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 THE BLOOMSBURY
COMPANION TO ARISTOTLE

EDITED BY

Claudia Baracchi

L ON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W Y OR K • SY DN EY
 Bloomsbury Academic
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First published 2014

© Claudia Baracchi and Contributors, 2014

Rémi Brague, “Sur la formule aristotélicienne Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ὌΝ (Physique, IV, 11 et 14),”

pp. 97–144, Du temps chez Platon et Aristote © PUF 2003,
translated and reproduced with permission.

Martha Nussbaum, “Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of Ethics,”

pp. 86–131, in J.E.J. Altham, Ross Harrison (eds), World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the
Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams © Cambridge University Press 1995,
reproduced with permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

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eISBN: 978-1-4411-9472-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Bloomsbury companion to Aristotle / edited by Claudia Baracchi.
pages cm.—(Bloomsbury companions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-0873-9—ISBN 978-1-4411-9472-5 (pdf)—ISBN 978-1-4411-4854-4
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 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii
Corpus Aristotelicum viii
List of Contributors xi

INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY 1

Part I:   Questions 17
Logos 19
  1.  Saying What One Sees, Letting See What One Says:
Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of the Sophists 21
  2. Aristotelian Definition: On the Discovery of Archai 41
Phusis 57
  3. Aristotle on Sensible Objects: Natural Things and Body 59
  4. On Aristotle’s Formula Ὅ Πote ὌN: Physics IV.11, 14 75
Psuche- 89
  5. Mind in Body in Aristotle 91
  6. Phantasia in De Anima 106
  7. The Hermeneutic Slumber: Aristotle’s Reflections on Sleep 128
Philosophia Pro-te- 145
  8. First Philosophy 147
  9. FIRST PHILOSOPHY, TRUTH, AND THE HISTORY OF
BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS 173
−
Ethos 189
10. Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundations of
Ethics, with an Addendum 191

v
CONTENTS

11. The Visibility of Goodness 227

-
12. To Kakon Pollachos Legetai: The PLURIVOCITY of
the Notion of Evil in Aristotelian Ethics 241
Polis 261
13. Education: The Ethico-Political Energeia 263
Poie-sis 277
14. Toward the Sublime Calculus of Aristotle’s Poetics 279

Part II:  Disseminations 295

15. Aristotle on the Natural Dwelling of Intellect 297
16. The Peripatetic Method: Walking with Woodbridge,
Thinking with Aristotle 311
17. What Remains of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Today? 327
18. Would Aristotle Be a Communitarian? 338

Glossary of Aristotelian Terms 348 

Chronology of Recent Research 384 
Bibliography 392 
Resources 404 
Sources of Translated/Reprinted Essays 408
Index 409

vi
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the editors at Bloomsbury for offering me the opportunity to compose this
choral work and rethink the meaning of companionship in reading Aristotle: Sarah Campbell,
David Avital, Rachel Eisenhauer. It has been a unique privilege to provide the site for this
collection of outstanding contributions. Thanks also to Merilyn Holme for her logistical
assistance. A particular manifestation of gratitude goes to Erick R. Jiménez, whose advice
and availability have been decisive at many junctures. Finally, many thanks (grazie mille) to
Alessandra Indelicato, whose love of things Greek knows no measure, for her assistance in the
final stages of editing.

New York City

November 2012

vii
 CORPUS ARISTOTELICUM

The Aristotelian Corpus is presented here in the standard order of the Bekker edition (Berlin,
1831–70). Texts deemed spurious are marked “**” while “*” indicates texts whose attribu-
tion is disputed. A list of abbreviations is available in the Bibliography section.

(1a1) Categories (Categoriae)

(16a1) On Interpretation (De Interpretatione)
(24a10) Prior Analytics (Analytica Priora)
(71a1) Posterior Analytics (Analytica Posteriora)
(100a18) Topics (Topica)
(164a20) Sophistical Refutations (De Sophisticis Elenchis)
(184a10) Physics (Physica)
(268a1) On the Heavens (De Caelo)
(314a1) On Generation and Corruption (De Generatione et Corruptione)
(338a20) Meteorology (Meteorologica)
** (391a1) On the Cosmos (De Mundo)
(402a1) On the Soul (De Anima)
Parva Naturalia (“Little Physical Treatises”)
(436a1) On Sense and the Sensibles (De Sensu et Sensibilibus)
(449b1) On Memory and Recollection (De Memoria et Reminiscentia)
(453b11) On Sleep and Wakefulness (De Somno et Vigilia)
(458a33) On Dreams (De Insomniis)
(462b12) On Divination in Sleep (De Divinatione per Somnum)
(464b19) On Length and Shortness of Life (De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae)

viii
 CORPUS ARISTOTELICUM

(467b10) On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death (De Juventute et Senectute, De
Vita et Morte)
(470b6) On Respiration (De Respiratione)
** (481a1) On Breath (De Spiritu)
(486a5) History of Animals (Historia Animalium)
(639a1) On Parts of Animals (De Partibus Animalium)
(698a1) On Motion of Animals (De Motu Animalium)
(704a4) On Locomotion of Animals (De Incessu Animalium)
(715a1) On Generation of Animals (De Generatione Animalium)
** (791a1) On Colors (De Coloribus)
** (800a1) On Things Heard (De audibilibus)
** (805a1) Physiognomonics (Physiognomonica)
** (815a10) On Plants (De Plantis)
** (830a5) On Marvellous Things Heard (De Mirabilibus Auscultationibus)
** (847a11) Mechanics (Mechanica)
  * (859a1) Problems (Problemata)
** (968a1) On Indivisible Lines (De Lineis Insecabilibus)
** (973a1) Situations and Names of Winds (Ventorum Situs)
** (974a1) On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias
(980a21) Metaphysics (Metaphysica)
(1094a1) Nicomachean Ethics (Ethica Nicomachea)
  * (1181a24) Great Ethics (Magna Moralia)
(1214a1) Eudemian Ethics (Ethica Eudemia)
** (1249a26) On Virtues and Vices (De Virtutibus et Vitiis)
(1252a1) Politics (Politica)
  * (1343a1) Economics (Oeconomica)
(1354a1) Rhetoric (Ars Rhetorica)
** (1420a5) Rhetoric to Alexander (Rhetorica ad Alexandrum)
(1447a8) Poetics (Ars Poetica)

ix
CORPUS ARISTOTELICUM

The Constitution of the Athenians, not included in Bekker’s edition, was first edited by Sir
Frederick Kenyon in 1891.

Among the works extant in fragmentary form are:

Gryllus or On Rhetoric (Gryllus sive De Rhetorica)
Eudemus or On the Soul (Eudemus sive De Anima)
Protrepticus (Protrepticus)
On Ideas (De Ideis)
On the Good (De Bono)
On Philosophy (De Philosophia)

A few other fragments or titles included in ancient catalogues (the oldest of which is in
Diogenes Laertius’ Lives V.1) are: Symposium, Sophist, Nerinthus, Erotic, On Riches, On
Prayer, On Good Birth, On Pleasure, On Education, On Kingship, Alexander or On Colonies,
Statesman, On the Poets, and On Justice.

Sources

Rose, Valentin, Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, Leipzig: Teubner, 1886.
Walzer, Richard Rudolf, Aristotelis Dialogorum fragmenta, in usum scholarum, Florence:
Sansoni, 1934 (reprinted Hildescheim: Olms, 1963).
Laurenti, Renato, Aristotele. I frammenti dei dialoghi (2 vols), Naples: Loffredo, 1987.

x
 List of Contributors

Pierre Aubenque Idit Dobbs-Weinstein

Université Paris IV Sorbonne, Institut Vanderbilt University
International de Philosophie USA
France
Arianna Fermani
Claudia Baracchi Università di Macerata
Università di Milano-Bicocca Italy
Italy
Benjamin J. Grazzini
Enrico Berti The University of Toledo
Università di Padova USA
Italy
Erick R. Jiménez
Rémi Brague Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona)
Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Spain
France
Ludwig-Maximilian Universität (München) Pavlos Kontos
Germany University of Patras
Greece
Barbara Cassin
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Helen S. Lang
(Paris) Villanova University
France USA

Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback Christopher P. Long

University College of Södertörn (Stockholm) Pennsylvania State University
Sweden USA

xi
List of Contributors

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou Alejandro Vigo

State University of New York—Buffalo Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona)
USA Spain

Martha C. Nussbaum Michael Weinman

University of Chicago European College of Liberal Arts—Bard
USA (Berlin)
Germany
Spyridon Rangos
University of Patras Russell Winslow
Greece St. John’s College (Santa Fe)
USA
Eric Sanday
University of Kentucky
USA

xii
 INTRODUCTION: PATHS
OF INQUIRY

[T]here came to be established a form of philosophy that, though it had two designations, was one
and concordant, that of the Academics and the Peripatetics, who, though agreeing regarding things,
differed in name . . . [A]nd those with Aristotle were called the Peripatetics, because they used to
debate while walking in the Lyceum, while the others, since they carried on Plato’s custom of getting
together and holding conversation in the Academy, which is another gymnasium, got their designa-
tion from the name of the place. But both drew a great deal from Plato’s abundance. . . . Indeed,
at first this was one philosophy with two names, as I said, for there was no difference between the
Peripatetics and the old Academy of that time. Aristotle, as it seems to me, brought to it a certain
copiousness of intellect, but both shared the same source and likewise distinguished things into
desirable and repellent.
Cicero, Academica I.iv.17

When Aristotle came back to Athens in Gryllus or On Rhetoric (polemically engag-

335/334, he was about 50, widely known, and
highly regarded. Yet, it seems likely that his
fame rested then on texts that are now for the
most part lost. With this return to the place
where, still a teenager, he had come to study
with Plato, begins the most fecund period of
his life. The majority of the works composing
the Aristotelian corpus as we know it probably
date back to the years 335/334–323, when,
having founded his own school in Athens (the
Peripatos), Aristotle devoted himself to sys-
tematic teaching and concomitant writing.
Aristotle had written copiously in the
past when he studied at Plato’s Academy
(367/366–348/347 ca): writings such as
ing the art of rhetoric as systematized by
Gorgias and Isocrates), Eudemus or On
the Soul (in antiquity, and even by later
neo-Platonists, held to be the equal of Plato’s
Phaedo), Protrepticus (extensively cited by
Iamblichus of Apamea), On Ideas (ideally sit-
uated in the context of the debates on Plato’s
thought, within Plato’s Academy itself), On
the Good (engaging Plato’s teaching on
principles and reconfiguring the question of
the ideas), and On Philosophy (anticipating
various aspects of Aristotle’s later treatises
on first philosophy, from his characteristic
philosophy of history and critical analy-
sis of past and present discussions, to the

1
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
interrogation of principles in their multiplic-
ity and unity) enjoyed wide circulation and
remarkable appreciation. With the necessary
caution, due to the lack of a reliable chro-
nology, other texts are frequently attributed
to the period following Aristotle’s departure
from the Academy and from Athens—when
he traveled to Asia Minor, visiting Hermias
of Atarneus (347–345/344), and then to
Mytilene (345/344–343/342), subsequently
to become the teacher of Alexander, son of
the Macedonian king Philip II (343/342–
340). Suffice it to mention, here, the treatise
On the Cosmos (almost unanimously held
to be spurious, yet most influential through-
out the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and
available in numerous Latin translations)1 as
well as On Kingship and Alexander or On
Colonies, which may be ascribed to the years
at the Macedonian court.
Prior to Aristotle’s return to Athens and
the founding of the Peripatos, then, numer-
ous published texts had made him a con-
spicuous figure, prominently discussed in
philosophical circles and in the public space
alike. The exoteric writings were admired as
well for their polished diction and artful com-
position, so much so that in later antiquity
Aristotle was still remembered for the trans-
porting force of his eloquence, celebrated
as a “golden stream” (Cicero, Academica
II.xxxviii.119) of distinctive suavitas (Quin­
tilian, Institutionum Oratoriarum X.i.83).
Indeed, we also have evidence of Aristotle’s
practice in lyric composition, most notably
two poems dedicated to Hermias, the friend
from the times of the Academia—an epigram
on his death and a commemorative song.
Perhaps tellingly, the latter begins with an
invocation of virtue, said to require much
labor (ἀρετὰ πολύμοχθε), and ends with the
evocation of Zeus the preserver of strangers,
and the gift of steadfast friendship.2
2
Yet, what for about two millennia has
been transmitted as the corpus aristoteli-
cum includes almost exclusively writings
from Aristotle’s years at the Peripatetic
school. This body of work, closely associ-
ated with the teaching activity, though not
necessarily reducible to the status of lecture
notes, has survived in the systematization
by Andronicus of Rhodes (first-century bc).
This proved to be a momentous crystalliza-
tion indeed, securing the transit of the corpus
across centuries in an unvaried order and
still providing the blueprint for Immanuel
Bekker’s edition (Berlin, 1831–70). With the
arrival of Aristotle’s original manuscripts in
Rome3 and the edition by Andronicus, the
esoteric texts pertaining to the Peripatetic
courses, that is, Aristotle’s opera as we know
it, became more broadly available than ever
before. In the wake of this fateful event, a
new perception of Aristotle began to take
shape and, simultaneously, the exoteric writ-
ings earlier enjoying vast circulation began to
sink into oblivion. Clearly the esoteric texts, in
their difficulty and depth, imposed themselves
at once as Aristotle’s outstanding contribution,
eclipsing the public writings by virtue of their
sheer stature. The material loss of the exoteric
texts is probably, at least to some extent, the
counterpart of this cultural/epochal shift.
But a brief consideration is in order, con-
cerning the nature of Andronicus’ catalogue
and the implications of its ordering—even
aside from the various collations and tex-
tual interventions attributed to him. There
is almost universal concordance on the arbi-
trary and anachronistic character of this
operation.4 It has been said that Andronicus
forced Aristotle into a Hellenistic philo-
sophical framework and, above all, that the
systematic stringency driving Andronicus’
project was quite foreign to Aristotle’s own
way of proceeding. Now, it may in fact be

dubious that Andronicus was the eleventh
scholarch of the Peripatos and, consequently,
it may be ill-advised simply to presume that
his editorial decisions might faithfully reflect
the organization of studies at the Peripatetic
school. Furthermore, if Andronicus was con-
vinced that one should read the Aristotelian
texts starting from the logical treatises, he
had his first critic in his student, Boethus of
Sidon, who thought instead that one should
access the corpus through the Physics.
And yet. Yet, however cautiously, it may per-
haps be fruitful to consider the matter in a less
prejudiced fashion. Perhaps, indeed, the matter
is not this straightforward. In the first place,
systematicity may be said in many ways. As has
consistently been acknowledged, certainly we
do find in Aristotle a systematic vocation—if
by this we mean the constant effort at drawing
connections and magnifying webs of relations,
at seizing the organic articulation of problems
that only appear extraneous to each other,
and at pursuing the interpenetration of ques-
tions of unity and multiplicity, singularity and
the whole, finitude and immensity. Aristotle’s
thinking is distinctively architectonic and
always driven to situate the individual holis-
tically. Every student or scholar of Aristotle
may grant this. Thus, when scholars consider
Andronicus’ initiative problematic, saying it
would force Aristotle’s texts into a system-
atic unity alien to it, they must have in mind
another sense of the word “system”: system
in the modern, or even late-modern, Hegelian
sense. This would indeed be genuinely alien
to Aristotle. Systematizing Aristotle’s work
in this manner would mean turning the open
systematicity that envisions interconnections
into the self-enclosed system that claims to
have resolved multiplicity into totality—with
no residue.
But is this what Andronicus’ ordering
does? Is the trajectory envisioned in his
3
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
edition, harbored in a millenary ­tradition
and reaching us via Bekker—is this at all
systematic, in the sense of a closed and
self-enclosed doctrinal construct? In other
words, are the preoccupations regarding the
extraneousness of the ancient editorial deci-
sions perceptive enough and to the point? It
seems to me that the contrary is rather the
case. Let us consider, albeit very succinctly,
the prog­ression fixed by Andronicus, from
the focus on logical/“instrumental” discur-
sivity, to the discourses on physical matters,
to the psycho-biological discussions, to the
question of principles and origins, to the
study of human, ethical and political issues,
and finally to discursivity, again, but in light
of beauty, creativity, and the disclosiveness
thereof. Reading, thinking with, or encoun-
tering Aristotle will have involved this tran­
sition: from logos to phusis to praxis.
***
Thus, one must start with the logical trea-
tises. Or perhaps not quite: Aristotle does
not speak of “logic” (this will be a Stoic
innovation), but addresses the manifold phe-
nomenon of legein, of logos—how speak-
ing is possible and how it articulates itself
in predication/attribution (Categories); how
speaking pertains to that which is and is not,
let alone that which may be and is not yet
(On Interpretation); how logos as sullogis-
mos can be demonstrative, show an unas-
sailable truth, through what figures and
modes (Prior Analytics); how demonstra-
tion is possi­ble, that is, how premises and
definitions (the starting points) are obtained
(Posterior Analytics); how argumentation as
dialectical exchange can be artfully sustained
(Topics, Sophistical Refutations). The gather-
ing of these discourses, opening the course of
studies according to Andronicus, constitutes
the Organon: quite literally, the tool, the
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
instrument propaedeutic to any kind of dis-
cussion and inquiry.
Aristotle does not speak of logic but of analy-
sis, of analytics, analutike-: at stake is taking
apart, examining by laying out a complex
subject matter in its elemental components.
Strictly speaking, analysis is not a science,5
but rather the illumination of the presupposi-
tions always already implicit in every scientific
endeavor, in fact, in every gesture of logos:
methodological awareness, one can say, is the
capacity for proceeding along a path (hodos)
of inquiry while cultivating the conscious-
ness of the structural conditions involved
(Metaphysics 1005b3). It also prepares one to
distinguish between different ways of proceed-
ing, assessing the most appropriate in each
case: it is in virtue of this kind of study that
one knows that demonstrations must come to
an end at some point, and is therefore prepared
to abstain from asking for a demonstration of
everything (1006a2–11). Again, by virtue of
this preliminary education, one knows when it
is fitting to ask for demonstrations and when
the situation calls for other approaches—in-
demonstrability being the common trait both
of first principles (Posterior Analytics) and
of becoming in its instability and fluctuation
(Nicomachean Ethics 1094b11–27).
Not a science in any proper sense, but
rather the methodological consciousness
that can make the practice of inquiry (sci-
entific and otherwise) perspicuous to itself,
the analysis of logos (logic, if you will) des-
ignates nothing formal, let alone abstract.
It is always rooted in worldly involvements
and practices at once preceding and envel-
oping it. Thus rooted, it allows one to seize
more lucidly how the paths of inquiry are
sustained, articulated, and drawn across
the world’s open expanse.
Starting from such considerations on
how the world is traversed, Andronicus’
4
Aristotelian program proceeds to consider
how the world as such is encountered. The
Physics and, more broadly, the various trea-
tises on cosmology and becoming concern
precisely the world encountered in its dynamic
unfolding and constant transformation: phu-
sis. The beings of nature are those beings
having the principle of motion and rest in
themselves (Physics 192b13–14), each mov-
ing according to its own nature and belonging
in nature as the comprehensive field of motil-
ity—far from inert matter mechanistically
explainable. It is clear that the question of life
imposes itself precisely in this connection. The
psycho-biological treatises are a necessary and
intrinsic development of issues confronted in
the study of physics. The cosmos itself, phusis
as a whole, is approached in the perspective of
pervasive aliveness (though with different out-
comes, say, in De Philosophia, Metaphysics
XII, and De Caelo), in light of the sentience
and vibrancy characteristic of living organ-
isms. From this macroscopic level all the way
to the most minute living beings (from cos-
mology to biology, via De Anima), the psy-
chological questions are questions variously
addressing the phenomenon of the animal, the
animate, and animation.
The trajectory of Andronicus’ Aristotle
leads only at this point to “first philosophy.”
That Aristotle did not have, let alone think,
the word “metaphysics” has been amply dis-
cussed with diverse results, and I shall leave
it aside here. For, in the first place, prior to
taking a position on whether or not Aristotle
“had” a metaphysics, it would be relevant
to think through this problem in light of the
fact that conceptual categories are not ahis-
torical, transhistorical entities, translatable
and transposable from one epoch to another,
across time and space, while remaining con-
stant and intact. Indeed, Aristotle was among
the thinkers most acutely aware of such

difficulties pertaining to the philosophy of
history, the genealogy of concepts, the finitude
and mortality of cultures (Metaphysics I and
II could hardly be more peremptory in this
respect, as is Metaphysics XII.8). Secondly,
however, in the present context the ques-
tion of “metaphysics” in Aristotle seems less
than compelling—for, even if Aristotle should
have thought the being simply separate and
unmoved, the point is how this thought would
be woven into the fabric of his comprehensive
reflection, where and at what juncture of the
encompassing movement of his thinking this
moment would be situated.
The discussions surrounding “first philo­
sophy” follow, according to Andronicus,
those on physical, physiological, and psycho-
logical matters. It is only through the study
of such issues that one comes to the questions
of first philosophy. Only by attending to the
physical may one come to the possibility of
interrogating the physical in such a way as
to transcend it, or as if transcending it—or,
again, in such a way as to begin to envision
the principles belonging to all the beings of
phusis, principles so common and archaic
that they no longer bear any resemblance to
anything determinate. The principle of deter-
mination and determinacy in and of itself has
no determinate outline. Whether or not the
physical can actually be left behind, this is
another matter, and a problematic one—as
the discussion in Metaphysics IV paradig-
matically shows, aiming as it does to speak
of “being qua being” and the axiomatics of
noncontradiction, yet at the same time neces-
sarily maintaining an argumentation consist-
ently ethico-practical in tenor.
After the discussion on first philosophy,
Aristotle’s trajectory culminates with the
ethico-political treatises and comes to a close
with the Rhetoric and Poetics, showing that
the ultimate concern of the Greek philosopher
5
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
is the examination of first principles as they
operatively display themselves in the world
and inform human practices—while, in turn,
human practices critically shape the ways in
which issues such as first principles emerge
as problems and are interrogated. The archi-
tectonic discipline of ethics/politics, and the
exercises of dialectical confrontation and
poetic articulation embedded therein, deter-
mine the way in which principles come to
appear at all. They make it clear that political
stipulations will never have been secondary,
derivative issues. They likewise illuminate the
work of investigation as never simply sepa-
rable from the contribution of creativity and
the decisions involved in creative construc-
tion. Creativity itself emerges as a mode of
exploration and disclosure no less than sci-
entific inquiry. The treatises of this last seg-
ment present the self-conscious insight of
the inquirer increasingly aware of the condi-
tions and delimitations of her own pursuits.
Far from paralyzing, the fact that all human
endeavors, including theoretical investigation
(NE 1094a1), are thus framed, lucidly situ-
ates the human in the awareness of its own
finitude and, at the same time, in the openness
to that which transcends and exceeds it—that
which cannot be reduced to the human and
its mortality, yet appears only through it.
***
In the wake of this drastically abbre­viated
overview of the Aristotelian trajectory accord-
ing to Andronicus, two brief remarks are in
order—one systematic and the other histori-
cal in nature, both essentially philosophical.
First, it seems hardly the case that the order
envisioned by the ancient ­editor would
amount to a closed system, in the sense of a
static, lifeless systematization having extin-
guished all residual questions. If what was
exposed above is at all sustainable, far from
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
having brought questions to rest and obtained
conclusive and inclusive mastery over them,
the course of studies outlined leads us to an
open-ended culmination. In this culmination
we may enjoy at once the possibility of a con-
templative grasp of the whole and the persist-
ence of limiting and obscuring conditions,
conditions which are ineliminable because
they are constitutive of us. We are made of
this: constitutively open to that which we
are not. Thus, rather than leading to the
totalizing assertions of a fully accomplished,
all-embracing rational system, this course of
study fosters a certain awareness. It allows
us (individually and collectively, alone and
together), perhaps, fleetingly to glimpse the
conditionality of our contemplation, its inter-
mittent nature, its never being complete but
always stretching out (the orexis at the thresh-
old of Metaphysics I) to completeness and per-
fection. This is a sober reminder of the open
structure that the human is: open, incomplete,
and finding precisely in such openness and
incompletion its distinctive trait.
Thus, the open systematicity the editor
brought to bear on the Aristotelian corpus
emerges as altogether foreign to the modern
system of rationalistic/idealistic inspiration.
It emerges as an altogether unusual path of
inquiry that leaves the problematic dimension
of thinking unresolved. The philosophical
significance of this trajectory, neither modern
nor familiar, will be seized and deliberately
thought through in the Judeo-Arabic context,
in which the meditation on first philosophy
always finds its fulfillment in the capacity for
ethico-political regeneration—as in Avicenna’s
paradigmatic Science of Divine Things, from
the Book of Healing (Kitab al-Shifa), which in
the end comes to rest in the return to human
(political, ethical, religious) institutions.
Because of the philosophically compelling
reasons of this systematization, the present
6
volume, as will become clear below, is organ-
ized according to Andronicus’ decision. In col-
lective volumes aiming to present the arc of
Aristotle’s work in its entirety, it is not unusual
to come across remarkable ways of ordering—
remarkable precisely to the extent that they go
without saying. The most remarkable among
them is the choice to have Logic followed by
Metaphysics, and only subsequently Physics
and the other disciplines. This sequence dis-
plays the unquestioned, unwarranted privi-
leging of formal-theoretical knowledge over
against modes of investigation that, in one
and the same gesture, are understood as
“applied” or derivative. This posture, domi-
nant in the Anglo-American tradition but by
no means its exclusive prerogative, rests on
not-so-self-evident assumptions regarding the
hierarchical dualism of reason and experi-
ence. Whether or not one formally commits to
a dualistic position (and today many do not),
a certain protectiveness of reason’s unaffected
and nonaffective exercise undeniably abides
untarnished—a defense of freedom, separa-
tion, and autonomy (from life, ultimately).
While this posture is prevalent after Descartes
and Kant, the axiomatic projection of it onto
ancient philosophy and the dissimulation of
perhaps unbridgeable discontinuities seem
worthy of being interrogated.
As for the second remark, let it sim-
ply be said that one should wonder at the
characterization of Andronicus’ edition as
Hellenistic and therefore anachronistic and
un-Aristotelian. The development recalled
above, opening with analytical propaedeutics
and leading from physics to first philosophy,
to ethics/politics, seems rather inscribed in
Greek philosophy from Plato’s and Aristotle’s
time, and to constitute, as it were, the deep
syntax of the Platonic/Aristotelian medita-
tion. Does Plato not draw precisely this trajec-
tory in the erotic ascent narrated by Diotima

in the Symposium? From beautiful bodies, to
the psychological beauty manifest in worldly
undertakings, to the beauty of knowledge, to
the wondrous contemplation of beauty itself
(if at all possible), to the possibility of giving
birth to true excellence in this life together
(210a–212a), the way up maintains its con-
tact with the point of departure, and always
returns, and blossoms like a seed planted in
this terrain here. We endlessly encounter in
Plato this circulation between below and
above, upwards and backwards—one of its
celebrated figures being that of the cave, which
not only entails the liberation of the prisoner
but also necessitates the coming back. But we
can likewise think of the course of education
in Republic VII, from mathematics, to geom-
etry, to astronomy, to harmonics, in order
finally to confront the most arduous task—
taking care of things here. The path leads one
all the way across the sky, and back to the
polis, where the enterprise comes to comple-
tion, with dialectic assisting in the assessments
and reckonings of which humans, individually
and as a community, are capable.
And do we not find traces of the same
journey in Aristotle—even in unlikely circum-
stances, such as, for example, the elaboration
of sophia (Nicomachean Ethics VI)? Sophia,
the highest intellectual accomplishment, the
capacity for the contemplation of the whole,
is here disclosed as that which encourages a
lucid ethical stance, the acknowledgment of
the finitude and situatedness of human beings.
It is precisely in virtue of this insightful reach-
ing beyond exclusively human affairs, looking
upwards, that the question may be broached,
concerning the proper place of humans in the
kosmos. Similarly, in a kind of nonanthropo-
centric turn, the insight of sophia may inti-
mate that humans are perhaps not “the best
of beings in the universe” (1141a22): “And
if one were to say that the human being is
7
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
the best of the animals, this too would make
no difference; for there are also other things
much more divine in [their] nature than the
human being, like the most visible things
(phanero-tata) of which the cosmos is com-
posed” (1141a35–b1). Far from being an
extraneous superimposition, the indication of
a metaphysics proceeding out of physics and
flowering into ethical formation seems to lie
at the heart of Aristotle’s thinking.
***
A volume conceived as a Companion in the
adventure of reading Aristotle addresses an
audience already initiated to ancient Greek
philosophical discourse. The central task of
such a volume, thus, is accompanying the
reader (the advanced student, the discerning
reader, even the scholar) from various degrees
of familiarity with the themes and lineaments
of ancient philosophy, into a deeper intimacy
with the author at issue. Along this trajec-
tory, the reader needs elucidation of complex
discussions as well as an exposure to the
problematic issues in scholarly interpreta-
tion. The collection presented here includes
studies with a historical/philological focus as
well as discussions rooted in recent/contem-
porary debates that show the fecundity and
lasting energy of Aristotle’s thought.
From the start, my inclination has been
to gather a multiplicity of heterogeneous
voices and to retain their irreducibility. I
conceived of a volume presenting perspec-
tives somewhat unusual in the context of
Anglo-American debates in this field, with-
out, however, bringing the various contribu-
tions into a uniform view, let alone imposing
stringent directives, whether stylistic or doc-
trinal. I wished to set side by side diverse
philosophical orientations, interpretive sen-
sibilities, and paths of research that, if not
incompatible, may be in tension with each
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
other, because I am convinced of the richness,
resonance, and fruitfulness of such juxtapo-
sitions without a conclusive synthesis. Such
a polyphony may guide the reader without
condescension, variously making forays into
the Aristotelian corpus, while refraining from
minimizing difficulties, from closing gaps, or
from resolving what instead might profitably
be articulated as an abiding problem. Indeed,
assisting in the exercise of reading involves,
along with the task of clarification, formulat-
ing que­stions as such and suggesting further
lines of inquiry.
Most of the essays were specially commis-
sioned for the occasion, and I was delighted
at the enthusiasm this project elicited from
those I contacted, whether friends or col-
leagues I never met before, regarded as
authorities in the field or at the early stages
of academic recognition. However, this
project also provided an occasion for pre-
senting in translation works unavailable in
English, although written by highly respected
authors. As anticipated, the contributions
are organized following Andronicus’ order-
ing. The sequence begins, therefore, with two
readings of Aristotle’s meditation on the phe-
nomenon of human logos.
Logos
Prior even to the institution of logic as we
know it, at stake in this section is the phe-
nomenon of utterance in its possibility
and nascent manifestations, and hence the
connections between word and phenome-
non—indeed, between naming, discursivity,
structure of argumentation, and ontology.
In “Saying What One Sees, Letting See What
One Says: Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the
Rhetoric of the Sophists,” Barbara Cassin
8
situates Aristotle between the claims of an
ancient proto-phenomenological posture and
those of rhetoric. The former would demand
that one attend to phenomena and let logos
emerge from them, so that saying what one
sees may be granted in its truth by such an
intimacy with the seen—a nascent striving
for adequation of word to being that, accord-
ing to Cassin, would lay down the conditions
for modern and later dualisms. The latter
would prompt one to attend to the crea-
tive gestures of logos, which originally light
up the world in its visibility, thus literally
allowing one to see. In what ends up being
yet another confrontation between philoso-
phy and sophistry, the Organon is examined
along with the Rhetoric and Poetics, showing
the continuity between the alpha and omega
of the corpus (whose circularity is, thus, illu-
minated), in the sustained effort to explore
the implications of speaking.
With a phenomenological (rather than
sophistical/rhetorical) emphasis, Russell
Winslow focuses on the attainment of defi-
nitions (the origin and condition of all
demonstrative endeavor) from the dialectical
assessment of received discourses molding
prior experience. In the essay “Aristotelian
Definition: On the Discovery of Archai,”
Winslow seizes in Aristotle what could be
called a dialectical naturalism—the journey
from what is according to us toward what
is in itself, an ongoing task of attunement
declining any claims to revelation and pre-
tenses of objectivism.
Phusis
Pursuing the question regarding the nature and
procedure of Aristotle’s discourses on phusis,
in “Aristotle on Sensible Objects: Natural

Things and Body” Helen Lang comprehen-
sively examines Aristotle’s “science of natural
things” from Physics to De Caelo, from On
Generation and Corruption to texts in the
Parva Naturalia, situating these discussions
in the context of the ancient and archaic doc-
trines, in particular those of the atomists, and
concentrating on the relation of form and
matter. She then proceeds to call into question
the well-known trope depicting Aristotle as an
empiricist. Such a characterization of Aristotle
clearly reflects an attempt to come to terms
with his consistent appeal to pheno­mena and
indefatigable striving to adhere to things as
they are. Yet, Lang maintains, insofar as the
empirical account is held to be posterior and
secondary vis-à-vis the account of essence (i.e.
insofar as one dwells on the dualism of experi-
ence and formal knowledge, or appearing and
being), an altogether central trait of Aristotle’s
way of inquiry is missed—namely, the intima-
tion that it is in experiencing natural phenom-
ena that one comes to essences. In the end, the
descriptive/phenomenological approach mag-
nifying the role of experience confirms the
enduring meaningfulness of Aristotle’s phys-
ics and shows it as a possible resource for a
critique of the ethos of abstraction distinctive
of the modern/contemporary sciences.
Through the interpretation of Aristotle’s
discourse on time, Rémi Brague further delves
into the relation between natural/psychologi-
cal phenomena and essential (indeed, logical)
structures, highlighting both the inherently
logical/discursive articulation of motion/time
and the unsettling of logical, grammatical,
and syntactic order signaled most notably
in the dispersion of the subject. In the con-
cluding sections of his seminal work “On
Aristotle’s Formula Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ὌΝ: Physics
IV.11, 14,” Brague illuminates the dynamic
unity of the “now,” and thereby the emerging
structure of time, in their essential connection
9
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
with logos. Gathering and dividing, the oper-
ation of logos is shown at the heart of the
now—the unity into which prior and pos-
terior are brought together (while still abid-
ing as two), the divided union that is never
simple, never simply resolved, in fact always
opening into that which it is not. The analysis
of time reveals logos (articulation, configura-
tion, number) at work in phusis as well as
psuche- and, at the same time, undergoing in
its articulation the tremor of a subject tend-
ing to dissolve into the predicate. The logic
of time reveals the time of logic, that is, the
implications of time at the heart of logic.
PSUCHeˉ
Aristotle’s discourses on the psuche- are
approached with particular attention to the
themes of intellect and imagination, but also
from the point of view of the basic phenom-
enon of animal psychism—aliveness in the
broadest sense. Focusing on the problems sur-
rounding Aristotle’s treatment of the intellect
(nous), Erick Raphael Jiménez’s essay, “Mind
in Body in Aristotle,” allows the issue of per-
ception, whether imaginal or intellectual, to
emerge in its complexity. After recalling the
interpretive orientations favoring a view
of the intellect in its separation from body,
Jiménez lays out what he calls an aesthetic
interpretation delineating the ways in which
the intellect is indeed not separate, and how
its embodiment (and, hence, sensibility and
imagination) may configure the reception/
formation of intelligibles.
Eric Sanday turns to the thematization of
the living organism in De Anima, in order
to consider the relation between psyche and
soma and, even more pointedly, the capac-
ity for discernment emerging in the dynamic
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
interaction of the living organism with its
environment, an interpenetration and con-
stant exchange that are constitutive of the
animal as such. In his essay “Phantasia in
De Anima” imagination is shown as decisive
with respect to animal motility and essential
to the discriminating power, thus revealing a
constructive dimension inherent in the move-
ments of perception.
Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback’s con-
tribution, “The Hermeneutic Slumber:
Aristotle’s Reflections on Sleep,” principally
addresses three treatises from the Parva
Naturalia, On Sleep and Wakefulness, On
Dreams, and On Divination in Sleep, in a
twofold discussion. On the one hand she
outlines Aristotle’s analyses of modes of
consciousness, whether wakeful or dor-
mant. On the other hand she seizes the issue
of sleep in its methodological reverberations
and allows it to inflect and frame the entire
discussion. In this light, the author calls
for a hermeneutical approach receiving the
corpus of ancient texts as a sleeping body,
rather than confronting the past as if it were
a corpse. Not surprisingly, the Aristotelian
discourses on psychism, indeed, the overall
meditation on aliveness and the interpen-
etration of consciousness and unconscious-
ness, emerge in their unexhausted richness,
belonging in conversations with modern/
contemporary voices, from Freud to Husserl
and beyond.
ˉ teˉ
Philosophia Pro
The engagements with the treatises com-
prehensively addressing phusis and the ani-
mation pervading it are followed by essays
on Aristotle’s philosophia pro-te-. “First
Philosophy,” by Alejandro Vigo, exposes
10
the trajectory of the text known as the
Metaphysics—a remarkable study in its
extensiveness and ambition systematically
to account for the unitary architecture of the
text without downplaying or disguising the
unresolved moments of aporia. Vigo con-
fronts the “science of first principles” in the
genetic perspective of Metaphysics I, empha-
sizing the terminological as well as thematic
proliferation characterizing this discipline, its
novelty and originality as well as its “natu-
ralness” and archaic roots. On this ground,
and through the assessment of diverse and
often contrasting scholarly stances, he spans
the discourses on “being qua being” in its
“many-wayness,” on predication and the
question of truth, on the connections between
the language of being, that of “substance”
(ousia), and that of divinity. The concluding
open-ended remarks, concerning whether the
unmoved mover (i.e. the ultimate principle)
is one or many, leaves us with problems alto-
gether not marginal.
Spyridon Rangos’ contribution, “First
Philosophy, Truth, and the History of Being
in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” focuses on the
historicity of the ontological discourse, that
is, on the temporality at the heart of think-
ing (even and most notably the thinking at
stake in first philosophy) as well as the inau-
gural philosophy of history outlined in this
context. The science of being has come to
be shaped and finally to take place as such
in virtue of a complex, stratified genealogy:
problems have been handed down, received,
or lost, along with diverse intertwined dis-
cussions, cultural exchanges, and inflections.
Moreover, and even more crucially, Rangos
sets into relief Aristotle’s concern (particu-
larly keen in this turn to the first and ulti-
mate principles/causes) with the altogether
human conditions allowing for the “attain-
ment of truth.” Here of course Metaphysics

II is of primary importance, with its insist-
ence on knowledge in its choral/genealogical
enterprise, the relative blindness of humans
and the inevitably perspectival character of
their contemplation, and the material, lin-
guistic, cultural conditions necessary for lis-
tening to a lecture and participating in such
a collective meditation. Things in their truth
and origin do not make themselves manifest
simply and immediately. Thus, in following
the trajectory leading from the exploration
of the surroundings and their pervasive ani-
mation (phusis, psuche-) to the attempt to
contemplate their causes, the question comes
to impose itself, regarding what at first
remained unthematized and implicit, that
is, regarding the being who sustains such
a trajectory of exploration and study. This
is the question of the human being, the being
that traces paths of wonder, attraction, and
inquiry. It is, at once, an ethico-political ques-
tion, for it regards the upbringing, context,
awareness, and care making such a being
possible, making the human blossom into
itself, in fact, making the human as such.
eˉthos
With ethics, thus, the inquiry turns back
upon itself and attempts to seize its own
unspoken conditions. This means delving
into the nature of the human phenome-
non—of this being belonging in nature but
not fully (mechanically) determined by it,
belonging in life but having to choose how
to live, since different ways of life appear
likewise available. Delving into the nature
of the human, thus, proves to be an esp­
ecially delicate endeavor, for ethics is the
site at once of human self-reflection and of
human self-construction, that is, at once of
11
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
contemplation and architecture. Martha C.
Nussbaum, in “Aristotle on Human Nature
and the Foundations of Ethics,” with an
“Addendum,” takes up this fundamental task
in a fecund debate with Bernard Williams.
Drawing upon the ethical treatises as well as
the Politics, but also situating Aristotle in his
confrontation with Plato and in the context
of ancient and archaic poetry, Nussbaum
vividly outlines the basic experience of being
human, the human between beasts and gods,
the human questions of identity, mortality,
endurance, desire, and community. Crucial in
her overall reading of Aristotle is the empha-
sis on the communal (political) ground of the
individual, and hence the questioning of the
self/other distinction, with all its implications
in contemporary debates in interrelated disci-
plines, from philosophy to political thought,
to economics. Equally decisive is her ques-
tioning of the distinction between “natural
fact” and “ethical value,” especially with ref-
erence to the issue of grounding, and thus the
refusal to give practical reflection a marginal,
limited relevance. In the “Addendum” to her
essay, Nussbaum further develops the lines
of a broad-ranging contemporary debate
suggestively revolving around the relation
between ethics and biology, yet again casting
light on the vitality of Aristotle’s discourse.
Pavlos Kontos continues the examination
of Aristotelian ethics in his contribution “The
Visibility of Goodness,” where he emphasizes
excellence in its phenomenal evidence, as an
altogether worldly event irreducible to psy-
chological interiority (if there is such a thing).
This contribution guides us to a close analy-
sis of the forms of ethical excellence and the
experience of friendship.
Arianna Fermani lays out a sustained phe-
nomenological exposition of evil in the essay
“To Kakon Pollacho-s Legetai: The Plurivocity
of the Notion of Evil in Aristotelian Ethics.”
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
Here she confronts key issues ranging from
the voluntary or involuntary character of
action (and hence the themes of ignorance,
negligence, and responsibility) to the fine
distinction between vice and the structure of
continence/incontinence, from the analysis of
contingent circumstances and effectiveness in
action to the integrity or disintegration of the
psychosomatic organism.
Polis
In “Education: The Ethico-Political Energeia,”
Michael Weinman underscores the unity of eth-
ics and politics, the ways in which it is within
the framework of the polis (the aggregation of
many revolving around the axis of a common
orientation and aspiration, that is, of a common
good) that ethics becomes an issue to begin
with, and that its architectonic work unfolds.
The ethico-political reflection is seen in its
character of first philosophy, to the extent that
it provides at once an analysis and an articula-
tion of conditions. In addition to this, however,
ethics/politics emerges in its first-philosophical
function because of its essential bond with
education, which Weinman provocatively elu-
cidates in terms of a certain naturalness and
even independence from context.
Poieˉsis
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou concludes this part
of the present volume, with the essay “Toward
the Sublime Calculus of Aristotle’s Poetics.”
The theme of poie-sis, making, is addressed
in its exquisitely poetic sense here. At the
same time, poetry, in its sense and truth, is
situated at the heart of the human venture,
12
acknowledged as constitutive of the human,
implicated in the very dawning of the
human as such, let alone essential to human
self-articulation and self-understanding
(spectatorship as the exercise of contem-
plation of the human condition). Far from
anachronistically consigned to the narrow
field of aesthetics or the specialty of art
appreciation (not to mention the logic of
entertainment), the Poetics highlights the
centrality of the artistic/creative phenom-
enon in its ethico-political and anthropo-
logical valence. After all, on Aristotle’s terms,
the human animal is distinctively imitative
and capable of laughter no less than politi-
cal. Nikolopoulou’s essay manages to evoke
a long history of discussions, transmissions,
assimilations, and distortions of this text
while, at the same time, striving to capture
the source of its incisive simplicity, simul-
taneously disarming and infinitely compel-
ling. Her insightful suggestion, here, points
in the direction of nature—of a capacity to
abide in an intimacy with nature that grants
the experience of excess as well as the possi-
bility of bringing excess into an outline. The
quest for measure and rhythm appears to be
similarly vital in the task of artful living and
in poetic/dramatic composition. Once again,
we note in this sequence of studies a gesture
toward nature. This is probably one of the
urgent questions haunting this day, and an
open challenge to the contemporary a priori of
abstraction that, whether in art or in the many
guises of intellectualism, seems to have lost
its ground and, by the same token, the capac-
ity to speak meaningfully to the trained and
the untrained—indeed, to speak at all.
***
In addition to the study of the different
regions of Aristotelian inquiry, the volume
includes contributions addressing aspects of

the preservation and elaboration of Aristotle’s
thought, whether in modern Europe and
North America or outside the lineage of
Western philosophy (if it is one). The essays
gathered in this second part, far from provid-
ing exhaustive treatments of such matters, only
present a few possible forays into these fields.
Moreover, they amplify the attention, already
noted in the preceding contributions, given
to Aristotle’s enduring presence in a variety
of debates. Thus, in “Aristotle on the Natural
Dwelling of Intellect” Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
develops a materialistic reading of De Anima
(a “physics of psuche-”) in connection with
the Nicomachean Ethics, an approach that
she situates in the Judeo-Perso-Arabic line-
age, reclaiming in Aristotle what the tradi-
tion of “Christo-Platonism” has made nearly
illegible.
In turn, Christopher Long follows the
reading of Aristotle (again, with a focus
on De Anima) in the wake of Frederick
Woodbridge (and George Santayana). His
essay “The Peripatetic Method: Walking
with Woodbridge, Thinking with Aristotle”
connects Woodbridge to the European schol-
arly tradition leading to W. Jaeger’s devel-
opmental view of Aristotelian thought, and
emphasizes Aristotle’s way of thinking in its
temporality and dynamic implication in life.
In “What Remains of Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Today?” Enrico Berti considers the intellectual
legacy of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and enumer-
ates the Aristotelian axioms and conceptual
categories even now constellating discourses
in contemporary philosophy, whether in the
Anglo-American or European traditions.
Inexhaustible and yet to be thought through,
Aristotle's thinking of being in light of differ-
ence and mobility is shown to abide, if not per-
ennial, at the very least still our contemporary.
Finally, Pierre Aubenque confronts the ques-
tion “Would Aristotle Be a Communitarian?”
13
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
While many thinkers of the communitar-
ian persuasion seem to think so, the answer
involves a careful rethinking of the terms and
presuppositions of the debate between com-
munitarians and liberals (which is especially
lively in the United States). Aristotle’s logos
appears indeed to be at odds both with the
abstract universalistic rationality disallowed
by the communitarians and with the com-
munitarian one-sided emphasis on “insu-
lar, monological, and mutually exclusive
identities.” In its nuanced appeal to nature,
exceeding the bounds of universalism and
relativism alike, Aristotle’s thinking appears
irreducible to either side of the American
contention. Again, we cannot avoid noticing
an insuppressible naturalism ever surfacing
in a number of interpretive outlooks (from
Dobbs-Weinstein’s emphasis on embodiment,
the physics of the soul, and ethics as cloth-
ing the body of desire, to Long’s suggestive
appeals to motility and evocations of think-
ing belonging in life, to Aubenque’s remarks
on Aristotle’s alterity with respect to the cat-
egories of certain debates). Naturalism keeps
presenting itself in different guises, nondog-
matically, as other than a naturalizing move.
It returns as a gesture pointing to problems
that yet call for attunement—problems diffi-
cult and not fully intelligible.
***
This collection of essays is clearly not
exhaustive. In the traversal of Aristotle’s cor-
pus it touches on a few pivotal themes, form-
ing possible thematic constellations. It goes
without saying that this only calls for further
investigations and developments to come.
For this reason, in addition to the articles,
the present volume contains a distinctive
array of instruments for research—assisting
in the work of deepening and contextu-
alization. The Glossary lists a range of key
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
Aristotelian terms/concepts, with translit-
eration, Latin concordance when relevant,
discussion of semantic range, textual refer-
ences, and cross references. A Chronology
of Recent Research synoptically delineates
the fundamental works, developments, and
field reconfigurations in modern and con-
temporary scholarship. The Bibliography
lists standard editions of the Aristotelian
texts and key English translations, along
with key commentaries from antiquity and
the middle ages, as well as studies (mostly in
English) from the last century. Finally, a sec-
tion entitled Resources indicates reference
texts in Greek and in translation available
online, and a selection of academic journals,
professional organizations, and societies
crucially devoted to the study of Aristotle’s
thought.
The diversity of perspectives intersecting
here introduces characteristic Aristotelian
questions without settling them, thus con-
veying their depth and openness. Equally
significant, the presentation/analysis of the
Aristotelian texts is cast within the context
of living, ongoing debates, thus intimating
that the study of the ancient Greek thinker is
no in vitro experiment. The matter is always
there, embedded, inflected, and received in
this or that way, never as such. The alleged
objectivity/neutrality of basic, introduc-
tory readings emerges as a myth—or even
as a most self-dissimulating superstition.
The multiplicity of approaches and inter-
pretive stances, both in the contemporary
framework and throughout the history
of philosophy (which is not one), reminds
us that Aristotle “is said in many ways,”
λέγεται πολλαχῶς. This, too, is the task of
a companion.
Claudia Baracchi
14
Notes
1
Note, however, the exception of Giovanni
Reale, 1995, arguing for the authenticity of
the treatise.
2
See Ford, 2011.
3
The peripatetic adventures of Aristotle’s manu-
scripts, from Theophrastus’ library to their
resurfacing in Rome, were reconstructed on the
ground of ancient sources, however fragile such
accounts may be. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives
V.ii.52 and Strabo, Geographica XIII.i.54. See
also Bidez, 1943.
4
See paradigmatically Düring, 1957. But see also
Wehrli, 1959; Lynch, 1972; and Moraux, 1951.
5
To my knowledge, the only occurrence of
the phrase “analytical science” is in Rhetoric
1359b10, in a passing remark without further
elaboration.
References
Bidez, Joseph, Un singulier naufrage
littéraire dans l’antiquité : À la recherche
des épaves de l’Aristote perdu, Bruxelles:
Office de publicité, 1943.
Bignone, Ettore, L’Aristotele perduto e la
formazione filosofica di Epicuro, 2 vols,
Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1936.
Düring, Ingemar, “Notes on the History of
the Transmission of Aristotle’s Writings,”
Göteborg Högskolas Arsskrift, 56 (1950),
35–70.
—, Aristotle in the Ancient Biographical
Tradition, Stockholm: Almqvist &
Wiksell, 1957.
Ford, Andrew, Aristotle as Poet: The Song
for Hermias and Its Content, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011.
Gerson, Lloyd P., Aristotle and Other
Platonists, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2005.

