not, I think, allow us to choose one alternative rather than
another. This seems quite wrong. Judgment implies a rational, and typically a linguistically mediated act.
Judgment is a species of propositional thinking. Animals dont have language and do not think propositionally,
but Aristotle makes it clear that they discriminate. The idea that perception is propositional is pure speculation
and has no support in the phenomenology of perception. What Aristotle needs here is not yet another form of
representational and propositional knowledge, but a source of knowledge which is immediate, without being
superior to ajpovdeixi~ and ejpisthvmh. Of the senses of krivnein given by LSJ the most relevant are: to separate,
part, put asunder, and to distinguish. In other words, perception is a power capable of some degree of
discrimination; it already divides up the world to some extent. Cf. Eyjolfur Kjalar Emilsson, Plotinus on Intellect
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), pp. 197-198. Although Emilsson is dealing with Plotinus, the points he makes
are equally valid for Aristotle.
626
DA 2.5.418a11-14.
627
Ibid., 2.5.418a18-19.
628
Ibid., 2.5.418a20-23.
174

present in perception. Although the ontological ground of the structure of the sensible world is
divine novhsi~, at the empirical level this structuring need not involve thinking strictly
speaking, since it occurs even in animals who do not partake of nou`~ cognitively. Perception is
already a power that discriminates.
However, given the ontological priority of nou`~, it is not plausible to suggest that the power
of discrimination operative in perception functions in complete independence from nou`~.
There is a striving within sensible nature towards God, and thus towards the state of being
known and being intelligible. Hence it is better to understand the structuring that occurs even
at the level of animal perception as a manifestation of this overall drive towards intelligibility.
In On the Soul 3.5, Aristotle refers to the nou`~ that makes all things (pavnta poiei`n) as a
certain active state [e{xi~] like light. For light also, in a way, makes colours existing in potency
into colours that are in activity.629 Light brings colours existing in potency into manifest
existence as colours that are in activity. Kosman has asked: What does the maker mind
make?630 Perhaps the most common, traditional interpretation has been that this nou`~ makes
potentially intelligible things, into actually intelligible things, where the things are the
images persisting in the soul as a result of sense-perception.
The reference to light is more than metaphorical. Light has features compatible with
understanding it as a privileged sensible manifestation of divine nou`~.631 On my interpretation,
light (the activity that effects, via the mediation of human vision, the actual manifestation of
visual qualities) and nou`~ (the activity that effects, through the mediation of human cognition,
the actual manifestation of the essences of things) are two manifestations of a single
underlying reality. This privileging of vision is consistent with Aristotles views.632
Vision involves the special object (colour), the medium (air, water etc.), light and the
sense/organ (the organ is not merely a physical part of the organism but is ensouled by the
sense). The direct object of vision is colour, but what is colour? Colour is what lies upon
what is in its own nature visible,633 namely, the transparent, the activity of which is light. The
nature of colour is its power to set in motion the actually transparent. The transparent is what
629

Ibid., 3.5.430a16-17: wJ~ e{xi~ ti~, oi|on to; fw`~:trovpon gavr tina kai; to; fw`~ poiei` ta; dunavmei o[nta crwvmata
ejnergeiva/ crwvmata.
630
L. A. Kosman, What does the maker mind make? in Essays on Aristotles De Anima, ed. Martha C.
Nussbaum & Amlie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 343-358.
631
Cf. Goethe, in Vitor (1950), p. 40 (JA XXXIX: 94): Light and spirit, the former dominating in the physical,
the latter in the moral world, are the highest thinkable indivisible energies. For an interesting take on this idea
see, Robert Grosseteste, De Luce, trans. Julian Lock, in, Ian M. Mackenzie, The Obscurism of Light: A
Theological Study into the Nature of Light (Norwich: The Canterbury Press, 1996), p. 25: The first bodily form,
which some call corporeity, I deem to be light. . . .
632
Met. 1.1.980a21-26: All human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing. A sign of this is our
love of the senses; for even apart from their use, they are loved on their own account, and above all the rest, the
one through the eyes. For not only in order that we might act, but even when we are not going to act at all, we
prefer seeing, one might say, as against everything else. (Sachs).
633
DA 2.7.418a29-30 (Smith).
175

is visible, yet not visible in itself. Water, air, and certain bodies (e.g. glass) have this character.
However, all of these media are transparent not in virtue of themselves but because they
contain a certain substance which is found in the eternal body which constitutes the
uppermost shell of the physical Cosmos.634 Any physical medium is actively transparent
because of the presence of light within it, which is the activity of the substance mentioned.
Light is
. . . neither fire nor body generally nor an effluence from any body (for even then it would still
be a sort of body), but the presence of fire or something fiery in the transparent. For it is
impossible for two bodies to occupy the same space at the same time.635

The something fiery here is aijqhvr (aether). Aether is described as eternal and not subject
to increase or diminution636; it has neither heaviness nor lightness637; it is divine; and
finally, it is something else beyond earth, fire, air, and water.638 It is the activity of a
substance located at the very boundary of the physical cosmos. It is not a body. Darkness is
defined as the absence of light in the transparent. Aristotle is opposed to the idea that light
travels.639 Similarly, light as the activity of the transparent, is not visible in itself, but only
through the presence in it of colour. The fact that light is characterized in a way that makes its
status as a physical entity ambiguous makes it plausible to suggest that it is the boundary
between the sensible realm and the intelligible, and that therefore, it could itself be seen as a
liminal expression of divine nou`~, or of some dimension intermediate between the pure
immateriality of nou`~ and the sensible.
This fits well with the non-nave-realist character of Aristotles views about sensible
entities.640 The sensible thing is the partial, sensible manifestation of a non-sensible essence
that is inseparable from its manifestation. If the sensible and the intelligible manifestations of
634

Ibid., 2.7.418b7-9 (Smith).

Ibid., 2.7.418b14-17 (Smith).
636
Cael. 1.3.270b2-3 (Stocks).
637
Ibid., 1.3.270a30-33 (Stocks).
638
Ibid., 1.3.270b21-24 (Stocks).
639
DA 2.7.418b23-27.
640
Cf. Mure (1940), p. 20: (a) The substrata of perceptible qualities, the not actually perceived perceptibles, are
said by Aristotle to exist apart from the act of sense perception: he does not teach a naive subjective idealism. (b)
The organ too, though even apart from its acts of perceiving it is at a higher level of information than the
unperceived perceptible, and though in the act of its own perceptive function it is not a part of the object
perceived, is nevertheless a perceptible physical thing. Thus at first sight it looks as if Aristotle were naively
positing two juxtaposed sets of realistic things, of which the one set stimulates the other to perceive it. But the
perceptible is only and necessarily actualized in being perceived: its actual, though not its potential, esse is
percipi. Therefore there can be no inference to the nature of any sort of physical thing in the world supposed
indifferent to a subjects consciousness; Aristotle clearly excludes any naively realist view of the object of the
perceptive act. But he does on the other hand appear naively to presuppose the organ. The perceptible physical
characters of the organ, however, can be no more independent of consciousness than those of the object which
stimulates it.
635

176

an entity, in perception and thinking respectively, are manifestations of the same entity, then it
would make sense if both of the activities that make possible these manifestations (light and
nou`~) are ontologically related. Since the sensible form of the natural being is a manifestation
of its essence, and the essence is ultimately grounded in nou`~, then the sensible manifestation
is ultimately a sensible manifestation of nou`~. Since light is the actuality that brings visual
qualities to manifestation it would make metaphysical sense if light were itself a quasiphysical manifestation of nou`~.641 If we can see perceptual experience, and developing from
that imagination and memory, as an expression of a unitary world which manifests both
sensibly and intelligibly, then the cognitive process as described by Aristotle becomes more
comprehensible.
Mark Faller notes that Aristotles account of the cognitive process in Posterior Analytics
2.19 involves the
. . . image of the coalescing of a whole. . . . Like the elements of a crystal aggregating about its
seed, the determination of the universal is cultivated from such an image of the whole. In the
process of formulating some universal for the first time, we attempt to find some grouping or
whole within which to locate the particular. It is from the image of this initial wholeness that
we rise to find the limiting conditions of the universal class or category.642

If we conceive of the sensible particulars in naive realist terms as already finished, already
having a determinate character independently of the kaqovlou, then the relation between the
particular and the kaqovlou becomes mysterious. If the kaqovlou is not understood to be an
aspect of the unitary entity, then it will be seen as something separate that must be inferred
from the particulars. However, if they are seen as indivisible aspects of one entity, things
immediately become clearer. In Fallers view:
The model of the double image of whole/universal helps to resolve [the] . . . Humean Riddle
also. The determination of the universal through the spatially and temporally extended
conditions of the whole allows us to see how we could infer generic character from the details of
physical particulars we dont. Instead we comprehend the true functions of a species by
observing the activity of any of its members as a whole.643

The cognitive process Aristotle describes involves the coalescing and increasing articulation
of a whole. We begin with the lowest level of perception, which, in the case of the simplest
animals consists simply in disconnected sensory impressions. In such animals, the sensory
impression does not persist. Hence, they are restricted solely to this relative chaos of
disconnected impressions. The next step, the persistence of the percept in imagination involves
641
642

Cf. Ggelein (1987), p. 247.

Faller (2005), p. 10.
177

a greater degree of information, as again do memory, experience etc. What unifies this whole
process is that it is the same entity active throughout. In perception it is the sensible
manifestation of the entity working its way up out of the multiplicity of the sensible manifold
towards intelligibility, and on the side of thinking, it is the intelligible aspect of the same entity
becoming realised in the mind that ultimately grasps the essence as one with the sensible
manifestations. The next step in this process is fantasiva.
5.4 The Role of fantasiva in the Cognitive Process
Fantasiva644 plays an important, and in many ways obscure, role in Aristotle's account of
cognition.645 This verbal noun is sometimes translated as imagination, but this translation is
seen by some as problematic.646 Dorothea Frede notes that the term has at least three senses in
Aristotle. It can refer to a capacity, an activity or process, and the product or result of that
process.647 She suggests that appearances may be the best rendering as far as the product
is concerned. Thus fantasiva would mean (i) the capacity to experience an appearance, (ii)
the on-going appearance itself, and (iii) what appears.648
In On the Soul 3.3 Aristotle defines fantasiva as follows: fantasiva must be a movement
resulting from an actual exercise of a power of sense.649 In one sense, appearances are what
linger after actual perception has ceased.650 Aristotle presents this kind of account in On
Dreams:

643

Ibid., p. 16.
LSJ vs fantasiva: A. appearing, appearance, 2. imagination, i.e. the re-presentation of appearances or
images, primarily derived from sensation, in Aristotle, faculty of imagination, both presentative and
representative.
645
The following are a selection of essays dealing with fantasiva: K. Lycos, Aristotle and Plato on
Appearing, Mind 73 (1963), pp. 496-514. M. Schofield, Aristotle on the Imagination, in Aristotle on Mind
and the Senses, ed. G. E. R. Lloyd and G. E. L. Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 99141. M. V. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). D. A. Rees,
Aristotles Treatment of Fantasiva, in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. J. P. Anton and G. L. Kustas
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1971), pp. 491-504. J. Engmann, Imagination and Truth in
Aristotle, The Journal of the History of Philosophy 14 (1976), pp. 259-65.
646
Cf. Victor Caston, Why Aristotle Needs Imagination, Phronesis 41 1 (1996), pp.20-21. Castons main
objection is that while some of Aristotles uses imply the idea of seeing images, not all do. Another problematic
feature of the term imagination in contemporary English is that it suggests agency, whereas many of the
contexts in which Aristotle uses the term refer to processes that occur independently of any conscious activity,
e.g. dreams, perceptual after-images etc.
647
Dorothea Frede, The Cognitive Role of Phantasia in Aristotle, in Essays on Aristotles De Anima, ed.
Martha Craven Nussbaum and Amlie Oksenberg Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) p. 279.
648
Ibid., p. 279.
649
DA 3.3.429a1-2 (Smith).
650
Cf. R. H. Stephenson, Last Universal Man Or Wilful Amateur? in Goethe Revisited, ed. Elizabeth M.
Wilkinson (London: John Calder, 1984), p. 63: Stephenson notes that by . . . Nachbild, after-image, he
[Goethe] means the sense-trace, or sense-memory, left in our organs of perception.
644

178

The objects of sense-perception, corresponding to each sensory organ produce sense-perception

in us, and the affection due to their operation is present in the organs of sense not only when the
perceptions are actualized, but even when they have departed.651

Aristotle gives a number of examples of the manner in which perception can linger. For
example, if we go from bright sunlight into darkness, the effect of the sunlight lingers and we
are not able to see anything for a while. Or if we look at the sun, and then close our eyes, we
will see an after-image of the sun.652 Here, Aristotle could also have mentioned the afterimages that appear if we look steadily at one colour, and then turn our gaze to a white surface,
at which point a similar patch of the complementary colour will appear and linger for a short
period of time.
Appearances can also be present simultaneously with actual perception. Aristotle provides a
good example of this:
But there are false appearances concerning things of which we hold at the same time a true
conception. For example, the sun appears only a foot in diameter, but we are convinced that it is
larger than the inhabited world. . .653

The fact that the sun appears to me as smaller than I know it to be is not an instance of sense
perception strictly speaking. Even in the case of the so-called common-objects it is not clear to
what extent they are objects of sense perception properly speaking. If we keep this in mind it
becomes clear that the visible world of nature is to a large extent a realm of appearances.
However, this idea should not be interpreted dualistically, as if the appearances functioned as
an impenetrable screen between us and reality. The example given above, points to the
intrinsically relational and relative character of the sensible realm. One might be inclined to
say that mere appearance needs to be corrected by perception. But this is impossible.
Perception strictly speaking gives us access only to a very fragmented and restricted range of
sensible qualities. There is no way in which sense perception strictly speaking could serve to
correct the false appearance of the sun as being a foot in diameter. The fact that the sun
appears small because of my distance from it is a fact governed by law. I am in error because I
fail to grasp that the appearance of the sun is a fact deriving from the character of my
perceptual system, my distance from the sun, etc.
This knowledge cannot possibly be given by perception alone. The distinction between a
false appearance and a true phenomenon is not a distinction between imagination and sense
perception. Rather, it is a distinction between an appearance that has not been properly
integrated into the intelligible structure of the world, and one that has. Once I have properly
651

Insomn. 2.2.459a25-28 (Beare).

Ibid., 2.2.459b14-17.
653
DA 3.3.428b2-4 (Hicks, altered slightly).
652

179

understood the factors determining the fact that the sun appears to me in this way, the
appearance ceases to be false. The appearance remains as Aristotle points out the sun
appears smaller than I know it to be regardless of my knowledge but the appearance is now
re-interpreted. Its relativity is overcome not by comparing it with a perception, but by
integrating it by means of thinking. Aristotles notion of fantasiva seems to involve the idea
of kind of cognition closely connected with the ensouled body. Aristotle says that non-human
animals often act under the influence of fantasiva because they lack nou`~, while men do so
because in their case nou`~ is sometimes darkened or obscured by passion, disease, or sleep.654
Fantasiva also has the role of synthesizing percepts and filling the gaps between discrete
acts of perception. As Frede puts:
Because of the emphasis on the singleness of each act of perception and on the need for the
presence of its object, it is doubtful that for Aristotle we can have something like a panoramic
view of a whole situation, for he does not seem to include anything like a field of vision in his
explanations. Thus would suggest that when I let my eyes glide over the different books on my
bookshelves there is always just the piecemeal vision of this or that coloured object; the overall
impression of all the different books (including those behind my back) would then be already a
phantasia, a synthesis of what I perceive right now and what I have perceived a second ago and
so on.655

This means that perceptions of concrete objects, rather than discrete and fragmentary
percepts of e.g. colour patches are always already phantasmata for Aristotle, at least where
he uses precise speech.656
Aristotelian fantasiva is, I suggest, something more objective, and more general than our
notion of imagination. It can be distinguished from sensory perception proper (the perception
of the proper sensibles) as a more inclusive category of phenomenological givenness that
covers dreams, visual illusions, perceptual relativities, after-images, the effects of illness and
other disturbances of the body, consciously willed imaginations, as well as thoughts as
mental objects, in so far as we are empirically conscious of them. It is a distinct level within
a whole composed of levels nested within each other. Perception in the strict sense is nested
within fantasiva, while fantasiva itself is nested in novhsi~. Perception could not possibly
contain fantasiva because it is more fragmented. Fantasiva may derive from perception but it
is also a development of perception, it constitutes a stage in the synthesis leading back to the
pre-synthetic unity of the world.
Nevertheless, it is a form of cognition that is intrinsically relative and subject to many
654

DA 3.3.429a4-9.
Frede (1992), p. 282. Frede connects this up with Aristotles statement that animals in which the percept does
not persist have knowledge only when actually perceiving. Such animals, in other words, lack fantasiva. As
Frede writes (p. 285): Strictly speaking, the eyes or ears perceive only one object at a time; thus animals without
phantasia would only get a series of incoherent imprints.
656
Ibid., p. 289.
655

180

influences conducive to error. If we imagine the levels hierarchically, we need to keep in mind
that the real world is not below imagination, i.e. given to sense perception, rather it is above
imagination, in the synthesis of sensibility with the intelligible forms provided by thinking.
Imagination is a necessary part of the cognitive process, and is not in itself false as long as it is
not subject to distorting states of soul and body, and as long as it is illuminated by nou`~.
Again, Goethes views about imagination are illuminating. Goethe argues that the
imagination arising from perception is crucial to the scientist. This is not an imagination that
goes into the vague and imagines things that do not exist.657 Science requires an imagination
. . . that does not abandon the actual soil of the earth, and steps to supposed and conjectured
things by the standard of the real and the known . . . Such an imagination presupposes an
enlarged tranquil mind, which has at its command a wide survey of the living world and its
laws.658

The imagination that serves as the means towards a perception of the Urphnomen is a kind
of transformation of the natural object itself as received in perception. Goethe says elsewhere,
Imagination is first re-creative, repeating the objects.659 But imagination is not only recreative of the sensible appearance of the phenomena, it is also productive by animating,
developing, extending, transforming the objects. In addition, we can postulate a perceptive
imagination that apprehends identities and similarities.660
Fantasiva has a similar synthetic function in Aristotle. Aristotle notes the importance of the
perception of similarities in the acquisition of the kaqovlou and in the formulation of
arguments on the basis of ejpagwghv.661 But again, this synthesis makes no sense if it is not
guided by a pre-synthetic unity. And since perception clearly cannot give direct access to this,
the synthesis cannot possibly proceed by means of a comparison with a world given in
perception strictly speaking.
5.5 Experience as the Mediator Between Object and Subject
The next step in the account in Posterior Analytics 2.19 is the distinction between those
animals in which a lovgo~ arises from repeated impressions and those in which it does not.
Tredennick translates lovgo~ here as coherent impression, Barnes as an account, and Mure
657

Goethe, Conversation with Eckermann 27/01/1830, in Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann, trans. J.
Oxenford (London: Everyman, 1930), p. 346 (FA XII (39): 688-689).
658
Ibid., p. 346 (FA XII (39): 688-689).
659
Goethe, in, G. M. Vasco, Diderot and Goethe (Geneva: Librairie Slatkine, 1978), p. 88 (WA IV 34: 136-137).
660
Ibid., p. 88 (WA IV 34: 136-137).
661
Top. 1.28.108b6: The contemplation of likeness is valuable with a view to inductive arguments . . . . It is
useful for inductive arguments, because it is by ejpagwghv of particulars in like cases that we claim to supply the
universal: for it is not easy to supply if we have not seen the similarities. Cf. Top. 8.8.160a37-39: . . . as a rule
people secure their universal by means either of induction or of likeness (Mure).
181

as a power of systematizing. I prefer Tredennicks translation. This stage represents a yet

higher level of information and a development of the manifold of sense-impressions and
appearances into something more unified. I agree with Biondi that this stage of the cognitive
process marks the difference between human experience and that of animals who lack both
nou`~ and discursive thinking.662
From this develops memory, which is a species of imagination.663 This is the next step in
the process of the coalescing of the whole, since, repeated memories of the same thing give
rise to experience; because the memories, though numerically many, constitute a single
experience.664
It is at this point that we reach experience. For Aristotle, experience plays a crucial
mediating role in the cognitive process. Contrary to what the word may suggest, if interpreted
in an empiricist fashion, experience is a developed form of cognition, and is not to be confused
with pure sense perception. Indeed, experience has an intrinsically liminal character; it is the
threshold between the sensible and intelligible and seems to partake of both realms.
In its general outlines the notion is a clear and commonsense one. We speak, for instance, of
a skilled cook as experienced. Experience is thus a kind of skill, or knack, gained by long
practice and engagement with certain things. Experience is very close to tevcnh (art or craft)
and ejpisthvmh (scientific knowledge). It differs from both in that it does not grasp the
principles of its own operation and is unable to give an account of itself. This is because, as
Aristotle says, experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals.665 The experienced
healer may be able to heal an individual because they have seen that a certain remedy worked
in other individual cases, but they do not know why it worked. Indeed, the experienced healer
may even be more effective than the person who knows universally but lacks experience of the
particulars. Nevertheless the latter is held to be wiser than the former.
The connection between experience and experiment is not accidental. The Greek word
translated as experience is ejmpeiriva. As Biondi has noted, drawing on J. S. Stromberg,666
662

Cf. Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 135 (FA XIII: 83): The animal is taught by its organs; man teaches his
organs, and masters them.
663
Mem. 1.449b24-26: Memory is, therefore, neither Perception nor Conception, but a state or affection of one
of these, conditioned by a lapse of time.(Beare). Cf. Mem. 1.450a11-15: Accordingly, memory [not merely of
sensible, but] even of intelligible objects involves a presentation: hence we conclude that it belongs to the faculty
of intelligence only incidentally, while directly and essentially it belongs to the primary faculty of senseperception. This is why there is no memory of intelligibles as such. Cf. Goethe, in Stephenson (1984), p. 61
(WA 2 VI: 303-4): When, having something before me that has grown, I inquire after its genesis and measure
the process as far back as I can, I become aware of a series of stages that, though I cannot actually see them in
succession, I can present to myself in memory as a kind of ideal whole [italics added].
664
APo. 2.19.100a4-6. Cf. Goethe, The Influence of Modern Philosophy, in Scientific Studies, p. 28 (HA XIII:
26): In my physics experiments I became convinced that any observation of physical objects required above all
that I be thorough in my search for every condition under which a phenomenon may arise, and that I be as
comprehensive as possible in collecting phenomena.
665
Met. 1.1.981a15-16.
666
J. S. Stromberg, An Essay on Experimentum (Part 1), Laval thologique et philosophique 23 1 (1967), p.
182

both experimentum and experientia are used in Latin to translate the single Greek word.667
In English, similarly, ejmpeiriva could be translated as experience or experiment. Biondi
suggests that experience is more appropriate in Aristotles case since any experimentation
on his part was mostly limited to observation rather than incorporating the artifical and
controlled environment of a laboratory.668
Goethe himself made the point that The Greeks . . . presented the phenomenon as it was. In
their science, too, they did not perform experiments, but relied on experiences as they
occurred.669 Nevertheless, when Goethe speaks of many experiments forming one
experiment, he could also refer to one experience. This is because experiment is not intended
to prove a hypothesis about unobservable entities postulated by a theory, by inference from
visible evidence. Rather, the fundamental nature of experiment is simply the manifolding and
ordering of many experiences into one experience in which the universal comes to
manifestation.
The Goethean conception of experiment can, I suggest, help us to understand the
Aristotelian concept of ejmpeiriva and its role in the cognitive process. For both Goethe and
Aristotle the growth of scientific knowledge from experience is in part a function of the
practical and self-distilling processes of common human understanding.670
Experience, for Aristotle, involves the notion of formation through practice. There is no a
priori shortcut to becoming experienced; one becomes experienced only through long,
painstaking engagement with the sensible world. While this is perhaps more evident in an
ethical context, where acquiring good habits through proper formation is crucial to being able
to see clearly in practical matters, there is also a formation proper to the cognitive life in its
more strictly theoretical aspect.671 As for Goethe, so for Aristotle, there is a transformation of
the scientist that occurs by engagement with the phenomena. This transformation is
simultaneously a shaping of the cognitive powers of the scientist, giving rise to e{xei~ (active
states) that were not present before and, at the same time, a transformation of the phenomena
initially given to the knower as fragmented and relatively opaque. The crucial place of
experience in the cognitive process makes clear the basically phenomenological character of
Aristotles theory of knowledge, and strengthens the case for viewing the ajrchv as an
Urphnomen.