Lynch, John Patrick, Aristotle’s School. A
Study of a Greek Educational Institution,
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1972.
Moraux, Paul, Les listes anciennes des
ouvrages d’Aristote, Louvain: Éditions
Universitaires, 1951.
Moraux, Paul (ed.), Aristoteles in der
neueren Forschung, Darmstadt:
15
INTRODUCTION: PATHS OF INQUIRY
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1968.
Reale, Giovanni (ed.), Il trattato Sul
Cosmo per Alessandro attribuito ad
Aristotele, Milano: Vita e Pensiero,
1995.
Wehrli, Fritz, “Rückblick der Peripatos
in vorchristlicher Zeit,” Die Schule des
Aristoteles, 10, Basel: Schwabe, 1959.
 Part I:
QUESTIONS
Logos
 1
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING
SEE WHAT ONE SAYS: ARISTOTLE’S
RHETORIC AND THE RHETORIC OF
THE SOPHISTS
Narcissus and Echo
In the Metamorphoses (III.339–510),1 Ovid
retells the story of an ancient Greek myth.
There once was a newborn unparalleled in
beauty, who was named Narcissus by his
mother, a river in Boeotia. To see if her son
would live a long life, she went to find Tiresias,
who had just been blinded by Juno and who
had been given the gift of clairvoyance by
Jupiter in exchange. This was Tiresias’ first
prophecy. In response to the mother’s ques-
tion about her son, Tiresias said, “if he does
not know himself,” thereby reversing the
imperative engraved on the pediment of the
temple of Delphi, the “know thyself” that has
been so endlessly interpreted in Western phi-
losophy since the age of the Seven Sages and
Socrates up through Hegel, or Freud. When
Narcissus was an adolescent, men, women,
and nymphs alike were smitten with him. But
the nymph Echo was the most in love of all.
She was an odd nymph—nothing but a body
and a voice—for she had been punished by
Juno in accordance with her sin: Echo knew
21
all too well how to chatter, “to babble,” in
order to detain Juno and prevent her from
catching her husband, Jupiter, while he was
adulterously caressing other nymphs. As pun-
ishment, Juno condemned Echo to “a dimin-
ished power of language” and to having only
“very brief usages of her voice” (367). Echo
therefore could do no more than “repeat the
last sounds at the end of someone’s speech,
and reproduce the last words she had heard”
(368f.). Echo the “résonable”2 (358): speech
without creativity, cut off from any intention
to signify, talking of nothing and to nobody;
speech that does not even contain a complete
sentence or a repetition of what was first said,
but that simply duplicates sound waves.
Echo, the misery of speech that only refers
back to itself, loves Narcissus and follows
him everywhere.
During a hunt, Narcissus found himself
alone, separated from his friends. He called
out, “Is anybody there?”—“Anybody there,”
Echo responded. “Come out,” he said—
“Come out,” she replied. “Come out here”—
“Out here.” But as soon as the nymph came
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
out from the thicket to embrace him, he
pushed her away and ran off. She dried up
from hopelessness: there was nothing left of
her but “a voice and bones” (398), which
took, they say, the form of a stone. “Sound is
what lives on in her” (401).
Narcissus was cursed by all the admirers
whom he disdained.
Eventually, Vengeance led him to a
spring of undisturbed purity. We know the
rest: that “as soon as he wanted to appease
his thirst, a new thirst was born” (415); he
“contemplated” (420) what he saw there
with an “insatiable look” (439); “he was
captivated by the image he saw” (416);
“he was mirrored and admired himself”
(424). But this perfect lover who smiles
when Narcissus smiles, who holds out his
arms when he holds out his arms, is only
a “fleeting simulation” (432), a “shadow”
(434), a “lying form” (493). Narcissus,
when he finally understood that “I am
he” (463), dried up in turn and “himself
died on account of what he had seen”
(440). “Goodbye,” he said to his image.
“Goodbye,” responded Echo, while in the
place of his extinguished body the poet’s
flower began to grow.
Narcissus: the simple look that only sees
itself, sight reduced to the worst of seeing—
the simulacrum. Echo: the simple voice that
only repeats itself, speech reduced to the
worst of speech—to sound. Narcissus and
Echo miss each other eternally and die des-
iccated: sight and speech, obscured in this
way, are untenable, and slowly die without
each other.
There is a philosophical term that serves
as a counter-poison to the myth, and gives
a name to the interlacing of speech and
sight, the wedding of Narcissus and Echo.
For Martin Heidegger this term bespeaks
the essence of ancient Greek philosophy:
22
“phenomenology.” I would like to begin
with this term, taken from the Heideggerian
reading of Aristotle—but not to dwell upon
what is evidently central to metaphysics and
thought; rather, to find the motive that leads
outwards, which in turn shall lead me toward
sophistry. Sophistry: a way to think the echo
philosophically. Herein lies the paradox of
my project: in taking up the theme of “the
places of seeing,” to speak of the one who,
Plato said, “will appear to you as someone . . .
who has no eyes at all” (Sophist, 239e).
Saying What One Sees: Aristotle’s
Phenomenology and That of
the Sophists
Notions of Phenomenon and
Phenomenology: An Ultra-Heideggerian
Greece
As Heidegger remarks, even if the term
“pheno­menology” does not appear his-
torically until the eighteenth century (in
Lambert), in its historicity it is Greek: phain-
omenon, the middle participle of phaino-,
“that which shows itself, by itself, from
itself,” and logos, “to say.” In paragraph
7 of Being and Time, Heidegger reminds
us that phaino- comes from pho-s, “light.”
Though even here, to tell the truth, there is
already a tightly drawn etymological knot.
Chantraine points out that phaino- comes
from the Sanskrit radical bha, which has a
built-in “semantic ambivalence” because it
signifies both “to illuminate, to shine” (phai-
noi, <phami>) and “to explain, to speak”
(phe-mi, fari in Latin). In other words, there
is already a belonging together in bha of
the sayable and the shining; there is already
phenomenology in the phenomenon itself.
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
Finally, pho-s, the same word as “light,”
but with the acute accent instead of the peris-
pomenon, designates as well (e.g. in Homer)
man, the hero, the mortal. Chantraine tells
us that the etymology here is somewhat
“obscure.” However, “if the modification of
the dental consonant is secondary, there is
a formal identity between the Greek nomi-
native and the Sanskrit bhas, meaning light,
brightness, majesty”; “but,” he adds, “from
a semantic point of view, the identification
is troublesome.” Phenomenologically, on the
contrary, it is too good to be true: etymo-
logical evidence that unifies “to appear,” “to
say,” and “man.” The man of ancient Greece,
that is to say man as such, is the one who
sees light as a mortal (the light of the day of
his birth, and of the return, death). He sees
that which appears in the light, phenomena,
and that which illuminates phenomena in
saying them.
Here we find a matrix of the common
perception of Greece, at once classical and
Romantic, and motivating Heidegger’s
interest: if truth is the belonging together
of appearing and saying in human Dasein,
at once openness and finitude, then truth is
both the tracing of and the meditation on
this etymology.
The Phenomenological Charter:
Aristotle, De Interpretatione 1, 16a3–8
De Interpretatione deploys, in its very first
lines, the classical structure that informs phe-
nomenology and remains the great charter of
language:
Ἔστι μὲν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν
τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολα, καὶ
τὰ γραφόμενα τῶν ἐν τῇ φωνῇ. καὶ
ὥσπερ οὐδὲ γράμματα πᾶσι τὰ αὐτά,
οὐδὲ φωναὶ αἱ αὐταί. ὧν μέντοι ταῦτα
23
σημεῖα πρώτων, ταὐτὰ πᾶσι παθήματα
τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ ὧν ταῦτα ὁμοιώματα
πράγματα ἤδη ταὐτά (16a3–8). 3
That is:
First of all, that which is in the voice is
the symbol of the affections of the soul,
and that which is written is the symbol
of that which is in the voice. And just
as the letters are not the same for eve-
ryone, so the vocal sounds also are not
the same. But the affections of the soul,
of which the vocal sounds are first the
signs, are the same for everyone, and
the things that the affections resemble
are likewise the same.4
There is phenomenology, therefore, in the
mediation of the soul allowing a passage
from things into words:
things phenomeno
soul —
words logy
Phenomenology appears very well as a
question of transitivity; the phenomenon
shows itself in language and lets itself be
written and spoken on a double condition:
that it “passes” into the soul, and that the
soul “passes” into the logos.
However, this double condition constitutes
a double problem as well: are we sure that
the mediation of the soul does not obscure
anything, and in turn, that the mediation
of logos does not skew the affections of
the soul? For the purpose of exposing “the
phenomenological method” of his research,
Heidegger proposes an exploration of the
concepts of phenomenon and logos in para-
graph 7 of Being and Time, winding up with
a “provisional concept of phenomenology,”
in order for the reader to progressively shed
his or her classical prejudices and arrive at
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
an understanding of the term that is more
Greek, and more Aristotelian. Nevertheless,
as we shall see, it seems just as possible to
follow such a line of inquiry backwards in
the opposite direction: we have to admit
then that this phenomenological structure
is, always already, and already in Aristotle,
covered over and layered in and as the con-
stitution of objectivity. In other words, tran-
sitivity in the end is only the guarantee that
turns showing into a sign, logos into a judg-
ment, unveiling into correspondence, and the
phenomenon into an object. Is a Greek phe-
nomenology, in spite of being the paradigm
of phenomenology, unobtainable?
The Mute Paradise of Phenomenonoesis
In the best of all possible phenomenological
worlds, transitivities would go without say-
ing. In fact, Aristotle expressly assures us of
the first one, the passage of the phenomenon
into the soul, though under certain conditions.
De Anima (III, 427b11) in effect stipulates
that “the sensation of proper sensibles”—the
“proper” sensible being “that which cannot be
perceived by any other sense” (II, 418a11)—
“is always true.” It is precisely on this point
that Heidegger comments when he wants to
push aside modern misinterpretations of the
Greek concept of truth:
Αἴσθησιϛ, the sheer sensory perception
of something, is “true” . . . just as seeing
aims at colors, any αἴσθησιϛ aims at its
ἴδια (those entities which are genuinely
accessible only through it and for it); and
to that extent this perception is always
true. This means that seeing always dis-
covers colors and hearing always discov-
ers sounds. Pure νοεῖν is the perception
of the simplest determinate ways of
Being which entities as such may possess,
and it perceives them just by looking at
24
them. This νοεῖν is what is “true” in the
purest and most primordial sense; that
is to say, it merely discovers, and it does
so in such a way that it can never cover
up. This νοεῖν can never cover up; it can
never be false; it can at worst remain a
non-perceiving, ἀγνοεῖν, not sufficing
for straightforward and appropriate
access. (57 = 33 Ger.)
But, as soon as the mediation of the soul does
not skew anything and transitivity is assured
by an apprehension without detour, this
truth that is always true risks being without
speech, because, as indicated by what imme-
diately follows in De Anima, “sensation of the
proper sensibles is always true, and belongs
to all animals” (427b12). It would therefore
be a mute paradise, infraphenomenological
as well as infrahuman, one in which it would
not be a matter of saying what one sees, but
simply of seeing it.
Heidegger’s text juxtaposes sensible appre­
hension and “intellectual” apprehension,
in this way placing Metaphysics IX.10,5
which concerns not the proper sensibles
but “[things that are] without composition”
(τὰ ἀσύνθετα, 1051b17, taken up again by
ὅσα δή ἐστιν ὅπερ εἶναί τι καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ,
1051b31), on the same plane as De Anima.
In both sensible and intellectual apprehen-
sion, it is impossible to be deceived, to be
wrong (περὶ ὅ μὴ ἐνδέχεται ἀπατηθῆναι,
De An. 418a12, περὶ ταῦτα οὐκ ἔστιν
ἀπατηθῆναι, Met. IX.10, 1051b31). There
is simply an unveiling reception or not, or
nothing (ἢ νοεῖν ἢ μή, 32). Now, noetic
reception as distinct from aesthetic recep-
tion is characterized as θιγεῖν καὶ φάναι
(24),6 “touching and saying,” “emitting,” as
though the affected soul could turn the con-
tact felt into a sound. But Aristotle imme-
diately specifies that “saying and affirming
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
are not the same,” just as “emitting (sounds?
words?) and forming a sentence” are not
the same (οὐ γὰρ ταὐτὸ κατάφασις καὶ
φάσις, 24f.). This distinction corroborates
the characteristic inarticulateness of the
impossibility of the false, and the nonap-
ophantic sense of “unveiling” that char-
acterizes truth without a contrary. Thus,
the paradise of phenomenonoesis is not
mute, though it remains difficult to say if it is
more than merely signifying, or sonorous.
The Phenomenological Plane: To
Appear-As and Syntax, or, the Possibility
of Falsehood
In order for there to be phenomenology, it is
necessary to take logos into consideration to
its fullest extent and thereby apprehend the
concept of phenomenon otherwise.
As Heidegger underscored just above (56 =
32 Ger.), returning in particular to chapters 1
through 6 of De Interpretatione,
Aristotle has explicated this func-
tion of discourse more precisely as
ἀποφαίνεσθαι. . . . Discourse ‘lets some-
thing be seen’ .  .  . that is, it lets us see
something from the very thing which
the discourse is about. . . . In discourse
(ἀπόφανσις), so far as it is genuine,
what is said [was geredet ist] is drawn
from what the talk is about. . . . Thus
“phenomenology” means ἀποφαίνεσθαι
τὰ φαινόμενα—to let that which shows
itself be seen from itself in the very
way in which it shows itself from itself.
(56–58 = 32–34 Ger.)
Now, this comprehension of logos implies
that we are simultaneously in possession
of a complete concept of phenomenon.
The “in the very way” implies in effect
that we comprehend the phenomenon as
25
“that which appears-as,” as both appear-
ing and the appearance grounded in this
appearing.
If we are to have any further understand-
ing of the concept of phenomenon, eve-
rything depends on our seeing how what
is designated in the first signification of
φαινόμενον (‘phenomenon’ as that which
shows itself) and what is designated in the
second (‘phenomenon’ as semblance) are
structurally interconnected. Only when
the meaning of something is such that it
makes a pretention of showing itself—that
is, of being a phenomenon—can it show
itself as something which it is not; only
then can it ‘merely look like so-and-so.’
(51 = 29 Ger.)
In the end, we find solidarity between the
“as” of the phenomenon and the sun- or
cum- of logos, the combination, syntax, and
synthesis of the nouns and verbs capable of
seizing this relationship.
And only because the function of the
λόγος as ἀπόφανσις lies in letting
something be seen by pointing it out,
can the λόγος have the structural form
of σύνθεσις. Here “synthesis” does not
mean a binding and linking together of
representations, in manipulation of psy-
chical occurrences where the ‘problem’
arises of how these bindings, as some-
thing inside, agree with something physi-
cal outside. Here the συν has a purely
apophantical signification and means let-
ting something be seen in its togetherness
(Beisammen) with something—letting it
be seen as something. (56 = 33 Ger.)
In other words, the opposition between true
and false takes its place in the phenomenolo­
gical register of ἀλήθεια as unveiling. “‘Being
false’ (ψεύδεσθαι) amounts to deceiving in
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
the sense of covering up (verdecken): putting
something in front of something (in such a
way as to let it be seen) and thereby pass-
ing it off as something which it is not” (57
= 33 Ger.). Such is the interpretative hori-
zon that Heidegger proposes for the second
preamble to the theory of nouns, which, in
De Interpretatione 1, follows what we have
called the phenomenological charter:
ἔστι δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ὁτὲ μὲν
νόημα ἄνευ τοῦ ἀληθεύειν ἢ ψεύδεσθαι
ὁτὲ δὲ ἤδη ᾧ ἀνάγκη τούτων ὑπάρχειν
θάτερον, οὕτω καί ἐν τῇ φωνῇ· περὶ γὰρ
σύνθεσιν καὶ διαίρεσίν ἐστι τὸ ψεῦδος
καὶ τὸ ἀληθές (16a9–13).
That is:
Just as there are in the soul thoughts
that cannot possibly be either true or
false, and also those which must be
either true or false, so it is with voice.
For truth and falsity regard combination
and separation.
De Anima specifies in its own way the type
of composition at stake. We have just seen
that there cannot be error when sensing a
proper sensible with its corresponding sense,
but only ignorance. We are susceptible to the
intervention of error, as Descartes will later
echo, as soon as judgment is no longer a
judgment that something exists (“that there
is color, there is sound,” De An. 418a15),
but a predication—whether general, catego-
rial, concerning the “common” sensibles, as
is the case when we propose, for example, a
localization or a quantification of color or
of sound, or singular, concerning sensibles
that are “by accident,” as when we judge,
for example, that “that white thing is the
son of Diares” (418a16–23). In this way,
Aristotle manages to balance two relation-
ships between sensation and truth: “On the
one hand, sensation of the proper sensibles is
26
always true and belongs to all animals; how-
ever, on the other hand, thoughtfully travers-
ing sensation (διανοεῖσθαι) can as well occur
falsely (καὶ ψευδῶς), and this belongs only
to those who also have logos” (427b14).
It is therefore very much the same “as” that
is shared between appearance-apparition,
logical syntax, and the pathway of the soul:
in other words, phenomenology begins only
with the possibility of the pseudos.
The Logification of Logos and the
Objectification of the Phenomenon
Here is where everything accelerates, or
rather precipitates in the full sense of the
word, and phenomenology takes a meta-
physical form, is turned into itself by eternity,
all the way to Husserl.
With what Heidegger calls the “Als-
Struktur” in his Logik we are already
within the framework of the traditional
concept of truth, not only as resemblance,
but as correspondence (e.g. 143, 153).
Admittedly, Heidegger issues ceaseless and
multiple warnings against correspondence
as the basis for truth (“But here everything
depends on our steering clear of any con-
ception of truth which is construed in the
sense of ‘agreement’” [Being and Time, 56 =
33 Ger.]), but the resemblance between the
dia or the sun of the representational state-
ment, and the hos or the hoion of the phe-
nomenon, constitutes the phenomenological
ground of correspondence: logos says the
phenomenon as it appears, and that is why
the current definition of truth can stand on
the conformity between the statement and
the thing, the adaequatio rei et intellectus.
Heidegger’s work constantly shows that if
we can slowly and patiently regress to an
originary or fundamental phenomenology—
which alone is capable of yielding “the inner
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
possibility of accordance” (“On the Essence
of Truth,” Heidegger, 1993, 120) and, fur-
ther, the foundation itself of this possibil-
ity, freedom—then such a phenomenology
relentlessly leads, at full speed, in converse,
for example, from Aristotle to Tarski.7 “To
say that what is is not, or that what is not
is, is false; but to say that what is is, and
what is not is not, is true” (Aristotle, Met.
IV.7, 1011b25ff.). “‘It is snowing’ is a true
proposition if and only if it is snowing”
(Tarski, “The Concept of Truth in Formal
Languages,” in Tarski, 1938, 156) or, “The
sentence ‘snow is white’ is true if, and only
if, snow is white” (Tarski, 1944, 343).
This transformation in the deployment
of truth brings about what “On the Way
to Language” calls “the transformation
of the sign” (On the Way to Language,
115): the relationship between the show-
ing and what is shown becomes a con-
ventional relationship between a sign and
what it signifies. Simultaneously, it is the
phenomenon itself that is constituted as
an object. The Aristotelian categories are
only capable of describing the phenomenon
on condition that it is formed, informed, and
conformed as an object in an anterior or pri-
mary reciprocity because adaequatio intel-
lectus ad rem is only possible on account of
the adaequatio rei ad intellectum (“On the
Essence of Truth,” Heidegger, 1993, 118).
In Kant, the a priori forms of sensibility will
radically bring this same reciprocity to light
because they yield both the object and the
possibility of experience.
That is how the showing performed by
logos organizes the appearance of the phe-
nomenon into a demonstration. Just as the
sun of phenomenology freezes in the syn-
thesis of judgment, the apo- of apophansis,
exhausting the categorical process, freezes it
in the canons of apodicticity.
27
The Phenomenological Obstinacy of
Protagoras
It is at the classic moment in Metaphysics IV
when Aristotle has found the first principle
of the science of being qua being, namely the
principle of being and of the saying of being,
that he assigns the term “phenomenon,” and
the care for saying phenomena—apprehending
them in their unveiling—to his adversaries. “All
phenomena are true” (πάντα τὰ φαινόμενα
ἀληθῆ) becomes emblematic of Protagoras.
All those who deny Aristotle’s principle,
from Heraclitus to Parmenides, by way of
Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and
Homer, all those who searched for and loved
truth the most, suffered, like Protagoras, from
a phenomenological hubris: “it is because
these thinkers suppose that thought is sen-
sation and sensation alteration, that they
affirm that the phenomenon as it appears
to sensation (τὸ φαινόμενον κατὰ τὴν
αἴσθησιν) must be true” (1009b12–15). Now,
for Aristotle, to hold on to phenomenology
alone in this way is precisely to risk condemn-
ing oneself to silence or to noise. In effect we
lose ourselves in the phenomenon while look-
ing for just how to say it, like Cratylus, the
most consequential of the Heracliteans. We
attempt to conform our logos to appearances,
which disappear like the river “that we can-
not enter even once,” and, failing to hold an
adequate discourse, we condemn ourselves to
silence. Therefore Cratylus, when he is not
furiously whistling, “only moves his finger”
(1010a10–15). Aesthetic heaven, among men,
quickly becomes hell.8
Or, like Protagoras, we entrust ourselves
to logos and maintain that all logos is the
logos of a phenomenon. But then the phe-
nomenological thesis leads to sophistical
paradoxes. It implies, in effect, a belonging
of the phenomenon to speaking that does not
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
leave any room for the distinction between
true and false: according to the words of
Antisthenes “all speech discloses truth” (πᾶς
λόγος ἀληθεύει, Proclus, In Cratylum, 429b,
ch. 37, Pasquali). Along with this distinc-
tion, those between seeming and ­appearing,
being and non-being, or substance and
accident, also disappear; if all speech
discloses the true, that is just because it
always says “what is.” The very possibil-
ity of distinction disappears, and with it all
possibility of choosing a meaning, a being, a
phrase, a behavior, an anything “instead of”
another: once more, phenomenological para-
dise veers into its contrary.
In terms of the consequent relativism, the
discourse of Protagoras becomes phenom-
enologized to the point of being, according
to Aristotle, irrefutable:
But if not all things are relative, but some
are themselves in themselves, not every-
thing that appears will be true; for that
which appears appears to some one; so
that he who says all things that appear
are true, makes all beings relative to
something. And, therefore, those who
ask for an irresistible argument, and at
the same time are committed to support
their own discourse, must guard them-
selves by saying that it is not that which
appears that is, but rather that which
appears for him to whom it appears, and
when, and in the respect in which, and
in the manner in which it appears. (Met.
IV, 1011a17–24)
In other words, in a phenomenology so
tyrannical Aristotelian categories themselves
appear like instruments for the diffraction of
appearances rather than for constituting the
phenomenon into an object.
In Cratylus as well as Protagoras thus
interpreted, phenomenon and logos, which
28
the phenomenological tenacity wishes to hold
immediately together, appear alternatively
too weak or too powerful, leading to either a
gnawing silence or an obsessive brouhaha.
The Anti-Phenomenological Charter:
Gorgias, On Non-Being
This excess of phenomenology finds its
paradigm in a text that contains many cata-
strophic pronouncements, Gorgias’ treatise
On Non-Being. In the third part (after “noth-
ing is,” “if anything is it is unknowable”: “if
anything is and is unknowable, it is incom-
municable”) he proposes, one could say in
anticipation, a generalization of the struc-
ture of the Aristotelian proper sensible (true/
ignored), prior to the possibility of an “as.”
For how could a man express in words
what he has seen? Or how could a thing
be clear to a man who heard it, if he has
not seen it? For just as sight is not the
sense which recognizes sounds, so hear-
ing cannot hear colors, but only sounds;
and the speaker speaks, but he does
not speak a color or a thing. Anything,
then, which a man has not in his own
consciousness, how can he acquire it
from the word of another, or by any sign
which is different from the thing, except
by seeing it if it is a color, or hearing it
if it is a sound? For, to begin with, no
one speaks a sound or a color, but only
a word; so that it is not possible to think
a color but only to see it, nor to think a
sound, but only to hear it. (On Melissus,
Xenophanes, and Gorgias, 980a20–b9)9
The phenomenon is atomized into proper
sensibles, each true, but confined to its kind
without possible aggregation; or, alternatively,
that which appears is never one but always
many irreducible phenomena. The logos is
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
in itself one phenomenon among others, a
series of sounds that relate only to hearing.
Absolutely no transitivity is possible, neither
that which goes from what we see to what we
say, nor that which goes from what we hear
to what we can see. It is as though there is no
soul to assure the link between the manifesta-
tions of sight and sound, we are left with a
blank space between phenomeno and logy.
The value of the sophistic aporias is to make
clear that taking what is phenomenologically
immediate strictly at face value, with the pre-
tention of refusing to fall back onto any met-
aphysics, destroys the very possibility of this
same phenomenology. Through Aristotle’s
diagnosis of Cratylus and Protagoras, and his
reading of Gorgias, we come to understand
how phenomenological obstinacy veers into
its contrary. Reading Aristotle, Heidegger,
and Aristotle again, as read by Heidegger, tes-
tifies that phenomenology can only maintain
itself by going beyond itself. If we refuse, we
can neither speak nor understand what we
see; but “there is only understanding,” in an
­echolalic narcissism of logos.
Letting See What One Says:
Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the
Rhetoric of the Sophists
On the backdrop of this difference between
two directions of phenomenology (ontology
and logology), I would like to oppose not so
much two philosophical models (saying what
one sees), but rather two rhetorical registers
(letting see what one says). I propose to con-
trast two rhetorical styles that can still be
recognized in their avatars: that of Aristotle
and that of the sophists. Therefore, I will
study two different systems of exposition:
apodeixis or demonstration, and epideixis or
29
performance—and, correlatively, their para-
digmatic tropes, metaphor, and ekphrasis or
description—in order to distance the science
of setting things before our eyes from the
­satisfaction of bringing them into plain sight.
Apodeixis and Epideixis, Demonstration and
Performance
Deixis is the act and the art of showing with-
out words, like Cratylus pointing his index
finger at the disappearing phenomenon,
or like Justice in Parmenides’ poem, point-
ing to the path of being with a sovereign
gesture. Apodeixis is the art of showing by
making what has already been shown into
a ground for what follows, to demonstrate
(dé-montrer). Epideixis is the art of showing
by bringing to the fore, into public view, both
to display and to draw upon what is being
shown as an example, thus compounding it
through an additional showing, amplifying,
and exalting.
The connotations of these prefixes per-
sist for their habitual uses, particularly in
Aristotle.
Scientific Apodeixis and Rhetorical
Apodeixis: An Aid for Phenomena
Apodeixis presents a double localization in
the Aristotelian corpus: within the Analytics,
and at the heart of the Rhetoric.
Apodeixis and apodictic science consti-
tute the very object of the Analytics, as evi-
denced by the very first lines of the treatise
(Prior Analytics I.1, 24a11). Differing from
the dialectical syllogism, which begins from
accepted ideas and takes off from probable
premises, and the rhetorical enthymeme,
which is nothing other than a shortening
of the rhetorical syllogism, apodeixis has
for its domain the truth: it begins from true
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
premises, either self-evident or previously
demonstrated, and then “shows the cause
and the why” (Posterior Analytics I.24,
85b23f.). There could not be a science of
the sensible singular as such, let alone defi-
nition.10 Following the process of induction
(epago-ge-, see APo I.16, 81a40–b2), apo-
deixis is exactly that procedure that allows
the singular to be known as a universal and
therefore permits deduction. For exam-
ple, because Socrates is a man, Socrates is
mortal (ibid., particularly 86a5–10; see 11,
77a5–9). Aristotelian demonstration (apo-
deixis), and the procedure issuing from the
direction of its analysis, that is, from sen-
sation, to induction, to deduction, yield the
schema of philosophical science, in its per-
ennial tradition, up to the very movement
of Hegelian phenomenology, which likewise
draws contingency to necessity and extracts
the universal truth of the singular.
But apodeixis is not only a procedure for
transforming the phenomenon into an object
of science, it is also a technique for eliciting
agreement that lies at the heart of rhetoric.
The Aristotelian definition of rheto-
ric is “the faculty of contemplating in any
given case the available means of persua-
sion” (δύναμις περὶ ἕκαστον τοῦ θεωρῆσαι
τὸ ἐνδεχόμενον πιθανόν, Rhetoric I.2,
1355b25f.). There are three objects proper
to rhetoric: the parts of speech and their
order, proofs and their sources, and style
in the strict sense. Regarding the parts
of speech, after ridiculing the proliferat-
ing of divisions, Aristotle keeps two and
only two:
You must say the thing at stake, and you
must demonstrate it. You cannot either
say it without demonstrating it, or dem-
onstrate it without first having stated
it; since any demonstration must be the
30
demonstration of something, and one
makes a preliminary statement in view of
the demonstration that follows it. (III.13,
1414a31–35)
Aristotle proposes to call the first part—
which corresponds to the dialectical “prob-
lem” (πρόβλημα, “that which is thrown
ahead,” 36)—πρόθεσις or “proposition.”
He proposes to call the second part—what
we would call apodeixis in the strict sense—
πίστις, a term with two indissoluble mean-
ings: subjectively, it means faith, belief, and
adherence; and objectively, proof and con-
firmation. Thus, analysis attains the princi-
pal object of rhetoric: the classification of
proofs, πίστεις. The important division, we
recall, separates “extra-technical” proofs—
which come from outside and which it
suffices to know how to “use,” for exam-
ple, testimonies—from “technical” proofs,
those which are furnished by the rhetori-
cal method and by the orator him- or her-
self, which he or she has to “discover” (I.2,
1355b35–39). Technical proofs are, in turn,
of three species. They are to be found either
in the character of the orator (on the side
of the emitter, so to speak); or in the dis-
positions of the hearer (on the side of the
receiver); or, lastly, in the logos itself (in the
message), in the fact that it shows or seems
to show (1356a4). Apodeixis preeminently
corresponds to the proof par excellence:
that which constitutes the body of logos
itself as rhetoric.
“[A]rt completes what nature cannot
complete, and imitates her” (Physics II.8,
199a17f.). Scientific demonstration and the
system of rhetorical proof imitate nature
and fulfill it, by helping the phenomenon
to manifest itself over and above immediate
apprehension (sensation, exposition) such
that eternity transforms it, makes it true,
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
universal, persuasive: they help us to under-
stand and believe in the phenomenon.
Epideixis, the Epidictic Genre and
Sophistical Discursivity
Before approaching the technical sense of
epideixis in rhetoric, in distinction from
apodeixis, I would like to linger over one
of the very rare nontechnical occurrences of
the term in the body of Aristotle’s work—
perhaps the only one. Aristotle, in a rapid
explanation of the general principles of chre-
matistic practices in Politics I, considers the
example of Thales. From Plato to Nietzsche,
Thales is usually presented as the “found-
ing hero” or “great ancestor” (ἀρχηγὸς,
Met. I.3, 983b20) of philo­sophy—at least,
Aristotle specifies, of that philosophy which
looks for the principles of all things “in
the form of matter” (b7). As we know, it
is this love of wisdom that exposes him to
the laughter of the Thracian servant, when,
looking up at the sky, he falls into a well full
of the very water that he claimed was the
principle of all things. The Politics tells the
story of philosophy’s revenge:
He was reproached because of his pov-
erty, which was supposed to show that
philosophy was useless. According to
the story, in virtue of his astronomical
knowledge he knew that there would
be a great harvest of olives in the com-
ing year; so, having a little money, in the
winter he gave deposits for the use of all
the olive presses in Chios and Miletus,
which he hired at a low price because no
one bid against him. When the
harvest-time came, and many were
wanted all at once and all of a sudden, he
let them out at any rate which he pleased,
and made a quantity of money. Thus he
showed that philosophers can easily be
31
rich if they like, but that their ambition
is of another sort. (1259a9–18)
Thales, using foresight and the law of supply
and demand, creates a monopoly: in doing so
he is said to give “proof, epideixis, of his wis-
dom” (19). This chrematistic endeavor prop-
erly speaking, capitalist because it involves
money that makes money, is opposed to the
economy, either of a family or of a city, in
that the latter does not let itself be limited
by the possible instrumental use of its riches
(see 1256a36f.). For Thales, it is a matter of
acquiring for the sake of acquisition, without
any other end but acquisition itself: it is an
economy of “living” as limitless desire, as
opposed to “living well,” which constitutes
the end itself of politics (1257b40–1258a1).
This is why we should not be surprised that,
in spite of this deployment of inventiveness
that became exemplary, Thales only serves as
the paradigm of the imprudent sage (σοφοὺς
μὲν φρονίμους δ᾽οὔ, VI.7, 1141b4f.) in the
Nicomachean Ethics, like Anaxagoras but
opposed to Pericles. At the bottom of the
well, just as before his olive presses, Thales
does not know how to recognize what is
truly useful for himself or for others.
Thales’ epideixis, which is accomplished
without discourse, seems proper for bring-
ing out certain traits of the epidictic genre.
In fact, Aristotle tells us at the beginning of
the Rhetoric that the hearer who directs his
or her attention to discourse is necessarily
“either a spectator or a judge, and a judge
judges regarding both past and future” (I.3,
1358b2–4). The three genres of rhetoric
find themselves determined by this simple
remark. The judge of the future is the mem-
ber of the assembly to whom deliberative
discourse, which aims for the useful or the
harmful, is addressed; the judge of the past
is the one in courts, to whom is addressed
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
juridical discourse, which aims for the just
or the unjust; lastly, the spectator is the hearer
of epidictic discourse and finds him- or her-
self the judge περὶ τῆς δυνάμεως, of the dis-
course’s “power” or “capacity” (according to
Médéric Dufour’s translation,11 the “talent of
the orator”). The two differential characteris-
tics of the epidictic genre are, therefore, con-
cerned with neither the useful nor the just, but
with “the beautiful and the shameful” (ibid.,
1358b25), and furthermore pertain to neither
the future nor the past, but rather to “the
present,” “current events” (17). It is a matter
of what we communally call praise and blame.
Epideixis, which we could very well call the
most rhetorical of all the genres of rhetoric,
is for the orator an occasion like no other to
show what he knows how to do—without
worrying about politics, and not too much
about ethics either, or at the very least with
an ethics guided by aesthetics—to seize upon
the propitious moments that only the present
can offer. This is an occasion for Thales, as it
is for the sophist, to put something in plain
sight for the hearer, for whom it is as though
he or she were at the theatre.
Epideixis is, par excellence, the name that
tradition attributes to sophistic discursiv-
ity. The term is consecrated by Plato (e.g.
Hippias major, 282c, 286a; Hippias minor,
363c; Gorgias, 447c), where it designates
the discourse practiced by Prodicus, Hippias,
and Gorgias, in opposition to Socrates’ dia-
logue through questions and answers. The
best translation of Plato’s use of epideixis
would be “conference,” and more exactly
“lecture,” in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the
term, because the sophist, often coming from
Sicily or Magna Graecia, gave lecture tours
abroad, that is to say in the major Greek
cities like Athens, Sparta—just as celebrity
American professors cross the Atlantic to
shock old Europe. Aristotle remarks that
32
the epidictic style is graphiko-tate-, “most
pertinent to writing” because “it is fulfilled
in reading” (Rhet. III.12, 1414a18f.): in it
everything is ever so calculated, the effects
depend on exploiting the specific possi-
bilities of language, on figures of speech,
on the combination of sounds. So much so
that, even when the lectures are improvised,
as Gorgias boasts, in truth one can really
only reproduce them, repeat them before
others, or even in front of the same. Seven
centuries later Philostratus still notes: “[The
Thessalians] tried to write like Gorgias . . .
and they would have changed over and
tried to write like Critias, if Critias had
made any ἐπίδειξις ἑαυτοῦ σοφίας”—any
“proof of his wisdom,” in Aristotle’s words
for Thales—that is, by giving one of the lec-
tures to which he alone possessed the secret
(Philostratus et al., 1922, 502).
As later on in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, the
model of epideixis/lecture actually is epi-
deixis/eulogy. And the model itself of eulogy,
the oldest available, is none other than The
Praises of Helen written by Gorgias. The par-
adoxical nature of the eulogy is clear: Helen
is the guiltiest of all women, for the entirety
of Greece has been brought to ruin on her
account, but Gorgias convinces us that Helen
is innocence itself. As a supplement of deixis,
epideixis manages to turn the phenomenon
into its contrary: the phenomenon becomes
the effect of the omnipotence of logos. Along
the way, Gorgias even produces the theory of
his practice: “Speech is a powerful lord, which
by means of the finest and most invisible
body effects the divinest works” (The Older
Sophists, 52). The model that is the inverse
of the one in De Interpretatione then finds
its proper place—it is not phenomena but
discourse itself that the soul undergoes, or, as
Gorgias says, “through the agency of words,
the soul is wont to experience a suffering of
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
its own” (ibid.). In the place of having ade-
quately to say the phenomenon, in the end it
is discourse that produces the phenomenon
in total autonomy: “logos is not evocative
of the external, but the external becomes the
revealer of logos” (46). Through his “game”
of recreating a Helen who is innocent there-
after (from Euripides and Isocrates through
Goethe, Hoffmansthal, Offenbach, Claudel,
and Giraudoux), Gorgias brings to light that
at stake in epideixis is not, as in phenomenol-
ogy, the transition from the phenomenon to
its speech, but rather, in a logological mode,
the passage from speech to its effect.12
Therefore, opposed here are not only two
discursive modalities but also two models
of the world: a physical model, where it is
a matter of determining the immutable prin-
ciples of nature by way of demonstrations
in accordance with its deployment; and a
political model, where it is a matter of pro-
ducing or performing, occasion by occasion,
communal values, permitting the continual
creation of a consensus that constitutes the
identity of the city.
Metaphor and Ekphrasis: Two
Philosophical Styles
The Appropriateness of Phenomenological
Style
One of the paradoxes of phenomenology
comes from the fact that its discourse is fro-
zen by the metaphors of the visible and of
light, and yet must remain nonmetaphorical.
In fact, the style, the mode of expression,
or, according to the beautiful definition of
lexis provided by the Poetics, “the mani-
festation of meaning through words” (6,
1450b13–15), proper to epideixis, is always
33
characterized by its “clarity” (to saphe-s). This
is manifestly the case in scientific demonstra-
tion. Accordingly, the Posterior Analytics
lines up clear definitions with conclusive
reasoning. “Indeed, perspicuity is required
in definitions, just as syllogism is required in
demonstrations” (II.13, 97b31). We arrive at
clarity by taking singulars, and regrouping
them into species, then genres. In this way,
we find what is common and wind up with
a universal that is neither homonymous nor
metaphoric, but is, as indicated in the Topics,
kurio-s, “properly said”; take “temperance,”
for example, so-phrosune-, virtue par excel-
lence, which, contrary to what Plato says, is
not a “harmony,” since harmony “properly
speaking” cannot take place except between
sounds. Proper names, clear definitions, con-
clusive syllogisms—the discourse that helps
the phenomenon unveil itself must be trans-
parent. Clarity is the style of logos qua phe-
nomenological: qua disappearing in front of
the phenomenon that it lets be seen.
Apodeixis falls as well, we can recall, under
the jurisdiction of rhetoric, for it is major
proof and essential part of any disquisition.
The point of departure is, once again, the
same: “. . . the excellence of style is clarity, as
indicated by the fact that speech which fails
to show will fail to perform its work” (Rhet.
III.2, 1404b1–3, referring back to the begin-
ning of chapter 22 of the Poetics). But in the
Rhetoric, just as in the Poetics, there is an
“and”: style must be clear “and not banal,”
“not flat” (me- tapeine-). Now, tropes save
style from flatness, and of course the very
first is metaphor. The stylist is thus caught in
a double bind: the style must be clear, that is,
without metaphor; but also not flat—with
metaphor. It is as though demonstration is
torn between the pure but flat clarity of sci-
entific knowledge, and the embellished but
contradictory clarity of poetry and rhetoric.
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
The Status of Metaphor: A Supplement to
Knowledge
But we discover very quickly that clarity
is also an attribute of metaphor. For meta-
phor is precisely not homonymy: it pro-
duces not confusion but, rather, additional
knowledge.
From the start the contradiction of excel-
lent style relates to metaphor: “Metaphor
possesses the clear, the pleasant, and the
strange in the highest degree, and it is not
possible to receive metaphor from the hands
of another” (Rhet. III, 1405a8–10). It is
therefore the contradictory virtues of meta-
phor, “clear and,” which make its originality
decisive, the mark of the “style” of each one,
inasmuch as the style is the man. In other
words, it is in metaphor qua original that
the contradictory components of clarity and
attractiveness reach conciliation.
For the sake of making the original clarity
of metaphor even more explicit, it is appro-
priate to begin again from the canonical
definition given in the Poetics: “metaphor is
applying to something the name of some-
thing else [ὀνόματος ἀλλοτρίου ἐπιφορὰ],
the displacement being either from genus to
species, or from species to genus, or from
species to species, or according to anal-
ogy” (1457b6–9). Contrary to homonymy,
which is exploited to cloud definitions
in sophistical refutations, metaphor does
not take advantage of the signifier; meta-
phor instead has a regulated structure that
depends strictly on an epistemological, or
even scientific, classification, and, therefore,
implies a preliminary knowledge (shared
between the speaker and the hearer) of
definitional taxonomies. It is only on the
grounds of this placement that metaphor
can “displace” or “slide,” in order to enable
a better view of what there is in “common,”
34
an end it shares with the analytic proce-
dure itself. Moreover, metaphor benefits
from previously established resemblances,
genre/species, species/genre, species/spe-
cies, in order to exhibit new relations
of similitude that are more difficult to catch
sight of. That is the very virtue of analo-
gies, which enjoy “the highest reputation”
(Rhet. III, 1411a1f.) among all metaphors.
It is why metaphor can go so far as to invent
words when they do not even exist, either
by transporting words taken from common
genres and similar species into an empty,
“anonymous” space (ibid., 1405a34–37; see
Poet. 1457b25–33: “sowing the god-created
flame,” or “shield, a cup without wine”),
or by poetic creation—a veritable nomoth-
esis. The Poetics’ conclusion on metaphor
brings all these traits together: “The most
important thing is the ability to make meta-
phors, for this alone cannot be borrowed
from another and is the sign of a very gifted
nature. The ability to make metaphors is the
ability to see similarity” (22, 1459a5–9).
That the “clarity” of metaphor can be
linked to the supplemental knowledge it
produces becomes even more manifest
when we consider what Aristotle calls, in
Rhetoric III.10, “urbane and reputable say-
ings.” Characterized by reference to astu,
“town,” such sayings are that which circu-
lates in the streets and that which, like doxa,
­constitutes the common world. Regarding
them, Aristotle effects a remarkable reprise
of the opening lines of the Metaphysics:
“All men by nature desire to know. A
sign of this is the pleasure we take in
sensing. Sensations are liked in and of
themselves, apart from their usefulness,
and above all those that come from the
eyes.”/“Easy learning is by nature pleas-
ant to all; now words signify something,
so that all words that make us learn
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
something are for us the most pleasant.”
(1410b10–12)
The echo is confirmed as soon as we real-
ize why the urbane saying is, so to speak, the
ultimate metaphor: it is a metaphor by anal-
ogy that has, additionally, the virtue of “set-
ting something before our eyes.” Indeed, the
Rhetoric continues, “it is metaphor that best
brings this about; for when [Homer] says that
old age is stubble, he brings forth a teaching
and a knowledge through genus, for both
are withered” (14–16). A leitmotif comes
back again and again in the corpus of meta-
phors by analogy, which is so difficult for us,
that they are πρὸ ὀμμάτων, that they bring
things “before one’s eyes.” Aristotle specifies
the meaning of this expression in the follow-
ing chapter: “I say that words bring things
before one’s eyes every time they signify
things in act” (ὅσα ἐνεργοῦντα σημαίνει,
1411b24). Aristotle draws his most extreme
examples from Homer, who not only speaks
of living beings in act, but also himself gives
life to lifeless beings: “‘Curving waves,
crested with foam, some before others /
some after.’ These words make everything
alive and moving; and movement is activity”
(1412a9f.). Since ἐνέργεια, the “act,” is being
in the fullest sense according to Aristotle, as
the Metaphysics and Physics teach—it is at
once the being of beings and being par excel-
lence, God itself—we must conclude that
metaphor, at its best, shows things in their
maximum of being, making them resemble
what they are.
Metaphor belongs doubly to the style
of phenomenology itself: because it shows
something “as” something else, in resem-
blances more distant and imperceptible than
those that can be seized by philosophy, which
is confined to the evidence of manifesta-
tion (1412a11f.); and because, in so doing,
35
metaphor shows things in their being just as
much as philosophy, and without a doubt
more easily. In brief, metaphor produces
more meaning, more common sense, and
more knowledge.
The Sophist and the Bad Metaphor
Long before Aristotle, the sophists developed
the first rhetoric:
[Gorgias] was the first to give to the rhe-
torical genre the verbal power and art of
deliberate culture and employed tropes
and metaphors and figurative language
and hypallage and catachresis and hyper-
baton and doublings of words and rep-
etitions and apostrophes and clauses of
equal length. (The Older Sophists, 32)
Even if the testimony comes late, it is certain
that this Sicilian rhetoric, which uses not only
figurative speech but plays on signification
itself, is a generalization of tropes in which
metaphor represents only one of many.
We should not misinterpret the strange
objection Aristotle makes to Gorgias’ style
in book III of the Rhetoric, which we now
have well in mind. His principal fault lies
in the “coldness” of his metaphors. “Cold,”
ψυχρός, is said of cadavers. Gorgias’ style is a
style without life, the death of style. It is
­precisely from the “clarity” of his metaphors
that Gorgias detracts “and these lack clar-
ity if they are from too far away” (ἀσαφεῖς
δέ, ἄν πόρρωθεν, 1406b8f., see 1405a35);
“things fresh and full of sap” or “you sowed
in shame and harvested in misery,” for exam-
ple, are said “too poetically.” This meta-
phorical excess amounts to the accumulation
of metaphors that the Poetics designates by
the name of “riddles”: to write exclusively
with metaphors permits one to “describe real
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
things through impossible associations,” for
example, “I saw a man glue brass on a man
with fire” to speak of the placement of a suc-
tion cup (Poet. 22, 1458a 25–30 and Rhet.
III.2, 1405a34–1405b5). Thus Gorgias, the
stranger, looks too far away for what he
should take from up close. Using metaphor
for the sake of metaphor, tropes for tropes—
just as he speaks for the sake of speaking—
Gorgias makes the perception of the proper
and common disappear along with clarity. At
this moment we could take up the analysis
of Jacques Derrida in “White Mythology”:
metaphor “risks interrupting the semantic
plenitude in which it should belong . . .”13 but
only in order to show that it is sophistry that
constitutes and accomplishes what is, in phi-
losophy’s own eyes, the risk of philosophy.
Ekphrasis: From Word to Word
The clarity of the phenomenological style,
which allows what is seen to be said, is
increased by the clarity of metaphor, that
which renders the invisible visible. Opposed to
it is the logological style where one always goes
too far. It seems to me that the accumulation of
tropes that characterizes this latter style must
crystallize further in a larger figure, not very
well known to philosophers: ekphrasis. Like
epideixis, the term ekphrasis itself connotes
exhaustion, the insolence of going to the very
end, pushing the envelope. It is a putting into
words that depletes its object and, termino-
logically, designates the minute and complete
descriptions that are given of works of art.
At the end of Iliad XVIII, Homer gives the
first, and without a doubt the most famous
ekphrasis known: that of the shield of Achilles
forged by Hephaestus. The weapon had been
made on the demand of Thetis, not to prevent
her son from being killed but rather so that
“all would be amazed” (466f.) when destiny
36
caught up with him. We can recall that it is
a cosmo-political oeuvre. Not only are the
earth, heaven, and sea represented, all encir-
cled by the river Ocean, but also two cities in
all of life’s detail, one in peace, the other at
war. The blind poet omits nothing of what the
god has put there, and by omitting nothing at
all he produces the first synthesis of the world
of mortals, proving for the first time that
poetry is more philosophical than history.
Not only is this first ekphrasis the descrip-
tion of a fictitious object, but it is followed
in time by a second ekphrasis, attributed to
Hesiod. The model this time, as in a remake,
is the first ekphrasis itself: its subject is the
shield of Heracles. This palimpsest does not
conform to a phenomenon, a real shield, nor,
in this connection, to nature itself and cities,
but only to a logos. In this object saturated
by culture, along with natural reference we
also lose that which Aristotle would have
called the life of the story. As Paul Mazon
noted, with the value judgments that we
expect: “In all of this, there is no gesture
that would really be ‘seen,’ that would give
us the sensation of life. Not a word either
in the mouths of the characters that would
make such a sound frank and clear: each
speaks a language of pure convention.”14 We
have reached the point of metaphors that are
themselves dead, for, remote from the waves
that press like warriors, this time it is warri-
ors who roll like stones (374–9). The ut pic-
tura poesis of metaphor (“like a picture”)
takes an entirely different meaning; it is no
longer a matter of imitating painting, inso-
far as painting seeks to set the object before
our eyes—to paint the object—but rather to
imitate painting as a mimetic art—to paint
painting. To imitate imitation, to produce
knowledge not of the object but of the ficti-
tious object, of objectification: logological
ekphrasis, this is literature.
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
In fact, the fate of ekphrasis is linked
to that of the novel. I will not take up the
analyses by which I have elsewhere tried to
show how the second sophistry, more than
six centuries after the first, develops, along
with fiction, this pseudos by means of which
the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle for-
ever characterized the first sophistry.15 What
interests me here is only the manner in which
the style of fiction is obsessed with ekphrasis,
just as the style of phenomenology is with
metaphor.
First of all, with the Images of Philostratus
or the Descriptions of Callistratus, the
ekphraseis multiply to the point of constitut-
ing a genre of their own. Take, for example,
the xenia: the text consists in a collection of
critiques of still lives, presents that a host
sends to his guests and represent the dishes
they could eat at his place. The phenomenon
is pushed back three degrees, an infinite
distance, to become a pretext for the liter-
ary representation of a pictorial representa-
tion.16 The phenomenon is never again given
to the immediacy of perception. It is at most
rejoined, or supposed, at the end of a proce-
dure of fiction. Far from the discourse con-
forming to the phenomenon, one will wind
up deducing from the phenomenon that it
was in fact in conformity with the discourse.
Such is, manifestly, the structure of the
most celebrated Greek novels. For instance,
in Achilles Tatius’ The Adventures of
Leucippe and Clitophon, we learn from the
storyteller in the very first lines of the first
book that he has just ducked inside to escape
a storm and is looking at ex-votos when
he stops at a suspended painting that con-
tains the whole matrix of the story of The
Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon—a
story in the course of which we see the
protagonist give the painting away. But
it is the very famous Pastorals of Longus,
37
on Daphnis and Chloe, that traditionally
provide the paradigm of ekphrasis.17 The
prologue is a description of a painting and
the whole story, in four books, is nothing
other than the explication of the painting,
and this painting is not made, as we shall
read, in lines and colors, but already from
words:
I was hunting on the island of Lesbos
when I saw the most beautiful sight I have
ever seen in the grove of the Nymphs. It
was a story about Eros. The grove was a
beautiful place, abounding in trees and
flowers. Streams of water gushed down,
flowing from the same spring that nour-
ished the trees and flowers. But I found
more pleasure in the painting, instilled
as it was with unparalleled artistry and
the fortunes of Eros. Many strangers,
hearing about it, came to worship the
Nymphs and gaze upon its images. It
showed women giving birth, others wrap-
ping the newborn in swaddling clothes,
exposed infants, flocks of sheep suckling
the babies, shepherds picking them up,
and young people arranging marriages.
There was a pirate raid and an invasion
by the enemy. Many other things relat-
ing to Eros were there. I watched, and
as I watched and stood amazed, pas-
sionate longing came over me to paint
a response in writing to the painting.
I searched out someone to interpret
the images, and I completed four books.
I offer them to Eros and the Nymphs
and Pan as well as to all my fellows to be
their delight and possession. It will heal
whoever is ailing, console and comfort
whoever is mourning, evoke memories
for whoever has felt Eros, and educate
whoever has yet to feel Eros. No one has
escaped Eros or will escape Eros as long
as there is beauty, and eyes see. May the
gods grant me self-restraint in depicting
what others have done. (Proem)
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
Nature in this story is less beautiful than paint-
ing (“the most beautiful thing”/“beautiful
as well”). Only paintings, and then the
story that is its exegesis, have the power to
“charm” (τερπνότερα, τερπνόν), to delight
like the music of Orpheus. All the same, it is
the image itself that we “contemplate.”
This painting that ekphrasis describes
is already a story: “a painted image, a love
story.” The violence of the parataxis inverts
the ut pictura poesis: it is no longer poetry
that sets things before our eyes, it is the paint-
ing that makes us listen. To contemplate is to
lend an ear.
This story that is a painting is strictly
anti- or a-phenomenological in the
Heideggerian-Aristotelian sense of the word.
It makes nothing visible “as,” and defies all
­syntax. No resemblance, either epistemologi-
cal or metaphorical, can be elaborated from
here. All that we see is what discourse says in a
frenzied parataxis. The subjects in action, each
without predicate or modification, ­committed
to his or her act: the women who give birth,
shepherds picking up lambs, the youth who
promise, the enemies who invade. . . .
This story paints; it is a matter of “rep-
licating.” The Greek expression, ἀντιγράφαι
τῇ γραφῇ is much more rigorous: one must
write “against” and “from scratch,” to com-
pete with and to recopy the first writing that
is painting, playing the defense attorney and
the clerk of the court at the same time. This
“rewriting,” this “replication,” is the inter-
pretation of the painting in four books. The
ut poesis pictura that graphe- is (the paint-
ing) is followed by the ut pictura poesis that
antigraphe- is, the pastoral itself. It could not
be anything other than an ut poesis poesis,
the bucolic name for logology.
The discourse thus composed is not an
instrument of knowledge, an organon, but
a remedy, a pharmakon, and constitutes an
38
end in itself (an “offering,” a “good”). Not
only does it heal and console, it effectuates
at the same time an anamnesis of and a pro-
pedeutic to love (τὸν ἐρασθέντα ἀναμνήσει,
τὸν οὐκ ἐρασθέντα προπαιδεύσει): it is
wisdom itself.
In this prologue, in this novel, ekphrasis is
no longer a matter of having eyes to see and
to live the phenomenon, but of having eyes
in order to make sentences, eyes in order to
write and read: eyes to deceive.
Plutarch, in his On the Fame of the
Athenians, reminds us of a famous saying of
Gorgias’:
Tragedy bloomed and was celebrated,
a marvelous sound and spectacle for
the men of that time and one which by
means of myth and suffering produced a
“deception,” as Gorgias says, “in which
the deceiver is the more justly esteemed
than the nondeceiver and the deceived is
wiser than the undeceived.” The deceiver
is more justly esteemed because he suc-
ceeds in what he intends, and the deceived
is wiser, for a man that is not impercep-
tive is easily affected by the pleasure of
words. (The Older Sophists, 65)
With sophistry, it is apate-, “illusion,” simulta-
neously trickery and seduction, that is linked
not only with justice and wisdom, but, more
radically even, with αἴσθησις, with this “sen-
sibility” itself that characterizes the pheno­
menological opening. The sensibility to the
pleasure of speaking takes the place of the
sensibility to the phenomenon, and takes its
place. René Char reclaimed “the cruel honor
of deception”: it is on the literary and politi-
cal lucidity of this deception that I would like
to conclude.
Barbara Cassin
Translated by Claudia Baracchi
and Marcus Michelsen
 SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
Notes
1
[We translate Cassin’s French rendition of
Ovid’s text.—Trans.]
2
[Cassin writes “résonable,” a homophone for
“raisonable” (reasonable), from “résonner,” to
resound.—Trans.]
3
With πρώτων, sounds as well as writings
(ταῦτα, 6) are signs of affections of the soul
in the first place, and of the things themselves
in the second place. This interpretation is
quasi-unanimous among the ancients, the
Arabs, the moderns; the same goes for πρώτoν
(Ammonius, Stephanos of Alexandria), and
even for πρώτως. But this traditional interpre-
tation erases a whole series of differences that
constitute the details of Aristotle’s text; in par-
ticular, the difference between σημεῖον, natural
sign, symptom, and σύμβολον, conventional
sign, symbol (Heidegger chooses to consider
these as “provisionally synonyms” [1982,
114–15]). At the same time, we also lose the
distinction between φωναὶ and τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ,
γράμματα, and τὰ γραφόμενα, differences
that, at least, problematize the Heideggerian
reading according to which Aristotle always
thinks the sign on the ground of showing.
With πρώτως, the vocal sounds (ταῦτα, 6),
both human and animal, are first of all natural
symptoms of affections of the soul, and only
thereafter (in the case of articulate language
proper to human beings and, ­therefore, within
the framework of the difference among
tongues) become conventional symbols of
such affections, just as letters are the con-
ventional symbols of the articulated sounds.
Besides, reading πρώτων obscures without
a doubt one of the objectives of the passage:
the anti-Platonism of this beginning of the
treatise, written as a counterpoint to Cratylus
(Kretzmann’s thesis). The most important
reason to choose πρώτως over πρώτων can be
drawn from Kretzmann, 1974, and from Pépin,
1985. However, whichever text is established,
the whole movement that goes from logos to
the soul, and from the soul to things them-
selves, remains unalterable and paradigmatic.
4
[When quoting from Aristotle we follow
Cassin’s own translations.—Trans.]
5
It would be necessary to follow, step by step,
the parallel analyses that Heidegger proposes, in
39
particular of De Anima, De Interpretatione, and
Metaphysics IX, in Logik (GA 21, §§11–14,
127–95). At this point, we can only indicate the
necessity of such a comparison.
 6
The Greek here is difficult and open to differ-
ent interpretations: ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς ἤ
ψεῦδος, τὸ μὲν θιγεῖν καὶ φάναι ἀληθές (. . .),
τὸ δ᾽ἀγνοεῖν μὴ θιγγάνειν. We will compare
Heidegger’s construction “. . . vielmehr besagt
das Entdeckt oder Verdeckt das Betasten
und Ansprechen des Unverborgenen (. . .),
das Nichtvernehmen aber soviel wie das
Nicht-betasten” (Logik, 176), and Tricot’s:
“Voici ce qu’est alors le vrai ou le faux : le
vrai, c’est saisir et énoncer ce qu’on saisit (. . .)
ignorer, c’est ne pas saisir.”
 7
In order to show, from an entirely different
perspective, true and false resemblances, we
can consider Imbert, 1985.
 8
See Cassin, 1987. For an analysis of the whole
of Metaphysics IV, see Cassin and Narcy, 1988.
 9
See Cassin, 1980, 540–52. [English translation
is taken from Hett, 1936—Trans.]
10
See Met. VII.15, 1039b 28: διὰ τοῦτο δὲ καὶ
τῶν οὐσιῶν τῶν αἰσθητῶν τῶν καθ᾽ἕκαστα
ὄυτε ὁρισμὸς ὄυτε ἀπόδειξις ἔστιν.
11
Dufour, 1960.
12
Here, I am summarizing an analysis that can
be found fully developed in Cassin, 1985.
13
In Derrida, 1975, 267.
14
Hesiod, 1967, 128n. But Mazon ends on a
note of ambiguity: “In nine verses, everything
is over: the marionettes are brought back
behind the curtain. There is a casualness that
is not disagreeable. The author, though he may
have been without talent and originality, was
not, perhaps, without spirit.”
15
I refer on this point back to Cassin, 1986, 3–29.
16
See Blanchard, 1986.
17
For an analysis of these same texts in the
perspective of Stoic logic, where ekphrasis
would be the indication of the total translat-
ability between phantasia and discourse, I refer
to the remarkable article by Imbert, 1980. Our
perspectives, starting from Stoic phenomenol-
ogy and Sophistic fiction, are perhaps less
incompatible than they appear herein: with the
Stoic phenomenon, it is not a matter of data
for consciousness, but rather of signs.
SAYING WHAT ONE SEES, LETTING SEE WHAT ONE SAYS
References
Blanchard, M. E., “Problèmes du texte et du
tableau,” in Le plaisir de parler, ed.
B. Cassin, Paris: Minuit, 1986, 131–54.
Cassin, B., Si Parménide, Lille: Presses
Universitaires de Lille, 1980.
—, “Encore Hélène. Une sophistique de la
jouissance,” Littoral, 15.16 (1985), 161–76.
—, “Du faux ou du mensonge à la fiction,”
in Le plaisir de parler, ed. B. Cassin,
Paris: Minuit, 1986, 3–29.
—, “Le doigt de Cratyle,” Revue de
philosophie ancienne, 2 (1987), 139–50.
Cassin, B. and M. Narcy, La décision du
sens, Paris: Vrin, 1988.
Chantraine, P., Dictionnaire étymologique
de la langue grecque, Paris: Éditions
Klincksieck, 1968–99.
Derrida, J., “La mythologie blanche,”
Marges de la philosophie, Paris: Minuit,
1975.
Dufour, M. (trans.), Aristote. Rhétorique,
2nd edn, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1960.
Heidegger, M., Being and Time, trans.
J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, London:
Blackwell, 1962.
—, Logik. Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, ed.
W. Biemel, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1976.
—, On the Way to Language, San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1982.
—, Basic Writings: From Being and Time
(1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964),
ed. David Farrell Krell, SanFrancisco:
Harper, 1993.
Hett, W. S. (trans.), Aristotle. Minor Works,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936.
Imbert, C., “Stoic Logic and Alexandrian
Poetics,” in Doubt and Dogmatism, ed.
40
M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and
J. Barnes, Oxford: Clarendon, 1980,
182–216.
—, “La vérité d’Aristote et celle de Tarski,”
in Histoire et Structure, ed. J. Brunschwig,
C. Imbert, and A. Roger, Paris: Vrin, 1985,
173–193.
Kretzmann, N., “Aristotle on Spoken Sound
Significant by Convention,” in Ancient
Logic and Its Modern Interpretations, ed.
J. Corcoran, Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel,
1974, 3–21.
Longus, “Daphnis and Chloe,” Daphnis and
Chloe, trans. W. B. Tyrrell, Michigan State
University, n.d. www.msu.edu/~tyrrell/
daphchlo.htm
Mazon, P. (ed.), Hesiod. Théogonie, Les
Travaux et Les Jours, Le Bouclier, Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 1967.
Pépin, J., “ΣΥΜΒΟΛΑ, ΣΗΜΕΙΑ,
ΟΜΟΙΩΜΑΤΑ: À propos de De
Interpretatione 1, 16a3–8 et Politique
VIII 5, 1340a6–39,” in Aristoteles. Werk
und Wirkung, ed. W. Jürgen, Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1985, vol. 1.
Philostratus, Eunapius and Wilmer
Cave France Wright, Philostratus and
Eunapius. The Lives of the Sophists,
London: W. Heinemann, 1922.
Sprague, R. K. and H. Diels-W. Kranz (eds),
The Older Sophists, Columbia: University
of South Carolina, 1972.
Tarski, A., Logic, Semantics,
Metamathematics: Papers from 1923
to 1938, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett,
1938.
—, “The Semantic Conception of Truth:
And the Foundation of Semantics,”
Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, 4.3 (1944), 341–76.
 2
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION: ON THE
DISCOVERY OF ARCHAI
What is a definition? Often, especially when
speaking of Aristotelian logic, one encoun-
ters the answer: definitio fit per genus proxi-
mum et differentiam specificam (definition
proceeds from the closest genus and the
specific difference). Commonly, definition is
understood as a kind of taxonomical descrip-
tion by which a being is assigned a certain
universal genus that is then subsequently
further differentiated by its unique, specific
characteristics: the leopard is a feline ani-
mal belonging to the panther family, etc. As
such, a definition serves the linguistic func-
tion of preserving a categorical awareness
of a being, enabling humans to formulate a
concept to be applied to the beings that they
encounter in order to make them universally
recognizable and graspable. By applying the
conceptual categories of genus and species,
human beings are intellectually able to divide
a being into parts and to bring each of them
into an outline in virtue of their mutual simi-
larity and dissimilarity. In this way, beings
encountered in the world are placed within
an already existing organizational paradigm:
leopards belong to the genus “panther” with
the specific difference of possessing a light fur
coat covered in spots.1 One might argue that
41
such a method provides human beings with a
rational structure by which they are able to
harness and master natural beings by render-
ing them knowable and reducing their com-
plexity to orderable, catalogable (and hence
meaningful) configurations. Definitions, in
this view, originate a “demonstrative science”
through which nature may be possessed and
mastered.2
However, while the texts of Aristotle
(which the above interpretation might claim
as a source) may in fact betray a certain
inclination to employ definition for the sake
of coming to a dependable familiarity and
knowledge of a being, they point toward this
conception of definition as merely derivative
and secondary. Rather than an investigation
that cleaves beings from nature by abstrac-
tion into linguistic universals (genus and
species),3 I undertake to retrieve in Aristotle a
more primordial understanding of the activ-
ity of defining, which betrays a more imme-
diate relation to nature and reveals a curious
natural capacity that human beings harbor.
Human beings, among natural beings,
are perhaps uniquely capable of coming to
an awareness of an other being not merely
mediated through the structures provided
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
by human nature, but in accordance with
an unmediated encounter with the nature
of an other being. With this suggestion, I
allude to Aristotle’s ever present two-fold
description of the way we know the world
(according to us, according to itself):4 that
is to say, human nature betrays a comport-
ment in which one can be aware of an other
being not merely through human nature (i.e.
through the application of the cultural, lin-
guistic, and habitual quotidian structures
that form any given human’s identity), but
by the unmediated encounter with the other
nature of that being, by the noetic reception
of the arche- of an other entity. In this light,
definition would be the activity by which an
inquirer seeks to unhinge herself from pre-
cisely those universal structures that govern
a “definition” in the traditional understand-
ing of that term (the genus and species that
circulate in human cultural and linguistic
economies) in order to open herself intellec-
tually to the perception of the other being,
as other. Thus, in this essay I will argue that
Aristotle primarily understands definition as a
kind of phenomenological reduction in
which the inquirer turns toward a being in
such a way that she loosens herself from the
hermeneutic familiarity with a being in order
then to be disposed to it in such a way that
its nature, its arche-, its ti esti becomes mani-
fest (de-lon). With these governing reflections
on Aristotle’s texts, I will describe a mode of
being in which humans may discover nature
(and its singular beings) based neither upon
mere sensuous perception nor strictly con-
ceptual mediation. I will show that, though
dialectical/conceptual deliberation does not
reveal archai, it does place us in the com-
portment (the hexis, the mode of being) in
which we are noetically receptive to archai
(Aristotle lists nous as an intellectual hexis/
comportment, after all5). In addition, the
42
reader may already perceive that this account
of definition differs from the majority of the
literature referenced above, insofar as it con-
ceives of the activity of defining as primarily
philosophical/ontological and only secondar-
ily logical/scientific.
In the first part, in order to articulate this
primary conception of definition in Aristotle,
I will offer an interpretation of that struc-
ture by which Aristotle argues human beings
know anything at all: the prouparchousa
gno-sis.6 While prouparchousa gno-sis is often
translated as “pre-existent knowledge,”7
the present reading will suggest that it must
be understood not as an individual per-
son’s inner repository of previous empirical
experience, but rather as a kind of political,
hermeneutical horizon deeply informed by
Aristotle’s understanding of logos. Far from
data filed away in a cabinet lying between
the eyes and the ears, the prouparchousa
gno-sis seems rather to resemble a kind of
cultural horizon into which human beings
are born—a public, dialogically constituted
surrounding world that appropriates the
individual and bequeaths an identity and a
kind of citizenship. Most importantly, one’s
engagement with the world becomes shaped
and organized by the prouparchousa gno-sis.
Thus, as we will see through brief considera-
tions of Aristotle’s method in Physics I and
his solution to the epistemological problem
of the Meno in Posterior Analytics, one must
employ a dialectical critique of the proupar-
chousa gno-sis in order to begin to perform
the work of the definition of archai—which is
the same as to say, in order to begin to move
from an awareness of a being in accordance
with our nature, toward an awareness of
a being in accordance with its nature. Of
course, with this claim, I enter into the trou-
bled waters of Aristotelian dialectic.8 I will
indeed attempt to show that, for Aristotle,

one gains access to the archai, or first princi-
ples, through the above-described dialectical
process.
In the second part, subsequent to provid-
ing an account of the prouparchousa gno-sis,
I will offer a reading of definition as it is pre-
sented in the Posterior Analytics. It is in this
text that we learn that definition is the mode
in which human beings undergo the experi-
ence of the arche- of a being under inquiry.
Definition, Aristotle tells us, is the logos of
the arche-. Yet, this definition is not achieved
through apodeixis, demonstration. Rather,
Aristotle argues that definitions serve as the
archai of demonstrations, so that demonstra-
tions depend upon what is said in a defini-
tion; for, those performing demonstrations
do not question their primary definitions, but
rather hold them as convictions. How then
do definitions come to be if not by demon-
stration? We will see that, through the work
of critically engaging the prouparchousa
gno-sis, the arche- is subsequently made visi­
ble; the nature of the being is made manifest
(de-lon). The utterance of this vision of arche-
Aristotle names a definition.
Definition and the
Prouparchousa Gno ˉ sis
As mentioned before, at the beginning of
the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle states
that all teaching and learning proceed from
an already-present and already-governing
knowledge (ἐκ πρoϋπαρχoύσης . . . γνώσεως)
(71a2). Since human beings are the beings
whose function and nature is formed and
determined by logos,9 everything that human
beings do, qua human beings, is shaped by
a logos-structure that precedes them, that
already governs the meaning-horizon into
43
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
which they are ­situated. Every form that a
logos can take finds its origin in this preex-
istent knowledge; it is a logos-structure that
bestows upon humans a language and a con-
figuration of already-governing sciences and
arts: “the learned sciences and each of the
other technai . . . Similarly also in the case
of the logoi—both those through syllogism
and those through induction” (71a3–6). All
uniquely human disclosure and meaningful
awareness proceed from the prouparchousa
gno-sis. Further, Aristotle argues that even
rhetoric emerges out of the prouparchousa
gno-sis: “and that with which rhetorical
arguments persuade is the same” (71a9–10).
Thus, it would seem that, for Aristotle, every
activity that human beings perform that has
to do with logos (that is to say, every activ-
ity that human beings perform that pertains
to their unique nature) comes to be from out
of the already-present, hegemonic structure
of gno-sis. From a general Aristotelian point
of view, this claim should not be surprising;
for, as is said in the Physics, things always
come to be from something else (189b32).
As will become clear later, this ontological
observation holds not only for the beings of
nature but also for discourse.
The argument that Aristotle proceeds
to articulate—the three ways in which
already-present gno-sis is “necessary”—helps
to secure this claim. Aristotle writes that on
the one hand “sometimes it is necessary to
pre-suppose that something is” (Posterior
Analytics 71a12). He gives the example:
it is always the case that either an affirma-
tion or a denial is true. In making affirma-
tions or denials, one must presuppose that
they both cannot be true. Such a principle
is not demonstrated in making affirma-
tions or denials, but is assumed to be a
fact in advance of whatever is achieved in
the articulation. This principle is a kind of
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
postulate of speech that simultaneously gov-
erns speech. All knowledge must presuppose
such principles of speech in advance. Second,
Aristotle posits the form of necessity that is
most important for the present reading of
definition: “sometimes what the thing being
spoken is must be [already] understood [or
agreed upon]” (71a13). Aristotle’s example
is a “triangle.” I interpret this to mean that
there must be a preexistent conceptual frame
through which the thing being discussed
would have meaning at all: the concept of
“triangle” must already circulate in a prevail-
ing conceptual economy if it is to be mean-
ingful in knowledge. Third, sometimes one
must have both together. For this combina-
tion, Aristotle offers the example of a “unit.”
A unit is a kind of principle that we must
already understand (qua concept) if we are
to utilize it in speech and we must presume
its existence as a postulate: a unit, to quote
Euclid, is that “by virtue of which each of
the things that exist is called one.”10 Here, a
unit exhibits already-present gno-sis in both
ways: (1) A unit is not a number; it is a pos-
tulate11 for the possibility of numbering, a
principle assumed in advance of the activity
of numbering. (2) Moreover, a unit is simul-
taneously a concept that must already be
present in the common language in advance
of numbering. Both of these “necessities” for
knowledge are secured by inherited speech,
by an already-present logos-structure.
Yet, what does the prouparchousa gno-sis
have to do with the activity of definition?
A consideration of Aristotle’s initial mode
of inquiry into archai will point us to an
answer. As has been observed with much
debate,12 Aristotle often begins inquiry
related to the archai with an elucidation
of the endoxa that subtend the prevailing
thoughts on the subject under inquiry. In the
Physics, for instance, Aristotle prefaces his
44
investigation into the arche- of nature with
a survey of the arguments about the subject
that are circulating in his surrounding world.
Aristotle engages in a confrontation13 with
Parmenides and the Eleatics (as well as with
the phusikoi) in order to make nature more
explicit and perceivable and, thereby, to be
able to show that nature and the motions
over which it rules admit of being (a claim
at risk in the arguments of the Eleatics). In
the present reading, Aristotle’s activity in
these instances amounts to dialectically/criti-
cally engaging his own conceptual/cultural
resources (the prouparchousa gno-sis) in order
to more clearly elucidate the universal con-
cept, qua common concept, of nature, so that
he may then intellectually perceive the arche-
of nature in a definition. That is, in order
to reach an acquaintance with something in
accordance with its essence (in a definition),
for Aristotle, we must first critically engage
the arguments that already inform and shape
what we think in accordance with our essence
(logos, or the prouparchousa gno-sis).
The necessity of this dialectical proce-
dure for the intuition of the arche- of nature
in the Physics is made evident in Aristotle’s
solution to the epistemological problem pre-
sented by Plato’s Meno, namely, how do we
come to knowledge if we cannot learn what
we already know and we cannot come to
know something that we do not yet know
at all? Of course, Aristotle’s solution to this
problem hinges upon the observation that
it is possible to be familiar with something
in more than one way: one can know some-
thing in a general way and one can know
something simply. The much discussed pas-
sage at the end of the Posterior Analytics14
details a descriptive sequence that moves
from aisthe-sis, to memory, to experience,
and then to the universal, which might oth-
erwise be interpreted as the formation of an

individual person’s subjective repository of
previous empirical experience. Yet, it should
be remembered that in this passage Aristotle,
again, invokes the dilemma of the Meno by
claiming that we cannot already be born
with a potency to be disposed toward beings
in the manner of episte-me-, yet, we also
cannot simply take (lambano-) them from
being without somehow having already had
them before (again, “ἐκ . . . πρoϋπαρχoύσης
γνώσεως”) (99b25–30). Thus, the empirical
interpretation of the text would have to
ignore this initial sentence that, again, insists
that we are already disposed (in an imprecise
way) with respect to the universal. Humans,
for Aristotle, are born with the capacity to
acquire logos and logoi, not with the capac-
ity to originally employ logical procedures
to subjectively construct universals—either
vague universals or precise ones. Children
become enveloped by the logos-world, the
prouparchousa gno-sis, and only subsequent
to becoming adult humans, to acquiring
logos in an active and wakeful way, can
they cultivate a critical disposition to this
prouparchousa gno-sis in order to begin the
process of becoming familiar with the nature
of a being by its own nature; that is to say,
only subsequent to becoming humans can
a being be disclosed to them in the way of
episte-me-.
In the ensuing argument of the second part,
the essay will highlight the following points
about definition: (1) a definition is a way for
a human to break out of the common concep-
tual economy (logos as endoxa) that governs
her awareness of another being (awareness
according to us)—by, nevertheless, employ-
ing the very same logos/endoxa critically/dia-
lectically—in order to become aware of an
other being by its nature (awareness accord-
ing to the being itself); (2) yet, this logical
activity is not one that abstracts from nature
45
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
in the way of mathematics or the diairesis of
Platonism, or even as what we commonly
call “science” but rather, (3) it is achieved
in the comportment (hexis) in which one is
attuned with the arche- of what something
is (ti esti). The consequences of this account
will be a conception of definition that forces
a distinction between its use in philosophical/
ontological activity and its use in scientific
activity. Further, it will occasion a certain
alignment of logical activity with nature,
thereby securing Proclus’ intuitions15 that,
for Aristotle, logic and the rational disclosure
of nature are not things to be distinguished
from nature and are clearly not necessarily
abstractions of nature; indeed, remarkably,
Aristotle thinks in the Metaphysics that the
very same ousia that governs the generations
of biological forms also rules over what can
be meaningfully said about them in syllo-
gism: “ousia is the arche- of everything, for
syllogisms come from ti esti, while [among
biological forms] generations do” (1034a32).
I will show that this form of disclosure, defi-
nition, is an articulation of what provides the
continuity (sunecheia, the oneness that every
form, eidos, must exhibit if it is to admit of
being) to a natural being—an articulation of
that ousia that both compels the activities
and motions that constitute the nature of a
being and inscribes itself upon the intellec-
tual perception and, subsequently, meaning-
ful discourse about that being.16
Definition and the Vision of
Archeˉ
As is well known, Aristotle offers one of his
more thorough accounts of definition in the
Posterior Analytics. Here, in a text dealing
principally with demonstration (apodeixis),
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
Aristotle famously differentiates a demon-
stration from a definition (horismos) in order
to refute any claim that definition can show
itself as a proof or that apodeixis proves a
definition.
Toward the end of his discussion of
definition’s relationship to demonstration,
Aristotle claims that there are three different
ways that definition is said:17 (1) on the one
hand, definition is spoken of as a logos of
what something is (ti esti) (APo 93b30). Of
this first definition of definition, we can say
that it most likely refers to an account of
something insofar as it belongs incidentally
to or “comes along with” (sumbebe-kos) a
substance (ousia), since otherwise it would
essentially carry the same meaning as the
third and more primary articulation of
horismos. Aristotle confirms my suspicion
here by offering “triangular” as an example
of this first way that definition can be said
and “triangular” is a characteristic that can
only belong to a being incidentally (kata
sumbebe-kos), not primarily.18 (2) On the
other hand, definition bespeaks a mode of
speech that in quite limited cases can make
manifest “why something is”—a privilege
usually reserved for episte-me-. As such,
Aristotle argues, this second way that defini-
tion is said would be “like” a demonstration
of what something is (93b39); that is, defini-
tion can resemble a demonstration. In other
words, the definition in the form of a syl-
logism may bespeak “why something is” in
unique cases. For instance, in a certain way,
the definition of thunder (as “the extinguish-
ing of fire in the clouds”) already includes
an account of why thunder is, but not in the
form of a proof.19 (3) Finally, Aristotle offers
the third and more primary way the word
“definition” becomes used: “definition is the
laying down of the indemonstrable immedi-
ate [principles (archai)] of what something is
46
(ti esti)”20 (94a8).21 It is this final and more
primary conception of definition that inter-
ests us here. For, the third form most differ-
entiates definition from apodeixis while also
articulating the technical part that defini-
tion plays in any demonstration. Earlier in
Posterior Analytics II Aristotle had already
offered a reading of what is later called the
third form of definition and this reading will
help us to unpack the difficult definition of
horismos above while also enabling us to
understand the nature of horismos, insofar as
it discloses natural beings in a unique way.
In his explication of the way a defini-
tion differs from a demonstration, Aristotle
lays out three different characteristics that
belong to a horismos that do not belong to
apodeixis. (1) On the one hand, definition
is an arche- for a demonstration. (2) On the
other hand, definition is of “what something
is and of substance.” (3) Thirdly, definition
makes what something is visible—it makes
evident what something is, it does not prove
ti esti (90b30ff.). As to the first of our char-
acteristics, Aristotle comes to articulate one
attribute of definition by assigning to it the
role of arche-. Aristotle writes that definitions
are the archai upon which demonstrations
rely, the archai that apodeixis must assume
are without being able to demonstrate them.
We must consider precisely what this means,
for Aristotle also states that this “has been
shown earlier,” recalling a claim that “either
the archai will be demonstrable and thus
be archai of archai and this would be car-
ried to infinity, or the first definition will be
indemonstrable” (90b23ff.). By the phrase
“has been shown earlier,” Aristotle refers to
a passage in Posterior Analytics I in which he
argues that, even though the first principles
are not demonstrable or provable, in order
to be disposed toward a being in scientific
knowledge (episte-me-), we must be familiar

with and believe (pisteuein)22 in the first
principles even more than we do in conclu-
sions of our demonstrations (72a37–38).
Since the first principles (archai) are ruling
origins of beings and shape and determine
not only their physical being, but even what
becomes said about them (even as endoxa)
and, indeed, the knowing of them (72a30),23
then it is of utmost importance to dis-
play the first archai and to hold conviction
as to their disclosure if what becomes proved
about them in a demonstration is to hold any
reliable currency. One needs to be secure
in one’s conviction that the being about
which a demonstration will be made is held
in accordance with its arche-; for, the arche-
enters into the demonstration assumed and,
for Aristotle, is not knowable (in the form
of an episte-me-, qua demonstration), since
“the arche- of apodeixis is not apodeixis
and the arche- of episte-me- is not episte-me-”
(100b12). For Aristotle, apodeixis takes the
arche- for granted. In the comportment of
scientific investigation (for Aristotle, apo-
deixis and its episte-me-), therefore, we pre-
sume the first principle of the being that we
investigate.
If, indeed, (1) a definition is of the arche-,
a first principle of a being that is not only a
logical first principle but also one that rules
over the very nature of that being, and (2)
this first principle is presumed by logical/
scientific investigation, then does this not
necessitate the interpretation that the pri-
mary function of definition is philosophical/
ontological and only in a secondary sense
logical/scientific? Perhaps such an observa-
tion, while certainly ancient,24 is not foreign
to the contemporary world. If we direct our
gaze not only toward syllogism but even
toward experimental, empirical science, we
may have the same question. For it seems
to me questionable whether experimental
47
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
physicists who conduct the acceleration
and collision of particles in the Hadron col-
lider are asking questions about the arche- of
nature—the arche- of physics. Moreover, we
might wonder whether the electrical stimu-
lation of a severed muscle submerged in a
cylinder filled with saline by biologists seeks
an answer to the question “what is life?”—
the very object of biology. Are these experi-
ments not conducted with presumed answers
to the questions “What is nature?” “What is
life?”—answers that they inherit from the
hermeneutical situation in which they find
themselves? Or do they genuinely seek the
archai that rule over their work and argu-
ments? Whatever our answer, for Aristotle,
scientific knowledge does not aim at archai;
one will have grasped the arche- of what
something is in some other way.
In order to consider how an arche- is
grasped in a definition in such a way that
it makes the being of something visible, for
Aristotle, first we need to repeat what arche-
means in its primary sense and state in what
way a definition is philosophical/ontologi-
cal and not merely logical/scientific. In the
Physics, Aristotle argues that nature is an
arche- for motion (192b21)—in this context,
we mean not just any haphazard motion,
but rather nature is an arche- for the pri-
mary activity of any being by nature. Thus,
the arche- rules over the primary activity that
preserves and secures the being of a being. The
arche- provides the ruling activity that holds
the being together in a unity as the being that
it is; it provides the continuity (sunecheia)
that is necessary not only for the being to
exist, but even for its graspability in thought
or perception (Metaphysics 1036a7), insofar
as the being is to be grasped “as” any one25
thing and not a “heap” (1040b5–15). Thus,
a definition is not some simple premise from
which demonstrations begin; it is a unique
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
articulation of an arche-, an arche- that rules
over a demonstration, yet remains indemon-
strable by apodeixis. Moreover, a definition
is an articulation of the arche- of the primary
activity of the being26 (its τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι); a
definition bespeaks the nature of something
in the primary sense.
But what does the activity of primary
definition look like, qua articulation of the
arche-? In the literature, there remains much
disagreement about how archai are made
manifest to us. Earlier we noted the debate
between those who locate within dialec-
tic (and its engagement with the endoxa) a
path toward the archai (for instance, Owen,
1986) and those who, in opposition to dia-
lectical method, posit sensuous perception
and empirical analysis as the way to archai
(e.g. Bolton, in Judson, L. [ed.], 1991). While
it is clear from the first part of the present
essay that my thinking on the matter is
more inclined toward the dialectical than
the empirical mode of inquiry into archai
(insofar as moving from an awareness of a
being according to us to an awareness of a
being according to itself is articulated above
as fundamentally dialectical), nevertheless,
strict adherence to the endoxa without quali-
fication seems problematic for a number of
reasons. For instance, the endoxa represent
an awareness of a being according to us,
according to the prouparchousa gno-sis. If
we remain there, if we remain in preexist-
ent familiarity, how do we grasp the being
according to itself? Further, endoxa are logoi
and, if we were to assert a conceptual/a pri-
ori relation to the archai (see n. 12), then
we would have to ignore many passages
in which Aristotle appeals to aisthe-sis and
nous; for, aisthe-sis stars prominently in the
description of coming to archai at the end of
Posterior Analytics II.19 and nous—which is
often described as being “of archai” across
48
the corpus—is without logos (Nicomachean
Ethics 1142a27), thus without endoxa.27 At
the opposite extreme, if archai “come directly
from sensation and experience” (Halper,
in Sim [ed.], 1999, 216),28 then how do we
incorporate the prouparchousa gno-sis, from
which all knowing proceeds, whether syl-
logistic, epagogic, or rhetorical? Even if we
wanted to argue that preexistent knowledge
is wholly explainable by subjective, personal,
individual experience in Aristotle—and it
seems to me that there are strong reasons to
argue against this29 (not only in the case of
socially structured concepts such as justice,
truth, nature, etc. but also in more concrete
concepts like species and organism)—the
example of “a unit” that Aristotle offers as
an explanation of the way that the proupar-
chousa gno-sis is necessary seems to prevent
strictly empirical explanation. Allow me to
repeat it here. A unit is a form of principle
that we must already understand if we are to
utilize it in speech and we must presume its
existence as a postulate. As we saw, accord-
ing to Euclid a unit is that “by virtue of which
each of the things that exist is called one.”30
Here, to recall what was observed above, a
unit exhibits already-present, presupposed
gno-sis in two ways: (1) as a postulate and (2)
as a concept. Both of these “necessities” for
knowledge are secured by inherited speech,
the already-present logos-structure; they are
not appropriated by the senses of an individ-
ual perceiver. Even if the concept of unit were
wholly available to sensuous impression (and
there are reasons to doubt this), its existence
as a postulate for the possibility for num-
bering is not constituted by individualized,
subjective experience, since as a postulate it
makes possible the experience of number-
ing. However, one must be careful here not
to attribute to Aristotle a Kantian a priori.
For, what counts as preexistent knowledge