78.
667
Biondi (2004), p. 40.
668
Ibid., p. 40.
669
Goethe, Selections from Maxims and Reflections, in Scientific Studies, p. 308 (FA 13: 266).
670
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 25).
671
EN 6.11.1143b11-14: Therefore we ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions of
experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom not less than to demonstrations; for because
experience has given them an eye they see aright. (Ross). Cf. also EN 6.12.1144a29-30: And this eye of the
soul acquires its active state [e{xi~] not without the aid of excellence . . . . (Ross, altered slightly).
183

Nevertheless, ejmpeiriva is somewhat enigmatic. The enigmatic character of experience is

most evident when Aristotle writes:
From experience, that is, from the whole kaqovlou that has come to rest in the soul (the one
beside the many, that which would be, in all things, one self-same thing, [arises] the ajrchv of art
and science . . . 672

Biondi has argued that the h] (or, or else) at 100a6 should be read as epexegetic.673 In other
words, Aristotle is further explicating the meaning of experience, not contrasting experience
and the universal. Aristotle seems to be saying that experience understood as a whole or
unity composed of a number of memories is the universal. However, given that the universal
is not an object of sense-perception at all, and therefore cannot be an object of experience, this
is hard to understand. Surely, the universal is only accessible to nou`~? Is the experiential
whole, what one might call the experiential universal, identical with the scientific universal?
Are there two types of universals? Or are there perhaps two stages in the emergence of one
and the same universal? I will return to this issue later.
The emergence of the experiential kaqovlou is illustrated by means of a simile that has
received many divergent interpretations. The relevant passages reads:
Thus, neither are the e{xei~ present in us as already having been determined, nor do they come
from other e{xei~ that are more cognitive, but they come from perception: as in battle when a rout
occurs one makes a stand and another does, then another, until it comes [h\lqen] to the ajrch;n.674

At first glance the image is straightforward. A group of soldiers stands in formation, but in
the heat of battle they are routed and begin to flee, breaking formation.675 Then, one man
stands firm, he is followed by another, then another, until the original formation is restored.
However, as Lesher notes, there seem to be a number of possible interpretations, all connected
to different readings of the words ajrch;n (the accusative of ajrchv) and h\lqen.676
672

APo.2.19.100a6-9: ejk d ejmpeiriva~ h] ejk panto;~ hjremhvsanto~ tou` kaqovlou ejn th`/ yuch`/, tou` eJno;~ para; ta;
pollav, o} a]n ejn a{pasin e}n ejnh`/ ejkeino~ to; aujtov, tevcnh~ ajrch; kai; ejpisthvmh~ . . . .
673
Biondi (2004), p. 42. In contrast, cf. J. H. Lesher, Aristotles Considered View of the Path to Knowledge in
M. Boeri, ed. Festschrift for Alfonso Gomez-Lobo (Forthcoming), accessed at http://philosophy.unc.edu/people/
faculty/james-lesher, p. 20.
674
APo.2.19.100a10-13: ou[te dh; ejnupavrcousin ajfwrismevnai aiJ e{xei~, ou[t ajp a[llwn e{xewn givgnontai
gnwstikwtevrwn, ajll ajpo; aijsqhvsew~, oi|on ejn mavch/ troph`~ genomevnh~ ejno;~ stavnto~ e{tero~ e[sth, ei\q e{tero~,
e{w~ ejpi; ajrch;n h\lqen. Tredennick (1960), p. 258, suggests that the phrase e{w~ ejpi; ajrch;n h\lqen simply
means until it reaches the starting point and he interprets this as meaning until the rally has extended to the
man who first gave way.
675
Biondi (2004), p. 49, has noted that in Aristotles time, . . . Greek warfare relied on the hoplite phalanx. This
tactic required a high degree of discipline on the part of the soldiers so that the wall formed by their shields
remained impenetrable. Hence, the formation Aristotle has in mind is presumably a very disciplined and unified
one.
676
J. H. Lesher, Just as in Battle: The Simile of the Rout in Aristotles Posterior Analytics II.19, Ancient
Philosophy 30 (2010), pp. 95-96.
184

Firstly, what does ajrch;n refer to in this case? Since the soldiers presumably begin in some
formation, does ajrch;n refer to this, so that their return to the ajrchvn is their return to their
original formation? Or does it refer to the original location at which they stood? Perhaps it
refers to the first soldier to break rank? Or does it refer to a new stand, and the beginning of a
new battle? Or, since ajrchv can mean ruling power does it mean that the soldiers come back
under the control of their leader? Or, finally, as Lesher himself suggests, is the phrase e{w~
ejpi; ajrch;n h\lqen not part of the simile at all?
Secondly, the subject of the verb h\lqen is unclear. The verb h\lqen is the third person
singular form of e[rcomai and means he/she/it goes/comes. Lesher again raises a group of
questions, centred on the attempt to determine the grammatical subject of h\lqen.677 Is it an
individual soldier that comes to the starting point (perhaps the one who first broke rank)? Is it
the group of soldiers as a whole? Or is it perhaps the e{xei~ that come to an ajrch? Or else, is
this a quasi-impersonal verb that suggests merely that a coming to a starting point has
occurred? Thirdly, there is the crucial question whether the text suggests any return to an
original starting point or formation. This is certainly the interpretation favored by many
translators.678 Lesher argues that this is problematic since
. . . if we were to take the simile to be implying that in acquiring knowledge the mind returns to
some previous condition, we would be lending credence to Platos view that knowledge involves
returning to some state of awareness that lies hidden within our soul.679

This is problematic because Aristotle opposes precisely this view in 2.19. Leshers view is
that the subject of the verb is the cognitive process being described, and that the process
comes to a starting point in the sense that it comes to the grasp of the universal which is the
starting point of art and science. I think that in general this interpretation is plausible.
However, I think that Lesher goes too far in suggesting that the phrase is not part of the simile.
I also think that he misses something important concerning the ajrchv. But before I discuss
these issues I want to mention two other important points Lesher makes.
Lesher draws attention to two passages from the Problems (a text traditionally included in
the Aristotelian corpus, although it is probably not by Aristotle). Although the question of
authorship renders these passages of uncertain value, they are nevertheless very interesting. In
both passages, the image of a rout is used. In the first passage, the author is discussing the
677

Ibid., p. 96.
Ibid., p. 95. Lesher cites a large number of translations favoring this interpretation. For example Mure (1955)
and Warrington (1964) translate the phrase as, until the original formation has been restored. Guthrie (1981)
has: until their original order (ajrchv) has been restored. Modrak (1987) translates: until the original formation
is achieved. Bayer (1997) translates: until they assume their original configuration. Tredennick (1966)
translates: until the original position is restored. And McKirahan (1992) has: until it reaches the original
position.
679
Lesher (2010), p. 100.
678

185

question why certain people are made sleepy by reading while others are not. He suggests that
it is not the thinking per se involved in reading that produces wakefulness, but the constant
change. It is for this reason that wakefulness is caused by those activities, in which the mind
searches and finds difficulties rather than in those in which it pursues continual
contemplation.680 The author continues:
But in those who are in a natural condition, when the intelligence is fixed on one thing and does
not keep changing from one subject to another, every function in that region (the inactivity of
which involves sleep) is at a standstill. (Similarly during a rout, if the leader halts, all the forces
under his command halt also.)681

Although the section as a whole is far from clear, the basic idea here seems to be that
focusing the nou`~ leads to a cessation of certain activities in the body, and has a calming
effect. In this version of the rout simile it is the leader who halts, and the movement of the
forces under his control is brought to a stop, but with no suggestion of a return to an original
position. Given the context, it seems plausible to suggest that the leader is nou`~. The second
passage involves a discussion of why disturbed sunsets portend stormy weather. The
relevant portion reads:
And the rest of the air quickly densifies, because a beginning of the process has already been
made and there is a rallying point to receive and collect anything which comes to it, the same
thing occurring in the air as happens in a rout, where, if one man makes a stand, the rest also
remain firm. Hence the sky sometimes becomes quickly and suddenly overcast.682

As Lesher suggests, the idea seems to be that the first cloud that forms becomes a kind of
seed around which others more easily coalesce. Thus, although in the first instance we have a
calming of activity, while in the other an increase, in both cases the rout simile is introduced
to explain a process: the calming of consciousness around a stable object of thought and the
intensification of stormy conditions around a local disturbance.683 Lesher draws the general
conclusion that there is no suggestion here of the soldiers going or returning to an ajrchv;
rather, the fact that one soldier stops leads the others to do so.
I agree with Lesher that the subject of the verb h\lqen is most plausibly the process as a
whole. However, I think Aristotles simile can be given a more inclusive interpretation.684
Firstly, although the grammatical subject seems to be the process as a whole, clearly the
680

Prob. 18.7.917b1-2 (Forster).

Ibid., 18.7.917a29-32 (Forster).
682
Ibid., 26.8941a9-14 (Forster).
683
Lesher (2010), p. 98.
684
In other words, rather than trying to decide on one fixed literal meaning, we might try to draw out all of the
possible and relevant meanings on the assumption that Aristotle chose his words carefully, and that the whole
meaning will be more likely gained through drawing together the various possible interpretations.
681

186

individual parts, i.e. the soldiers, are themselves included in the process. In each case we have
a process governed by one principle leading to an increase in structure and unity among a
group of elements enveloped by the process. In the cloud case, we have a movement from a
less structured and less concentrated state, to a more concentrated one. Here the process is one
of condensation in which the leader is the original cloud. In the reading example, the
emphasis is on the concentration of nou`~ leading to a calming effect.
The contrast between the stillness of contemplation and the stormy sky is not as strong as
one might think. When we are thinking in a concentrated manner, nou`~ is not only calm, but
also very powerful,685 and most alive.686 The stillness of contemplation should not be seen
as lacking activity.
In the Posterior Analytics example, it also makes sense to suggest that the leader is the first
one to make a stand. Clearly, in a battle it is first and foremost the duty of the leader to stand
in the face of the enemy, and so to strengthen the resolve of his subordinates. It will most
likely be the best and the bravest (one might say the natural leader) who stands first. Now
nou``~ is the most plausible candidate for the leader. The first stand then is made by nou`~ or is
an act of nou`~. However, given the context, the process whereby more and more men follow
the leader in making a stand, will not be a random stopping here or there. Rather, it will be the
forming of a united front, a battle formation of some disciplined sort. Now given that the
soldiers were already in battle when the rout occurred, they were presumably already in some
formation prior to the rout. It would make little sense to speak of a rout, if the men were
already in a state of chaotic dispersion. Hence, the idea of going back to an original formation
does seem to be implicit in the simile after all.
What the Posterior Analytics version has in common with the other two is the idea of a
process whereby a number of subordinate elements are brought into a structured and
concentrated state by a single governing principle. It differs in suggesting that the governing
principle brings the elements back to a formation. The key to understanding how this can be
reconciled with Aristotles rejection of the idea that knowledge is recollection lies in the
distinction between what is most familiar and intelligible to us, and what is so by nature.
When we transpose the image to our human cognitive situation one important thing needs to
be kept in mind: for us there is no original formation at the beginning of the cognitive process,
the original formation comes last, without thereby ceasing to be original. There is no original
formation for us, because we do not begin with a noetic grasp of the intelligible structure of
the phenomena. Knowledge is not recollection because we are not going back to a place that
we have already occupied. For us, the rout has always already started. Recall at this point
Goethes statement:
685
686

Prob. 18.1.916b12 (Forster).

Ibid., 18.7.917a34 (Forster).
187

Phenomena, which others of us may call facts, are certain and definite by nature, but often
fluctuating in appearance. The scientific researcher strives to grasp and keep the definite aspect
of what he beholds. . .687

There is an original formation, an ajrchv that governs the phenomena, though not as
something separate, but as their intelligible aspect.688 Although for us the phenomena are to
begin with fluctuating in appearance (i.e. in rout), they are certain and definite by nature
(i.e. as ajrcaiv or Urphnomene). The original formation which is nothing other than the
ajrchv of the phenomenon cannot be given, from the start, in the disordered sensory
phenomena because the complete phenomenon, the phenomenon in its full realisation
(ejntelevceia), includes both the sensible and the intelligible aspects. The Urphnomen, while
it can be approximated by the whole synthesized from many perceptions, images and
memories, is nevertheless not a sensible phenomenon; it can only, finally, be seen by nou`~.
Thus, Aristotles use of ajrch;n here is not accidental the original formation simply is the
ajrchv sought in relation to a given sensible phenomenon. The ultimate governing principle
responsible for this original formation of the phenomena is nou`~, the ruling ajrchv in the
cosmos as a whole.
I have suggested that the first man to make a stand is the leader, i.e. nou`~. We can get a
clearer sense of what this means by considering what Aristotle says next:
For when one of the undifferentiated things has made a stand, the first universal is in the soul
(because although we perceive the particular [kaq e{kaston part by part], perceiving is of the
universal [kaqovlou in respect of the whole], e.g. of man but not of Kallias, the man.689

What is meant by one of the undifferentiated things? Since Aristotle speaks of the
undifferentiated thing as making a stand, there seems to be a direct connection to the simile. It
makes sense to say that the first undifferentiated thing is equivalent to the first man who
makes a stand. He also seems to say that the first undifferentiated thing to make a stand in the
soul is also the first, or experiential, universal. But I have suggested that the first one to make
a stand is the leader, i.e. nou`~. How can these elements be reconciled?
687

Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 24 (HA XIII: 23).
As already mentioned, it seems to me more than a coincidence that a military metaphor is also found at Met.
12.101075a11-16, where Aristotle discusses the relationship between God and the world. In that context the
metaphor is roughly as follows: The world is like an army whose good is found both in its order, in this case the
original formation, and in its leader, i.e. God. Although this goes beyond the text one might elaborate on what
Aristotle actually says in Posterior Analytics 2.19 to suggest that the gradual reversal of the rout is, so to speak, a
function of the leader (nou`~) ordering a halt. In other words, nou`~ functions as the tevlo~ which guides the process
of reformation.
689
APo.2.19.100a15-100b2: stavnto~ ga;r tw`n ajdiafovrwn eJnov~, prw`ton me;n ejn th`/ yuch`/ kaqovlou (kai; ga;r
aijsqavnetai me;n to; kaq e{kaston, hJ d ai[sqhsi~ tou` kaqovlou ejstivn, oi|on ajnqrwvpou, ajll ouj Kallivou
ajnqrwvpou).
688

188

The first undifferentiated thing to come to a stand in the soul is the concrete sensibleintelligible object. The object at this stage is sensible-intelligible, i.e. it is an undifferentiated
pre-synthetic unity having sensible and intelligible aspects which are only subsequently
distinguished. To say that the sensible-intelligible object makes a stand means that it is
discerned, that it is actually perceived as a certain determinate whole. This discernment is not
a function of sense perception alone since, as already stated, the senses do not perceive
individual objects. The discernment of the first sensible-intelligible whole is a function of
nou`~ seeing through the eyes as it were. Given the identity of knower and known in actual
cognition, the coming to a stand of the first determinate sensible-intelligible whole is at the
same time the coming to a stand of nou`~, since it is through a noetic act in perception that the
object is discerned by a human being at all.
Tredennick translates tw`n ajdiafovrwn eJnov~ as one individual percept, though it is unclear
whether he means the percept of an individual oujsiva, e.g. an individual soldier, Kallias, a
horse, etc., or whether he means an individual percept strictly speaking, e.g. a particular
colour. In fact, Aristotle is making the more general point that any act of perception always
involves the kaqovlou. Mure suggests this by saying that the content of the act of perception
is universal. This two-foldness is present in even the simplest sensible phenomena, for
instance, a given colour, or the letter a.690 The universal colour is an aspect of this particular
colour. Any actual act of knowledge is a union of the sensible and the intelligible aspect of the
phenomenon. Even in the case of the simplest sensible entity, this letter a, or this colour, we
are not dealing with something purely sensible.This a is at the same time an a, this triangle is
at the same time a triangle. The universal is neither strictly identical with the sensible
particular, nor is it some object separate from the particular.
This grasp of the concrete sensible-intelligible object in a sensible-noetic act is both the
starting point and the governing principle of all later knowledge. It is because human
knowledge starts with the concrete sensible-intelligible object that there is no a priori
knowledge, no possibility of knowledge in the absence of perception. The loss of a particular
sense means the loss of the corresponding knowledge not because knowledge is based on
perception alone in the empiricist sense, but because knowledge is based on the sensibleintelligible whole. For example, someone who cannot see colour cannot possibly come to a
grasp of the essence of colour, because colour is a sensible-intelligible whole and a grasp of its
essence presupposes a sensory-noetic grasp of this whole.691
The next step in Aristotles account describes the emergence of ever more encompassing
690

Met.13.10.1087a15-21: But per accidens sight sees universal colour, because this individual colour which it
sees is colour; and this individual a which the grammarian investigates is an a . . . . (Ross).
691
Ph. 2.1.193a7-9: A man blind from birth might reason about colors . . . such persons must be talking about
words without any thought to correspond. What Aristotle says, more precisely, is that necesssarily the logo~
presented by such people will be about mere names, and will not involve any noei`n at all. Those who have no
sense perception of color, cannot noei`n the nature of color either.
189

wholes. Aristotle writes:

Again a stand is made in the presence of these, until the indivisible universals have made a
stand, as when such and such an animal [stands] until animal does, and in the presence of this [a
stand is made] in the same way.692

An important point to note is the parallelism between the act of making a stand in the
presence of, or among, the phenomena, and the coming to a stand of the more encompassing
universals. This is again an example of the identity of knower and known in the act of
knowledge. The standing out of the universal as a determinate whole from among the many is
identical with the noetic act that grasps it. As Victor Kal says:
Aristotle places the human mind on the same level as the object of its cognition; just as this
object owes its existence in sense-perceptible reality to the mind of God, so the human mind
owes its (initially potential) existence in the embodied soul to the knowledge which the mind
gains of the object of its knowledge, and thus ultimately to the mind of God which is active in
this object.693

We might say that this is a meeting akin to that of Alexandros and Menelaos: two divine
aspects face each other, and the outer nou`~ meets the inner.
5.6 The Meaning of ejpagwghv
The next step in Aristotles account involves his introduction of ejpagwghv. I have already
noted the importance of this concept in Aristotles theory of knowledge. I have also mentioned
that it is typically understood as induction, and I have suggested some of the problems
associated with this interpretation. In this section I consider the concept in more detail.
Aristotle introduces ejpagwghv very suddenly. After having described the process of making a
stand among ever more encompassing wholes, he immediately writes:

692

APo.2.19.100b2-3: pavlin ejn touvtoi~ i{statai, e{w~ a[n ta; ajmerh` sth`/ kai; to; kaqovlou, oi|on toiondi; zw`/on,
e{w~ zw`/on: kai; ejn touvtw/ wJsauvtw~. I translate ejn as in the presence of in both cases since this seems to me
most appropriate given the contemplative nature of what is being described. The more developed kaqovlou, like
the initial experiential one, is an object of contemplation. One stands in the presence of the sensible-intelligible
thing, and one sees the kaqovlou. According to Tredennick (1960), p. 259, the move is towards every more
encompassing genera, ultimately ending with the categories, which are indivisible because they . . . do not admit
of analysis into genus and differentia. I do not think this is the right interpretation. Firstly, the ultimate ajrcaiv
cannot be the categories, because what ajrchv is sought depends on the phenomenon one is investigating.
Secondly, I think the indivisibility at stake is not the impossibility of division into genus and specific difference,
but rather indivisible unity and wholeness which charactersises every kaqovlou at whatever level. I have already
discussed this in relation to Aristotles idea of finding the commensurate universal. We understand triangle when
we know that the attribute 2R applies to it universally and necessarily precisely qua triangle, and not qua
isosceles triangle, or figure.
693
Victor Kal, On Intuition and Discursive Reasoning in Aristotle (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988), p. 113.
190

Thus it is clear that it is necessary for us to become familiar with [gnwrivzein] the primitives [ta;
prw`ta] through ejpagwghv, for perception too instills [ejmpoievw to produce or create in] the
kaqovlou in this way.694

This sudden turn suggests that ejpagwghv is another name for the cognitive process Aristotle
has been describing. But what does ejpagwghv mean? According to LSJ the word ejpagwghv has
a variety of meanings: a bringing in or to, a supplying, an enticement or allurement, an
incantation or spell. The verb ejpavgw means, among other things: to lead, to bring on, to
urge on as hunters do dogs, to lead on by persuasion or influence, to bring in or invite as
allies, to bring to a place, and to lead on an army against the enemy. The adjective
ejpagwgov~ means attractive or alluring. However, in the context of Aristotles philosophy
ejpagwghv is typically translated as induction. This traditional translation is valid
linguistically. The Latin source of the English word induction literally means to lead in.695
Groarke aims to recover the original Aristotelian understanding of induction by freeing it
from the layers of misunderstanding and misrepresentation it has suffered, especially under the
influence of modern, empiricist notions of induction. Although I am sympathetic to Groarkes
project, I am inclined to think the term induction is too coloured by misunderstandings and
weighed down with empiricist baggage, which in part explains my desire to avoid this word in
discussing Aristotelian ejpagwghv. In criticizing the translation of ejpagwghv as induction, I am
referring only to the distorted modern version.
The problem of induction is usually associated with David Hume, although one can find it
much earlier, for example, in Sextus Empiricus.696 Hume saw no logical justification for the
assumption that, in the future, natural processes will exhibit the same regularity that they are
currently observed to exhibit. My conviction that the sun will rise tomorrow has no rational
foundation, but is merely grounded in habit.
The characteristics of the modern form of induction are primarily the following: Firstly,
induction is understood as a form of argument, involving the inference to a general conclusion
694

APo. 2.19.100b2-4.
Cf. Biondi (2004), p. 192, where Biondi nicely characterizes the difference between induction and deduction:
Whereas the syllogism consists in drawing (down) of necessity a consequent from an antecedent, induction is
said to be a road or path leading (up) from particulars to a universal . . . . Syllogism and induction thus present
contrary intellectual motions, which (with certain reservations) may be respectively referred to as de-duction,
leading down (or out) from a universal, and in-duction, leading up (or in) to a universal.
696
J. R. Milton, Induction Before Hume, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 1 (1987), pp. 5556: The ancient sceptics appear in fact to have had rather less to say about induction than many of their modern
successors. The most substantial discussion of induction surviving from either the Academic or the Pyrrhonist
tradition is to be found in ch. 15 of Book II of Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Milton quotes Sextus
as follows: It is also easy, I consider, to set aside the method of induction. For, when they propose to establish
the universal from the particulars by means of induction, they will effect this by a review either of all or of some
of the particular instances. But if they review some, the induction will be insecure, since some of the particulars
omitted in the induction may contravene the universal; while if they are to review all, they will be toiling at the
impossible, since the particulars are infinite and indefinite. Thus on both grounds, as I think, the consequence is
that induction is invalidated.
695

191

from premises expressing a finite number of perceptions of particulars. Secondly, induction is

understood as enumeration, in other words, the epistemic force of an inductive generalization
is thought to derive from the number of instances observed. Thirdly, the generalization is often
thought to be an empirical claim about the total set of sensible instances of the particular type
of thing described.
The assumption that such empirical generalizations have no universal validity has
devastating consequences for scientific knowledge. In order to defend the possibility of
scientific knowledge, Kant argued for the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments, which
are both universally valid and provide us with information about the world.
Jeremy Naydler discusses the problem of induction in relation both to the Goethean and
Aristotelian perspectives.697 Kant, says Naydler, accepts the Humean assertion that
experience cannot reveal to us any necessary laws698 Kant concludes that since necessity
cannot be drawn from experience, it must be put into experience. However, since the human
being is incapable of intuitive thinking, the source of the laws that thinking legislates can only
be found in the necessary structures of the human mind. Kant serves as a good exemple of one
way of responding to this problem.
Jonathan Lear has argued that if what he calls the objective idealist reading of Aristotles
philosophy is correct, then a common conception of the history of philosophy has to be
revised. It is widely believed that before Kant philosophers tended to conceive the mind as a
mirror of nature.699 But Aristotle did not subscribe to the view that the mind merely reflects
nature. Lear has pointed out that Kants characterization of his own Copernican Revolution
enshrines this misunderstanding.700
What Lears analysis implies and Naydler makes explicit, is that the crux of the problem is
the denial of intuitive thinking. The real origin of the problem of induction lies in Humes
blindness to the intuitive character of thinking and his assumption that ideas derive exclusively
from sense-impressions. Hume is thus barred from the realization that the perception of
necessity in nature arises from the interplay of sense-perception and intuitive thinking, both of
which transmit two indivisible aspects of the same world.
In discussing Karl Poppers response to these twin Humean and Kantian answers to the
problem, Naydler makes a point which is directly relevant to the issue of interpreting
Aristotles concept of ejpagwghv. Consider the statement all ravens are black. Many
697

Naydler (1982), pp. 92-107.