(inherited speech) is not compatible with the
“categories of the understanding.”31 Rather,
as was stated before, the prouparchousa
gno-sis is social and political and, as such, it
is changeable, subject to criticism and mal-
leability, and it varies according to cultures
and practices.
I will conclude with what I hope is an
example that elucidates how we arrive at pri-
mary definitions and their archai in a way that
reflects the movement from being aware of a
being according to us toward being aware of
a being according to itself. Despite the risk of
confusing the matter by employing an exam-
ple related to geometry and its demonstrative
knowledge, I would like to reference a geo-
metrical proposition from Euclid’s Elements
in relation to the contemporary endoxa sur-
rounding that proposition. One of the prob-
lems with employing such an example is that
Euclid’s method is apodeixis and the way to
definitions is not. Another problem lies in the
fact that the object of geometry is not prop-
erly ousia in Aristotle’s view32 and a definition
in the primary sense is of ousia. Nevertheless,
I think this example will help to illuminate
how we find our way to archai in a similar
manner to the one that Aristotle himself uses
often to describe phenomena difficult to
put into speech: analogy; for, in the Physics,
almost every example that Aristotle offers
of natural beings is drawn from techne-—
a house, or a statue, etc.—even though he
specifically argues that technological arti-
facts do not actually have a nature proper
to themselves.33 It is in the spirit of analogy
that I offer the following example. If we con-
sider the algebraic formulation A2 + B2 = C2,
presumably everyone reading this essay will
recognize it immediately. Moreover, the for-
mulation might quickly invoke within the
mind a narrative involving how and when
we learned the formula; perhaps we will
49
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
remember how we have employed it in geom-
etry class to mechanically solve problems;
images of triangles might surface in our mind’s
eye. We know a great deal about this concept
and we would not know the concept at all if
we were not educated in a culture and sur-
rounding world that considered it important
to discuss. The algebraic concept circulates
in our conceptual economy, in the economy
that has appropriated us; and in a certain
way, we have access to the mathematics of a
triangle because of the common concept that
this formula conveys. That is to say, we have
a certain awareness of the being of triangles,
and hence of right triangles, because of this
formula that has been written upon us by the
surrounding linguistic world. Thus, without
too much distortion, we can say that the
algebraic formula resides in the structure of
preexistent knowledge that I describe above—
the prouparchousa gno-sis. Moreover, it
clearly exhibits itself as a form of endoxa—of
the wise opinions of mathematicians without
whom we almost certainly would not have
access to triangles in the same way. However,
in my experience, despite their ability to
utilize the formula, to solve mathematical
problems with it, to discuss characteristics
of triangles as a consequence of being famil-
iar with the Pythagorean theorem, students
reading Euclid for the first time often have
not had an immediate encounter with the
actual structure of equalities; in all of their
procedural experience with the formula, they
have not actually encountered the phenom-
enon that is abstractly represented by the
algebraic formulation (with which they are
familiar in almost precisely the same way as
a dictionary “definition”). Indeed, often they
have never even considered that there are
actual squares involved. Perhaps it was dif-
ferent for the mathematicians of Euclid’s day;
but, with widespread practical knowledge of
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
the formula in the contemporary world, if
one is to grasp the principle that underlies
the algebraic statement, perhaps one must
interrogate this common knowledge, this
prouparchousa gno-sis34 that first makes pos-
sible my awareness of the structure of equali-
ties suggested in the formula. One way to
do that would be an historical investigation
into the endoxa surrounding the content of
the algebra. Euclid provides such an occasion
for interrogation. Proposition I.47 in Euclid’s
Elements actually exhibits the fundamental
intuition that is assumed in the algebraic
formulation—it makes the equalities in the
properties of the squares explicit and visi-
ble.35 Moreover, in following Euclid, we are
able to dialogically engage the triangle, to
critically analyze what we already know
about it, to add and subtract figures from its
sides and compare their equalities. In doing
this, we prepare ourselves for a fundamental
insight, a noetic vision, an intuition in which
we see the very meaning of the Pythagorean
theorem we have already been employing
without truly understanding it. It was pre-
cisely the critical engagement and the lin-
guistic assessment of the triangle that placed
us in the position for the “ah ha!” moment
of seeing what the Pythagorean theorem
means. However, it seems that the seeing of
this fundamental meaning cannot be reduced
to the discursive engagement that placed us
in the position to be able to see. The seeing
is rather something in addition to the logical
moves in the proposition. I would argue that
while the seeing of the equality would not be
possible without the discursive assessment
of the triangle in the proposition, it can-
not be reduced to the discursive assessment.
Perhaps this is what Aristotle means when
he says in passages that I have quoted above
that (1) “it would be nous that is of archai”
(APo 100b13),36 “nous is of definitions” (NE
50
1142a25), and (2) intellectual intuition is
without logos (1142a27). Dialogical engage-
ment with the prouparchousa gno-sis places
us in a receptive comportment with respect
to the archai, places us in the hexis in which
we can intellectually perceive the being of a
being37—but the reception of the archai can-
not be reduced to rational, dialogical engage-
ment, to the logos. A curious consequence
of the latter is that it might be possible to
argue that the discursive content of A2 + B2 =
C2 with which we started is nevertheless
identical to what would be articulated as a
consequence of the dialectical work that led
us to the intellectual vision of the meaning of
proposition I.47.38 In merely articulating the
content of two conceptual representations of
the triangle, one cannot perceive a difference.
The immediate perception of the meaning
of the equalities requires the addition of the
noetic perception. Moreover, if the articula-
tion of the content of the two forms is iden-
tical, then this means that the vision of the
arche- is experiential, not strictly conceptual.
And, one achieves the experience through
dialogically working through the proposi-
tion in order to work back toward its pri-
mary meaning, rather than simply presuming
the meaning in the algebraic formulation
and proceeding with the science of algebraic
manipulations. The latter is a demonstrative
science; the former is a philosophical, con-
templative reflection on nature.
In offering an account of primary defi-
nition in Aristotle, we have shown (1) that
definition betrays a fundamental interpene-
tration of the ontological and logical, insofar
as it is the very same arche- that rules over
the motions of the natural being that also—
through a definition—rules over any syl-
logisms about it. And we have seen (2) that
definition exhibits a mode of being in which
humans may discover nature (and its ­singular

beings) based neither upon mere sensuous
perception nor strictly conceptual media-
tion. Though dialectical/conceptual delibera-
tion does not reveal archai, it does place us
in the comportment (the hexis, the mode of
being) in which we are noetically receptive to
archai. With these two observations, we have
made clear how, for Aristotle, the activity of
defining is primarily philosophical/ontologi-
cal and only secondarily logical/scientific.
Russell Winslow
Notes
1
As Jack Lynch notes in his “Johnson’s
Encyclopedia,” this description of definition
derives from Porphyry’s interpretation of
Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (in the Isagoge)
and Boethius’ own commentary on it. “From
this Scholastic tradition emerged the ‘genus-
differentiae’ mode of definition, summarized as
‘Definitio fit per genus proximum et differen-
tiam specificam’: a definition identifies the kind
and offers a means of distinguishing it from
other examples of that kind. The genus and
a minimally adequate number of differentiae
provide a definition. Much lexicographical
practice even today employs some version of
this genus-differentiae definition” (Lynch and
McDermott, 2005, 131).
2
The accounts of Aristotelian definition in the
literature share a commitment to the concep-
tion of the purpose of definition as, first and
foremost, a “foundation for demonstrative
­science” (Deslauriers, 2007, 2), insofar as defi-
nition articulates the first principles employed
in those sciences. Indeed, for some, the “dis-
covery of first principles” and the consequent
articulation of those first principles, qua
definition, is “the scientist’s . . . province” (Sim,
1999, xiii). My paper will argue for a concep-
tion of definition that is prior to a foundation
for demonstrative science and formal
logic.
3
While I find Deslauriers’ account of definition
compelling—especially insofar as
(1) she suggests that through definition “we
51
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
­ iscover a link between logic and metaphysics”
d
(Deslauriers, 2007, 1, 59, and chapter 3),
(2) she distinguishes between the prior defini-
tions that “reveal substance to us” and the
derivative forms of definition (Deslauriers,
2007, 10), and (3) she argues that immediate
definitions are the most philosophically impor-
tant to Aristotle (Deslauriers, 2007, 44)—I
disagree with her claim that “immediate”
definition, the more primordial conception
of definition, is understood by Aristotle as a
“genus and a set of differentiae” (Deslauriers,
2007, 211). I will argue that these conceptual
categories are already a move into abstraction
from the arche-, which is the first object of a
definition.
 4
See, for example, Physics I.1, 184a17–18 and
Posterior Analytics I.2, 71b35.
 5
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines
virtue as a hexis, which is to say, a habit/com-
portment of the soul in which “we hold/bear”
(echomen) ourselves “well” or “badly” toward
the passions (1105b25–6). Later, in book VI,
Aristotle employs this term (hexis) again to
describe the intellectual virtues insofar as they
are comportments in which truth is disclosed.
Nous is included among these (1139b12–13).
Also, in Posterior Analytics, Aristotle employs
the term hexis to describe nous when he begins
the investigation into which form of “knowing
hexis” knows the archai (99b19). Here and
for the rest of the essay the quotations from
Aristotle’s texts are based on the editions/
translations listed in the References, although I
often offer alternative renditions of the Greek.
 6
APo 71a2.
 7
See, for example, Tredennick, 1960.
 8
The positions in the debate may be perused in
Sim, 1999. See also Irwin, 1988, 1–70.
 9
“The work of the human is a certain life, and
this is the activity and action of the soul with
logos” (NE 1098a14).
10
Heath, 1956, vol. 2, 277.
11
In this context I italicize “postulate” in order
to draw attention to the character of a sub-
structure that this particular already-present
gno-sis exhibits. It serves as what we might
call a “holding place” for the content/­
meaningfulness of numbering—one must
already have an awareness of “unit” if one
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
is to perform the activity of gathering like
“units” into number.
12
The function of endoxa in Aristotle’s method
of discovery has engendered a great deal of
debate between those who, on the one hand,
wish to see a conceptual/a priori methodology
at work and those who, on the other, wish to
see an empirical method at work. With regard
to Aristotle’s Physics, for example, compare
Owen, G. E. L.’s “Tithenai ta Phainomena”
(Owen, 1986, 239–51) with Robert Bolton’s
challenge to Owen in “Aristotle’s Method in
Natural Science: Physics I” (Judson, 1991,
1–30).
13
I use the term confrontation in order to convey
critical engagement, but not necessarily total
negation. I would argue that Aristotle appro-
priates as much as he refutes his predecessors.
14
99b15–100b4.
15
In his Commentary on Euclid’s Elements
(Morrow, 1970, 11), Proclus appears struck
by a curious tendency he sees in Aristotle’s
understanding, on the one hand, of the relation
of mathematics to nature and, on the other, of
the relation of logic to nature. More specifi-
cally, Proclus draws our attention to the fact
that Aristotle criticizes mathematical explana-
tions of nature, arguing that they abstract from
phusis. Of course, in Proclus’ reading, Aristotle
fails to think clearly about the relation of the
sensible and mathematical. Proclus wants
to argue that attending to sensuous beings
unhinges one’s logic and knowledge from true
nature, while mathematical beings secure an
accurate account of it. Yet, Aristotle argues for
the reverse; the accuracy of logical disclosure
of nature, for him, is better secured by attend-
ing to physical beings. Physical and particular
beings give themselves as logical principles
(archai) somehow already, while mathematical
beings are abstractions of this sensuous experi-
ence. For instance, in Physics II.2 Aristotle
explicitly denies that mathematics offers an
account of nature as such. “The mathematician
does busy himself about the things men-
tioned,” Aristotle writes, speaking of natural
bodies, “but not insofar as each is a limit of a
natural body” (193b32). Rather, the math-
ematician assesses the surfaces, lengths, and
volumes of natural bodies by abstraction—by
separating these “formal” characteristics from
52
the motion and matter of a being in becom-
ing. Yet, strangely and remarkably, as Proclus
notes, Aristotle does not come to the same
conclusion about logic and its relationship to
nature. Logic—and the broader structure into
which it is situated: reason (logos)—we can
therefore conclude, is not an abstraction or a
separation from the sensuous and particular
beings of nature, for Aristotle, but rather logos
must somehow be thought of as an expression
of these beings of nature; or, perhaps better,
logical structures, in contrast to mathematical
structures, must be included when thinking of
natural beings in the world.
16
Here one might consider the finitude of the
human intellectual encounter with the form
of natural beings in Aristotle. Indeed, the very
fact that we can engage critically the existing
arguments and concepts shows that these argu-
ments do not exhaust the ousia of the other.
It is the irreducibility of the other that keeps
arguments unstable, revisable, always in the
process of dissolving and being reconstituted
anew. Even if the reception of the form of the
other being is noetic, that reception might be
subject to malleability and change (perhaps
even “corruption”) at the very moment it is
raised into discourse (which is to say, at the
very moment it is incorporated into speech).
Perhaps this finitude bespeaks the urgency
behind the activity of definition: we could even
say that it is the force of definition that keeps
discursivity on its tiptoes.
17
There is much disagreement in the literature
with respect to these three forms of definition.
For reasons that are clear from the argu-
ments below, I differ from the reading that the
first and the third articulations of definition
are identical (e.g. in Ross’ commentary on
Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics (Ross,
1949, 634–9). Further, I remain unconvinced
that these passages indicate a developmental
conception of definition. In his “Definition
and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Posterior
Analytics and Generation of Animals,” Robert
Bolton offers a reading of these three types
of definition as if they would represent three
consecutive points of achieving a definition.
For Bolton, first we are aware of something
in accordance with its general sensuously
perceived characteristics (this is conceived

as a first definition), then we are aware of
something that exhibits why something has
the characteristics in the first definition (this is
the second), and then we continue our inquiry
to clarify the features most basic to our first
sensuously perceived characteristics (this is
the third and most primary “indemonstrable
definition”). I do not think Aristotle suggests
that there are consecutive degrees of definition
through which a definition passes. Rather,
I think Aristotle is speaking of two incidental
(sumbebe-kos) ways we speak of definition
and then also the primary way we speak of
definition, the third being the primary sense of
definition. Bolton’s summary of this process is
to be found in Gotthelf and Lennox, 1987,
145–6.
18
Aristotle confirms this assertion in his recapitu-
lation of the three forms of definition (94a11),
in which this first kind is said to be “the con-
clusion of a demonstration” (94a14). Clearly,
Aristotle has already said numerous times that
it is not demonstration, but definition that
accounts for what something is (ti esti) and,
moreover, that definition and what something
is (ti esti) cannot be proved. Yet, there is a way
in which a definition can resemble a demon-
stration in form, but not in such a way that it
proves anything about the primary substance,
but rather, in such a way that it makes mani-
fest something incidental (sumbebe-kos) to or
something that “comes along with” substance.
19
“For it is different to tell why thunder is and
to tell what thunder is. For it will be said:
‘because fire is extinguished in the clouds.’
But [the question] ‘what is thunder?’ [is
answered by] ‘noise from extinguishing fire in
the clouds’” (94a3). Aristotle explains that the
former is a continuous demonstration (moving
forward in the way that syllogisms do) while
the latter is a definition.
20
In Posterior Analytics, Aristotle writes that
definition is of the ti esti and ousia (90b16,
91a1). Yet, in Metaphysics, he writes that
definition is a logos of the τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι
(1030a7). With Aristotle, my essay presumes a
certain synonymy between the three phrases.
21
Aristotle has earlier stated that “it is clear that
the essences (ti esti) of things [whose cause is
not other than themselves] will be also imme-
diate and [will be] first principles (archai)”:
53
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
which is to say that their “ti esti must be
assumed” (as in the case of a demonstration)
or they must be “made manifest in some other
way” (93b22–4). We will presently pursue this
“other way.”
22
For the importance of conviction and belief in
Aristotle’s logical thinking, see Baracchi, 2008,
27–8.
23
On this point consider, once more, the claim
in Metaphysics VII.9 that “just as in demon-
stration, ousia is the arche- of everything, for
syllogisms come from ti esti, while [among
biological forms] generations do” (1034a32).
Thus, the ousia of something rules over,
provides continuity and completeness, qua
arche-, both to thinking and rational disclosure
and to the generation of natural beings. As
shown in the first part of the present essay, the
continuity in Aristotle between the motions
of generation and those of logic (and the fact
that the latter depend upon the former) signal
a deep connection between the ontological and
the logical.
24
While it does not employ the language of
definition, there is a version of such a structure
articulated already in the discussion of the
divided line in Plato’s Republic, stating that
science is not concerned with the archai as
such, but rather begins with hypotheses about
the forms and proceeds from these hypoth-
eses with its scientific work—it operates with
presumed conceptions of archai. Philosophy,
too, begins with the hypotheses but turns back
from the hypotheses (rather than simply pro-
ceeding from them) to the beginning (510b).
25
Oneness is precisely the origin of one of the
problems with thinking definition in the
Metaphysics (1037b11); for, insofar as a
definition is composed of several concepts, it
must nevertheless exhibit oneness insofar as
it is to articulate something that is one and
continuous.
26
This conception of a definition as a philo-
sophical articulation of what makes a being
one, continuous, and intimately connected
to a being’s substance is even stronger
in Metaphysics VII than in the Posterior
Analytics. For example: “a definition and a τò
τí ἦν εἶναι belong primarily and simply to
ousia . . . [and a definition] belongs to some-
thing that is one, not by being continuous in
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
the way that the Iliad is, nor by being bundled
together, but [by being continuous] in just the
ways one is meant” (1030b5). Compare also:
1036a1, 1037b25, and 1038a20.
27
In the words of T. H. Irwin, “Aristotle’s
description of dialectical method seems to offer
no grounds for believing that it systematically
reaches objective first principles, it reaches a
more coherent version of the beliefs we began
with, solving the puzzles revealed by our exam-
ination of the initial beliefs. But coherence
within common beliefs does not seem to be a
ground for claiming to have found objective
principles” (1988, 8).
28
Halper also argues that the procedure at the
beginning of the Physics and other texts that
open with an engagement of the endoxa “can-
not quite count as science” (Sim, 1999, 216).
I agree with him here; for, as I argue above,
philosophical work involves the disclosure of
archai, not scientific work. Thus, I would want
to argue that the first books of those texts
originate a philosophical comportment, a
comportment concerned with moving from
awareness of nature (in the case of the
Physics) according to us . . . to an awareness
of the arche- of nature.
29
Winslow, 2006, 163–80.
30
Heath, 1956, vol. 2, 277.
31
Kant, 1855, 58.
32
Phys. 193b32.
33
NE 1140a15.
34
For a contrasting view, compare Robert
Bolton’s essay “Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
and Generation of Animals” (in Gotthelf
and Lennox, 1987, 120) in which he argues
mostly against the view that Aristotle’s prin-
cipal method of discovery is dialectic. Bolton,
quoting the Topics (142a6–7, 141b15–19),
sees definition as more intimately connected
to apodeixis, arguing that definition accord-
ing to our nature is specifically criticized
by Aristotle as being for people who lack
the intellectual capacity for syllogism. Yet, I
would argue that Aristotle means something
quite different in these passages from the
Topics. Namely, that there is a way that one
can form definitions in accordance with our
nature, “according to us” (see, for exam-
ple, Phys. I.1, 184a17–18), which is to say,
in accordance with the cultural/linguistic
54
constitution in which we find ourselves. These
derivative definitions do not enable us to
break out of that cultural constitution and
such breaking out is a requirement in the gen-
eration of definitions “according to nature.”
These derivative definitions are formed by
those who cannot or do not employ ration-
ality wakefully and originally, but rather
resemble the formation of definitions and
games by those bounded souls in Plato’s cave
allegory (516c–d), who hold contests and
word-guessing games based upon the ruling
cave prouparchousa gno-sis). In fact, there
are ways in which even syllogism does not
and cannot break out of its cultural constitu-
tion such that it can generate a comportment
of knowing—as we recall from Aristotle’s
assertion in Nicomachean Ethics that there
are people (children and drunk people, for
instance) that are able to string together
scientific demonstrations, but do not know
what they are saying (1147a20). In the case
of children, we can see very clearly how they
may rehearse the definitions (similar to my
example of the Pythagorean theorem below)
they have been habituated to state in support
of a geometrical proof, but they do not have
the reflected insight that comes from the intel-
lectual experience of definition in its primary,
noetic sense. Nevertheless, contrary to Bolton,
I see these derivative forms of definition as
important, perhaps even necessary, insofar as
they are a part of the structure of preexistent
knowledge out of which we come to know
anything at all.
35
“In right-angled triangles the square on the side
subtending the right angle is equal to the squares
on the sides containing the right angle. Let ABC
be a right-angled triangle having the angle BAC
right; I say that the square on BC is equal to the
squares on BA, AC. For let there be described
on BC the square BDEC, and on BA, AC the
squares GB, HC. . . . Therefore the whole square
BDEC is equal to the two squares GB, HC.”
H
G
K
A
F
B M C
(Heath, 1956, vol. 1, 349–50)
D L E

36
The relation between nous and aisthe-sis in the
reception of archai is not uncomplicated. They
are both immediate perceptive capacities that
when attuned in the right way toward their
objects are never wrong: “sense perception
when directed at its proper objects is always
truthful” (De Anima, 427b11); “The think-
ing of indivisible things is one of those acts
in which falsehood is not possible” (430a27).
Despite this claim that nous and aisthe-sis
are never wrong, there have been compelling
readings that assert a certain possibility of a
finitude or (even) fallibility of nous: for exam-
ple, Brague, 1990; Bäck, “Aristotle’s Discovery
of First Principles,” in Sim, 1999, 163–81;
Baracchi, 2008.
37
Aristotle’s conception of noetic perception is
highly debated and controversial in the litera-
ture. A sustained meditation on nous would
require an essay on its own and is, conse-
quently, not possible here. One might attribute
the difficulty of the interpretation of nous to
the confused state of certain key manuscripts
that include Aristotle’s reflections on nous,
as Martha Nussbaum writes in “The Text of
Aristotle’s de Anima” in Nussbaum and Rorty,
1992, 2. Or, one might also simply suggest,
as Martin Heidegger has, that nous continues
to elude Aristotle insofar as “it is the phe-
nomenon that causes him the most difficulty”
(Heidegger, 1997, 41). Further, one might try
to offer an interpretation of certain difficult
passages while still qualifying what one writes
by saying, as K. V. Wilkes does: “I cannot
understand this chapter [de Anima III.5],
and none of the secondary literature has so far
helped me to do so” (Nussbaum and Rorty,
1992, 125). I argue for a receptive (dektikon)
conception of nous based upon the comparison
of aisthe-sis and nous in De Anima (Winslow,
2009).
38
We are reminded here again of that passage
quoted earlier in Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics VII on the difference between a geom-
eter and a child performing demonstrations.
The demonstrations that they place on a black
board are identical. However, the difference
may lie in the intellectual perception of the
geometer—he has seen, while the child is
merely repeating the content of the demonstra-
tion (1147a20).
55
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
REFERENCES
Apostle, H. (trans.), Aristotle. Physics,
Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic Press,
1980.
Baracchi, C., Aristotle’s Ethics as First
Philosophy, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
Brague, R., “Aristotle’s Definition
of Motion and Its Ontological
Implications,” Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal, 13.2 (1990),
1–22.
Bywater, J. (ed.), Aristotelis Ethica
Nicomachea, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1894.
Deslauriers, M., Aristotle on Definition, The
Hague: Brill, 2007.
Forster, E. (ed. and trans.), Aristotle. Topics,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1960.
Gotthelf, A. and Lennox, J. (eds),
Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987.
Heath, T. (trans.), Euclid. Elements Vol. 1
and 2, New York: Dover, 1956.
Heidegger, M., Plato’s Sophist, trans.
R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer, Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press,
1997.
Irwin, T., Aristotle’s First Principles, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1988.
Judson, L. (ed.), Aristotle’s Physics: A
Collection of Essays, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1991.
Kant, I., Critique of Pure Reason, trans.
J. Meiklejohn, London: Henry Bohn,
1855.
Lynch, J. and A. McDermott (eds),
Anniversary Essays on Johnson’s
Dictionary, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION
Morrow, G. (trans.), Proclus. A
Commentary on the First Book of
Euclid’s Elements, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1970.
Nussbaum, M. and A. Rorty (eds), Essays
on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Owen, G. E. L., Logic, Science and Dialectic,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986.
Ross, W. (ed.), Aristotle. Prior and Posterior
Analytics, Oxford: Clarendon, 1949.
—, Aristotelis De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1956.
Sachs, J. (trans.), Aristotle. On the Soul and
On Memory and Recollection, Santa Fe:
Green Lion Press, 2001.
56
—, Aristotle. Metaphysics, Santa Fe: Green
Lion Press, 2002.
Sim, M. (ed.), From Puzzles to Principles?
Lanham: Lexington Press,
1999.
Tredennick, H. (ed. and trans.), Aristotle.
Posterior Analytics, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1960.
—, Aristotle. Metaphysics, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1989.
Winslow, R., “On the Nature of ‘Logos’ in
Aristotle,” Philosophie Antique V.6 (2006),
163–80.
—, “On the Life of Thinking in Aristotle’s
De Anima,” Epoché, V.13 (2009),
299–316.
Phusis
 3
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS:
NATURAL THINGS AND BODY
Introduction
Aristotle’s works in physics, astronomy, and
biology are remarkable for their appeal to
natural phenomena. Bostock, for example,
approaches Aristotle’s account of ­matter
and change saying “Aristotle takes it to
be an obvious fact of observation that. . . .”1
Throughout the corpus, Aristotle points
to objects of everyday experience as being
explained by or bearing witness to his
account. Perhaps for this reason, Aristotle’s
science is often conceived and so evaluated
in terms of “the empirical method.”2 But an
appeal to natural things and the development
of a science to explain them is not necessar-
ily “empirical”—however this notion is ulti-
mately defined. A consistent turn to natural
things as they appear to us within the sen-
sible world could be thought of as akin to
phenomenology, that is, an interest in the
structure of appearances and a resistance to
accounts relying on what is “invisible.” While
concern with method, whether empirical or
phenomenological, is clearly modern in ori-
gin, it is nonetheless legitimate to ask about
Aristotle’s procedure.
To answer the question of whether
Aristotle’s natural science is best thought
59
of as an empirical examination of natural
objects or as a phenomenological account of
appearances requires an understanding both
of Aristotle’s science of natural things and the
basic criteria of these two types of accounts.
In the text that follows, I shall first exam-
ine Aristotle’s account of nature and things
that are by nature as it emerges against the
background of Greek natural philosophy,
especially the atomists, and on its own terms.
With the force of this position clarified, I
shall, in conclusion, turn briefly to issues of
“empirical method” and “phenomenologi-
cal method” in order to suggest how we can
understand Aristotle’s project in such terms.
The question of what sensible things are
and how to explain them lies at the heart
of Greek philosophy. Parmenides rejects the
possibility of knowing sensible things at all
and the atomists respond by asserting that
“body,” defined as atoms, is a first prin-
ciple of all things. Aristotle criticizes both
positions. These criticisms assume a project
shared across all philosophy: accounting for
the phenomena that we experience in a way
that is recognizable to everyone and open to
evaluation by acknowledged standards. But
what does it mean to account for sensation
and sensible objects?
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
This question may be answered by con-
sidering sensible objects first as the atomists
define them, against Parmenides, and then
as Aristotle redefines them. While the atom-
ists define “what is” as body, Aristotle defines
“what is” as substance, which includes “things
that are by nature.” In Aristotle’s Physics,
body seems to disappear replaced by natu-
ral things; it reappears only in the De Caelo.
I shall first identify the basic principles of
the atomists’ account of “what is” and then
consider some possible criticisms of them.
I shall then turn to Aristotle’s account of nat-
ural things and, ultimately, body. Examining
these different accounts allows us to under-
stand the differences between them regard-
ing the definition of sensible objects (and our
experience of them) and finally to evaluate
what is at stake in these differences. Sensible
phenomena may seem clear within experi-
ence, but these two accounts show that they
are anything but straightforward. Aristotle
explains sensible phenomena through causes
that render these objects orderly and know-
able. Here we shall see the relation of his
project to phenomenology.
“What is”: Body and Things That
Are By Nature
Body
The rejection of sensation and sensible objects
as real by the Eleatics, led by Parmenides,
dominates much of ancient philosophy:
“[Parmenides’] method and his impact alike
have rightly been compared to those of
Descartes’ cogito.”3 Affirming this view, Kahn
calls him “[aside from Plato, Aristotle, and
Plotinus] perhaps the most important and
influential of all the Greek philosophers.”4
60
Parmenides distinguishes “what is,” which
we should seek, from “what is not,” which we
should abandon.5 “‘What is’ must necessar-
ily be one. .  .  .”6 Furthermore, if there is to
be motion, there must be a void; but there is
no void; therefore, there cannot be motion.7
Consequently, “what is” must be one, motion-
less, and changeless. Parmenides’ conclusion,
Aristotle remarks, rests entirely on logic, dis-
regards sense-perception or the world as we
experience it, and appears “next door to mad-
ness”: “for no lunatic seems to be so far out
of his senses as to suppose that fire and ice are
‘one.’”8 Against Parmenides, Aristotle praises
Leucippus and Democritus as developing the
“most systematic and consistent theory, how-
ever, and one that applied to all bodies .  .  .
and, in maintaining it, they took as their
starting-point what naturally comes first.”9
The atomists, Leucippus and Democritus,
assume “atoms” to account for both the gen-
eration and corruption and the multiplicity
of sensible things.10 So Leucippus claims
that “what is” is body, defined as an infinite
number of invisible indivisible atoms; moving
atoms come into contact with one another,
either hooking together to generate percepti-
ble things or pulling apart to destroy them.11
But atoms require a void “where” they can
move.12 Therefore, atoms and the void are
the two causes or “elements” of all things,
themselves resulting from aggregates of
atoms.13 The atoms differ in shape (sche-ma),
arrangement (taxis), and position (thesis)—
differences that remain unexplained.14 Placed
in the void, atoms move because they dif-
fer from one another, producing an infinite
series of collisions and entanglements that
increase and decrease “body,” that is, the
sensible bulks (τοῦς αἰσθητοὺς ὄγκους) that
we experience.15
For Aristotle however, even though the
goals of atomism are laudable, the account

fails to explain sensible phenomena because
it entails a contradiction. “What is” is body,
that is, atoms; “void” means “empty,” that is,
holds nothing, and since the void “receives”
or “holds” body, it cannot be body.16 Since
the atomists identify “what is” with body,
and void cannot be body, the void fails to
meet the definition of “what is”: void must be
what is not.17 Aristotle is clear: for Leucippus
and Democritus, the two elements of all
things are what is full, that is, body, which is,
and the void, that is, the empty, which is not;
as the elements of all things, both body and
void are and so “what is not” is no less than
“what is.”18
This contradiction is just the first and
most serious of several insurmountable
problems. Atomism seems inevitably tied to
skepticism in part because sensation var-
ies from one individual to another and is
uncheckable.19 Furthermore, no one experi-
ences the atoms as such because they are so
small;20 we experience only the outcome of
their multiple collisions and entanglements.21
So the first principle posited to explain
­sensible experience, atoms, is itself unknow-
able. Setting out with the goal of accounting
for sense-experience, the atomists posit first
principles that cannot be experienced and
so, a fortiori, cannot be confirmed within
sensation. Objects within experience also
become unknowable because there is no way
to determine what is true outside individual
perceptions.22 Sense-perception, such as “hot”
or “cold,” differs from one person to another
and is uncheckable; Democritus claims that
such sensations are “by convention” (nomo-i),
effectively acknowledging the atomists’ fail-
ure to explain sensation.23
The outcomes of the collisions and entan-
glements of the atoms are also unknowable
and so unpredictable. Due to differences
among them, atoms exhibit motions, which
61
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
produce complex sets of collisions.24 Aristotle
complains that “whence or how motion
belongs to [the atoms]” remains unex-
plained.25 Worse still, the regularity of natural
motion (for example, fire always goes up, the
stars always go around) cannot be explained
and might not even be recognized. In short,
the skepticism that envelops sense-objects
extends to their motions as well.
According to the atomists, everything that
happens depends upon contact among the
indivisible atoms. Consequently, innumer-
able worlds could arise and pass away as
atoms collide and entangle.26 This possibil-
ity gives rise to further unsolved problems.
Possible worlds would require void “where”
they are and so return us to the original con-
tradiction.27 Furthermore, because motions
exhibited by the atoms are unexplained, pos-
sible kosmoi resulting from such motion can-
not be explained either.
Lastly, perception too must be defined by
the atoms and, according to Aristotle, must
be traced back to the shapes of the atoms,
an implication that he finds absurd.28 So if
the atoms are infinite and something like fla-
vor is traced back to their shape, then there
should be an infinite number of flavors,
which is clearly false.29
Aristotle concludes that atomism fails to
provide an account of sensation, sensible
objects, and knowledge of them. An appar-
ently clear starting point, identifying “what
is” with body defined as atoms, leads to con-
clusions that destroy the initial goal, forcing
the atomists to support absurd implications.
As I shall argue, Aristotle opposes the ato-
mists in every regard. He denies that body is
primarily “what is” and that motion requires
a void; he rejects the view of body as a bulk
of entangled atoms. For Aristotle, “what is”
is primarily substance; natural things, com-
prising the domain of physics, are among
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
“things that are” because they are substance.
Body is not substance but a predicate of sub-
stance that expresses quantity: body is per-
fect magnitude bounded by length, breadth,
and depth. From this account of “what is,”
Aristotle claims to account for sensation as a
kind of knowledge, for sensible objects as
known through sensation, and for the foun-
dations of natural science. In short, he will
claim to produce the universal account of
sensation and its objects that the Eleatics
claim is impossible and that the atomists try,
but fail, to produce. In both its causal expla-
nations and its commitment to the coher-
ence of sensible phenomena, we can see why
Aristotle’s project is akin to phenomenology.
Things that are by Nature
Where for Democritus and Leucippus the
first principles of all things are invisible, for
Aristotle the starting point for physics is obvi-
ous to everyone: things that exhibit motion,
including plants, animals, their parts, and the
four elements (earth, air, fire, and water).30
Such things are “by nature” and nature is a
source or cause of being moved and being
at rest in that to which it belongs primarily
and in virtue of itself.31 Each thing that is by
nature has this principle of motion and rest in
itself and each of these things is a substance
(ousia) and a subject (hupokeimenon).32
But an ambiguity about nature remains:
some (whom Aristotle opposes) identify
a thing’s nature, or substance, with ­matter,
that is, the immediate constituent of the
thing taken without reference to its arrange-
ment or shape.33 Aristotle cites Antiphon, but
he could also be thinking of the atomists for
whom the atoms constitute things as primary
while shape, arrangement, and position are
secondary attributes. Others hold the oppo-
site view (which Aristotle supports): nature is
62
primarily the shape or form specified in the
definition; matter is a thing only secondarily,
because form is the thing as actual whereas
matter is the thing only potentially.34 And to
have a man or a bed, it is not sufficient to
have a potential man or bed; one must have
an actual man or bed.35
Aristotle’s distinction between a natural
thing as form (and so actual) and that thing
as matter (and so potential) lays the founda-
tion for his rejection of atomism. “Form”
(eidos), or “shape” (morphe-), is a thing as
specified by the definition and so intelligi-
ble. We define a thing by specifying what is
unique to it, a uniqueness that it shares with
all individuals of the same kind: John and
Jane, like all humans, are first and foremost
“rational” and we know “what each is” in
a primary sense when we know the form,
rationality. “What is” is not body at all: it
is primarily form.36 This account agrees with
modern sciences such as anthropology. The
anthropologist, looking at a bone, does not
say “this is body,” but “this bone is human.”
Consequently, what the natural thing is pri-
marily and what is primarily knowable to an
expert are identical: form.37
But to identify the form, the scientist must
examine an individual. The individual is “ἐκ
τούτων,” from these, that is, form and matter,
and it is “by nature.”38 Form, or shape—a
thing as actual—is separable from matter
(and hence the individual); for example, god
is form without matter and the definition
is independent of any given individual. But
matter, the thing as potential, is not separa-
ble from form. Matter such as flesh or bone
cannot be at all without presupposing form,
such as human or canine. But here is a prob-
lem. “Form” or “shape” only becomes appar-
ent in a shaped thing.39 The anthropologist,
for example, must look at an individual bone
in order to recognize the form and thereby

declare it “human” or “canine.” Even though
natural form is by definition separable, in
fact it is never found apart from individuals.
To explain sensible phenomena as primarily
form, Aristotle must solve this puzzle.
Natural things are composed of both
form (or shape) and matter.40 John and Jane
are individuals that are by nature; as such,
they are not just rational, but this rational
individual and that rational individual. For
Aristotle, matter and form taken together
explain both that a sensible individual is and
what it is and how it is knowable (or not).41
While form specified in the definition makes
a thing unique, for example, John and Jane
are rational rather than canine, matter is the
thing as potential, for example, as flesh or
bone, and makes a thing an individual.42 So
if we compare two individuals of the same
“kind,” John and Jane, they share a common
definition, human, but differ as individuals,
for example, these hands and those hands.
That is, their form is the same, but their mat-
ter differs. If we compare individuals of dif-
ferent kinds, either John or Jane and Fido,
then they not only differ as individuals but
their definitions also differ; therefore, they
differ from one another in a more profound
way than do two individuals of the same
kind. This difference appears clearly if we
consider matter constituting individuals as
potential.
Because Aristotle gives “flesh” and “bone”
as examples of matter, matter is often identi-
fied with body. But it is not body; matter is the
individual as “potential,” that is, what can be
and be known only in relation to form. “Flesh”
or “bone” cannot be at all except by being
of a certain kind, human or canine. Because
John and Jane differ as individuals, each has
matter that as potential produces these two
hands and those two hands. But for every
individual, the matter is only in relation to
63
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
form and as such is the same. John and Jane
are both bipedal, both have opposed thumbs,
etc. The same point follows for knowledge.
The anthropologist looking at any part of
either individual, for example, an eyelash,
a drop of blood, sees the matter in relation
to form and makes the same declaration for
each: “this one is human.” Conversely, the
matter of either John or Jane on the one hand
and Fido on the other differs as individual
and in the form to which it bears a relation.
The hair, for example, is not only of differ-
ent individuals, but of different kinds; con-
sequently, in this case, the matter differs in
every respect because the individuals “differ
in form.”
Aristotle uses vivid metaphors to express the
relation of matter to form. Matter “is aimed
at” form, the matter of the heaven is called
“aether” because the heavens “run always”
after perfect form, namely god.43 Natural
form, which is separable from things, occurs
always with matter because of matter’s active
horme-, “tendency,” toward form.44 Insofar
as they are potential, the elements, earth, air,
fire, and water, from which all natural things
are composed, possess rhope-, inclination,
toward their respective natural place. That is,
matter’s very character as potential is to be
always ready, poised, to attach itself to form
whenever possible. Natural form is always
found together with matter—not because it
is not separable or depends in some way on
matter, but because form always provides
matter with an opportunity to be and matter
is always opportunistic. And when one sees a
“thing that is by nature,” that is, the individ-
ual thing that exhibits motion and serves as
the first starting point of physics, one sees the
form, that is, shape, that is expressed clearly
not “in” but “by” the matter.45
When the atomists make body, atoms,
primary, shape, arrangement, and position
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
become secondary attributes; consequently,
body is independent of them. For Aristotle,
form, or shape, is “what” a natural thing is
primarily. The further point that there is no
such thing as flesh or bone that is not “of a
form” eliminates body taken independently
of form and eliminates it as “what is” pri-
marily. Matter is not “body”; it is a thing,
itself primarily form but including matter,
as potential and so individual. Body disap-
pears from Aristotle’s account of natural
things because it has been replaced with the
individual, that is, the natural thing, consti-
tuted by form and matter. For physics, the
individual, primarily form but also includ-
ing matter, is the object of perception and
­knowledge: the “thing that is by nature.”
Each individual has only one form and
because matter can be only in relation to
form, all matter is determined by it.46 In
modern terms, we say “every cell” reveals
“human” or “equine,” etc. Consequently,
myriad individual parts relate to just one
form and via this relation both are and are
knowable. Indeed, for Aristotle’s physics—or
science generally—the form is identified by
the definition, but the individual is what is
known by scientists. And the scientist knows
the individual, for example, says “this bone
is human,” when recognizing the form
expressed by the matter.
Aristotle asks whether in order to know
natural things, we must know both form
and matter, or only one, or only the other?47
The ancients seemed to think one needed
to know only the matter.48 But this cannot
be right because matter cannot be apart, it
is secondary and the thing only potentially;
form is separable, specified by the definition
and required to have an actual thing—but
for natural things, form is never found apart
from matter. Because natural things always
include both form and matter, the physicist
64
must both know form and include a refer-
ence to matter within the account.49 Matter,
not being separable, cannot be known apart
from form and so there is no science of it as
such. Consequently, the physicist resembles
the doctor who must know the sinew or the
smith who must know the bronze.50
Here we begin to see the distance between
Aristotle and the atomists. First, where the
atomists offers us body as “sensible bulk”
formed by entangled atoms, Aristotle defines
a natural thing as form specified by the
definition and individuated by matter. In
Aristotle’s Physics, body seems to disap-
pear. When we see flesh or bones, we see not
body, but an individual as potential. Form,
by constituting a thing as actual, makes
the individual knowable for the scientist,
the physicist, or the anthropologist. Where the
atomists begin with body and end up with
skepticism—Democritus attributes sensa-
tion to convention—Aristotle starts out with
things exhibiting motion and ends up identi-
fying sensible phenomena with a principle of
intelligibility, form.
The account of the Physics finds confirma-
tion in Metaphysics I.1:
All men by nature desire to know. An
indication of this is the delight we take
in our senses; for even apart from their
usefulness they are loved for themselves;
and above all others the sense of sight.
For not only with a view to action, but
even when we are not going to do any-
thing, we prefer sight to almost every-
thing else. The reason is that this, most
of all the senses, makes us know and
brings to light many differences between
things.51
In the psychology, memory resides in the
faculty of sensation because it retains our
contacts with sensible things.52 Sensation

produces memory in some animals and “by
nature” animals having memory are more
apt to learn because remembering is linked
to being teachable.53 Sensation is not, for
Aristotle, private in regard to things that
are by nature: it presents the natural object,
constituted primarily by form but including
matter, as immediately available to the one
who is by nature teachable because the con-
tent of sensation can be retained in memory.
Sensation is thus the lowest kind of knowl-
edge.54 And the objects of this knowledge are
sensible phenomena constituted as actual by
form and as potential by matter.
Further points of difference between
Aristotle and the atomists are striking. Where
the atomists make motion random and local
situations of tangling or disentangling atoms
unknowable, Aristotle explains motion in the
same terms that account for natural things,
the actual and the potential. Motion is the
actualization of the potential as such by what
is actual and so may be thought of as some-
thing indeterminate becoming determinate.55
Something made, such as a wooden bed,
requires a maker to act on it from the outside
so that the wood, which could become any
number of things, becomes an actual bed.56
Nature is by definition an intrinsic principle
of being moved and being at rest: a puppy,
that is, a potential dog, is moved intrinsically
to become a dog (assuming nothing inter-
venes or hinders development) and when
there is an actual dog, the individual “rests”
there.57 A natural thing has only one form
and so there is only one thing a puppy can by
nature become: a dog. When a natural thing
is moved, form acts as its final cause and pro-
duces a knowable, predictable outcome.58
At Physics III.1, Aristotle could hardly
be more explicit: if we are to understand
what nature is, then we must also under-
stand motion. And motion in its turn raises
65
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
further topics, namely the continuous and
the infinite, place, void, and time. These top-
ics, which are examined in Physics III and
IV, are “common and universal” (κοινὰ καὶ
καθόλου) and so must be considered first,
while the examination of “proper things”
(idio-n) comes later.59 Aristotle leaves the
notion of “proper things” unexplained in this
context but I shall return to it below.
Against the atomists, Aristotle rejects the
void in favor of “place” (topos) as “where”
motion occurs.60 A recent review of work
on Aristotle’s account of place notes: “It
is wondrous that in the last twenty years
at least five books have been substantially
devoted to the five Bekker pages that con-
stitute Aristotle’s account of place.”61 What
stands out in his account is the order and
regularity of natural things: all place (keep-
ing in mind that Aristotle’s cosmos is geocen-
tric and bounded by the sphere of the stars)
admits of up (toward the heavens) and down
(towards the center of the earth) while each
of the natural bodies (earth, air, fire, and
water) is moved toward its natural place,
where it rests.62 Place can be understood as
actual, that is, actually up and actually down,
while the “natural bodies,” or elements, are
potentially up and down. Since nature is an
intrinsic source of being moved and being
at rest, the potency of the elements is aimed
at actual place and so Aristotle believes that
his account explains why earth always goes
down and fire always up, while water and air
are relatively heavy and light between them.
All natural things are composed of these ele-
ments and so all natural things are embraced
by this regularity. All artistic things are made
from natural things and as such they too
exhibit this regularity.
On all these counts, Aristotle concludes,
the void is a failure. It fails to account for
locomotion because in a void there is no
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
intrinsic “up” or “down” and so anything
can move anywhere.63 Void fails to account
for why motions start or stop and it fails
to explain the regularity of motion.64 As a
proposed principle—or explanation—for
motion, the void is truly void.65
Aristotle replaces both principles proposed
by the atomists: things that are by nature
replace atoms and the void is rejected for a
cosmos defined by place as up, down, left,
right, front, and back. In the Physics, not only
are atoms gone, but body is gone. Aristotle
calls the elements “body” and refers to body
in his account of the infinite.66 But he gives
no account of body as such.67 For Aristotle,
“what is” is primarily substance; things that
are by nature are substance and they are con-
stituted first and foremost by form but also
by matter. Not body, but natural things are
objects of knowledge for the physicist.
Against the account of the Physics, the
opening line of De Caelo I.1 comes as a
surprise: the science of physics concerns
“bodies and magnitudes and their affections
and movements and further their princi-
ples as many as may belong to this sort of
substance.”68 Things that are by nature along
with form and matter disappear. Body, absent
in the Physics, is examined in the De Caelo.
At Physics II.1, Aristotle defines nature and
things that are by nature; at De Caelo I.1,
he defines body: a continuum that is in every
way divisible.69 A magnitude (megethos), if
divisible one way, is a line, if two ways, a sur-
face, and if three, a body; beyond these three,
there is no further magnitude; therefore,
these three are all there are and to be divis-
ible in these three ways is to be divisible in
every way.70 Having defined body, Aristotle
proceeds to an examination of the cosmos
and the elements as body. Where the Physics
gives us “things that are by nature,” the De
Caelo provides an analysis of “body.”
66
But how is body related to natural things,
that is, substance constituted by form and
matter, what justifies its appearance in
the De Caelo, and how are we to understand
the larger coherence of Aristotle’s physics?
These questions require a turn to Aristotle’s
logic. In Physics II, natural things are sub-
stance and a subject; as a subject, a substance
takes predicates.71 Predicates, or “categories,”
are of different sorts, for example, quality or
quantity. For physics, quantity is a crucial
category.72 Quantity is divided into (1) what
is discrete (dio-rismenon), for example, rice or
atoms, and so indivisible and numerable, and
(2) what is continuous (suneches), for exam-
ple, lines, planes, or body, and so potentially
infinitely divisible and measurable.73 Here
then, for Aristotle, is body: continuous quan-
tity that is a predicate of substance.
But defining body as a predicate of sub-
stance fails to answer the question. How
can body, which is a “predicate,” effectively
replace natural things as the “subject” of
physics? In order to answer this question,
we require what in the logic Aristotle calls
“counter-predication” (antikate-goreo-): the
conditions under which a predicate becomes
a subject. That is, “counter-predication”
forms a subject from a predicate. But spe-
cific conditions apply. “Whenever a predi-
cate attaches to every individual of a given
kind and to no individual not of that kind,
it can be counter-predicated,” that is, made
into a subject.74 Aristotle’s example is clear:
all humans are grammatical and no individ-
ual that is not human is grammatical.75 So
“grammatical” is a predicate of humans that
can (perhaps should) be made into a subject,
that is counter-predicated and examined as a
subject in order to understand “human.”76
Predicates meeting the conditions of
counter-predication and so able to become
a subject are called “proper” (idion) and

express “properties” (ta idia).77 We saw
what is proper above, where Aristotle dis-
tinguishes between what is common and
universal, that is, motion, the infinite, place,
void, and time, and what is proper, which
remains unexplained.78 Body meets the con-
ditions for being proper to natural things: as
a predicate, it attaches to every individual
that is by nature (or is made from natural
things, for example, works of art) and does
not attach to what is not “by nature,” for
example, god.79 Consequently, the Physics
gives us an account of what is common and
universal, which should come first, while the
De Caelo gives us an examination of what is
proper, which should come later. A property
must belong to a subject and we see this rela-
tion when the property is a predicate.80 But
when the property belongs to every and only
individuals of a kind, then, being universal,
it needs to be examined in its own right.81
When the property is counter-predicated and
so becomes a subject, the subject to which
it belongs continues to be assumed but dis-
appears from view. The account of body in
the De Caelo follows the analysis of common
and universal topics in the Physics because
it at once presupposes things that are by
nature and completes the analysis of them.
In short, together these works constitute the
science of physics.82
Body, as Aristotle argues in the De Caelo,
is continuous magnitude bounded by length,
breadth, and depth.83 As such it is complete
and can be known, insofar as it can be meas-
ured, that is, as continuous quantity. Again,
Aristotle’s opposition to the atomists is
telling: the atomists are wrong not only in
making body “what is” but in their very con-
ception of body as atoms. According to the
atomists, atoms are a plurality, indivisible,
discrete, and so numerable (not measurable);
body that we experience is “sensible bulk”
67
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
and as such unknowable (the atomists do not
mention length, breadth, or depth). Because
more atoms could always “hook on,” sensi-
ble bulk is indefinitely large in the sense of
an ever increasing possible size (or number
of atoms). For Aristotle, body is continuous,
divisible, and measurable; it is by definition
bounded—hence he argues that the cosmos
must be bounded—and, as magnitude, body
is completed by these boundaries and is infi-
nite only in the sense of potentially infinitely
divisible.
From Aristotle’s perspective, the atom-
ists have been routed.84 Bostock argues per-
suasively that they constitute a, if not the,
major target of his physics.85 Their view
of “what is,” body, is wrong; their view of
body as a plurality, that is, atoms, is wrong;
their notion of “sensible bulk” produced
by atoms hooking together is unknowable;
their account of experience, for example,
body and perception, as dependent upon
contact among individuals is wrong. Their
skepticism marks the complete failure of
their attempt to account for sensible objects
or sensation. If we turn from the triumph
over atomism to the reach of Aristotle phys-
ics, we can see how his view may be thought
of as akin to phenomenology.
Conclusion
For Aristotle, natural things are primarily
form but also include matter—sensible indi-
viduals are “from these.” Because form is the
object of the definition, sensible phenomena
are directly and immediately knowable by
natural science. Since matter, which consti-
tutes the sensible individual as potential, can
be only in relation to form, not only is the
sensible individual, for example, a human or
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
a dog, knowable as form, but all its parts are
also partly knowable in terms of this form,
for example, this bone is human, that blood
is canine. Since artistic things are made from
natural things, they too are to this extent
knowable. Knowledge embraces the list
of natural things identified at Physics II.1:
plants, animals, their parts, and the four ele-
ments, earth, air, fire, and water, and every-
thing made from them.86
Because form constitutes a thing as unique
and matter is knowable insofar as it enters
into a relation to form, “to know” prima-
rily means “to grasp what is unique,” that is,
specific, about a thing. Body is not unique. It
is a universal predicate that expresses “how
much” for all things that are by nature. Insofar
as it is common to all natural things, body
does not express anything unique about any
individual and therefore cannot bear a direct
relation to form. For example, oak, with
matter of leaves and branches, and human,
with matter of flesh, blood, and bones, both
have body, that is continuous magnitude
that can be measured as length, breadth, and
depth without reference to form. And the
same is true of all things, individuals, that
are by nature. Consequently, body is and is
known in a way secondary to individuals
and so secondary not only to form but also
to matter. As a kind of quantity, magnitude,
or body, can be only by presupposing a sub-
ject—a thing that is by nature—and becomes
a subject only through counter-predication:
as a subject, it can be examined as a prop-
erty, silently presupposing the individual to
which it belongs. Nonetheless because body
is a universal property of all natural things
(and of nothing else) it must be examined as
part of physics if the science of nature is to
be complete.
Aristotle can claim that on his view the
absurdities of atomism disappear while body
68
appears as we immediately recognize it in
sensible phenomena. We do not experi-
ence body as a “sensible bulk” composed
of atoms; we experience body as magni-
tude, that is, continuous, measurable, and
potentially infinitely divisible. Furthermore,
Aristotle’s definition of body, that is, magni-
tude bounded by length, breadth, and depth,
makes it knowable as a feature of all sensible
phenomena. We measure the length, breadth,
and depth of sensible individuals (we do not
count their atoms). We experience an arm
or a branch, for example, not as a collec-
tion of parts cohering through contact, but
as a whole that is “by nature.” Body belongs
within the domain of physics because as con-
tinuous it is a property that is knowable.
In conclusion we may see why this
account of nature and ultimately body may
be thought of as akin to phenomenology.
In a Kantian sense, the empirical content
of experience must be based on inductive
generalizations and as a posteriori empirical
content can never be necessary. By this stand-
ard, Aristotle’s account of natural things and
ultimately body cannot be empirical.87 When
the [trained and competent] anthropologist
says “this bone is human,” this statement
describes an observable phenomenon as
a matter of fact. Indeed, on Aristotle’s account,
form (and matter) are causes that at once
constitute and render knowable sensible
phenomena that we experience as matters
of fact.88
The importance of form as a cause con-
stituting natural phenomena takes us to a
further point. Form, by constituting natural
things as unique, also makes such things
knowable. The philosophical term for a
thing as knowable is “essence.”89 In the his-
tory of ancient philosophy, Aristotle is the
first thinker to identify the principle that
constitutes a sensible thing’s being in the

primary sense with the principle that makes
a thing knowable in the primary sense. And
so by knowing a thing as form, we know
its essence, that is, the thing according to
its definition. For example, when we know
that this individual is rational, we know
what it is, that it must have flesh, blood,
and bones, and that it cannot possibly have
scales, feathers, hooves, branches, leaves,
or an infinite number of other attributes.
There is clearly much more that can be
said on the problem of knowing form and
knowing essence, but any examination of
this problem starts from the form, along
with a reference to matter, as the target of
the definition.90 Natural phenomena are
not only essences for Aristotle—they also
include properties and accidents;91 but in a
primary sense they are essences.92 Empirical
accounts, insofar as they must be based on
inductive generalization, in principle can-
not arrive at essences. Again insofar as
Aristotle’s account does arrive at essences,
it cannot be empirical.93
Throughout the corpus, Aristotle empha-
sizes that his account accords with experience
as everyone can recognize it.94 His account
of natural science yields a descriptive science
of observable phenomena. Anyone who pos-
sesses or turns to expert opinion, whether
distinguishing a cat from a dog or visiting
a doctor, can recognize the world of natu-
ral phenomena as it appears in Aristotle’s
account.
No consideration of this account would
be complete without mention of an impor-
tant fact: by the standards of modern sci-
ence it is wrong about everything. Sensible
things are not “by nature,” there is not one
determinative form for each natural kind,
the earth is not in the center of the cosmos,
directions, for example, up and down, are
not determined throughout the cosmos by
69
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
place, body is not perfect, bounded, continu-
ous magnitude. But such observations tell us
something not only about Aristotle but also
about the standards of modern science. The
success of current science emerges not from
the world as we experience it—we might
say “Aristotle’s world”—but from technical
laboratories and constructed experiments, in
short a highly specialized world, producing
results that often bear little, if any, relation
to the world as we experience it. Indeed, the
apparent loss of the world as we experience it
might give us more pause for thought about
the standards of modern science than is gen-
erally recognized.
Aristotle’s account of sensible phenomena
spoke to his contemporaries to the extent
that it answers to their common experience
of these phenomena. And it continues to speak
to modern readers for exactly the same rea-
son: Aristotle offers an explanatory account
of observable phenomena within the bounds
of experience. Herein lies the ultimate mark of
kinship between his account and the tradi-
tion of phenomenology originating in Kant
and founded by Husserl.
Helen S. Lang
Notes
1
Bostock, 2006, 34.
2
Indeed a recent essay on the De Caelo charac-
terizes his arguments as “physical”; Pellegrin,
2009, 163, passim.
3
Kirk et al., 2002, 241 (henceforth referred to
as KRS). At Parmenides 127a, Plato describes a
meeting between Parmenides at about age 65
and Socrates, who was still “very young.” KRS
(239–40) argue from this and other evidence
that Parmenides was born about 515 bce.
All references to Plato are to John Burnet (ed.),
Platonis Opera, Oxford: Oxford Classical Texts,
1900–7, henceforth referred to as OCT.
4
Kahn, 2009, 143.
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
 5
I proceed here to various problems of “what
is”; but it should be noted that “what is not” is
also problematic. For an interesting discussion
of the problems involved in “what is not,” see
Sanders, 2002, 87–104.
 6
Aristotle, De Generatione et Corruptione I.8,
325a2. All references to Aristotle are to the
OCT except as noted.
 7
Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I.8, 325a5. Sedley,
1982, 176, suggests that the atomists’ account
of the void is formulated “at least partly as a
response to [the Eleatic] challenge.” He also
considers the Parmenidean background to
atomism, see 176–9. For a brief but intriguing
reflection on “Parmenides and physics,” see
Kahn, 2009, 207–17.
 8
Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I.8, 325a13–24.
 9
Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I.8, 324b36–325a3.
Again, KRS conclude that “Atomism is in
many ways the crown of Greek philosophical
achievement before Plato,” 433.
10
Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I.8, 325a24–7. For
a classic study of this account as specifically
directed against the view of Parmenides and
his followers, see Furley, 1967, 79–103.
11
Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I.8, 325a28–35; see
Physics I.3, 187a1–3. “Atom” means “uncut”
or “not compound”; in physics it quickly
comes to mean “what cannot be cut” or
“indivisible.”
12
See Aristotle, Phys. IV.1, 208a27–32 and 6,
213a15–19. Sedley, 1982, 176, points out that
the notion of a void surely had antecedents in
sixth-century Pythagoreanism.
13
KRS, 555. Aristotle, Metaphysics I.4,
985b4–20. Kahn, 1960, suggests that as princi-
ples atoms and the void represent a struc-
tural c­ onception of nature that parallels the
­geometrical structure of the elements proposed
by Plato in the Timaeus; see Anaximander and
the Origins of Greek Cosmology, 129.
14
KRS, 555; see 584.
15
KRS, 565; 578–80; 583.
16
Aristotle, Phys. IV, 213a27–213b2.
17
Again, Sedley, 1982, is very helpful on this
point; see 180–1.
18
Aristotle, Met. I.4, 985b4–6. There is a
problem in “lumping together” Leucippus and
Democritus but it lies beyond the boundaries
of this paper. For a persuasive argument that
70
Theophrastus corrects Aristotle on this point,
see Schofield, 2002, 253–63.
19
KRS, 548; see Aristotle, Met. IV.5, 1009b7–15.
The same problem is raised regularly by Plato;
for one example, see Theaetetus 152b1–d1.
20
KRS, 556.
21
KRS, 548–50.
22
KRS, 553–4. See Aristotle, Met. IV.5,
1009b1–16.
23
KRS, 549.
24
KRS, 578–9.
25
Aristotle Met. I.4, 985b16–20; see also De
Caelo III.2, 300b8.
26
KRS, 563–5.
27
We shall see Aristotle’s rejection of the void
below.
28
Aristotle, De Sensu 4, 442a29; b17–23; see
KRS, 587.
29
For a fuller treatment of this problem, see
Ganson, 1999, 201–15.
30
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 192b9–10. see I.2,
185a13–20. In some texts, although not this
one, Aristotle uses the phrase “the so-called
elements” (τὰ καλούμενα στοιχεῖα); a recent
article examines this phrase to reach the
conclusion that Aristotle is reporting a view
of the elements, which may or may not be his
own. See Crowley, 2008, 223–42. The many
references to the elements independently of
this phrase and the role they play in Aristotle’s
physics signals that they must indeed be part of
his theory of the cosmos.
31
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 192b21–2. The force of this
definition has been debated extensively in the
literature. For a review of the central problems,
see Lang, 1998, 34–65; many treatments of this
problem refer to later arguments in Physics II
and bring them to bear on these lines (see, for
example, Kelsey, 2003, 59–72).
I am suggesting here that the argument presents
an integrity in its logic and progression that
makes such a procedure illegitimate.
32
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 192b33–4.
33
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 193a9–12.
34
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 193a30–b8.
35
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 193a33–b2.
36
On the identification of nature with form and
shape, together with a number of issues raised
by such an identification, see Thayer, 1975,
725–44.