Ibid., p. 97.
699
Lear (1999), p. 306.
700
Ibid., p. 307: Kant describes his Copernican Revolution in philosophy as the shift from the supposition that
all our knowledge must conform to objects to the supposition that objects must conform to our knowledge. The
problem with this description is that it permits the reader to suppose that Kants distinctive contribution lies in the
suggested direction of the conforming relation rather than in the characterization of the mind to which objects are
conforming.
698

192

philosophers assume that the perception of a single non-black raven would suffice to falsify
this statement. In Poppers terms, this is precisely what makes the statement scientific, i.e. the
fact that it is falsifiable. But Popper fails to make a basic distinction between essential and
accidental features. The unasked question here is: how is it that we know that the non-black
raven is a raven?701 It is not clear that a list of the attributes that are distinctive of ravens, by
which we identify a bird as a raven, is open to the same kind of falsification as the statement
that all ravens are black. This is because, counter instances will simply be classified under
a different species.702 Naydler sums up his assessment of the issue as follows:
There is thus a difference between universal statements which characterize a generic object, and
those which simply predict the occurrence of certain events. Such a distinction Popper fails to
make, with the result that all universal statements alike are treated as if they were mere
conjectures, subject to falsification by future observations, which is clearly not the case.703

Groarke gives another good example to illustrate this point. Consider the statement All
dogs have four legs. After making this statement I see a dog that lost one of its legs in an
accident. Does this refute my initial statement? On the modern view it does. But this is so only
if we interpret the statement as making the claim that all dogs we will ever encounter in our
perceptual experience will have four legs. As Groarke rightly says, Aristotle is not interested
in this sort of merely enumerative induction. Aristotle is interested in scientific definitions that
express necessary attributes of things. A dog essentially has four legs; the fact that some
chance instance is found to have three legs because of disease or misadventure does not in the
least undermine the law that all dogs have four legs. Indeed, this would be true even if all
the dogs in the world had three legs.704
The belief that the perception of one counter instance refutes the statement that all dogs
have four legs depends on a misunderstanding. It is assumed that the ideal goal of induction is
generalisation based on a perfect enumeration that shows that every single instance of the
existing kind has a certain attribute. On this view, induction is faced with the impossible task
of aiming for a kind of comprehensive sense-perception. Induction involves gathering all the
sensible instances together, so as to see them all at once and make sure that they all have the
701

Naydler (1982), p. 100.

Ibid., p. 100.
703
Ibid., p. 100.
704
Groarke (2009), p. 141: Suppose that everyone in the world cut off the right foreleg of every dog as soon as it
was born. (Not a logical impossibility.) Suppose every dog in this cruel world was a three legged dog. A clearthinking Aristotelian would still have to claim that the scientific generalization dogs have four legs is true.
Why? Because the three-leggedness of all the observed examples is an artificial contrivance dependent on human
intervention. It is an expression of human perversity, not a reflection on the true nature of dogs. Cf. also p. 416:
If I claim that dogs have four legs, but my dog loses one in a car accident this does not impugn the validity of
this generalization . . . . Inasmuch as a dog lacks four legs, it imperfectly embodies the idea of what a dog is. If,
however, dog nature can be inadequately expressed in individual cases, such counter-examples do not alter the
true nature of a species.
702

193

attribute in question. This is complicated by the temporal dimension. It is typically assumed

that inductive generalizations are also predictions about the future. Here also, the tendency is
to assume that the goal of induction is merely the prediction of particular instances, hence that
induction is always, and in principle, open to refutation by even one counter instance.
Aristotles ejpagwghv has virtually nothing to do with this modern notion.705 In other words,
ejpagwghv is not a matter of generalization from a finite set of observations, and it is not a
matter of inference.706 Nor does it involve predictions about future observations on the basis of
a finite set of past observations. Rather, ejpagwghv is a process through which the knower is
lead towards a vision of the intelligible whole in and through the sensible particulars.707 Both
the notion of inference and that of generalization obscure the fact that ejpagwghv relies on a
way of seeing.
Certainly ejpagwghv can support an inference, as in the inductive syllogism, but it is not itself
primarily an inference. Talking in terms of inference gives the misleading sense that ejpagwghv
involves stepping out into a cognitive fog, proposing a hypothesis that needs to be supported
by indirect evidence. This is not how Aristotle conceives of ejpagwghv. Rather than being a
doubtful, hypothetical procedure ejpagwghv leads to nou`~, a state of insight which is the
pinnacle of cognitive clarity and truth. Leonard Peikoff notes that ejpagwghv at no point
involves an inductive inference or argument, since the general proposition, once conceived,
is self evident and does not require to be inferred from premises.708 While I disagree with the
view that the goal of ejpagwghv is the grasp of a general proposition, Peikoff is certainly right
705

There are interpreters who support the idea that ejpagwghv is different from the modern notion of induction. Cf.
McKirahan (1983), pp. 1-2: It would be fundamentally wrong to assume that Aristotles notion is the same as
any modern notion of induction. This kind of anachronism would only lead to the conclusion that Aristotle did a
wretched job of describing induction. Equally wrong would be to assume that he was struggling towards some
modern conception of induction and to say that passages where what he says does not fit that conception show
only that there was more work to be done. However, with the exception of those like Groarke (who has a
radically different understanding of induction), few scholars go as far as saying that ejpagwghv is not induction at
all. I think the reason for this is simply the lack of an alternative conception. If the only concept one has to
explain what is involved in reaching a universal on the basis of the perception of particulars is induction, one will
naturally see Aristotles ejpagwghv as being more or less akin to induction. The Goethean approach, however,
offers an alternative to induction, which allows us to dispense with the concept altogether. This approach is, as I
argue, much closer to Aristotles own position.
706
Engberg-Pedersen (1979), p. 305, also argues that ejpagwghv does not involve inference: Aristotelian ejpagwghv
is . . . different from the modern concept of induction: while this concept includes the idea of an inference from
particular to universal and hence raises the question of the validity of the inductive procedure, there is no trace of
these ideas in the schema as given [here Pedersen is referring to his schema organizing Aristotles different uses
of ejpagwghv]. Acquiring insight into some universal point as a consequence of attending to particular cases is
different from inferring that point from the particulars.
707
Walter Brogan (2005), pp.29-30, gives an interesting description of ejpagwghv: Epagg is neither the seeing
of beings as a whole, nor the perception of a particular being. Epagg is the way of knowing that moves
between the twofold way in which human beings are related to what is. Epagg gathers this twofold way of
knowing into one. Thus, epagg is not the study of individual beings in order to abstract the universal from them
. . . In epagg, we do not look toward a part of the being, but toward the being as such, as a whole. Therefore,
we see it as it necessarily is and as it necessarily reveals itself in our repeated encounters with it.
708
Leonard Peikoff, Aristotles Intuitive Induction, The New Scholasticism 59 2 (1985), p. 188.
194

that there is no inference involved.

The claim that ejpagwghv is not generalization needs to be clarified. Because induction is
typically thought of as aiming for complete enumeration the notion of ejpagwghv as involving
generalization from particular instances might be interpreted as the making of a claim about
the sensible properties of all of the sensibly existing particulars. As we saw with the dog
example this is not the case. There is a normative force here. As Goethe puts it, one seeks to
grasp not only how the phenomena appear, but how they should appear. The insight, by means
of ejpagwghv and nou`~, that a dog necessarily has four legs implies that a dog should have four
legs. A three legged dog does not in the slightest threaten this truth. As Goethe suggested
earlier, a grasp of the universal allows us to keep the law in view even when presented with
sensible instances which seem to contradict it.
The fact that ejpagwghv has been interpreted as induction is rather puzzling. There is virtually
no support in Aristotles own works for an interpretation of ejpagwghv along modern lines. Why
has this interpretation been influential? The most plausible explanation seems to be the natural
tendency to interpret an unfamiliar position in terms of what is familiar. Since the modern
understanding of induction is widely accepted, scholars naturally try to interpret Aristotle in
these terms. Because of these assumptions, such interpreters fail to see that the very fact that
these modern assumptions lead to insoluble problems, suggests that there is something wrong
with the assumptions, at the very least as guides to the interpretation of Aristotle. Aristotle
says, unequivocally, that all the ajrcaiv are reached by ejpagwghv. These ajrcaiv are, as we have
seen, irreducible intelligible features of the world. They are universal, necessary facts. This in
itself suggests very forcefully that whatever Aristotle means by ejpagwghv, he does not mean
what modern philosophers mean by induction.
At this point, it is necessary to draw attention to the one place in Aristotle which might
seem to support a reading along modern lines. A consideration of Prior Analytics 2.23, has
lead some interpreters to conclude that Aristotle is referring to a notion of perfect induction
where, as McKirahan puts it we know all the specific cases covered by the conclusion.709
Regarding Prior Analytics 2.23, Engberg-Pedersen writes: It is normally held that in this
chapter Aristotle is talking of perfect induction and analyzing that species of induction in
such a way that it comes out as a proof or valid argument.710
Groarke sees this kind of interpretation as a desperate measure arising from the desire to
save Aristotle from the apparently massive blunder of thinking that an inductive argument can
be deductively valid. This is done by arguing that Aristotle is dealing with a rare form of
inductive argument, namely, one which is based on the observation of literally all of the
709

McKirahan (1983), p. 1. For other commentators who speak of perfect induction in relation to Aristotles
account cf. Barnes (1975b), pp. 253-254; also, W. N. Thompson, Aristotles Deduction and Induction
(Amsterdam, Rodolphi, 1975), p. 84.
710
T. Engberg-Pedersen (1979), p. 311.
195

relevant particulars. It is easy to see why this reading would suggest itself to those influenced
by modern empiricist epistemology and the modern idea of induction. If we start with the
assumptions that the human being has no intuitive intellect capable of grasping universal and
necessary features of the natural world, that the human knower can base universal claims
solely on inference from the observation of particular instances, and that in any case the
knower never has direct, non-representational access to reality, then one will naturally
conclude that only a complete induction could lead to indubitable results. The fact that
perfect induction is obviously not available to us only serves to underscore the essential
hopelessness of the so called problem of induction. Groarke is right in saying that perfect
induction is the the mechanical ideal toward which statistical theories of induction naturally
tend.711
Indeed, if Aristotles conception of ejpagwghv were akin to the modern notion of induction
then he would necessarily be committed to the ideal of perfect induction. This is because
Aristotle is committed to the necessity and universality of the principles of science. While
modern authors might have the option of settling for something less than necessity and
universality, and viewing the inductive process as essentially fallible, this option is not
available to Aristotle. Aristotle is committed to strictly universal and necessary principles as
the basis for demonstrative ejpisthvmh. If he understood ejpagwghv as a form of enumerative
induction then he would necessarily be committed to at least the ideal of perfect induction,
since nothing less than the observation of literally all the instances could possibly ground the
sort of principles he needs. But as soon as we admit this we commit Aristotle to an absurd
position.
Even had Aristotle not stated unequivocally that the human mind cannot traverse an infinite
series it is in any case obvious that perfect induction is impossible, since no human being can
possibly observe every instance of any kind.712 In being committed to perfect induction
Aristotle would be committed not to a rare form of induction, but to a non-existent one; he
would be committed to something impossible.713
Indeed if one accepts the modern notion of induction then one is committed to a procedure
which could lead to universal and necessary principles only for an omniscient being. A perfect
induction would have to involve the present perception of literally all actual and possible
instances. A sequential perception of all the instances would not suffice, for it would always
711

Groarke (2009), p. 112.

APo.1.3.72b11: For it is impossible to traverse the infinite (ajduvnaton ga;r ta; a[peira dielqei`n). Indeed,
even Aristotles God could not traverse an infinite series in the sense required, because, as Aristotle also holds,
there is no actual infinite.
713
Thomas V. Upton, Infinity and Perfect induction in Aristotle, Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association 55 (1981), p. 149: Perfect or complete induction would entail the examination of a
potentially infinite number of possible (past, present, and future) cases of a particular kind of reality. According
to Aristotle, however, the human mind cannot traverse an infinite series . . . . Because of this impossibility the
notion of perfect induction would seem to be a questionable ideal at best.
712

196

be possible that the instances one is no longer observing have changed in the relevant sense.
One could not rely on the memory of the instances no longer observed, not only because of the
epistemic uncertainty associated with memory, but also because the instances could have
changes since one observed them.
One might argue that they could not have changed by appealing to some notion of the
regularity and unchanging character of natural laws. But on a strictly empiricist account any
such notion must itself be based on induction, i.e. on the view that in all observed instances the
law has not changed. This would need to be claimed for all of the laws governing the natural
world in order to justify any claim that nature as a whole is regular and unchanging in its
operation.
Ultimately, the ideal of induction in the modern sense is the impossible ideal of a
comprehensive sense perception. Perfect induction would be possible only for an omniscient
perceiver. This idea follows inevitably from the denial of the intuitive character of thinking. If
thinking is not intuitive, then the truth of any generalization of the form all xs are y, will
necessarily depend on an actual perception of all xs. The Goethean conception of the relation
between the intelligible whole (the idea) and the sensible whole (the particulars gathered
together to stimulate insight into the idea) allows us to affirm the intuitive character of noetic
seeing without identifying it with sense perception and thus thinking of the universal grasped
by ejpagwghv as an actually comprehensive sensible grouping.
But let us consider the text of Prior Analytics 2.23 more closely. Aristotle discusses the
inductive syllogism as follows:
Now induction, or rather the syllogism which springs out of induction, consists in establishing
syllogistically a relation between one extreme and the middle by means of the other extreme, e.g.
if B is the middle term between A and C, it consists in proving through C that A belongs to B.
For this is the manner in which we make inductions. For example let A stand for long-lived, B
for bile-less, and C for the particular long-lived animals, e.g. man, horse, mule. A then belongs to
the whole of C: for whatever is bileless is long-lived. But B also (not possessing bile) belongs
to all C. If then C is convertible with B, and the middle term is not wider in extension, it is
necessary that A should belong to B. For it has already been proved that if two things belong to
the same thing, and the extreme is convertible with one of them, then the other predicate will
belong to the predicate that is converted. But we must apprehend C as made up of all the
particulars. For induction proceeds through an enumeration of all the cases [italics added].714

As Groarke has shown the validity of the inductive syllogism is secured by the idea of
conversion.715 There are a number of problems of interpretation associated with understanding
714

APr. 2.23.68b15-29.
Groarke (2009), p. 129: The two conditions for convertability (or counter-predication) are uniqueness and
necessity. In the case of convertible terms S is P, the extension of S and P must coincide . . . . Aristotle, for
example, would claim that the term human being is convertible with the definition rational animal. In other
words, all the individual instances of human being added up together exactly coincide with all those of rational
animals. The two groups are interchangeable for they share the very same members. This relationship of
715

197

this passage, and the inductive syllogism which I cannot go into here. For my purposes the
important point to note is that conversion is based on noetic insight not on a literal sensory
observation of all the instances.
The real crux of the perfect induction interpretation (which is the strongest element in the
very weak case for the view that Aristotles ejpagwghv is induction in the modern sense) is
found in the last two sentences of the quote above: But we must apprehend C as made up of
all the particulars. For induction proceeds through an enumeration of all the cases. The Greek
reads as follows: dei` de; noei`n to; G to; ejx aJpavntwn tw`n kaq e{kaston sugkeivmenon: hJ ga;r
ejpagwgh; dia; pavntwn. Aristotle is clear that a noetic act is involved, and not the senseperception of many instances. It is necessary to see noetically (noei`n) C as composed of all of
the particulars. What Aristotle is not saying is that C must be based on the perception of all the
sensible particulars. Aristotle is talking about the noetic whole, not about a sensible grouping.
Based on a necessarily finite perception of singular instances of some thing one gains, by
means of ejpagwghv and nou`~, a kaqovlou or view of the whole; not of the sensible sum of
particulars, but of the intelligible whole in which the particulars are contained and which
accounts for the nature they have. The next point follows from this. In the second sentence
there is no mention of enumeration at all. Literally Aristotle says: For ejpagwghv [is] through
all/the whole [of the particulars].
As Upton has noted, much depends on how we interpret the phrase dia; pavntwn,
specifically, whether we interpret it to mean that ejpagwghv proceeds by means of an
observation of all the particulars. There is no cogent reason to suppose that this is what
Aristotle means. Firstly, as already noted, he makes clear that a noetic seeing is involved and
not sense perception. Secondly, he explicitly denies that a human being can traverse an infinite
series. Thirdly, as noted earlier, he says, in his discussion of ajgcivnoia that a person can
discern the universal from even one instance.716 Fourthly, and this is decisive, we have already
seen that even a complete induction would not constitute the kind of cognitive grasp necessary
for scientific knowledge. Even if there were no triangles other than isosceles triangles, and you
knew of every single one that it has 2R, in other words, even if you could make a
generalization on the basis of a complete induction, still you would not know this except
sophistically, and in respect of number. In the face of these objections, there is really no
reason to interpret these sentences as supporting a doctrine of complete induction. Upton
writes:
Although dia with the genitive is often used to indicate the genitive of means and this is how
the phrase is traditionally taken in II 23 dia can also mean through. And, I would argue, this
alternative translation more accurately expresses what Aristotle thought could be achieved
convertibility obtains because of the objective nature of things.
716
APr.1.34.89b10-21.
198

through epagg; that is, that the results of epagg run through all of the particulars taken
individually.

For Aristotle, ejpagwghv leads, by means of perception of a finite number of instances the
number of which depends on many factors, foremost among them being the cognitive capacity
of the knower to a noetic view of the whole, the kaqovlou or ajrchv that runs through all of
the particulars, stringing them together into a whole.
5.7 From Seeing to Seeing: From ejpagwghv to nou`~
The only step left is for Aristotle to introduce nou`~ explicitly into his account of the
cognitive process. The remaining steps of Aristotles argument in Posterior Analytics 2.19 run
as follows: 1) some of our cognitive e{xei~ are always true (ejpisthvmh and nou`~) while others
(such as opinion and reasoning) can be true or false; 2) the ajrcai; are necessarily true, hence
can only be grasped by a e{xi~ incapable of error; 3) this leaves only ejpisthvmh and nou`~; 4) of
these two nou`~ is more precise717 than ejpisthvmh; 5) furthermore, the ajrcaiv of demonstration
are more knowable718 than demonstration; 6) hence there can be no ejpisthvmh of the ajrcaiv; 7)
since nothing except nou`~ is truer719 than ejpisthvmh it must be nou``~ that knows the ajrcaiv; 8)
therefore, nou`~ will be the ajrchv of ejpisthvmh. The final sentence of the Posterior Analytics
runs: And the ajrchv will be of the ajrchv, while scientific knowledge as a whole will similarly
be related to the whole body of fact.720 Here, Aristotle again affirms the unitive character of
noetic seeing. The ajrchv (nou`~) is of the ajrchv (the kaqovlou). In other words, the act of noetic
seeing is identical with the kaqovlou which it contemplates, and which it envelops, or
comprehends, just as ejpisthvmh in turn comprehends in a lower and more discursive manner,
the facts it explains.