37
Form is clearly identified with actuality. A full
discussion of the priority of actuality and its
relation to potency is found in Metaphysics IX;
on this text and the problems surrounding
Aristotle’s claim here, see Lang, 1994,
335–4; Katz and Polansky, 2006,
233–42; Makin, 2003, 209–38.
38
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 193b5–6.
39
I do not take up further problems here, but
there are some. For example, there is being
that is not a substance, for instance, accidents
such as qualities. They are dependent on
substance and in the case of things that are by
nature, natural substance, that is, the combina-
tion of form and matter. For a clear sense of
these issues, see Corkum, 2008, 65–92.
40
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 194a12.
41
The relation of matter and form that underlies
the claim that together they comprise the indi-
vidual raises a number of related ontological
issues. For a review of these and the secondary
literature concerning them (although no men-
tion is made of Physics II), see Loux, 2005,
81–123.
42
Aristotle uses the examples of flesh and bone
at Phys. II.1, 193a36.
43
Aristotle, Phys. I.9, 192a20–5; DC I.3,
270b20–4. See Met. XII.6, 1072a5–18; 8,
1074a31–1074b13.
44
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 194b13. See also Phys. II.1,
192b18; Met. V.23, 1033a18–23.
45
Matter and form working in this way can be
seen as Aristotle’s solution to the problem
posed by Parmenides’ rejection of the possibil-
ity of motion. As such, it is an alternative to
atomism. See, for example, Hinton, 2005,
365–82.
46
The mule is an apparent exception to the
“rule” that natural things have only one form
and Aristotle is at pains to explain it (away).
47
Aristotle, Phys. II.2, 194a12–18.
48
Aristotle, Phys. II.2, 194a19–20: Empedocles
and Democritus touched on form and essence
only very slightly.
49
This problem also appears in Metaphysics IX.
For a fuller treatment of it there, see Beere,
2006, 303–29.
50
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 194b12. Aristotle also
takes up this problem in Metaphysics VII.5.
For a consideration of the problems involved
in his claim to include both matter and form in
71
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
the definition of things that are by nature, see
Lewis, 2005, 161–99.
51
Aristotle, Met. I.1, 980a23–7. The point lies
beyond the scope of this paper, but I want
to note that sensation is the lowest form of
knowledge; not all knowledge is identical with
sensation.
52
Aristotle, De Mem. et Rem. 1, 451a15–17
(I use the new edition, Bloch, 2007 that recon-
siders the manuscript tradition). For an older
but still widely cited article on the problems
associated with Aristotle’s claims here, see
Lang, 1980, 379–93.
53
Aristotle, Met. I.1, 980a25–980b25.
54
“Sensation” as I use it here is connected to a
set of interesting problems. On these problems,
including how they arise out of Metaphysics
I.1, see LaBarge, 2006, 23–44.
55
Aristotle, Phys. III.1, 201a11–14. For the
problems traditionally associated with this
definition, see Anagnostopoulos, 2010, 33–79.
56
Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 192b16–19.
57
Again, Aristotle, Phys. II.1, 192b12–13; 21–3;
See Phys. III.1, 201a27–8; on hindrance, see
Phys. VIII.4, 255b17–31.
58
Aristotle, Phys. II.7, 198a25–6.
59
Aristotle, Phys. III.1, 200b21–5.
60
Aristotle, Phys. IV.1, 208a27–32. A full analy-
sis of this problem lies beyond the bounds of
this paper. Aristotle says that proponents of the
void think of it as “a sort of place or vessel”
(213a16). Sedley, 1982, argues that void for
atomism is a “negative occupant of space”
(180).
61
Mendell, 2005, 325–66, gives an excellent
review of the modern problems and literature
associated with Aristotle’s account of place.
For a consideration of early treatments of the
problems associated with Aristotle’s account of
place, see McGinnis, 2005, 140–61.
62
Aristotle, Phys. IV.4, 211a2–5; see also DC I.4,
271a26–7.
63
Aristotle, Phys. IV.8, 215a6–13.
64
Aristotle, Phys. IV.8, 215a19–21.
65
Aristotle, Phys. IV.8, 216a26–7.
66
See Aristotle, Phys. III.4, 203b25–30.
67
See, for example, Aristotle, Phys. III.5, 204a8:
“Now it is impossible that the infinite should
be a thing that is in itself infinite, separable
from sensible objects (to-n aisthe-to-n).”
68
Aristotle, DC I.1, 268a1–3.
ARISTOTLE ON SENSIBLE OBJECTS
69
Aristotle, DC I.1, 268a7.
70
Aristotle, DC I.1, 268a7–10.
71
For example, see Aristotle, Categories 2,
1a16–1b9.
72
The usual English terms associated with
Aristotle’s categories, for example, “quantity”
are Latin in origin. We may note that Aristotle
regularly uses the expression “the how much”
(to poson). For some examples see Cat. 6,
passim.
73
Aristotle, Cat. 6, 4b20–5a14.
74
For this point and a fuller account of the
conditions under which counterpredication
legitimately occurs, see Aristotle, Topics V.3,
132a4–9; 4, 33a5–10; 5, 135a15–19.
75
Aristotle, Topics I.5, 102a20.
76
For problems that go beyond the bounds of
this paper with the notion of “counterpredica-
tion,” see Barnes, 1994, 177–9.
77
Although it is older, the best work on this topic
remains Barnes, 1970, 136–55.
78
See above, n. 59.
79
At Physics II.7, Aristotle explicitly excludes
god from the science of physics because god is
unmoved.
80
For a fuller account of this issue, see Aristotle,
APo I.10, 76a37–76b11.
81
Aristotle remarks that a property may be
more familiar to us than the subject to which
it attaches, implying that when it becomes a
subject it makes the more familiar more know-
able. See Aristotle, APr I.19, 82a15–20; 22,
83a36–83b12.
82
The larger issues of these relations clearly
lie beyond this paper. For a fuller discussion
of them, see Bäck, 2000, 152ff.: “Aristotle’s
science consists in ways to uncover the true
nature of substances, and he cashes out this
project by looking for their propria [APo
75a18–31; 76a4–7]. But then Aristotle insists
that a thing’s nature, which includes its neces-
sarily concomitant attributes, is not accidental
to it [Phys. 192b20–3]. For him the accidental
has no place in science. . . .”
83
For a quite different treatment of issues
concerning body in Aristotle, see Studtmann,
2002, 211–34.
84
For a fuller account of the different texts
reflecting Aristotle’s rejection of atomism, see
Hasper, 2006, 121–55.
85
Bostock, 2006, for example, 185.
72
86
The problem, which lies beyond the bounds
of this paper, is sometimes raised of how
Aristotle’s natural world relates to his account
of god. For a fairly recent example, see
Matthen, 2001, 171–99 and Bodnár, 1997,
81–117.
87
Bostock, 2006, 3, finds it “outrageous for him
[Aristotle] to claim, in advance of any empiri-
cal enquiry . . .” as if only an empirical enquiry
could solve certain kinds of problems.
88
It should, of course, be noted that the positions
of seventeenth-century physicists, including
Galileo and Newton, are not clearly empirical.
The entire situation is very complex. For an
interesting comparison of Aristotle with later
science, see Lennox, 2008, 149–86.
89
On what is sometimes referred to as
“Aristotelian Essentialism” and postmodern
critiques of it, see Curran, 2000, 327–63.
90
See, for example, Tierney, 2001, 149–70.
91
Because of space constraints here, I have omit-
ted discussion of accidents, an interesting and
important topic, which points out that Kant in
the Critique of Pure Reason gets his definition
of accident from Aristotle, see Ebert, 1998,
133–59.
92
Again, Thayer is very clear about the way in
which the identification of natural things with
form leads to a kind of “essentialism,” 1975,
725–44.
93
One consequence of this issue is that knowl-
edge in Aristotle does not readily fall into mod-
ern categories. On this problem, see Lesher,
2001, 45–55.
94
See Aristotle, Met. XII.8, 1074b1–13.
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 4
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA
Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ: PHYSICS IV.11, 14
[The text that follows constitutes the
last two sections of the long essay “Sur la
formule aristotélicienne Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
(Physique IV. 11, 14),” first appeared in R.
Brague, Du temps chez Platon et Aristote,
Paris: PUF, 1982, 97–144. In its original
form, the essay is subdivided into five sec-
tions and addresses the formula mentioned
in the title (abbreviated as OPO) both in its
grammatical difficulty and in its philosophi-
cal opacity. The overall orientation is toward
realigning syntactic analysis and thoughtful
interpretation. Indeed, the formula appears
at crucial junctures in the discussion of time,
and thinking through its implications proves
to be of the utmost relevance. Section 1
delves into the syntactic construction of
the formula, which appears seven times in
Physics IV (six times in chapter 11 and once in
chapter 14), twice in Parts of Animals II,
and once in the treatise On Generation and
Corruption. Through a painstaking exami-
nation of these passages, Brague calls into
question those constructions and editorial
stratagems that have allowed the unprob-
lematic interpretation of the formula OPO
as hupokeimenon, “underlying subject.”
Far from being isolated and nominalized,
75
the formula OPO introduces a clause in
which the pronoun (ho) functions not as
the subject, but rather as the predicate of
the participial verb (on). Thus, for instance,
in Physics 219a19ff.: “the prior-posterior
is, in movement, that by being which, at a
certain time, [movement] is movement.” As
Brague points out in Sections 2 and 3, where
he considers the antecedents of this linguis-
tic behavior in Plato and Aristotle himself,
the formula OPO introduces sentences of
the type: “that by being which [OPO] x is
such and such, that is, x is y,” or “that by
being which [OPO] S is P.” These, in turn,
answer questions of the type: “by being
what is x such and such?” or “by being what
is S P?” Thus, far from coinciding with the
subject, the formula says what the subject
must be in order to be what it is—it says,
in other words, the very constitution of the
subject as such, what/how the subject must
be in order to be the subject of that predi-
cation. The phrase, thus, exposes that in
virtue of which something is itself. At stake
is the “act” of “subjectivization” (subjec-
tivisation) of the subject—subjectivity (sub-
jectivité) understood not psychologically,
but as the becoming subject of the subject.
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
In this way the subject (that which is said
to lie under) emerges as neither static nor
inert. It may in fact be seized in light of
temporality and enactment, and therefore
as qualitatively evanescent. In light of this
“expanded” understanding of the subject,
Brague proceeds to discuss the relation
between soul and time, the legein of the soul,
and the logic thereof. This discussion takes
place in Sections 4 (“Saying Time”) and 5
(“Arithmos”), which are presented here for
the first time in English translation—Ed.]
Saying Time
The sphere of logos, of “saying,” of predi-
cation, is here the natural locus for reflect-
ing on time and the now. It is within such a
reflection that the phenomenon of the now
must be thought in connection with the for-
mula “that by being which the now is the
now” (OPO). This formula, indeed, allows
for the expression of the substrate-function
played by the now, even as the substrate is
constituted by a predication, beyond which it
has no consistency.
The Structure of the Enunciation
This paradoxical status holds for the very
nature of the enunciation of time and its par-
ticular syntactical structure. It may be impor-
tant here to bear in mind the phenomenon
for which Aristotle is attempting to find a
theory. We should therefore allow ourselves
to be detached from what is explicit in the
Aristotelian text in order to attempt to iden-
tify the thing itself, which other thinkers have
already attempted to consider.1 Such an oper-
ation is risky, for nothing allows us to say that
Aristotle had in view the phenomenon of the
76
enunciation of time. We might ­rigorously rely
on the curious formula with which Aristotle
ends the phrase just cited: τότε καὶ τοῦτό
φαμεν εἶναι χρόνον (219a28f.). The expres-
sion might be translated: “we say then that
this is time.” This borders on a zeugma, in
which the verb is simultaneously used as an
existential (then there is time) and as a copula
(this is time). But the interest is to show that
the now, and the time defined by it, as lapses
of time (219a29f.), do not exist outside of the
act of saying the now,2 and, for example, say-
ing, “Now is the time to go,” etc.3 The “then”
that I say is the very “that” that is the now.
Take the phrase “it is now noon.” In Greek,
one would tend instead to say, “now is noon.”4
This is in any case what we would suppose,
on the model of “then was noon.” This phrase
seems to us, at first glance, to be composed of
a subject (“now”) and a predicate (“noon”)
linked by a copula (“is”). The Greeks would
doubtlessly have analyzed it according to a
binary rather than ternary schema, and would
speak of “now” as an onoma and of “is noon”
as a rhe-ma. However that may be, if we look
more closely at the phrase, we see that such a
phrase has, properly speaking, no subject (or
onoma), and that the term “now” occupies the
place of the subject owing to a certain gram-
mar, and not at all because of its meaning. It
is for this reason that both elements of the
phrase can occupy either place and are inter-
changeable: one could very well say, “now is
noon” as “noon is now.” There is no veritable
subject; aside from the verb “to be,” it is as
if such sentences contained only predicates.
Which is why they take, entirely naturally, the
so-called impersonal form, “it is noon.”
We might conclude from this absence of a
subject, as a first consequence, that discourse
about time, if it is made of propositions that
do not involve a subject, should have certain
characteristic properties. Such propositions
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
define something as sophistry does. Sophistry
thrives indeed by neglecting the substrate.5
We can thus better understand the passage
in which Aristotle, in a perfectly unexpected,
and even, in view of his constant critique of
sophists, stupefying way, takes up without
critique a sophism that he even seems to jus-
tify: at 219b20f., the Stagirite draws a parallel
between the case of an object carried—which
is in one sense identical, and in another sense
different—and the sophism that consists in
supposing Coriscus at the Lyceum is different
from Coriscus in the Agora.
This remark is made within the frame-
work of a reflection on the now, and it is
grasped fully only if one is aware of this
basic point, that the now is the only case
in which sophistry is correct. Or, rather,
the phenomenon of the now contains, one
might say, a sort of natural sophistry to
which only sophistical discourse can do
justice. Moreover, it ceases thereby to be
sophistical and identifiable as such, and
becomes simply philosophical, since it is
true. It is for this reason that Aristotle no
longer calls it sophistical: Coriscus remains
the same because he is not constituted
by his circumstances at a given moment.
“Being Coriscus” is not the same thing as
“being at the Lyceum.” In turn, the sophism
is true (and ceases to be one) for the now,
which has no consistency outside of a situa-
tion established by a logos that announces:
“Now it is noon, one, etc.”6
This analysis could be pursued further:
in phrases of the kind we have chosen as an
example, the verb “to be” has a rather par-
ticular function. The distinction with which
we are familiar between the function of
the copula and the existential signification
can hardly be maintained. The phrase, “it
is now noon,” can be understood as “now
(S) is (C) noon (P),” but also as “noon (S) is
77
(exists) now (adverb).” This latter formula-
tion is, no doubt, found nowhere in Greek,
which in such sentences prefers to assign to
the verb “to be” the function of the copu-
la—which explains why it is omitted most
of the time.
Let us note, though, that this indecision in
the verb tends toward what might be called
the weakness of the subject. At best, one might
consider “now” as a sort of quasi-subject,
an evanescent reality, capable of furnishing
a verb with a fulcrum, but one so weak as
to be incapable of supporting a predicate.
A quasi-subject is nevertheless a subject.
I must therefore qualify what I have said
about the absence of the subject. The sub-
ject is indeed there, but it is present in an
entirely paradoxical way. It is this para-
doxical mode of presence that usage of
the formula containing the OPO expres-
sion must translate. The function of the
subject is not purely and simply lacking.
In effect, to the question “What is that
by being which the now is?” one may
give an answer. One can read this answer
in full: τὸ πρότερον .  .  . καὶ ὕστερον .  .  .
τὸ ἐν κινήσει (219b26f.).
The Prior and Posterior
The phrase just cited should indicate to us
that by being which movement is. Yet this
is itself hardly comprehensible. In order
to understand it, we must make a detour
upstream that will lead us back to the first
occurrence of the expression presently occu-
pying us, which we had already studied from
the point of view of its construction,7 and of
which we must now propose an interpreta-
tion. This presupposes that the phrase be
appreciated in its context: after having pos-
ited in principle that movement lies in the
wake of magnitude (megethos), and time in
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
turn in the wake of movement, Aristotle
establishes the existence of the prior and
posterior in magnitude (219a14ff.), then in
movement (a17f.), and finally in time (a18f.).
He then moves back a step in order to deter-
mine the mode of presence of the prior and
posterior in movement (a19ff.). This model
will also permit him to establish the mode of
presence of the prior and posterior as con-
cerns time. The better part of chapter 11 is
devoted to this task.
The presence in movement of the prior and
posterior is precisely what defines the phrase
that we tried earlier to restore. The expres-
sion τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον designates a
single, unique phenomenon, as the absence
of the article before the second adjective
indicates. It is readily observable in every
case—with the exception of 219a28, which
is sufficiently explained by the context. As
I understand it, the phrase has to do with
something like a prior-posterior structure:
the fact that movement is oriented accord-
ing to a prior and a posterior. This structure
is a relation: the two directions are insepa-
rable, a movement always lets appear at
once a before and an after—and it lets them
appear precisely by putting them in relation.
Aristotle thus claims: “The prior-posterior in
movement is that by being which, at a given
moment, it [movement] is movement; but for
it being is different and is not movement”
(219a19ff.). One might paraphrase this claim
as follows: the prior-posterior structure is,
in movement, that whose actualization at a
given moment allows for movement to be
movement, without this structure itself being
movement. At each moment, movement puts
into relation a “before” and an “after.” But
the structure itself, the polarity of before
and after, is not of movement. In this phrase,
Aristotle nevertheless contents himself with a
78
negative claim, and does not examine what is
the being (einai) of this structure.
His explanations are clearer when he deals
with the phenomenon principally at issue,
which is that of the now: that by being which
the now is, is the prior-posterior structure, as
it appeared in movement—rather than in
general. We must undoubtedly understand
Aristotle’s precision here as indicating that
the relation of prior and posterior is marked
by an irreversibility. It is from this point of
view that we glimpse that by being which the
now is. As for that by being which the now is
itself, the now is something like a relation of
prior and posterior; a passage (not an act of
passing but a path) from the one to the other;
a putting-into-contact of a “before” and an
“after.”
Supposing this to be the case, we might
then be able to broach a controversial ques-
tion concerning the nature of the now. The
question is whether the now, for Aristotle,
has perfect (ponctuel) or progressive (duratif)
aspect. However, nothing is perfectly clear on
this point in the text of Physics, although we
might mark out a now in a primary sense,
which is indivisible (VI.3, 233b33f.). But
this distinction is put to use, here as every-
where else, in terms of a particular analysis,
and outside of the treatment of time. Here
we find the expression τὸ παρὸν νῦν ἄτομον
(222b7f.). Yet it occurs in a passage of lit-
tle doctrinal emphasis. On the other hand,
indivisibility is not equivalent to the absence
of dimension, but could simply indicate that
the practice of division would change the
nature of the object divided. Finally, the
distinction carried out at 222a20f. does not
have extension as a criterion, and the sense
in which it claims the now is properly to be
taken is susceptible to two interpretations.
Where Aristotle gives explicit treatment of
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
the instant, thus, nothing is clear enough to
eliminate all discussion.
Faced with such a situation, it is necessary
to pose a principle of method: when a question
that we are posing is undecided by an author,
and in a given text, we must not decide the
question for the author, but should seek to
understand why a distinction that we make
use of, or that the author himself or herself
makes use of elsewhere, is not pertinent in a
certain passage. And this is the case, it seems
to me, with regard to the distinction between
an extensional and a perfective now.8 It does
not suffice to state (at the level of reality) that
Aristotle did not distinguish them, even if this
relieves us from having to supply as an expla-
nation some hypothetical “mentality” or cer-
tain facts of the Greek language. We must
rather (at the level of necessity) explain why
he did not need to distinguish between them
from the perspective adopted in a given text.
As regards the question of the extension or
nonextension of the now, it is not necessary
to decide that the now is extended.9 Nor
is it necessary to say that this idea “runs
counter to what is said on every line of the
Aristotelian treatment of time.”10 This is say-
ing too much. What is necessary rather is to
construe a focal point, external to the text,
which can account for its coherence, to the
extent that it can make apparent that the dis-
tinctions that Aristotle does not make use of
are not practicable from the perspective he
adopts at a given moment. In case, it must
be that the doctrine of the now remains true
whether it is perfective or ongoing. This is
the case if the now, from the point of view
of that by being which it is the now, is the
prior-posterior structure in ­movement. For
the question whether that before which the
anterior takes place, and that after which the
posterior takes place, is a point or a duration,
79
loses its pertinence. Whatever the duration of
the now, extended or evanescent, the func-
tion it fulfills of assuring the passage between
prior and posterior remains the same.11 We
might take to heart an intuition of Heidegger,
who offers a number of helpful insights
on this point, and say that it matters little
whether the now has dimension, provided it
has what he calls die Dimension.12
We are now in a position to return to the
“logical” examination of the now. In the
phrase, “now is noon,” the prior-posterior
structure plays the role of subject. This is
why we had to qualify our first claim, which
said that the subject was simply absent.
But the function of the subject is exercised
mediately. The structure that fulfills this
function does indeed only receive its con-
sistency as a subject from the predication
itself. The predication, so to speak, subju-
gates its subject [s’assujettit son sujet]. In
“now is noon,” the latter two words form
a whole. The second predicate, “noon,” is a
sort of accident, but it is the accident of no
subject. It is a sort of accident of the verb,
and an accident that, since it has no basis
other than the verb itself, belongs insepa-
rably to it. The sentence is thus binary. The
words, “is noon,” the rhe-ma, furnish the
content of the subject, “now,” since this
word means: “that in relation to which
there is a before and after.” In this sense, the
now is nothing but that by being which it
is itself. The quasi-substrate is a predicate.
In other words, the subject is nothing other
than what receives each time, from the verb,
what it is. What it receives situates it, and
thus merely allows it to be, after one thing
and before another.
If we now apply these considerations to
the question what is it in the now that is
permanent and what is it there that changes,
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
we must make a correction to the traditional
answer. According to that answer, in fact, it
is the subject that remains and that receives
changing predicates. But if it is the predicate
that endows the subject with the heft that
permits it to be the subject, one could then
say that it is as a predicate that the now does
not change: noon, one, two, is now, and what
changes is, in a sense, the verb, “it is noon,”
“it is one,” etc.
Arithmos
These remarks however leave in the dark half
of what we described as having a thoroughly
“logical” nature. We should therefore pres-
ently examine how this other aspect of the
now responds to this expectation.
Numerical Structure
Aristotle indicates this other aspect of
movement when he writes, in a text that
is the counterpart to the one we have been
examining, ᾗ ἀριθμητὸν .  .  . τὸ πρότερον
καὶ ὕστερον, τὸ νῦν ἔστιν (219b28): the
now is, inasmuch as the prior-posterior is
susceptible to an arithmein. I have left the
verb untranslated so as not to prejudge
anything. For ­everything here depends on
its meaning, in the same way that every-
thing depends, in the definition of time, on
the meaning of the ­corresponding substan-
tive, which meaning, too, is not without its
own problems.
To begin from an external point of view,
the word arithmos makes its appearance in
the text rather surprisingly. Carteron, for
example, remarks that “this result cannot
fail to surprise. .  .  . The notion of number
that appears here is not prepared for by
80
­earlier developments.”13 Conen, after having
cited Carteron, correctly draws attention to
the fact that the lines preceding the defini-
tion contain the requisite preparation.14 But
Carteron conserves the merit of his having
been surprised, and of having perceived that
what the lines 219a22–b1 prepare is not
what we understand usually by the notion
of number, and that we should test what we
commonly understand by number against the
Greek term. The concept of number will not
therefore be presupposed. The precise sense
that the word arithmos takes for Aristotle
in the treatise on time will, on the contrary,
have to be deduced from the text itself. In
other words, what the Stagirite understands
by it is what he describes in 219a22–b1 and,
at least at first, nothing else. He invites us
quite explicitly to be careful with our spon-
taneous understanding of the term, by the
prudence with which he introduces the
topic.
This in any event is shown in the 219b3–8
passage: after noting that time is not move-
ment, but that ᾗ ἀριθμὸν ἔχει ἡ κίνησις
(b3),15Aristotle offers an indication (se-meion)
showing that this is the case: we regard move-
ment as longer or shorter by means of time,
in the same way that we regard more and less
by means of arithmos. We have here a strong
indication, not necessarily a demonstration,
of the legitimacy of the use of this term. This
indication is derived from common practice
and opinion, not from the thing itself. It is
for this reason that it shows only that time is
something like an arithmos (ἀριθμός . . . τις,
219b5). The concept we are dealing with is
provisional and imprecise. Hence the quali-
fication that is immediately offered, and not
at all as “a simple appendix”:16 But (δέ, b6),
since arithmos is said in two ways, we must
distinguish them. And the specification that
is added results in saying that time is rather
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
(δή, b7) the arithmos counted, and not that
by which we count. What is excluded here is
the possibility of defining it as that by which
we judge (κρίνομεν, b4). The indication first
advanced is thus later superseded by a more
precise determination.17
Supposing this to be the case, we must
proceed to examine the term arithmos. And
this is especially the case, curiously, as we
are dealing with a term that has undoubt-
edly received the least attention from those
who have discussed Aristotle’s definition of
time.18
It is only relatively recently that attention
has been paid to elucidating the meaning of
the word arithmos in the Aristotelian treat-
ment of time, in the wake of older works on
the meaning of the word generally in Greek
thought. Credit for this is owed to Wieland
and Böhme.19 Both authors, although their
works are of immense value, have the disad-
vantage of restricting themselves, in that they
extract from the Greek word what lets itself
be translated by “number,” or more exactly,
as German allows for an essential distinction
here, by Anzahl.
However, it seems to me necessary to
pursue the inquiry further, and to attempt
to suspend in the first place trials of trans-
lation in order to grasp, above all, the phe-
nomenon at issue. Translating arithmos as
Anzahl—the “number of . . .,” in the sense
in which one says that there are in some
room a certain number of people—has the
advantage of calling attention to the act
of counting itself, of enumerating collec-
tions. It frees us from a nearly inevitable
fixation on that with which we count and
perform operations (Zahl). But we must go
one step further and grasp the act of count-
ing as consisting in stating and reproduc-
ing the structure of certain assemblages of
unities: a pair, a triad, a quartet, a quintet,
81
etc. An arithmos is above all a structure, an
assemblage.20
The phenomenon in question emerges
in certain occurrences of the word, more
ancient than philosophy itself—for exam-
ple, in Homer. But there are still in Aristotle
a certain number of texts in which the word
arithmos is hardly susceptible to another
interpretation, and where, in any case, to
translate it by “number” would indeed be
particularly strange. This goes, for example,
for many texts in which Aristotle gives an
account of the Pythagorean image of the
world: it makes much more sense to under-
stand that the Pythagoreans conceived of
the universe as a “structure determined by
number,” as a system of numerically express-
ible relations, than to say that for them, quite
simply, the world is number. It is in this way
that the word arithmos could be treated on a
parallel with harmonia, and that it evidently
designates a structure ordered by numbers.21
In the Posterior Analytics, the expression
εἰς ἀριθμὸν θέντες (II.1, 89b25ff.) could
be seen to say: reducing the question to a
system of possible solutions, drawing out
its structure—here the simplest one, the one
which expresses the first number, two, that
is, the alternative. Moreover, a difficult text,
and one frequently corrected, in De Anima
III.7, 431a22f., might receive new light if
we were to suppose that arithmos desig-
nates there a numerical relation rather than
a number. We need not neglect the occur-
rences in which the word takes the sense of
the “rhythm” of verse or prose.22 Finally,
the text presently occupying our atten-
tion contains, at the very end, a passage in
which Aristotle returns to the concept of
arithmos in order to clarify it one last time.
The passage itself is clear only if one grasps
the parallelism between figure (sche-ma)
and arithmos. What is common to both is
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
the idea of an arrangement, a structure, an
articulate whole. A sche-ma is the way some-
thing holds (echein) together. In this sense,
an arithmos is like a figure. What does not
change, with regard to arithmos when that
of which it is the arrangement varies, and
with regard to a sche-ma when, for exam-
ple, in the case of a triangle, the length of
its sides is modified, is precisely the law of
the structure, the structural properties inde-
pendent of that which the structure compre-
hends: in the first case, the relative length of
the sides articulated in a triangle, and in the
second, the nature of the unities articulated
in a decad.
One could find in Plato’s works certain
occurrences of the word arithmos in which
the proximity to the idea of the sche-ma is
particularly visible. Thus a passage from
the Timaeus concerning the transformation
from one to another of three of the four
elements, which are formed from differ-
ent combinations of the same elementary
triangle, where we read: “When in turn a
quantity of small [combinations] is dissemi-
nated into triangles, by emerging in a single
arithmos, they will realize another large fig-
ure, that of a unitary volume” (54d1f.). The
term arithmos here designates not so much
number as an expression of quantity, but
rather the structure realized by the elements
that draw together.23
Articulation
The fundamental fact bearing on numeri-
cal structure is in my view its articulation.
Reflection on this feature makes it pos-
sible to avoid clumsily defining arithmos,
something thus like number, by means of
the idea of a numerically defined structure.
We will be able here to avoid such a tautol-
ogy only by reflecting on the nature of the
82
articulation that constitutes arithmos. An
arithmos is an arrangement that is simul-
taneously one and plural. The existence of
number constitutes the practical synthesis
of the one and the many—which explains
its interest as a paradigm for Platonic dia-
lectic. Each arithmos is one in that it dis-
tinguishes itself from others: a pair is not a
triad, etc. It distinguishes itself from others
by the way in which it brings together, in
a structure that is in every case a particu-
lar one, elements that are unities. An arith-
mos is one only because each unity is one.24
The unity of arithmos is a unity of unities.
The resulting unity does not have the same
properties as its constituent unities, which
might be, for example, even or odd.25 An
arithmos is one because its unities are each
of them one, apart from the others and not
to be confused with the whole.
One might perhaps show the pres-
ence of these conceptual points in certain
Aristotelian texts. For example, in a pas-
sage from De Anima where Aristotle speaks
of the way in which we become aware of
arithmos (III.1, 425a19): ὁ δὲ ἀριθμὸς [is
perceived] τῇ ἀποφάσει τοῦ συνεχοῦς, καὶ
τοῖς ἰδίοις.26 Sensation provides us with the
unity that we use for measuring, by having
us discern the eidos that assures the unity of
the thing: before counting horses, one must
know how to identify a horse as constituting
a unity.27 As for the collection itself, it is fur-
nished by a negation (apophasis) of the con-
tinuum, which produces something discrete
(die-re-menon). But what is discrete does not
deny the continuum in such a way that the
elements are separated by having become
disparate. They only appear discrete, on
the contrary, owing to a basic, radical con-
tinuity that their division makes manifest:
diairesis makes evident the common basis
and horizon of what it cleaves apart.
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
My conscious intention in making use of
the term articulation, in order to name this
complex structure of arithmos, has been,
although not uniquely,28 to connect it to the
linguistic domain. The term designates the
way in which a meaning is produced by
the combination of elements none of which
is a bearer of the meaning in question—a
fact well known to Plato and to Aristotle.29
If we are to consider articulation, we must
juxtapose arithmos to logos. It is indeed only
at the level of discourse (logos), and not sim-
ply of a word or a syllable, that a meaning
(logos) arises from meaningful parts, whereas
at the level of the syllable, meaning arises
out of parts that have no meaning.30 Many
meanings form another one, and in such a
way that the total meaning supposes that the
­partial meanings remain distinct. Aristotle
notes this parallelism when he compares def-
inition (horismos) to an arithmos and when,
very explicitly, he situates arithmos and
logos—specifying that he is speaking of vocal
discourse here—in the same class, namely
that of discrete quantities.31 Now, we have
spoken, with regard to Plato, of the “numer-
ical structure of logos.”32 This formula could
be generalized and extended to Aristotle. But
it is necessary above all to understand that
we could very well turn the formula around
and speak of a “logical structure of arith-
mos.” In this sense, if I may be permitted this
formulation, we should say that number is a
logos whose meaning is unity.33
One and Two
It remains now to see how these rather gen-
eral considerations can be applied to the
Aristotelian discussion of time. Our starting
point was the question what is opposed to
“that by being which the now is,” and there-
fore what the meaning is of the being (einai)
83
of the now, that is, what the now is insofar
as the prior-posterior is arithme-ton (219b25,
28).
We might now translate this last term
“articulable”—on the condition that we
invest this word with the sense that we have
so far seen it to bear. The Aristotelian defini-
tion of time should thus, if my approach has
been legitimate, be understood in a modified
way. By exaggerating its conciseness slightly,
in order to render it clearer, we might translate
the definition thus: “This is what time is: the
prior-posterior articulation of movement.”
The lines that precede the enunciation of the
definition contain the description of what
I have called articulation. They are placed
indeed at a level at which the prior-posterior
appears as one and many—in this case, as
two.34 Similarly, articulation is both the act
of unifying and the act of dividing. It could
thus be characterized as pertaining to a
unitary structure (219b25, 28) as well as per-
taining to two elements (223a29: ταῦτα . . .
ἀριθμητά). Arithmos is not viewed as what
makes counting possible, but as what a collec-
tion must possess in order to be a collection,
and thus in order to be counted. Articulation
alone makes enumeration possible.
The case of time casts this fact into relief
particularly well—which is why the concept
of arithmos appears there with exemplary
clarity.35 In effect, when the question is raised
what is “counted” in time, of what collection
time is the number, it cannot be answered. It is
not a matter of periods of time, of which one
would have to assume a temporal character,
in a circular way; nor again are they instants,
for they do not exist.36 In general, it must be
noted that nothing is counted except that
which is previously ordered and structured
by an articulation. Call this a “number,” if
that is preferable, but only in the sense in
which one speaks of a numerous verse, that
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
is, a unique verse, but well structured. In the
case of time, Aristotle never speaks of what
is counted, of what the plurality of enumer-
ated elements is made of. He speaks rather of
the “number” of movement, in the singular.
We are given the impression, inasmuch as we
remain with an understanding of number as
something that serves to count, that it is one
and the same thing that is counted—which is
bizarre, to say the least.
In fact, it is the articulation itself that
“counts.” Time is that by which movement
is structured according to the before and
after, and thus the before and after receive a
numerical structure, that is, that which allows
them to be at the same time one and two.
Arithmos in the sense Aristotle speaks of it
with regard to time is above all the smallest
number, the dyad—which explains the pres-
ence of a remark on the smallest number pre-
cisely after the section on the now (220a27).
There is time when the now is at the same
time one and two, simultaneously a unity
of the before and after and an inner dimen-
sion, a tension of the before and the after.
Time is the articulation of the prior-posterior
structure of movement, that is, the fact
that the coincidence of the prior and the
posterior is their separation. Time emerges
when we think the now(s) as two, although
there is but one now, and because there is
but one. Time holds them together as torn
apart. To hazard a formula: time is the now
of nows.
The arguments that Aristotle devotes to the
now contain clarifications made necessary by
the definition of time based on arithmos. The
way in which the now is simultaneously one
and many makes explicit the idea of articula-
tion. That by being which the now is, we have
seen, is the simple polarity and orientation
with respect to the prior and posterior. The
einai of the now is the mutual articulation
84
of the prior and the posterior. What does it
mean to speak of the “being” of the now? It
is what we mean when we say: now, it is such
and such time. The existence of the now is
nothing but the fact that it receives (as a qua-
si-subject) a predicate—in simpler terms, a
date. For the now, being is always being such
and such a date (see 219b13). Being now is
being situated, and in relation to a prior and
a posterior. These in turn appear as such only
in such a situation.37 The now is as the unity
of a number that runs through and unifies the
elements that compose this number. But this
exists as a posited unity—which is why the
image of a point presents itself naturally. It is
posited in a polarized structure. This forces
it to shatter into two all the while that it
is one. Reciprocally, however, this positing of
the one as two, by predicating the situation,
and thus the duality of the now (or nows), of
the subject constituted by the prior-posterior
orientation, gives it the two poles it needs in
order to be.
The unity of the now is its unifying func-
tion (222a15). It is devoid of its own unity,
which it attains only by unifying what it is
not. By unifying that which is two, it passes
into the two: the two become one, but the
one passes into the two. This pulsation of
gathering and division constitutes time. Time
“advances” down the middle, through the
present that simultaneously ejects the past
and the future. The “movement” of time is
centrifugal.38
Such is the way in which one might for-
mulate the dialectic of the now. This dialectic
is situated in the sphere of logos. The per-
spective from which the Aristotelian treatise
on time is enacted seems thus to escape the
alternative of the “physical” and the “psycho-
logical,” while in this revealing their common
basis. Logos is indeed the only aspect under
which the soul is present here. It is nothing
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
more than the site of logos. Without it, the
articulation turning the prior-posterior into
time would not exist; only the prior-posterior
structure would exist, since there may very
well be movement without soul.39 Yet, on
the other hand, logos is also at the basis of
movement, insofar as it is to logos that the
potential as such, whose entelechy is move-
ment, manifests itself.40 One might, at this
level, draw between time and movement an
analogy altogether more radical than the
one appearing at the derivative level where
movement shows itself as ἔκ τινος εἴς τι. The
diairetic function of the now is only exer-
cised dunamei (222a14, 18). Even if time is
not movement, it is nevertheless possible
to speak of a “movement” of time41 as the
entelechy of the diairesis accomplished by
the now, insofar as this is in potentiality.
This reflection on the OPO expression
has led us to a reading of the Aristotelian
discussion of time that highlights the “logi-
cal” dimension of the concepts involved
in it. I believe doing so has resolved certain
problems, but has posed other, no doubt
more numerous, problems, and in any
event has furnished us with one of the keys of
the interpretation of this inexhaustible text.
Rémi Brague
Translated by Erick Raphael Jiménez
Notes
  1 See Hegel, 1927–40, 83; Heidegger, 1977, §81,
416.
 2
I offer this as a possible interpretation. One
could indeed understand the turn of phrase
otherwise, by taking the καί in the sense,
for example, of De memoria 2, 451b4. The
zeugma that I am indicating is in any event
not the most surprising one to be found
in Aristotle. In the Physics compare III.4,
203b10f.; IV.2, 209b32f.
 3
See Plato, Meno 100b6f.; Protagoras 361e6.
85
 4
See Plato, Symposium 220c5f. For more exam-
ples, see Kahn, 2003, 173f.; and Kühner and
Gerth, 1976, vol. 1, 33.
 5
See the fine remarks in Aubenque, 1962,
135–40.
 6
It could be equally necessary that we ask
how predication without a subject, and hence
necessarily led to infinity (Metaphysics IV.4,
1007a33–b1), lends itself to the expression of
the infinity of time (Phys. IV.10, 218a1).
 7
[The formula OPO appears for the first time
at 219a20f. Brague examines the construction
in Section 1 of the original essay. See Editor’s
note above—Ed.]
 8
However, the treatment of time leaves unde-
cided other questions that we might pose. For
example, Aristotle does not allow for distin-
guishing between what we call the “content”
of the now (that which is now) and the now
itself, or again between the content of the
prior-posterior (the unique object that is found
before a point, then after it) and the structure
itself.
9
Thus Moser, 1932, 116.
10
Wieland, 1992, 323, n. 6.
11
By this is understood the habitual sense of
“now,” which one employs in giving the pre-
cise time as well as in situating oneself within
an extremely broad era.
12
Heidegger, 1975, 351.
13
Carteron, 1924, 67.
14
Conen, 1964, 60, n. 71.
15
This expression is understood by the commen-
tators in diverse ways, which may be reduced to
two: (1) that by which movement has arithmos
(Moreau, 1965, 132; Wagner, 1967, 113), and
(2) insofar as movement has arithmos (Torstrik,
1857, 466, who consequently conjectures ἢ
ᾗ; Carteron, 1924, 151. But the translation of
the latter, “is not inasmuch as . . .” supposes
an ellipsis of the verb “to be” in the existential
sense that is hardly plausible (see Kühner and
Gerth, 1976, 40ff.); Wieland, 1992, 327; Conen,
1964, 59, but see 78). The second interpretation
seems to me more probable.
16
Conen, 1964, 60.
17
This passage is infrequently mentioned by com-
mentators. Conen, 1964, for example, passes
over it fleetingly on page 59. Commentators
prefer to focus on the distinction between the
two, perhaps three, meanings of number. The
text however is interested in showing that the
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
function of measuring played by number does
not occupy pride of place in the concept of
arithmos contained in the Aristotelian defini-
tion of time (see Conen, 1964, 60, 141).
18
Even in Conen, 1964, who nevertheless has a
chapter entitled “Number” (53–8), the word
arithmos does not appear once. Others go so
far as to consider Aristotle outright wrong
for having used it. Thus Ross, 1960, speaks
of “the original error that consists in defining
time as the number of movement” (601). Or
Moreau, 1965, who explains the cause of
the error by way of the Stagirite’s deficient
philosophical tools: “It is because he lacks,
for the symbolic representation of movement,
the graphical method of coordinate axes, that
Aristotle is reduced to calling time a number”
(126).
19
Wieland, 1992, 317–21; Böhme, 1974, passim.
20
This result has been progressively clarified
by works in the last few decades, namely
Stenzel, 1924, 24ff. See Becker, 1957, 21f.;
Becker, 1963, which proposes the translation
“zahlenmässig bestimmtes Gefüge” (136);
Burkert, 1962, 245f. The most suggestive
text on this problem is without a doubt
Klein, 1934, 18–105, esp. chap. 6, 53–64.
This work is more easily accessible in the
English translation by E. Brann, Klein, 1968,
46–60.
21
See Met. I.5, 986a2f., and De Caelo I.1,
268a10ff.
22
Rhetoric III.8, 1408b28f. and 9, 1409b4ff. See
also Problems XIX.38, 920b33.
23
Taylor, 1928, identifies this passage with the
Pythagorean idea that “things” are numbers
(373). As to the passage cited, I see in the opta-
tive at d3 a reference to the future at c8, in the
sense of a purely logical genesis (Kühner and
Gerth, 1976, vol. 1, 235, n. 1) rather than a
conditional (contra Rivaud, 1925, 174).
24
See Met. I.6, 1056b23. Conen, 1964, seems to
have glimpsed this fact (96).
25
See Plato, Hippias Major, 301d5ff.
26
I am taking the καί in a way different from
Ross, 1961, 271, who supposes that Aristotle
distinguishes two ways of receiving arithmos.
For my part, as for Tricot, 1965, 149, n. 2,
Aristotle associates two elements necessary
to the perception of arithmos. In effect, the
reminder καὶ τοῖς ἰδίοις is explained by the
86
fact that Aristotle’s point is to destroy the
idea of a common sense. And the idea that
we perceive number by realizing the identity
of what presents itself to our senses under
diverse aspects conflicts with the fact that, for
Aristotle, number can be perceived by a single
sense alone (see De Sensu 1, 437a9, together
with its context).
27
See Phys. IV.12, 220b19–22.
28
The Aristotelian doctrine of physiological
articulation explains how it is what is one may
be two. See Movement of Animals 1, 698a19,
b1; 8, 702a23f., 30f.
29
See Plato, Theaetetus, 203aff. and Aristotle, De
Interpretatione 2, 16a20–6; and Met. VII.17,
1041b16f.
30
See De Int. 4, 16b26–33.
31
Respectively, Met. VIII.3, 1043b34ff.;
Categories 6, 4b23, 32–7.
32
See also Gadamer, 1972, 31.
33
It would be meet here to pursue this reflection
as far as making apparent the logos as the
continuity of discontinuity as such, or, in more
modern language, as the care (maintenance) of
the fragmentary as such.
34
219b29, 32—on the latter text, see Conen,
1964, 55ff., and 219b26–8.
35
See Klein, 1934, 53f. (47f.); Becker, 1963, 135.
36
See Böhme, 1974, 164.
37
There is in this characterization of the now as
the act of situating itself in relation to a before
and an after something like an approach
to—or perhaps a residue of—the existential
phenomenon of the instant in the sense of
Augenblick, a glance of the eye so as to recog-
nize one’s situation.
38
The past and the future surround the present
(see πέριξ in De Int. 3, 16b18). This may be
what makes the image of the cosmic sphere
necessary, as a translation of a somewhat
Parmenidean circularity in which past and
future are μὴ ὄντα (see 218a2, 221b31).
39
I understand the οἷον εἰ at 223a27 otherwise
than the “might be” one finds customarily
in others, after Bonitz, 1955, 501b60f.; for
example, Conen, 1964, 157, n. 4. Bonitz
refers to Politics III.6, 1279a15. But the verb
here is in a hypothetical mode. A translation
with a conditional (Carteron, 1924, 160;
Festugière, 1971, 198; Moreau, 1965, 162f.;
Wagner, 1967, 122) inevitably encourages
 ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
the idea of a world-soul (thus Wagner, 1967,
587). As ei with the indicative signifies “if it
is true that, from the moment that . . .” (as at
223a25), I am tempted to see in the hoion a
use analogous to the sense this adverb takes
with the genitive absolute (Kühner and Gerth,
1976, vol. 2, 97)—as in the Latin quippe; a
usage of which we may find a parallel in On
Generation and Corruption II.5, 333a11. If
we understand Aristotle’s phrase as saying:
“since, in fact, it is possible for there to be
movement without soul,” the phantom of a
world-soul is definitively exorcised.
40
See Phys. III.1, 201a16f., 33.
41
Such a “movement” would be something alto-
gether other than displacement. But is this not
the case, in Aristotle, for kine-sis in general?
References
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1962.
Barreau, H., “L’instant et le temps selon
Aristote,” Revue philosophique de
Louvain, 66 (1968), 213–38.
Beare, J. I. (trans.), On Sense and the Sensibles,
in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1931, 436–49.
Becker, O., Zwei Untersuchungen zur antiken
Logik, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1957.
—, Dasein und Dawesen: Gesammelte
philosophische Aufsätze, Pfullingen:
Neske, 1963.
Böhme, G., Zeit und Zahl: Studien zur
Zeittheorie bei Platon, Aristoteles,
Leibniz und Kant, Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1974.
Bonitz, H., Index Aristotelicus, 2nd edn,
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1955.
Bröcker, W., Aristoteles, 4th edn, Frankfurt:
Klostermann, 1974.
Burkert, W., Weisheit und Wissenschaft:
Studien zur Pythagoras, Philolaos, und
Platon, Nuremberg: H. Carl, 1962.
87
Carteron, H., “Remarques sur la notion
de temps d’après Aristote,” Revue
Philosophique de la France et de
l’Etranger, 98 (1924), 67–81.
Cassirer, E., Aristoteles Schrift Von
der Seele, Darmstadt: Wissenschaft
Buchgesellschaft, 1968.
Conen, P. F., Die Zeittheorie des Aristoteles,
Munich: Beck, 1964.
Croiset, A. (trans. and ed.), Platon. Hippias
Majeur, Charmide, Laches, Lysis, 3rd edn,
Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949.
Denniston, J. D., The Greek Particles,
2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1950.
Festugière, A. J., Études de philosophie
grecque, Paris: Vrin, 1971.
Gadamer, H. G., Platons Ungeschriebene
Dialektik, vol. 3 of Kleine Schriften,
Tübingen: Mohr, 1972.
Hegel, G. W. F., Phänomenologie des
Geistes, vol. 2 of Sämtliche Werke, ed.
H. Glockner, Stuttgart: Bad Cannstatt,
1927–40.
Heidegger, M., Die Grundprobleme
der Phänomenologie, Gesamtausgabe
24, Frankfurt: Klostermann,
1975.
—, Sein und Zeit, Gesamtausgabe 2,
Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1977.
Joachim, H. H. (ed.), Aristotle. On
Coming-to-Be and Passing-Away, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1922.
Kahn, C., The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek,
Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003.
Klein, J., Die griechische Logistik und die
Entstehung der Algebra, in Quellen und
Studien zur Geschichte der Mathematik,
Astronomie und Physik, Berlin: Springer,
1934.
—, Greek Mathematical Thought and
the Origin of Algebra, trans. E. Brann,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.
ON ARISTOTLE’S FORMULA Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ
Kühner, R. and Gerth, B., Ausführliche
Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, 2
vols, 3rd edn, Hanover: Hahn, 1976.
Louis, M. P. (trans. and ed.), Aristote. Les
parties des animaux, Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1956.
Moreau, J., L’espace et le temps selon
Aristote, Padua: Antenore, 1965.
Moser, S. (ed.), Grundbegriffe der
Naturphilosophie bei Wilhelm von Ockham:
Kritischer Vergleich der Summulae in
libros Physicorum mit der Philosophie des
Aristoteles, Innsbruck: F. Rauch, 1932.
Mugnier, R. (trans. and ed.), Aristote. Petits
traités d’histoire naturelle, Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1953.
Prantl, C. (ed.), Acht Bücher Physik, Leipzig:
Engelmann, 1854.
Riddel, J., The Apology of Plato, with a
Revised Text and a Digest of Platonic
Idioms, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1877.
Rivaud, A. (trans.), Platon. Timée, Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1925.
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complètes, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1970.
Ross, G. R. T. (trans.), Aristotle. De Sensu
et De Memoria, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1906.
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Ross, W. D. (ed.), Aristotle. Physics, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1960.
—, Aristotle. De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
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Stenzel, J., Zahl und Gestalt bei Platon und
Aristoteles, Leipzig: Teubner, 1924.
Taylor, A. E., A Commentary on Plato’s
Timaeus, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1928.
Torstrik, A., “Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ῎OΝ: Ein Beitrag
zur Kenntnis des aristotelischen
Sprachgebrauchs,” Rheinisches Museum
für Philologie, 12 (1857), 161–73.
Tricot, J., Aristote. De l’âme, Paris: Vrin,
1965.
Wagner, H. (trans.), Physikvorlesung,
Aristoteles Werke in deutscher
Übersetzung, vol. 2, ed. E. Grumach,
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1967.
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3rd edn, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1992.
 -
PsuchE
 5
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
Introduction
It is a doctrine frequently taken as
Aristotle’s that the human mind is a faculty
disembodied,1 and perhaps for good reason;
for Aristotle speaks frequently of “mind”
(nous) as “separate” (cho-ristos). Upholders
of the Aristotelianism of a disembodied mind
thesis point to general and specific consider­
ations: Generally, some maintain, the soul is
the form of the living thing, and as a form
it is changeless, hence eternal, and all of its
parts and potentialities are likewise change­
less and eternal, not bound therefore to con­
ditions of embodiment. Specifically, others
maintain, mind has no essential attachment
to physiological processes. Moreover it is a
presupposition of the passive reception of
intelligible forms by the faculty mind that the
former exist and are produced as such by a
corresponding active mind, which cannot,
some claim, have a body or involve my, the
passive thinker’s, body.
Yet it has also been held that these con­
cerns with the Aristotelian text are sideways
on; for they saddle him with modern preoc­
cupations that are not his.2 Descartes—if
not the author of these preoccupations, then
certainly their spiritual ancestor—famously
thought that we could find mechanistic
91
explanations for all phenomena in nature,
perhaps save one—thinking; and in this he
prefigured “the mind-body problem,” how if
at all to account for the interaction of inten­
tional mind and mechanical body. At the
same time he presupposed that mind was not
subject to the same causal strictures as mere
matter. If Aristotle, on the other hand, shared
neither the mechanistic background notions
nor Descartes’ specific conception of mind,
then by putting the question to Aristotle how
to convene these entities one is bound at best
to find half-answers and at worst to find bad
ones. We should not burden the Aristotelian
text with questions it is not prepared to
answer.
Something is right of this second view,
but it is not so right that the first problem
should be dropped from consideration alto­
gether. Like Descartes’, Aristotle’s questions
about mind with respect to body are medi­
ated by questions of explanation, and mind’s
“separateness” and “immateriality” are fea­
tures attaching to mind to show what sort of
explanation for mind is possible. However,
Aristotle’s and Descartes’ questions are
quite different; for whereas the explanatory
schemes bearing on the traditional question
of mind-body relations ask merely to see an
interaction and to have noted some species of
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
contiguity of the parties involved, Aristotle’s
explanatory scheme asks somewhat more
rigidly to see a specific relation of a specific
causality: that of natural or material neces­
sity conducing to form or purpose.
Investigating how Aristotle sees that
explanatory scheme as applying to mind, I
shall however not pursue detailed excurses
here concerning Aristotle’s usage of the
expressions cho-ristos and cho-rizein in De
Anima, and whether it is (as I think it is not)
a mere matter of pointing to the attribution
of “separateness” to nous and regarding the
mind-body matter as resolved. I shall also
have nothing to say about the “immortal­
ity” of nous. These difficulties bear, I think,
on a further and incidentally more complex
question, how for Aristotle it is possible
for mind to perceive essences, which are
eternal, and what are the ramifications for
mind in view of its identity with these its
purported objects. I shall not deal here with
the question of mind and body in its entirety
then but will rather focus on two specific
questions: whether Aristotle, when put to
the question, conceived of mind as disem­
bodied; and where in Aristotle we should
find tools for thinking of the relationship
or nonrelationship between mind and body
concretely.
As a consequence of careful attention
to the question not whether but how mind
is embodied, an essential point governing
Aristotle’s conception of mind emerges—a
point I shall develop under the rubric of
what I call “the aesthetic interpretation.”
This interpretation outlines, with a view to
further inquiry, a different model for think­
ing in Aristotle than that to which perhaps
we are accustomed or to which we customar­
ily have recourse. It has importance beyond
questions of mind-body relations and lies at
92
the heart of a little-appreciated but sophisti­
cated detail in Aristotle’s philosophy of mind
bearing on the directedness and sort of per­
ception involved in thinking. Thus, while the
mind-body question is indeed of some signif­
icance to Aristotelian psychology, Aristotle’s
answer to that question, when properly
understood, may also be seen to hold sig­
nificance in circles of interest yet wider than
Aristotelian ones.
Explanation in Psychology
Distinctive of the Aristotelian psycholo­
gist is the way in which she contrasts with
(as Aristotle describes the matter in DA) the
“physicist” and the “dialectician.” For the
latter both define psychological phenomena,
but they do so only partially: The physicist
defines, for example, anger materially as a
boiling of the blood, the dialectician formally
as a desire for revenge; the Aristotelian psy­
chologist, on the other hand, as a material
consequence entailed by (“for the sake of”)
some end, that is, a form.3 Aristotle’s psychol­
ogy then, to put it summarily, involves such
a juxtaposition of matter and form that the
former is shown to exhibit whatever featu­
res it does for the sake of the fulfillment of
the latter.
The procedure toward achieving this sort
of insight relies characteristically on dis­
cerning, relevant to some matter at hand,
two sorts of necessity. The first sort relates
to the apprehension of a universal “that”
(τὸ ὅτι)—as in, for example, “that all humans
are risible,” where the connection between
terms “human” and “risible” must be a neces­
sary one.4 This “that” then forms a basis for
inquiry into its explanation or “why” (τὸ διότι);

and we have achieved explanation, in psy­
chology, when we can present our “thats” as
following of necessity from the fulfillment of
some purpose. Now, whereas the necessity
that frames a universal is “unconditional”
(haplo-s), the necessity joining a purpose to
these and those specific material configura­
tions is called “hypothetical necessity” (τὸ
ἐξ ὑποθήσεως ἀναγκαῖον), for the material
configurations are seen to be necessary only
on the condition (“hypothesis”) that the pur­
pose is to be realized.5
Success in Aristotelian psychological expla­
nation consists in having established that this
or that material configuration is as it is owing
to its role in the realization of some purpose.
It is obvious to see, even at this very general
level, that even the image of success is biased
heavily toward conceiving of all of psycho­
logical phenomena as being in some way
“embodied,” supposing “embodied” means
“material”; for to feature at all in psycho­
logical explanations requires some necessary
relationship to materiality. Therefore it is
not much of an exaggeration, at least at this
admittedly very general methodological level,
to say the very idea that mind should fit this
explanatory model is itself a provocative one,
notwithstanding prejudices to the contrary.
Mind in Body
The prejudices abound anyway. Still, in order
to grasp how it is Aristotle conceives of mind
at all, it is, notice, an Aristotelian impera­
tive to ask in what way mind relates to body.
Now to do this is to embark on two separate
ventures. The first is to show that mind for
Aristotle is not disembodied. Aristotle him­
self has two negative arguments to this effect,
93
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
which I have outlined below. The second task
is to show how, positively, Aristotle conceives
of mind as embodied. To do so fully is more
than this short essay can muster; therefore I
have restricted myself to outlining the case,
and with special attention to the relationship
of mind to phantasia.
Mind in Body (A): The Negative Account
Aristotle has, as I shall call them, a generic
and a specific account for the claim that mind
is not disembodied. They run as follows.
The Generic Account
It is claimed early in DA that,
if there is some one of the soul’s acts or
affects that is unique to it, then soul itself
will admit of separation [from body].
If, on the other hand, there is nothing
unique to soul, then it cannot be sepa­
rate, but must be rather like straightness,
which, as straight, involves many prop­
erties, such as touching a bronze sphere
at a point, although in fact it will touch
nothing at all if [straightness] is sepa­
rated [from it]; for it is inseparable, since
it is always in some way embodied (μετὰ
σώματος).6
A remarkable feature of this comment is,
although initially distinguishing in the obvi­
ous way between “embodied” and “sepa­
rate” psychic acts and affects, it goes on to
insist that the characteristics of the latter
still nevertheless derive from conditions of
embodiment. Features of a “separate” thing
qua separate, says Aristotle, are dependent
upon their association with a body: So and
so may hold of, say, a form, but only inas-
much as it is a form instantiated in such and
such matter.
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
Since nevertheless for Aristotle soul isn’t
“separate” in the way described at the begin­
ning of the above passage,7 then all the
actions and affections of soul must also not
be separate; it follows as a matter of course
that mind could not be separate. Thus the
generic account, which might be formalized
thus:
(1) Mind is a part of soul; and
(2) if any part of soul is separate from body
then all of soul is separate from body;
but
(3) soul is not separate from body;
(4) therefore, etc.
If it were not true one after another to say
of psychic acts and affects that they are
embodied, then embodiment would not be
a feature of soul, and soul would as a conse­
quence be its own ousia, having, as M. Frede
puts it, “a life and a history of its own.”8
But that is, going by Aristotle’s conception
of soul and his analyses of its parts or func­
tions, strictly an impossibility. To the extent
mind is a part of soul, it is related of neces­
sity to the body.
(Note again, however, that even if mind
were “separate,” its features, according to
the DA I.1 passage above, still would derive
from the association it has to a living body.)
The Specific Account
In the most pointed drafting of the question
whether mind is embodied, Aristotle asserts
that, “if thinking is a kind of phantasia, or
impossible without phantasia, then thinking
will be impossible without a body.”9 I take it
this implies a strict disjunction: Either think­
ing is “a kind of phantasia, or impossible
without phantasia,” or “it will be possible
to have thought without a body.”10 In order
to show that mind is embodied Aristotle
thus need only show that the first half of the
94
disjunction is true; then he will perforce have
shown the disjunct on the right to be false,
and mind to be embodied.
And that is just what Aristotle says, at
least in this elegant proposal: “The soul
never thinks without an image.”11 From that
it follows neatly that Aristotle concludes
mind is embodied. We might, in a parity with
the general account, formalize this argument
thus:
(1) Mind, if it involves representation (phan-
tasia), necessarily requires a body;
(2) mind involves representation;
(3) therefore, etc.
Since thinking involves representation and
representation a body, thinking involves a
body.12
Mind in Body (B): The Positive Account
These rather mechanical arguments really say
nothing about the essential nub of the ques­
tion of the embodiment of mind, but they do
or should clear the way to thinking, in an
Aristotelian vein, the link of mind to body.
We have seen thus far how it is mind is not
disembodied; the question that presses on us
now is how precisely it is embodied.
In thinking through the possible range
of ways in which a psychological capacity
like mind may be embodied, we should con­
sider more than that way in which sensation
(aisthe-sis) is embodied. For it is obvious that
mind, the faculty for the perception of, for
example, essences and principles, does not
traffic in material (i.e. sensible) objects, just
as it is obvious eyes and sight do not traf­
fic in aural or gustatory objects. Therefore
that mind does not relate physically to sen­
sible objects is no grounds for regarding it as
disembodied. Nor again is it a grounds for
disembodying mind to claim that there is no

organ of it as there is for sensation; there are
plenty of clearly embodied actions and affec­
tions of soul that are not assigned to specific
organs.13
A passage in DA I.1 that introduces the
question of soul-body relations says first that
most affections of soul, “like anger, cour­
age, desire, and sensation,” “do not occur
without the body’s being affected or act­
ing.” That however all affects of soul are
“embodied,” for Aristotle, is evidenced by
the fact that, although external events may
seem the sort to elicit reliably a given act or
affection, one may, depending on psychic
makeup and habituation, respond quite dif­
ferently (consider courage and its lack in the
face of fearful circumstances); or, on the con­
trary, although nothing externally is going
on, one may suddenly experience affections
(consider anxiety) that relate in no essential
way to one’s present situation or environ­
ment.14 It is thus the incongruence, not the
conformity, of psychic affection to external
circumstance—the ability of the soul to bring
about changes in the body irrespective of sit­
uation—that for Aristotle counts as the mark
of the embodied.
If then it can be shown mental acts bring
about or depend upon bodily affections,
mind will be embodied. One helpful way of
simplifying this question is to see it as ask­
ing whether, according to the divisions of
time, mind is preceded by some embodied
process; whether mind is simultaneous with
some embodied process; and whether mind
anticipates some embodied process, in each
case in terms of the notion of hypothetical
necessity outlined prev­iously. And indeed, as
I shall show in the following three subsec­
tions, what in Aristotle we find is not just
one way in which mind is embodied—but
all three. For mind is embodied inasmuch
as it is (1) necessarily preceded by sensation,
95
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
(2) simultaneous with the perception of an
image or representation, and (3) causes the
thinker to act.
Mind and Sensation
That there are embodied conditions of think­
ing is an unquestionably Aristotelian tenet;
for Aristotle holds that thinking is always
necessarily preceded by having sensed. Thus
in Aristotle’s introductory account of mind
he alludes first of all to the cognitive depend­
ence of mind and phantasia on sensation,
claiming that “[phantasia] does not come
about without sensation, and without [phan-
tasia] there is no judgment (hupole-psis),”15
where “judgment” means any of the several
intellectual functions.16 To this may moreo­
ver be added the claim of DA III that “noe- ta
are in sensible forms,” and that “no one
would learn or understand anything without
having first sensed.”17 APo I.18 makes the
same claim in equally strong language.18 In
addition we might bear in mind the claims
of Met. I.1 and APo II.19: that thinking
and understanding are forms of perception
dependent on a history of sensation, mem­
ory, and experience.
The psychological consequence of this doc­
trine should be evident: If thinking depends
on “having sensed” then there is no think­
ing without sensing. Now there certainly is
not sensing without having a body.19 Then,
just as certainly, there is not thinking without
having a body.20 We need allow this notion
to mean nothing more than that thinking
is always preceded by processes requiring a
body, and that there is necessity conjoining
the term having sensed with the term think-
ing. For in short if one is to think, then one
must have sensed. Then if sensing is embod­
ied, and only operative in living animal bod­
ies, if one is to think, then one must have a
living animal (=sensitive) body.
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
Mind and Imagination
Thinking is always preceded by sensing,
and it is always simultaneous with an image
and some bodily disposition corresponding
uniquely to the thought. Now Aristotle is,
to be sure, somewhat vague on the question
how imagination itself is “embodied,” and the
relation too between mind and imagination
is not entirely an obvious one; yet to grasp
the relation between mind and imagination,
considering its importance for Aristotle’s own
conception of the link of mind to body, is an
essential piece of the embodied mind question.
First however it bears noting that, inasmuch
as imagination is “a movement resulting from
actual sensation”21 and plays an essential
role in retention,22 it too evidently is in fact
embodied in ways similar to the ways sensa­
tion is, differing from it inasmuch as it lacks
the constraint that its objects must be simult­
aneous, external, and impinging on the imag­
iner in order for her to imagine. I have noted
already Aristotle’s argument to the effect that
mind depends on imagination and therefore
is, as Aristotle puts it, “not possible with­
out body.”23 In a telling expression Aristotle
articulates the relation between thinking
and phantasia in these terms: “Necessarily
(ananke-) when someone studies (theo-rei)
something they study (theo-rein) at the same
time (hama) some representation (phantasma
ti).”24 In the terms of the explanatory scheme
explored above, we should read this as a clas­
sical sort of psychological explanation of
thinking—that is, as an explanation of think­
ing in terms of what is necessarily (i.e. materi­
ally) entailed by it.
In DA and in De Mem., among the psy­
chological works, Aristotle has a fairly
specific way in fact of talking about the
relationship between mind and phantasia.
It is here I should like to bring out a differ­
ence between what I have called above the
96
standard interpretation and the aesthetic.
According to the standard interpretation
“images” (phantasmata) are things for mind
to stare at, and the forms in images (which
in turn are the forms in sensible things) are
the things that mind thinks.25 So mind per­
ceives not just second- but third-hand as it
were. And something of the standard inter­
pretation is indeed right: Mind in order to
think must have sensed and phantasia does
seem to mean a presentation of the form of
something sensed or sensible.
Yet there is an important asymmetry
between the image and the thought that
makes what is in the image and what is in the
thought quite different, and in turn that makes
a fundamental problem for the standard inter­
pretation in describing the use of phantasmata
in thinking. In De Mem., a text forming part
of a family of treatises that claim to apply the
lessons of DA,26 Aristotle describes the rela­
tionship in the following terms:
We have spoken of representation (phan-
tasia) in DA, and [there it was said that]
thinking (noein) is not possible without
a representation (phantasma). Now,
what happens in thinking (τὸ . . . πάθος
ἐν τῷ νοεῖν) is the very same as hap­
pens in making a geometrical diagram
(diagraphein): Making no use of the
triangle’s being a determinate quantity,
nevertheless we draw it as quantitatively
determinate. Someone thinking does the
same thing. Should she think of some­
thing that has no quantity, nevertheless
she places before her eyes (τίθεται πρὸ
ὀμμάτων) some quantity, except that she
does not think it as a quantity. Should
the nature [under consideration] count
among those things that are quantities
but indeterminate, then [the thinker]
places before her eyes a determinate
quantity, except that she thinks it solely
as a quantity.27