717

APo. 2.19.100b8-9. More precise translates ajkribevsteron. I prefer this to Tredennicks more accurate
because the latter suggests representation, whereas more precise suggests sharpness of vision. I dont see much
merit in Barnes more certain which seems to me to psychologise the notion unnecessarily.
718
Ibid., 2.19.100b10. More knowable translates gnwrimwvterai.
719
Ibid., 2.19.100b12. Truer translates ajlhqevsteron. This comparative literally means truer. This translation
is definitely preferable to Tredennicks more infallible. It makes no sense to say that one faculty is more
infallible than another. Infallibility does not come in degrees. Besides, ejpisthvmh is in any case always true, i.e.
infallible, so this cant be what distinguishes it from nou`~. What distinguishes nou`~ from discursive knowledge is
that it is the manifestation of a more basic kind of truth than that manifested in ejpisthvmh. Nou`~ is the
manifestation of what I have called ontological truth. Cf. Lesher (1973), p. 63: . . . both nou`~ and ejpisthvmh
are said to be always true (ajlhqh` d ajei; ejpisthvmh kai; nou`~, 100 b 7-8), and it is hard to see how nou`~ can be
more accurate and less fallible than a state of mind which is always true. Lesher argues that what distinguishes
nou`~ from ejpisthvmh is, in the first instance, that it grasps the first principles or basic truths of the science;
and secondly that it is truer because the . . . knowledge of first principles is a better kind of knowledge and first
principles are themselves more knowable because they are the a[tiai for the knowledge of other principles.
720
APo. 2.19.100b15-18: kai; hJ me;n ajrch; th`~ ajrch`~ ei]h a[n, hJ de; pa`sa oJmoivw~ e[cei pro;~ to; pa`n pra`gma.
Tredennick interprets pa`n pra`gma as referring to the whole world of facts, while Mure has the whole body
199

Certain interpreters have been puzzled by the introduction of nou`~ at the end of 2.19. If the
ajrcaiv are reached through ejpagwghv (which these scholars interpret as induction) and thus
through a strictly empirical process, why do we need any form of intellectual intuition?
Since we already have the ajrcaiv through induction what possible purpose can nou`~ serve? Is
it merely the name for the final state of mind that emerges from induction? Does it in some
way justify the ajrcaiv?
It should be clear by now that all such questions are misguided. Barnes view that Nous
has no philosophical importance721 in the Posterior Analytics is completely wrong. It is a
mistake to expect Aristotle to argue for something that he clearly takes to be so obvious as to
need no justification. It is a mistake to treat nou`~ as a hypothesis introduced for some specific
theoretical reason. An unprejudiced reading of Aristotle makes it clear that for him nou``~ is no
postulate but a living experience. Cognition is not a mechanism that functions invariably when
certain objective conditions are present. A person who has developed nearness-to-nous
(ajgcivnoia) may grasp the kaqovlou from even one instance, while another person will not see
even after many examples. As Goethe succinctly puts it:
. . . there is a difference between seeing and seeing . . . the eyes of the spirit have to work in
perpetual living connection with those of the body, for otherwise one risks seeing and yet seeing
past a thing.722

Although we rarely achieve the full noetic grasp of the ajrcaiv, and even then only at the end
of inquiry and after a long process, nou`~ is always presupposed as the ontological ground of
the phenomena. The dual character of nou`~ as both ajrchv and tevlo~ is a function of our nature
as limited beings. We cannot be from the beginning in possession of the noetic vision because
we are too far removed from governing origin [th`~ ajrch`~], that is, divine novhsi~.723 Nou`~
represents a real, ontological identification with the phenomenon, an event wherein the
phenomenon becomes self-evident. Goethe, again, describes the cognitive process and its
conclusion admirably:
Everything we call invention and discovery in the higher sense is . . . the activation of an internal
feeling for truth, which has long unobtrusively been developing and then suddenly and
unexpectedly leads with lightning speed to fruitful knowledge. It is a revelation which proceeds
from within the human being, to act on the external world, and it gives us an intimation of our
kinship with God. It is a synthesis of mind with the external world. . .724

of fact. Barnes suggests the science as a whole. I think that the first two are preferable because they make
clear the connection, via a kind of nesting, between nou`~, the ajrcaiv, science, and the individual facts.
721
Barnes (1975b), p. 259.
722
Goethe, in Naydler (1996), p. 115 (FA XIV: 432).
723
GC 2.10.336b30-31 (Joachim, slightly altered).
724
Goethe, in Wells (1978), p. 24 (HA 12: 414).
200

The highest thing we can attain in the sensible world is that active state in which we behold
the Urphnomen, the phenomenon become translucent to its own essence. There is nothing
behind the experience of seeing the essence of the phenomenon in and through its sensible
expression. There is no more basic explanation, there are no more basic explanatory
entities. Some people, says Goethe,
. . . are not satisfied to behold an Archetypal Phenomenon. They think there must be something
beyond. They are like children who, having looked into a mirror, turn it around to see what is on
the other side.725

But there is no other side, since in the Urphnomen both sides are present at once and
united: subject and object, sensible and intelligible. In a passage from his Theory of Color
Goethe presents ideas that can serve as a kind of summary of the essential elements of a
rational empiricist interpretation of Posterior Analytics 2.19:
In general, events we become aware of through experience are simply those we can categorize
empirically after some observation. These empirical categories may be further subsumed under
scientific categories leading to even higher levels. In the process we become familiar with
certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. From this point everything gradually
falls into place under higher principles and laws revealed not to our reason through words and
hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception through phenomena. We call these phenomena
archetypal phenomena because nothing higher manifests itself in the world; such phenomena, on
the other hand, make it possible for us to descend, just as we ascend, by going step by step from
the archetypal phenomena to the most mundane occurrence in our daily experience.726

We can express this in Arisotelian terms as follows: just as we ascend, through the cognitive
process (including perception, imagination, memory, experience and ejpagwghv) toward the
ajrcaiv, which we see, ultimately, by intuitive perception through phenomena, so we can also
descend and demonstrate the necessity of individual facts by showing them to be ultimately
explicable in relation to more basic facts, and ultimately in relation to the ajrcaiv.
Throughout 2.19, Aristotle gives what seem to be three different answers to the question
regarding the source of our knowledge of the ajrcaiv. Firstly, he suggests that the pre-existing
power that accounts for our ability to acquire the cognitive e{xei~ without already having them
is perception. A little later he argues that it must be by ejpagwghv that we acquire
knowledge727of the first principles. Thus, on this second view, it is perception plus ejpagwghv
that gives us this knowledge. Finally, he ends by saying that nou`~ grasps the ajrcaiv and is
itself the ajrchv of ejpisthvmh. This last claim suggests that nou`~ is the ajrchv of the ajrcaiv, just as

725

Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann 18/2/1829, in Naydler (1996), p. 108 (FA XII (39): 311).
Goethe, Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, pp. 194-195 (HA XIII: 367).
727
Apo. 2.19.100b2-3.
726

201

in On the Soul 3.8 nou`~ is said to be the form of forms (ei\do~ eijdw`n).728 The participational,
unitive character of noetic cognition means that for Aristotle the ajrcaiv are internal to nou`~; in
other words noetic activity envelops the intelligibles considered as objects.
The combination of these three apparently different answers to the question how we come
to know the ajrcaiv is the source of many of the most difficult problems in the interpretation of
Posterior Analytics 2.19. In chapter 1, I quoted Barnes succinct formulation of these
problems:
B19 is Janus faced, looking in one direction towards empiricism, and in the other towards
rationalism. The principles are apprehended by induction (epagog) in an honest empiricist
way; but they are also grasped by nous, or intuition as it is normally translated, in the easy
rationalist fashion. It is a classic problem in Aristotelian scholarship to explain or reconcile these
two apparently opposing aspects of Aristotles thought.729

We are now in a better position to appreciate the claim, made initially in chapter 1, that in
order to understand Aristotles theory of knowledge, we must reject the very terms of the
problem. In other words, we must reject the opposition between empiricism and rationalism;
we must reject the translation/interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction; and finally, we must
reject the conception of intuition Barnes presupposes when he refers to grasping the
principles in the easy rationalist fashion. Barnes implies that intuition is a magical faculty
for grasping scientific truths without having to do any of the empirical work of the honest
empirical laborer. The Goethean interpretation of Aristotles account of the cognitive process
has shown how decisively Aristotle rejects such a view. There is nothing easy about
developing the ability to see with the eye of the mind, or nou`~. When Aristotle enjoins us to
strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us he is clearly not suggesting
an easy road to truth.730
The process Aristotle describes in Posterior Analytics 2.19 has various aspects: Firstly, it is
leads to acquisition of a developed capacity to perceive ajrcaiv. Secondly, it leads to the grasp
the ajrchv of a given phenomenon. Thirdly, it is a stage in the life-cycle of the phenomenon
itself. What is, from the perspective of the human knower, a process of reaching knowledge,
is, at the same time the movement of the thing itself towards intelligibility. Neither the
sensible nor the intelligible aspects of the phenomenon are created by the human being; both
are received. Fourthly, insofar as divine Thinking is active in the phenomena, and is their
ontological ground, this process is at the same time the acquisition/actualisation of nou`~.731 To
728

DA 3.8.432a2.
Barnes (1975b), pp. 248-249.
730
EN 10.7.1177b34.
731
Cf. Goethe, Theory of Color: Introduction, in Scientific Studies, p. 164 (FA XIII/1: 24): From among the
lesser ancillary organs of the animals, light has called forth one organ to become its like, and thus the eye is
formed by the light and for the light so that the inner light may emerge to meet the outer light. One might
729

202

refer back to Barnes statement, one might say that Posterior Analytics 2.19 is Janus-faced
because the world is Janus-faced the world is one God with two faces, a sensible and and
intelligible one.732

reformulate this, in order to express Aristotles view, as follows: Human nou`~ owes its existence to divine Nou`~.
In the embodied human soul Nou`~ produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so nou`~ is formed by Nou`~ and
for Nou`~ so that the inner nou``~ may meet the outer Nou`~.
732
McNeill (1999), p. 241, suggests a deep connection between originary theoria and the presencing of the
sensible. He also discusses the notion of the sensible as the appearing of the divine cosmos a pre-metaphysical
conception of the world as divine.
203

Chapter 6. Aristotles Conception of Scientific Method

6.1 Introduction
In the last chapter I presented a general account of the cognitive process leading from sense
perception to the noetic view of the whole that serves as the ajrchv of demonstrative science. In
this chapter I want to deal with certain remaining problems, and at the same time to give a
more detailed account of Aristotles conception of scientific knowledge and method by
considering some specific examples taken from his work.
Some interpreters deny that the Posterior Analytics describes a method of scientific
discovery. This denial derives from a perceived discrepancy between the conception of
scientific knowledge presented in the Posterior Analytics, and Aristotles actual practice in his
scientific works.733 The Posterior Analytics seems to restrict knowledge to what has been
demonstrated from self-evident first principles, whereas the scientific treatises seem to reach
their results without such demonstrations.734 Some suggest that the Posterior Analytics
presents only a method for the systematization and dissemination of existing scientific
knowledge.735 I respond to this problem by discussing some of Robert Boltons arguments in
support of the idea that the Posterior Analytics contains a general account of the method of
scientific discovery. The view that the Posterior Analytics includes no account of the method
of scientific discovery is connected to the view that the method used in the scientific writings
is dialectical.736 I very briefly discuss the dialectical interpretation at the end of this chapter.

733

D. K. W. Modrak, Aristotles Epistemology: One or Many Theories? in Aristotles Philosophical

Development: Problems and Prospects, ed. William Wians (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996),
p. 151: On a variety of grounds, commentators have argued that Aristotles later works fail to meet one or
another of the epistemic requirements set out in the Posterior Analytics. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find a
single uncontroversial example of a demonstration in Aristotles other writings. Cf. Jonathan Barnes,
Aristotles Theory of Demonstration,in Articles on Aristotle Vol.1: Science, ed. Barnes et al. (1975a), p. 65:
The method which Aristotle follows in his scientific and philosophical treatises and the method which he
prescribes for scientific and philosophical activity in the Posterior Analytics seem not to coincide.
734
Bolton (1987), p. 121. Cf. R. J. Hankinson, Philosophy of Science, in Articles on Aristotle Vol.1: Science,
ed. Barnes et al. (1975), pp. 113: . . . one can trawl the whole of Aristotles considerable scientific oeuvre
without netting a single instance of a fully worked-out syllogism . . . Aristotles commentators sometimes trouble
to reformulate his arguments in syllogistic form but Aristotle himself does not do so.
735
Barnes (1975a), p. 77: The problem only arises if it is assumed that the theory presented in the Posterior
Analytics was intended by Aristotle to give an account of the sort of activities which his treatises report . . . . it is
clear that without it no problem arises; for if the Posterior Analytics was never intended to provide the theoretical
substructure for Aristotles scientific research, then there can be no question of inconsistency between the
research and the theory. But the assumption is false: the theory of demonstrative science was never meant to
guide or formalize scientific research: it is concerned exclusively with the teaching of facts already won; it does
not describe how scientists do, or ought to, acquire knowledge: it offers a formal model of how teachers should
present and impart knowledge.
736
Cf. Martha C. Nussbaum, Saving Aristotles Appearances, in Language and Logos, ed. Martha Craven
Nussbaum and Malcolm Schofield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 267-293.
204

Another important problem is the apparent conflict between the account of scientific
method given in the Posterior Analytics and the account suggested by Physics 1.1. Whereas
the former is thought to be inductive (i.e. science starts with sensible particulars and moves
towards a grasp of universals), the Physics seems to present a diametrically opposed view (i.e.
science starts with universals, and proceeds to examine these in a manner akin to conceptual
analysis). This apparent disagreement has served as an important element in a recent reversal
of scholarly opinion concerning Aristotles theory of knowledge. Bolton describes this
reversal as follows:
Traditionally scholars have found it congenial that Aristotles intended method in his works on
natural science is empirical, even as they criticized him for failures on this count. The current
generation has reversed this verdict entirely. The Physics in particular is now standardly taken as
a paradigm of Aristotles use of dialectical method, understood as a largely conceptual or a priori
technique of inquiry appropriate for philosophy, as opposed to the more empirical enquires
which we, these days, now typically regard as scientific.737

In fact, the conflict between these two accounts is only apparent and can be resolved by
understanding the relation between two distinct senses of kaqovlou. In the last chapter I noted
the puzzling fact that Aristotle seems to identify experience which is a certain whole
composed of a number of perceptions, appearances, and memories and the kaqovlou. I
referred to this as the experiential universal. The idea that we start with mere particulars is
therefore mistaken. Knowledge starts with a sensible-intelligible whole that is implicitly
universal. Nevertheless, this initial whole is not the culmination of the cognitive process. For
Aristotle there is a distinction between experience on the one hand and art and science on the
other. The discernment of the second more articulated kaqolovu is not the discernment of a
numerically distinct kaqolovu; rather, it is the bringing to light of the universal dimension of
the originally given whole, and the gaining of a more adequate perception of it. This
relationship is the key to resolving the apparent incompatibility between the two accounts, and
enables us to give a unified rational empiricist interpretation of Aristotles theory of
knowledge.
6.2 Understanding and Discovery
I begin with the first problem. The popular view Bolton criticizes rests on two main
assumptions: firstly, that the methodology of the scientific works is empirical in a way that
cannot be reconciled with the Posterior Analytics; secondly, that Aristotles method in the
scientific writings is dialectical. This popular interpretation depends on the view that the
737

Robert Bolton, Aristotles Method in Natural Science: Physics 1, in Aristotles Physics: a Collection of
Essays, ed. Lindsay Judson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 1-2.
205

Posterior Analytics contains no method of discovery and cannot be reconciled with the
supposedly empirical (but somehow simultaneously dialectical) method of the scientific
works.738 This is itself a symptom of a failure to make sense of the apparently incompatible
empiricist and rationalist elements in the text. Once we understand that Aristotle is a rational
empiricist, there is no need to even consider the idea that scientific discovery proceeds via
dialectic.739
In Posterior Analytics 2.1, Aristotle describes the basic things sought by the knower: The
things we seek are equal in number to those we understand. We seek four things: the fact, the
reason why, if it is, what it is.740 To clarify what he meas Aristotle gives some examples. To
seek the fact is e.g. to seek to discover whether the sun is eclipsed or not. Once we have
discovered the fact (in this case by perception) we stop. Once we know that the fact exists
(once we have perceived it) we ask why it is, e.g. why the sun suffers eclipse. As I have
already discussed, seeking the why is just seeking a more adequate perception of the fact, since
the reason why is nothing more than the fact grasped in the necessity of its own nature.
The distinction between the first pair of questions and the second has to do with the
distinction between simple and composite things. Aristotle seems to see suffering eclipse as
an attribute of the sun. Hence discovering the fact, in this case, means discovering that a
certain complex of phenomena exists, while discovering why means discovering why this
relationship exists. To ask if it is means, e.g. to ask if a centaur or a god exists; in other
words, to ask about the simple existence of an oujsiva. And to ask what it is is to ask what the
nature is of the oujsiva in question. In Posterior Analytics 2.8, Aristotle writes:
When we are aware that something is so we search for why it is; sometimes both become evident
simultaneously, but it is not possible to know why a thing is so before knowing that it is.
Similarly, it is clear that it is not possible to know what it is to be something without knowing
that it exists. We are sometimes aware in an accidental way that something exists and sometimes
by being aware of something of the thing itself (for instance that thunder is a certain noise in the
clouds, that eclipse is a certain loss of light, that man is a certain sort of animal or that the soul is
that which moves itself). Whenever we know in an accidental way that a thing exists our
awareness is necessarily in no way directed toward what it is. For we do not know that it exists.
To search for what something is not being aware that it exists is to search for nothing. But
whenever we are aware of something [of the thing itself] to that extent it is easier to search.
Thus, according to the manner in which we are aware that something exists, so is our awareness
directed toward what it is.741

738

Cf. J. H. Randall, Aristotle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 33: There is in the Posterior
Analytics no concern with method and procedure: Aristotles gaze is fixed entirely on what a completed and
perfected science is like.
739
I should really say exclusively via dialectic. I am not denying that dialectical argument might play a role.
What I am opposing is the view that dialectic, like other human cognitive practices, is hermetically sealed in
some distinct cultural realm and cut off from the things of nature.
740
APo. 2.1.89b23-25 (Barnes).
206

We need to know that a thing exists in order to search for what it is. In all cases the
existence of the thing comes first. Aristotle is not referring to some bare existence without any
essence. Existence is not some unknowable stuff hidden behind what is cognitively accessible
to us. The existence of something is manifest in its determinate appearance. This is why
something that does not exist, i.e. a goat-stag, does not have an essence. A modern thinker
might be inclined to say, interpreting essence as concept, that there is a concept of e.g.
unicorn even though there are no unicorns. This formalism is absent in Aristotles thought.
Richard Cobb-Stevens discusses this feature of Aristotles thought in relation to modern
logic.742 Cobb-Stevens writes:
. . . in Greek philosophy there seems to be no distinctively existential use of the verb to be
having the sense conveyed in contemporary logic by an expression such as x exists. Aristotle
does, of course, distinguish between ti estin questions (what is?) and ei estin questions
(whetheris?) but the focus of the latter questions is always on identifying something as having
the nature referred to by the predicate rather than to the existence of that something tout court.743

For Aristotle there is no knowledge a priori, i.e. prior to our encounter with something in
experience. This original givenness is not something brutely sensible. In this regard, Boltons
discussion of the problems associated with translating the phrase e[comen pro;~ to; tiv ejstin
are instructive. Bolton notes that that both Mure and Tredennick avoid a literal translation.744
J. L. Ackrill suggests as the best, literal translation, we are related to what it is. Bolton
objects that e[comen clearly has cognitive force; it signifies some cognitive grasp or
awareness.745 However, we grasp what it is is too strong because at this stage we dont yet
grasp what it is. What we need is a sense of an initial impression, that involves sufficient
knowledge of the essence to permit a meaningful search for its full nature, but perhaps no
more.746 Thus, the initial discovery that something exists, is always already a partial
741

Ibid., 2.8.93a15-28 (Bolton).

Richard Cobb-Stevens,The Presence of Aristotelian Nous in Husserls Philosophy, in
The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy, ed. Riccardo Pozzo (Washington: Catholic University of
America Press, 2004), p.232: In modern logic . . . particulars tend to be considered as mere somethings shorn
of the specific features that make them what they are and only subsequently as falling under the conceptfunctions expressed by the predicates. It would never have occurred to Aristotle or to the ancients generally to
regard particulars in this manner. For Aristotle, to be is not to be the value of a variable; to be is first and
necessarily to share in some specific nature. Indeed, whenever he considers the individual as such, he always
refers to the unity of the particular and its nature in the intuited whole. The nature or form of a thing is revealed to
us by its specific look (eidos). The species-look is what (ti esti) we know when we know some particular
thing (tode ti). Knowledge of a particular and its form always occurs as a unity and this prior unity is the
condition for the subsequent distinction between the particular and what it is.
743
Ibid., p. 232. Cobb-Stevens here refers to David Lacherman, The Ethics of Geometry: a Genealogy of
Modernity (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 93-98.
744
Mure translates this as: our knowledge of a things essential nature. Tredennick on the other hand translates:
our capacity for discovering what a thing is.
745
Bolton (1987), p. 132.
746
Ibid., p. 132. Bolton also mentions Barnes quite apt suggestion: we have some hold on what it is.
742

207

discovery of what it is.747 Aristotle gives a number of examples of ways in which we can be
aware of the existence of some phenomenon, and of how how knowledge can develop out of
such an initial grasp. As Bolton helpfully points out, the examples are structured in a particular
way. The first example given at Posterior Analytics 2.8, presents us with a case in which the
fact and its aijtiva are given simultaneously, whereas the later examples involve cases where
the fact is discovered first, and the aijtiva is grasped only afterwards. Aristotle describes the
first example as follows:
Let A be eclipse, C the moon, B the earths acting as a screen. Now to ask whether the moon is
eclipsed or not is to ask whether B has occurred. But this is precisely the same as asking whether
A has a defining condition [lovgo~]; and if this condition actually exists, we assert that A also
exists.748

Unlike Bolton, who thinks this is the least interesting749 of Aristotles examples, I believe
it is the most illuminating, although it needs to be read alongside the following:
Cases in which the middle is sensible show that the object of our inquiry is always the
middle: we inquire, because we have not perceived it, whether there is or is not a middle
causing e.g. an eclipse. On the other hand, if we were on the moon we should not be inquiring
either as to the fact or the reason but both fact and reason would be obvious simultaneously. For
the act of perception would enable us to know the kaqovlou too; since, the present fact of an
eclipse being evident, perception would then at the same time give us the present fact of the
earths screening the suns light, and from this would arise the kaqovlou.750

Combined, these quotes describe a case where the phenomenon and the ajitiva are as nearly
identical as it is possible for the sensible and intelligible aspects of a phenomenon to be.
Usually, we see A (e.g. the eclipse occurs) but do not have B. So we ask why this
phenomenon has occurred. Here, however, we have both simultaneously, because in this
thought experiment we are on the moon and can directly see the earth screening the light of
the sun and preventing it from reaching the moon. Hence, we need to inquire neither whether
the eclipse is occurring nor why. Both are dh`lon (manifest) simultaneously. This is an
747

Cobb-Stevens (2004), p. 233: Discernment of essences is therefore the product of a work of discrimination
that begins from the initial looks of things In other words, discernment of essences starts from the sensible
form as the manifestation of the intelligible form.
748
APo.2.8.93a30-34. I think that lovgo~ here is probably untranslateable. Barnes account is problematic
because it puts the focus on whether or not it is possible to explain something. Tredennick and Mure both
maintain a sense of the ontological basis of the explicability of the phenomenon. Mure (1955) notes that . . .
lovgo~ varies in meaning from mere statement to the formula giving to; tiv h\n ei\nai of a substance, but always
the underlying unity of its meanings is the rationality, the intelligible connexion, which discourse verbal or held
by the soul with herself exhibits in varying degrees. Here it is equivalent to proximate cause. The fact that
lovgo~ also means definition assists Aristotle to identify cause and definition. I would also suggest something
like intelligible structure as a plausible alternative.
749
Bolton (1987), p. 133.
750
APo. 2.2.90a24-31 (Mure, altered slightly).
208

exemplary case of the kaqovlou being seen as implicit in the clearly perceived particular.
Now consider how exactly this corresponds to the account of the Urphnomen given in
Chapter 2. In particular, consider again Steiners definition:
Such a phenomenon, now, in which the character of the process follows directly and in a
transparently clear way out of the nature of the pertinent factors, is called an archetypal
phenomenon (Urphnomen) or a basic fact (Grundsache). This archetypal phenomenon is
identical with objective natural law. For in it is expressed not only that a process has occurred
under certain conditions but also that it had to occur. Given the nature of what was under
consideration there, one realizes that the process had to occur.751

Because of the circumstances, i.e. our being on the moon, we can see that the eclipse arises
in a transparently clear way out of the nature of the pertinent factors.752 We see
simultaneously that it occurs and why it occurs; and because we understand why it occurs we
also know that it occurs necessarily or universally. The universality is derived from the
necessity which is in turn founded on the intelligibility of the phenomenon. It is not that one
observes that this happens in every instance. One realizes in this one, exemplary instance that
it must happen, hence that it must happen universally in all cases of the same type.
The simultaneous perception of the fact and of the reason why has nothing to do with
inferring from a large number of previously perceived cases; and the kaqovlou which arises
directly from this perception is not an inductive generalization. There is here no projection
into the future on the basis of past observations. No future observations could negate this
kaqovlou.
Imagine as a possible counter-example that in the future the earth becomes totally
transparent, so that it no longer blocks the light of the sun. This poses no problem for the
Aristotelian account. The flaw in this far-fetched counterexample is that it changes a
fundamental feature of the original complex of phenomena, namely the earths opaqueness
and ability to block the light of the sun. The kaqovlou is intrinsic to this particular complex of
phenomena, which involves the presence of an opaque body. The necessity has the form: in
any and every instance where these elements are present, the same phenomenon (e.g. eclipse)
will occur.
This is what science is always aiming at: a cognitive state where the phenomena which as
Goethe put it are definite by nature but fluctuating in appearance become definite in
appearance; in other words, where the laws governing the phenomena become phenomenal,
and where one virtually sees ideas with ones own eyes. Such ajrcaiv are, as Steiner puts it:

751

Steiner (1988b), p. 80.