According to my interpretation of this pas­
sage, thinking involves two separate acts: the
representation of something and the arousal
in a mind of something other than what is
represented. Thinking for Aristotle is like
geometrical construction: What one is star­
ing at is not the thing one is thinking; the
representation or image is figuratively meant
to evoke a thought. In this way, Aristotle is
claiming, thinking makes a use of images
(phantasmata)—not in order to represent
something but in order to elicit something
other than what is represented.
Of course the standard interpreter will
object: “She is thinking the form of the thing.”
The specific mechanics of the passage tell
however quite against this objection. In the
case of thinking an indeterminate quantity,
Aristotle claims, we call to mind a determi-
nate quantity; if something without quantity,
then some quantity. The difference here to
be sure is not intended to be representative
or “a form of” at all. Consider, for example,
the thinking of “an indeterminate quantity,”
say, a bunch of chairs. In my mind I have pic­
tured not a bunch of chairs, but in fact—as
I count them—five chairs.28 Is an indeter-
minate bunch “the form of” five chairs? It
seems extremely likely it is not.29 Perhaps
“indeterminate” here means “without a spe­
cific content.” Then “thinking” five would
imply the representation of five chairs—but I
am hard-pressed to imagine five is “the form
of” five chairs. For there is a great difference
for Aristotle between “the number of” and
“the form of.”30 If I intend “to think” some
quality, say red, I place before my thinking a
red ball; but again there is no decent evidence
to suggest red for Aristotle is “the form of”
red ball. Aristotle’s interest in the De Mem.
passage is not to show what is the way to
think forms, but what is the way to use
representations in order to evoke thoughts,
97
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
which are conceptual tools—what Aristotle
calls noe-mata.31
The difference between the standard and
the aesthetic interpretations may be grasped as
follows. According to the standard interpreta­
tion the thinking of an “indeterminate quan­
tity” would involve just the representation
of—an indeterminate quantity. According to
the aesthetic interpretation the thinking of an
indeterminate quantity will be evoked by the
representation of something else. Nussbaum’s
interpretation comes closest to mine in this
respect.32 Thus on the evidence of the De Mem.
passage she describes a “symbolization” to go
with thinking, the expression being no doubt
deliberate. For it points out that the relation
between phantasma and thought is not one
of representation but of some wider notion of
“association” or “coupling.”33
The point of the De Mem. passage is thus
not to show how thoughts of forms are
achieved through the thinking of the form
represented by imagination, but to illustrate
a peculiar “as” function of thinking that is
always some step removed from the “mate­
riality” of a mental image, and a peculiar
“filling in” function of imagination that is
always likewise some step removed from the
thing thought. For every time I mean to think
something, for Aristotle, I am always draw­
ing an image that has a few too many details.
“Think elephant,” says mind. “I’ll make
it gray,” says imagination. Mind of course
does not specify the color, is not even con­
cerned with the color, but it must be of some
color.34 Inasmuch as mind involves these acts
of phantasia, and these acts of phantasia are
not possible except for embodied perceiv­
ers, mind is an act too that is embodied.
Intelligible contents, Aristotle is claiming, are
made out only through sensible ones.
In Aristotle’s description active and pas­
sive components in thinking are of a unique
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
embodied sort. He claims that one aspect of
thinking will consist in the active representa­
tion (phantasia) of something associated in
some way for the thinker with the thought.
With this Aristotle joins a passive element:
not just the contemplation of the image
but the affection or undergoing (pathos) of
something called thinking. Which is not the
staring at the image or representation but
a movement that follows as a result of it—
and a movement according to DA III.5 that
is not remembering (οὐ μνημονεύομεν). I
have called this the aesthetic model owing
not only to the fact that more (or some­
thing else) is thought than is represented but
because moreover it is vividly exemplified in
average aesthetic experience—the image, the
piece, the film: They are occasions for think­
ing, and often (always?) not representative of
the thing thought. No one leaves the theater
saying, “Poor Willy Loman. How unique his
plight!”
There is an important respect in which
thinking is not like imagining, and also
not like pondering (but the two are differ­
ent), namely that when we have thought
something we have hit on some truth of it.
“Pondering” (dianoeisthai) is any intellectual
effort at running through steps of reasoning,
and this may be false or true;35 “imagining”
(phantazein) is, broadly construed, any sort
of appearance or “anomalous” sensation36
and usually, according to Aristotle, false.37
In order to contrast the preceding Aristotle
has recourse to the following difference: In
the case of phantasia “its affect (τὸ πάθος)
is up to us, whenever we like: We put some­
thing before our eyes (πρὸ ὀμμάτων . . . τι
ποιήσασθαι),”38 whereas “doxazein is not
up to us; for necessarily it is either false or
true.”39 The operation of placing something
pro ommato-n, “before the eyes,” puts us again
in mind of the De Mem. passage: phantasia
98
is said to be a sort of theatrical presentation.
The “up to us” qualification means to point
at the fact that who or what we put on stage,
so to speak, is entirely under our control and
at our whim. Doxazein by contrast is here
treated as a form of judgment (which is an
expression of intellectual virtue)40 whose
contents are not “up to us” inasmuch as they
are either true or false.
Thinking, Aristotle claims, “is in one
respect like phantasia and in another respect
like hupole-psis.”41 It is like phantasia in that
it is as we have seen not reliant on impinge­
ment, and is premised on a sort of theatri­
cality and imagination. On the other hand
it is like hupole-psis in that it makes a claim
to represent things as they are—but not
the contents of imagination. Consider Mr.
Loman. Here the phantasia that is the play
provides occasion for grasping some thought
about some subject like the modern laborer,
the modern subject, and so on. Now that
to be sure is not Willy Loman’s “form” but
(and here it must be recalled that he is not a
real person) a particular intelligible feature
occasioned by this character—a feature of or
about the world, that is, real people. No one
walks out caring about Willy Loman but
they do walk out caring about something
that is real. In this sense it is not just the
“escape” or “fantasy” of phantasia that is at
issue in thinking but the perception of a real­
ity that is occasioned by an image—a “judg­
ment” (hupole-psis) that so and so (which is
not represented in the phantasma) is indeed
the case.
Mind is embodied inasmuch as it is pre­
ceded by sensation and simultaneous with
imagination, but it is embodied in a fur­
ther sense connected with its distinction
from imagination—namely that “whenever
we have thought (doxaso-men) something
uncanny or frightful, immediately (euthus) we

are affected with an approximating sentiment
(sumpaschomen), just as [whenever we have
thought something to give us] courage.”42
Bearing in mind Aristotle’s introductory notes
on the question of the embodiment of mind,
this perhaps more than anything else shows
definitive commitment to the thesis that
mind is embodied. For earlier Aristotle had
said that being “embodied” (μετὰ σώματος)
meant the body’s “undergoing something
simultaneously” (ἅμα πάσχειν τι); and here it
is claimed precisely that in thinking the body
undergoes something simultaneously. The
relation could not be more immediate: Again,
the earlier question was whether it is possible
to relate some act or affect in the body that
correlates just to the influence of the psychic
faculty. Mind—not imagination—is claimed
precisely to be capable of that. The affection
associated with thinking, Aristotle claims, is
not like the affection of imagination, which
is “indifferent,”43 but rather—in the precise
terms of DA I.1—one of immediate affection
of the body by what is going on in the soul
(in this case the mind): the readying of the
body for action.
Mind, we have seen, is embodied inas­
much as it is preceded by sensation and
simultaneous with imagination. In the first
place this means just the use of the sensi­
tive capacities in order to elicit a thought.
Thus I am always making a use of embod­
ied capacities—capacities that could not be
disembodied—when I think. In phantasia I
see a hand, hear a quartet, smell roses. But
mind is embodied in a further sense, that is,
with a bodily affection. For some embodied
state corresponding to readiness for the actu­
ality perceived by mind puts the body in a
certain state. Inasmuch as the latter is not a
“simultaneous” (hama) but a “straightaway”
(euthus) affection we may also see it to result
of necessity from thinking.
99
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
Mind and Action
There is a third in addition to the precedent
and the simultaneous forms of embodiment
of mind, namely the embodiment of mind in
terms of a consequent action. Since it may
justly be objected that action results from
thinking only in certain cases,44 I shall limit
my remarks here. Even though to be sure
mind of itself is insufficient to generate an
action,45 nevertheless the agent who thinks is
most certainly compelled to act as a result of
having thought, and the relation of mind to
action provides further clues to its place in
the makeup of the thinking organism.
In MA 6–7 Aristotle claims that mind in
addition to desire is a fundamental sort of
principle of action.46 In certain explicit—per­
haps we might say “intentional”—practical
cases mind conduces to the conclusion, which
just is the action.47 The action-conclusion
itself is not a further propositional state but
the action.48 Aristotle articulates the contri­
bution of mind to action in the following
terms: “When one thinks (noe-se-i) that it is
good for every human to walk, and that she
is herself a human, straightaway (euthus) she
walks.”49 That the action is a necessary entail­
ment of the thought, is clear from Aristotle’s
claim that “one acts from a principle: If there
will be a cloak, there must be (ἀνάγκη εἶναι)
this first, and if this, then that; and the lat­
ter they do straightaway (πράττει εὐθύς).”50
The hypothetical necessity stemming from
the positing of an end is led in the practi­
cal syllogism back to the agent herself: The
agent acts because her mind discerns she
must act. Action—which of course is entirely
embodied51—follows in these cases necessar­
ily from having thought. Thus mind is not
only embodied in that it is always preceded
by sensation and simultaneous with imagi­
nation and some bodily disposition; it also
necessarily implies in certain cases some
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
embodied action as a result. These may even
be seen to be not just isolated embodiments
of mind but nodes along a continuous action.
The connection of bodily disposition and
mental act is given special emphasis in this
remark in MA 8: “The principle of move­
ment, as we were saying, is that which in
point of action is to be pursued or to be fled;
necessarily (ἐξ  ἀνάγκης), then, a heating or
cooling follows the thinking and imagining
(ἡ νόησις καὶ ἡ φαντασία) of them.”52 In
this way as a result of thinking (in certain
cases) there will be a bodily disposition and
a bodily action that are continuous produc­
tions necessarily entailed. The same claims
about mind’s role in action are to be found
in DA III53—yet in the latter there is spe­
cial insistence that thinking inasmuch as it
requires action will always be accompanied
by desire.54
Hesitance is indeed in order here. For as
I noted mind as a virtue is always an end or
purpose. And explanations of mind to the
effect of necessarily producing an action—in
the efficient sense—would certainly seem
near to flout that principle. Thus Aristotle’s
insistence that mind has no essential link to
praxis as a consequence; that mind may result
either in action or not, is an Aristotelian way
of maintaining the integrity of mind (in the
sense of a virtue) as a goal—mind is an end,
never a means.55 Nothing in a certain strict
and all-encompassing (practical and theoreti­
cal) sense therefore follows from mind “nec­
essarily” because mind is not the matter of
some other function.
Conclusion
I have attempted here to outline provision­
ally some ways in which to track Aristotle’s
100
attempts to concretize the relationship
between mind and body. I have dwelled
somewhat at length on the most conspicu­
ous of these attempts, that is, the relationship
between mind and phantasia. According to
the thought developed above, mind’s embod­
iment has not only to do with the embodi­
ment inherited from sensation and phantasia
but also immediately to do with forms of
affection specific to thinking.
On this model, notice, the nature of the
so-called active and passive “intellects” of
DA III.5 should not be as mystifying as the
commentary tradition would sometimes lead
us to believe. In asking the question, essen­
tial to psychological inquiry, how thinking is
actualized in matter, we were led to consider
its dependence on other perceptual acts; and
further in considering this dependence in
detail we find that to thinking correspond
not only sensitive and imaginative affec­
tions giving rise to mental contents but also
affections following on and simultaneous
with mental acts themselves. That to think­
ing then there belong not any but specific
embodied affections is precisely the principle
formalized in DA III.5 in terms of an active
(or, better, a constructive) and a passive or
affected component to thinking: here mind
“active,” contemplating some image; there
mind “passive,” apprehending some specifi­
cally mental (not merely sensitive or imagi­
native) content. And now, since mind is not
merely for Aristotle imaginative, but grasps
contents that articulate real states of affairs—
onta—the thinking organism is disposed and
behaves differently than before; now she per­
ceives matters differently.
All these acts and affections of mind are
embodied then in ways remarkable and unre­
markable. It is unremarkably evident, at the
level of sensation, that the sources of thinking
are living bodies; it is unremarkably true that

nothing that thinks is without a body and
that nothing that is without a body is capa­
ble of thinking. Yet it discloses something
remarkable to try to conceive of in what way
for Aristotle mind’s characteristic contents—
principles and essences—are adequate to and
at home with certain corresponding, and
embodied, sorts of fulfillment. It contains
potentially important insights, for example,
into his conception of the human body.
I have not reviewed in detail the language
of DA problematic to the embodied-mind
account, although it is my view that we
should regard it, problematic or not, from
the perspective of Aristotle’s broader theo­
retical commitments; for to do the opposite
of that, and to infer theoretical commitments
from isolated one-word claims, is irresponsi­
ble to the highest degree. It may nevertheless
be said that there is in Aristotle a fairly con­
sistent preoccupation with the remarkable­
ness of nous, and this, to go by the thought
of the previous paragraph, for reasons con­
nected intimately to the following tension in
his thinking.
Mind itself is an object of thinking. Then,
on the one hand, since thought relies always
on sense perception, and sense percepti­
bles are all material things or attributes, it
is strictly speaking only possible that mind
itself, as an object of itself, bears necessarily
on that sensible, hence material stuff—the
embodiment of mind may on this argument
be inferred from Aristotle’s basically empiri­
cist program. On the other hand, since, as
may also be shown for Aristotle, thinking
consists in sorts of evidence or fulfillment
irreducible to sensitive sorts, mind itself, an
object indeed most appropriate to thinking,
must needs be ontologically of a sort differ­
ent from that of the sensible—and the insen­
sibility, hence immateriality, of mind, along
with that of all essences and principles, may
101
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
be inferred from epistemological prejudices
of a different, say rationalist, sort. Supposing
(which would be no less faithful to Aristotle)
these arguments may go the other way,
and the epistemological claims inferred
from their corresponding ontological posi­
tions, the outmoded mind-body question
may then really be seen as a more contem­
porary, pressing question about the role of
sensation in thinking; about the character of
contents of sensation and mind; about the
relation between sensation and thinking in
judgment.
Far from irrelevant, far from anachro­
nistic, the mind-body question—how, and
no longer whether, mind relates to body—
may be seen to be the problematic core of
a tension characteristic in Aristotle not only
of mind itself, but of the being of the things
mind thinks. Let mind be embodied; in ask­
ing however about Aristotelian essences,
about their relation to matter, we are put to
questions perhaps more pressing, but in a
way the same.
Erick Raphael Jiménez
Notes
 1
Classic proponents of this view include
Robinson, 1978 and 1983; Heinaman,
1990.
 2
Defenders of some such view (which may be
seen to include the question whether Aristotle
has a Cartesian conception of “conscious­
ness”) include Kahn, 1966; Matson, 1966;
Grene, 1963; Hamlyn, 1993; Sorabji,
2006.
 3
For the contrast, see DA I.1, 403a25–b7.
 4
Thus the definition of so-called commensurate
universality in APo I.4, 73b25–8, that a univer­
sal is “what belongs to everything [of a certain
class] in itself and as itself” and moreover
“belongs of necessity (ἐξ  ἀνάγκης) to those
things.” As-such coextensivity means that
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
terms A and B extend to the exact same class;
there are no As that are not Bs and no Bs that
are not As. B belongs “universally” (katholou)
to the class to which A belongs “universally.”
(On the relevant definition of universality, see
APo I.2.)
 5
Note that “hypothetical” here does not mean
stipulative or axiomatic in the Euclidean sense.
In this context it describes a real, not a strictly
logical relationship.
 6
DA I.1, 403a10–16.
 7
On which see DA II.1, 412b6–9, where Aristotle
complains there is no reason even to ask
whether the soul and the body are one; since the
soul is the actuality of the body, they are one “in
the most authoritative sense [of unity].”
 8
M. Frede, 1995, 106.
 9
DA I.1, 403a8–10: εἰ δ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ τοῦτο (=τὸ
νοεῖν) φαντασία τις ἢ μὴ ἄνευ φαντασίας,
οὐκ ἐνδέχοιτ᾽ ἂν οὐδὲ τοῦτ᾽ (=τὸ νοεῖν) ἄνευ
σώματος εἶναι.
10
DA III.3, 429a1–2. Naturally this assumes
phantasia involves workings of the body.
11
DA III.7, 431a16–17.
12
It may be, a detractor might claim, that think­
ing does not involve a body as such but does
only because the thinkers we are talking about
happen also to be animals and to have bod­
ies. Thus Kahn, who seems to argue against
the specific account that “[t]he requirement
of phantasms is a direct consequence of . . .
our existence as sentient animals,” whereas
“the incorporeality of nous is for Aristotle
an essential feature of . . . our access to the
noetic domain” (Kahn, 1995, 362). Yet Kahn’s
point here is about the explanatory scope
of sensitive and noetic capacities; not about
whether thinkers have bodies or not. And
indeed he insists that so long as by thinkers
we mean humans, then thinkers have bodies.
The incorporeality of nous for Kahn is a
property of it that explains certain sorts of acts
and their contents. Thus the specific account
does not violate Aristotle’s “general principle
of non-reducibility: phenomena at the level
of nous are not to be explained in terms of
sense-perception” (376). Yet this does not
touch on the question whether mind requires
as a condition of its existence and exercise a
living body, which according to Kahn Aristotle
wholly endorses (ibid.).
102
13
Charlton, 1987, 417, justly complains: “That
there is no organ of thought may be agreed.
We do not think with our brains, or use them
in thinking, in the way in which we write with
our hands or use them in writing. But what
does that prove? There is no organ for turning
over in bed; nevertheless, there could not be a
turner-over-in-bed without a body.”
14
See DA I.1, 403a3–24.
15
DA III.3, 427b15–16.
16
See DA III.3, 427b24–6.
17
DA III.8, 432a3–8.
18
APo I.18, 81a38f.
19
It will be objected perhaps that sensation is
not embodied inasmuch as it is a reception
of form, and forms are the things that are
thought. To that it is easily responded that for
Aristotle to sense materially (with an organ)
and to sense formally are numerically identi­
cal even if essentially different, so that there
is no formally sensing without materially
sensing.
20
Of course this does not restrict at all my claim
throughout that the contents of thinking are
not contents of sensations, which anyway does
not follow from the fact that thinking depends
on having sensed.
21
Thus DA III.3, 429a1–2.
22
I take it the association is obvious in DA III.3;
De Mem. 1; APo II.19; etc.
23
See what I call “The Specific Account” above.
24
DA III.8, 432a7–8.
25
The most conspicuous recent representative
of this way of thinking would probably be
Modrak, 1987.
26
My interpretive premise here may be taken
from De Sensu 1, 436a1–6: “Since soul in itself
and each of the potentialities of its parts have
been defined, the next thing to do is to under­
take an inquiry into living things and all things
that have life concerning what are their unique
and what their common actions. Let what has
been said in DA [or ‘what has been said about
soul’] be taken for granted, and now let us
speak of the remaining questions.” Given this
rule-and-application architecture we should,
it seems, be in some position to assess from
the vantage of the Parva Naturalia some of
Aristotle’s own sense of the accomplishments
of DA.
27
De Mem. 1, 449b30–450a9.

28
Here I am reminded of the exemplification of
this feature of “Aristotelian categoricals” in the
natural-historical documentary-inspired exam­
ple from Thompson, 2008, 63, of a narrator’s
claiming bobcats have “two to four” offspring,
while the film shows “not just ‘two to four’ of
them, but exactly three.”
29
Perhaps a good question would be, Does
Aristotle conceive of “forms of” determinate
quantities? It would seem in the chair example
that the relevant “form” would be either chair
or some quantity, that is, in the sense of number.
But the thinking of indeterminate quantity does
not seem at all to be either of these.
30
The contrary would amount to a sort of
Platonism Aristotle rejects; thus Met. XIII–XIV,
esp. XIII.6–9, XIV.6.
31
Thus Caston, 2002, 284ff. Note I agree how­
ever with Nussbaum contra Caston that the
use of phantasmata is not just for the purpose
of “ignoring” certain features.
32
Thus Nussbaum, 1986, 266: “There is no
thinking (whether practical or thinking)
that is simply abstract; I cannot think of a
pure proposition. For every thought there is
some episode of symbolizing or envisaging
that, as it were, provides a concrete vehicle
for the thought. I do not simply think of the
Principle of Non-Contradiction, in all its
abstract purity. At the same time I am also
somehow symbolizing it to myself, whether
by imagining an example of it, or a logical
formalization, or even by saying some words.
Another point made by Aristotle in this regard
(Mem. 449b31ff.) is that usually my sym­
bolization will convey other strictly unneces­
sary information: I want to think about the
mathematical abstraction, Triangle, and my
thought is accompanied by the envisaging of
a particular kind of triangle, having a certain
size.” However she then goes on to miss the
point of the passage all over again, claiming
that “a picture-like object . . . symbolizes in
virtue of a similarity” (my emphasis) and that
“[Aristotle] seems to say we can’t help pictur­
ing the triangle of some definite size” (her
emphasis) drawing from Aristotle’s exam­
ples a prejudice for the visual (267). Frede,
1995, 285, in my opinion rightly stresses
that phantasmata need be neither visual nor
representative. I am agnostic on Frede’s larger
103
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
(essentially Kantian) story about phantasia as
“synthesizer.”
33
Here I am alluding, as no doubt Nussbaum
alludes, to the Greek notion of sumbolon as a
token of a contract.
34
But imagination does not return to mind and
say, “You said an elephant, but of course
an elephant is spatial and has surfaces and
surfaces have color. But you did not say which
color, so I have returned to ask you, What
color elephant did you mean?”
35
DA III.3, 427b13–14.
36
Thus respectively Frede, 1995; Schofield, 1995.
I have no special need to decide on these read­
ings; for my interest is just in the function of
phantasia with regard to thinking.
37
Thus, for example, DA III.3, 428a10. The
point of this doctrine seems to be that phan-
tasia as a presentation of sensible things is
“false” in that the sensible things represented
by phantasia are not there, which is precisely
how phantasia presents them. Interestingly
in the same passage Aristotle claims that “the
sensation of the unique objects is always true”
(DA III.3, 427b11–12)—obviously in the sense
not that my judgments about sensations are
always true but that if I perceive red I am
perceiving red and it is indeed red that I am
perceiving—implying that sensation as such, at
least of the idia, is not a presentative act.
38
DA III.3, 427b17–19.
39
DA III.3, 427b20–1.
40
DA III.3, 427b24–6.
41
DA III.3, 427b27–8.
42
DA III.3, 427b21–3.
43
DA III.3, 427b23–4: “In the case of phantasia
the state we are in is as if we were staring
(theo-menoi) at frightening or encouraging
things in a painting.”
44
This is not to say that I believe any such
scission of the practical from the theoretical
is ever entirely tidy in Aristotle; on which see
above all Baracchi, 2008. Indeed, to speak just
to the relevant context, especially in DA III.7
Aristotle is keen on emphasizing the continu­
ity of mind in a practical mode (and not just
after the model of MA) with mind as a state of
excellence in theoretical pursuits, and his claim
that mind perceives not just “the true” but “the
good” as well (or in the sense of “correctness”
[τὸ ὀρθῶς] the true as good) speaks directly
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
against any attempt to conceive of mind
strictly as a “theoretical” excellence in DA III.
(Indeed it is not clear even that that would
mean for Aristotle what it is taken frequently
to mean, since for Aristotle theoretical activity
is πρᾶξις τις, “a sort of action.”) The role of
nous moreover in the explanation of action (in
MA and in Met. for example) is well-known.
In any event: In NE mind is called the state of
excellence in principles both practical (vis-à-vis
phrone-sis) and theoretical (vis-à-vis episte-me-).
45
Thus the insistence of Nussbaum, 1986, 265,
citing DA III.9 and MA 6–7. The strongest claim
to credit this hesitance is in DA III.9–10. Thus
DA III.9, 432b26–433a1: “Neither the calcula­
tive capacity nor so-called mind can be the
mover [ὁ κινῶν, the efficient cause of action]; for
theoretical mind studies nothing practical; it says
nothing about what is to be fled or pursued. And
[animal] movement is always a sort of fleeing
or pursuing. But when one studies something of
this sort, it does not yet urge them to flee or to
pursue it. For example, one may frequently pon-
der (dianoeitai) something fearful or pleasurable,
but this does not demand that one be frightened;
rather the heart is moved.”
46
MA 6, 700b19; 6, 700b24; 7, 701a7f.
47
MA 7, 701a11f.
48
For discussion of this ambiguity, and for a
defense that the conclusion is not a proposition
but an action, see Vigo (forthcoming).
49
MA 7, 701b13–15.
50
MA 7, 701b20–2.
51
See, for example, the detailed excurses on
animal movement as a cooperation of parts in
MA, esp. MA 1–2, 8–9.
52
MA 8, 701b33–5. This is incidentally strik­
ingly contradicted by a passage of DA III.4
that I have argued elsewhere is not in propria
persona. Aristotle claims: “Mind is nothing
actually before thinking. Hence it was good
to say it is not mixed with the body; for then
some quality would come about, like a cooling
or warming, or it would have some organ,
like the sensitive faculty; but there is no such
thing,” etc. (DA III.4, 429a24–7). One further
attraction then for regarding the DA III.4 pas­
sage as incoherent and “dialectical” is that this
remark in MA 8 makes sense.
53
Thus DA III.10, 433a9.
104
54
Thus DA III.10, 433a22–6: “Now mind does
not seem to move without desire (for delibera­
tion is desire, and whenever one is moved as a
result of reasoning (logismos), they are moved
as a result of deliberation), but desire moves
even without (para) reasoning; for impulse
(epithumia) is a sort of desire.”
55
Indeed these same specifications will hold the
other way round: For praxis has just as little
an essential link to reason (that is one of the
leading suppositions of Aristotle’s ethics), and
(of course!) there is no inference forward to
or backward from action that will connect it
always or necessarily to full-blown thinking.
References
Baracchi, C., Aristotle’s Ethics as First
Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
Caston, V., “Aristotle on Consciousness,”
Mind, 111.444 (2002), 751–815.
Charlton, W., “Aristotle on the Place of
Mind in Nature,” in Philosophical Issues
in Aristotle’s Biology, ed. A. Gotthelf and
J. G. Lennox, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.
Frede, D., “The Cognitive Role of
ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑ,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De
Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Frede, M., “On Aristotle’s Conception of the
Soul,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima,
ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
Grene, M., A Portrait of Aristotle, Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1963.
Hamlyn, D.W. (trans. and ed.), Aristotle. De
Anima: Books II and III (With Passages
from Book I), 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
Heinaman, R., “Aristotle and the
Mind-Body Problem,” Phronesis, 35
(1990), 83–102.

Kahn, C., “Sensation and Consciousness
in Aristotle’s Psychology,” Archiv für
Geschichte der Philosophie, 48 (1966),
43–81.
— “Aristotle on Thinking,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum
and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
Matson, W. I., “Why Isn’t the Mind-Body
Problem Ancient?” in Mind, Matter,
and Method: Essays in Philosophy
and Science in Honor of Herbert Feigl,
ed. P. Feyerabend and G. Maxwell,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1966.
Modrak, D., Aristotle: The Power of
Perception, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1987.
105
MIND IN BODY IN ARISTOTLE
Nussbaum, M., Aristotle's De Motu
Animalium, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986.
Robinson, H. M., “Mind and Body in
Aristotle,” Classical Quarterly, 28 (1978),
105–24.
— “Aristotelian Dualism,” Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy, 1 (1983), 123–44.
Schofield, M., “Aristotle on the
Imagination,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De
Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Sorabji, R., Aristotle on Memory, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Thompson, M., Life and Action, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2008.
Vigo, A., Praxis and Action, Leuven:
University of Leuven, forthcoming.
 6
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
If locomotion belongs more to beings that have more fully taken on their natures, then this motion
would be first among others with respect to being.
Aristotle’s hylomorphic account of substance
often seems to follow from careful observa­
tion of phenomena, especially the obser­
vation of individual living organisms, rather
than abstract theoretical reflection. However,
Aristotelian science is governed by a very spe­
cific explanatory model that can be difficult
to reconcile with observational study. The
account of the living organism in De Anima
is split between these two poles. On the one
hand, the study of life aims at articulating
the soul and its principal divisions, which is
in line with the structure of scientific expla­
nation, and on the other hand the account
of soul depends on and derives from phe­
nomenological observation of living things.
I argue in this chapter that the Aristotelian
explanatory model, which requires that the
causal source of the animal’s life power be
a-spatial and atemporal but also instanti­
ated through the animal’s physiological
capacities of locomotion, imagination, and
common sensing, pushes in a phenomeno­
logically rigorous direction by demanding
that we do not privilege the animal over its
environment but take both perceiver and
perceived, broadly speaking, to be drawing
106
Aristotle, Physics VIII.7, 261a18–20
their separate identities from a single, physi­
ologically dynamic actuality.
The strategy of this chapter will be to take
Aristotle as wrestling philosophically in the
De Anima with the relationship between
body and soul and, in book III, taking spe­
cific interest in the relationship between the
living organism’s power of discrimination (to
kritikos) and its power of movement with
respect to place (τὸ κινεῖν τὴν κατὰ τόπον
κίνησιν).1 Aristotle is asking, I propose,
how these two powers can help us unify
what analysis has apparently “broken up”
(diaspan) (432b5) into parts. In the struggle
to account for the unity of soul, phantasia
plays a key role. I claim that phantasia is both
a “motor” power, which frees a given state
of affairs to be reconstrued as receptive of
initiative, and a “discriminative” power that
lets things present themselves independently
of the desiring and therefore partial perspec­
tive from which they are sighted.2 These two
sides of phantasia, discriminatory and motor,
are reconciled in the account of phantasia as
enabling a given actuality to be construed
“as,” that is, as being of this or that sort, as
turning toward this or that advantage, as

open to reconstrual pending deliberation and
inquiry. One chief merit of this reading will
be to unify the soul’s motor, perceptual, and
discriminative powers.
In the first section of the chapter, I address
the strengths and limitations of some contem­
porary interpretations of imagination and the
soul in De Anima, paying special attention to
the difference I find between interpretations
that look primarily toward the divisions of the
soul and interpretations that look toward the
unified soul reflected in the living organism.
I read these as false, or unsatisfying, alterna­
tives that prioritize either first or second actu­
ality respectively when the aim should be, I
claim, to see the two aspects of soul and its
expression in a broader unity. In the second
section of the paper I turn to phantasia, distin­
guishing between its “deliberative” (logistike-)
and “aesthetic” (aisthe-tike-) sides (De Anima
III.10) and interpreting phantasia as the power
to grasp and participate in the distinction
between first and second ­actuality.3 I argue
that the soul’s power to orient itself toward
the expression of first actuality affords it not
only its capacity for greater initiative but, in
its more developed form, the ability to recog­
nize its participation in life.
Review of Interpretations of
De anima Book III
To date in the secondary literature, helpful
work has contributed to our understand­
ing the role that imagination and locomo­
tion play in the exercise of the soul’s causal
­power.4 A major division in the work on
Aristotle’s De Anima occurs between those
who are primarily interested in Aristotle’s
account of the causal power of the soul’s
individual parts, aiming to distinguish the
107
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
soul’s powers from its parts, and those pri­
marily interested in an account of the rela­
tionship between soul and body, focusing on
the way powers facilitate the causal efficacy
of the soul in the body.
The structure of De Anima on the sur­
face of it lends support to the former view.
books II and III answer the methodological
aim set up in book I of dividing the soul into
appropriate parts, as signaled in II.2 where
Aristotle says that if capacities are separa­
ble in account they name different parts of
the soul. We might therefore take the ensu­
ing study of the various powers of soul as a
test of which powers qualify as parts prop­
erly speaking.5 Book III continues marking
out parts of the soul, extending the book II
discussion of the power of receiving form
with matter, that is, nutrition, and receiving
form without matter, that is, perception, into
a discussion of the soul’s grasp of intelligible
form. In this context, the study of phantasia
is situated between the account of the unified
sense power in III.2 and the account of think­
ing in III.4–5 because Aristotle is attempt­
ing to distinguish phantasia, here taken as a
power, from the parts of the soul that make
use of this power. Aristotle is free to return to
investigate the role of imagination in locomo­
tion (DA III.9–11), on this account, as an epi­
logue to the analysis of the soul’s parts. The
order and organization of De Anima would
therefore suggest a programmatic orientation
toward the division of the soul into its proper
nutritive, perceptive, and intellective parts.
But the structure of book III also points to
the alternative view according to which the
aim of the study is not only to partition the
soul into its parts but to understand the rela­
tionship between first and second actuality in
the soul’s relationship to the body. First actu­
ality is the principle governing the organized
body, differentiating its complex structure
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
and relating its powers to one another in a
way that supports its efficacy and explicit
expression in all life circumstances. Aristotle
calls soul the first actuality, or form, of an
organized body with the potential or power
for life. From this point of view, it is the life
of an organism that most of all dominates
Aristotle’s thinking about the soul and its
embodied activity (hylomorphism).
De Anima III begins with an analysis of
the completeness of the five sense powers
and their unifying principle in the account
of the “common sensibles” (chapter 1),
followed by a discussion of the perceiving
soul’s self-awareness (chapter 2), and ends
with a study of the unified life sense and loco­
motion. Aristotle’s focus on the basic sense
power of self-aware orientation and the prac­
tical expression of this power through loco­
motion at the beginning and end of the book
indicate his interest in the way the parts of the
soul, separate in account, can be reconciled.
If Aristotle were primarily interested in estab­
lishing the distinction between parts of soul,
presumably he would not have said so little
about the nature of intellect, and he would
not have left the question of the unqualified
separability of intellect undecided. The very
brief and passing study of intellect in book
III is subordinated, by its extreme economy if
nothing else, to the larger and more encom­
passing study of the unified life sense.
From these two points of view, we arrive
at very different expectations regard­
ing book III. On the one hand, the book
presents itself as the project of identifying
the parts of the soul separable in account;
on the other hand, it presents itself as a
study of how the separate parts of the soul,
that is, nutritive, perceptive, and thinking,
are reconciled with one another in animal
life. I propose that these two interpretive
directions in which De Anima III is taken
108
reflect a single, self-consistent account of
the relationship between soul and body.
The Unity of Perceptive
Power (AISTHeˉTIKoN) and the
Placelessness of Soul
The main thesis put forth in this section
is that the perceptive part of the soul,
broadly speaking, is inseparable from the
power of locomotion, and yet the conjunc­
tion of the two implies that the perceptive
part of the soul is separable in account and
not located in the animal.6 In other words,
animal self-awareness is inextricably tied
to the unity of its perceptual field, and
the unity of the perceptual field implies a
distinct part of the soul that governs the
body’s relation to an intelligibly organized
environment.7
In De Anima III.1 Aristotle uses two argu­
ments to show that the perception of motion,
rest, shape, magnitude, number are “com­
mon” to multiple sense powers and, there­
fore, must be grasped by a unified power
of perception. The first argument is that he
has already provided a complete list of the
proper sense powers, that is, the three con­
tact powers (touch, taste, smell) and the two
distance powers (seeing and hearing),8 and
as such there can be no further sense power.
The second argument is that if these common
objects of perception were to be grasped by
a proper power, they would be known “acci­
dentally” (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) in the way see­
ing “white” is seeing “sweet,” that is, seeing
white is a perception of the thing that is also
sweet. In the case of accidental perception,
we are aware that two perceptions happen
together (συμπέσωσιν ἅμα) (425a23–4), but,
as Aristotle claims, this is possible because

we “already” have a common perception of
the object. The connection between “white”
and “sweet” is not inferred or added to
them externally by a process of reasoning
but is present in advance of the perception
of color and taste. This advance perception
allows the connection to be drawn between
separate grasps we have on the thing through
the proper senses.9 The common sensing
power is not an additional sense but, prior
in account to the proper sense powers, ena­
bles and situates the perception of primary
qualities.10 Aristotle says that the senses per­
ceive what is proper to each other “by what
is one,” that is, a prior unified grasp of the
perceptual object.11 There is one source to
which all proper perceptions point and from
which their differences and relations are
apparent.12
All perception is a displacement from a
proper ratio, or mean, which in the case of
the proper sense powers is a ratio of high and
low tones, wet and dry, rough and smooth,
etc.13 When this ratio is stretched too far,
the perceiving can be overwhelmed and
shut down, and the perceptive organ can be
damaged. The common sense power is also
a “mean” but one that is directed toward
those aspects of the environment relevant
for initiative and action. The common sense
power gathers the various aspects of percep­
tual experience toward a center; for example,
Aristotle’s account of the common sensibles
would allow us to say that a particular shape
(e.g. round or square) speaks of motion and
rest, for instance, as a square shape implies
stability and a round shape implies insta­
bility.14 This correlation of aspects in things
signals a shift in the level of description of
perception from ratios that are visible, aural,
olfactory, etc., to potentialities for the power
of ­initiative. The common sensibles are
the point of access the ensouled body has,
109
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
through objects, to its own potentiality for
engagement with its environment.
Aristotle says “it is necessary that one
[thing] gather that they are different” (δεῖ δὲ
τὸ ἓν λέγειν ὅτι ἕτερον, DA III.2, 426b20–1)
and “it is the same thing that gathers [they are
different]” (λέγει ἄρα τὸ αὐτό, 426b21).15
The common sensing power speaks of the
unity of objects and circumstances. On their
own, “it is not possible for separate senses
to distinguish what is separate” (οὐχ οἷόν
τε κεχωρισμένοις κρίνειν τὰ κεχωρισμένα,
426b22–3).16 Separate senses are no more
aware of the difference between them than
two people having separate experiences,
and they are therefore unaware of the larger
context in which any of the proper objects
belong. In order for distinct aspects to be
seized in their belonging together, they must
be placed into a shared space, which means
that they must be seized from a single source
at a single moment. Aristotle says that the
source and the “when” of the seizing must
be one, just as the single act of distinguish­
ing good and bad implies both that one dif­
fers from the other and that the other differs
from the one.
From this single act of discrimination the
soul distinguishes opposite qualities. The
act of discrimination is “an indivisible [act]
in an indivisible time” (ἀχώριστον καὶ ἐν
ἀχωρίστῳ χρόνῳ, 426b29), for instance,
the act in which white is distinguished from
black. Although the qualities are opposite
and, therefore, would move the perceptive
power in opposite directions, “one thing”
discriminates the opposites at one time, and
by its act the soul is open to, for example,
white and black, sour and sweet, or good and
bad. As Aristotle puts it, the thing that dis­
tinguishes is one in being but two in potency.
As one in being, it distinguishes at one time
in a single act. As two in potency, it has the
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
capacity to be moved in opposite directions
by the opposites it marks out. Aristotle com­
pares the distinguishing act to a point or
boundary: the boundary divides an area and
provides orientation within the overall field
but, as a limit, is only per accidens an object
in the field it demarcates.
In III.2 Aristotle consolidates his basic
point in the formula that “we perceive that
we perceive” (425b12). The way an animal
perceives itself is drawn from objects in the
sense that the animal’s self-perception and
awareness of motor potentiality cannot be
separated from its perceptual intwining
with objects. As he says, the actuality of the
perceiver and the actuality of the perceived
is “one and the same” (ἡ αὐτὴ μέν ἐστι καὶ
μία, 425b26–7); they differ not insofar as
their actualities are separate but insofar as
“their being is not the same” (τὸ δ’ εἶναι
οὐ τὸ αὐτὸ αὐταῖς, 425b27). Later in the
text Aristotle calls this shared actuality
“twofold” (ditton), similar in a sense to the
twofold nature of the way up and the way
down. To submit ourselves to the way, we
must submit to a single path going from the
Piraeus to Athens and from Athens to the
Piraeus. The path is one, but its being is two.
Similarly, when we submit to a perceptible,
we submit to a certain self-awareness. The
grasp the animal has of the object, how­
ever partial it is, is a grasp the animal has
of itself. Things therefore in being perceived
must speak of a perceiver.17 Furthermore,
insofar as there is no object that cannot
be better seen, there is no instance of see­
ing that does not imply potentialities of the
perceiver, all of which are oriented toward
the principle of completeness. The common
perception of objects implies the potential
for further clarity, and the cohesiveness of
the perceiver is inextricably tied up with the
perceptibility of things.
110
All this seems to point to the conclusion
that perception is sourced in the animal
body, positioned in a certain way, with a
certain disposition, affordances, and so on.
But Aristotle compares the source of the per­
ceptive power to a geometrical point, which
although it is “spatial” in a very important
respect, it is not one of the things in space.
The point has no dimensions of its own; it
differentiates places from each other with­
out taking up space of its own. As the line
depends on the point as the source from
which it arises and into which it terminates,
so too the perceptive power (aisthe-tikon) is
an a-spatial principle of spatiality, one which
locates and gives orientation.
We have seen in this section that the per­
ceiver gains access to its self-perception
through the perception of objects and that the
principle of perception places without being
subject to place. Importantly, we have seen
that these are two sides of the same concept.
There is an intimate correlation between the
perception of things and the perception of
self, which calls for a principle of place that,
even if it is in some sense present in the body,
for example, in the heart, would itself be
prior to place similar to the way in which the
point, which does not have size, is “present
in” its context as the limit that defines that
context. For the animal, the perceptive power
divides the context in ways that matter to the
animal. The perceptive power carves up and
integrates its perceptual field. Although the
animal is “in” its environment, the source
of the power that divides and integrates the
animal’s perceptual field is not subject to
spatiality, carving up its perceptual field and
giving the animal orientation. The common
sensing power opens up the distance nec­
essary for initiative and carves out lines of
relevance within the unified perceptual field,
illuminating place by the light of the qualities

revealed by the proper senses, for example,
brightness, color, taste, pitch, etc., all unified
in and answering to the demands of animal
initiative. Thus, place is inherently something
lived in.
Ensouled bodies have the power to reveal
differences in and among things of the world,
specifically differences that are relevant to
their self-aware engagement with things and
circumstances in the context of their overall
desiring project.18 In III.2 Aristotle extends
the study of common sensing to show that
the power of perception is a power of initi­
ative, that is, a power that renders the world
actionable. What we might loosely call the
“empiricist” assumption that the perceptive
principle is located “in” the perceiver ignores
the a-spatial character of the explanatory
schema. The principle of perception is the
prior constitutive basis that saturates the envi­
ronment without being subject to spatiality. If
the perceptive principle is to be located at all
it is “in” the appearance to the organism of
a unified perceptual field.19 It is for this rea­
son that perceiving a world is always already
a process of discovering the position and dis­
position of the body from which the world is
perceived and the motor-potentialities inher­
ent in the actuality of a perceiving body. In
other words, perception is fundamentally a
motor-perceptual project.
Locomotion and Phantasia
The account of the critical powers in book
III, especially the characterization of the
common sensing power as a mean of
self-perception, dovetails nicely with the dis­
cussion of motor capacities in III.9–11. In
III.1 Aristotle demonstrates the completeness
of the five proper senses, which establishes a
qualitative distinction between proper sense
111
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
and common sensing power. This shifts the
book II analysis of embodied form to a new
level of description. The means of percep­
tion is now no longer a part of the body, for
example, eyes, ears, etc., but the ensouled
body as a whole. In this section I will argue
that the a-spatial character of soul makes
room, as it were, for the ensouled body to act
as a single mean of perception. Specifically, I
want to show that the placelessness of soul as
causal source requires a body with the pow­
ers of locomotion and phantasia. The rela­
tionship between locomotion and phantasia
will enable us to see the intimate relationship
between the opening part of book III, that is,
the account of the unified perceptual field
(DA III.1–3), and the concluding account of
the locomotive power (III.9–11).
In book II, the soul demands a certain
bodily ratio (logos), capable of supporting a
mean, in order to perform its functions. The
form of the proper sense power was instan­
tiated in a qualitatively determinate ratio of
homoeomerous material components. The
power of touch is a certain ratio of bodily
elements capable of sensing tangibles, just
as the powers of seeing and hearing, etc. are
ratios of simple bodies capable of receiv­
ing form without the matter. The elements
standing in ratio to one another are capable
of sensing objects of qualitatively ­different
kinds and are open to a qualitatively distinct
arena of meaning, one which they support
but in which they do not directly partici­
pate.20 At this level, the soul’s exercise of
its causal power is an inflexible measure
of qualitative determinacy, supported by a
determinate ratio out of which bodily ele­
ments are composed.
The inflexibility of the form-matter rela­
tionship in perception is carried over into the
single mean of perception in animals with
so-called hardened eyes, which are unable
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
to see colors except in terms of what is and
is not threatening to their initiative. For
such animals, colors simply are what either
is or is not threatening to the soul’s overall
project of self-maintenance.21 Colors are
seen univocally as either frightening, that is,
time to flee, or enticing, that is, time to eat
or reproduce, or as irrelevant background
noise.22 Everything that appears to the ani­
mal does so as either an aid or an obstacle
in the projects of nutrition, self-defense, and
ultimately reproduction,23 and action is just
the process of sorting the given material situ­
ation in which the animal finds itself. Things
are present insofar as they speak to the ani­
mal’s capacities and in terms of the animal’s
characteristic style of responding. What is
missing is a sense of the given as open to dif­
ferent, even opposing, construal, such that
“red” could mean pleasure or pain, or that
“threatening red” could be the occasion for
a variety of different appropriate responses.
What is missing, in other words, is the dis­
tance from the given that would allow room
for ambiguity. We discover that room for
ambiguity in the desiring perception of things
discussed at the end of book III.
In III.7–11 Aristotle repeats and extends
the book II analysis of desiring bodies by
introducing the distinction between sen­
sory and deliberative phantasia. At first, the
description of sensory imagination does not
allow for greater degrees of ambiguity in
the animal’s experience of things. The bod­
ily awareness of position and disposition
with respect to circumstances is subjected to
a fixed reading of color, sound, taste, etc.,
in the terms set by the life sense. The per­
ception of “green” is the desiring percep­
tion of “food” dictated by the perception
of a unified context of bodily initiative and,
ultimately, by the species form. The animal
is oriented toward the good and the bad:
112
“being pleased or pained is the being-active
of the mean state in the perceptive part in
relation to the good or bad as such” (DA
III.7, 431a10–11). Animals, with their very
being focused into this single mean of per­
ception, mark a primary distinct­ion between
“yes” and “no” in response to the world.
The good and bad mark out the true and
the false in terms relevant to the perceiver:
“independently of practical matters, the true
[thing] and the false [thing] are in the same
class as the good and the bad; they differ in
that the one is in the class simply, the other
in relation to someone” (431b10–12). The
good and the bad carve up the world in rela­
tion to the fate of the perceiving being. In
sensory imagination there is perceived ambi­
guity but only at the level of the direction
things are turned, that is, either toward or
away from the animal’s advantage. There is
no explicitly perceived ambiguity in the ani­
mal’s perceptive field.
At the same time, there is always an
implicit capacity for ambiguity in the ani­
mal’s experience of itself and the world. For
instance, “sensory imagination” (αἰσθητικὴ
φαντασία) allows the animal access to the
plasticity of its surroundings for the sake of
engaging those circumstances transforma­
tively. In each imagining there is an implicit
engagement with the reversibility and redi­
rectability of given circumstances.24 Similarly,
the locomotive body contains within it the
power to reconstrue its limbs in self-motion.
According to Aristotle, locomotion
depends on the body’s power to oppose
itself. Unlike earth, air, fire, and water, which
are aggregates, a self-moving being must be
capable of sustaining itself in opposition to
itself, which implies the ability to let its limbs
stand open for construal. The joint sustains
the opposition in which motion and rest are
drawn together into a center at which one

part of the body, resting, frees another part
to be in motion. Explaining this work in the
Motion of Animals, Aristotle says:
For it is clear in perceptible objects, too,
that it is impossible for there to be move­
ment if nothing is at rest—and, above
all, in animals, our present concern. For
if one of the parts moves, there must be
some part at rest; and it is for this reason
that animals have joints. For they use
their joints like a center, and the whole
section containing the joint becomes
both one and two, both straight and
bent, changing potentially and actually
by reason of the joint. (698a14–21)25
One part holds itself in place impassively so
that the other part can express this impassiv­
ity in and through motion. For example, it is
possible for a foot to be lifted forward for the
purposes of walking as long as the other foot
is fixed in place. The determinate impassivity
of the part at rest is in some sense expressed
by the determinate freedom of the part in
motion.
The body’s power of self-opposition is
made more explicit in Aristotle’s description
of jumping and running. The upper part of
the body pushes against the lower part, and
the body as a whole pushes against the solid
earth below it. The upper part is free to move
only insofar as the lower part is held fast,
unmoved, and impassive. In turn, the upper
part of the body can reverse its role and become
the unmoved base from which the lower part
is drawn up. As Aristotle describes it:
. . . For the [animal] leaping makes the
leap by supporting itself on both its
upper part and on what is under its feet,
for the parts [of the animal] have some
mutual support in relation to each other
in its joints, and generally the [part]
pressing [finds support] in relation to the
113
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
one pressed. For this reason those train­
ing holding [weights] leap further than
those not holding, and runners run faster
swinging their arms, for there occurs in
extending the arms some pressing against
the hands and wrists. (Progression of
Animals, 705a12–18)
Aristotle shows that the body is a composite
made up of parts that are what they are in and
through being other to one another. The body
is a self-opposed relation; the body is held
together at its joints, from which its locomo­
tion springs. Not only are parts of the body
opposed to other parts, but the parts them­
selves can switch between the role of being
“squeezed” as the rest of the body pushes
down on them, and being “pulled” as the body
thus set in motion carries them forward. This
clarifies what Aristotle means when he calls
the joint a “center”: the joint is a point of rota­
tion around which the parts of the body lever­
age each other in the motion of the whole.
This brief consideration of animal motion
has uncovered two things. First that it is nec­
essary for an animal body to be articulated
into parts. Motion is only possible insofar
as a body can be in motion and at rest, that
is, in motion with respect to one part and at
rest with respect to the other. This is true of
all locomotion.26 Second, the relationship
between the part in motion and the part at
rest is reversible. The jointed body is the one
that is in the business of transforming its
moving part into a part at rest and leverag­
ing its newly fixed inertia in the process, the
way we might push off the ground with a leg
only then, quite naturally, to swing that same
leg forward and let our momentum carry us
forward.
Motion teaches us not only that parts of
the body can be differently construed, that
is, as leveraging and leveraged, but that they
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
must be so construed. When I move, one leg
remains at rest in order to propel the rest of
me forward, and then that leg is taken up
in turn and propelled forward. If I imagine
what it is like for a bird to fly, the wings
pull the body forward, drawing it up behind
them, and then the body’s built-up momen­
tum becomes a secure anchor for the wings
to reset themselves as they reach forward and
draw the body forward again. This process
works because the animal is tacitly aware of
itself as a limit, that is, as one and two: it is
at one moment pulling itself forward, and
in this moment it is “two,” self-opposed. In
the next moment it is one thing resting in the
inertia of the whole body. Neither attitude of
opposition nor self-confirming inertia would
be possible unless they both drew equally on
the awareness of the body being both one and
two. This awareness of self as limit expresses
itself as locomotion.27
When I move, furthermore, I demonstrate
that my inertia can carry my initiative into
the world and serve me as the “launching
pad” for further initiative. I learn to antici­
pate the way the situation will be given to
me, that is, the pivot point I will establish
for myself if I move in this direction at this
speed, etc. The earth against which I push to
launch myself forward is no longer simply
something given. It is now something I give
myself in one particular respect or another.
The experience of jointed motion thus comes
with the wisdom that what I now do pre­
pares the conditions in which I will presently
find myself acting. It shows me that “I” am
both the one acting and the conditions from
which I act, because it is through my body
that I give rise to the conditions that make it
possible to act. I am the one who disposes my
body in such a way that my future comport­
ment will enable me to take up my inertia
and propel myself forward.
114
In the previous section of this chapter, we
saw that the common sensing power is a per­
ceptive mean by which the animal’s desiring
project in the world is practically expressed.
In the case of animals with “hardened eyes,”
perception was seen to be locomotive in the
sense that perception implied pleasure and
pain, therefore pursuit and avoidance, and
the animal’s power to turn circumstances to
its advantage or away from its disadvantage.
The animal inherits a situation that has been
disposed either well or poorly by prior initia­
tive and the givenness of circumstances, and
it must take up in turn that inherited situa­
tion to propel it forward.
In the case of nonrational animals, inher­
ited momentum and individual initiative are
reliably wedded by the soul. For instance, the
power of walking is at home as the power
to inherit momentum and turn it toward the
animal’s aim, shifting itself in response to
changing circumstances. The power to walk
can then be understood not only in terms of
the body and material cause, as if the animal
needed to think explicitly about the recon­
strual of bodily limbs necessary for locomo­
tion, but in terms of the world as it appears
to a “walker,” that is, the world appears as
articulated with respect to place and position,
that is, as accessible to a mobile perspective.
It is the animal’s ability to reconstrue itself
that is presupposed by the animal’s ability
to see its world as open to being differently
construed and receptive of initiative.28 In
order to have a unified field of perception,
the animal must be able to see the world in
terms that are consistent with locomotion
and initiative.
If we were to take from our above discus­
sion the lesson that phantasia is the power to
make present what is absent, then imagina­
tion would be a precondition for our ability
to see a situation is charged with potential.

For example, a cat seems to be imagining
things when it waits attentively at the base
of the wall waiting for something to emerge
from the crack in the floorboard. Surely a dog
is imagining things when it is asleep at the
quietest hour in the middle of the night but
its paws are twitching and its nose is flaring
as if it were on the verge of a great victory. In
both these cases, the animal is allowing the
potentialities of a given circumstance to
express themselves fully. They are following
out the potentialities that are secretly present
in actually existing circumstances. They do
not need to wait for something to present itself
to them. Actual circumstances point beyond
themselves to the possibilities they contain
not in virtue of any content other than the
very determinacy of the circumstances.
I am suggesting here that images (phantas-
mata) and imagination are best understood
as possessing a potentiality to be otherwise
that is rooted in their specific determinacy. I
have in mind the sort of things Aristotle says
about recollective images in On Memory and
Recollection. Recollecting, he says, is not in
one’s power, just as it is not in the power of
those who throw something to make it stop.
We get hold of a starting point that sets a
process in motion, like ringing a bell; as soon
as one note is sounded, the others seem to
follow of their own accord, until finally the
whole song emerges to situate each of its
parts. Images and imagination, in my view,
are volatile in the same way, that is, they
point beyond themselves and turn given cir­
cumstances into a starting point for possibili­
ties that are only implied. I take it that this
is what Aristotle indicates when he says that
phantasia is a “motion of a sort” (DA III.3,
428b11), that is, it implies an unfolding; it
harbors a dynamic impulse.29
In III.1–3, we saw that the body capable
of initiative, that is, desire and its expression
115
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
through pursuit and avoidance is a prior basis
for the work of the proper sense organs. The
proper senses perceive qualities, which means
that in some sense this perceptual act can be
abstracted from the larger whole of life, but
this is true only in the specific instance of a
rational soul. For the animal in the broadest
sense, there are no detached and free-floating
qualities in the world, and there is no percep­
tion of qualities not already situated within
a larger, directed, horizon of engagement.
Qualities appear as measured by the percep­
tual mean, and they appear abstracted on
their own as qualities only insofar as the soul
is capable of detaching itself from its practical
engagements. This self-extraction requires, I
contend, the ability to behold ambiguity in
the object of perception, which requires the
power of phantasia.
The result of this power to behold ambi­
guity is “deliberative” phantasia, which
operates in the context of hypothetical or
conditional engagements. Deliberative phan-
tasia is, in the context of practical intellect,
the power not only to reconstrue the given
in light of initiative but the power practi­
cal intellect has to draw a common measure
from given circumstances and to reckon “for
the sake of something” (νοῦς δὲ ὁ ἕνεκά
του λογιζόμενος καὶ ὁ πρακτικός, III.10,
433a14). Aristotle emphasizes the variability
to which deliberative phantasia gives rise:
“whether one will act in this way or that is
already the work of reckoning (logismos)”
(III.11, 434a7–8). This variability and the
animal’s presence to its productive ambiguity
depend on the ability to establish a standard
by which to measure circumstances and map
them out, as it were. It is only on the basis
of the power to gather circumstances in light
of a governing standard that it is possible
to orient toward the variability of action and,
at the same time, “pursue the greater [good]”
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
(τὸ μεῖζον γὰρ διώκει, 434a9). Deliberative
phantasia thus lets its object stand open to
construal and remain to a certain degree
undecided, so that the animal can stand
back from actually given circumstances and
engage them transformatively.
Most importantly for the purposes of this
chapter, deliberative phantasia allows the
animal the detachment from circumstances
requisite to perceive the gap between form
and matter; that is, by taking the relationship
between the governing form and its material
expression, deliberative imagination allows
for participation in the relationship between
first and second actuality. Circumstances are
no longer simply given but given as a mate­
rial composition answering to the aims of
action, evaluable according to a standard and
expressive as well of a potential for recombi­
nation and new expression.
Turning now from practical to theoretical
intellect, we are in a position to see that it is in
the context of the practical detachment pro­
vided by phantasia that the errors of thinking
first arise. In the final section of this chapter
I want to extend the point that the embod­
ied soul is characterized by greater degrees
of awareness of ambiguity in things and
self-aware participation in life to the account
of thinking and error in De Anima III.3.
The Problem of Truth and
Falsehood
In this concluding section of the chapter I
want to ask the question, which may seem
naïve, why it is that perception and thinking
are not always true. Given that animal life
is for the most part successful at making a
place for itself in the world, and given that
we seem to have powers of proper perception
suited to that world and suited to the things
116
we encounter, why should it not be that we
are always correct, or at least never in error,
in all our perceptions and judgments? The
answer, I claim, is that for animal soul, espe­
cially in light of locomotion, disengagement
from circumstances and a grasp of their
objective ambiguities, that is, the power of
phantasia, is the basis upon which errors of
thinking can occur. I will thus be arguing that
phantasia is constitutive of discrimination,
that is, perceiving and thinking.30 As corol­
laries of this point, I will argue that certain
types of perception in which there is appar­
ently no phantasia, such as the perception
of color as color (rather than as good or
bad), and instances of phantasia in which
there is apparently no perception, for exam­
ple, dreams and images, presuppose a more
fundamental power of phantasia at the root
of its special exercise. Fundamental phan-
tasia (1) evacuates perception of desire, (2)
allows things to be taken up as undecided
and open to reconstrual and, therefore,
(3) allows ambiguity to become for the first
time an object of thought. On the basis of
this account, I will conclude by addressing
Aristotle’s claims regarding falsehood, that
is, that phantasiai are frequently and persist­
ently false (DA III.3, 428a11), that deception
is proper to living beings, and that the soul
persists in it (427b1–2).
True and false judgments are the work of
theoretical, not practical, intellect. Aristotle’s
analysis here begins from the animal’s simple
presence to a state of affairs rather than the
practically transformative engagement with
circumstances through desire and locomo­
tion. In order to be simply present to cir­
cumstances without being engaged in them,
however, it is necessary first to carve out a
space in which this is possible. The basic
stance toward things is not one of detach­
ment but engaged participation, as reflected

in supposition (hupole-psis, 427b16 and
b28) and belief, which Aristotle says are not
simply “up to us” but compelled. Phantasia
enables us to suspend those commitments. In
imagination, Aristotle says, we can be present
to something terrifying without feeling terri­
fied, as if the terrifying situation were in a
painting (427b23–4).31 In the detached space
provided by imagination we can participate
in truth and falsity because we have tempo­
rarily suspended the good and the bad and,
along with them, we have suspended the per­
spective “for me” from which things appear
good or bad. In this way we can approach
objects as a combination and division of
qualities rooted in the nature of the object
and take them up without reference to our­
selves. To perceive error and participate in
truth and falsity require that we first become
aware that the measure we take of things
might reflect more on our perspective than
on the nature of the object known.
Once a space is clear in which the nature
of the object can appear, it becomes possi­
ble to see the qualities of that object as dis­
tinguished from one another and gathered
toward a shared source. In this way, error is
“always in an act of putting things together”
(III.6, 430b3). In other words, truth and fal­
sity require the ability to see combinations
and divisions of things in light of being appro­
priate and called for by the nature of things.
The power to see truth is accompanied by the
constitutive possibility of falsehood, for the
reason that what we take to be the gathering
source, the nature of the thing, might be just
an opinion of ours. Neither truth nor falsity
can occur except on the basis of detachment
from circumstances granted by phantasia.32
The account of imagination we are devel­
oping here thus explains the power human
beings have to suspend the claim objects
of our world have on us, such that we are
117
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
able to approach them as open to construal.
What we might otherwise have taken to be
the nature of things imposing itself on us
presents itself on the basis of imagination as
something construed, either truly or falsely.
The knower may now, for instance, falsely
suppose “yellow liquid” to be bile on the
basis of being able to disengage from things
and, by separating “yellow” from “liquid,”
“viscosity,” and “odor,” let these qualities
stand out as gathered together by the nature
of bile. Judgment of this kind implies a disen­
gaged presence to things, that is, a spectator
who is accidentally a participant. Phantasia
allows the embodied soul to extricate itself
from the immediacy of the given not only
for the sake of transformative initiative but
in order to see the given as called for and
ordered by the nature of things on the side
of the known. Phantasia that reveals the
actual state of affairs charged with potential
is “deliberative” when it allows the soul a
degree of transformative initiative.
But phantasia only provides the possibility
of detachment on the basis of engagement.
Phantasia is irrevocably dependent on the
practical commitment to a particular con­
strual, that is, one that opens up other facets
of things and the possibility of reconstrual.
It is always possible that the “detached” and
open presence to things that allows true judg­
ment will turn out to have been guided by a
prior commitment of ours, guided not by the
nature of things but by the necessity of prac­
tical engagement. Thus, even while phantasia
is what allows detachment from our par­
tial perspective, Aristotle also calls phanta-
siai frequently and persistently false (III.3,
428a11), and he says that being deceived is
“more proper to living beings” and that “the
soul continues to persevere in this condition”
(427b1–2). Things appear in light of judg­
ments, but it is the world that we see and
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
know, so our judgments, when false, remain
concealed from our view.
Practical phantasia would be continuously
in error in the sense that error is fundamen­
tally disclosive and inexorably part of the
appearing of things. That is, the falsity of one
practical hypothesis opens the horizon for
the practically engaged animal and provides
the basis, in principle, for the detached pres­
ence that is required by theoretical imagi­
nation. The animal “reads” circumstances
by inserting itself into them, jumping in the
water as it were, and therefore always getting
things partially right and partially wrong.
Practical imagination would on this account
be frequently in error because it finds utility
in its errors. Animals “err” when they posi­
tion themselves in the environment, assume
a bodily disposition, and prepare themselves
for a response. Sometimes animals must even
insert themselves into the environment in such
a way as to prompt a premature response for,
for example, a predator or prey. These practi­
cal (bodily) decisions are often inadequately
(or imperfectly) precise because situations
can only be articulated by the animal through
ongoing dialogue with its environment. It is
only by virtue of first being inserted into the
practical situation that the animal will be able
to establish a more intimate relationship to
things and afford itself new opportunities.
This is the nature of practical life: truth is
always a matter of doing, and doing is always
a matter of correcting or clarifying. Falsity is
therefore a condition for opening up a hori­
zon of engagement, and it is required by the
nature of initiative. As accurate as any hypo­
thetical supposition may be, it always remains
open to clarification as necessary. The imagi­
nation is often in error, but its errors are pro­
ductive.33 They facilitate response.
If, however, we take this to say that theo­
retical phantasia is often in error and persists
118
that way, the reading would be slightly dif­
ferent. For an animal that participates in
truth and falsity, the “true” judgment cannot
extricate itself from the possibility that the
“nature” guiding its combination and division
of aspects is merely a false opinion about the
thing it is thinking. Imaginings are false inso­
far as the guiding principle is not a “nature”
but false opinion or errant desire, and thus
the way out of falsehood will always go
through the work of recombining a percep­
tual field wrongly articulated by false opin­
ion or errant desire. A knower gains access
to knowledge insofar as she has the power
to subordinate her desiring life to the nature
of the known and, thereby, to combine and
divide the aspects of perceptual life on their
own terms; on this basis, the knower is able
to distinguish between nature and accident.
This requires seeing the essential character of
a thing, its necessity and principle, and dis­
tinguishing this from its other features.
The account I have offered of phantasia
I hope has shown itself capable of accom­
modating both the practical and the theoreti­
cal imagination in one perspective. That is,
whether phantasia is functioning within the
context of practical engagement or in the con­
text of theoretical judgment, it is the power
that grants detachment from the given state
of affairs and allows the animal to adopt a
stance toward ambiguity in the actual, or
toward its potential to be reconstrued. This
account of phantasia draws together dispa­
rate elements of Aristotle’s thinking about
animal locomotion, including the jointed
motion of the body, the initiative expressed
in circumstances of the animal with “hard­
ened eyes,” the planning of all animals capa­
ble in relative degrees of deliberation, and
the specifically human capacity for truth and
falsity. In each of these separate exercises of
phantasia we see a different sense in which

the animal is able to adopt a stance toward
the possibility of things being otherwise by
virtue of holding onto an unmoved center
around which variation is possible.
Conclusion
I have claimed in this chapter that the loco­
motive side of the imagination is a neces­
sary resource for understanding Aristotle’s
account of the soul as such. I am in funda­
mental agreement with interpreters who have
been drawn to De Anima III.3 to understand
imagination as a power of construing things
as being of this or that sort, but I want to
point out that the very experience the ani­
mal has of its own body, and the experience
the animal has of that body in the context of
other things and unfolding events, contains
within it a material basis for thinking. Rather
than assuming that mind can recognize
images, it is my conclusion that body must
first be able to experience itself imagistically,
or in a way preparatory to the image, in order
that the embodied soul can have an image in
a way that would matter to it. The power to
have an image is the very thing we should be
trying to explain, not presuppose.
I have tried to show that the power to
have an image, and especially the power to
understand an image as image, is consist­
ent with locomotion. It is in locomotive life
that the living body learns to reconstrue its
own inherited momentum in such a way that
my limbs carry my initiative forward into
the world to become in turn the basis from
which to launch new initiative. Perception
should therefore be understood in light of the
perceptual-locomotive nexus from which the
locomotive body experiences the world as
navigable. Because the animal moves itself in
119
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
the world, it has the power to manifest things
independently of appetite, open to construal.
Animals lacking theoretical intellect do not
experience their construal of those events as
construal any more than they reflect on their
“good” explicitly and participate directly
in what it means to have a life as a whole.
Animals act along channels already demanded
by their natures, and their actions are in
most cases completely species-dependent.
The determinacy of a perceived situation is
inseparable from the potential of that situ­
ation to be turned toward the advantage of
the desiring perceiver or to be turned against
its interests as determined by its nature. At
the same time, however, the gap between
theoretical and practical intellect has now
been lessened by virtue of their being con­
ceived as distinct capacities for seeing things
open to construal. With this gap closed, we
are in a better position to see the extent to
which phantasia is the necessary foundation
for thinking.
I started this chapter with the claim that the
explanatory schema of Aristotelian science fits
with his observational study of animal organ­
isms. I tried to reconcile distinct interpretive
approaches to Aristotle’s account of soul by
showing that the soul is an a-spatial and atem­
poral causal source that expresses itself in a
living bodily dialogue between animal and
environment. Only by appreciating the cen­
tralilty of the power of phantasia to Aristotle’s
account of animals is it possible to understand
the sense in which the parts of the soul are
causally prior to the life of the animal.
Eric Sanday
Notes
 1
The distinction between the powers of
movement and discrimination, which
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
is brought up in III.9 and introduces a
three-chapter discussion of locomotion, also
introduces the ­discussion of imagination
in III.3. There Aristotle said not that soul
is “defined” by movement and discrimina­
tion but that motion with respect to place,
on the one hand, and intellecting, thinking,
and perceiving, on the other, “most define
the soul” (ὁρίζονται μάλιστα τὴν ψυχήν)
(427a17–19). The opening remarks in De
Anima III.9 show, I think, that Aristotle
struggles with whether and in what sense talk
about parts of the soul is appropriate to the
soul itself.
 2
This reflects Aristotle’s distinction between the
true and false and the good and bad, that is,
the true/false differs from the good/bad in that
the former are present “simply” and the latter
are present “to someone” (431b12).
 3
I am in general agreement with Jennifer
Whiting’s view that “the locomotive part
of soul is constituted by the desiderative,
perceptive, and imaginative capacities func-
tioning together in something like the way in
which the various senses function together
to constitute the common sense” (Whiting,
2002, 143, n.1, emphasis included). Whiting
sees these powers of soul as standing in a
kind of functional unity. They form a single
part of the soul that is analogous, Whiting
claims, to the common sense power (Whiting,
2002, 172).
4 
Nussbaum and Putnam latch directly on
to the unified account of imagination as a
perceptual-locomotive whole toward the end
of De Anima III, distinguishing between the
perceptual-locomotive function of phantasia
and its modification by nous in human beings:
“DA 3.12 tells us that the most essential func­
tion of perception in animal life is to present to
the animal’s awareness objects of pursuit and
avoidance, so that it can survive (434b9–27).
So the fact that Aristotle does not spend much
time talking about what happens when an
animal gazes at a mountain or smells a flower
or hears a symphony is hardly surprising:
animals’ perceiving is eminently practical, and
their awareness of motivationally irrelevant
parts of the world is bound to be limited. (This
would presumably be true of humans as well,
except insofar as we have nous in addition.)”
120
(Nussbaum and Rorty, 1992, 41). The distinc­
tion between the practical imagination and
the potentially transformative effect of nous
in the case of human beings traces out the
distinction between perceptual and delibera­
tive imagination. Jennifer Whiting also sees a
perceptual-locomotive nexus at work in the
soul, taking perception and locomotion to be
“a single, functionally integrated part of the
soul” divided into internal (representational)
and external (behavioral) aspects, each insepa­
rable from the other (2002). Christopher Long
emphasizes the practical dimension of phanta-
sia, resisting the translation into “imagination”
for the reason that this restricts phantasia to
a faculty of representation (2011, 82, n. 28).
Claudia Baracchi, broadly interested in the
question of the physiological foundations of
intellection, notes the role imagination plays
as intermediary between thought and desire
(2008, 21, 202, n. 53). Let us call the account
of phantasia attuned to practical perceiving the
“embodied” account of imagination. Another
group of interpreters tends to focus on the
division of the soul into the parts separable in
account. Terence Irwin distinguishes between
the perceiving and the desiring parts of the
soul as coordinated within a general system
but not more tightly integrated to each other
than either is to any of the other parts of the
soul (1988). The treatment of the soul from the
perspective of its parts lends itself to interpret­
ing imagination as a representational power
within the soul for coordinating behavior.
Ronald Polansky argues that imagination is
a power of presentation or representation
that operates only occasionally, for instance,
to complete imperfect perceptions, and that
it offers its presentations to a unified sensing
power of soul that, in turn, is free to take up
this presentation as representative of an actual
state of affairs (2008). For Polansky, imagina­
tion is not a discriminative power, like percep­
tion and judgment, so it does not underlie all
perception but rather supplements perception
(see also Hicks, 1907, 389). Corcilius and
Gregoric argue, citing Whiting, that aisthe-sis
and the aisthe-tikon refer to sense-perception,
which has its own account not dependent on
others and therefore is its own fundamental
part of the soul (2010, 117). Let us call the

view that takes imagination to be depend­
ent on and derivative of the presentational
power of perception the “representational­
ist” account. In general, this view is based on
the interpretive assumption that the unity of
soul, and therefore the object of inquiry in De
Anima, is sufficiently grasped definitionally.
 5
I adopt the view of Whiting, 2002, and
Corcilius and Gregoric, 2010, in distinguish­
ing between parts of the soul and its capacities
contra interpretations of De Anima II.2 that
take the powers of soul to be parts.
 6
In this chapter I do not address the question
whether Aristotle developed over time two dis­
tinct and incompatible accounts of the soul, one
in the De Anima and another in the Parva natu-
ralia (see Block, 1961, 82). I take the view that  
Aristotle did not see a contradi­ction between
the soul as (1) the entelechy of the body as a
whole, and (2) as being in some sense localized
according to its main and subordinate powers.
On the issue of the location of soul in the body,
for instance, the soul being centered in the
heart, I take the view articulated by Furley that
the soul can be both the entelechy of the whole
body while also being localized in some sense,
as there is an entelechy of the whole axe that is
in some sense localized in its cutting edge (1980,
57, n. 3). In my view, we might consider the
heart to be the primary part called for by the
soul as a form of the whole insofar as ensouled
bodies have a world on the condition that they
be present in, and vulnerable to, that world, and
that they do work to maintain themselves in the
world. Thus, the heart (like the edge of the axe)
can be the location in which the work of the
whole is most explicitly manifest (e.g. when we
gather courage by calling on our heart to stand
firm), but that part is still just a part subject to
the whole.
 7
Aristotle is relatively silent on the subject of
what explains the coherence of a systemati­
cally integrated field of individual things, but
this need not imply a rejection of such an
integrated field as an object of analysis.
 8
I am not distinguishing between “sense” and
“perception,” using them interchangeably. The
specific argument from the completeness of
the elements (wet/dry, hot/cold) shows that the
embodied, perceiving soul is not just “in” the
world but “of” the world. Aristotle says that
121
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
we have all the sense organs required for per­
ception by contact and through all perceptual
media, so that there would have to be other
elements for there to be other organs and other
perceptual powers. His discussion spans a con­
tinuum between a materialist account, accord­
ing to which the powers of the soul are tied to
specific material foundations, and a functional­
ist account, according to which the “job” of
hearing can be done through interchangeable
media, that is, water or air, while remaining
formally identical. The functionalist freedom
of form with respect to instantiating material
foundation, although I will not pursue it in this
chapter, is one of the first introductions of the
soul’s detachability from the world.
9
We cannot rule out the possibility that the
common objects (koina) in the Theaetetus are
reached by a process of reasoning, and that
they are inferred. For Aristotle, it is important
to stipulate that it is a power of perception
that first accesses the commons, but of course
he would be willing to accept that these objects
can also be rendered explicit as objects of theo­
retical concern. Aristotle says that mistakes
occur because, for example, what is yellow
“is surmised to be” bile. It is the prior grasp
of the unity of multiple aspects that allows
for the inference of proper qualities that are
not in evidence. I take Aristotle to be extend­
ing the insights Plato offers in the Theaetetus,
where perception and thinking are clearly
distinguished, and introducing the notion of
certain types of common objects (koina) such
as motion, same, different, which cannot be
restricted to individual powers of perception,
and which are accessed by some form of reflec­
tion or process of reasoning. There is no direct
concern with the relationship between soul and
body in the Theaetetus account of the koina.
By contrast, Aristotle takes particular care in
the De Anima to draw a distinction between
deliberative and perceptive phantasia, which
allows us to distinguish between objects that
are accessed through a process of reckoning
(sullogismos, De Anima 434a11), thereby
objects that are constitutive of opinion (doxa)
and subject to standards of judgment, and
objects that subject the soul to the demands
of pleasure and pain. It is the perceptual
imagination in particular that is not a concern
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
for the Theaetetus account. However, we might
discover the same awareness of the way the
perceiver contributes to the appearance and
limits or enables access to the truth of appear­
ances in certain parts of the Platonic corpus,
including the analysis in the Parmenides of
the apparent “one” taken up by the individual
perceiver from afar and up close (Seventh
Hypothesis, 165b7–e1), in the discussion of
error in the Theaetetus (187d–190e), as well as
in the distinction between eikasia and phanta-
sia in the Sophist (235d6–236c7).
10
I take the common sensing power to be prior
in account to the proper senses in the sense
that it is the power by which the functioning of
the proper senses are distinguished and related
within the animal. In “higher” animals, there is
a greater degree of differentiation of function
between the proper senses, with human beings
demonstrating the greatest degree of isolabil­
ity of sense power in their ability to enjoy
the individual senses of seeing, hearing, and
smelling, separately and for their own distinct
power. In “lower” animals, by contrast, the
senses are not noticed, or perhaps even capable
of being noticed, as such but only that toward
which they are directed in the world of the
animal’s primary concern.
11
The “one” of perception can be seen from the
introduction of false judgment that something
yellow is supposed to be bile in III.1. The
common sensible allows access to the core of
the spatio-temporal “one,” of which there can
be distinct perceptible aspects (i.e. properties).
It is perceptible openness to distinct percepti­
ble aspects that introduces the possibility of
error. Aristotle says the senses perceive what is
proper to each other not by what each sense is
but by what is one in them, and it belongs to
something else “to say that one thing [e.g. bile]
has both properties [e.g. bitter and yellow]”
(τὸ εἰπεῖν ὅτι ἄμφω ἕν) (III.2, 425b1–2). The
possibility of deception is opened up by seeing
some “one” is yellow and supposing (oiomai)
that it is therefore bile, that is, supposing that
the yellow thing is bitter. Deception therefore
stems from the occasion of seeing the proper
sensibles as belonging to, being “of,” a subject.
Having more than one sense, as Aristotle
goes on to point out, would tend to clarify
the distinction between what is proper to
122
individual senses and what is shared between
them. Aristotle leaves aside the discussion of
the root and cause of judgment until III.6,
where he adds to the account the claim that
“what makes each thing one is intellect (nous)”
(430b4–5).
12
Aristotle argues that the difference between the
separate senses cannot be apparent unless both
are grasped by one thing, for if separate senses
were grasped by separate things there would
be no more recognition of their difference
than if one were apparent to me and another
to you. Furthermore, the distinction between
separate senses must be apparent perceptibly
(for they are perceptible objects that are being
discriminated). So there is a perceptive power
that is aware of the differences between proper
sense powers, and this is the common sense
power, that is, the unified life sense.
13
See Bradshaw, 1997, 149–51.
14
See Polansky, 2008, on III.1. Although the
precise meaning of “motion” in the account for
the common sensibles is difficult to determine,
it seems plausible in the large context to read
this motion as covering a range of possibilities,
beginning with the motion of things, not only
with respect to their surroundings and with
respect to themselves but also the motion that
obtains between perceptibles and perceivers as
they address one another through placement
and displacement within a shared context.
Polansky surmises both that the motion of the
perceiver in “sizing up” the object would be
necessarily part of the process of coming to
perceive, and that the object would contain
within its articulation a set of differentials
propelling perception from one part to the
relevant other along lines of composition. I am
arguing here that the common sensing power is
a mean directed toward aspects of the environ­
ment relevant to initiative, specifically directed
toward the plasticity of the environment and
the potential in the environment to receive
initiative. These aspects of common sensing
are more relevant for action than, for example,
sweet and bitter, insofar as the proper senses
indicate an opening or opportunity, but the
common sensing power establishes a context in
which initiative can place itself.
15
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my
own.

16
The term “separate” in De Anima means,
when it is not qualified as “separate in speech”
etc., “separate in existence,” that is, capable
of independent existence, or separate in place
and number (assuming these latter two, place
and number, are different from the former). So,
when we ask whether intellect is “separable,”
we mean either “capable of separate existence”
or “exists in a separate place” or “in a separate
time.”
17
Again, in potential contrast to Plato’s
Theaetetus, Aristotle is claiming that the soul’s
access to common sensibles is at least in part
perceptual, as opposed to a process of reason­
ing (sullogismos) in terms of which Socrates
specifies access to “ta koina” (e.g. “is” or
“same” or “different”).
18
At the outset of the Metaphysics, Aristotle
refers to the power that sight has in human
beings to “reveal many differences” (πολλὰς
δηλοῖ διαφοράς, 980a26) and calls this an
object of affection or esteem. Aristotle both
shows that the work of revealing differences is
fundamental to soul, and that in human beings
this power takes the special form of being
able to reveal differences apart from need and
utility. We should understand this to say that
the work of the soul, in one aspect as least if
not the whole, is to make discriminations, that
this work is often performed in light of the
needs and relevant utility of the particular type
of animal species, and that human beings are
characterized by the ability to see and enjoy
seeing beyond the horizon of need.
19
Aristotle’s analysis of the “mean relative to
us” in the Nicomachean Ethics also reveals
itself not as one thing among many but
as the characteristic way things and situa­
tions appear to the moral agent. In order to
“locate” the mean relative to us, we must
learn by comparison of our ethical perception
that our way of seeing is calibrated differently
than that of others and, perhaps, the mean
of things themselves. In order to change that
mean, we have to put ourselves in a position
that our ethical perception tells us is “false.”
The difference between the mean of percep­
tion in De Anima and the mean relative to us
in the Ethics is that the mean relative to us
can be grasped as an object, albeit indirectly,
and recalibrated.
123
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
20
David Bradshaw points this out, “the qualities
which combine to produce the ratio need not
be the same as those perceived by the organ. In
some cases they may be, but what is impor­
tant is the value of the ratio they instantiate”
(Bradshaw, 1997, 151).
21
In order to perceive anything at all, the per­
ceiving being must take a stand at a “when”
(De Anima III.2). Just to say that two things
are different, for instance, we must do so at a
when, a now, a “now” that inherently means
“now, time for. . . .”
22
In the context of discussing moderation,
Aristotle describes the distinction between
human beings and other animals in terms of
the power to stand back from the object of
perception and enjoy the senses for their own
sake: “For dogs delight not in the smells of
rabbits but in eating meat—the smell brought
about the perception; nor does the lion delight
in the sound of the cow, but in its meat, but
it perceived that the cow was nearby through
its sound, and seems to delight in that, and
likewise not in seeing ‘a deer or a wild goat,’
but because it will have meat” (Nicomachean
Ethics 1118a18–23). The isolation of an indi­
vidual sense power required for enjoying its
discriminations is proper to human beings and
reflective of the qualitatively distinct detach­
ment from the immediacy of experience of
which a being with logos is capable. However,
as human beings are to other animals, I con­
tend, so too are the higher animals (e.g. dog,
lion) to the animals with “hardened eyes.” That
is, the higher nonhuman animals are capable
of taking the initiative and are not committed
immediately to devour what presents itself as a
meal; they are able to act in the most effective
way.
23
According to some interpretations of the claim
“we perceive that we perceive” (DA III.2), the
very act of perception cannot be separated
from an active engagement in our surround­
ings, with the result that no division can be
drawn between perceiving a situation and per­
ceiving myself as a part of that situation. Miles
Burnyeat believes that perception is already
awareness; he writes that “perception is aware­
ness, articulate awareness, from the start”
(1992, 21). Nussbaum and Putnam claim that
perceptual awareness cannot be separated
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
from desire: “it is not perception itself that is
realized in matter but perception-cum-desire.
It is only in so far as desire enters the picture
that the body must enter it too” (Nussbaum
and Rorty, 1992, 41). Aryeh Kosman explicitly
believes this awareness to be traced back to the
animal’s total situational awareness; he writes,
“It is only because the eye is part of a single
living organism that it is the seat of a mode of
sensitive awareness called seeing . . . the body,
the ultimate organ of percipient sensibility, is
one whole and connected organism” (1975,
518). While I agree with the tight connec­
tion drawn between perception and desire
in the living organism, what we above called
the embodied interpretation of imagination
flirts with a modern, post-Cartesian set of
philosophical assumptions when it takes the
unity of subjective experience as the necessary
“for whom” of appearance. Perhaps Aristotle
is, in this respect, just the most “modern” of
Greek philosophy. But we might want, when
moderating our reading of Greek philosophy
in light of our own modern starting point,
to distinguish precisely the point at which
the perceiving agent achieves access to what
presents itself in perception. For instance,
Nussbaum’s caution that there is no “innocent
eye” in perception is well taken, for it helpfully
reminds us that perception achieves access to
what presents itself only after the object of
perception has been colored by the experi­
ence of the perceiver (Nussbaum, 1978, 261).
The assumption of an “innocent” perspective
would be a mode of access possible for human
beings at most, specifically human beings
capable of virtue and receiving things well. In
this respect, Christopher Long helpfully glosses
Nussbaum, saying, “it is itself a matter of being
moved by things encountered in such a way
that they are permitted to appear as what they
are” (2011, 136). It is on the basis of reading
the power to receive things as they are as a
positive achievement of the agent of percep­
tion that the embodied account can claim
that imagination is fundamentally a power of
discrimination.
24
This interpretation is consistent with the aspect
of the term “imagination” that Christopher
Long advocates as appropriate to the semantic
range of the Greek term phantasia: “the
power to reach out beyond oneself in new and
124
striking ways and thus to open new possibili­
ties of thinking and acting in community with
things” (Long, 2011, 82, n. 28).
25
Nussbaum, 1978, 24. The parallel between
this language and the model Aristotle uses to
explain the way the common sensing power
perceives difference is unmistakable: “the
point, insofar as it is one and two, in this way
it [the common sensing power] too is divided.
So insofar as it is indivisible, the thing that dis­
tinguishes is one and once, but insofar as it is
constitutively divisible, it at once uses the same
mark (se-meion) as double. So insofar as it uses
the boundary (peras) as double, and distin­
guishes two divided things, it ‘is’ dividedly, but
insofar as [it uses] one, it is one and once”
(DA III.2, 427a10–14).
26
As Whiting points out in her essay, Aristotle
describes the heart in the Parts of Animals
as the primary part of a body possessing the
principles of perception, locomotion, and
nutrition. As such, the heart must be homoe­
omerous insofar as it receives the sensibles and
anhomoeomerous insofar as it is capable of
locomotion and is practical (Whiting cites PA
647a25–b8).
27
In support of her claim that the perceiving,
desiring, and imagining capacities are unified
in (at least) nonrational animal souls, Jennifer
Whiting points at Aristotle’s distinction
between being “same” and being “differ­
ent in being,” for instance, in these passages
where Aristotle is relating the various sides of
the same power: “what is capable of desir­
ing and what is capable of fleeing are not
different, either from one another or from
what is capable of perceiving, but their being
is different” (DA 431a12–14), and “What is
capable of imagining is the same as what is
capable of perceiving, but what it is to be is
different for what is capable of imagining and
what is capable of perceiving” (De Insomn.
459a15–17; Whiting, 2002, 154–5). The type
of sameness here is analogous to the sameness
of the stretch of road that differs in its being
the road from Athens to Thebes or the road
from Thebes to Athens, or the sameness of the
tongue that differs in its being the organ of
taste or the organ of speech, or the sameness
of the limit that differs in its being a connect­
ing or dividing limit, or the perception that
differs in its being the perceivedness of the

perceptible or the perceiving of the perceiver.
Whiting hypothesizes that the importance of
the formula “the same but different in being”
is to show how it is that by one and the same
thing, that is, the animal, differences between
opposites and incompatibles can be perceived,
such as the difference between white and
sweet. Aristotle explains, “just as what some
call a point, in so far as it is both one and two,
is in this way [both indivisible] and divisible,
so too in so far as it is indivisible, what judges
is one and [it judges things] together, while in
so far as it is divisible, [what judges] uses the
same mark in two ways at the same time. In
so far as it uses the limit in two ways, it judges
two things and is [judging] separately; but
in so far [as it uses the limit] as one, it is one
[and judges things] together” (DA 427a9–14;
Whiting, 2002, 165).
28
We may, perhaps, say that phantasia is an
“actuality of perception” insofar as phantasia
resituates all perception at a higher level of
description that actualizes lower level potenti­
alities inherent in perceptive soul.
29
The sense of “motion” here, as in the Physics,
is as an actuality of potential qua potential,
that is, it is the active being-open of an actual­
ity to its potential to be otherwise.
30
The common view is generally that phantasia
is a power of representation and therefore not
constitutive of the discriminative powers of
sensation and thinking. For instance, Polansky
writes “Phantasia depends upon sense percep­
tion, as was stated in 427b15–16 and soon
again in 429a1–2, but aisthe-sis does not depend
in the same way in turn upon phantasia. The
causality goes generally in only the one direc­
tion” (2008, 415–17, esp. 417). Polansky reads
the causal relation between sense perception
and phantasia to be expressive of a dichotomy
between them, which although not unbridge­
able gives priority to the separate and occa­
sional origination of phantasia in the absence
of perception as a presentation of the perceived.
Polansky underlines this dichotomy by referring
to the “prior perception” on which a phantasm
is based and from which it is drawn. This read­
ing reinforces Polansky’s view that imagination
is presentational as opposed to discriminative,
merely “similar” to perception without being an
actuality of perception, merely presentationally
true and false rather than judgmentally true and
125
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
false. But Polansky admits that imagination is
sometimes simultaneous with perception, and
that if the perception of the common sensibles,
such as motion, implies anticipation, then phan-
tasia “may have a prominent role even in the
true perception of this common sensible” (429).
I do not follow Polansky’s explanation for how
present perception would eclipse phantasia
even on the view that phantasia is basic to the
perception of motion and, through motion,
all the other common sensibles and acciden­
tal sensibles drawing on them. It seems that
Polansky overlooks the way in which poten­
tiality “appears” only indirectly through the
presencing of sense but, albeit indirectly active,
transforms that presence into a dynamically
unfolding (and plastic) environment for desire.
It is true that we orient ourselves more explicitly
toward the edges of things when we are not
sure of our perceptions, such that we feel more
displaced by the object when we need to retest
our relationship to it, but this would not entail
I think that we are not fully engaged in a less
apparent phantasia when we are fully certain
of the practical circumstances of action. Indeed,
phantasia’s tendency to conceal itself in favor of
the present perceptual object would support the
reading that phantasia is the power that allows
potentiality to illuminate and inform our grasp
of a given state of affairs. The present state of
affairs would not be present even as something
capable of being deliberated upon, understood,
not to mention acted on or transformed,
unless it were charged with potentiality, and
imagination is the manner in which the soul
orients itself toward this charge. Nonetheless,
Polansky’s closing caution that modern philoso­
phy tends to place imagination at the base of all
sense perception is a welcome reminder.
31
Aristotle seems to offer conflicting reports
of this point. In On the Motion of Animals
(701b18–22) Aristotle explains that imagina­
tion and thinking “have the power of expe­
rienced things” in the sense that they present
objects to which we react emotionally. But he
also says in the Poetics that we do not feel pain
at the sight of the least estimable of beasts and
corpses in imagination, whereas we do feel pain
at the sight of these things in themselves (Poetics
4). Experience lends itself to the same ambigu­
ity, for as Aristotle explains in the Rhetoric, it is
not all things that inspire fear but only fearful
PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
things that are perceived as imminent (Rhetoric
II.5). All know they have to die, but death is not
experienced as fearful if it is far off.
32
It is difficult to reconcile my account of imagi­
nation with Aristotle’s claim that “sensations
are always true” (DA 428a10). In my view,
Aristotle’s claim here is best understood in
light of the questioning attitude of inquiry (in
the case of animals with nous) and the probing
attitude of practical engagement (in the case
either of animals without nous or animals that
have nous but are not acting primarily accord­
ing to the orientation provided by nous). I
interpret Aristotle to be saying that practical
and theoretical truths are always the result of a
decision, a judgment, made in response to a
situation that presents itself to be decided.
Sensations, on this view, are “always true” in
the sense that there is always something there
to be decided. Thus, a cat can inspect an inter­
esting smell or become alert to an alarming
sound and have these sensations be “true” in
the sense that there is something present to be
decided (i.e. Is this a threat? Is this a treat?).
33
As Polansky notes: “Phantasiai cannot be false
in the way suppositions are false, as believed,
but rather as faulty presentations differing
from the way a better criterion and more
realistic presentation discloses them to be. . . .
When an animal has phantasia presenting the
object of desire, that is, some future attainment
not now the case, and all such hypothetical
or imaginary appearances, these can be called
false” (2008, 417). Polansky generally holds
the view that phantasiai are only occasional,
not constitutive, aspects of perceptual experi­
ence, such as when we do not perceive clearly
and fill out our incomplete perceptions with
imaginings. He concludes, “we need not
include phantasia in all cases of perception or
take phantasia to be misperception or ‘percep­
tion as,’ but phantasia is a presentation due to
sense perception that may contribute to inac­
curate perception, misperception, or perhaps
accurate perception. . . . as significant a role
as phantasia plays for Aristotle, he does not
extend it, as some have, to serve as a constitu­
ent of the whole realm of cognition. There is
no need for phantasia to underlie the percep­
tion of proper sensibles” (420). Polansky,
however, is emphasizing the self-awareness we
126
have as not having certainty or, alternatively,
having an appearance, therefore our awareness
of being at a deficit with respect to knowledge.
The self-awareness of a motor-perceptual
organism with respect to the object that eludes
its grasp, or the grasp it is trying to elude,
must also be aware of itself as at a deficit
with respect to securing the moment, but its
self-awareness expresses itself in the bodily
probing and resituating with respect to things
and other animals within a shared situation.
Polansky does allow, however, that phantasia
may “perhaps” be extended to perception of
common sensibles that anticipate future stages
of motion of a body in motion.
References
Baracchi, C., Aristotle’s Ethics as First
Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
Block, I., “The Order of Aristotle’s
Psychological Writings,” American
Journal of Philology, 82 (1961), 53–72.
Bradshaw, D., “Aristotle on Perception:
The Dual-Logos Theory,” Apeiron, 30.2
(1997), 143–61.
Burnyeat, M., “Is an Aristotelian Philosophy
of Mind Still Credible?,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum
and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992, 15–26.
Corcilius, Claus and Pavel Gregoric,
“Separability and Difference,” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, XXXIX
(2010), 81–119.
Furley, David J., “Self-Movers,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A. Rorty, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980,
55–68.
Hicks, R. D. (trans.), Aristotle. De Anima,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1907.

Irwin, T., Aristotle’s First Principles, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988.
Kosman, A., “Perceiving that We Perceive,”
The Philosophical Review, 84.4 (1975),
499–519.
Long, C., Aristotle on the Nature of Truth,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011.
Nussbaum, M. and H. Putnam, “Changing
Aristotle’s Mind,” in Essays on Aristotle’s
De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and
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PHANTASIA IN DE ANIMA
A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992, 27–56.
Nussbaum, M., Aristotle's De Motu
Animalium, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978.
Polansky, R., Aristotle’s De Anima,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008.
Whiting, J., “Locomotive Soul,” Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, XXII
(2002), 141–200.
 7
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER:
ARISTOTLE’S REFLECTIONS ON SLEEP1
Those who are asleep are fellow-workers in what goes on in the world.
Our history is the story of the awakened man: no one has yet imagined the sleeping man’s
history.
Sleep shows the impossibility of stepping into mystery with open eyes.
Hermeneutic philosophy, as the art of under-
standing, preserves the old metaphor that
considers philosophy as a transition from
sleep to wakefulness. To understand the
already said, the already thought, the famil-
iar, to understand what in many ways is con-
cluded “in-itself,” somehow seems to involve
awakening the said, the thought, the famil-
iar, the past, that which is “in-itself”—awak-
ening from the impenetrability of sleep to a
life that, if not truer, then at the very least
is more alive. If understanding is awakening,
and hence a relation to sleeping, how is one
to grasp the phenomenon of sleeping in order
to envision a hermeneutical awakening?
According to Heraclitus the human beings
without comprehension are those who “are
oblivious of what they do awake, just as they
are forgetful of what they do asleep.”2 Plato
128
Heraclitus, fr. 75
Lichtenberg
João Cabral de Melo Neto
compares the difference between one who phi-
losophizes and one who does not with the dif-
ference that separates wakefulness and dreams
in sleep.3 Comprehension, understanding,
knowledge, and wisdom are all words signi-
fying wakefulness, an alert consciousness, in
contrast to sleeping and dreaming. But in what
does this difference consist? If we return to the
site of classical philosophy, paying particular
attention to the way it has discussed the dif-
ference between sleep and wakefulness, what
we find is that the meaning of this difference
lies in the very ability to see differences: “Don’t
you think he is living in a dream rather than
a wakened state? Isn’t this dreaming: whether
asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not
a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is
like?” Socrates asks Glaukon.4 In contrast to
being awake, someone sleeping and dreaming

cannot see differences; s/he thinks that things
that are merely alike are identical. To see the
difference is the primary attribute of a wake-
ful consciousness. For Plato, precisely this skill
constitutes the distinctive trait of the philoso-
pher. In this respect, the dog possesses as well
the philosophical “sense,” the sense of differ-
entiation, “because it differentiates (diakrinei)
anything it sees to be either a friend or an
enemy, on no other basis than that it knows
the one and doesn’t know the other. And how
could it [the dog] be anything besides a lover
of learning (philomathe-s), if it defines what
is its own and what is alien to it in terms of
knowledge and ignorance?”5
The conception of this inquiring sense of
differentiation—which in a strange way con-
nects Plato’s Republic with Franz Kafka’s
story about the “Investigations of a Dog”6—
is one that has focused the Western con-
sciousness on consciousness. Consciousness
is what differs from sleep on account of the
former’s ability to recognize, determine, and
define differences. But how can the waking
consciousness know that the human being
does not see differences while sleeping? Does
the waking consciousness have any access to
sleep? Can we say of sleep that it is some-
how still a conscious state? Sleep is nearly
as self-contained as death; for those who are
asleep, like the dead, withdraw into them-
selves, apparently breaking all bonds with
the common world of the living. Homer’s
famous formulation in the Iliad, that sleep
is brother to death,7 both resonates with,
and is further expounded in the words of
Heraclitus: “the world of the waking is one
and shared, but the sleeping turn aside each
into his private world.”8 Here, it is said that
what binds sleep as a brother to death is pre-
cisely a certain self-containment and sepa-
rateness, which seems to be describable only
in terms of a past condition. The dead are
129
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
those who have lived and who cannot rise
again. Those who are sleeping, however, are
those who can wake up and find themselves
in a strange tense, the present participle—
what grammarians also have called “radical
present.”9
What those who sleep share with the dead
is not really the past, but rather the past’s hav-
ing passed away; for it is only after sleep has
passed by, that it can be recognized as sleep.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the words
for sleep (in Latin somnus, in Sanskrit svápiti,
in the slavic languages the root sun-u) sound
like gusts of wind, with their drawn out “s”
sounds. Only when sleep is over can we
approach it as a phenomenon. The phenom-
enon of sleep announces itself with the same
paradoxical structure as the past: it is only
when we no longer possess it that it appears
as such. Whence the fact that sleep has mostly
been discussed in negative terms: in sleep we
have no impressions from exterior things, we
have no knowledge of time and space, and we
have neither will nor a focused interest. But,
similarly to the past, those who sleep do live.
The question, then, is how those who sleep
live, or, put otherwise, what mode of life sleep
(and, subsequently, the past) may be.
To prepare a path toward these ques-
tions we shall turn to three short works by
Aristotle, De Somno et vigilia, De insomniis,
and De divinatione per somnum,10 which,
taken together, constitute the first systematic
study of the phenomenon of sleep in ancient
philosophy.
***
Much has been written about dreams. Freud’s
Traumdeutung and Jung’s symbolic dream
analyses have conspicuously contributed to
our knowledge of the psychic mechanisms
that lay behind the enigmatic dream-ability of
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
the living. Nonetheless, this should not make
us forget how far back human endeavor to
interpret dreams extends. Dreams follow us
when we wake up, as the only tangible mem-
ory of this strange state of absence that sleep
constitutes. Therefore, the phenomenon of
sleep is often discussed either in relation to
dreams or as an independent physiological
phenomenon. The Aristotelian treatises differ
from this tendency for, indeed, they ascribe
the greatest significance to sleep. They regard
dreams as something that can only be under-
stood if sleep itself is understood. The Greek
word for dream, to enupnion, literally says
that dream is a being-in-sleep. In Aristotle’s
analyses, we can follow a discussion treating
sleep as a coming to pass, a state of passage,
while dreams are rather regarded as a work,
a work that can be analyzed and interpreted,
something that can be seen and observed.
Aristotle does not say that we “have” dreams,
rather we “see” them (horao-). “Dreams
are like an accomplished work, a work in
itself,”11 as the Brazilian poet João Cabral de
Melo Neto writes. The dream is, however, the
work of sleep, and not the other way around.
And sleep “is an adventure that can neither
be narrated nor documented,”12 a dimension
in which “the hidden life of unmoving things
pulsates.”13 The aim of this chapter is to show
how Aristotle’s reflections on the theme of
sleep can contribute to the recent philosophi-
cal discussions on this pheno­menon that still
harbors much mystery.14
The starting point for Aristotle’s discus-
sion on sleep is the intimate relationship
between sleep and life. Only that which lives
can both sleep and awaken. However, not
all living things follow this pattern. Plants
live, but we cannot say that they sleep or
are awake. In Aristotelian biology, it is the
nutritive function that differentiates living
from dead things. Among living creatures
130
there are those, like plants, that do not need
to move for sustenance, and those that must
move and do so independently. Along with
the ability to sense (aisthe-sis), autokine-sis,
the faculty of self-movement, characterizes
animal life. Life is for Aristotle an aesthetic
movement, in the etymological sense of a
sense-perceiving movement, meaning both
movement presupposing sensation and sen-
sation implying movement. It is precisely in
relation to the ability of perception (or sens-
ing) that Aristotle engages with the phenom-
enon of sleep. In several respects, Aristotle’s
discussion seems to treat sleep solely as a bio-
logical function. It is said to be the salvation
of life, so-te-ria, not a rest from the activities
of life, but itself an active achievement serv-
ing to maintain and regenerate animal life.15
Even in the Gospel of Saint John we read that
“If Lazarus is asleep [and not dead] he will
be saved (so-the-setai).”16 In this context, the
meaning of the Greek verb, so-zo-, to save, is
rather to enliven life, making life even more
alive. In the same work, Aristotle considers
the treatment of sleep as rest (anapausis) to
be just a metaphor,17 since sleep entails a vital
activity. The vitality of animal life hinges,
as previously said, on aisthe-sis, the abil-
ity to sense-perceive. But what complicates
Aristotle’s reflections on sleep is that the
faculty of sensory perception, aisthe-sis, even
defines rational life, namely wakefulness, the
alert consciousness, that is, the noetic part of
the soul. Aristotle’s doctrine on sleep unfolds
within an intricate web of problems. On
the one hand, sleep is considered an active
achievement to preserve the natural process
of life. On the other, the natural process of
life, the biology of life, is not a merely biolog-
ical process, for what characterizes animal
life—the faculty of sensibility—constitutes
the inescapable and necessary condition for
conscious and rational life. Shall sleep in this

respect also be regarded as an active achieve-
ment within conscious life? It is important
not to forget that human rational life for
Aristotle constitutes a necessary discontinu-
ity with respect to the continuous cycle of
life. Human rational life inscribes a histori-
cal biography within the natural biology of
the living. Such a discontinuity appears as a
kind of tear in the homogenous and continu-
ous fabric of life—which could be compared
to the way the Italian painter Lucio Fontana
tears the canvas in his paintings. In this sense,
human life is the only mortal life, because all
other animal life is drawn into the immortality
of nature, into its continuous cycle.18 In order
to respond to the above question—namely,
whether sleep is also an active achievement
in the conscious, historical, mortal, and
rational human life—it is important to main-
tain the complexity in Aristotle’s understand-
ing about the relations between the life of
humans and the life of nature. In the context
of this question regarding the bond between
nature and history, between the immortal-
ity of life (life as a continuous, “immortal”
alternation between life and death) and the
mortality of the human, and on account of
such a question, Aristotle focuses on sleep,
above all in De somno et vigilia, the first of
the three above mentioned works.
***
We can summarize Aristotle’s trajectory in
De somno et vigilia, in view of a definition
of sleep, with the following observations.
Sleep is the opposite (antikeintai) of wakeful-
ness.19 Opposition only takes place when the
positive and the negative determi­nations are
within the same “subject,” within the same
part of the living, within the same receiving
material,20 and moreover when the same crite-
ria are used to identify both determinations.21
131
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
However, sleep is not merely the opposite
of wakefulness; sleep seems also to be the
absence or lack of it.22 This important state-
ment is expressed without any attempts to
discuss to what extent this really is a lack,
a privation, stere-sis. With an almost axi-
omatic force Aristotle further states that
wakefulness (to egre-gorenai) is nothing
other than aisthanesthai,23 that is, nothing
other than the capacity to sense-perceive.
What this argument implies is, broadly speak-
ing, that sleep is a lack or absence of aisthe--
sis, for the time being understood as faculty
of sensibility. Further essential developments
will be that sleep and wakefulness move both
body and soul, since sensation presupposes
both body and soul in their relatedness, and
that, moreover, unlike other animals plants
neither sleep nor are awake, since they can-
not perceive anything. Decisive in Aristotle’s
argument is his understanding of aisthe-sis,
the ability to sense-perceive. In the famous
passage in the Politics, where Aristotle
defines the human as a living creature that
has logos, he says the following about what
logos consists in:
[Human logos] is formed to show (ἐπὶ
τῷ δηλοῦν) the advantageous and the
harmful and therefore also the right and
the wrong. For a proper trait of man in
distinction from the other animals is that
he alone perceives (αἴσθησιν ἔχειν) good
and bad, just and unjust and similar
qualities; and the belonging together in
these is what builds a household and a
city-state.24
Logos—in its wide meaning as reason, lan-
guage, the ability to see relations—is here
defined as aisthe-sis, and aisthe-sis, in turn as
a sense of differentiation, as the capacity to
discern between good and evil, the just and
the unjust. Without being able to discuss
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
Aristotle’s doctrine of perception here, and
how sensibility and rationality constitute
a complex intertwinement in his work, it is
nevertheless important to acknowledge the
central role of that which, in everything that
lives, we can call an aesthetic capacity as a
capacity for seeing differences. What distin-
guishes the dog’s sense of differentiation
from the human being’s perceiving reason,
however, is not only the capacity to sense or
perceive something, but the capacity to per-
ceive or sense something as something.
In De Anima, Aristotle defines aisthe-sis,
the capacity to sense-perceive something as
something (i.e. to see differences), as a being
moved, kineisthai, and as undergoing an
affection.25 To perceive involves the simulta-
neous movement of moving and being moved.
Aristotle’s language moves within the diathe-
sis of the middle—the so-called middle voice,
which, with the words of Pierre Chantraine,
can be defined as a verbal “voice” in which
“the subject is felt as the place where proc-
ess unfolds.”26 This double movement means
that the subject is somehow “made” at the
same time as it makes something. Thus, at
this juncture in De Anima Aristotle adds that
“sense-perception is held to be some sort of
qualitative alteration.”27 For a more detailed
discussion of what is meant by qualitative
alteration (alloio-sis, “becoming-other”)
Aristotle himself cites another work, De
Generatione et Corruptione. In contrast to
genesis, to the coming into being of some-
thing new, alteration is here defined as what
happens when “the substratum (hupokeime-
non) is perceptible and persists but alters in
its own properties, the properties in question
being either contraries or intermediates.”28
An alteration, alloio-sis, takes place, for
example, when a healthy body becomes ill,
since the opposition between health and ill-
ness has as its point of reference the same
132
body. That an alteration and not a coming
into being (genesis) happens in perception
is confirmed, according to Aristotle, by the
fact that the body that senses and perceives
by itself is perceivable as one and the same
body, despite being affected by something
external.
What strikes Aristotle as strange is that we,
as sensing and sensible life, cannot in turn
sense-perceive the senses themselves, that is,
the very perceiving. We cannot, for exam-
ple, see seeing, we cannot listen to listen-
ing. This shows, according to Aristotle, that
perception—aisthe-sis—has both a poten-
tial and an operative or active meaning.29 In
other words: sense-perception appears both
as potentiality and actuality, “even though it
is at the moment asleep,”30 in such a way that
it is never fully absent or lacking. The capac-
ity to sense-perceive proves to be the capacity
to sense-perceive differences qua differences,
to perceive something as something rather
than as something else. But even if sensa-
tion cannot sense-perceive itself and it seems
possible to sense or perceive only what is
located outside the sentient perceiving body,
something nonetheless happens with the
perceiving body in the course of perception.
The sentient body is affected by that which
is sensed. This reciprocal action between the
one who senses and that which is sensed is
expressed in the middle “voice,” in which the
subject itself is the place where the alteration
takes place. What appears as a certain pas-
sivity—that is, to be affected by something—
necessarily entails a strange activity, an acting
that happens in a kind of pause or rest, a
kind of transformation in rest, or a rest in
transformation, as is said in Heraclitus’ frag-
ment 84a: “in changing it is at rest.”31 This
strange relationship between rest and tran-
sition, between pause and activity, involving
both moments, lies at the heart of Aristotle’s

teaching on potentiality and actuality, duna-
mis and energeia. It is further mirrored in the
very capacity to sense-perceive, inasmuch
as sensation perceives something without
being able to perceive the very senses in the
active mode of sensation. At the same time
we know that we see, that we hear, that
we feel, and so on. This knowing is as imme-
diate as seeing, hearing, and touching some-
thing, but without there being some thing
to be sensed and even without there being a
sense sensing it. This knowing Aristotle calls
a sensing through “common sense.” The com-
mon sense—the capacity to see that we see,
hear that we hear, and so on—is regarded by
Aristotle as connected to the heart. According
to Aristotle all senses have specific functions
and, in addition to them, one sense is com-
mon to all. The common sense perceives that
we sense-perceive, constituting the center of
what is generally called “consciousness.” It
is precisely through common sense that we
can “see” so-called abstract sensations, such
as quantity and form. When we perceive
something as large or small we also perceive
magnitude as such. Sleep and wakefulness
are defined as pathos; they affect common
sense, and not just perception in general.32
Aristotle considers that common sense, that
is, the sense able to see that we see, and there-
fore capable of perceiving degrees of a total-
ity within the singular—is most often said to
be related to touch. The common sense as a
kind of sensibility for the abstract, for what
is shared in common, is tied together with
touching, haphe-—according to Aristotle
the only sense which is common to all liv-
ing creatures.33 “Common sense” appears,
thus, as the sense that is common to all living
creatures and, at the same time, as that sense
through which the senses can be perceived,
sensation can be sensed, and feelings can be
felt.
133
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
The common sense is maximally “specu-
lative” because perception is mirrored for
itself, within itself. It is proximal to touch-
ing, as also Husserl observes in his phenom-
enological meditations, noting how a hand
can sense itself when, for instance, one of the
hands holds the other. According to Aristotle,
sleep and wakefulness are affections of the
common sense, of the ability to perceive
perceptions and feel oneself as feeling. It is
precisely this reflexivity that is affected in
sleep or wakefulness. But the question is,
in what sense are sleep and wakefulness a
pathos or an affection of this common sense?
Aristotle argues that sleep does not entail
that the senses are inactive, or that the sen-
sory faculty is incapacitated. Conversely,
there is no sense perception when one faints
(lipopsuchia),34 when one loses consciousness
(eknoia), or when one is in a state of catato-
nia (pnigmos).35 Sleep, on the contrary, brings
about the incapacitation of the common
sense. To explain this incapacity (adunamia)
regarding the common sense, Aristotle links
his argument on the structure of perception
with the nature of life and the life of nature.36
He reminds us that everything that is alive by
nature moves, that is, moves itself by itself.
But nothing living can move always and con-
tinuously in virtue of pleasure. Saying “in
virtue of pleasure” Aristotle wants to point
out that the movement of life is intimately
tied to pleasure; life is defined as something
essentially good. In this connection, sleep is
defined as a recovering and saving power, as
so-te-ria. The “incapacity” that occurs to com-
mon sense—sleep—carries the implication of
restoring, of returning to life the strength to
keep on living, a strength making life even
more alive. This “incapacity”—adunamia—is
defined as fetter (desmos) and as immobility
(akine-sia).37 Both terms are used by Plato
in his famous myth of the cave, in order to
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
describe the predicament of the inhabitants
of the cave. Wakefulness, in contrast, is a sort
of liberation and relaxation.38 Aristotle con-
siders carefully that one who sleeps can be
restless,39 that in sleep there is much move-
ment within one’s body, a kind of endomor-
phosis, as Jean-Luc Nancy expressed it.40
The immobilization of sleep does not entail
an absence of all movement. On the contrary,
it holds a pulsating movement, a contraction,
and an opening, a beating heart. Again, it is
very important to recall that Aristotle con-
nects common sense with the heart. This
becomes even clearer once Aristotle has
claimed that sleep is a consequence of the
“hyperbolic excess of wakefulness.”41 When
the adunamia (incapacity) of common sense
is explained by way of an abundance of
wakefulness, it becomes difficult to sustain
the current translation of adunamia as lack of
capacity. At any rate, the negation expressed
here seems not to be merely negative.
We are now approaching what Aristotle
wishes to suggest, namely that the common
sense does not simply rupture or disappear
during sleep. It contracts, intensifies, and
gathers itself in abundance. This shows itself
even more clearly when Aristotle dedicates
the remainder of this first work to investi-
gate how sleep is essentially bound up with
the process of digestion. The physiology of
sleep is described by the process of densi-
fication that occurs in the absorption of
exogenous matter, such as food. The natural
tendency of warmth to move upwards and
of cold downwards; the thinness of the veins,
the function of which is to limit vaporiza-
tion; the coolness of the brain as the cause of
densi­fication: all of this is described in detail
in the rest of the work, to show how sleep is
an expression of a process of absorption that
causes a condensation and a concentration
of activities and an accompanying weight,
134
forcing the body to lie down and sleep.42
In his physiological observations, Aristotle
focuses on the role of the heart in the proc-
ess of absorption of nutrition, thus follow-
ing the pulsating movement of relaxation
and tension, of opening and contraction, as
a fundamental movement that bridges the
gap between sleep and wakefulness. From
such a physiological description of sleep, in
this treatise we can observe that, if sleep con-
stitutes an adunamia in common sense, this
must be understood in terms of densification
and concentration. Aristotle may write in the
beginning of the text that sleep seems to be
a lack of wakefulness; yet he subsequently
maintains that it is not so. In the last line
of De somno et vigilia we read that sleep
is a pause, anapausis.43 Aristotle claims that
perceptions do occur in sleep, even if, when
somebody sleeps, an active sense-perception
is not possible in the proper and unqualified
mode.44 Perception through common sense
is, in sleep, not “energetic,” that is, not fully
active. This does not mean that sleep is lack
or absence of activity but rather contraction,
densification, and force of compression. To
express this, Aristotle uses the word antiper-
istasis.45 Here, it is a matter of concentration
of activity and abundance of wakefulness.
The telos of life is wakefulness,46 Aristotle
insists.
***
In the further work entitled De insomniis,
Aristotle, having established that the gen-
eral assumption is that no perception takes
place during sleep, claims that while it is
the case that, in a state of slumber, we are
deprived of sight, this does not mean that
during such a period our senses do not
experience anything at all. On the con-
trary, Aristotle contends that even sight

experiences something during sleep, albeit in
a different form from when we are awake.47
We have already pointed out that Aristotle
associates the common sense with touch-
ing, haphe-, and that haphe- is considered the
only sense common to all living things; it
is the very sense capable of broaching the
possibility of sensing sensation, of touching
touch—even if, literally, it is impossible to
see sight, listen to the act of listening, taste
tasting, or smell the very sense of smell. In
this respect, touch, haphe-, is speculative and
reflexive; it possesses the capacity of relat-
ing to itself, of reflecting upon itself. And it
is this capability that, in some way, “comes
to rest” during sleep. Rather than being
operative in an active sense, in sleep this
common sensory power undergoes a con-
traction. Haphe-, touch, is intimately tied to
the hands, and is enacted not only by way
of touching but more as a gripping, seiz-
ing, grasping. The question then is whether
Aristotle holds that, in sleep as well, haphe-
still occurs—touching, establishing contact,
gripping, taking, albeit “in a different way.”
In a very rich fragment, cited by Clement of
Alexandria, Heraclitus says:
A man strikes a light for himself in the
night, when his sight is put out. Living,
he touches the dead in his sleep; waking,
he touches the sleeper.48
Here we may have an important resource to
try to think through Aristotle’s discussion.
There are many different interpretations
of this particular fragment. But what con-
cerns us specifically is the nocturnal touching,
haptetai, in sleep. Thereby an utterly crucial
element is introduced, namely the force of
the night—where, to quote Epicharmos, the
most excellent can find a home.49 It is the
force of the night that saves Sleep (Hupnos)
135
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
from the wrath of Zeus, as we read in the fol-
lowing lines of the Iliad:
Great Jove, awaking, shook the blest
abodes
With rising wrath, and tumbled gods on
gods;
Me chief he sought, and from the realms
on high
Had hurl’d indignant to the nether sky,
But gentle Night, to whom I fled for aid,
(The friend of earth and heaven,) her
wings display’d;
Impower’d the wrath of gods and men
to tame,
Even Jove revered the venerable dame.50
This power of protection the night offers is
an invariant in both Aristotle and Heraclitus’
understanding of sleep. In Heraclitus’ frag-
ments the human being is depicted as the
being that can grasp darkness and watch
over the nightly element. Eugen Fink, in a
long discussion with Heidegger around this
fragment, insists on the Promethean capac-
ity of touching the obscure in sleep and in
death.51 In the fragment itself, three dimen-
sions of this nightly sense are discernible:
the first is to catch the light; the second is
to seize, while awake, the one who sleeps;
and the third is, while asleep, to contact the
dead. Leaving aside the important differ-
ences between touching, brushing with, grip-
ping, grasping, capturing, what characterizes
touch is that the distance between perceiving
and perceived seems to fade into immediacy.
Through this it becomes possible, at least to
some extent, to touch touching itself (to per-
ceive perception). As Fink observes: “touch-
ing is a sense of proximity and, as such, the
way of an immediate neighborhood.”52 The
fragment speaks to this immediacy and prox-
imity characteristic of touch, addressing the
nearness between day and night, between
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
sleep and wakefulness—a nearness that is
“similar” to the closeness of a hand touching
itself in touching the other. In Fink’s inter-
pretation, sleep appears as a milder death, a
deep absorption, a state in which nothing can
be sense-perceived, distinguished or defined.
Heraclitus’ fragment would corroborate this
interpretation, showing as it does the human
being’s power to light up the night and allow
the light of night to come forth. Here a fur-
ther question arises, namely, whether touch-
ing the dead while sleeping and touching
those asleep while awake simply entails the
capacity to “see” darkness in its obscurity.
The question is whether this nocturnal touch
may, instead, involve a moment in which
transitivity is not a matter of proceeding
from one state to another, but rather of a
transition in and of itself obscure. In sleep,
the spatio-temporal distances undergo a
cont­raction. Here and there, before and after,
earlier and later, are compressed in such a
manner that one is in contact with the other
as with itself. In an attempt to describe this
transition in its event, not though as some-
thing that changes into another state, thought
is forced to specify that which is impossible
to specify. In this transition, that which is no
longer present strangely enough endures and
the not yet is already there. Both the past
and what is to come are present at one and
the same time. The transition seems like a
compressed time, a temporal concentration
where all times are contracted into only one
center.
Heraclitus’ fragments offer some sug-
gestions about how we should understand
certain discussions developed by Aristotle
in his other works, De insomniis and De
divinatione per somnum. In the beginning
of De ­insomniis, which aims to investigate
the being of dreams, Aristotle claims that the
best way to study the origin of the dream is
136
to investigate the circumstances under which
sleep occurs. What is said here about sleep
amounts to the following: even when sleep
envelopes us, we nonetheless keep sensing
and perceiving, which confirms the inter-
pretative direction we have been following
so far. Aristotle claims we sense-perceive
when we are asleep, however, we do not
sense “something,” but rather something’s
projective and projectile movement. What
we sense during sleep is a movement that
lingers after something has disappeared. At
stake here is an experience other than mere
sensation or perception. Aristotle compares
certain sense-perceptions with the move-
ment of a projectile through space, such as a
comet, which continues to move when what
was projected is no longer active. He writes
explicitly how something similar takes place
in a qualitative change or alteration.53 That
which in a change is no longer, still is through
its force, and continues to move. Because a
sense-perception is a kind of change or alter-
ation, as Aristotle defines it in De Anima, the
perception continues in the persistence of
that which is no longer perceived. Such is the
case when we switch from light to darkness,
or when we fix our gaze upon one and the
same color for a long time, or, to give another
example, when we observe a rushing river.54
Aristotle assumes that the senses are not only
affected by external elements; complementa-
rily, the senses affect that which is being per-
ceived: “just as the eye undergoes [that which
is seen], so also it produces a certain [affection
on it].”55 This is something that Empedocles
paid attention to as well; the same insight
can be found in Goethe, serving as the start-
ing point for his theory of colors.56 It plays
also a crucial role in the so-called mystical
experiences, for example, in Jacob Böhme.
Aristotle discusses here the mutual encoun-
ter between two states or differences that, in

principle, exclude one another, where both
states move around each other as if in one
and the same body. He speaks of extremely
subtle differences, of movements of extreme
velocity usually imperceptible, but also of the
surface of the mirror where such impercepti-
ble movements or differences become visible.
In this connection, Aristotle mentions that if,
during her menstruation, a woman watches
herself in a well-polished mirror, the mirror
adopts the appearance of a blood-colored
cloud, since during such periods women’s
eyes take on a more reddish hue. This occurs,
according to Aristotle, since not only are the
eyes affected by external visible objects, but
they also produce a certain affection with
respect to the objects.
Based on these observations, Aristotle
investigates the remaining sense-perceptions,
paying particular attention to their projective
character. The dogmatic view that Aristotle
himself defends in other writings, namely,
that sense-perception can only be related to
the here and now—so that that which no
longer exists can only be recollected and what
does not exist yet can only be imagined—is
here put in question. Uncanny as they may
be, Aristotle’s investigations on sleeping and
dreaming contribute to a broadening of the
perceptual field and the doctrine of sensa-
tion. Sleep moves within this broadened
horizon of perception, and this may allow
us to investigate sleep not as a diminished
capacity, but rather as an enhanced one—as
a perceptual dimension exceeding that which
could possibly be mastered. This broadening
of perception accounts for the lingering of
sensation even after that which affects our
senses has disappeared, and it is compared
by Aristotle with other states where excess
occurs, like fear and erotic pathos.57 He
regards the onset of illusions as an important
field of investigation for exploring different
137
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
dimensions of this expansion. And he realizes
that illusions—for example, when someone in
love sees the loved one even when she is not
present, or when “the sun seems to be the size
of a foot”58—occur because the visualization
of the loved one happens not just with the
eyes. The person in love discerns and makes
distinctions through a different sense. This
shows that an experience of something can
also occur when this something is not here
now. It shows that perception perceives, that
the senses “sense” from within themselves.59
When these illusions emerge they always
appear together with an intense movement.
It is this experience in and of movement that
Aristotle focuses on when describing the state
of sleep. In an intense movement, conscious-
ness latches onto certain more durable struc-
tures, thus allowing for the manifestation of
extremely small, rapid, and transient events.
Aristotle surmises that all these events and
movements, which are nearly imperceptible
in the wakeful state, linger as a projectile, and
that it is such projective residues that form
what we call dreams. Aristotle admits that
the dream (enupnion) on the one hand is a
sensible image (phantasma), although, on the
other hand, not all sensible images that occur
during sleep constitute dreams. This observa-
tion can be understood if we remind ourse­
lves that all thoughts according to Aristotle
occur through “fantasy,” through the play
of the “imagination,” that is, through dif-
ferent degrees of sensible images. Therefore,
Aristotle argues, it is possible to think in
one’s sleep without these thoughts constitut-
ing a dream. A dream, on the other hand,
is a sensible image (phantasma) that arises
from the movement of perception during
sleep, as he insists at the end of De insom-
niis.60 Dreams are “fantasies” in the original
sense of the word. For they present some-
thing to be known; they are presentations,
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
not just representations, that is, not merely
images or figments. Dreams are formed from
the prolongation of the remnants of images
produced in a state of wakefulness.61
A more detailed discussion of Aristotle’s
investigation of dreams and their divinatory
aspect would exceed the aim of this essay.
The conjunction between dreams and fanta-
sies, in the sense of presentations that yield
knowledge, is here discussed foremost in
relat­ion to the question whether those asleep
can touch something, if they perceive, that
is, if they can undergo an affection and, in
turn, produce affections. Aristotle insists on
the connection between sleep, dreams, and
movement. It is movement, velocity, which
erases the clarity of the dream, he claims.62
Dream images become unclear in the same
way an image reflected on the surface of
water becomes more indiscernible as water’s
movement increases. When Aristotle admits
that sensations imperceptibly small, nuanced,
ephemeral and extremely fast continue to
operate, appearing when wakefulness rests,
he is admitting that in sleep that which was
asleep during wakefulness wakes up, and the
other way around. This means that sleep is but
another form of wakefulness, a wakefulness
for that which moves in movement, for that
which flees in flight, transgressing in trans-
gression, and so on. Sleep watches over that
which evades the definable, the specifiable, the
tamable, and which again will be forg­otten
whenever a waking consciousness wishes to
seize and grasp it. The initially established
difference between sleep and wakefulness—
between a state in which it is no longer possi-
ble to experience something as something and
a state where such distinctions are constantly
made—loses in these works any immediate
obviousness. When Aristotle, in an observa-
tion that resembles Plato’s in the Republic,63
claims that the similarities in dreams look as
138
if they were identities, adding that the power
of sleep lies in forgetting that at stake here
are similarities and not sameness,64 he situ-
ates sleep in an as-if structure. In sleep and in
dreams, similarities and distinctions do not
disappear; what happens is that they are no
longer perceived as differences and distinc-
tions, their nature is therefore forgotten. This
forgetfulness constitutes in its own right an
important topic and shows the importance of
relating these short works to Aristotle’s writ-
ing On Memory and Recollection.65 But, even
without turning the present discussion in that
direction, we should note that when simi-
larities no longer appear as similarities, it is
because the very difference between the real-
ity within us and that outside of us becomes
blurred. When Chuang Tsu says he does not
know whether it was him that dreamt that he
was a butterfly or the butterfly that dreamt
it was Chuang Tsu, he is describing this rare
state of being inseparable with respect to
what we do, know, and desire. What happens
in sleep is that the presence is so intensified
that any distance, separating the one observ-
ing and the one being, is obliterated. Thus,
when life hits us with a sense of overwhelm-
ing joy or sorrow, we experience that “life is
a dream,” vida es sueño, to recall Calderón
de La Barca’s beautiful play.66 Failing to real-
ize that at stake is a similitude, and instead
perceiving it as if it were a sameness, does not
reveal so much about the illusion-generating
force of dreaming, but speaks first and fore-
most to a protection, a safeguarding of the
indistinguishable. In sleep, all differences and
similarities are contracted in an “antiperi-
static manner,” that is, in a way that enfolds
and compresses into a center. It is along these
same lines that Schelling as well speaks of the
magnetism of sleep.67 Far from distraction,
dissolution, or dispersal, sleep manifests itself
as a “deep intimacy with the center”—as

Maurice Blanchot so well expressed it.68
In sleep “I am, not dispersed, but entirely
gathered together where I am, at this point
which is my position and where the world,
because of the firmness of my attachment,
localizes itself.”69 Here, the I and space are
no longer an inside and an outside. Here,
the self is already spatiality and spatiality
the self. Aristotle describes this indiscernibil-
ity of self and space in terms of being bound
to a place, not leaving it other than through
sleep walking. This bond to place shows
itself even more clearly in insomnia, where
anxiety is foremost manifest as the anxiety of
not finding a position or a place to lay. The
positioning of the world is, in actual fact, so
determinant for the phenomenon of sleep
that the Greek language designates sleep in
distinctively spatial or positional terms and
revolves around the contrast between the
position of lying (katheudo) and the upright
position (egeiro). In sleep, we fall asleep, “we
fall from sleep into sleep,” quoting Jean-Luc
Nancy.70
Aristotle’s discussion entails, in addi-
tion, certain erotic implications that would
deserve their own study. That the erotic is
easily awoken in connection to sleep is admit-
tedly not something thematized by Aristotle,
but it still presents interesting connections to
certain Aristotelian observations. This eroti-
cism of sleep, so to speak, affords moreover
an opening toward an understanding of that
state of indiscernibility—a point on which
Aristotle insists—not as confusion or illu-
sion but as the rare and complete presence
in what we do. The indiscernibility Aristotle
addresses characterizes the moment in which
being and doing (thinking, acting, etc.)
become one. This full presence describes the
meditative state as well as the experience of
the lover entering into indifference between
self and other.
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THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
The dark light of Eros lies in the capacity
to “lose” oneself in the other, in the sense of
becoming the other limitlessly. To “lose one-
self” is, however, a misleading expression.
What is at stake here constitutes the etymo-
logical meaning of the Greek orgasmos, from
orge-: impulse, natural movement, and pas-
sion, impetus, fury, ardor. At stake is blend-
ing with the other, being kneaded into the
other in an unlimited devotion. In the indis-
cernibility Aristotle describes, the “world is
present in me and I am absent in it,”71 to
borrow Blanchot’s particularly pertinent for-
mulation. Indiscernibility—the inability to
distinguish something as something—entails
such an intense concentration of different
movements and dimensions that the obvious
difference between the I and the world, the I
and space, becomes blurred. Here, the world
and the I are infinitely concentrated.
From this perspective we might claim that
Aristotle’s observations around sleep open the
way to a critique of the widespread idea that
sleep is absence of world, a sinking into the
powers of oblivion. Heraclitus’ words quoted
above (“for the waking the world is one and
common, but each sleeper turns away to
a world of his own”) do not claim that the
sleeper loses the world. What Heraclitus says
is simply that the world becomes the sleep-
ing one’s own world. Certainly, in reading
this fragment one has to ask how a world
can be “one’s own.” Taking inspiration from
Aristotle, we can at any rate intuit the possi­
bility of understanding “the sleeping one’s
own world” in the sense that, in sleep, the I is
the world, for the self loses itself in the world
at the same time as the world becomes alto-
gether present in the I. Thus, we have to begin
questioning the idea that sleep before anything
else entails a loss. This idea still lives on in
most philosophical discussions of sleep, even
in what one could call the phenomenology of
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
sleep. The phenomenology of sleep is of great
significance for phenomenological research,
not only as an area for specialized investiga-
tion, but also in virtue of its methodological
implications. For, indeed, Husserl regards
sleep as a “natural epoché,” a natural loss of
the world. When phenomenology searches
for a way of thinking that does not immerse
itself in the world, as the positive sciences do,
but instead undertakes an epoché—losing the
world “in order to be able to gain it again
through universal self-reflection”72—it must
obviously lead to a great interest in the natu-
ral epoché, namely sleep. Contrary to what
Heraclitus’ words seem to say, Husserl and
Eugen Fink assume that “sleep is the present
loss of the world by the originary self.”73 This
means that, in those sleeping, all capabilities
are asleep, except for the one to be awoken.
To Husserl, Fink, and, although starting from
different presuppositions, Bergson as well,
sleep entails a suspension of all interests, of
all intentionality, of all constitution based
on egoity. From this point of view, in sleep
the world is lost, absent, rather than missed.
Hence, sleep only has significance from the
perspective of wakefulness, and can only be
regarded by way of analogy and contrast with
respect to this. Husserl’s occasional, yet sig-
nificant, observations on sleep follow largely
the same pattern as his treatment of the expe-
rience of the other self as other. Neither in the
case of another consciousness nor in sleep is
there any access other than by way of projec-
tion, analogy, and contrast. Sleep is, in this
manner, as impenetrable as the other self.
Husserl regards sleep as a pause, a suspension,
a death in the middle of life, entirely inexpli-
cable.74 Thus, he insists: “. . . in this immersion
I am not a human being in the world, I am
not for myself as I always am, I am not a self
that senses, experiences, acts, can capable. . .
About myself I don’t know anything. . . . This
140
would be sleeping’s dreamless construction.”75
Sleep is here presented as the zero-degree in
the vitality of consciousness, an undifferen-
tiated state that, as its mode of vitality, pre-
serves the capacity to wake up. Based on this
kind of description, Husserl as well as Fink
maintain that sleep implies the will to leave
the self and the world in order to abandon
oneself to the uncontrollable. In an attempt
to draw Husserl’s phenomenological position
to its extreme consequences, Pierre Carrique
suggests that one could read in Husserl’s
reflections an understanding of sleep as a sur-
rendering to the flesh of the present.76 Different
studies, on a phenomenological basis, have
tried to criticize the fundamental thesis in
Husserl and Fink’s phenomenology of sleep,
according to which sleep would be a radical
pause equally deprived of intentionality and
interest. Zahavi’s discussions, which take up
certain problematic experiences like hypnosis,
sleep-walking, and sleep-talking, endeavor to
show that there is an element of wakefulness
in sleep, an element of self-consciousness that,
in sleep, appears as a double or split self.77
Aristotle’s investigations open the way
for other dimensions of this discussion, for
waking consciousness, and its being directed
toward something, to a certain extent appear
as dispersal, and not simply as focus. The
directedness of wakefulness toward some-
thing differs from the “antiperistatic”
movement of sleep, that is, from sleep’s
concentrated and compressed movement.
By centering his reflections on the relation
between sleep and the vastness of that which
(being richly nuanced, rapid, like a projectile)
in wakefulness is imperceptible, forgotten,
excluded from sight and hearing, Aristotle
lets sleep appear as care for the transient,
for that course of life that leaves no trace.
During sleep the living takes care of that
which gives life to life—namely the ­passages,
 THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER

the transitions, the transient. In Homer sleep,  3

Plato, Republic 476c. Here and throughout
hupnos, is enfolded within the unforeseen. the essay, the quotations from Plato’s and
Aristotle’s texts are based on the editions/
Sleep, as we can read in the Iliad, all of a
translations listed in the References. However,
sudden looked like “a sounding mountain my renditions of the Greek often depart from
bird.”78 The winged sleep blows the transient those.
breath of life and opens the empty space of  4
Ibid.
openness to the living. Here nothing can be
 5
Plato, Rep. 376b.
 6
Kafka, 1996, 411–55.
kept. Here only full presence is possible.  7
Iliad XIV, 231.
The present reading of Aristotle’s investi-  8
Kahn, 1979, 31, fragment VI.
gations on sleep aimed to awaken a dimen-  9
Meillet and Ernout, 1951, 1121.
sion of hermeneutical thought that, for the 10
Hett, 1986, 319–85. For a close reading of
most part, has been neglected. The con- these treatises of Aristotle see the doctoral
thesis of Wijsenbeek-Wijlers, 1976.
nection between sleep and the past is often 11
Melo Neto, 1984, 686.
understood as the obvious fact that the past 12
Ibid., 687.
is asleep and is to be awoken by life. The 13
Ibid.
trouble with such a current representation 14
On the topic of sleep, more recents works
is that much is overlooked, above all the published are Alter 5 (1997), Carrique, 1992,
and Jean-Luc Nancy, 2007.
active performance of nothingness, of that 15
De Somno et Vigilia, 455b22–3.
which is inadequately designated as priva- 16
John, 11.12.
tion, lack, absence. In its active perform- 17
De Somno et Vigilia, 455b21.
ance, nothingness constitutes the horizon 18
About the relation between nature and his-
from which the transitions and the transient tory in Aristotle’s thought see Arendt, 2000,
278–310.
can manifest themselves in their evanescent, 19
De Somno et Vigilia, 453b26.
untouchable origin. A hermeneutics of sleep 20
De Somno et Vigilia, 453b28–30.
can show us that the access to the past—the 21
De Somno et Vigilia, 454a1–4.
already thought, the already said, the already 22
De Somno et Vigilia, 453b27.
familiar—in search for the unthought, the
23
De Somno et Vigilia, 454a5–6.
24
Politics, 1253a14–18.
unsaid, the unfamiliar, entails the discovery 25
De Anima, 416b33.
of the past as the “antiperistatic” presence 26
Chantraine, 1963, 175, § 261: “Si l’on veut
of the night in diurnal life, the coming to serrer la définition du moyen, on pourrait le
presence of life’s compressed and condensed définir en disant que, dans l’emploi du moyen,
multidimensionality. le sujet est senti comme le lieu du procés. On
pourrait aussi rappeler la définition de Panini,
Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback
qui définit le moyen comme l’atmane pada, ‘le
Translation by David Payne mot pour soi.’” See also Benveniste, 1950, 121f.
27
De Anima, 416b34–35.
28
De Generatione et Corruptione, 319b11–13.
29
De Anima, 417a13.
Notes 30
De Anima, 417a11.
31
Diels-Kranz, 1989, 170, fragment 84ª (my
 1
An earlier version of the present chapter translation).
appeared in Swedish under the title “Den 32
De Somno et Vigilia, 455a26f. I am consider-
hermeneutiska sömnen,” in M. Sá Cavalcante ing that touto in this passage refers to common
Schuback, Lovtal till intet, Gothenburg: sense.
Glänta, 2006, 129–51. 33
De Somno et Vigilia, 455a27–8.
 2
Kahn, 1979, 29, Fragment I. 34
De Somno et Vigilia, 455b5–6.