Cf. Lonergan (1967), p. 14: The act of understanding leaps forth when the sensible data are in a suitable
constellation.

752

209

. . . simply facts that have been wrested from the confusion of chance happening and made into
necessary facts. We know that if the factors a and b are there, a particular effect necessarily
takes place. We do not go outside the phenomenal world. The content of science, as we think of
it, is nothing more than objective happening. Only the form according to which the facts are
placed together is changed.753

The Urphnomen is not purely sensory. Aristotle is equally clear that There is no
scientific knowledge through sense perception.754 Aristotle is not saying that one cannot
attain scientific knowledge in response to perception, i.e. that it is attained in some a priori
manner; rather, he is saying that the senses cannot see the kaqovlou.755 Of necessity sense
perception sees an individual at a certain place and at a certain time, whereas the kaqovlou is
neither this nor now, but is always (ajei;) and everywhere (pantacou`). Elsewhere, Aristotle
says in relation to the eclipse example:
Hence, if we were on the moon and saw the earth intercepting the light of the sun, we should not
know the cause of the eclipse. We should only perceive that an elipse was taking place at that
moment; we should have no perception at all of the reason for it, because (as we have seen) there
is no sense perception of the universal.756

Superficially, this might seem to say the exact opposite of the passage considered earlier.757
Whereas in the earlier passage Aristotle spoke of a case where the middle, i.e. the aijtiva, is
perceptible by the senses (aijsqhtovn), here he makes it very clear that there is no sense
perception of the aijtiva. How can the aijtiva simultaneously be and not be an object of the
senses?
Firstly, we need to clear up an ambiguity in the way Aristotle talks about the kaqovlou. In
Posterior Analytics 1.31, Aristotle uses two examples to illustrate his claim that perception
does not grasp the universal: the eclipse example and the example of a triangle having the sum
of its angles equal to right angles (2R). He says much the same thing in both cases.758
However, the two examples differ in an important sense, of which I am not certain that
Aristotle was aware. The relationship between the triangle and its having 2R is clearly the
relation between a subject and an attribute. We grasp what Mure calls the commensurate
universal when we grasp that every instance of triangle has 2R qua triangle. Things are not so
simple with the eclipse example. Aristotle seems to think that the subject in this case is the
moon, and that being eclipsed is an attribute of the moon.
753

Steiner (1988b), p. 80.

APo. 1.31.87b28.
755
Ibid., 1.31.87b31-32: It is impossible to perceive the kaqovlou that covers all things (to; de; kaqovlou kai; ejpi
pa`sin ajduvnaton aijsqavnesqai).
756
Ibid., 1.31.87b39-88a3 (Tredennick, with slight changes.)
757
Ibid., 2.2.90a24-31.
758
Ibid., 1.31.87b35-38: . . . it is clear that even if one could perceive of the triangle that it has its angles equal to
two right angles, we would seek a demonstration and would not, as some say, understand it . . . . (Mure).
754

210

That this is not the case can be seen by considering what is involved in grasping the
commensurate universal in this case. It is plainly false that being eclipsed is an attribute of
every instance of moon qua moon. It is not the case that on any occasion on which I observe
the moon, it will be eclipsed, whereas it is the case with any given triangle that it will have 2R.
Also, when the moon is eclipsed it is not eclipsed qua moon.
In fact the subject in this case is the whole situation. The phenomenon eclipse is a
kaqovlou attribute of the whole situation considered as an instance of more universal situation.
The particular situation, call it s, is an instance of the following universal situation (call it S):
three spherical objects A, B and C (where C is a light source) arranged such that B (which is
opaque) is interposed between A and C, hence stopping the light from C reaching A.759 Lets
call the phenomenon that results from S, E to distinguish it from the particular phenomenon
resulting from s, e. The relationship between s and S is exactly akin to the relationship
between e.g. this isosceles triangle and Triangle. In the triangle example we grasp that all
isosceles triangles have 2R because all isosceles triangles are triangles and all triangles have
2R. In the eclipse case, we grasp that all instances of s (all instances of the situation in which
the earth, sun and moon are in a certain configuration) are e (in other words, have the attribute
we call eclipse) because all cases of s are instances of S, and all Ss necessarily have the
attribute E. Once we make this clarification everything fits together. Eclipse is a kaqovlou
attribute of s because it is an attribute of any and every instance of s qua S.
In Posterior Analytics 2.2 Aristotle distinguishes between seeking to discover whether some
subject is or is not something (i.e. whether a subject has a given attribute) and whether it
simply is. In the latter case we seek to discover e.g. if the moon or night is or is not.760
Tredennick notes that Night is not a substance like the moon, but either an event or a
privative attribute.761 Whereas the moon is both a subject of attributes (in the grammatical or
logical sense), and an oujsiva, night is an event, treated as a subject.
The clarification that in some cases the subject is a situation or complex of phenomena
rather than an object like a triangle is important because many of the ajrcaiv or Urphnomene
dealt with in the context of the scientific study of nature take this form. When Goethe, for
example, speaks of light and dark seen through a turbid medium762 as an Urphnomen in
the domain of color, he is referring to color as necessarily arising from the interaction between
more than one element. The same can be said for Aristotles definition of thunder as the

759

This description could of course be refined. Determining precisely which elements are essential, hence what
the boundaries of the situation are is a difficult process.
760
APo. 2.2.90a5.
761
Tredennick (1960), p. 177. By privative attribute I presume he means that night is a privation of light in the
transparent. Since light is the ejnevrgeia of aether, which is described by Aristotle as an oujsiva, one could
presumably say that night is a privative attribute of this oujsiva.
762
Goethe, Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, p. 206 (FA XIII/1: 102).
211

quenching of fire in cloud.763 In this case, thunder is not a kaqovlou attribute of cloud, but
rather of the whole complex fire-being-quenched-in-cloud.
We can now return to the question raised earlier, namely, in what sense the aijtiva is
perceptible to the senses and in what sense it is not. Steiner offers a way of resolving this
problem. In dealing with inorganic phenomena like the eclipse, we attempt to grasp the
necessary relationship between sense-perceptible elements. All of the elements needed to
understand why the phenomenon necessarily arises are actually sensibly perceptible. There is
no need for us to postulate anything non-sensible in order to understand the situation.
Obviously one needs thinking, and thinking is not sensible; however, thinking is not a
postulate but an immediate given in which we directly participate. The point is rather that the
activity of thinking in coming to understand inorganic phenomena is purely formal. As Steiner
puts it: Thinking says nothing a priori about the given, but it does produce those forms upon
which the lawfulness of phenomena becomes manifest a posteriori.764 Without going beyond
what is given in experience we place the facts together in such a way that they work in
accordance with their own nature, and only in accordance with it.765
Consider the eclipse example: what is actually given in experience is a very complex
situation. Even to grasp that the main elements involved are the moon, the earth and the sun, is
already to discriminate certain elements from the complexity of the complete experiential
situation. Standing on the earth and seeing the moon eclipsed I am in fact faced with a
disordered multitude of elements: e.g. all of the other stars in the sky, the clouds etc. I have to
determine which elements are relevant. In Aristotles thought experiment, the situation is
already greatly simplified. Experience gives us the fact (in this case the situation), science
grasps the necessary fact. The necessary fact is simply the experiential fact purged of
irrelevant elements and understood in its intrinsic necessity.
This is why Aristotle can say that in a sense, the middle term, i.e., the aijtiva or reason why,
is both sensibly perceptible and not sensibly perceptible. The situation as Aristotle presents it
is already so clearly defined and simple, and hence, the law underlying the phenomenon is so
close to the surface, that it seems almost to be given directly to perception, and the
contribution of thinking may not be noticed. Nevertheless, Aristotle makes it clear that the
scientific grasp of the kaqovlou comes from (ejk) perception, not by means of perception.766
We can see the same basic process occurring in relation to the illness example given in
Metaphysics 1.1. As Frede describes it:

763

APo. 2.8.93b7-8.
Steiner (1993), p. 38.
765
Steiner (1988b), p. 81.
766
APo.2.2.90a28: For from perceiving [italics added] it would come about that we knew the universal too.
(Barnes) Cf. also, APo. 2.2.90a31.
764

212

To have true knowledge we would have to grasp the salient feature which distinguishes all those
who benefit from this treatment when they suffer from this disease from those who do not
benefit. Those who benefit might, for example, be of a bilious or of a phlegmatic condition (cf.
981a11-12). It is only if we grasp this feature that we can form more than a mere empirical
generalization, namely the truly universal judgment that all patients of this constitution who
suffer from this fever will benefit from this treatment.767

Initially we know that a certain number of men, Callias, Socrates etc., have benefited from
treatment x when suffering from illness y. Now, we specify our perception of the patients by
adding the qualification that all those who benefit are of a similar constitution. The crucial
thing is that the feature be the salient one, where the salient feature is the one that allows us to
see the necessary and hence truly universal connection768 involved. We need to understand
why certain men benefit from the treatment. And we do this by isolating those elements of the
situation under consideration that necessarily give rise to a certain effect.
This is made clearer in Fredes discussion of a passage from the Nicomachean Ethics.769 As
Frede presents it, the passage expresses the following idea: we may know that the meat of
fowl is good for health, so that generally patients of a certain type will respond favorably to
eating it. However, we need insight to recognize that the salient feature is the lightness of the
meat, and not the fact that it is fowl. In Fredes words: Its being fowl is irrelevant to its being
good for one, just as in the earlier example the patients having a certain complexion in a way
was irrelevant to his benefiting from the given treatment.770
In fact, the passage Frede cites makes a rather different point. What Aristotle actually says
is that those who have experience are more likely to produce health than those who merely
have a grasp of the universal principle without experience. For someone may know that light
meats are wholesome, but not know which meats are light, e.g. not know that the meat of fowl
is light. Hence he will not be able to produce health. Conversely, someone who knows by
experience that e.g. chicken is wholesome will be able to produce health more readily,
although he may not understand why chicken is wholesome.
Nevertheless, Fredes point is valid and important. The situation he describes is basically
the following: we perceive a certain complex of phenomena A (having a fever) and B
(receiving a certain treatment) and C (benefiting from the treatment). All sorts of elements are
present. For example, we note that all of the persons who have benefited from this treatment
are men, are Greek, are perhaps within a certain age range, have a certain complexion, are of a
certain constitution (phlegmatic) etc. We need to isolate those factors which if present
necessarily give rise to the phenomenon under consideration. So, if we are trying to grasp why
the treatment is effective, we need to grasp that, e.g. the patients having a ruddy complexion
is not relevant, since the phenomenon arises even in the case of non-ruddy patients. Or, it may
767

Frede (1996), p. 161.

Ibid. p. 161.
769
EN 6.7.1141b16-20.
768

213

be the case that ruddiness is always associated with having a certain constitution, in which
case we would need to clarify that it is qua phlegmatic and not qua ruddy (even though
ruddiness is perhaps caused by being phlegmatic) that the patient responds to the treatment.
Further, we may find that being male is not necessary, since the treatment is also effective on
women. We may find that it works on non-Greeks. We proceed in this way, until we isolate
the fact that, e.g. if we remove the phlegmatic temperament as a factor, the treatment is no
longer effective. So, we grasp that combining a patient suffering from this kind of fever and
having this kind of constitution with this kind of treatment, leads necessarily to this kind of
result, i.e. their being cured of the fever. What distinguishes the merely empirical
generalization from the truly universal comprehension is that in the latter we isolate the salient
elements and thus grasp that
. . . there is a necessary and hence truly universal connection between having this constitution,
suffering from this fever, and benefiting from this treatment, which, once spelled out, explains the
success of the treatment.771

Someone may object as follows: Let us assume that I seem to have isolated the salient
feature. I have found that having a phlegmatic constitution is the factor that is always
correlated with the effectiveness of the treatment. Nevertheless, my supposed certainty is
based ultimately on having seen that a certain finite number of phlegmatics suffering from
fever have responded to this treatment. How can I possibly know that this is the case
universally, that all phlegmatics will respond favorably, or that the next one will? The problem
with this objection is that it interprets the process as a form of induction, which it is not. The
grasp of the universal is not the result of an inference, and is not based evidentially on the
particular observations. The process is misunderstood if one does not remember that it is
always ultimately the noei`n, the realization or insight, that grasps the necessary fact. If nou`~ is
not taken into account then all we have are what Frede calls empirical generalizations.
It is possible to imagine a visitor to the moon so obtuse that he would simply fail to see the
connection between the factors involved. He may not realize that the darkness of the moon is
caused by the lack of light reaching it. He may think that the light has simply died out on the
other side of the earth rather than being stopped by it. The precise cause of his lack of
understanding is not important. The point is that a noetic act is involved in letting the
lawfulness of the phenomenon show itself.
Now, the first eclipse example I described was one where the aijtiva is given together with
the phenomenon.772 The next example is one where we are given a phenomenon but do not as
770

Frede (1996), p. 161.

Ibid., p. 161.
772
APo. 2.7.93a34-36: When we have found the answer, if the premisses are immediate, we know fact and
reason together. (Mure).
771

214

yet grasp its ajitiva:

. . . let C be the moon, A eclipse, B the fact that the moon fails to produce shadows though she is
full and no visible body intervenes between us and her. Then if B, failure to produce shadows in
spite of the absence of an intervening body, is attributable to C, and A, eclipse, is attributable to
B, it is clear that the moon is eclipsed, but the reason why is not yet clear, and we know that
eclipse exists, but we do not know what its essential nature is. But when it is clear that A is
attributable to C and we proceed to ask the reason of this fact, we are inquiring what is the nature
of B: is it the earths acting as a screen, or the moons rotation or her extinction? But B is the
definition of the other term, viz., in these examples, of the major term A; for eclipse is
constituted by the earth acting as a screen.773

Bolton presents a useful way of visualizing what is involved here. Imagine a hunter who
decides to go out on the night of the full moon. Although there are no clouds in the sky the
hunter fails to see the
. . . the normal patterns of light and shade which he had expected on such a night to facilitate his
hunting. From this he is aware that the moon is eclipsed, understanding an eclipse simply as the
failure of the moon to produce shadows of things when it is obvious that the sky is clear.774

Here the initial grasp of the essence of the phenomenon is based solely on a grasp of
explicable properties of the thing and on no generic or other features of its ultimate
essence.775 In the first instance we came closest to things in their general state,776 whereas
in this case we have initially only a grasp of a property of the phenomenon, which while not
accidental, needs to be explicated in terms of more basic elements of the phenomenon. It is
necessarily the case that if the moon is eclipsed there will be a lack of shadows. However, our
initial definition of eclipse as the failure to cast shadows does not tell us why the eclipse
occurs, i.e., what it is. The failure to cast shadows is a phenomenon which follows from a
more basic phenomenon, and it is ultimately explicable in terms of this more basic
phenomenon.
Thus, scientific inquiry follows a certain general methodology: (1) We begin with an

773

Ibid., 2.7.93a37-93b9 (Mure).

Bolton (1987), p. 136. Bolton mentions Ross argument that the perception of the moons inability to cast
shadows is only evidence for the fact that there is an eclipse. It seems to me that this misses the central point of
these examples, which is the movement from an initially obscure grasp of the phenomenon, to a grasp of its
definite underlying essence. To talk about evidence here introduces a dualism which leads us astray. Eclipse
in its essential nature is not some transcendent entity utterly inaccessible to us, about which we can only make
inferences on the basis of the evidence available to us. The essence is found not beyond the phenomena, but in
their midst. The awareness of the moons failure to cast shadows is an awareness of the existence of eclipse,
because we are at all stages talking about a phenomenon. The initial grasp is certainly inadequate, but that does
not make it a mere grasp of evidence about something non-phenomenal.
775
Ibid., p. 137.
776
Goethe, Empirical Observation and Science, in Scientific Studies, p. 25 (HA XIII: 24).
774

215

awareness of some easily apprehendable features manifested by some kind.777 (2) Such an
initial awareness can take a number of forms. The first and least likely is a case where the
phenomenon and its essence are given simultaneously. A second possibility is that we are
aware only of some some feature explicable by reference to some more basic feature and
ultimately by reference to the essence,778 as in the second example of the awareness of the
moons failure to cast shadows. A third possibility is where we are aware of one part of the
essence of the kind which is explicable by reference to some other part.779 (3) The first
example, where the perceptual phenomenon immediately displays its essence, presents us with
an ajrchv or Urphnomen. When some aspect of the essence, or some connected explicable
feature is given without the essence being given, we proceed to inquire further in order to
explain the apprehended features by means of something more basically explanatory, and we
proceed in this way until we reach the ultimately self-explanatory phenomenon in which the
essence manifests itself. This last stage exhibits primitive or indemonstrable features780 of
the phenomenon. The ajrcaiv are essences, which have a determinate intelligible content that is
discovered rather than being postulated. The ajrcaiv are indemonstrable because they are
grasped by a non-discursive thinking which is a form of seeing.781
6.3 Posterior Analytics 2.19 or Physics 1.1?
Now, I turn to the second problem mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. In a recent
article Lesher notes that there seem to be two main acounts of scientific and philosophical
method in Aristotles work. The first account is found in the Posterior Analytics. Two
elements are central here: firstly, scientific knowledge involves constructing syllogisms of the
right kind, on the basis of the right kind of premises; secondly,
. . . the path to knowledge begins from the perception of sensible particulars, advances through
the formulation of universal concepts and principles, and ends in a grasp of the subject grounded
in a knowledge of its ultimate or un-middled principles.782
777

Bolton (1987), p. 139.

Ibid., p. 140.
779
Ibid., p.140. An example of this is given at APo. 2.8.93b7-14: Thus, (1) What is thunder? The quenching of
fire in cloud, and (2) Why does it thunder? Because fire is quenched in the cloud, are equivalent. Let C be
cloud, A thunder, B the quenching of fire. Then B is attributable to C, cloud, since fire is quenched in it; and A,
noise, is attributable to B; and B is assuredly the definition of the major term A. If there be a further mediating
cause of B, it will be one of the remaining partial definitions of A. Here, Aristotle seems to treat thunder
(bronthv) and noise (yovfo~) interchangeably. Hence, what is initially given, i.e. a certain noise, is a part of the
essence of thunder. The fact that e.g. trees or clouds fail to cast shadows when there is a lunar eclipse is not part
of the essence of eclipse in the same way.
780
Bolton (1987), p. 140.
781
Goethe, in Brady (1998), p. 98 (FA XXIV: 535): An idea cannot be demonstrated empirically, nor can it
actually be proved. An individual not in possession of it will never catch sight of it with the physical eye.
782
Lesher, Aristotles Considered View of the Path to Knowledge, p. 1.
778

216

According to Lesher, there are two problems with taking this to be Aristotles final view of
knowledge. Firstly, Aristotles scientific treatises contain no explicit syllogisms. Lesher
suggests that the strictly syllogistic view of scientific knowledge was eventually abandoned by
Aristotle. For my purposes, this genetic question is not that important. I think the continued
relevance of the Aristotelian conception of knowledge is independent of the syllogistic form it
takes in the Posterior Analytics. However, Lesher raises an apparently more serious problem.
The Posterior Analytics account seems to be in conflict with the account given at the
beginning of the Physics. The first paragraph of the Physics reads:
When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles [ajrcai;], conditions [ai[tia],
or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge, that is to say scientific
knowledge, is attained. For we do not think we know a thing until we are acquainted with its
primary conditions [ta; ai[tia ta; prw`ta] or first principles [ta;~ ajrca;~ ta;~ prwvta~], and have
carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements. Plainly therefore in the science of Nature, as
in other branches of study, our first task will be to try to determine what relates to its
principles.783

At first glance, this paragraph seems compatible with the Posterior Analytics account.
Although there is no mention of demonstration, some familiar elements are present. Scientific
knowledge presupposes being acquainted with the aijtiav or ajrchv. Even the wording is
reminiscent of Posterior Analytics 71b9-12.784 In the scientific knowledge of nature, as in
other areas of inquiry, one must attempt, first, to distinguish what pertains to the ajrcaiv.
In the second paragraph Aristotle repeats his standard view that we should start from the
things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are
clearer and more knowable by nature.785 The problem comes in paragraph three. According
to many interpreters, the Posterior Analytics teaches that the things we start from, the things
that are more knowable and obvious to us are the sensible particulars. But here Aristotle says:
Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and
principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from
generalities [kaqovlou] to particulars [kaq e{kasta]; for it is a whole that is best known to senseperception, and a kaqovlou is a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts.
Much the same thing happens in the relation of the name to the formula. A name, e.g. circle,
signifies vaguely a sort of whole: its definition analyses this into its particular senses. Similarly a
child begins by calling all men father, and all women mother, but later on distinguishes each
of them.786

783

Ph. 1.1.184a1-11 (Hardie & Gaye).

APo. 1.11.71b9-12: We think we know a particular strictly, and not in the sophistical manner according to the
accidental, whenever think we recognize the aijtiva through which the thing is.
785
Ph. 1.1.184a16-18 (Hardie & Gaye).
784

217

This seems to state the exact opposite of the doctrine found in the Posterior Analytics. As
Ross notes in his commentary, in the Posterior Analytics the
. . . kaqovlou is described as farthest from sense and therefore as gnwvrimon th`/ fuvsei [what is
familiar by nature], not hJmi`n [to us], while here the kaqovlou is identified with the gnwvrimon
hJmi`n [what is familiar to us] from which the study of first principles must proceed.787

The puzzle is therefore twofold: on the one hand, Aristotle seems to reverse the order of
priority of the kaqovlou in referring to it as familiar to us;788 on the other hand, he seems to
make it an object of sense perception. Ross concludes that here
. . . kaqovlou is not used in its usual Aristotelian meaning. The reference must be not to a
universal conceived quite clearly in its true nature, but to that stage in knowledge in which an
object is known by perception to possess some general characterisitic (e.g. to be an animal)
before it is known what its specific characteristic is (e.g. whether it is a horse or a cow.)789

According to Ross, we start from a more generic grasp of the essence of something on the
basis of the vague whole presented to us in perception, and proceed to a more specific grasp.
However, it is still not clear how the examples Aristotle gives relate to this point. Aristotle
says that a name, e.g. circle (oJ kuvklo~) signifies vaguely a certain whole, while the
definition (oJrismo;~) of it, divides it into parts. In the normal Aristotelian sense a definition
combines the genus with the differentia; in this case, a circle is a plane figure (genus) such that
all points on its circumference are equidistant from a given point (differentia). This would
mean that whereas the name circle is initially grasped in a way which does not distinguish
between the genus and the differentia, definition involves distinguishing the two. On this view
these are the parts into which this initial whole is divided. Ross thinks this is impossible.
Is Aristotle perhaps referring to the analysis of a genus into its species? This cannot be the
right sense here, says Ross, since a definition does not state the species contained in a genus,
and in any case the genus circle has no species.790 Ross suggests that Aristotle means that in
definining the word circle it is first necessary to analyse it into its different meanings, since,
in this case, the word is ambiguous.791 Thus, on Ross view Aristotle is referring to an
incidental feature of definition rather than to definition itself.
786

Ibid., 1.1.184a21-184b14 (Hardie & Gaye, with some changes).