141
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35
De Somno et Vigilia, 456b10–11. position et où le monde, par la fermeté de mon
36
For a path-opening interpretation of attachement, se localise.”
Aristotle’s discussion of nature’s adunamia, see 70
Nancy, 2007, 3.
Merleau-Ponty, 1995. 71
Blanchot, 1955, 280, my translation: “Là
37
De Somno et Vigilia, 454b11–12. est ma personne, empêchée d’errer, non plus
38
De Somno et Vigilia, 454b28. instable, éparpillée et distraite, mais concen-
39
De Somno et Vigilia, 457b3–4. trée dans l’étroitesse de ce lieu où le monde se
40
Nancy, 2007. recueille, que j’affirme et qui m’affirme, point
41
De Somno et Vigilia, 454b5–6. où il est présent en moi et moi absent en lui,
42
For a detailed discussion of the physiology of
par une union essentiellement extatique.”
sleep in Aristotle’s reflection, see J. Wiesner, 72
Husserl, 1992, 161: “Das Delphische Wort
1975.
gno-thi seauton hat eine neue Bedeutung
43
De Somno et Vigilia, 458a33.
gewonnen. Positive Wissenschaft ist
44
De Somno et Vigilia, 454b13–14.
Wissenschaft in der Weltverlorenheit. Man
45
De Somno et Vigilia, 458a29.
46
De Somno et Vigilia, 455b22. muß erst die Welt durch epoché verlieren, um
47
De Insomniis, 459a1–8. sie in universaler Selbstbesinnung wieder-
48
Kahn, 1979, 71, fragment XC. zugewinnen. Noli foras ire, sagt Augustin, in te
49
Diels-Kranz, 1989, 202, fragment 28: πάντα redi, in interiore nomine habitat veritas.”
τὰ σπουδαῖα νυκτὸς μᾶλλον ἐξευρίσκεται.
73
Fink, 1966, 64, my translation: “Schlaf ist die
50
Iliad XIV, 289–96 (Pope’s translation). gegenwärtige Weltverlorenheit des originären
51
Heidegger, 1986. Ich.”
52
Ibid., 229: “Das Tasten und Berühren ist ein 74
The contemporary research on sleep tends to
Nahsinn und als solcher die Weise eines unmit- no longer consider sleep as a pause or a death
telbaren Anstehens und Anliegens, eine unmit- in life. Through the registration of electric brain
telbare Nachbarschaft.” activity during sleep, and also by studies of the
53
De Insomniis, 459b1–2. brain’s chemical processes, research has increas-
54
De Insomniis, 459b8–20. ingly cast light on sleep as an intense physiologi-
55
De Insomniis, 459b28. cal activity. The physical relaxation allows a
56
Goethe, 1840, 34: “If the eye were not sunny, huge internal activity. Sleep has been shown to
how could we perceive light? If God’s own accommodate the different phases that alternate
strength lived not in us, how could we delight cyclically, the shift from a so-called slow-wave
in divine things?” sleep into rapid eye movement (also called para-
57
De Insomniis, 460b5–6.
doxical) sleep, etc. See Pringuey, 1997, 101–21.
58
De Insomniis, 458b28–9. In this text there are 75
This passage is from the manuscript coded as
two references about the sun having the same
E III.6, 6b–8b. The complete quote can be
size of a foot, as in Heraclitus’ fragment 3
found in Alter, 1997, 85, n. 22.
(Diels-Kranz). 76
Carrique, 1997.
59
De Insomniis, 460b16–27.
60
De Insomniis, 462a30–2.
77
Zahavi, 1997, 137–51.
61
Freud had read and studied these works by
78
Iliad XIV, 290.
Aristotle. See Freud, 1948.
62
De Divinatione per Somnum, 464b16–17.
63
Rep. 476c.
64
De Divinatione per Somnum, 461b30. References
65
Hett, 1986, 288–313.
66
Calderon de la Barca, 2002. Arendt, H., “The Concept of History:
67
Schelling, 1985.
Ancient and Modern,” in The Portable
68
Blanchot, 1955, 280, my translation.
69
Ibid.: “Je ne suis pas dispersé, mais rassemblé Hannah Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr, New
tout entier où je suis, en ce point qui est ma York: Penguin Books, 2000, 278–310.

142

Barnes, J. (ed. and trans.), Aristotle. The
Complete Works, 2 vols, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1988.
Benveniste, É., “Actif et moyen dans le
verbe,” Journal de Psychologie, 43
(1950), 119–27.
Blanchot, M., “Le sommeil, la nuit,”
L’espace littéraire, Paris: Gallimard, 1955.
Calderon de la Barca, P., Life Is a dream/
Vida es sueño, trans. Stanley Appelbaum,
Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002.
Carrique, P., Rêve, vérité. Essai sur la
philosophie du sommeil et de la veille,
Paris: Gallimard, 1992.
Chantraine, P., Grammaire Homérique,
Syntaxe, vol. II, Paris: Klincksieck,
1963.
Conford (trans.), Aristotle. Physics
Books I-IV, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1980.
Diels, H. and Kranz, W., Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker, Zürich/Hildesheim:
Weidmann, 1989.
Fink, E., “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” in
Studien zur Phänomenologie, Den Haag:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1966.
Freud, S., “Über den Traum,” in Gesammelte
Werke II/III, London: Imago, 1948.
Goethe, J. W., Theory of Colours, trans.
Charles Lock Eastlake, London: John
Murray, 1840.
Heidegger, M., Seminare. Gesamtausgabe
15, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1986.
Hett, W. S. (trans.), Aristotle. On the soul,
Parva Naturalia, On Breath, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press,
1986.
Husserl, E., Cartesianische Meditationen,
ed. Elisabeth Ströker, Husserliana VI,
Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992.
Kafka, F., “Forschungen eines Hundes,”
in Die Erzählungen Originalfassung,
Frankfurt: Fischer, 1996.
143
THE HERMENEUTIC SLUMBER
Kahn, C. H., The Art and Thought of
Heraclitus, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979.
Meillet, A. and Ernout, A., Dictionnaire
étymologique de la langue latine. Histoire
des mots, Paris: Klincksieck, 1951.
Melo Neto, J. C., “Considerações sobre o
poeta dormindo,” in Obra Completa, Rio
de Janeiro: Nova Aguilar, 1994.
Merleau-Ponty, M., La Nature: Cours du
Collège de France, Paris: Gallimard,
1995.
Nancy, J.-L., Tombe de sommeil, Paris:
Galilée, 2007; The Fall of Sleep, trans.
C. Mandell, New York: Fordham
University Press, 2009.
Peck, A. L. and E. S. Forster (trans.),
Aristotle. Parts of Animals, Movement
of Animals, Progression of Animals,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1998.
Pope, A. (trans.), Homer. The Iliad, London:
Penguin, 1996 [1899].
Pringuey, P., “Essai de psychobiologie du
sommeil,” Alter 5 (1997), 101–19.
Rackham, H. (trans.), Aristotle. Politics,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1977.
Schelling, F. W., “Die Weltalter,” in
Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1985.
Wiesner, J., “Die Einheit der Schrift De
Somno und die physiologische Erklärung
des Schlafes,” in Aristotle on Mind
and Senses: Proceedings of the Seventh
Symposium Aristotelicum, ed. G. E. L.
Owen, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1975.
Wijsenbeek-Wijlers, H., Aristotle’s Concept
of Soul, Sleep and Dreams, Amsterdam:
Hakkert, 1976.
Zahavi, D., “Sleep, Self-awareness and
Dissociation,” Alter 5 (1997), 137–51.
 ˉ teˉ
Philosophia Pro
 8
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
The science of the first
principles and causes
Aristotle recognizes the existence of differ-
ent forms of knowledge, of both a presci-
entific and scientific character. In the case
of scientific knowledge, there are, in addi-
tion, different particular sciences, each of
which has its own sphere of competence,
its own conceptual resources and its own
proper methods. In addition to being a con-
dition of possibility for philosophy itself,
this fact raises certain challenges for philo-
sophical reflection. In particular, how do
we deal with the possible unity of knowl-
edge, while maintaining the variety of its
manifestations?
In different contexts, Aristotle focuses on
the thematization of the structure, reach,
and limits of different forms of knowl-
edge. In two texts of central importance,
Metaphysics I.1–2 and Nicomachean Ethics
VI, he also carries out a certain attempt
at systematization, based on a kind of
phenomenology of the principal forms of
knowledge. Both texts are inserted in dis-
tinct thematic contexts and, additionally,
there are significant differences of detail
between them, which, in some cases, appear
to be inexplicable other than by reference
147
to their different dates of composition and
the evolution which the thought of Aristotle
underwent.1 But there are also fundamen-
tally important ways in which they coincide,
especially in regard to the identification of
a supreme form of knowledge, of a purely
theoretical-speculative character, which in
both texts is identified by the traditional
name of “wisdom” (sophia).
The treatment in Met. I.1–2 is of special
importance, since it provides not only a more
detailed characterization of wisdom but also
an intent to explain how it comes about on
the basis of other, more elemental, forms of
knowledge. Aristotle begins with the asser-
tion of the presence in human beings of a
natural tendency toward seeking knowl-
edge (see Met. I.1, 980a21: “by nature, all
human beings desire to know”). Above and
beyond its possible usefulness, knowledge is
also sought as something desired in and of
itself. This natural tendency to seek knowl-
edge reaches its fulfillment precisely in wis-
dom, which no longer bears any relation to
the satisfaction of immediate vital needs, but
rather is always sought for its own sake. In
order to show in what way wisdom comes
about as a result of the radicalization of a
tendency already in operation long before,
Aristotle presents it in Met. I.1 as situated
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
in the highest place within a scale of fun-
damental forms of knowledge. This scale
is constructed on the basis of two criteria,
that is: (1) the criterion of universality and
(2) the criterion of causality. In accordance
with (1), a form of knowledge that facili-
tates access to universal connections will be
superior to another that remains restricted
to the sphere of particular objects; likewise,
given two forms of knowledge that permit
access to universal connections, that form
will be superior which has as its object more
universal connections. In accordance with
(2), the knowledge of causal connections
is superior to the mere knowledge of facts.
Both criteria are closely connected: causal
explanations, insofar as they habitually refer
to determined types of things or events, are
characterized simultaneously by bringing
with them a claim of validity for all the cases
of the same type; that is, they claim univer-
sal validity. On the other hand, insofar as
the different types of objects considered in
each case can be characterized in terms ever
more all-embracing, the causal explanations
referring to them can also be ordered in a
sequence of increasing universality.
Within the scale of Met. I.1 Aristotle
considers five fundamental forms of knowl-
edge, each of which comes about based
upon the preceding form, that is: (1) per-
ception ­(aisthe-sis), (2) memory (mne-me-),
(3) experience (empeiria), (4) art or technique
(techne-), which in this context, as opposed
to the discussion in NE VI, is not clearly
distinguished from science (episte-me-),2 and
(5) wisdom (sophia), the characterization
of which he takes up again and completes
in the following chapter (see I.2). (1) and
(2) are forms of knowledge referring to par-
ticular things, and which humans share with
animals, and which do not provide access
to causal connections (980a21–b25). (3) is
148
a type of uniquely human knowledge, which
is already characterized by the presence of
a certain type of generality, of a merely
typological character, but which does not
involve reference to causal connections:
diverse particular memories are united in an
empirical type delineated in a more or less
approximate manner, which thereby per-
mits recognizing their identity, in regard to
some aspect relevant for guiding our actions
(e.g. recognizing when someone has a cold
and adopting habitual remedies in order
to alleviate it) (980b25–981a1). (4) consti-
tutes, conversely, a type of knowledge that
possesses a causal character and, thereby,
a universal reach, that is, for all the cases
of a given type, adequately defined (e.g. the
explanation according to which all the indi-
viduals who possess a determined type of
constitution or bodily disposition are cured
of a determined illness by means of a deter-
mined type of medication). Thus, the expe-
rience remains restricted to the knowledge
of certain facts (τὸ ὅτι), while that which is
proper to science or technique is to know
the corresponding cause (τὸ διότι καὶ ἡ
αἰτία) (981a2–30). Finally, (5) corresponds,
within the sphere of scientific knowledge, to
the idea of a maximally universal science,
which, as such, should deal with certain
causes (aitiai) and certain principles (archai)
(981b27–982a3); more precisely, it should
deal with the primary principles and causes
(αἱ πρώται ἀρχαὶ καὶ αἰτίαι) of all things
(see I.2, 982b8–9).
Thus characterized, wisdom unites in
itself the principal characteristics that the
habitual use of language links to the usage
of the term “wise” (sophos): the wise man
knows all things, without having a par-
ticular knowledge of each one; he knows
difficult things, which are not accessible
to everyone; he possesses a more precise

knowledge; he is more capable of teaching
the causes of things; he possesses a knowl-
edge that is sought for its own sake; and he
possesses the most directive or architectonic
science, which is not subordinated to any
other (see Met. I.2, 982a8–b10). It is thus
a science that possesses a maximum dig-
nity, both because of its object as well as its
totally free and disinterested character. Its
initial impulse derives from wonder (thau-
mazein), which permits a person to become
conscious of her own ignorance and drives
her to attempt to overcome it (982b11–28).
Wisdom is the most divine science, in a
dual sense: as the science that the divinity
itself should possess and, at the same time,
as the science that has as its objective the
divinity, qua ultimate cause of the universe
(983a5–11).
In this way, the traditional notion of wis-
dom, which had a long and rich history in
the preceding Greek culture,3 is reinterpreted
via reference to the novel idea of a science of
the causes and first principles of all things.
And thus, it comes to designate the funda-
mental philosophical discipline, which the
later philosophical tradition would know
under the name of metaphysics. In fact,
Aristotle never uses the term “metaphysics,”
but rather makes use of other terms for this
science. One of them is precisely that of wis-
dom, employed in I.1–2. To this term Aristotle
adds others, employed in different contexts,
such as first philosophy (πρώτη φιλοσοφία:
VI.1, 1026a24, 30; XI.4, 1061b19), the
sought-after science (ἡ ζητουμένη ἐπιστήμη:
III.2, 996b2–3; 996b31–3; XI.1, 1059b1, 13,
22, 25; 2, 1060a4, 6), and theological science
(θεολογικὴ ἐπιστήμη: VI.2, 1026a19; XI.7,
1064b3).
This is a science that is, in a certain sense,
new, given that it had never before been
characterized in such terms. But since it
149
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
arises based on the natural attitude of won-
der, this “novelty” does not impede us from
considering this science, at the same time, as
old or even the oldest of all: not only does it
retain a certain natural continuity with the
other forms of knowledge, but this science
itself arises as the result of the radicalization
and as the consummation of the natural ten-
dency to seek knowledge that characterizes
the human being. Furthermore, this science
also has its own history. Therefore, after the
predominantly synchronic explanation of
the genesis of wisdom offered in Met. I.1–2,
Aristotle adds in chapters 3–10, which com-
plete the book, an attempt to reconstruct the
history of the philosophy that precedes it.
The main connecting thread for this attempt
at reconstruction is provided by Aristotle’s
own doctrine of the four causes (i.e. mate-
rial, formal, efficient, and final): he attempts
to show how the different philosophers that
preceded him, beginning with Thales and
the first natural philosophers up to Plato
and his disciples in the Academy, progres-
sively discovered each one of these causes,
albeit in an unsure and hesitant manner. The
history of the progressive discovery of the
four causes can only be narrated in a coher-
ent fashion from the perspective of some-
one, like Aristotle himself, who is already
in possession of a unitary conception of
causality. Nonetheless, it is this very history
that explains, from its origins, the very pos-
sibility of the explicit formulation of this
conception and, in addition, of the concep-
tion of wisdom as a science of the causes
and first principles of all things. Thus, in a
way comparable to that which would later
characterize Hegel, Aristotle presents his
own conception as the final goal of a histor-
ical development, which, at the same time
that it culminates in this goal, also makes
it possible.4
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
The meanings of “being”
The characterization of wisdom as a science
that has as its object the first causes and prin-
ciples of all things still does not make explicit
the manner in which we should understand
this latter expression. In chapters 1–2 of
book IV of Met., Aristotle focuses on the
same problem from a different perspective.
To do so, he provides a more precise char-
acterization of the object of this science: the
­science of the first causes and principles seeks
to thematize “that which is insofar as it is”
(τὸ ὂν ᾓ ὄν) and the attributes that belong
to it in and of itself (see IV.1, 1003a21–2).
Therefore, the causes and the first principles
that this ­science studies will be, definitively,
the causes and first principles of that which is
insofar as it is (1003a26–32). There appears
here the idea, formulated for the first time
in an explicit fashion, and which would be
dominant throughout the entirety of the
later philosophical tradition, of a “science of
being,” that is, of an ontology (τὸ ὄν: “that
which is”), as it was termed beginning in the
seventeenth century (Goclenius).
So, while the particular sciences (e.g.
mathematics, physics, biology, etc.) for-
mally constitute their object by demarcating
a determinate sector of that which is (e.g.
quantity, that which is subject to movement,
that which is alive, etc.), the science of that
which is in insofar as it is does not carry
out a similar demarcation (1003a22–6).
The thematic field of the particular sciences
remains, then, circumscribed by the unity
of a genus (genos) or natural class of things
(see Posterior Analytics I.7). Conversely,
the science of that which is insofar as it is
seeks to not be restricted to any particular
sector of objects, and aspires, therefore, to
maximum universality. Nevertheless, this
very aspiration, which places it above the
150
particular sciences, results, at the same time,
in certain difficulties. In the technical sense
that Aristotle gives to the term, the genus
always designates a universal predicate (e.g.
“animal”) that is predicated of multiple spe-
cies (e.g. “horse,” “dog,” “ox,” etc.), without
varying its meaning from case to case: the
predication of the genus with regards to its
species (eide-) results in a case of synonymy
or univocity (suno-numon, suno-numo-s) (e.g.
“a horse is an animal,” “a dog is an animal,”
“an ox is an animal,” etc., where “animal” =
“living being possessing a sensitive soul”)
(see Categories 1, 1a6–12). The contrary
case to synonymy or univocity corresponds
to homonymy or equivocity (homo-numon,
homo-numo-s), which occurs when two or
more things have the same name, but this
name is not applied to all of them with one
and the same meaning (e.g. “animal” applied
to a living human being and to a painting on
a wall) (1a1–6). Aristotle considers that there
can only be genuine science where the terms
that delimit the corresponding sector of
objects are employed in a univocal manner,
and not merely equivocal. Thus, for example,
zoology has as its object all those beings that
are univocally designated by “animal,” in its
most strict sense (= a living being possessing
a sensitive soul), since in this case one is in
the presence of a genus, that is, of a genuine
natural class of things.
Turning now to the science of that which is
insofar as it is, we encounter a peculiar situa-
tion. Indeed, while the predicate “is” appears
to be applicable to absolutely all things,
Aristotle expressly concedes that “being” is
not applied in a univocal fashion to all things
to which it is predicated: “that which is” (τὸ
ὄν, see Met. IV.2, 1003a33–4), “to be” (τὸ
εἶναι, see VII.1, 1028a10) and “is” (τὸ ἔστι,
see VII.4, 1030a21) are said in multiple ways
(λέγεται πολλαχῶς). This is equivalent to

saying that “that which is” cannot be con-
sidered a genus, a natural class of things (see
III.3, 998b22–7).5 The term “being” evidently
has different meanings. For example, a state-
ment such as “Socrates is a man” provides
a case of essential predication, in which the
copula expresses a type of relation of identity
between term S and term P, something that
does not occur in the case of a statement such
as “Socrates is white,” which corresponds to
so-called accidental predication. “Man” des-
ignates the species to which the individual
Socrates belongs, while “white” designates
only an accidental determination of this indi-
vidual, and the relation that the individual
object maintains with its own essence, which
constitutes its substantial form, is radically
different from the relation that this same indi-
vidual maintains with its accidental determi-
nations, since these do not form part of its
identity: the individual object may at some
point cease to possess these accidental deter-
minations and acquire others, without for
that reason ceasing to be the individual object
that it is.6 Something analogous occurs in the
case of statements such as “white is a color”
and “white is pleasant,” which exemplify the
difference between essential and accidental
predication in the case of something that,
like the color white, is a quality, not a sub-
stantial object. Lastly, “being” in its existen-
tial use also does not have a unique meaning
that is the same in all cases.7 For instance, we
can say both that “men are (= ‘exist’, ‘there
are’)” or “horses” or “rocks” are, just as we
also say “numbers are (= ‘exist’, ‘there are’)”
or “colors” or “places,” etc. but the mode
of existence that corresponds to substantial
objects such as human beings, horses, or
stones is, in Aristotle’s judgment, different
from that which corresponds to nonsubstan-
tial entities such as mathematical determina-
tions, qualities, or spatial determinations and
151
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
space itself. The attempt to reduce the evident
multiplicity of meanings that “being” bears
to the monolithic unity of one and the same
meaning in each and every use of the term
turns out to be, in Aristotle’s view, completely
unjustified from the logical-semantic point of
view, and would have, in addition, disastrous
consequences for the science of being itself,
since it would make it impossible to explain
not only the multiplicity and diversity of
the real but also the fact of movement and
change, in general. Such would be the con-
sequences of the position of Parmenides and
his disciples Zeno and Melissus, to whom
Aristotle attributes an ontological conception
of a monistic character, which negates multi-
plicity and movement, and which was based,
definitively, in a univocal conception of being
(see Physics I.2–3).
If “being” cannot be univocal, it would
appear that the die is cast for a possible sci-
ence of being, at least if we confine ourselves
to the epistemology that Aristotle himself
presents in APo. Nevertheless, in Met. IV.2
Aristotle introduces a logical-semantic model
that is intermediate between the cases of
pure univocity and pure equivocity, that is,
the model of homonymy or equivocity with
reference to some one thing (πρὸς ἓν), which,
beginning with G. E. L. Owen, is also known
technically as the model of focal meaning.8
This is, more specifically, a type of nonacci-
dental equivocity that is not considered in an
explicit fashion in the treatment in Cat. 1,
although it is a matter of discussion whether
the alternative between univocity and equiv-
ocity outlined in that text excludes the possi-
bility of the existence of nonaccidental forms
of equivocity, in the way in which Aristotle
discusses it in Met. IV.2 or, rather, turns out
to be compatible with it.9
In Met. IV.2 Aristotle illustrates the case of
homonymy pros hen (πρὸς ἓν) by means of
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
the example of the different uses of the pred-
icate “healthy”: “healthy” is said in many
ways with reference to many different things
(e.g. taking a walk, the color of one’s face, a
type of diet or food, etc.), but always, defini-
tively, by reference to the health of the body,
which provides the focal meaning that guides
the use of the term (1003a34–5). In this case,
it is the presence of certain real relations
between the things designated by one and
the same term—such as the relation of the
cause to that which it causes, or vice versa,
of that which is caused to its cause, as in the
case of a natural sign and that of which it
is a sign, etc.—which undergirds the transfer
of meaning that makes possible the applica-
tion of one and the same predicate, taken in
different senses but not completely discon-
nected from one another, to different things
or types of things. We have here, then, a case
of homonymy or equivocity, but not merely
accidental, insofar as the application of the
same predicate to different things, with par-
tially differing meanings, is supported by the
relations that link these things on the onto-
logical plane.
Thus, Aristotle holds that the case of
“being” is comparable to that of “healthy”:
“being” is also said in multiple manners,
but always “by reference to some one thing
and to some single nature” (πρὸς ἓν καὶ
μίαν τινὰ φύσιν), and not in an accidentally
equivocal fashion (1003a33–4). In the case
of “being,” that basic principle (arche-) by
reference to which it is said that all else is,
is nothing other than substance (ousia),
since all the things that are said to be are
either substantial objects, properties of sub­
stantial objects, or else processes that invo­
lve substantial objects (1003b5–10). Hence,
“being” has its focal meaning there where
it is predicated of substantial objects, while
in all other cases “being” is taken in derived
152
senses, which refer, directly or indirectly, to
the aforesaid basic meaning. And this seman-
tic fact reflects the corresponding relations
of dependence that exist on the ontological
plane. We are, as a result, in the presence
of equivocity in the case of “being” as well,
but not a merely accidental equivocity, but
rather equivocity or homonymy πρὸς ἓν.
This discovery has decisive consequences for
the possibility of a science of what is insofar
as it is. This is because, as Aristotle explains,
the type of logical-semantic unity that pro-
vides the foundation for the focal-meaning
model also constitutes a sufficient basis for
the unity of a science that seeks to thema-
tize the totality of the scope of that which
is designated by means of the predicate in
question. Thus, for instance, there is a sin-
gle science, medicine, which, via its differ-
ent parts or disciplines, deals with all that
which is designated as “healthy,” and even
with that which is opposed to it as a priva-
tion, that is, the not-healthy; and in the same
way, there will be a single science that deals
with all that is insofar as it is (1003b11–12,
15–16). This solution to the problem implies,
as is obvious, making the epistemological
model of APo more flexible, since it is no
longer required that the thematic field of a
science always be delimited by the unity of a
genus of things. In Met. IV.2 Aristotle alludes
explicitly to this issue, when he declares that
the unity of focal meaning (πρὸς ἓν) is, in
a certain manner (τρόπον τινά), compara-
ble to the unity of meaning that corresponds
to the genus (καθ’ ἕν), and that its presence
will be sufficient to guarantee the unity of
the corresponding science (1003b12–15).
There follow two consequences: on the one
hand, that there will be a unitary science
that studies all that is insofar as it is; on the
other hand, this science will be necessarily
focused on that which is said to be, in the

basic and primary sense of the term, that
is, on substance, and will consider all else,
which depends on substance, precisely in
reference to it (1003b15–17), just as medi-
cine focuses its attention in the health of the
body, and considers all else that is said to be
healthy only insofar as it is linked, in one or
another manner, to the health of the body. If
what is proper to philosophy is to seek the
principles and the causes of what is insofar
as it is, and if substance provides the basic
principle on which all else depends which,
in a derived sense, is said to be, it thereby
follows that what is proper to philosophy
will be, definitively, to study fundamentally
the principles and the causes of substance
(1003b17–19).
The multiplicity of the meanings of
“being” is, however, in Aristotle’s judgment,
even greater than what is suggested by the
argument of Met. IV.2. Indeed, in Met. V.7
Aristotle distinguishes four great domains
of meaning of “being,” within each of which
there are various meanings that differ among
themselves, namely (1) “being” according
to the categories, qua fundamental modes
of “being per se”; (2) “being” according to
potency and act; (3) “being” as the true, and
“not being” as the false; and (4) “being” as
accidental.
With regards to (1), Aristotle explains
that, considered in themselves, substance
and the accidental categories together con-
stitute the different modes of “being per se”
(ὂν καθ’ αὑτό) (1017a22–7): all that exists
and can be designated by means of a certain
name will be per se either a substantial object
or a quality or a quantity or a relation or else
something pertaining to one of the remain-
ing categories.10 This classificatory aspect is
present at the base of any predicative act,
independently of the fact of whether the
connection between the term S and the term
153
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
P that a statement of the form S-P establishes
is itself of an essential or accidental charac-
ter. Indeed, in order to be able to predicate
we must first designate by means of a name
both the object that will be predicated of,
and that will be represented by the term
S in the statement, as well as the property
or determination that will be predicated of
it, and that will be represented by the term
P in the statement. In fact, Aristotle men-
tions examples that correspond to acciden-
tal predication: “the man is healthy,” “the
man walks (is walking)” or “the man cuts (is
cutting)” (1017a27–30), where the relevant
factor is not, then, the character of the link
between S and P, but rather the fact that both
that which is designated by S as well as that
designated by P necessarily fall under a deter-
mined category.
With respect to (2), it should be noted that
both in the designative usage of the simple
terms in order to name something, as well as
in the predicative act that links the term S and
the term P in the statement, we may indicate
not only what the thing currently is but also
the aspects of virtuality that it hosts. Thus,
for instance, we can use the name “wheat”
or else say “this is wheat” both in reference
to the grown plant as well as in reference to
the corresponding seed, such that in one and
the other case the designation or the predica-
tion possesses, in Aristotle’s view, a different
scope (1017a35–b8).
(3) “Being” as the true alludes, fundamen-
tally, to the truth value that the copula “is”
has in the predicative statement, insofar as
any statement of the form “S is P” can be
paraphrased by means of a statement of
the form “it is true that S is P”; in an analo-
gous fashion, any statement of the form “S
is not P” can be paraphrased in terms of a
statement of the form “is is false that S is P”
(1017a31–4). In the case of the affirmative
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
statement, the paraphrase highlights the
fact that any use of the copula “is” in an
apophantic statement brings with it a truth
value; conversely, in the case of the nega-
tive statement the corresponding paraphrase
highlights the fact that one of the functions
of negation consists in the rejection of the
pretension to truth carried by a statement
that is considered false.
(4) “Being” as accidental is connected,
finally, with the difference, already men-
tioned, between essential and accidental
predication. Aristotle illustrates the point
by means of three types of statements, that
is: (a) “the just is educated,” (b) “the man is
educated,” and (c) “the educated is a man”
(1017a7–13). Here, the statement (a) is, in
the final analysis, a pseudo-statement of
the form S-P, since it should be interpreted
rather as an elliptical statement concern-
ing one or many substantial objects not
mentioned in the place of the subject, since
both the term S as well as the term P here
designate accidents of something different,
that is, of a substantial object or else a type
of substantial objects (1017a15–16), which
would be formulated in terms of contempo-
rary logic as follows: a statement with an
existential qualifier of the type (∃x) [Jx ∧
Ex] or else a statement with universal quan-
tifier of the type (X) [Jx → Ex], according to
whether we take the pseudo-subject of the
statement as either particular or universal,
respectively. In both cases it is clear that
we are not speaking, in reality, about that
which is mentioned as the apparent subject
in the pseudo-statement S-P taken as a start-
ing point, but rather the predication is in
reality of an object or else a set of differ-
ent objects, of which the above-mentioned
determinations are mere accidents. On the
other hand, case (b) is that which most ade-
quately reflects the underlying ontological
154
structure, since here the term S refers to the
substantial object of which an accidental
determination is predicated, and the term P
refers to the accidental determination predi-
cated of S (1017a16); and finally, case (c)
presents, in inverted fashion, the underly-
ing ontological structure, since the term S
refers to an accidental determination of the
substantial object designated by the term P
(1017a17–18). In all three cases, the predica-
tion is possible because it presupposes refer-
ence to something that exists in the manner
of substantial objects, which provide the
substrate for the corresponding accidental
determination (1017a19–22).
Hence, that which is characteristic of
accidental predication, as the examples men-
tioned—and, in particular that correspond-
ing to case (b)—illustrate, resides in the fact
that in this type of predication there is no
identity between that which is designated by
the term S and that designated by the term
P, bur rather that one thing is predicated
of another, in opposition to what occurs in
essential predication—as occurs, for instance,
in the case of a definition—in which, pre-
cisely, one thing is not predicated of a differ-
ent thing, but rather there is identity between
that designated by S and that predicated by
P (see, for example, Met. VII.4, 1030a6–11;
APo II.3, 90b34–5). This difference between
essential and accidental predication does not
coincide, simpliciter, with the categorial dis-
tinction between substance and accidents,
for the simple reason that it is possible to
predicate both essentially and accidentally
of entities that belong to each and every one
of the different categories. Aristotle explains
this point in an important text from Topics
I.9. It is possible to predicate essentially of
the category of substance as well as of some-
thing that belongs to the accidental catego-
ries, provided that what is predicated of it is

either its species or its genus. For example,
if we say of a man that “this (this man) is
man” or else “this (this man) is animal,” we
will have predicated in an essential manner
of something that belongs to the category of
substance; in analogous fashion, if we say of a
particular white color “this (this white color)
is white” or else “this (this white color) is
color” we will have predicated in an essential
manner of something that does not belong
to the category of substance, but rather, to
an accidental category like quality (see Top.
I.9, 103b27–39).11 Of course, we can predi-
cate accidentally of these same things, when
we predicate of them determinations that are
different from themselves, which do not con-
stitute either their genus or their species. This
necessarily occurs each time that we predicate
of something that belongs to a determined
category something that belongs to another
category, or else, even within the framework
of the same category, when we predicate of
something belonging to a determined genus
subordinated to the given category some-
thing belonging to a different subordinate
genus. This is the situation in cases (a), (b),
and (c) considered by Aristotle, since they
correspond to statements that combine terms
that designate things belonging to different
categories or else to different subordinate
genera within one and the same category.
While it is true that the distinction between
essential and accidental predication holds, in
principle, in the domain of each and every
one of the categories, Aristotle links essen-
tial predication, in a closer fashion, with the
category of substance, and generally guides
his discussion on the basis of examples of
statements of type (b), in which the term S
designates something that belongs to the
category of substance. In any case, what is
important to retain here is the fundamen-
tal reach possessed both by the opposition
155
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
between “being” by accident and “being”
according to the categories and by the dis-
tinction between essential and accidental
predication, within the Aristotelian treat-
ment of the multiple senses of “being” and
in connection with the development of the
theory of the categories. In the explanatory
model thus delineated, substance occupies
the central place, corresponding to the basic
sense of “being” according to the categories:
it is on substance that a science that seeks to
universally thematize that which is insofar as
it is should focus its attention.
Ontology and theology
According to the position sketched out in
Met. IV.1–2, first philosophy is delineated as
a universal science of that which is insofar
as it is, that is to say, as a general ontology,
although centered on the study of substance,
which is its primary object. In this regard,
in the framework of the introduction to the
specific treatment of substance in Met. VII.1,
Aristotle explains that the fundamental ques-
tion of ontology, the question “what is that
which is,” should be definitively understood
in the sense of the question “what is sub-
stance” (VII.1, 1028b2–4). Here there takes
place what has been ­characterized as a redi-
recting of ontology, as the science of being
(on) in ­general, toward ousiology, that is, the
science of substance (ousia).12
Nevertheless, in another context Aristotle
provides a different characterization of first
philosophy, which does not seem, at first
glance, to be easily compatible with that
which is offered in IV.1–2. According to this
new characterization, introduced in the con-
text of a classification of theoretical sciences
in VI.1, first philosophy would be a science
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
that studies the divine substance, that is,
theological science or simply theology
­(theologike-). Aristotle explains in this text
that sciences can be of three types: practical,
productive, or else theoretical, and within the
scope of the theoretical sciences he distin-
guishes three fundamental sciences, namely:
mathematics, whose objects are immobile
but lack separate existence, physics, whose
objects possess separate existence but are
subject to movement, and theology, which
studies those objects that are immobile
and possess separate existence (1025b18–
1026a32).13 In this passage Aristotle speaks
of a theological science which studies exclu-
sively one particular genus of substantial
objects: the most venerable genus of all, since
it is of a divine character, with the result
that the science that studies this genus of
things would also be the most preferred and
most venerable (1026a19–22). As the con-
text shows—in which he also makes refer-
ence to the science that studies the stars (see
1026a26: astrologia)—Aristotle has in mind
here a distinction between three types of sub-
stances, which also appears in other texts,
namely: (1) sensible, corruptible substance,
which corresponds to the substantial objects
of the sublunar world, (2) sensible, noncor-
ruptible substance, which corresponds to
the case of the stars, and (3) nonsensible
substance, which, as such, is immobile and
eternal.14 These substances are linked by rela-
tions of causal dependence, such that type
(1) depends upon type (2), and type (2), in
turns, depends on type (3), with the result
that everything depends, in a mediated or
immediate manner, on type (3).
However, this new characterization of first
philosophy as theology is not easily com-
patible with the characterization in terms
of general ontology introduced in IV.1–2,
since the theological science of VI.1 appears
156
to be a particular science that studies only
a specific type of substantial objects. The
problem is made more acute when we con-
sider that at the beginning of VI.1 Aristotle
takes up again the characterization of first
philosophy as a universal science of that
which is insofar as it is, in exactly the same
terms in which he had introduced this sci-
ence in IV.1–2 (see VI.1, 1025b3–18). And
Aristotle himself notes that the dual charac-
terization produces a difficulty, since, after
having introduced the reference to theology,
he explicitly asks the question whether first
philosophy thus characterized must be seen
as a universal science or rather as a science
referring to a determined genus and a sin-
gle nature (1026a23–5). Shortly thereafter
he offers a response, which consists of three
steps, as follows: (1) first philosophy will
study that which is first, and hence if there
were no other substances than physical sub-
stances, physics would be first philosophy;
however, if there are immobile substances, in
addition to physical substances, the science
that studies these substances will be prior to
physics and will merit the name of first phi-
losophy (1026a27–30); (2) this philosophy
will be universal, because it is first (καθόλου
ὅτι πρώτη) (1026a30–1); and (3) that which
is proper to this science will be the study of
what is insofar as it is, and the attributes that
belong to it as such (1026a31–2).
This response contains an attempt at a
compatibilist mediation between both char-
acteristics of first philosophy, expressed by
(1) and (3), respectively; and it is also clear
that the linking element in this attempt at
mediation is expressed by the extremely
concise and enigmatic sentence contained
in (2). This attempt at mediation is far from
convincing for all commentators. W. Jaeger
considered it an unfruitful attempt to make
compatible two mutually contradictory

conceptions of metaphysics, which would
correspond, from the evolutionary point of
view, to two different phases of Aristotle’s
thought: the theological conception would
belong to the early phase of adherence to
Platonism, while the ontological concep-
tion would correspond to the mature phase
in which Aristotle definitively marks a dis-
tance from the fundamental premises of
Platonism.15 What this interpretation does
not explain is why Aristotle evidently con-
sidered it possible to make both characteri-
zations of first philosophy compatible. The
interpretation of Jaeger appears to suggest,
furthermore, that Aristotle’s mature concep-
tion did not concede any special relevance to
the question of the divine substance, within
the general design of the science of being,
having abandoned the fundamentally theo-
logical conception of Platonism in favor of
the idea of a general ontology. At the extreme
opposite to the position of Jaeger is the inter-
pretation of P. Merlan, who seeks to resolve
the difficulty provoked by the dual charac-
terization of first philosophy by eliminating
from the Aristotelian conception the very
idea of a general ontology, by interpreting
the notion of “that which is insofar as it is”
not as a reference to what the later Scholastic
tradition would call ens commune, but
rather, to the summum ens or ens absolutum:
according to this interpretation, the science
of what is insofar as it is would be, even in
IV.1–2, the science of the divine being.16 This
solution does not adequately account for the
character of universality that, both in IV.1–2
as well as VI.1, Aristotle assigns to the sci-
ence of being, and also does not do justice to
the fact that the greater part of the discussion
contained in the treatises that make up Met.
are dedicated, in fact, to the study of sensible
substance. As shown also by the treatment of
the first mover in Phys. VIII, Aristotle always
157
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
proceeds in such a way that the reference to
suprasensible being appears as a requirement
derived from what is made manifest by the
discussion relating to the principles of com-
posite substance, which is the object of phys-
ics. The same is true even for the case of Met.
XII, whose chapters 6–10 contain what has
traditionally been known as the theology of
Aristotle, since this treatment is preceded,
once again, by a development referring to
the principles of substance in general, which
takes up again fundamental aspects of the
theory of sensible substance. For this reason,
the most recent research has strongly empha-
sized the fact that on the basis of its contents
Met. XII does not constitute, as such, a trea-
tise on theology, but rather, it is a treatment
of substance in general, including nonsensi-
ble substance, which culminates in a succinct
consideration of the divine substance.17
An adequate interpretation of the posi-
tion of Aristotle should begin by recognizing,
in the first place, that there are indeed two
characterizations of first philosophy that are
not equivalent simpliciter, and in the second
place, that Aristotle did not consider them to
be contradictory, but rather that his intention
was to render them compatible. The attempt
at harmonization in VI.1, whose nucleus
acquires expression in the sentence contained
in (2), seeks to found the pretension of uni-
versality of first philosophy on its priority,
which, at the same time, is founded on the
priority of its object. Indeed, the argumenta-
tion in IV.1–2 provides an indication of the
type of solution that Aristotle may have in
mind. In IV.1–2 Aristotle does not consider
the relationship between different types of
substances, but rather between substance, as
the first category, and the accidental catego-
ries. And, via the application of the model
of focal meaning or homonymy πρὸς ἓν,
he shows that one single and unique science
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
thematizes all that is said to be, but it does
so in such a way that in this thematization
substance, as the basic meaning of “being”
according to the categories, occupies the
center of attention, with the result that the
primary object of general ontology is sub-
stance, considered according to its principles
and causes, while everything else is consid-
ered from the perspective derived from its
relation with substance. Everything indicates
that in VI.1, where he considers the relation-
ship between the different types of substance,
Aristotle has in mind an analogical model:
the science of being is primarily a science of
substance, but substance has, in turn, its pri-
mary object in the divine substance, precisely
insofar as this is the primary substance, upon
which depend, in mediate or immediate man-
ner, all other substances. The diagram result-
ing from considering together the relations
of priority established in IV.1–2 and in VI.1
would thus be the following:
non-sensible
substance
incorruptible
sensible
substance
corruptible
sensible
substance quality quantity relation action passion
The horizontal plane of the diagram repre-
sents the relation of priority of substance with
respect to the accidental categories discussed
in IV.1–2; the vertical plane of the diagram,
on the other hand, represents the relations
of priority that Aristotle establishes in VI.1
between the different types of substances.
There is a certain parallelism between both
axes of the diagram, but the relations of
priority considered are in no case identical:
in IV.1–2 Aristotle is discussing the relation
between substance and that which does not
possess substantial existence, while in VI.1
the discussion deals with the relations of pri-
ority and causal dependence between differ-
ent types of substantial objects. To this first
and fundamental difference we must add the
fact that in the case of the three types of sub-
stance the relations of priority and depend-
ence exist according to a model of succession
(τῷ ἐφεξῆς) of the type C → B → A, while in
IV.1–2 Aristotle does not at any time suggest
that in the case of the accidental categories
their reference to substance could be con-
strued, at least in some cases, according to the
model of a successive series.18 The parallelism
is useful, nevertheless, since it permits us to
see why Aristotle thinks that the science of
being, understood fundamentally as a science
of substance, could not be concluded, as such,
without an explicit consideration of the divine
substance, which constitutes, so to speak, the
focal case of the notion of substance. Some
prestigious commentators reject the pos-
sibility of translating the model of focal
meaning to the plane of the relation existing
between the different types of substances.19
Nevertheless, the most plausible interpreta-
tion appears to be that which affirms the pos-
sibility of also applying the model of focal
meaning to the case of the relation between
etc. the different kinds of substances, although in
a way that tries to do justice to the particu-
lar nature of the relations of dependence that
Aristotle establishes in each case: in the case
of the different types of substances, the rela-
tions of dependence cannot be assimilated,
simpliciter, to those relations that govern the
case of the relation between substance and
the accidental categories.20
In sum, when Aristotle emphasizes the
universality of the science of that which is
insofar as it is, this does not involve, in any
way, a universality founded on the reference
to a kind of universal genus, which would
158

comprehend within itself the totality of that
which exists, since, as Aristotle emphasizes,
there cannot be such a genus, since “being”
is not a genus. On the contrary, both in the
plane corresponding to the relation between
substance and the accidental categories (the
horizontal axis) as well as in the plane corre-
sponding to the relation between the different
types of substance (the vertical axis), we have
a special type of universality, founded on a
common reference of a multiplicity of things
to something considered basic and primary,
namely: substance with respect to the acci-
dental categories, and nonsensible substance
and, more precisely, the divine substance with
respect to the other types of substance, which
are composite and are subject to movement.
Precisely because “being” is not a genus, the
reference to substance, in general, and to the
divine substance, in particular, plays a decisive
role in accounting for the possibility of the
constitution of first philosophy as a unitary
science: the thematic treatment of that which
is insofar as it is will necessarily be centered
on that which is in a basic and primary sense,
and which thus constitutes the foundation
for the existence of all else, that is, substance;
for the same reason, the divine substance will
occupy a central place here, insofar as it is
this substance that, as we shall see, reveals in
the most exemplary and paradigmatic way
the particular features of substantial being,
such as the capacity for independent exist-
ence, the identity of the object with its own
essence, and existence in act.
Ontology, as a universal science of being,
will be concretely carried out fundamentally
as ousiology, as a science of substance, and
this science, in turn, will find its full realiza-
tion in theology, the study of the divine sub-
stance. The tension between general ontology
and theology that appears for the first
time in the Aristotelian conception of first
159
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
philosophy, far from remaining restricted in
its systematic importance to the writings of
Aristotle, provides instead a fundamental
connecting thread, which runs throughout
practically all the later history of Western
metaphysics, which, it would appear, owes
not only its name but also basic aspects of its
core structure to the Aristotelian conception:
the question concerning being in general
leads to the question concerning a particu-
lar type of being, substance, which is being
par excellence and, more precisely still, to
the question concerning God, the supreme
being, as the paradigmatic case of substantial
existence. On the basis of this particular path
which, in different ways, the question con-
cerning being has taken, over and over again,
from Aristotle onwards, we can say that the
basic and definitive feature of Western meta-
physics resides, in a word, in its essentially
onto-theo-logical constitution.21
Substance
In books VII–VIII of Met. Aristotle seeks
to characterize substance by means of a
recourse to criteria that permit distinguish-
ing it from that which belongs to the acci-
dental categories. In particular, he has
recourse to the relation “to be said (to be
predicated) of”: substance is that which
is not said (predicated) of anything else. In
VII.3 Aristotle presents a list of four senses
in which “substance” is said. More precisely,
these are four possible candidates for deter-
mining where the very “substantiality” of
substantial objects is rooted, namely: essence
(τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι), the universal (τὸ καθόλου),
the genus (τὸ γένος), and, finally, the sub-
strate (τὸ ὑποκείμενον) (1028b33–6). All of
these candidates capture, in one or another
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
fashion, aspects that Aristotle himself wishes
to retain in his own conception of substance.
Nevertheless, not all of them provide equally
adequate responses to the question of what
is properly substantial in substantial objects.
Of the four candidates mentioned, three—
essence, universal, and genus—are linked, in
one or another manner, to the formal deter-
mination of substantial objects, composed
of form and matter, while the fourth—sub-
strate—is linked instead with matter.
In the course of the rest of book VII, that
is, chapters 4–17, Aristotle examines the first
three candidates, while in chapter 3 he dis-
cusses the range of the notion of substrate,
which articulates a characteristic that, as is
commonly believed, appears to correspond
above all (malista) to substance (1028b37–
1029a1). “Substrate” is understood as that
of which all other things are said or predi-
cated, while it is itself not said or predi-
cated of anything else (1028b36–7). From
this characterization we derive a criterion
of substantiality that could be termed the
requirement of impredicability. Its applica-
tion as the unique and exclusive criterion of
substantiality in Met. VII.3 produces, never-
theless, an unsatisfactory result, because it
results in converting into the sole substance
something like a completely indeterminate
matter, which cannot be identified or indi-
vidualized by means of any description that
corresponds to it per se. Indeed, if all formal
determination is suppressed, there appears
to remain nothing other than this indeter-
minate matter. Taking as an example of a
substantial object, composed of form and
matter, a bronze statue—in this case a statue
of Apollo (1029a3–5)—Aristotle develops
an argument in three steps, as follows: (1)
of the composite object identified by refer-
ence to its form, taken as a subject, we predi-
cate the accidental determinations of the
160
composite object (e.g. “the statue of Apollo
is hard,” “brilliant,” “heavy,” “two meters
high,” etc.); (2) the expression that refers to
the formal determination of the object can
be predicated, in turn, of the corresponding
matter (e.g. “this piece of bronze is a (the)
statue of Apollo”); finally, (3) the bronze is
also an object comprised of form and mat-
ter, such that in this case as well we could
pass the formal determination to the side of
the predicate and predicate it of a different
subject, possessing a simpler formal determi-
nation, which corresponds to the matter of
the bronze, and so on, until we come to the
level of the simplest bodies of all, that is, the
four elements, below which there can only be
postulated a prime matter, completely inde-
terminate. What the argument shows is: (1)
that the object composed of form and matter
better satisfies the requirement of impredica-
bility than its accidental determinations, (2)
that the matter of the composite object better
satisfies it than the composite identified by
reference to its form, and (3) that the poorer
in formal determination matter is, the better
it satisfies this requirement, such that it will
be a completely undetermined matter, noni-
dentifiable per se under any definite descrip-
tion, which satisfies it to the greatest degree
possible (1029a10–26): if we consider things
in this way, pure and indeterminate matter
will thus be the genuine and indeed only sub-
stance (1029a26–7).22
This conclusion is unacceptable (see
1029a27: ἀδύνατον δέ). Therefore, the argu-
ment shows that the notion of substrate,
taken by itself, does not permit capturing all
the defining features of that which constitutes
a substantial object. Indeed, nobody seriously
doubts that the composite objects of nature
should count as substantial objects, although
some thinkers also postulate the existence
of other, different substances, in addition to

the objects composed of form and matter
(see VII.2). It does not only pertain to sub-
stantial objects to be substrates but also, and
in an equally essential fashion, it pertains to
them to be capable of separate or independ-
ent existence (cho-riston) and to be identifi-
able as individual and formally determined
objects (τόδε τι) (1029a27–8). Together with
the requirement of impredicability, Aristotle
introduces, therefore, a second complemen-
tary criterion of substantiality, which appeals
to what could be called the requirement of
separability and determination: substance is
not a mere substrate, but always, at the same
time, something capable of independent exist-
ence and, as such, also formally determined
and identifiable under a certain description
that corresponds to it per se. Insofar as pure
and indeterminate matter does not satisfy
this criterion, Aristotle concludes that both
the object composed of form and matter as
well as its formal-essential determination
are substance to a greater degree than mat-
ter (1029b20–30). The position of Aristotle
in VII.3 supposes, then, a balance between
two criteria of substantiality, namely: (1) the
criterion of “being a substrate,” expressed by
the requirement of impredicability, and (2)
the criterion of “being something possessed
of independent existence and which is for-
mally determined,” expressed by the require-
ment of separability and determination. At
first glance, one might suppose that we are
dealing with two different requirements,
which do not maintain an internal linkage
between them. Nevertheless, the argument
developed in VII.3 shows, precisely, that a
supposed substrate lacking all formal deter-
mination would definitively not be an inde-
pendent object that is identifiable per se. As
a result, neither could it constitute a genuine
substrate that would give foundation to the
existence of other entities, which could be
161
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
conceived as its accidental determinations,
since any determination ultimately must be
conceived of as the determination of some-
thing identifiable under a certain description
that corresponds to it per se.23 The suppres-
sion of all formal-essential determination,
insofar as such determination is constitutive
for substantial objects, and its reduction to
the status of a simple accidental determina-
tion of something different, of whose iden-
tity it no longer will form a part, would carry
with it, definitively, the additional suppres-
sion of any genuine substrate (see Met. IV.4,
1007a20–b18).24
The criterion of separability and deter-
mination turns out, then, to be essential at
the moment of characterizing substance. In
this sense, Aristotle explains in Met. VII.1
that substance signifies something essen-
tially determined, which constitutes a certain
“this,”25 and is the only one among the cate-
gories able to exist independently. Conversely,
all that which belongs to one of the other
categories can only exist as an accident of
something belonging to the category of sub-
stance, which constitutes the determined
substrate (τὸ ὑποκείμενον .  .  . ὡρισμένον)
for such accidents (1028a13–29). The fact
that substance can exist independently of
accidental determinations, while the latter,
on the other hand, cannot exist independ-
ently of substance, implies that substance
possesses what Aristotle defines as natural or
ontological priority (πρῶτον φύσει or else
πρῶτον οὺσίᾳ) (see Met. V.11, 1019a1–11;
see also Cat. 12, 14a27–9, 14b10–22).
Similarly, substance constitutes “that which
is in a primary sense” (τὸ πρώτως ὄν) or
“that which is, without other specifications”
(ὂν ἁπλῶς), as opposed to the accidents,
which only are in a relative sense (ὄν τι)
(1028a30–1). But given that, just as in the
case of “being,” “primary” is also said in many
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
ways (1028a31ff.), substance is primary in
all the senses relevant here: in the definition
(logo-i), in knowledge (gno-sei), and in time
(chrono-i) (1028a32–3).26
On this basis, Aristotle concludes that
just as “being” belongs in a basic and pri-
mary manner to substance, in the same way
the essence (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) and the defini-
tion (horismos) also belong basically and
primarily to substance; they belong to the
other categories, on the other hand, only in
a derivative manner (hepomeno-s) (see VII.4,
1030a17–32). In principle, this affects the
relation between entities belonging to the
category of substance, on the one hand, and
entities belonging to the accidental catego-
ries, on the other, such that they are repre-
sented by terms such as, for instance, “man”
and “white,” respectively. But something
analogous also is valid for the case of the
comparison between substance as such and
the accidental unities that result from add-
ing, via predication, a different accidental
determination to a term that designates a
substantial object. In this latter case, the rela-
tion that Aristotle has in mind is that which
exists between simple terms such as “man,”
on the one hand, and composite terms such
as “white man,” on the other. Just as occurs
in the case of accidents like “white,” it is also
the case with accidental unities like “white
man” that we cannot speak of essence and
definition in anything other than a derived
sense: insofar as they constitute the syn-
thetic result derived from predicating one
thing of another, different thing, accidental
unities of the type “(substantial) object +
accident” cannot indicate that which some-
thing is per se (1029b22–1030a7). Wherever
there is accidental predication, there is no
essence and definition, properly speaking.
Therefore, the essence and the definition
will correspond in a primary sense to that
162
which is primary, in the sense that it does
not involve one thing being predicated of
another, different, thing (1030a7–11). That
is to say: there will only be genuine essence
and definition in the case of an articulation
of the genus-species type, which is not analo-
gous to the type of synthetic articulation that
constitutes an accidental unity: “rational ani-
mal,” as a supposed definition of “man,” thus
constitutes a type of significative articulation
completely different from that which is pre-
sented by accidental unities such as “white
man” (1030a11–14). This is valid also for the
case of those accidental unities in which the
accident that forms part of them constitutes
a type of determination that can only exist
in a single specific type of substantial object,
such that the substantial object need not even
be explicitly mentioned, as such. This is the
case of the so-called per se accidents or per se
attributes (see VII.5, 1030b31: πάθος καθ’
αὑτό; see also V.30, 1025a30–4: συμβεβηκός
. . . καθ’ αὑτό): hence, it is also not the case
that unities of the type “(substantial) object +
per se accident” provide examples of things
that possess essence and definition in a pri-
mary sense (see VII.5).27
The logical and gnoseological priority of
substance reflects, on the plane of discourse
and knowledge, its ontological priority, and
implies that only in the case of substance
is there genuine identity between the thing
and its own essence (see VII.6). In the case
of accidental unity, conversely, such identity
does not exist, since, definitively, there is no
essence proper to accidental unity qua acci-
dental unity. If we had to say, for instance,
what the essence of “white man” is, we
would have to say, definitively, that it is noth-
ing other than the essence of “man”: “white
man” is, hence, different from its own essence
(1031a19–28). For its part, the accident,
taken in isolation, is also not identical with

its own essence, since the accident cannot be
defined in an independent manner: its defini-
tion will involve, in a mediate or immediate
fashion, a reference to substance. The acci-
dent never exists per se in an independent
manner, but rather always exists in a sub-
stance, which is equivalent to saying that,
from the ontological point of view, there are
no accidents apart from accidental unities,
but the accidental unity of which an accident
forms a part is not identical with the essence
of the given accident (1031b22–8). The iden-
tity between something and its essence thus
remains restricted to the domain in which
there are essence and definition in a pri-
mary sense, which is nothing other than the
domain in which “being” is said in a primary
sense, namely: the domain demarcated by the
category of substance.
We have already seen that the argument of
Met. VII.3 makes it clear that what is prop-
erly substantial in substantial objects can-
not be given by the matter, since a genuine
substrate is necessarily something capable of
separate existence and, as such, something
determined formally-essentially. The funda-
mental role of the moment that accounts for
this formal-essential determination is thrown
into new relief in the light of the priority of
substance in VII.1 and, in particular, of the
connection between substance and essence
in VII.4–6. On this basis, Aristotle shows in
VII.10–12 that the definition, which consti-
tutes the statement that articulates the essence
of the thing defined, has as its correlate just
the form of the object defined in each case.
Indeed, the genus-species articulation proper
to a genuine definition accounts for the unity
that corresponds to the constitutive elements
of the form, and does not make reference,
conversely, to the material parts of the object
composed of form and matter (see VII.11).
The unity of the definition is thus founded
163
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
on the unity of the object being defined,
considered from the point of view of that
formal-essential determination that makes
it precisely what it is, and not some other
thing. This unity is expressed in the relation
between the proximate genus and the specific
difference, and thus is not assimilable to the
type of composition that gives rise to acci-
dental unities (see VII.12, 1037b13–27).
Thus it is not surprising that, upon con-
cluding the discussion of substance in Met.
VII, in chapter 17, Aristotle identifies the
form (eidos), and neither the matter nor the
material parts, as that which is properly sub-
stantial in substantial objects, given that it
is the formal-essential determination of the
object that explains, definitively, that the
object, with its particular material consti-
tution, is what it is, and not something else
(see VII.17, 1041a20–b9). Similarly, Aristotle
denominates the substantial form as the first
cause of being (αἴτιον πρῶτον τοῦ εἶναι)
of the object (1041b28).28 As is shown by
Aristotle’s critique of the Platonic conception
of the Ideas and, in general, of the attempt
to erect universal entities at the level of inde-
pendent substantial entities (see VII.13–16),
this substantial form cannot, certainly, be
thought of in the manner of generic univer-
sals, since the latter lack existence independ-
ently of the corresponding subordinated
forms: for example, there is no “animal”
outside or independently of “man,” “ox,”
“dog,” etc., since the genus “animal” is predi-
cated of each of the species that fall under
it. These latter, conversely, are not predicated
of other species, but only of the multiplicity
of individuals that fall under them, and this
occurs in the manner in which the form is
predicated of matter, and not in the manner
in which a genus is predicated of the species,
or the way in which an accident is predi-
cated of a corresponding substantial object
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
(see VII.13, 1038b5–6).29 Thus, specific sub-
stantial forms provide the means that permit
identifying these individuals as substantial
objects belonging to a natural type or class
of things, such that later, identified in this
way via the corresponding terms, they can
function as subjects for the predication of
other determinations, via statements of the
form S-P. This identifying function permits,
for the first time, the identification of enti-
ties that can function as genuine subjects of
predication, and distinguishes the substantial
form from all generic universals, without it
being the case that the substantial form need
be considered as something particular, inso-
far as it itself is the correlate of the definition
and the element common to all the individu-
als of a given species.30
The divine substance
In chapters 6–10 of book XII Aristotle
presents us with a consideration of the divine
substance. At least from a certain perspec-
tive, this consideration can be seen as the end
point toward which the discussion leads and
which was initiated with the presentation of
the idea of wisdom as a science of the causes
and ultimate principles of all things in book
I. This point, nevertheless, can only be held
to be valid while keeping in mind a series of
restrictions, since, from the point of view of
the compostion of the Met., there is no way
to force a continuity that lacks any kind of
fissures between the books mentioned. In
particular, book XII originally constituted, in
the judgment of the majority of commenta-
tors, an independently written treatise, and
is, to a certain degree, self-contained; at some
later point, it was integrated into the work
we know today as the Metaphysics.31 And, in
164
regard to its date of composition, W. Jaeger
already held that it should be considered
as an independent text, prior, at least in its
fundamental part, to books VII–IX.32 This
position has been taken up again recently by
certain commentators, who hold that, on the
basis of its conception of first philosophy,
the book would be close, in general, to the
position reflected in book II,33 the authentic-
ity of which, as is well known, is a point of
contention.
Whatever the case may be, in regard to
the manner in which Aristotle discusses the
existence and nature of the divine substance,
there are nevertheless no substantive rea-
sons to hold that the conception presented
in XII.6–10 is, simpliciter, incompatible with
the general lines of the position elaborated
in the preceding books. On the contrary, we
find here important fundamental aspects that
coincide. This turns out to be completely
reasonable. Indeed, even in the case that the
chapters of XII dedicated to the divine sub-
stance were composed before books VII–XII,
nothing would prevent the conception of the
divine substance elaborated in these chapters
from having later influenced the manner in
which Aristotle himself elaborated his con-
ception of sensible substance, composed of
form and matter.
Book XII, whose general title presents it
as a treatment of substance, in general, is
made up of three parts, namely: an introduc-
tion (XII.1), a summary presentation of the
principles of sensible substances (XII.2–5),
and finally a discussion of supersensible sub-
stance and, in particular, the divine substance
(XII.6–10). In XII.1 Aristotle introduces the
distinction between three types of substances:
corruptible sensible substance, incorruptible
sensible substance and nonsensible substance
(see XII.1, 1069a30–b7). In the discussion of
sensible substance that follows, in XII.2–5,

Aristotle first briefly presents his conception
of substance subject to change, as composed
of form and matter (see XII.2–3). Later, he
turns to the important question of whether the
principles of all sensible things are the same
or different, a question to which he responds
by way of the introduction of what would
later be termed a doctrine of the analogy of
the principles and causes. The principles and
causes of sensible substances are not, for all
of such substances, numerically the same, but
rather they are analogically the same: both
the triad “matter (substrate)”—“form”—
“privation” and the four causes (see XII.4)
as well as the opposition between “act” and
“potency” (see XII.5) apply analogically to
all sensible substances. Nevertheless, already
here in this context Aristotle emphasizes that
there is, in addition, one first principle in act
(XII.5, 1071a36: τὸ πρῶτον ἐντελεχείᾳ),
which is numerically the same for all things.
On this basis, Aristotle develops in XII.6
an argument intended to demonstrate that
there must be an immobile first mover, eter-
nal and substantial, which exists purely in
act, as the ultimate cause of the movement
of nature as a whole (1071b4–5). The argu-
ment proceeds in the following manner: (1)
substance is what is ontologically primary,
upon which everything else depends for
its existence, so that if all substances were
corruptible, all things would also be cor-
ruptible (1071b5–6); nevertheless, (2) it is
impossible that the movement of nature
had a beginning or will have an end, since
it is eternal (1071b6–7);34 and (3) the same
is valid for time, which cannot have begun
before nor cease afterwards, since “before
and after” are only possible within time itself
(see Met. XII.6, 1071b7–9);35 therefore, (4)
movement and time, which is a determina-
tion of the former, must be continuous, in
the sense of continuing without interruption
165
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
(1071b9–10), a condition that in the case of
movement, nevertheless, can only be satisfied
by the circular movement of the heavens,
which provides, therefore, the only possible
support for the extensive continuity of time
(1071b10–11); nevertheless, (5) such an eter-
nal and continuous movement can only be
caused by a mover that is itself permanently
in act (1071b12–20).
As various commentators have empha-
sized,36 it is important to note that the
argument does not pass directly from the
eternity of movement to the existence of a
first immobile mover, but rather, as an inter-
mediate step, also proves that there is an
incorruptible mobile substance, which is the
subject of eternal circular movement, spe-
cifically, the stars. This intermediate step fol-
lows from the conjunction of the affirmation
of the eternity of the circular movement of
the heavens, contained in (4), and the the-
sis of the ontological priority of substance,
contained in (1). It is certain that the for-
mulation of XII.6 is not sufficiently explicit
concerning this point, but this interpreta-
tion is confirmed by the fact that in XII.7,
on taking the argument up again, Aristotle
affirms that he has proven the existence of
something that is always in incessant, circu-
lar movement, and explicitly mentions the
first heaven (1072a21–3). However it may
be, returning to the argument of XII.6, there
can be no doubt that the final conclusion
contained in (5), which refers to a motor that
is permanently in action, no longer alludes
to the stars, but to the first immobile mover,
since Aristotle next explains that a substance
of such a type would have to not only be
eternal but also, in addition, be entirely lack-
ing in matter (1071b20–2).
The nature of this eternal and immate-
rial substance, which holds office as the first
immobile mover with respect to the totality
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
of the cosmos, is studied in chapters 7 and
9, fundamentally. The movement of the stars,
which is eternal and unceasing, is a con-
current cause of the motions and processes
proper to the sublunar region of the world.
This eternal movement must have, in turn, a
cause, which cannot be moved by any other
thing, since, to the contrary, we would have
to suppose that it hosts within itself poten-
tiality and contingency—as does everything
that is subject to movement (1072b4–5)—
and then the series of explanations would
continue ad infinitum: such an ultimate
cause must be, then, something that moves
without being moved, and must be an eter-
nal substance that is existent purely in act
(1072a19–26). But how can something of
this type move without being moved, on the
supposition that every time something moves
another thing by performing an action on the
latter, it receives, in turn, an action on the
part of the latter? Aristotle responds: in the
manner in which the object of amorous desire
does (ὡς ἐρώμενον), which moves without
being moved (1072b3–4), in the same man-
ner as the object of thought (1072a26–30).
Although there are those who believe the
contrary,37 it appears to be correct that the
explanation of Aristotle seeks to suggest that
the first immobile mover moves the stars in
the manner of a final cause, and not as an
efficient cause. As Aristotle makes clear, fore-
seeing a possible objection, everything occurs
in such a way that the first mover does not
itself suffer movement when moving, while
objects of desire belonging to the realm of
the sensible do experience change, when they
are finally reached by that which desires
them.38
On just such a principle, explains Aristotle,
depend the heavens and, more generally, the
entirety of nature (1072b13–14). And to
that principle there belongs, in a continual
166
manner, that type of activity that is most
perfect and also most pleasant, in which
human beings only participate in an epi-
sodic fashion (1072b14–16; see also NE
X.7, 1177b24–1178a8). More concretely,
this is the activity proper to thinking (noe-
sis) (see Met. XII.7, 1072b16–19). To this
degree, God has life, since the activity of the
intellect is life (1072b24–7). And further:
the life of God is, per se, eternal and most
perfect (1072b27–30). In XII.9 Aristotle
completes the description of the essence of
the first mover understood as pure thought.
In so doing, he asks the following question
concerning the object of this thought: what
is it that the divine intellect thinks? And he
responds by saying that it cannot think any-
thing other than itself, since it can only con-
template that which is most divine and which
is free of all change (see XII.9, 1074b15–34).
In this sense, in the case of the activity of the
divine intellect, what we have is a “thought
of thinking” (νόησις νοήσεως), as Aristotle
expresses the point in a formula that has
become immortalized.
This characterization of the activity of the
divine intellect and its object leads, certainly,
to a series of questions, such as whether
Aristotle, in Met. XII excludes not only divine
providence but also any knowledge of the
world on the part of God, which would be a
clear contrast with the vision of a provident
god and which Plato had already presented
at length in the Timaeus.39 Commentators
have debated this and other questions con-
nected with conception of the divine sub-
stance of Met. XII. But Aristotle says little
explicitly in the text concerning the relation
that links God with the world. In any case, in
XII.10 Aristotle discusses, at least, one aspect
of the more general problem, in asking the
question concerning the manner in which
the Good is present in the universe: is this