Ross (1936), p. 457.
788
APo. 1.2.71b335-72a6: Things are prior and more familiar in two ways; for it is not the same to be prior by
nature and prior in relation to us, nor to be more familiar and more familiar to us. I call prior and more familiar in
relation to us what is nearer to perception, prior and more familiar simpliciter what is further away. What is most
universal is further away, and the particulars are nearest; and these are opposite to each other. (Barnes).
789
Ross (1936), p. 457.
790
Ibid., 458.
791
LSJ vs kuvklo~: A. ring, circle, II.1. a wheel, 4. the vault of the sky, 5. orb, disk of the sun and moon
etc.
787

218

Joseph Owens disagrees with Ross, and argues that the particular components into which
the definition expressly divides its objects are clearly enough the genus and the specific
differentia.792 On Owens reading, Ross is saying that we move from knowledge of the genus
(animal) to knowledge of the species (cow). Thus the genus will not be one of the ajrcai;,
elements, or aijtivai reached by analysis. Owens objects to Ross argument on a number of
points: firstly he objects to the claim that Aristotle is using the word kaqovlou in a sense
different from its usual one; secondly, he rejects the connected idea that Aristotle distinguishes
between the genus (considered as a rudimentary universal) and the species (as a true
universal); thirdly, he disagrees with the view that definition here involves distinguishing the
various senses of an ambiguous word.
Lesher takes a more broadly reconciliatory approach.793 He suggests that the two accounts,
given in the Posterior Analytics and the Physics respectively, should be thought of as parts of
one overall cognitive process which has the following stages: (1) firstly, we gain a
rudimentary grasp of the (experiential) universal on the basis of repeated perception of
individual cases; (2) next we refine our understanding of this rudimentary universal by an
analytic process which enables us to discern the principles, elements and causes initially given
in a confused way in this rudimentary universal; (3) then, on the basis of this analytic
clarification of the inner structure of the universal, we produce an adequate definition of the
essential nature of the thing being studied; (4) finally, on the basis of the definition gained in
step (3) we are able to formulate demonstrations which show the necessary relationship
holding between the essential attributes of the thing, and between the essential attributes and
other attributes.
On Leshers account, the analytic approach suggested in Physics 1.1 is a step that is
necessary to get from the universal gained by means of ejmpeiriva and ejpagwghv to the
scientific universal and an adequate definition. He cites, in support of this view, a passage
from History of Animals 1.6, where Aristotle notes that it is necessary to distinguish the parts
of animals before moving on to a discussion of the avitivai:
After this [i.e. after clearly determining the parts of animals] we shall pass on to the discussion
of causes. For to do this when the investigation of details is complete is the proper and natural
method, and that whereby the subjects and the premises of our argument will afterwards be
rendered plain.794

This may be read as suggesting that the proper way to go about forming the premises of
demonstrative arguments is first clearly to distinguish the parts of the whole universal given
792

Joseph Owens, The Universality of the Sensible in the Aristotelian Noetic, in Aristotle: The Collected
Papers of Joseph Owens (1981), p. 65.
793
Lesher, Aristotles Considered View of the Path to Knowledge, pp. 15-16.
794
HA 1.6.491a10-14 (Thompson).
219

in experience. Lesher notes, however, that the place of demonstration in the Posterior
Analytics cannot totally be reconciled with the account given in the Physics. Even where
Aristotle sees a place for demonstration, it functions not as the framework for inquiry in its
entirety, as the unqualified descriptions given in Analytics would lead one to suppose, but
merely as its final, largely summative phase.795 Lesher concludes by suggesting that at some
point Aristotle began to move away from the syllogism-based understanding of the nature of
inquiry set forth in the Analytics and toward the process of analysis and differentiation
described in Physics I 1.796
The suggestion of a move away from the emphasis on demonstration is plausible. It seems
likely that the emphasis on demonstration in the Posterior Analytics is in part a result of
Aristotles justified fascination with the unprecedented theory of syllogistic logic he had
developed. After an initial period of attempting to fit all inquiry into the syllogistic framework,
Aristotle realized its limitations and opted for a more inclusive approach. But whatever the
true story of his intellectual development is, I think that we should not exaggerate the
importance of demonstration even in the Posterior Analytics.
It would be quite wrong to imagine that demonstration is a mechanical procedure which on
its own produces knowledge. Obviously one has to see that the conclusion follows from the
premises; and the value of demonstration is ultimately that it aids seeing. When I grasp,
through a demonstration that all isosceles triangles have 2R, because all isosceles triangles are
triangles and all triangles have 2R, I am, in essence, explicating what is already contained in
the complete whole isosceles triangle given to me in experience. The isosceles triangle I see
is already simultaneously a triangle, and qua triangle it necessarily has 2R. There is no reason
why I cannot grasp this immediately and independently of demonstration, indeed
demonstration ultimately would be worthless if it did not lead to insight. The benefit of
demonstration is that it renders discursive and thus more explicit, what is contained in an
undivided form in the originally intuited whole.
Goethes distinction between mathematical proofs and what he calls arguments is
instructive here. Recall how Goethe spoke approvingly of the mathematical method in
relation to his own methodology. Goethe said of mathematics that
. . . its proofs merely state in a detailed way that what is presented as connected was already
there in each of the parts and as a consecutive whole, that it has been reviewed in its entirety and
found to be correct and irrefutable under all circumstances. Thus its demonstrations are always
more exposition, recapitulation, than argument.797

795

Lesher, Aristotles Considered View of the Path to Knowledge, p. 16.

Ibid., p. 17.
797
Goethe, The Experiement as Mediator Between Object and Subject, in Scientific Studies, p. 16 (HA XIII:
19).
796

220

Goethe contrasts the mathematical approach with one that seeks to prove assertions by
using isolated experiments like arguments.798 Part of his point is that in such an argument
one infers on the basis of something taken as evidence (i.e. an isolated experiment) to a claim
about the nature of something not given in experience. One attempts to support a conclusion
about something not given, by appeal to something given. In a mathematical demonstration,
on the other hand, one is only making explicit what is already contained within a given whole.
Because mathematics is a kind of higher empiricism, it does not involve any inference, but
is wholly descriptive. Because such demonstrations only involve making explicit what is
already contained in a given whole, the whole can indeed be reviewed in its entirety and
found to be correct and irrefutable under all circumstances. Similarly, in an Aristotelian
demonstration one is only making explicit what is already potentially present in the original
intuited whole, e.g. this isosceles triangle: i.e. I am stating that this isosceles triangle
necessarily has 2R because it is a specification of the genus triangle of which 2R is a per se
attribute.
What then, does Aristotle mean by kaqovlou in Physics 1.1? He does not mean, as Owens
takes Ross to imply, a more generic concept.799 The idea that we start with a generic concept
would clearly go against Aristotles view in Posterior Analytis 2.19 that all concepts arise
from experience, through ejpagwghv, and in response to perception. One might argue that
Aristotle is speaking about the starting point of scientific knowledge and not the starting point
of human cognition in the more general sense of experience. Whereas experience starts,
genetically, with perception of sensible particulars, science starts with the universals reached
by ejpagwghv. However, the second example Aristotle gives tells against this. Aristotle uses the
example of a child calling all men father and all women mother as an illustration of the kind of
whole or kaqovlou he means. Hence, if the kaqovlou here is a generic one, this would mean
that the child begins with a general concept that covers both men and fathers and uses the
word father to express this. Owens is on the right track when he writes:
Neither the specific notion fathers nor the more generic notion men seems to be the concrete
whole that is first known. They seem represented as concepts distinct from each other, the kaq
e{kasta that emerge from a differentiating knowledge of the objects initially grasped through
sensation. The starting point is neither one nor the other as distinct notions, but rather a vague
object in which both are fused and neither is differentiated.800

However, Owens actual account of this vague object is problematic. Owens interpretation
798

Ibid., p. 17 (HA XIII: 19).

Owens (1981), p. 66: Ross (p. 457), as already noted, identifies the universal in this context as generic
knowledge. Actually this does not seem quite fair to Ross who suggests (p. 457) that the universal here refers to
. . . that stage of knowledge in which an object is known by perception [italics added] to possess some general
characteristic.
800
Owens (1981), p. 68.
799

221

is bound up with his desire to show that for Aristotle all human knowledge is dependent on the
natural objects given in perception. He wants to show why the mind cannot attain in simple
apprehension a concept that is common to corporeal and incorporeal things.801 In other
words, he wants to defend the Thomist idea that it is not possible for human beings to directly
grasp the supersensible. Owens view is that the first confused notion for human cognition is
that of something sensible.802 The vague notion of a sensible thing serves as the ultimate
universal in Aristotles philosophy. From it are derived such basic principles as e.g. form and
matter. Matter is not knowable as such, it is reached only indirectly. The notion of matter is
formed, according to Owens, by taking the universal concept of substrate as seen in
particular sensible things, and then adding to that basic concept the privation of any formal
characteristic.803 The concept of form is basically that of shaped or formed body, with the
negation of all substrate added as its distinguishing feature.804 This means that not only the
basic principles in the study of nature, but also all metaphysical principles, even the
conception of God as pure form, are, in Owens view, merely abstractions from the initially
vaguely given concept of something sensible.805
The primary problem with Owens interpretation is that the vague concept of something
sensible is exactly that a concept. Hence it is not clear how it differs from any other generic
universal. Owens wants to say that the senses convey something that serves as a universal in
relation to both the infimae species and all the more generic universals. But it is not at all clear
how such a thing could possibly be conveyed by sense perception. For, there is really no such
thing as the sensible thing in general. There are only particular sensible things with a
definite nature. Owens starts on the right track in realizing that the kaqovlou referred to here is
neither the species nor the genus, but something prior and inclusive of both. He is also on the
right track in seeing that vagueness is an important defining feature of this kaqovlou. But he
makes the mistake of turning it into something generic.
In the second example it is completely mysterious what would be the more generic concept
which the child has that includes both man and father, woman and mother. Besides,
Aristotle says that the child calls all men father, i.e. the focus is on the more specific term.
Hence, we need to distinguish clearly between the notions of generality and vagueness. As
Wieland puts it, Katholou here, of course, does not designate anything general in the sense of
a class, but something general in the sense of indeterminate, something not yet differentiated
into its factors.806 The kaqovlou Aristotle is referring to in Physics 1.1 is vaguer not more
801

Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 72.
803
Ibid., p. 70.
804
Ibid., p. 71.
805
Ibid., p. 72: In the Aristotelian noetic, then, the subject of metaphysics is not something that is offered
immediately to mens intellects. It is something that has to be reached by a difficult reasoning process.
806
Wieland (1975), p. 131.
802

222

generic than the kaqovlou grasped in scientific knowledge.

Wieland in fact gives us a crucial clue in noting the parallel between the experiential
kaqovlou and the notion of kaqovlou described in Aristotles Poetics. In the Bywater
translation, the relevant passage reads as follows:

The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse . . .
it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of
thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than
history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are
singulars.807

The work of the poet is not to say what has already become, but to speak of the kind of thing
that might come to be, i.e. what is possible as being probable or necessary.808 Here,
possible does not mean anything like logically possible. It means rather what could
actually happen given the circumstances and the character being described. Here we find the
familiar terms kaqovlou and kaq e{kaston. However, a brief consideration of the context
makes clear that the translation of these as universal and particular is problematic, at least
if we understand universal to mean generic. As Wieland points out:
This katholou is likewise a nice example of a generality which is not the generality of a class.
For poetry of course presents in the first instance completely individual cases, often of a highly
extreme character. History and poetry have in common the fact that they deal with individual
occurrences. What marks poetry out against history is simply that from the outset it conceives of
the individual occurrences as at the same time representing truths which are generally valid.809

The question is: how does a poetic particular represent a truth that is generally valid? For
Goethe the primary unit of poetry is neither the abstract concept, nor the mere sensible
particular, but rather the symbol. Goethes distinction between symbol and allegory is useful
in this regard. Goethe distinguishes them as follows:
1. Symbolism transforms appearance into an idea, the idea into an image in such a way that the
idea remains always infinitely effective and unreachable in the image and remains ineffable even
if uttered in all languages.
2. Allegory transforms appearance into a concept, the concept into an image, but in such a way
that the concept can be grasped and can be had completely as something delimited in the image
and can be expressed in it.
3. It is a big difference whether the poet looks for the particular in the general or whether he sees
the general in the particular. The former produces allegory, where the particular has validity only
807

Poet. 9.1451a38-1451b7 (Bywater).

Ibid., 9.1451a37-38.
809
Wieland (1975), p. 132.
808

223

as an example of the general; the latter, however, is the actual nature of poetry; it expresses the
particular without thinking of the general or without pointing at it. He who grasps this particular
vividly gets the general with it at the same time without being aware of it, or only later [italics
added].810

In the case of allegory, the abstract conceptual content is merely re-presented in a sensible
image. As such, it can be grasped fully, even independently of the image, as a determinate
conceptual content. The idea, on the other hand, is both infinitely effective in the image, but
also unreachable and ineffable, in the sense that it cannot be fully expressed in any sense
perceptible form, even when expressed in all languages. This does not mean that the idea as
expressed in the symbol is unintelligible. The symbol is characterized not by a lack of
intelligibility, but rather by an excess of intelligibility that cannot be mastered, or constrained
within a conceptual or sensible form. Nor is Goethe saying that the idea is totally
inexpressible. His whole point here is that symbol, the life blood of poetry, is precisely the
place where appearance becomes idea, and idea becomes image. Symbol presents (rather than
re-presents) the idea in a way that is adequate to its inexhaustible character, not in the sense
that it contains it, which is impossible, but in the sense that it lets the idea shine through the
sensible particular, while the particular always maintains its link with the source of its
meaning. I want to suggest that the initial whole given in experience, points to a more poetic
dimension to Aristotles theory of knowledge.811 In other words, Aristotles theory of
knowledge makes sense only if the initial whole with which knowledge starts is universal in
the sense in which a symbol is universal.
Speaking of arguments proceeding from ejpagwghv Aristotle writes that they involve
deiknuvnte~ to; kaqovlou dia; tou` dh`lon ei\nai to; kaq e{kaston.812 Tredennick translates this
as proving the universal from the self-evident nature of the particular. This translation can
be improved. Although deivknumi can mean to prove, here it gives the wrong emphasis.
Focusing on the idea of proof makes it seem as if the activity of proving is decisive, whereas
in fact the decisive factor is whether or not ones interlocutor sees the universal. The
conviction deriving from proof is consequent on seeing. One is not presenting instances in
order to force ones interlocutor to concede defeat because of the overwhelming number of
instances, or because of the formal structure of ones argument. The point of adducing
instances is to get the other person to see the universal.
810

Goethe, in Rainer Ngele, Theater, Theory, Speculation: Walter Benjamin and Scenes of Modernity
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991) p. 88 (HA XII: 470-471).
811
I mean poetic in its authentic etymological sense, where the poet is a poihthv~ (a maker), who gives
meaningful form to some sensible material. It is not insignificant in this regard to recall the term nou`~ poihtikov~,
used in the later Aristotelian tradition to refer to the active nou`~ that Aristotle himself describes in DA 3.5 as what
makes all things (pavnta poiei`n); in other words, the principle that like light brings the phenomena in potency
into determinate existence. Active intellect is really an inadequate translation for what should rather be called
creative or productive nou`~.
812
APo. 1.1.71a8-9.
224

If we consider other meanings of deivknumi we can find a more appropriate translation.

Although this word can mean to prove, according to LSJ it also means to show forth, to
bring to light; in relation to artists it can mean to portray or represent; finally, it can also
mean to show, to point out, to set before one, to display and to exhibit. In other
words, ejpagwghv, in this case in the context of leading someone else to a grasp of the universal,
involves presenting, portraying, showing forth the universal through the sensible instances in
which it is present in order to bring it to light, so that it becomes known by the other person.
But this process would be useless if the universal were not already in some sense present in
the particular.813 It should be remembered that by the time we get to the concrete entities that
make up the world we are already talking about experience and not sense-perception strictly
speaking. So we can say that ejpagwghv whether as the process whereby one gains a grasp of
the universal oneself, or as the means by which one leads another to this grasp would be
impossible if it were not the case that in experience one already gets the general . . . at the
same time [as the particular] without being aware of it, or only later. In this regard, Mures
translation is better, where ejpagwghv involves exhibiting the universal as implicit in the
clearly known particular. However, it should be noted that it is the to be (ei\nai) of the kaq
e{kaston that is described as clear or manifest (dh`lo~).814 The particular, given in
experience can be be grasped vividly in such a way that one gets the universal along with it.
Aristotles account of the cognitive process, and of ejpagwghv, makes sense only if the
particular is a symbol.815
6.4 From the Vague to the Complete Whole
We have seen that Aristotles theory of knowledge involves the idea of a transition between
an initial experiential kaqovlou and a kaqovlou seen more clearly and articulately by nou`~.
This transition is made possible by the fact that the sensible datum has the character of a
symbol. Whether the datum is the sensible whole provided by perception, imagination,
memory and experience, or the single exemplary instance, it is in both cases simultaneously
particular and universal, sensible and intelligible.
813

Cf. Biondi (2004), p. 188: The implication of enumerating particulars to obtain the universal is that each
particular must be perceived or known to be an instance, a representative or sample case, of the universal being
sought. If each particular is known in its individuality and singularity alone, then the universal which is common
to and predicable of many particulars could never, and would never, be obtained.
814
LSJ vs dh`lo~: I. visible, conspicuous, hence II. clear to the mind, manifest, evident.
815
Cf. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Statesman's Manual (1816), reprinted in Hazard Adams ed., Critical Theory
Since Plato (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1992) p. 468: Coleridge provides us
with a wonderful reformulation of the idea of the universal as shining through the manifest being of the particular
when he writes, . . . a symbol . . . is characterized by a translucence of the special in the individual, or of the
general in the special, or of the universal in the general; above all of the translucence of the eternal through and in
the temporal. It always partakes of the reality which it renders intelligible; and while it enunciates the whole,
abides itself as a living part of the unity of which it is representative.
225

Goethe recognizes the difference between the initial whole grasped at the beginning of
inquiry (the initial symbolic datum) and the more articulate and clearly perceived whole or
Urphnomen. As he puts it, There is a great difference between dimly apprehending with dull
senses a vague whole, and seeing and grasping directly a complete whole.816 The vague
whole and the complete whole are not two different things; they are different moments of the
same phenomenon. Goethe helps us to understand the relation between these two moments in
Aristotles account.
As Goethe says, everything in the realm of fact is already theory.817 The already does
not imply temporal priority. Most of the time, the phenomena are not to begin with transparent
to the understanding. We can reformulate Goethes statement in Aristotelian terms as follows:
the phenomena are always already, i.e. pre-temporally, qewriva. This idea that the ultimate
ajrcaiv of nature are always already manifest, is echoed in Goethes unashamedly paradoxical
naming of nature as an open secret.818 In some deep sense our limits are also the limits of
the phenomena. Goethe writes of this translucence at the very boundaries of phenomenality as
follows:
We go far enough when we come to the archetypal phenomena, seeing them face to face in their
unknowable glory and then turning back to the world of other phenomena. The
incomprehensible, in its simplicity, manifests itself in thousands upon thousands of variations,
unchanged despite its inconstancy.819

Why then, do we not always contemplate the phenomena as Urphnomene? Goethes

answer, I would argue, is that the initially opaque character of the phenomena is a function
both of our cognitive limitations and of the inexhaustible glory of the Urphnomene. The
resolutely phenomenological character of Goethes approach allows us to shine a new light on
a passage from the Metaphysics where Aristotle talks about the nature of our relationship to
truth, a passage whose deep signifance may easily be missed. Aristotle begins as follows:
The beholding [qewriva] of truth is in one way difficult, but in another way easy. A sign of this is
that, while no one happens to be able to grasp it in an adequate way, neither does anyone miss it,
but each one says something about nature, and though one by one they add little or nothing to it,
from all of them put together something comes into being with a certain stature. So if it seems
that we happen to be in the condition of the common saying, who could miss the doorway?, in
this way it would be easy, but to have the whole in a certain way, and yet be incapable of part of
820
it, shows what is difficult about it.

816

Goethe, Introduction to the Propylaea, in Stephenson (1984), p.61 (HA XII: 51).
Goethe, in Scientific Studies, p. 307 (HA XII: 432).
818
Goethe, Epirrhema, (FA 3: 96).
819
Goethe, Karl Wilhelm Nose, in Naydler (1996), p. 120 (FA XIV: 580).
820
Met. 2.1.993a30-993b2 (Sachs, slightly altered).
817

226

Rosss translation of hJ peri; th`~ ajlhqeiva~ qewriva as the investigation of truth obscures
the meaning of the first sentence. Aristotle is not saying that the discursive process of getting
to truth is difficult (although it is), but rather that the beholding of truth is difficult. He is
describing the human inability to be adequate to the intelligibility of nature.821 The second
sentence presupposes the ontological conception of truth. The reason no one can miss the truth
completely is because the human being is always already in the truth, in a whole (the cosmos)
the intrinsic intelligibility of which is manifest in nou`~. The difficulty Aristotle describes is not
the difficulty of getting to a transcendent truth outside consciousness; rather, it is the
difficulty of having the whole in a certain way, and yet being incapable of grasping the
part.822 In other words, it is the difficulty of moving from the vaguely intuited whole, to the
articulated whole.
Aristotles characterisation of the difficulty becomes clearer if seen as a response to the
question why we do not always behold the ajrcaiv (Urphnomene) of nature. Aristotle says that
the cause of the difficulty lies not in the things [toi`~ pravgmasin] but in us; for just as the eyes
of bats are facing the splendor by day, so also is the nou`~ in our soul in relation to the things
by nature most manifest [fanerwvtata] of all.823 Again, the Goethean idea of the
Urphnomen helps us to see clearly the phenomenological character of Aristotles thought.
Ross translation of fanerwvtata as most evident leads us in the wrong direction, since it
is apt to suggest that Aristotle is referring to some kind of a priori, self-evident, clear and
distinct ideas. However, fanerwvtata is the superlative of favnero~ which means visible,
manifest, and also shining and illustrious. For Aristotle, as for Goethe, nature is an
open secret. When Aristotle clarifies what these most manifest things are, his statements
once more gain clarity when seen in relation to the Goethean perspective. The tevlo~ of
contemplative knowledge [qewrhtikh`~] is truth.824 But, Aristotle says: We do not know
[i[smen, literally we have not seen] the truth without the ajitiva. This is because
. . . what is responsible for the being-true of derivative things is more true than they are. For this
reason the sources of the things that always are must be true in the highest sense (for they are not
sometimes true, nor is anything a cause for them of their being, but they are the cause of other things),
so what each thing has of being, that too it has of truth.825
821

The adverb translated as adequately is ajxivw~. LSJ vs a[xio~: II. worthy, estimable, 4. deserved, meet,
due. Thus the adverb has the sense of worthily. Aristotle is in a sense saying that no one is able to grasp truth
in a manner befitting its lofty status. Since the truth he turns out to mean is the ontological truth of the ajrcaiv of
nature, and particularly the ajrchv (divine nou`~), this makes sense.
822
Wieland (1975), p. 129: In the distinction between what is better known to us and what is better known by
nature, Aristotle is not in the least concerned with the distinction between a subjective and an objective sphere, or
between an order of being and an order of knowledge. He is concerned merely with different forms of knowledge
. . . not with an opposition between knowing and thing known, or with an ontological dualism.
823
Met. 2.1.993b7-11: . . . w{sper ga;r ta; tw`n nukterivdwn o[mmata pro;~ to; fevggo~ e[cei to; meq hJmevran, ou{tw
kai; th`~ hJmetevra~ yuch`~ oJ nou`~ pro;~ ta; th`/ fuvsei fanerwvtata pavntwn.
824
Ibid., 2.1.993b20-21.
825
Ibid., 2.1.993b26-31 (Sachs).
227

The more something is the truer it is. Contemplative knowledge reaches its perfection in the
beholding of the ultimate ajrcaiv or Urphnomene of nature, which are responsible for all the
phenomena arising from them.
What is the relationship between the idea that the phenomena are already pre-temporally
qewriva and the idea that the cognitive process involves the reintegration of the knower into
the intelligible cosmos? Reality, for human beings, is not given at the beginning of inquiry, but
is the never fully attained tevlo~ of inquiry, which becomes progressively manifest in and
through the cognitive process. This is the Goethean conception of the ontological function of
human cognition expressed in the following statement:
The human being is therefore called upon to bring into the realm of manifest reality those
fundamental laws of the world which otherwise do indeed govern all existence, but which
themselves would never come into [manifest] existence. This is the nature of knowing: that in it
the ground of the world, which can never be discovered in objective [i.e. sensible] reality,
presents itself.826

The phenomena are already qewriva and this is veiled in us by our meagre participation in
nou`~. Since novhsi~ is pre-temporal one cannot really speak of this illuminated state of things
existing before or indeed after the cognitive process. The cognitive process is precisely
what enables us to be lifted out of time. Because the dimension of novhsi~ is nothing but
activity it is impossible to participate in it except through activity. One cannot perceive it
passively as an object over against oneself. In this sense, the conflict implied in the idea of
reaching, at the end of the cognitive process, an intelligibility that is already there is only
apparent. Because reality is activity, it can only be given in activity. This necessary
mediation does not in the least imply that the intelligible cosmos is a product of the
cognitive process.
The kaqovlou, then, is implicit in the symbolic data of experience. Whether we are aware of
it or not, experience is never solely of particulars, but always of sensible-intelligible, or
symbolic, wholes. Owens is in a sense right to say that the whole given in experience is
universal with respect to all subsequent knowledge. But it is not universal in the sense of
generality. It is universal in the sense of being a whole that contains the parts able to be
distinguished within it. It is not the barren whole of the abstract universal from which the parts
could never be derived, but the pregnant whole that can give birth to all subsequent
determinations.
For both Aristotle and Goethe our cognitive limitation accounts for the inadequacy of our
initial intuition of the phenomena in experience. We are simply unable to hold in a simple,
826

Steiner (1993), p. 59. Cf. also Steiner (1988b), p. 74: The form of reality that the human being produces in
science is the ultimate, true form of reality.
228

indivisible act of contemplation all of the elements contained within any natural form. Also,
natural forms are essentially in movement, in a perpetual process of becoming. The process of
analysis suggested Physics 1.1 is an integral part of Aristotles overall theory of knowledge.
The analytic process articulates parts within a whole, and thus gives us a more explicit grasp
of them. The synthetic process, involving ejpagwghv, enables us to see connections and
similarities between the parts distinguished by analysis. But analysis is itself an articulation, a
sharpening and refinement of vision. The trained botanist can see far more in the field than the
casual wanderer. Analysis, synthesis, ejpagwghv, demonstration all are in the end aids to
vision.
We find a transition between a vague and a determinate whole also in the study of the
development of organisms. Goethe describes this well when he writes:
Intuitive perception (Anschauung) gives us at once the complete concept of an achieved form;
the faculty of thought (Denk-Kraft), not wishing to lag behind, shows and articulates in its own
way how such a form could and must be achieved . . . . Since [the faculty of thought] does not
feel entirely adequate to the task, it calls on the imagination for help; and in this way conceptual
entities (entia rationis) gradually arise whose great advantage is to lead us back to perception
and to pressure us into greater attention and complete insight.827

Anschauung (or in Aristotelian terms nou`~, here as operative in sense perception) gives us
the complete concept of an achieved form. What does Goethe mean by this? If the concept
is really complete then why is the return to perception after the articulation of that initial grasp
by thinking and imagination described as leading to greater attention and presumably more
complete insight? The most plausible explanation is that Anschauung initially gives us a
sensible-intelligible or symbolic whole that is already complete in itself in the sense that it
already contains in potency all of the distinctions which subsequent articulation and
explication reveal. Nevertheless, while complete in itself, it is for us initially a vague whole.
What is the significance of the reference to an achieved form? Recall that earlier I noted
that pr`agmav (thing) has the sense of that which has been done, a deed, or that which has
been effected. I suggested that the search for the ajrchv and aijtiva is an attempt to step back
from the finished object as given to sense perception and to grasp of what Goethe calls
certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself. These requisite conditions have
the character not of objects but of activities. In Goethes terms, perception initially gives us
the Gestalt, and we attempt to grasp the Bildung, of which this Gestalt is only a moment. In
order to have complete insight into the Gestalt, we need to grasp how such a form could and
must be achieved. A particularly good example of this kind of inquiry is found in On the
Parts of Animals where Aristotle writes:

827

Goethe, Der Kammerberg bei Eger, in Stephenson (1984), pp. 65-66 (HA XIII: 268).
229

The fittest mode, then, of treatment is to say, a man has such and such parts, because the
conception of man includes their presence, and because they are necessary conditions of his
existence. . . . Thus we should say, because a man is an animal with such and such characters,
therefore is the process of his development necessarily such as it is; and therefore it is
accomplished in such and such an order, this part being formed first, that next, and so on in
succession; and after like fashion should we explain the evolution of all other works of nature.828

Although otherwise very good, Ogles translation of ejpeidh; tou't h\n to; ajnqrwvpw/ ei\nai
as because the conception of man seems too abstract to me. The reference here is to what
Aristotle typically calls the tiv h\n ei\nai of a thing, literally, the what it was going to be. He is
not talking about what is involved in the concept of man in some nominalistic sense. He has
just asked the question whether the proper object of our exposition is . . . the process of
formation of each animal; or whether it is not rather, what are the characters of a given
creature when formed.829 The contrast is between engaging in contemplation of how the
entity comes into being and grows (Bildung), or on the other hand how it is, pw'" e[stin
(Gestalt). The animal that has grown to adulthood is because for Aristotle the achieved form
of the adult organism (the ei\do~) most transparently reveals the essence.
Aristotle suggests that we should firstly take hold of the phenomena presented by each
group of animals830 and then proceed to state the causes, and to describe the process of
genesis of the organisms. In other words, we start with the finished forms which the animals
present to us.
An artifact, say a house, has a certain form and because it has this form it comes to be in a
certain way. Our initial contemplation of the phenomenon gives us a grasp of the achieved
form, e.g. the house, or the particular animal. In the case of the artifact, one begins with a
form in mind prior to its realization in some matter, and this pre-existing idea is also the tevlo~
towards which the process moves.
In the case of the natural organism the form to be achieved pre-exists in time in the form of
the parent animal, as well as serving as both the formal and final cause of the development of
the organism. However, perception typically presents us with the finished form. In order to
fully understand the entity we need not only a vague grasp of the finished form, but also of the
relation between its parts, both the parts contained within it spatially and its temporal
parts, i.e. the stages it moves through as it moves expresses its form and moves towards
perfection.
Hence, to paraphrase Goethe, when we have before us something that has grown, we need
to inquire after its genesis, and trace the process as far back as we can. We will find that these
stages are not merely haphazard. Because of what a human being is, a human being needs a
828

PA 1.1.640a31-640b5 (Ogle).
Ibid., 1.1.640a10-12 (Ogle).
830
Ibid., 1.1.640a15 (Ogle).
829

230

certain sort of complex body. The form-governed process of development will necessarily go
through certain orderly stages. In order to more adequately understand the entity, we analyse
it, whether in thought, or physically, into its constituent parts. This may involve analysing it
logically into genus and specific difference, or anatomically into organs, or temporally into
stages of development, and so on. But this analytic work is parasitic on there being something
to analyse in the first place.
The development of an organism is not a sequence of separate parts, like a series of
punctual nows. It is a single indivisible activity.831 The parts and steps which we distinguish
within it are in a sense intellectual constructs. For this reason, once we have gained a more
explicit grasp of the structure of some natural process (and all natural entities are processes),
we should always return to perception with greater attention and [more] complete insight.
Having taken the process apart to see how it works, we then need to set it working again. We
need to see the now distinguished parts in the dynamic context of the unfolding whole. Goethe
speaks in this regard, of the need to present the stages to oneself in memory as a kind of ideal
whole. And in another place he expresses the idea in even more clearly dynamic terms: Thus
in the end I am required to visualize an uninterrupted activity as a whole, by cancelling the
particular [as a particular] without destroying the overall impression.832
What characterises the transition from experience to science in all cases is that science
simply makes explicit what is already implicit in experience but cannot be grasped by the
senses. However, as I have emphasized repeatedly, the intelligibility of the phenomena seen
by nou`~ cannot be seen a priori, but always only through mediation of experience. This is
ultimately because Nature is symbolic a prior unity of the sensible and intelligible.
The close relationship in Aristotlea thought between the notions of whole and kaqovlou can
be understood more clearly against this background. Goethe emphasizes the importance of
presenting as comprehensive as possible a survey of the relevant phenomena. The
philosophical importance of this in the context of Goethes scientific method is well
recognised. The same cannot be said for Aristotle. However, when we interpret Aristotle as a
rational empiricist certain features of his philosophical work immediately become more
significant. Here I note only two features very briefly.
Firstly, there is the well known fact that Aristotle often begins a discussion of an issue with
a historical survey of earlier opinions.833 The well-founded opinions of past thinkers are for
Aristotle among the phenomena which must be set down if one is to reach an adequate
understanding concerning some matter. Secondly, Aristotles scientific works include
831

Goethe, in Frster (2008), pp. 14-15 (LA I 10:131): At first I am inclined to represent a number of steps, but
nature makes no leaps.
832
Ibid., p. 14 (LA I 10:131).
833
Goethes Theory of Color also includes a historical survey, and in general his discussion of the various ways
in which color manifests is very similar to Aristotles broad and inclusive sense of laying down the phenomena.
231

voluminous and detailed descriptions of a variety of natural phenomena, together with reports
taken from various experienced observers. Instead of seeing this aspect of Aristotles work as
the mere gathering of empirical data prior to the formulation of some theoretical explanation, I
suggest that we see it as intrinsically linked to the concrete nature of the Aristotelian kaqovlou.
Aristotle shows an awareness of this in On the Soul 1.1, where he notes that while the
awareness of what a thing is (of the to; tiv ejsti) is valuable with a view to a contemplation of
the factors responsible for its attributes (its aijtivai); conversely, the attributes which we bring
together or accumulate (sumbavlletai) for ourselves are also very useful with a view to seeing
the to; tiv ejstin.834 He explains this as follows:
. . . ejpeida;n ga;r e[comen men ajpodidovnai kata; th;n fantasivan peri; tw`n sumbebhkovtwn, h] pavntwn h]
pleivstwn, tovte kai; peri; th`~ oujsiva~ e{xomen ti levgein kavllista.835

The basic idea expressed here is the relationship between our grasp of the visible attributes
of a thing and its essential nature. However the precise translation of this passage is tricky. Of
particular interest are the word ajpodidovnai and the phrase kata; th;n fantasivan. The verb
ajpodidovnai means among other things, to exhibit or display.836 The phrase kata; th;n
fantasivan means in accordance with fantasiva. The difficulty here is determining what
Aristotle means by in accordance with. Both Smith and Hicks translate ajpodidovnai as to
give an account. Smith translates the passage as:
. . . for, when we are able to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the
properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position to say something worth
saying about the essential nature of that subject.

But this doesnt seem quite right. Aristotle is not talking about explaining the attributes, but
rather about reaching the essence through the attributes. Talking about giving an account
might be alright if Smith meant that we recount the attributes; but even then this isnt the
best option. Lawson-Tancred speaks of giving a demonstration, but clearly this cannot be
taken in the strict sense of ajpovdeixi~, since Aristotle is here speaking about reaching the best
definition of a thing, and demonstration is only possible once one already has a definition. I
think a more pertinent use of ajpodivdwmi is found in the Poetics:
Since tragedy is a representation of men better than ourselves we must copy the good portraitpainters who, while rendering [ajpodidovnte~] the distinctive form and making a likeness, yet

834

DA 1.1.402b16-22.
Ibid., 1.1.402b22-25.
836
LSJ vs ajpodivdwmi: A. give up or back, restore, return, 5.b. exhibit, display, 11. give an account or
definition of a thing, explain it.
835

232

paint people better than they are.837

This is captures well what Aristotle is getting at: he is talking about rendering the essence,
or painting a portrait of it through a presentation of the attributes. The student of nature is like
the good portrait painter, he must paint the particular as better than it is, because the sensible
part is never a complete manifestation of the intelligible whole. The phenomena set down in
the course of an investigation are like so many veils of colour placed down by the artists
brush. The inner character of the subject that emerges is not the sum total of these veils, nor
can it be found on the surface of the painting; nevertheless it emerges from the complete effect
of the work. Aristotles point can be understood more clearly through the following statement
of Goethes:
In reality, any attempt to express the inner nature of a thing is fruitless. What we perceive are
effects, and a complete record of these effects ought to encompass this inner nature. We labour
in vain to describe a persons character, but when we draw together their actions, their deeds, a
picture of their character will emerge.838

It should be clear now that Goethe is not saying that we cannot know the inner nature of a
thing. Rather, he is saying that we cannot know it a priori and independently of the concrete
presentation of its sensible expressions. Both our knowledge, and nature (which is both the
object and the unobjectifiable context of all human cognitive activity) are essentially
mediated, which is another way of saying that they have their being only in becoming.
If we return to the On the Soul passage quoted above with these things in mind, we can give
a more adequate translation. In this case, Aristotle does not seem to be talking about setting
down the phenomena in speech or writing, nor is he talking about setting them down for
another. Nor, presumably, is he talking about setting down the phenomena in the very
perceptual presence of the more or less complete range of attributes. Hence, it makes little
sense to translate ajpodidovnai kata; th;n fantasivan as to give an account in accordance
with experience. It doesnt make sense to talk of giving an account in accordance with
experience because we are very unlikely to be giving an account in the field, so to speak. Of
course, Smith might have in mind the idea of giving an account in accordance with experience
not in the sense of immediate sensory perception, but in the sense of the experiential whole as
mediated by fantasiva and memory. But then there is no need for the strained translation of
fantasivan as experience.
Aristotle says that ajpodidovnai kata; th;n fantasivan enables us to say what is finest, or
most beautiful (kavllista) concerning the essential nature of the thing; an aesthetic dimension
which fits perfectly with my interpretation, but which is missing in the more narrowly
837
838

Poet. 15.1454b10-12 (Bywater).

Goethe, Theory of Color: Preface, Scientific Studies, p.158 (FA XXIII/1: 12).
233

cognitive translation of e.g. Hicks (who translates ti levgein kavllista as to define most
exactly). Smiths translation suggests that the account of the attributes enables us to give the
best account of the essential nature, thus implying that there are two different accounts
involved, but I see no reason to interpret the passage in this way. The most fitting
interpretation is that Aristotle is speaking literally about placing the phenomena before the
eyes in imagination, as he suggests the poet should do in composing his dramatic work.839 On
this interpretation the passage would be best translated as follows:
For when are are able to exhibit in imagination either all or most of the attributes then we shall
be able to say what is finest concerning the essential nature.840

Read in this way, this passage becomes a very clear example of the role of ejpagwghv in
Aristotles scientific method, and fits perfectly with the account of the emergence of the ajrcaiv
of scientific knowledge given in Posterior Analytics 2.19.
6.5 The Dialectical Interpretation of Aristotles Scientific Method
I conclude with a few comments on the dialectical interpretation of Aristotles
philosophical/scientific method. Martha C. Nussbaum sketches some essential features of this
interpretation clearly. She notes firstly the high epistemic value Aristotle places on being true
to the phenomena. In the Eudemian Ethics, for example, Aristotle writes: Concerning all
these matters one must try to seek conviction through arguments, using the phenomena as
witnesses and paradigms.841 But how should we understand phenomena? One possibility
would be to interpret the word as referring to observable facts in some empiricist sense. This
interpretation, writes Nussbaum,
. . . comes out of a long tradition in the interpretation of Aristotelian science. The tradition
ascribes to Aristotle a Baconian picture of scientific / philosophical method that it also believes
to be the most acceptable characterization of the scientists procedure. The scientist or
philosopher, in each area, begins by gathering data through precise empirical observation,
scrupulously avoiding any kind of interpreting or theorizing; he or she then searches for a theory
that explains the data. Aristotles phainomena are his Baconian observation-data; the attempt to
save them is the attempt to find a comprehensive theory.842

However, argues Nussbaum, this interpretation is problematic. Drawing on G. E. L. Owens

famous article,843 Nussbaum argues that
839

Poet. 17.1455a24.
DA 1.1.402b22-25.
841
EE 1.6.1216b26-27 (Solomon).
842
Nussbaum (1982), p. 272.
843
Owen (1975).
840

234

. . . not only in the ethical works, but also in the Physics, de Caelo and other scientific works,
Aristotles phainomena must be understood to be our beliefs and interpretations, often as
revealed in linguistic usage. To set down the phainomena is not to look for belief-free fact, but
to record our usage and the structure of thought and belief which usage displays.844

Nussbaums account presents us with another example of a tendency I have already

commented on: what appears to us as an ambiguity is interpreted as a dilemma, and one or the
other horn is grasped, when in fact the ambiguity derives from a richness of meaning not
reducible to either pole of the dualistic construal. The rational empiricist can certainly nod
with approval at Nussbaums criticism of the notion that the Aristotelian method (or scientific
method in general for that matter) involves anything like pure observation, independent of all
interpretation and theory. I have already noted Goethes rejection of this notion. Nussbaum is
surely right that Aristotle has no sharp distinction between raw perceptual data and interpreted
phenomena; that he has a loose and inclusive notion of experience845 that comprehends
both what we might call the perceptual phenomena in a stricter sense, and the shared beliefs of
a particular community. The realization that laying down the phenomena involves presenting
both the perceptual phenomena and the endoxa, or noted opinions, helps us to keep in mind
the broadly phenomenological character of Aristotles method.
The notion that we should seek for pure sense data uncontaminated by thinking derives
from two assumptions that are fundamentally un-Aristotelian: firstly, that thinking is
subjective, and secondly, that the real world sought by science is exclusively sensible. The
merit of an interpretation like Nussbaums and Owens lies in its rejection of the empiricist
reading. However, the problem with Nussbaums reading is that she grounds human cognitive
practices, in a pragmatic manner, in the sheer fact that we behave in such and such a way.
Citing a passage from the Metaphysics846 where Aristotle criticizes those putting forward
standard skeptical arguments about the relativity of perceptual experience, Nussbaum writes:
Aristotle asks us to look at our practices, seeing, in the different areas, what sorts of judges we
do, in fact, trust. The judgement about whom to trust and when seems to come, like the
appearances, from us. We turn to doctors because we do, in fact, rely on doctors. This reliance,
Aristotle insists, does not need to be justified by producing a further judge to certify the judge
(1011a3 ff.); it is sufficiently justified by the facts of what we do.847

844

Nussbaum (1982), p. 273.

Ibid., p. 274.
846
Met. 4.5.1010b3-14.
847
Nussbaum (1982), p. 279. The idea that Nussbaum is basing the epistemic standing of the phenomena revealed
in human cognitive practices on the sheer factuality of their being the practices of a community is confirmed on
pp. 280-281: It is, however, also crucial to see that the expert plays here no deeper role than the role that he in
fact plays. He is normative for our use only to the extent that we in fact agree in accepting his authority.
845

235

This broadly pragmatist interpretation is in fact just as reductionist as the narrowly

empiricist one; and it is similarly dependent on the implicit acceptance of a dualism at odds
with Aristotles theory of knowledge. It works implicitly with a non-participatory conception
of cognition. What we end up with is a denial that human cognition gets to the things
themselves: instead, scientific and philosophical activity involves examining and resolving the
puzzles inherent in the way the members of a particular community talk about the world.
What this position fails to recognize is that truth is like the proverbial door which no one
can completely miss not because truth is really just whatever we in fact take to be
authoritative, but rather because human beings participate in nou`~ and hence can serve as a
locus for the worlds self-manifestation. The reason Aristotle has the broad conception of
phenomena already mentioned is because he has a participatory conception of cognition.
Nussbaum demonstrates her misunderstanding of this aspect of Aristotles thought when
she notes approvingly the view that the model of understanding that emerges from the
Posterior Analytics and connected texts does not introduce either intuition or extraexperiential truth.848 By this formulation, Nussbaum shows that she in fact subscribes to the
mistaken empiricist dogma that experience is exclusively sensual. As we have seen, nou`~ is
not at all extra-experiential. Indeed, given the immediacy and clarity characteristic of noetic
experience, novhsi~ is the paradigm of experience, since in this case the union that
characterizes all active cognitive states is even more radical than in perception, where some
distinction between the perceiver and perceived remains. In the case of novhsi~ reality in its
highest activity and perfection is immediately present.
In fact, if we consider the Metaphyics passage Nussbaum cites, we will find that it does not
support her reading. In this passage Aristotle mentions those who raise skeptical problems
regarding the question who is likely to judge rightly on each class of questions.849 This
question arises from the consideration of perceptual relativity. It is asked whether
. . . magnitudes are as great, and colours are of such a nature, as they appear to people at a
distance, or as they appear to those close at hand, and whether they are such as appear to the sick
or to the healthy, and whether those things are heavy which appear so to the weak or those which
appear so to the strong, and whether truth is what appears to the sleeping or to the waking.850

Aristotle does indeed argue that such problems are misguided, because they ignore that, for
example, a particular sense is in fact authoritative with regard to its special objects, and a
doctor is authoritative in regard to the question whether someone will recover or not. But in
the original passage cited, Aristotle diagnoses the unfortunate state851 of these skeptics as
848

Nussbaum (1982), p. 282.

Met. 4.6.1011a5-6 (Ross).
850
Ibid., 4.5.1010a4-10 (Ross).
851
Interestingly, where Ross translates mistake, Aristotle uses the word pavqo~, suggesting that the scepticism
849

236

follows:
These people expect that there be a discursive account of everything; for they seek an ajrchv, and
they seek to grasp this through demonstration . . . But just what their unfortunate state is we have
said: they seek a discursive account of that of which there is no discursive account; for the ajrchv
of demonstration is not demonstration.852

The connection between this and Posterior Analytics 2.19 is evident: as Aristotle makes
clear in the latter, the ajrchv of demonstration is not common usage, but nou`~. The unfortunate
state in which these skeptics find themselves is their failure to recognize the intuitive
dimension of their own cognitive life. Elsewhere, Aristotle says that those who demand a
demonstration of the principle of non-contradiction do so through lack of education.853 One
might also say that they are lacking in ajgcivnoia, and are far from nou`~.
Nussbaum is right in saying that The expert, and our reasons for choosing him, are not
behind our practices; they are inside them.854 She is wrong in suggesting that the ultimate
ground of the validity of noted opinions, and the experts who express them, lies in the
contingent fact that this how we do things. What she fails to recognize is that nou`~ precisely
as a divine activity is not outside our practices, but in the most intimate sense within them.
The ultimate ground certain lies in a certain kind of practice, for thinking is after all an
activity, but it lies in nohvsi~ and not in the contingent practices of a community.
Nevertheless, Nussbaum does draw attention to an important aspect of Aristotles thought.
It is indeed the case, as Aristotle says, that every man has some contribution to make to the
truth.855 However, as Stephen R. L. Clark has seen so clearly, the man who serves as the
standard is the well balanced man, who, in terms of views, manages to reconcile the views of
most men.856 We become most human in transcending our humanity by participating in the
divine activity of nohvsi~ by which the sensible world is illuminated and achieves its full
realisation and perfection. The views of the best men can serve as a standard of reality not
because they happen to be recognized as the best, which would render this recognition
of these sceptics is something unfortunate that befalls them. The use of pavqo~ also suggests that scepticism is a
sign of mental passivity connected to being excessively concerned with the sensible world in which . . . there is
largely present the nature of the indeterminate (1010a3), i.e. matter.
852
Meta. 4.6.1011a8-13. The Greek is: pavntwn ga;r lovgon ajxiou`sin ei\nai ou|toi: ajrch;n ga;r zhtou`si, ka;i
tauvthn di ajpodeivxew~ lambavnein . . . ajll o{per ei[[pomen, tou`to aujtw`n to; pavqo~ ejstivn: lovgon ga;r zhtou`sin w|n
oujk e[sti lovgo~: ajpodeivxew~ ga;r ajrch; ou;k ajpovdeixi~ ejstin. I translate logo~ here as discursive account
rather than Ross reason. The problem with Ross translation is that it might suggest that Aristotle is saying that
there is no ultimate intelligibility. It is quite true that the giving of reasons comes to a stop at a foundation for
which no independent reason can be given. But this does not mean that this foundation is some brute fact.
853
Ibid., 4.4.1006a5-7: Some indeed demand that even this shall be demonstrated, but this they do through want
of education, for not to know of what things one may demand demonstration, and of what one may not, argues
simply want of education. (Ross).
854
Nussbaum (1982), p. 279.
855
EE 1.6.1216b30-31 (Solomon).
856
Clark (1975), p. 196.
237

unintelligible, but because they are closest to the God who is nou`~. Clark expresses this idea
clearly when he writes:
The life-world of the fully developed man, the Aristotelian saint, who best shows what it is to be
human, is the absolute reality from which all other ways of experiencing reality are diminutions
or abstractions . . . It is in terms of the principles of intelligible being intuited (occasionally) by
the saint that all other principles, beliefs, and habits are to be explained just as a modern
anthropologist explains savage customs in terms of the principles he accepts from his own
society. The difference between saint and ordinary anthropologist is that the former has a direct
intuition of being, realized after prolonged attempts to see the truth in all human claims . . . 857

Goethe expresses a similar idea when he writes: I went on troubling myself about general
ideas, until I learnt to understand the particular achievements of the best men.858 In other
words, the truly universal is not the general (which is reached by exclusion and results in a
shadowy average), nor what is agreed upon by the majority, but what is expressed in the views
and actions of the best, for these give the fullest expression to the whole in their particular
existence. Another example of these ideas is found in a letter from Schiller to Goethe, which is
part of a short series of letters that discuss Aristotles Poetics. Schiller writes of Aristotle that
His whole view of tragedy is based upon empiric grounds . . . In scarcely any case does he start
from the idea of art; always but from the factum of art and of the poet and of the representation;
and if his judgements, in all essential points, are genuine laws of art, we owe this to the fortunate
accident that there were in those days works of art which realized an idea through the fact of
their existence, or represented their genus by an individual case.859

In Schillers view Aristotle was able to reach genuine laws by means of a method which
was completely a posteriori because he had access to works of art which manifested the law
so fully in their sensible appearance that the single, empirical work of art had the character of
necessity. I leave unanswered the question whether this is a sound assessment of Aristotles
Poetics. In any case, it does express, once again, the important idea that the exemplary
instance can serve as a privileged manifestation of the ajrchv.

857

Ibid., p. 199. Clarks use of the surpirising expression Aristotelian saint is apt to capture the peculiar sort of
mysticism involved in Aristotles philosophy.
858
Goethe, in Saunders (1893), p. 97 (FA XIII: 26).
238

Conclusion
The preceding chapters have made a case for interpreting Aristotle as a rational empiricist. I
have shown that a Goethean interpretation leads to a coherent and non-reductive account of
Aristotles theory of scientific knowledge.
In Chapter 1, I showed that some of most significant problems in the interpretation of the
Posterior Analytics arise from the apparent tension between rationalist and empiricist elements
in the work. I noted, as of particular significance, the problems associated with interpreting
ejpagwghv as induction; and also the problems associated with interpreting nou`~ as an a priori
intellectual intuition. I suggested that these problems require a rational empiricist resolution.
In Chapter 2, I presented the theory of knowledge and philosophy of science of Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe. This chapter set out the essential elements of Goethes rational
empiricism, which I then, in subsequent chapters, applied to the interpretation of Aristotles
work.
In Chapter 3, I gave a brief account of Aristotles conception of ejpisthvmh, focusing on the
nature and role of the ajrcaiv. I emphasized both the phenomenological character of the ajrcai
and their ontological (as opposed to their merely logical or linguistic) status.
In Chapter 4, I discussed the nature of nou`~. In the first part of the chapter I focused on nou`~
as a divine activity that makes the cognitive process possible. I also argued that despite a
nascent dualism in Aristotles work involving a purely supersensible conception of nou`~ his
work still contains echoes of a more archaic conception that brings him into close proximity
with Goethe. On this understanding of nou`~ and its relation to the sensible cosmos, nou`~ is
characterised by a wholeness, indivisibility, simplicity, unity and pre-temporality that can be
characterised as organicist. These aspects of nou`~ are manifested both ontologically and in the
context of the cognitive process. In the latter, they are manifested in the fact that the
progressive stages of in-formation characteristic of the cognitive process are all pre-temporally
enveloped by nou`~. Thus, while the cognitive process is not recollection, it is nevertheless in a
sense the reintegration of the knower into the intelligible cosmos, by means of an overcoming
of the fragmentation characteristic of sense perception. In the last two sections of Chapter 4, I
discussed Kurt von Fritzs account of the meaning of nou`~ in earlier Greek thought. This
discussion was meant to complement the broader ontological issues raised in the first part of
the chapter. In this second main part of Chapter 4 I showed that nou`~ originally had a very
immediate, phenomenological sense, without in the least sacrificing its divine character, and
that it was not originally seen as opposed to sense perception. This double movement, from
859

Schiller, Letter to Goethe 05/05/1797, in Schmitz, Vol. 1 (1914), p. 325.

239

the direction of archaic thought and from the direction of Goethes equally non-metaphysical
thinking of nature, helped me to bring into clearer relief a similarly non-metaphysical
dimension to Aristotles conception of nou`~.
In chapter 5, I presented an interpretation of Posterior Analytics 2.19, the chapter where
Aristotle gives his most focused account of the cognitive process leading to the noetic seeing
of the ajrchv. I also criticised the interpretation of ejpagwghv as induction.
In chapter 6, I did three main things. Firstly I presented a general account of Aristotles
conception of scientific method by discussing a few concrete examples taken from his work.
This discussion showed that contrary to a popular view, the Posterior Analytics does contain a
general account of the method of scientific discovery, and is not merely concerned with how
knowledge already gained should be systematized and presented. Secondly, I attempted to
resolve the apparent tension between the Posterior Analytics account of scientific method and
Physics 1.1. Thirdly, I briefly discussed and criticised the dialectical reading of Aristotles
scientific method.
As a whole the thesis has presented a strong case for view that the relationship beween
Goethe and Aristotle has philosophical substance and is worthy of more attention than it has
hitherto received from philosophers, at least in the English speaking world. I would like to
conclude by briefly suggesting some directions for further research.
A more substantial treatment of the relationship between Goethe and Aristotle would
involve looking in more detail at the relationship between the two thinkers, and would also
involve giving equal weight to the details of Goethes scientific work. I will give only two
examples of promising points of comparison.
Firstly, there is the relationship between Goethes Theory of Color, and Aristotles own
views about the nature of colour. Such a discussion would certainly involve looking at the
pseudo-Aristotelian text On Colors in relation to Aristotles own thought. Among indisputably
Aristotelian texts, Sense and Sensibilia 3 is of particular interest:
It is conceivable that the light and the dark should be juxtaposed in quantities so minute that
either separately would be invisible, though the joint product would be visible; and that they
should thus have the other colors for resultants.860

As Brigid E. Harry rightly notes, Aristotle is not talking about mixing paints, but colours
860

Sens. 3.439b20-23 (Beare). I have slightly altered Beares translation, translating leuko;n as light rather
than white and mevlan as dark rather than black. This translation is supported by Brigid E. Harry, A
Defense of Aristotle, Meteorologica 3, 375a6ff, The Classical Quarterly 21 2 (1971), p. 398. Harry discusses the
following passage from Mete. 3. 375a7-9: to; de; xanqo;n faivnetai di;a to; par a[llhla faivnesqai. to; ga;r
foinikou`n para; to; pravsinon leuko;n faivnetai. I would translate this as Yellow appears through the being
brought to appearance alongside each other [of red and green]. For red alongside green appears light. As Harry
rightly objects (p. 398), leukovn here cannot mean white since If the red is looking yellow, it can hardly be
looking white as well.
240

produced in nature.861 Aristotle is talking about how colours are brought into being
(givnesqai) from the relationship between the light and the dark (to; leuko;n kai; to; mevlan). It
would be interesting to determine the extent to which this aspect of Aristotles thought is
consistent with Goethes own view that colours result from the interaction between light and
darkness. According to Aristotle, another way in which the light and the dark give rise to
colour is when
The light and the dark appear the one through the medium of the other, giving an effect like that
sometimes produced by painters overlaying a less vivid upon a more vivid colour, as when they
desire to represent an object appearing under water or enveloped in a haze, and like that
produced by the sun, which in itself appears white, but takes a crimson hue when beheld through
a fog or cloud of smoke.862

The same example appears also in Meteorology 3.4 where Aristotle discusses the
appearance of the rainbow:
Bright light through a dark medium or on a dark surface . . . looks red. We can see how red
the flame of green wood is: this is because so much smoke is mixed with the bright white
firelight: so, too the sun appears red through smoke and mist. . . . We must recognise, as we have
said, and lay down first, that white colour on a black surface or seen through a dark medium
gives red.863

In general terms this is certainly reminiscent of Goethes description of the Urphnomen in

the domain of colour as light and dark seen through a turbid medium.864 The accuracy of
Aristotles specific observations and their precise relation with Goethes own account, are of
course a matter for further research.
Another area which calls for further investigation is the connection between Goethes study
of organic morphology and Aristotles own biological research. This area is interesting both in
terms of specific issues and in terms of the philosophical significance of the distinction
between organic and inorganic science. I want to briefly discuss some Aristotelian issues in
relation to which a Goethean approach would be very illuminating.
James G. Lennox has discussed the question whether Aristotle is a typological essentialist,
861

Harry (1971), p. 401.

Sens. 3.440a7-12 (Beare, slight changes).
863
Mete. 3.4.374a2-374b11.
864
Goethe, Theory of Color, in Scientific Studies, p. 206 (FA XIII/1: 102). Cf. Arthur Zajonc, Goethes
Theory of Color and Scientific Intuition,American Journal of Physics 44 4 (1976), pp. 330-331: Goethe,
following Aristotle, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, and others, saw colors as produced by the raying of one
extreme or pole through the other. More specifically, the warm colors arise from the raying of the light through
the darkness. Natures most prominent and beautiful example of this is to be seen in the sunrise and sunset. As
the sun nears the horizon, its light penetrates more and more air (which carries the darkness), giving rise to the
sequence of colors yellow, orange and red progressively as it sets. An example of the opposite is the blue of the
sea where the dark sea bottom is seen through the illuminated medium of the water.
862

241

and has argued against the long tradition of reading Aristotle in this way.865
Lennox quotes DArcy Thompson who suggests that, for Aristotle, the essential differences
between one species and another are merely differences of proportion, or relative magnitude,
or as he phrased it, of excess and defect.866 Such a view, says Lennox, might seem
incompatible with the typological essentialism typically ascribed to Aristotle. Lennox wants to
argue that Aristotle can affirm both that species differ by excess and defect,867 and that they
constitute distinct indivisible wholes and not merely arbitrary groupings. Crucial to Lennoxs
argument is the idea that
Aristotles account of genos in the Metaphysics is anything but extensional that is, a genos is
not primarily a class with members. Typically, a genos is represented as a substratum
(hupokeimenon) or material (hul) for differentiation.868

It is easy to imagine the genus as an abstract universal having a determinate character and
serving as a class of which the more specific forms are members. The determinate features of
the genus would then serve as criteria of inclusion. However, this is not Aristotles view.
Lennox illustrates the difference as follows:
Imagine, for example, that there was a basic Porsche 911, and that the different models of it
consisted of this basic automobile onto which different features, not present at all on the basic
model, are appended (FM radio, automatic transmission, air foil, racing stripes, mud flaps, etc.).
That is, the kind does not consist of features with range, but rather completely determinate
features; and the features of the forms of the kind are not determinate realizations of the generic
features, but features added on to the generic features.869

This way of looking at the genus/species (gevno~/ / ei\do~) relationship translates, in the
biological context, into the view that the genus is reached by abstraction: in other words, we
note the features which e.g. all the species of bird have in common and derive a general
concept, a kind of common plan, from which the particular species of bird can be derived by
the addition of specific differences (the optional features of the Porsche example). Aristotle
865

James G. Lennox, Kinds, Forms of Kinds, and the More and Less in Aristotles Biology, in Philosophical
Issues in Aristotles Biology, ed. Gotthelf et al. (1987), p. 340: By typological essentialism I intend a view that
there is some one identical feature or set of features in which individuals of a kind share or participate, and in
virtue of which the individuals are said to belong to the kind. Indeed, on this view the species name might be
viewed as having primary application to this essence, and only secondary reference to the individuals.
866
DArcy Thompson, On Growth and Form, ed. J. T. Bonner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971),
p. 274.
867
Lennox (1987), p. 341: Lennox notes that the translation of . . . Huperoch kai elleipsis is often rendered
excess and defect, which has unfortunate connotations of a norm which properties fall away from or
overreach. As will be clear, all Aristotle means by this phrase is variation in degree rather than by discrete
units.
868
Ibid., p. 347.
869
Ibid., pp. 349-350.
242

sees matters differently.

In speaking of the genus as matter Aristotle is saying that the genus is no determinate form,
but rather the potency to be determined in various specific ways,870 whereas to be a form [an
ei\do~] is to be a determinate realization of a kind.871 The genus is not merely the absence of
form (potency is not mere privation), but neither is it a more general form. As Lennox puts it:
For two individuals to differ in degree, they must both be the same general sort of thing. With
respect to that sort they do not differ in degree. But the general sort is constituted of features
with range any sub-kind may have those features exemplified by different specifications of
that range.872

However, if the difference between species is determined by degrees, does this not make
distinctions between species below extensive kinds like bird, merely arbitrary demarcations
within a fluid continuum? Lennox argues that the wholeness of specific kinds is teleological,
and is related to the way in which the relationship between the potency of the genus and the
demands of the environment brings about particular realisations within the potential range of
features of the general kind. For instance, If a crane is to survive and flourish, it must have,
not simply long legs, but legs of a certain length, defined relative to its body, neck length,
environment, feeding habits, and so on.873
Timothy Lenoir writes that Goethes morphology has tempted some to see him as a
precursor of Darwin, while others have disparaged him as an essentialist and typologist.874
However, as Lenoir right says, the works of Goethe and Darwin present us with two radically
different conceptions of biological science, both capable in their own right of organizing the
phenomena of life and serving as the basis for progressive empirical research.875
In Goethes morphology we find striking parallels with Aristotles biological work. In
Goethes case, the Aristotelian notion of excess and defect, or less misleadingly more or less,

870

Ibid., p. 348: The genos is that which can be determined in various ways the generic potential . . . .
Ibid., p. 348.
872
Ibid., p. 346.
873
Ibid., p. 356. Cf. PA 4.12.693a15-17: Whichever birds live in swamps and eat plants have a broad beak, this
sort being useful for digging and for uprooting and cropping of their food. Cf. also, PA 4.12.694b12-15:
Certain of the birds are long-legged. And a cause of this is that the life of such birds is marsh-bound; and nature
makes organs relative to their function, not the function relative to the organ. (Ogle).
874
Timothy Lenoir, The Eternal Laws of Form: Morphotypes and the Conditions of Existence in Goethes
Biological Thought, in Goethe and the Sciences: a Reappraisal, p. 17: In the decade marking the centenary of
Darwins death as well as the 150th anniversary of Goethes death, it is tempting to treat the work of Goethe . . .
as the rudimentary beginnings of a scientific discipline which would acquire its firm foundations some sixty years
later in the work of Darwin. This was in fact the strategy followed by Ernst Haeckel . . .when he sought to honor
both men . . . by casting Goethe as a precursor of the Darwinian theory of evolution . . . . Cf., also Lenoir (1987),
p. 23: In somewhat disparaging terms Goethe is frequently described as an essentialist and a typologist . . . and
his conception of biology has been characterised as idealistic morphology. . . .
875
Ibid., p. 17.
871

243

takes the form of what Lenoir calls the law of compensation.876 Goethe notes that
comparative anatomy requires the discernment of an anatomical archetype which is reached by
comparison of many existing forms.
However, Goethes archetype is not a fixed form which underlies all variations.877 As
Goethe says, the archetype contains the forms of all animals as potential.878 For this very
reason, no particular animal can be used as our point of comparison; the particular can never
serve as a measure for the whole.879 When we compare this ideal archetype with the
particular forms of existing animals, we find potentially infinite variation within a certain
structural range.880 These differences of form arise because one part or the other outweighs
the rest in importance. Thus, for example, the neck and extremities are favored in the giraffe at
the expense of the body, but the reverse in the case of the mole.881
The boundaries of the type are the boundaries of a range of possibilities.882 In Goethes
words, the formative impulse is given hegemony over a limited but well supplied
kingdom.883 This kingdom is governed by the law that nothing can be added to one part
without subtracting from another, and vice versa.884 Thus, the potency of the type is realised
in specific forms according to differences in degree as in Aristotle, with the added stipulation
that more in one area necessarily involves less in another.
For Goethe the specification of the potency of the type is determined by two things. Firstly,
there is the relationship between the organism and its environment; and secondly the internal
coherence of the organism itself.885 As to to the first, he writes, If we ask what causes the
appearance of this ability to assume manifold shapes, we will at first answer that the animal is
formed by circumstances for circumstances; hence its inner perfection and its outer
practicality.886
The Goethean morphologist, in determining relations between forms, is not guided by an
arbitrary choice of structures but rather focuses upon whose [sic] which have some special
876

Ibid., p. 24.
Ronald H. Brady, Form and Cause in Goethes Morphology, in Goethe and the Sciences: a Reappraisal, p.
275.
878
Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with
Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 118 (FA XIV: 229).
879
Ibid., p. 118 (FA XIV: 229).
880
Ibid., p. 120 (FA XIV: 233).
881
Ibid., pp. 120-121 (FA XIV: 233).
882
Brady (1987), p. 296: The general type, as Brady notes, designates potential rather than actual forms.
883
Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with
Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 121 (FA XIV: 233).
884
Ibid., p. 121 (FA XIV: 233).
885
Lenoir (1987), p. 24: An organism, in response to external factors defining the conditions of its existence, can
expend more of this force on developing certain structures, making them more complex and efficient for the
ends life [sic]; but at the same time this can only be accomplished at the expense of other systems, which must
compensate by becoming less complex.
886
Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with
Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 121 (FA XIV: 235).
877

244

significance for the life of the animal, and in particular, with its contact with the external
environment.887
However, the type (like the genus) is not merely passively moulded by external factors. An
animal will never become a plant. A bird will never become a fish (though it may acquire fishlike characteristics like the penguin.) The realisation of the type is not the imposition of
external structure on formless matter, but the realisation of potency in given circumstances.
For Goethe each animal is a small world and is physiologically perfect.888 No feature of
the animals form is arbitrary although Externally, some parts may seem useless because the
inner coherence of animal nature has given them this form without regard to outer
circumstances.889 Here Goethe arguably goes beyond Aristotle. We should not only look at
features in terms of function, and thus in relation to the life-world of the organism, but also in
terms of the formal coherence of the organism governed by the law of compensation.
These considerations suggest the way in which both Goethe and Aristotle differ
fundamentally from the Darwinian approach to the study of natural form. Lenoir sums this up
nicely:
Goethes conception of biology was that of a functional morphologist, and, accordingly,
whatever similarities persons like Haeckel have sought to detect between Goethes views and
Darwins theory of evolution are purely superficial. . . . For Goethe, even though it is not
possible to reduce life to strict mechanistic laws, a science of life is possible nonetheless because
there are internal laws of biological organization. . . . For Darwin, on the other hand,
morphotypes are not the manifestation of biological laws at all; they are simply the effects of
natural selection operating on the descendents of a common ancestral form. . . . Goethes
conception of life is fundamentally teleological.890

It is not, however, teleological in any way akin to human purpose. As Goethe puts it, we
should not claim that the bull has been given horns so that he can butt; instead, we will try to
discover how he might have developed the horns he uses for butting.891 Goethes point is that
the bull has not been made, like an artefact, according to a purpose. The bull has not been
887

Lenoir (1987), p. 25. Goethe gives many examples of this, explicitly echoing the traditional idea of the four
elements. Cf. Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing
with Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 122 ( FA XIV: 235-236): Goethe suggests that the archetype be
considered . . . from the standpoint of how the various elemental forces of nature affect it, and how it is also
somewhat subject to the general laws of the external world. Thus for example The air, by absorbing water, has
a drying effect. Hence the archetype developed in the air will be as inwardly dry as the air is pure and lacking in
moisture, giving rise to a more or less lean bird. Enough material will be left over for the formative force to
clothe flesh and bone in rich array, and outfit the auxillary organs fully. What in the fish was used for flesh is
here left over for the feathers. Thus the eagle is formed by the air for the air, by the mountain peak for the
mountain peak.
888
Ibid., p. 121 (FA XIV: 234).
889
Ibid., p. 121 (FA XIV: 234).
890
Lenoir (1987), pp. 26-27.
891
Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with
Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 121 (FA XIV: 234).
245

created with horns in order that he might butt. Rather, the presence of horns is intelligible
within the context of the complex whole characterising the realisation of the type within
particular circumstances.
The type has a certain range of potential forms and these are realised, in this case as horns,
both because of the way in which the environment moulds the inherentily plastic type and
because of the internal coherence and economy of the type itself. Recall that Aristotle asked
whether one should consider how organisms come to be, or rather consider how they are as
finished forms, i.e. in the adult organism. In these terms, the bull has horns because the
what it was going to be of the bull involves their presence. What Goethe is suggesting is that
more emphasis should be given to the process of genesis than to any fixed stage. He differs
from Aristotle in not seeing the adult form as primary.892 For Goethe the primary question is
not What are horns for? but rather Where do they come from?893 Nevertheless I think that
Goethes emphasis on making the necessity of forms intelligible through a presentation of the
process of their genesis can be reconciled with Aristotle and serves as a valuable corrective to
Aristotles occasional overemphasis on the ei\do~ as a fixed form.

892

Brady (1987), p. 289: Aristotle supposed that the adult stage can be conceived as goal, since it was the most
revealing stage of development, but Goethe did not make any stage of development primary in this manner.
893
Goethe, Excerpt from Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing with
Osteology, in Scientific Studies, p. 121 (FA XIV: 234).
246

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