Good reduced to the order of the universe
itself, or is it rather something separated and
existing per se? (1075a11–13). Aristotle’s
response suggests that it is necessary to link
in one single explanation both alternatives,
and compares the relation that links God, as
an immaterial and separated substance, on
the one hand, and the ordered totality of the
universe, on the other, with the relation that
exists between the general and the army that
acts upon his orders. Indeed, the totality of
the army acquires the order that is proper
to it only in virtue of the common reference,
be it direct or indirect, of all its parts to the
general, which thus constitutes the cause of
this order (1075a13–15). It is also in this
way that all the things of nature are ordered,
albeit in different manners and by means of
multiple reciprocal relations, to a single end
of the cosmic totality, which, in its entirety,
constitutes an ordering comparable to a fam-
ily dwelling, which serves the good of the
family as a whole (1075a16–25).
A last, difficult point has to do with the
number of immobile movers. This aspect
connects with the attempt at harmonizing
metaphysics and astronomy that Aristotle
introduces in XII.8, a chapter that W. Jaeger
considered to be a later insertion, which
Aristotle had composed later in his life, for
the purpose of reformulating his theological
conception in terms that would be compati-
ble with the development of astronomical sci-
ence.40 In this chapter, Aristotle upholds the
thesis that the number of unmoved movers
should be determined by astronomy, which
would be the closest science to philosophy
among the mathematical sciences, insofar
as it has as its object a certain type of sub-
stance: sensible, eternal substance (see XII.8,
1073b1–17). More specifically, Aristotle
determines the number of movers to match
the number of spheres that account for the
167
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
movement of the stars, for which purpose
he adopts a modified version of the astro-
nomical system of Eudoxus of Cnidus and
Callippus of Athens. Aristotle thus postu-
lates a total of 55 spheres (47, if we leave
aside those that correspond to the sun and
the moon) (1073b17–1074a14), and holds
that the number of unmoved movers will
have to be the same, although he admits that
this is only a reasonable conjecture (eulogon)
(1074a14–31).41 On the basis of this associa-
tion between the astronomical conception of
the spheres and the theory of the unmoved
movers, Aristotle recovers the core of the
ancient tradition of astral theology, which
sees the stars as divine entities, although his
own conception would be stripped of mytho-
logical encrustations, of an anthropomorphic
and zoomorphic character, which later tradi-
tion added on (1074a38–b14). Whatever the
case may be, the introduction of this plurality
of unmoved movers in XII.8 contrasts clearly
with the conclusion of the discussion of the
divine substance, where, after criticizing con-
ceptions such as that of Speusippus, which
did not account satisfactorily for the unity
that the cosmic order must possess, Aristotle
states that things do not wish to be badly
governed, and introduces the famous cita-
tion of Homer: “the government of many is
not good, only one should be king” (XII.10,
1075b37–1076a4).42
Alejandro G. Vigo
Notes
1
The discussion in Nicomachean Ethics VI is
habitually considered as belonging to the late
phase of Aristotle’s philosophical production,
whereas the treatment in Metaphysics I.1–2
belongs, without a doubt, to the earlier period,
and corresponds closely to the conception pre-
sented in the Protrepticus, a document which
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
is an exhortation to the philosophical life. See
Jaeger, 1923, 68–72; Dumoulin, 1986, 41–52.
2
Lines 981b25–9, which refer to the distinction
established in NE VI, appear to be a gloss added
later, as indicated by Jaeger, 1957, 3 in appa-
ratu ad loc. The identification of techne- and
episte-me- in Met. I.1 corresponds to the Platonic
usage of both terms. See Dumoulin, 1986, 43 ff.
 3
See Snell, 1924, 1–20.
 4
For a comparison of Aristotle and Hegel in this
respect, see Mondolfo, 1963, 33–54.
 5
For a discussion of the scope of this position,
see Aubenque, 1962, 222–36.
 6
For a reconstruction of the connection between
essential properties and identity in the light
of the contemporary theory of sortal terms,
see Rapp, 1995, 109–51, 433–68. A useful
comparison of the Aristotelian position with
essentialist positions of the type elaborated by
S. Kripke is found in Witt, 1989, chap. 6.
 7
For some of the specific problems which are
presented by the Aristotelian treatment of the
notion of existence, which does not occupy
a central position in Aristotle’s ontological
reflection, see Owen, 1965, and Rapp, 1995,
304–46.
 8
See Owen, 1960.
 9
The first position is defended by Owen, 1960,
173–9, and the second, conversely, by Irwin,
1981. For a systematic reconstruction of the
different forms of equivocity considered by
Aristotle, see Shields, 1999, 9–42.
10
See, for example, Kirwan, 1993, 140–3.
11
See Ross, 1924, I, 306–7.
12
See Reale, 1994, 33, 109–14.
13
See Décarie, 1954; Cleary, 1994 and 1995,
431–8. The classification in VI.1 presents both
textual and systematic difficulties, in particular,
in the case of physics. Indeed, the references to
“separated” entities, though subject to move-
ment, derived from line 1026a14, is based on
a correction of the transmitted text, which
gives the opposite reading “not separated.”
The correction, introduced by A. Schwegler in
1847, was, in principle, admitted by the most
important modern editors (W. D. Ross and W.
Jaeger), but its legitimacy was strongly ques-
tioned later.
14
For this distinction, see Met. XII.1,
1069a30–b2; XII.6, 1071b3–5.
15
See Jaeger, 1923, 226–8.
168
16
See Merlan, 1953, 160–220 and 1957.
17
See Frede, 2000 and 2000a.
18
For the model of unity by succession, a different
type of nonaccidental homonymy, which con-
stitutes a stronger variant of the πρὸς ἓν model,
see IV.2, 1005a8–11, with the commentary of
Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Met. 263, 25–35.
See also Robin, 1908, 168–70, notes III–V.
19
See Berti, 1975 and 1998.
20
See Frede, 1987; Cleary, 1988, 70–5; and Vigo,
1991, 124–7. This line of interpretation goes
back to Patzig, 1960–1.
21
See Heidegger, 1957.
22
For a detailed discussion of the argument in
1029a10–26, see Bostock, 1994, 76–80.
23
For a good reconstruction of the connection
between identifiability and formal-essential
determination in Aristotle, in the light of the
contemporary notion of a sortal dependency of
identity, see Rapp, 1995, 408–32 and 433–68,
where the connection between substantiality
and identity is discussed in the light of the
criteria of substantiality. For the problems
linked with the relation between the substan-
tial object and its matter, see also Lewis, 1994.
24
For this point, see Liske, 1985, 300–2;
Hafemann, 1998, 77–83.
25
See 1028a11ff.: τί ἐστι καὶ τόδε τι. For differ-
ent interpretations of this expression, which in
composite form only appears in this passage,
see Ross, 1924, II, 159ff. ad loc.; Frede and
Patzig, 1988, II, 11–15 ad loc.
26
Priority in definition establishes that that which
pertains to the category of substance can be
defined without reference to its accidents, while
that which belongs to an accidental category
cannot be defined without making reference
to something that pertains to the category of
substance (see 1028a33–6). Priority in knowl-
edge establishes that the knowledge of that
which is essential has priority with respect to
any other knowledge referring to a given thing
(see 1028a36–b2), with the understanding
that only that which belongs to the category
of substance has essence, in the most basic and
primary sense of the term. Finally, contrary to
what is suggested by the interpretation that has
been most broadly accepted since Ps-Alexander,
priority in time should not be understood as
chronological precedence, but rather as the pri-
ority of that which is permanent with respect
 FIRST PHILOSOPHY

to that which is transitory and variable due 40

See Jaeger, 1923, 366–92. For the general
to change (see Vigo, 1999). For the different question of the development of the theology of
senses of “primary,” see Cat. 12 and Met. V.11, Aristotle, see von Arnim, 1931; Guthrie, 1933
and the discussions in Cleary, 1988, 21–52 and and 1934.
Vigo, 1989. 41
For a discussion of the entirety of the concep-
27
The famous example that Aristotle employs for tion presented in XII.8, see Lloyd, 2000.
this type of case is that of the “snub (nose)” 42
For the citation from Homer, see Iliad II, 204.
(τὸ σιμόν = ῥὶς σιμή). These are attributes that
already involve a reference to that in which
they exist as in their proper subject. These
cases illustrate the close relation that links References
formal determinations and the matter in which
these determinations have their reality, in the
Álvarez Gómez, A. and R. Martínez Castro
case of composite objects that are the topic of
sciences like physics and biology. These sci- (eds), En torno a Aristóteles. Homenaje
ences do not study mere abstract forms, after al Profesor Pierre Aubenque, Santiago de
the fashion of mathematics, but rather also Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de
consider the corresponding matter. For these
Compostela, 1998.
aspects, see Mansion, 1969.
28
For this treatment of the substantial form as Arnim, H. von, “Die Entwicklung
cause of the being of the object, see Morrison, der Aristotelischen Gotteslehre,”
1996. Sitzungsberichte der Akademie
29
See also VII.3, 1029a1–5, with the commen-
der Wissenschaften in Wien,
tary of Ross, 1924, II, 164–5 ad 1029a2.
30
For an interpretation of the Aristotelian philosophisch-historische Klasse, 212.5
critique of the conception of the universal as (1931), 3–80; reprinted in: Hager, 1969,
substance in VII.13–16, at the line suggested 1–74.
above, see Rapp, 1996. The particularity of
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
the substantial form is defended, on the other
hand, by authors such as Irwin, 1988, 245–69; Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
Frede, 1987a; and Frede and Patzig, 1988, I, France, 4th edn, 1977 [1962].
36–42, 48–57, among others. — (ed.), Études sur la Métaphysique
31
See Frede, 2000, 1–3.
d’Aristote. Actes du VIe Symposium
32
See Jaeger, 1923, 230–6. See also Düring,
1966, 39f., 202–24. Aristotelicum, Paris: Vrin, 1979.
33
See Berti, 1983, 289ff.; Donini, 2002, 198. Barnes, J., M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji
34
For the demonstration of the eternity of the (eds), Articles on Aristotle, vol. 3:
natural movement alluded to here, see Physics
Metaphysics, London: Duckworth, 1979.
VIII.1–3.
35
For a complementary argument concerning the Berti, E., “Logical and Ontological Priority
impossibility of a beginning or end of time, see among the Genera of Substance in
Phys. IV.13, 222a33–b2. Aristotle,” in Mansfeld and de Rijk, 1975,
36
See Oehler, 1955; Berti, 2000, 182–3.
55–69; Italian version: “Priorità logica e
37
See, for example, Broadie, 1993; Berti, 1997
and 2000. priorità ontologica fra i generi di sostanza
38
See 1072b1–3, with the commentary of Ross, in Aristotele,” in Berti, Studi aristotelici,
1924, II, 376–7 ad loc. For a good, recent L’Aquila: Japadre, 1975, 261–73.
defense of the interpretation of the first mover
—, “La fonction de Métaph. Alpha Elatton
as exclusively a final cause, see Natali, 1997.
39
See, for example, Aubenque, 1962, 355–68; dans la philosophie d’Aristote,” in
Owens, 1979, 219–22. Moreaux and Wiesner, 1983, 260–94.

169
FIRST PHILOSOPHY
—, “Da chi è amato il motore immobile? Su
Aristotele, Metaph. XII 6–7,” Méthexis,
X, 1997, 59–82.
—, “Il concetto di ‘primo’ nella Metafisica
di Aristotele,” in Álvarez Gómez and
Martínez Castro, 1998, 131–48.
—, “Unmoved Mover(s) as Efficient
Cause(s) in Metaphysics Λ 6,” in Frede
and Charles, 2000, 181–206.
Bostock, D., Aristotle. Metaphysics Books
Z and H, Oxford: Clarendon, 1995
[1994].
Broadie, S., “Que fait le premier moteur
d’Aristote. Sur la théologie du livre
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philosophique de la France et de
l’Étranger, CLXXXIII (1993),
375–411.
Cleary, J. J., Aristotle on the Many Senses of
Priority, Carbondale, IL: Southern
Illinois University Press, 1988.
—, “Emending Aristotle’s Division of
the Theoretical Sciences,” Review of
Metaphysics, XLVIII.1 (1994),
33–70.
—, Aristotle and Mathematics. Aporetic
Method in Cosmology and Metaphysics,
Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1995.
Décarie, V., “La Physique porte-t-elle sur
des ‘non-séparés’ (acho-rista)? Note sur
Aristote, Métaphysique E 1, 1026a14,”
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Théologiques, 38 (1954), 466–8.
Donini, P., “Il libro Lambda della Metafisica
e la nascita della filosofia prima,” Rivista
di storia della filosofia, 57 (2002), 181–99.
Dumoulin, B., Analyse Génétique de la
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Les Éditions Bellarmin; Paris: Les Belles
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Düring, I., Aristoteles. Darstellung
und Interpretation seines Denkens,
Heidelberg: Winter, 1966.
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— (ed.), Naturphilosophie bei Aristoteles
und Theophrast. Verhandlungen des 4.
Symposium Aristotelicum veranstaltet
in Göteborg, August 1966, Heidelberg:
Stiehm, 1969.
Frede, M., “The Unity of Special and
General Metaphysics,” in Frede, 1987,
81–95.
—, “Substance in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,”
in Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987, 72–80.
—, “Introduction,” in Frede and Charles,
2000, 1–52.
—, “Metaphysics Λ 1,” in Frede and
Charles, 2000, 53–80.
Frede, M. and D. Charles (eds), Aristotle’s
Metaphysics Lambda. Symposium
Aristotelicum, Oxford: Clarendon,
2000.
Frede, M. and G. Patzig, Aristoteles,
Metaphysik Z. Text, Übersetzung und
Kommentar, vol. I: Einleitung, Text
und Übersetzung, vol. II: Kommentar,
München: Beck, 1988.
Guthrie, W. C. K., “The Development of
Aristotle’s Theology—I,” The Classical
Quarterly, XXVII (1933), 162–71;
German version in Hager (1969),
75–95.
— “The Development of Aristotle’s
Theology––II,” The Classical Quarterly,
XXVIII (1934), 90–8; German version in
Hager (1969), 96–113.
Hafemann, B., Aristoteles Transzendentaler
Realismus. Inhalt und Umfang erster
Prinzipien in der Metaphysik, Berlin/New
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Hager, F. P. (ed.), Metaphysik und Theologie
des Aristoteles, Darmstadt: WBG, 2nd
edn, 1979 [1969].
Heidegger, M., “Die onto-theo-logische
Verfassung der Metaphysik,” in Identität

und Differenz, Pfullingen: G. Neske, 8th
edn, 1986 [1957], 31–67.
Irwin, T., “Homonymy in Aristotle,” Review
of Metaphysics, XXXIV.4 (1981),
523–44.
—, Aristotle’s First Principles, Oxford:
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Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin:
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Clarendon, 1957.
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between a Thing and Its Matter,” in
Scaltsas, Charles, and Gill, 1994,
247–77.
Liske, M. T., Aristoteles und der
aristotelische Essentialismus. Individuum,
Art, Gattung, Freiburg/München: Alber,
1985.
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and Charles, 2000, 245–73.
Mansfeld, J. and L. M. de Rijk (eds),
Kephalaion. Studies in Greek Philosophy
and its Continuation Offered to Professor
C. J. de Vogel, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1975.
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physique,” in Düring, 1969, 124–32;
reprinted in: Mansion, 1984, 347–55.
—, Études Aristotéliciennes. Recueil
d’Articles, ed. J. Follon, Louvain: Éditions
de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie,
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Merlan, Ph., From Platonism to
Neoplatonism, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1953.
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87–92; reprinted in: Hager, 1969, 251–65.
Mondolfo, R., Problemas y métodos de
investigación en la historia de la filosofía,
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Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 3rd edn, 1969
[1963].
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September 1981), Berlin/New York: de
Gruyter, 1983.
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in Rapp, 1996, 193–207.
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nel libro Lambda della Metafisica di
Aristote,” Méthexis X (1997),
105–23.
Oehler, K., “Der Beweis für den unbewegten
Beweger bei Aristoteles,” Philologus, 99
(1955), 70–92.
Owen, G. E. L., “Logic and Metaphysics in
some Earlier Works of Aristotle,” in Düring
and Owen, 1960, 163–90; reprinted in:
Barnes, Schofield and Sorabji, 1979, 13–32
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97–105; reprinted in: Owen, 1986, 252–8.
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in the Metaphysics,” in Aubenque, 1979,
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in der Metaphysik des Aristoteles,”
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13, 14–16),” in Metaphysik. Die
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Books I–VI, vol. II: Books VII–XIV,
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(eds), Unity, Identity, and Explanation
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(1991), 115–127; reprinted in: Vigo,
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University Press, 1994 [1989].
 9
FIRST PHILOSOPHY, TRUTH, AND THE
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S
METAPHYSICS

ψελλιζομένῃ γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ πρώτη φιλοσοφία περὶ πάντων, ἅτε νέα τε καὶ κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς οὖσα.
For the earliest philosophy is, on all subjects, like one who lisps, since in its beginnings it is but a
child.
Arist. Metaphysics I.9, 993a15–16

εἰ μὲν οὖν μὴ ἔστι τις ἑτέρα οὐσία παρὰ τὰς φύσει συνεστηκυίας, ἡ φυσικὴ ἂν εἴη πρώτη
ἐπιστήμη· εἰ δ´ ἔστι τις οὐσία ἀκίνητος, αὕτη προτέρα καὶ φιλοσοφία πρώτη, καὶ καθόλου
οὕτως ὅτι πρώτη· καὶ περὶ τοῦ ὄντος ᾗ ὂν ταύτης ἂν εἴη θεωρῆσαι, καὶ τί ἐστι καὶ τὰ ὑπάρχοντα
ᾗ ὄν.

If there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first
science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and must be first
philosophy, and universal in this way, because it is first. And it will belong to this to consider being
qua being—both what it is and the attributes which belong to it qua being.1
Arist. Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a27–32

I It is certainly not due to an accident of his-

What has come to be known as Aristotle’s
Metaphysics is a collection of 14 treatises edited
and arranged in order by Andronicus of Rhodes
in the first-century bc.2 Andronicus, the head
of the Peripatetic school in Athens, was not a
mere grammarian. By placing the collection of
those 14 treatises after the Physics in his edition
of Aristotle’s esoteric works Andronicus left it
to posterity to know the collection as Ta meta
ta phusika or “The after the Physics.”
173
tory that the collection of Aristotle’s meta-
physical treatises is so named. The title of the
work implies a transcendence of the domain
of nature and of the perceptible things con-
tained therein. Aristotle himself believed that
the study of what he called “first philoso-
phy” (or “theological [i.e. science]” or “wis-
dom” and even simply “philosophy”), that is,
the science of which his Metaphysics is a
sketch, should begin after the completion
of the study of physics. First philosophy
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
comes last in the curriculum of the philoso-
pher because it is first in the order of nature.
And it is first in the order of nature because
it deals (1) with the principles and causes of
everything, (2) with being qua being, and (3)
with divine substance. How these different
subjects are related to each other is a hotly
debated issue of interpretation, and we shall
give a few hints toward its solution below.
Of all theoretical sciences Aristotle’s first phi-
losophy had the aspiration of being the most
universal, even more universal than math-
ematics or physics in their various subdivi-
sions. But first philosophy was also the most
speculative science because even its legiti-
macy as a science was a debatable issue.3
The Metaphysics shows us the philoso-
pher in his workshop, struggling with per-
plexities that are not less enduring for being
formulated in such clear-cut ways for the
first time in Western thinking. The con-
tents of the work as a whole and the form
in which it has been transmitted constitute
an invitation for us to actually think the
topics raised in it rather than passively lis-
ten to results already reached by another.
Perhaps more than any other extant work in
Aristotle’s corpus the Metaphysics engages
the reader in the task of interpretation. We
may suppose that this is an effect intended
by Aristotle himself—not unlike the purpose
behind Plato’s composition of philosophical
dialogues.
In what follows we shall accept the invita-
tion presented by the structure of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics and give some preliminary
answers to the question about the relation of
first philosophy to the history of being. Our
primary focus will be selected chapters from
books I, II, VI, and IX of the Metaphysics.
The peculiarities of the Metaphysics can be
seen against the background of Aristotle’s
standard method of dealing with the past,
174
philosophical or otherwise, and his explicit
views on history.4
II
One of the methods of philosophical inquiry
that Aristotle is famous for is that of investi-
gating the reputable opinions handed down
to the present. Reputable opinions (endoxa or,
elsewhere, hupole-pseis) are defined as those
opinions “which are accepted by everyone or
by the majority or by the wise.”5 In most of
his surviving works Aristotle begins his explo-
ration with a survey of views held by previous
Greeks either collectively or individually. In
the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics, for
instance, he delves into the problem of human
well-being (eudaimonia) through a collec-
tion of the attributes that human thriving is
assumed to possess by sages such as Solon and
Plato, communities such as the Pythagoreans,
and the common people at large. In the first
book of his work On the Soul he raises the
question of the essence of the soul as principle
of life in all animate things with an investi-
gation of the doctrines about psuche- put for-
ward by Greek philosophers from the archaic
age to his own time. “For our study of soul
it is necessary,” he writes, “while formulating
the problems of which in our further advance
we are to find solutions, to call into council
the views of those of our predecessors who
have declared any opinion on this subject, in
order that we may profit by whatever is sound
in their suggestions and avoid their errors.”6
Aristotle conducted inquiries into the
history of Greek philosophy and science in
order to find solutions to clearly formulated
questions. His aim was not the history of a
certain subject as such but the truth of the
subject-matter itself. “[I]n the case of all
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
discoveries,” he writes toward the end of the
Sophistical Refutations,
the results of previous labours that have
been handed down from others have
been advanced bit by bit by those who
have taken them on, whereas the original
discoveries generally make an advance
that is small at first though much more
useful than the development which later
springs out of them. . . . This is in fact
what has happened in regard to rhe-
torical speeches and to practically all the
other arts. . . . Of the present inquiry, on
the other hand, it was not the case that
part of the work has been thoroughly
done before, while part had not. Nothing
existed at all.7
The self-admiring joy that these lines convey
is the result of the fact that in the subject of
argument and valid inference Aristotle found
no legacy to base his inquiries upon. He had,
rather, to create the theoretical framework of
logic all by himself.
The view of history that the above quota-
tion implies seems to be that of progressive
evolution. But the progress that Aristotle had
in mind was neither the linear nor the endless
progress of the modern Age of Reason.8 It
was not meant to be endless because Aristotle
believed that the full truth of whatever is to
be known is an achievable goal rather than
a constantly approachable but never realiz-
able ideal, and sometimes his words betray
the optimism that the goal really stands close
by. Aristotle abhorred infinity as the sign par
excellence of incompletion and imperfection.9
Time and again, his arguments rest on the
claim that the opposite view would involve an
infinite regress, a result considered to be con-
clusive refutation of the thesis that entailed
it. What is more, “nobody would attempt to
do something,” he writes in the Metaphysics,
“if they were not to reach the end.”10 The
175
very finitude of Aristotle’s universe and the
priority of actuality over potentiality in all
domains and ultimately in all respects11 logi-
cally implied that there are no latent possi-
bilities in the world at large. But the progress
to which history testified was not meant to
be linear either. In several passages Aristotle,
possibly influenced by Plato’s idea of man-
kind’s past destructions by conflagration or
deluge, speaks of an infinite number of times
in which a total or quasi-total annihilation of
all human arts and sciences occurred.12 Only
some remnants of ancient wisdom have,
according to Aristotle, survived, and they are
often camouflaged in myths about anthro-
pomorphic or zoomorphic deities and other
such traditional beliefs. We may therefore
reach the conclusion that Aristotle believed
that there is indeed progress in history and
that this progress consists in the preser­
vation, accumulation, and enhancement of
past knowledge, but only when history is on
the ascending phase of its essentially palin-
dromic or cyclical movement. This is a far
cry from unreserved faith in linear progress.
Although we find discussion of reputable
opinions in almost all surviving works of
Aristotle, still it is a distinctive mark of book I
of the Metaphysics that such an inquiry is
conducted in a way that shows awareness
of, and respect for, chronology and histori-
cal influence of one thinker on another. In
this treatise Aristotle approached his pred-
ecessors and their doctrines with a singular
emphasis on the development of philosophy
and its possible completion, at least with
respect to the discovery of the causes and
principles of all that is. This observation is
rather surprising since the acknowledged
aim of the treatise is the foundation of a still
unnamed but sought-for science that would
be the trunk or even root of all particular
branches of knowledge.13 And it becomes a
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
little more surprising once we realize that
Aristotle did not entertain a particularly high
opinion of historiography.
In a well-known chapter of the Poetics the
word historia, which originally meant per-
sonal inquiry and empirical research into any
subject whatsoever, acquired, for the first time
in our sources, the modern sense of “history”
as narration of human events in the proximate
or distant past. Aristotle famously claims that
“poetry is something more philosophic and
of graver import than history.”14 He bases the
claim on the distinction between universal
and particular statements. Philosophy (a term
used by Aristotle to include empirical science)
aims at ­statements of universal truth whereas
the truths of history are always singular. In
this view, history does not teach us anything
other than what a particular individual has
done or suffered at a particular time and
place. Thucydides’ claim that history teaches
us how people generally behave toward one
another and how they think, individually and
collectively, especially in times of crisis where
the rather stable human nature manifests its
hidden potential for evil all the more vividly,15
would not have gained the approval of
Aristotle who never even ­mentions Thucydides
in his vast surviving corpus. History, accord-
ing to Aristotle, teaches particular actions and
passions that are not susceptible to generaliza-
tion. Hence history is not a science (episte-me-)
in the proper sense of the term since all sci-
ences aim at some universal knowledge.16
To approach a singular event, such as the
battle of Salamis, in the light of some uni-
versal rule or law of human behavior would
be, for Aristotle, to compose a tragic drama
like Aeschylus’ Persae rather than a truly his-
torical account. Poetry focuses on the inter-
nal unity, hence the intelligible wholeness, of
the narrated or staged action whereas history,
interested as it is to keep the order of temporal
176
sequence, is forced to narrate events with no
other intelligible connection with one another
than that provided by the unity of time in
which they occurred.17 In short, there are no
proper laws of historical development to the
discovery of which an hypothetical historical
science could aspire.
A different but compatible picture emerges
from the first book of the Politics. The evolu-
tion of human associations from household
to political society via the intermediary stage
of the village is said to be based on nature.
The view that “every polis exists by nature”18
does not mean that political society came into
being by a kind of natural spontaneity like
the growth of a tree. It is rather the view that
humans, upon becoming aware that they need
self-sufficiency in order to flourish, have cre-
ated the polis as a social organization in which
their natural end, that is, happiness and the
good life, could be accomplished. What we
would definitely call a historical development
is, in Aristotle’s mind, a natural rather than
a conventional or fortuitous evolution. This
is even more evident when Aristotle thinks
that the historical development that led tragic
drama to its formal perfection in Sophocles’ art
of playwriting was a process that reached an
end when “tragedy found its own nature.”19
In Aristotle’s thought, history and nature
were not juxtaposed to one another as in
most modern discussions. The domain of
human freedom or ingenuity was not seen
as the opposite of physical compulsion and
natural necessity. Aristotle could put forward
the famous evolutionary scheme of human
associations described above not because he
had conducted comprehensive investigations
into the historical evolution of all human
societies but because he espoused a particu-
lar view of what human nature is and what
it desires. To understand his claim about the
naturalness of the polis (or the naturalness
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
of tragedy’s formal perfection, for that mat-
ter), we must bear in mind Aristotle’s own
distinction between potential and actual
being. But this is a fundamentally metaphysi-
cal distinction not only because its theoreti-
cal articulation is discussed in book IX of the
Metaphysics but also because it is a distinc-
tion assumed to be applicable not solely to a
particular domain of being but to being qua
being.
The foundation of Aristotle’s thought is
to be found in his metaphysical thinking.
There are therefore reasons to think that if
a particular conception of the history of phi-
losophy, and by implication of history more
generally, appears in this thinking, then that
conception, in its implications about the
relationship between eternal and temporal
being, would be an idea that was perhaps left
explicitly unthought by Aristotle himself, but
which deserves to be thought by means of the
signposts that Aristotle left on his way to the
thought of being qua being.
It seems that Aristotle believed that being
has no history. The universe, with all the
essences of natural and immaterial sub-
stances contained therein, is for him no less
eternal and immutable in its totality than the
monolithic being (eon) of Parmenides from
which all kinds of change were excluded as
a result of the absolute unthinkability of
nonbeing.20 It follows that the very title of
the present essay that speaks of the history
of being in Aristotle’s Metaphysics must
be profoundly misleading. But contrary to
Parmenides who relegated change to the
false opinions of mortals, thus making it
apparent rather than real, Aristotle believed
that change in all its manifestations is a real
occurrence—and he devoted a great deal of
effort to the explanation of its mechanism.
Even though Aristotle nowhere hints at the
possibility that the historical growth and
177
diminution of knowledge in human minds,
for him a particular kind of qualitative
change, would make any difference in being
as such, nevertheless his treatment of past
philosophers in Metaphyics I, if seen in con-
nection with his notion of truth in Met. II
and with his treatment of potentiality, actu-
ality, and truth in Met. IX, may modify the
prima facie correct belief that there is no
history of being.
III
In the first two chapters of Metaphysics I
Aristotle undertakes an exploration of the
characteristic features of wisdom (sophia).
His aim is to lay the foundations of a new sci-
ence that will share with traditional notions
of wisdom the latter’s claim to universality.
And so he begins by exploring what can be
deduced from common opinions about the
sage. Master craftsmen, he writes, are deemed
wiser than manual workers in the same field
because they know the causes of what they
make.21 Craftsmanship or art (techne-) dif-
fers from experience (empeiria) in terms of
knowledge. Aristotle acknowledges22 that
in some cases experienced workers produce
better results than learned technicians, arti-
sans, and craft­smen: a practical healer, for
instance, may treat a particular case of ill-
ness more successfully than a certified doc-
tor of medicine. Yet only the latter possess
a knowledge of what they do and are able
to give an account of it and teach others.23
Moreover, the inventors of fine arts (such as
poetry or painting) are more highly esteemed
than the inventors of useful crafts, and the
inventors of pure sciences (such as math-
ematics or physics) are considered wiser than
either of the former.24 The implication to be
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
found in common opinions about wisdom is
that wise people know the causes (aitiai) and
starting points, origins, or principles (archai)
of things without any concern for practical
use or applicability. But Aristotle is inter-
ested in this implication in order to deduce
from it that the science (episte-me-) he is after
and calls here by the name of “wisdom” is
a science of first principles and causes (περὶ
τὰ πρῶτα αἴτια καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς).25 The only
usefulness of this sought-for science, we may
conclude, is that it fulfils the universal human
desire for knowledge, a desire provided by
nature.26
In the following chapter, Aristotle seeks to
determine with more precision the character-
istics of this science of wisdom. He explicitly
considers reputable opinions (hupole-pseis)27
from which he deduces some important fea-
tures that this science must possess.28 They
can be briefly enumerated as follows. The
sought-for science must be (1) the most uni-
versal science: its results must be applicable to
everything (panta). (As we learn from a later
passage,29 the most universal science should
be contrasted not only with particular sciences
such as medicine or geometry but also with
dialectic and sophistic that speak or presume
to speak about everything as well.) It must
also be (2) the most difficult science since (3)
it should deal with the highest universals (τὰ
μάλιστα καθόλου), which are the most dif-
ficult subjects for human cognition because
they are furthest removed from the testimony
of the senses. From (1)–(3) it would follow
that the sought-for science must be the most
abstract of all sciences. Surprisingly, however,
Aristotle adds that this science must be (4)
the most precise (akribestate-), as well as (5)
the most instructive (διδασκαλικὴ μᾶλλον).
He accounts for the former claim by stat-
ing that sciences are more precise when they
deal with more primary things. Arithmetic,
178
for instance, is regarded as more precise than
geometry because, of all mathematical sci-
ences, it alone deals with the primary objects
of mathematics, namely numbers, whereas
geometry adds other objects, such as points,
lines, and planes, in order to determine its
proper field.30 Since the point is defined
with reference to the monad, which is the
primary constituent of number, as “an indi-
visible monad in place,”31 and the line and
the plane with reference to the point, it fol-
lows that geometry depends on, and is more
complex than, arithmetic; hence less pre-
cise too. Precision is a matter of simplicity.
The most primary things are the simplest.
They are also the starting-points, and there-
fore the causes, of things dependent on them.
And since instructors are capable of giving
the causes of what they teach, it follows that
the most precise science will be the most
instructive since it will be best equipped to
explain things with reference to their ulti-
mate causes and starting-points. Moreover,
since first things and causes are said to be the
most knowable things, the science we are in
search of must be (6) the science of the most
knowable things (μάλιστα ἐπιστητά).
To understand this paradoxical claim
we need to bear in mind Aristotle’s distinc-
tion, repeatedly stressed,32 between things
that are more known with reference to
nature (γνωριμώτερα φύσει) and things
that are more known with reference to us
(γνωριμώτερα ἡμῖν). Human knowledge,
Aristotle claims, begins with things that are
more known to us (such as sensible objects
and their perceptible attributes) and proceeds
to things that are more known by nature or
in themselves (such as universals and their
intelligible attributes). The end of the cogni-
tive process is reached when the human mind
grasps things more known by nature (namely
starting-points, elements, and causes) and
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
realizes that the objects of sense perception
are, contrary to appearances, more obscure
than their naturally intelligible causes. The
purpose of human cognition is to render the
more known by nature also better known to
the knowing mind.
Since the sought-for science is the sci-
ence of the most knowable things it must be,
Aristotle adds, (7) the most authoritative of
all sciences (ἀρχικωτάτη τῶν ἐπιστημῶν) as
well as (8) the science of the best in the whole
of nature (τὸ ἄριστον ἐν τῇ φύσει πάσῃ). As
such it is (9) the only free science (μόνην
οὖσαν ἐλευθέραν τῶν ἐπιστημῶν). For, pre-
sumably, the science that possesses the most
authority and studies the best domain of
being cannot be subservient to any other sci-
ence, nor are its practitioners dependent on
hypotheses borrowed from another science
that they themselves cannot demonstrate.
Not bound by any kind of ignorance or
dependence wise men are cognitively free in
the highest degree.
Last but not least, the sought-for science
must be (10) the most divine and precious
science (θειοτάτη καὶ τιμιωτάτη). And this
last feature must be understood, accord-
ing to Aristotle, in a dual sense: it is, on the
one hand, (10’) the science which god pos-
sesses and, one the other, (10’’) the science of
(=about) divine things.
So far Aristotle has given us a formal
sketch of how the desired science should be
conceived. “We have seen,” Aristotle con-
cludes, “what is the nature (phusis) of the
sought-for science and what the end (sko-
pos) which our search and whole methodi-
cal enterprise must attain.”33 Aristotle’s
arguments are based on the assumption that
the quality of a science is determined by the
quality of its objects such that the more pre-
cious, universal, intelligible, authoritative,
etc., the objects of cognition are, the more
179
precious, universal, intelligible, authorita-
tive, etc., the science that deals with them
will be. This assumption is further based on
another: that knowledge is a kind of assimi-
lation of the mind to the contemplated object
of thought.34 But for the object of thought to
be so able to affect the mind as to transmit
its own qualities to it, the object of thought
must be a kind of activity itself.35 We shall see
how this understanding of knowledge as a
kind of action by the intelligible object on the
contemplating mind has affected Aristotle’s
conception of philosophical history. Prior
to that, we must gather additional informa-
tion about the sought-for science from other
books of the Metaphysics.
In book II (traditionally called “alpha
minor” since it is a kind of appendix to the first
book called “Alpha”), philosophy is said to be
rightly called “science of truth” (ἐπιστήμη τῆς
ἀληθείας).36 The author (whether Aristotle
himself or a certain Pasicles who wrote down
an oral lecture by Aristotle, hence Aristotle
mediately) claims that “the contemplation
(theo-ria) of truth is in one sense difficult and
in another easy”: while no one ever manages
to adequately come into full contact with truth
and say it, yet no one ever completely fails.37
We always already stand in the horizon of
truth so that it is impossible to miss it entirely.
The difficulty of the full attainment of truth
lies in the fact that, though we possess, or are
(so to speak) immersed in, its whole, we are
still unable to grasp its parts. Aristotle thinks
of the whole of truth as the very manifestness
of things-that-are, which constitutes a target
too big for anyone to miss, and of its parts as
the very precise reasons behind what obtains
in each case, reasons that, like minute points
in the overall target, are too small for everyone
to hit. Yet he acknowledges that the sum total
of individually minor successes amounts to a
significant magnitude. Aristotle is thinking of
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
the accumulation of knowledge provided by
a living tradition. As he later explains,38 grati-
tude should be paid not only to those earlier
thinkers whose views one espouses but also to
those who expressed things in more superficial
ways: for they have contributed to the exercise
and development of our mental faculty.
For Aristotle the cause of the difficulty of
attaining truth does not lie in things (ἐν τοῖς
πράγμασιν); it lies in us (ἐν ἡμῖν): “As the
eyes of the bats are to the light of the day, so
the mind of our soul is to the things that are,
of all things, the most evident by nature.”39
In this powerful simile, we are not supposed
to be merely short-sighted. We are said to
be blind like bats. And we are blind to the
brightest or most shining (phanero-tata, ren-
dered “most evident” above) of all things.
The opposition that we have already seen
between things more known by nature and
things more known to us recurs in this pas-
sage with a particular force: we are bathed in
truth as in an ever-present and overwhelm-
ing blaze, and yet truth we do not perceive.
The radiance of truth is first in the order
of nature but last in the order of human
cognition.
A little later,40 Aristotle states that since
each thing must itself possess the quality
that it manages to impart to another (like
fire, which manages to heat other things pre-
cisely because it is itself hot), those things
must be most true (ale-thestata) which are
the causes of other things’ being true. “It
follows that it is necessary for the principles
(archas) of eternal beings to always be most
true (ale-thestatas).”41 The principles of eter-
nal things cannot be temporary propositions
that have their truth-value changed as time
goes by. The reason that Aristotle gives for
the immutable truth of eternal things is that
there is nothing that causes eternal things to
be but, conversely, it is the eternal things
180
themselves that are the causes of the being of
other things. It seems that the higher a thing
stands in the causal concatenation of events
and the more causal power it possesses,
the more true it is. At the end of the chap-
ter, Aristotle draws a symmetrical relation
between being (einai) and truth (ale-theia)
by stating that “as each thing is in respect
of being so it is in respect of truth too.”42
The conclusion to be drawn is that the con-
templation of truth, with which our inquiry
began in this chapter, is a contemplation of
being—difficult and easy at once. Being and
truth are the two sides of the same coin.
What is rather astonishing in this account
is, first, that truth is supposed to be an
attribute of things rather than of statements,
beliefs, or mental states. Truth exists out
there as a kind of unperceived brightness in
which each and every thing-that-is partici-
pates according to its kind. Secondly, truth
is assumed to possess degrees: things are
more or less true according to their relative
place in the “great chain of being.” The cul-
mination of truth is to be found in the most
eminent domain of being, that of eternal and
unchanging beings. Last but by no means
least, truth is supposed to possess a causal
power: like the hotness of fire that is the
cause of the heat of all hot things, it is the
truth of the most eminent beings that is
the cause of the truth of all other things. In
conclusion, we may say that since the grada-
tion of truth reflects, and is reflected by, a
corresponding gradation of being,43 the sci-
ence of truth par excellence must be the sci-
ence of being par excellence; and since being
is eminently present in the most eminent
beings, the one science of truth-and-being
par excellence is the science of divinities, the
theological science.
The word “divine” does not occur in
Metaphysics II.1. But it is not difficult to
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
supply it from other passages of Aristotle’s
Metaphysics. Already in book I we have seen
that the sought-for science is a science which
god possesses as well as a science about the
attributes of godhead (features 10’ and 10’’
in the above enumeration). In Met. VI, the
intuition is spelled out. Aristotle divides the
theoretical sciences into three distinct catego-
ries according to the nature of their objects.44
Physics studies things that are at once sepa-
rate, changeable, and material (i.e. natural
substances such as plants and animals); “some
branches of mathematics study things that are
unchangeable but perhaps inseparable from
matter”;45 and the first theoretical science,
which is now called theologike- (or “theolog-
ics,” if we are permitted a neologism), studies
things that are at once separate, unchange-
able, and immaterial. Aristotle hastens to add
that “it is necessary for all causes to be eternal,
and these causes must be eternal in the high-
est degree (malista); for these are the causes
of the manifest divine things (τοῖς φανεροῖς
τῶν θείων).”46
As Metaphysics XII makes plain,47 the
hidden causes Aristotle has in mind here
are divine intellects, and the manifest divine
things that are the visible results of their
causal power are the heavenly bodies. The
divine, therefore, consists of a whole hierar-
chy of things, some of which are most evi-
dent to the senses and others most evident
to the mind. Immaterial intellects are meant
to account for the orderly movements of
the planets (including the sun) and the daily
revolution of the sphere of fixed stars. Their
postulation is a rational necessity stem-
ming from the empirical observation of the
sky, and as such it belongs to physics or the
study of nature.48 But what physics uses as
an unproven hypothesis it is the task of first
philosophy to study in itself and in all its pos-
sible consequences.
181
Aristotle’s divine intellects are fully deter-
mined beings that have no share whatsoever
in potentiality. They act as the final causes of
the whole universe. As pure activities (ener-
geiai) of intellection (noe-sis) they can only be
grasped by a similar activity of the human
mind and more precisely of that part of it that
is divine.49 The science of truth is, ultimately,
a science that contemplates the simple activ-
ity of uninterrupted divine intellection.
In Met. VI.1, theoretical sciences are
ranked above the practical. They are them-
selves graded according to their objects so
that the most precious science (timio-tate-n)
should be the one that deals with the most
precious kind of being (περὶ τὸ τιμιώτατον
γένος),50 which we have seen to be the pure
activity of divine intellection. We must now
see how such a particular science with such
a limited, albeit extremely eminent, object
is also meant to be universal. The ques-
tion is raised and very briefly answered by
Aristotle himself.51 His answer is that this
science is universal precisely because it is first
(καθόλου οὕτως ὅτι πρώτη). What this brief
answer means to say is that by studying the
first cause or causes of everything-that-is one
studies not only a particular kind of being
but also being qua being and its attributes.
To be sure, being qua being is to be found
in any kind of being whatsoever, in poten-
tial, undeveloped and imperfect faculties as
well as in active, mature, and fully-perfected
substances. For all things, be they actual or
merely potential, are what they are. This
last statement, however, need not mean
that things are what they are to the same
extent or in the same degree. After all, we do
not call an acorn an “oak-tree” but think of it
as an oak-tree to be. Aristotle’s view of being
is fundamentally determined by his view
of nature (phusis) as a process of limited,
and hence potentially perfect, development.
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
Aristotle thinks that being qua being is most
eminently present and most fully active in
the first causes of everything that is. The first
causes of being are themselves actual beings
in the most eminent sense. By studying them
one studies a privileged domain of being in
which the most universal of all questions,
the perennial and always unresolved quest­
ion “what is being?”52 can come to its own.
The science of being qua being or science
of truth has, therefore, a focal reference,53 and
this is to be found in the causes and origins
of being, which are the same as the causes
and starting-points of truth. The brightest
things in whose effects we constantly live are
those to which our untrained minds are the
least attuned. The Metaphysics as a whole is
a training field to the end of their cognition.
To come back to book I, from which we
started: after the enumeration of the features
of the sought-for science of wisdom in I.2,
Aristotle proceeds, in the following chapter,
to mention the kinds of cause that an inde-
pendent investigation of his has reached.
Since the sought-for science is a science of
causes we must know how many kinds of
cause there are. After mentioning what are
now commonly known as the formal, mate-
rial, efficient, and final causes—Aristotle’s
own terminology is much more vivid and
revealing54—Aristotle makes a backward
reference to Physics II.3, where he had dis-
tinguished those four kinds of cause.55 He
then announces a historical exploration of
past views on the subject,56 a project that
will occupy him for the main part of the
rest of the book.57 His explicit aim is to find
out whether or not another kind of cause,
besides his four, has ever been proposed. If
not, we will be more confident, he says, that
no other kind of cause exists.58
Although (or rather because) Aristotle
seeks to set up a still-unknown science, the
182
most universal science of being qua being,
his historical investigation is not restricted
to those past philosophies (such as the
Pythagorean, Eleatic, and Platonic) that
could be said to have initiated the meta-
physical quest. He explores the philoso-
phers of phusis no less than the philosophers
of logos. His sought-for science of being
qua being is a science that must necessar-
ily include and, if necessary, surpass the
domain of nature. In Metaphysics I Aristotle
approaches the philosophical past not as a
disinterested historian of ideas but as an
active philosopher on his way to establishing
the new discipline of first philosophy. The
history of philosophy is for him a repository
of accumulated wisdom against which one
may test the validity of one’s own discover-
ies. Aristotle addresses to his predecessors
a particular question (“how many kinds of
cause are there?”), and the “history of phi-
losophy” he delineates for the first time in
extant Greek literature is a history of philo-
sophical doctrines conducted in the light of
a particular conception of philosophy. That
is why he feels free to omit views that have
no relation to the question of causality,59 and
to disregard the symbolic mode of expression
that is characteristic of mythology.
To be sure, Aristotle does not overlook the
insights hidden in the poetic myths of Hesiod
and Homer.60 But he hesitates as to whether
or not he should include poets in his account
of the philosophical past. In what is, in all
probability, an allusion to views expressed in
some Platonic dialogues,61 Aristotle writes:
“there are some people who think that even
the ancients who lived long before the present
generation and were the first to speak about
the gods had a similar view of nature.”62
But he continues by casting a doubt as to
whether one should retrospectively read in
some Homeric myths the belief that water
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
is the origin of everything.63 By considering
Thales to be the founding father of a kind of
rational speculation about nature unknown
to earlier poets, as Aristotle clearly did,64 we
still adopt a version of the history of Greek
philosophy that is fundamentally Aristotelian
in conception.
In Aristotle’s account of the development
of Greek philosophy we may discern some
prominent predilections that, to a certain
extent, still dominate the history of philoso-
phy as we practice it to date. First, Aristotle
loved to stress the temporal priority, original-
ity, and possible influence of one thinker over
another even when he was not entirely certain
about dates.65 Second, he grouped together
thinkers with similar views even when they
happened to be distant from one another in
terms of time.66 Third, he was interested in
presenting the best case that can be made of
a particular doctrine by finding out what its
truly philosophical significance is, quite irre-
spective of whether or not the philosopher
who held it was able to see the full import
of his own utterances.67 Last but not least,
he thought that truth is an active power that
somehow forced philosophers to advance in
knowledge and to surpass the discoveries of
their predecessors unless they were defeated
by the difficulty of the required labor.68 We
shall come back to this.
The first two features of the above list may
seem to contradict each other. But they are
perfectly compatible. At one and the same
time, Aristotle was viewing the philosophical
past according to its own intelligible features
and as a temporal succession of doctrines.69
He believed of course in temporal progress.
But he realized also that the order of time
does not always exactly coincide with the
order of intelligible development. And so
he felt free to occasionally disregard the
former in favor of the latter. Since he was
183
neither a skeptic nor a relativist, Aristotle
could see beyond the actual formulations and
utterances of past philosophers, beyond even
their idiosyncratic and often eccentric articu-
lations, to the truth that they meant, however
inadequately, to convey. Aristotle approached
the philosophical past not so much as a
domain of errors about, but rather as a field
of important insights into, the nature of
being. He found, for instance, premonitions
of efficient and final causality in those think-
ers who spoke of a cosmic mind,70 and the
dim beginnings of the discovery of the formal
cause in the Pythagorean search for defini-
tions and the Platonic theory of Forms.71 All
in all, Aristotle thinks that the four causes of
his system were, dimly or fully, anticipated
by his predecessors.72 The material cause, in
particular, was fully discovered by Ionian
natural philosophy,73 and the efficient cause
was more or less clearly conceived by think-
ers such as Anaxagoras and Empedocles.74
As for the other two causes, Aristotle denies
that any of his predecessors had an adequate
understanding of them.75 However, by hind-
sight he was able to see where they were
heading. The potential of a certain doctrine,
he implies, can be fully appreciated only
from the vantage point of the actual. And
the present, the sole fully actual dimension
of time, casts a retrospective light on the past
and renders it intelligible.
Aristotle uses three equivalent expres-
sions to denote the active power exerted
by truth on thought.76 The first is found at
984a18–19: “as they [sc. past philosophers]
advanced, the very facts (αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα)
opened the road for them and joined in forc-
ing them to search the subject.” Here, what
is actually the case in the world is seen as
a force opening ways in unknown territories
and coercing thinkers to step in. The second
expression is the most straightforward of all
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
(984b8–11): “since those causes were not
adequate to generate the nature of beings,
men were compelled by the truth itself
(ὑπ´αὐτῆς τῆς ἀληθείας ἀναγκαζόμενοι),
as we have said, and searched for the next
cause.” Here it is truth, rather than facts, that
acts as the coercive force for further research.
The backward reference (“as we have said”)
indicates that Aristotle conceived the two
expressions αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα and αὐτὴ
ἡ ἀλήθεια as strictly identical. The third
expression speaks again of a coercing power.
But the coercion is now exercised on think-
ing by things-that-shine-forth (phainomena,
986b31), and Parmenides is said to have
been compelled by them to admit that there
is motion. As in book II, the conception of
truth that Aristotle envisages in all three pas-
sages of book I of the Metaphysics is one that
highlights the active manifestness of things,
the very conspicuousness and brightness of
observable and experienced facts.
In a later book Aristotle defines truth and
falsity with reference to human speech: “to
say of what is the case that it is not the case
or of what is not the case that it is the case is
false, whereas to say of what is the case that
it is the case and of what is not the case that
it is not the case is true, so that the speaker
who is saying that this is or is not the case
will be saying something true or something
false.”77 In this passage truth and falsity
become properties of sentences, and, more
particularly, of uttered propositions. As such
truth and falsity cannot belong to the senses
of being qua being that are appropriate for
first philosophy to investigate. In Met. VI.4,
1027b25–1028a3 Aristotle indeed denies
that being qua truth is a legitimate subject of
first philosophy, on the reasonable assump-
tion that truth is an affection of the mind
(διανοίας τι πάθος) rather than an objective
aspect of external being itself. Nevertheless,
184
at the very end of the central books of the
Metaphysics we find, surprisingly,78 a chapter
on truth.
Met. IX.10 begins with the astonishing
claim that the most authoritative sense of
being is truth. In view of the earlier rejec-
tion of being qua true from first philoso-
phy, editors have been at pains to alter the
received text of the manuscripts in order to
make it compatible with the whole discus-
sion of being qua substance, potentiality,
and actuality that dominates books VII–IX
(up to, and including, chapter 9).79 But in IX.
10 Aristotle no longer speaks of truth as men-
tal affection or propositional property, as he
had done in IV.7 (briefly repeated in IX.10,
1051b3–5) and VI.4. He, rather, considers a
sense of truth that can act as the cause of the
truth and falsity of propositions, beliefs, and
mental states. “It is not the case,” he writes,
“that you are white because we think of you
as white, but because you are white we who
say so stand in truth (ale-theuomen).”80 What
this statement means is that the real cause of
the truth and falsity of propositions is being.
And as the previous chapters have shown
(IX.6–9), the innermost core of being is activ-
ity (energeia).
In the same chapter Aristotle discusses the
kind of truth that pertains to noncomposite
essences and simple activities.81 He claims
that since the being of those things is dif-
ferent from the being of composite things
their truth must be different too. In the case
of composite things truth consists in the
being-compounded of the subject with all
the (necessary or contingent) predicates that
belong to it, as well as in its being-separated
from all the properties that do not pertain to
it.82 Therefore, the truth of a composite thing
consists, in reality, in the being-one or unity of
a substance with all its (necessary or contin-
gent) properties. In the case of noncomposite
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
essences neither truth nor its opposite can be
the same, however. Since the being of a non-
composite essence is not such as to allow for
a statement to pick it up (in the naming act)
and ascribe to it a predicate that belongs to
it (in the predicational act), its truth must be
a nonpropositional grasping of it—much like
touching. The opposite of truth must, corres­
pondingly, be complete ignorance rather than
falsity or propositional deception. For non-
composite essences do not possess a propo-
sitional structure like composite substances.
Noncomposite essences are always actually,
never potentially.83 Their being is activity.84
And activity is always at work: it radiates.
To avoid a more technical discussion of the
details of this most difficult of chapters, we
may say that the ground of Aristotle’s meta-
physical conception of truth is his conception
of being as active radiation. In view of what
we have seen from Metaphysics I and II, this
active radiation of being must be the ultimate
ground of the compelling force that truth pos-
sesses to open the road for new discoveries
and to effect a gradual disclosure of being in
the course of historical time. The cumulative
effect of the eternal radiation of being is the
revelation of being in time.
IV
Aristotle inscribes his metaphysical project in
a tradition that begins with Thales and ends
with himself, passing through various phases
(Ionian materialism, Pythagorean dualism,
Eleatic rationalism, Anaxagoras’ conception
of cosmic Mind, Empedocles’ pluralism, and
Plato’s philosophy of Forms). First philoso-
phy, the only free science, is a product of his-
tory. As the last and highest development of
the philosophy of nature, first philosophy
185
manages to overcome the domain of nature
and succeeds in opening up a vision of
eternal reality that is totally unaffected by
coming-into-being and passing-away, the
everlasting processes of nature. This eternal
reality is immaterial through and through.
For the ultimate cause of generation and
destruction is potentiality. And the real
ground of potentiality is matter. Divine intel-
lection as the case par excellence of the per-
vasive activity of being is not just a kind of
being among others. It is the focal reference
of being with respect to which all other kinds
and particular instances of being acquire
their ontological status and corresponding
level of truth. Paradoxically enough, the dis-
covery of the immaterial, eternal activity of
divine intellection is the outcome of histori-
cal time. For historical time manages to accu-
mulate insights into nature, and the causality
inherent in it, and by so doing it may achieve
a final overcoming of nature.
“History of being” is doubly ambiguous:
it means either the investigation or the his-
torical development of being. And again “of
being” may be taken either as the object (the
“what”) or as the agent (the “who”) of inves-
tigation and development. Aristotle who never
used the phrase “history of being” would
most probably have taken it in the objective
sense: it is we, human beings endowed with
logos, and above all the philosophers as dis-
tinguished from the dialecticians and soph-
ists, who conduct inquiries into the different
kinds of beings and their attributes; and it is
the philosopher, and above all the first philos-
opher, as distinguished from the physicist and
the mathematician, who investigates the pri-
mary senses and focal reference of being and
its attributes. Nonetheless, between the lines
of his account about the historical develop-
ment of Greek philosophy, in Metaphysics I,
we can read how Being, in its mode of being
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS

as active truth, has guided Greek investiga- 12

Meteorology I.3, 339b27–30; Politics VII.10,
tions and determined the historical develop- 1329b25–27; On the Heavens I.3, 270b16–25;
Met. XII.8, 1074a38–b14; see Pl. Timaeus 22c,
ment that led to its own manifestation as
23a–b; Critias 109d.
formal and final cause, as activity and intel- 13
Met. I.1, 981b27–982a6.
lection, in the last ascending phase of an axial 14
Poetics 9, 1451b5–6 in I. Bywater’s translation
civilization. as reprinted in Barnes, 1984, II, 2323.
Spyridon Rangos
15
Thuc. I.22.4; III.82.2.
16
Posterior Analytics I.31, 87b38–88a7; I.33,
88b30–35; Met. III.6, 1003a13–15; VII.15,
1039b27–1040a7.
17
Poet. 23, 1459a17–29.
Notes 18
Pol. I.2, 1252b30.
19
Poet. 4, 1449a15.
 1
Unless otherwise stated the translations of 20
See Met. IX.10, 1051b29–30.
Aristotle’s passages are mine. The two epi- 21
Met. I.1, 981a30–b2.
graphs of the present essay are given in W. D. 22
Met. I.1, 981a12–15.
Ross’ translation as reprinted in Barnes, 1984, 23
Met. I.1, 981b5–10.
II, 1569 and 1620, respectively. 24
Met. I.1, 981b17–25.
 2
Plut. Sulla 26; see Strabo XIII, 1.54. 25
Met. I.1, 981b27–982a3. The passage
 3
See Metaphysics VI.1, 1026a27–32 quoted as 981b25–29 is athetized by Christ, 1903,
second epigraph at the beginning of the present 4, followed by Jaeger, 1957, 3, as a later
essay. interpolation. (Jaeger curiously claims that the
 4
Cherniss, 1935, forcefully argued in favor of interpolation is by Aristotle himself!) Ross,
the thesis that Aristotle was an incompetent 1924, ad loc. rightly retains it.
historian of philosophy who regularly misrepre- 26
Met. I.1, 980a1.
sented his predecessors, on the ground that his 27
Met. I.2, 982a6–8, 19–21.
main concern was to show that earlier philo- 28
Met. I.2, 982a20–b10, 982b24–983a11. See
sophical speculations were inadequate attempts Reale, 1980, 19–22.
at the construction of a philosophical system 29
Met. IV.2, 1004b16–26.
such as Aristotle’s own. The thesis is extreme 30
See APo I.27, 87a31–7.
since it blurs the important distinction, repeat- 31
Met V.6, 1016b25–6.
edly stressed by Aristotle himself, between the 32
APo I.2, 71b33–72a5; Phys. I.1, 184a16–23;
actual sayings of a thinker and the implications Met. VII.3, 1029b1–12.
of his views, or historical accuracy and critical 33
Met. I.2, 983a21–3.
interpretation. See the fine critique by Guthrie, 34
See On the Soul III.4, 429b22–430a5.
1957, as well as the more balanced accounts by 35
See Met. XII.7, 1072b19–24.
Aubenque, 1962, 71–93; Collobert, 2002; and 36
Met. II.1, 993b19–20.
Frede, 2004. 37
Met. II.1, 993a30–b7. The direct quotation is
 5
Topics I.1, 100b23. from the very beginning of the book.
 6
On the Soul I.2, 403b20–4 in J. A. Smith’s 38
Met. II.1, 993b11–14.
translation as reprinted in Barnes, 1984, I, 643. 39
Met. II.1, 993b7–11. The bat simile occurs at
 7
Sophistical Refutations 34, 183b16–36 in b9–11.
W. A. Pickard-Cambridge’s translation as 40
Met. II.1, 993b24–30.
reprinted in Barnes, 1984, I, 313–14. 41
Met. II.1, 993b28–9.
 8
For a general assessment of ancient Greek 42
Met. II.1, 993b30–1.
views on progress see the very balanced 43
See Owens, 2007.
account by Dodds, 1973; see Edelstein, 44
Met. VI.1, 1025b26–1026a32.
1967. 45
Met. VI.1, 1026a15–16.
 9
See Physics III.6, 207a1–32. 46
Met. VI.1, 1026a16–18.
10
Met. II.2, 994b13–14. 47
See especially Met. XII.6–7, 1071b3–1073a13.
11
Met. IX.8, 1049b10–1051a3. 48
See Phys. VIII.5–6, 10; On the Heaven I.7.

186
 HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
49
See Nicomachean Ethics X.7, 1177a12–17,
1177b26–1178a8; On the Soul III.5,
430a22–5.
50
Met. VI.1, 1026a19–23.
51
Met. VI.1, 1026a23–32. Part of this passage is
quoted as the second epigraph of the present
essay.
52
Met. VII.1, 1028b3–4.
53
Met. IV.2, 1003a33–b19.
54
Aristotle’s designation of the formal cause
is the Platonically inspired ousia (“being” or
“essence”) explained in terms of Aristotle’s
own highly artificial construction τὸ τί ἦν
εἶναι or “the what it was to be” that distin-
guishes the required sense of ousia from ousia
in the sense of “substance”; his designation
of the material cause is hule-, which origi-
nally meant simply “forest” or “wood” but
was turned into a technical term by Aristotle
himself, as well as hupokeimenon (literally
“what lies underneath”); his designation of the
efficient cause is the periphrastic locution ὅθεν
ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως or “whence the begin-
ning of change”; and his designation of the
final cause is his own technical phrase τὸ οὗ
ἕνεκα or “that for the sake of which” coupled
with the Platonically inspired tagathon or “the
good” (Met. I.3, 983a24–32). Since they are,
for the most part, coined phrases, Aristotle’s
terms of causation dynamically reveal their
meaning in a markedly originative way.
55
Met. I.3, 983a24–b1; see I.7, 988a21–2.
56
Met. I.3, 983b1–4.
57
Met. I.3, 983b6; I.7, 988b21.
58
Met. I.3, 983b5–6.
59
Met. I.5, 986b10–14; 17–18.
60
Met. I.2, 983b30–3; I.4, 984b23–31.
61
Pl. Cratylus 402b, Theaetetus 152b, 160d,
180c; see Philebus 16c, Phaedrus 274c.
62
Met. I.3, 983b27–30.
63
Met. I.3, 983b33–984a2.
64
Met. I.3, 983b20.
65
Met. I.3, 984a1–13, 984b8, 17–20; I.4, 984b23,
985a29–30; I.5, 985b23–4, 986a27–30,
986b21–2, 987a20–2; I 6, 987a29–b14,
b22–32, 988a15–17; I.9, 991a16–18.
66
Met. I.3, 984b18–20; I.4, 984b23–32; I.5,
987a2–19; I.7, 988a23–b16.
67
Met. I.4, 985a4–10; I.5, 986b4–7.
68
Met. I.3, 984a18–19, a27–31, 984b8–11; I.5,
986a6–8, 986b31; see Physics I.5, 188b29–32;
Parts of Animals I.1, 642a18–20, 27–9.
187
69
See Aubenque, 1962, 81–3; Collobert, 2002,
289–93.
70
Met. I.3, 984b15–22; I.7, 988b8–11.
71
Met. I.5, 987a20–7; I.7, 988a34–b6.
72
Met. I.7, 988a22–b16.
73
Met. I.3, 983b6–984a18.
74
Met. I.3, 984a19–b22; I.4, 984b23–985b3; I.5,
987a2–13.
75
Met. I.7, 988a34–b8.
76
See Long, 2011, 67–71.
77
Met. IV.7, 1011b26–8.
78
Both Christ, 1903, 196 and Jaeger, 1957,
192 in their critical apparatuses suggest that
the chapter is misplaced by an incompe-
tent ancient editor. Christ goes as far as to
hold that the same editor inserted a whole
sentence in VI.4 (1027b28–9) as a forward
reference to IX.10. In his earlier publication
Jaeger, 1948, 205 thought that the chapter
was placed by Aristotle himself “at a fitting
place, namely between the end of the doctrine
of potentiality and the beginning of that of
the reality of the supersensible which was
intended to follow immediately.” See Ross,
1924, II, 274.
79
In his edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Ross
obelizes the phrase κυριώτατα ὂν that occurs
at 1051b1 because, as he explains in his
commentary, “being as truth and not-being as
falsity are elsewhere treated as emphatically
not the primary or strictest senses of being and
not-being” (Ross, 1924, II, 274–5). See Jaeger,
1957, 192 in app. cr. ad loc.
80
Met. IX.10, 1051b6–9.
81
Met. IX.10, 1051b17–1052a4.
82
Met. IX.10, 1051b9–17.
83
Met. IX.10, 1051b28. I accept Ross’ correction
ἐνέργειαι instead of the manuscripts’ reading
ἐνεργείᾳ.
84
Met. IX.10, 1051b31.
References
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 2009 [1962].
Barnes, J. (ed.), The Complete Works
of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford
HISTORY OF BEING IN ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS
Translation, Bollingen Series LXXI.2,
2 vols, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1995 [1984].
Cherniss, H., Aristotle’s Criticism of
Presocratic Philosophy, Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.
Christ, W., Aristotelis Metaphysica, Leipzig:
Teubner, 1903.
Collobert, C., “Aristotle’s Review of
the Presocratics: Is Aristotle Finally a
Historian of Philosophy?” Journal of the
History of Philosophy, 40 (2002), 281–95.
Dodds, E. R., “The Ancient Concept of
Progress,” in The Ancient Concept of
Progress and Other Essays on Greek
Literature and Belief, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988 [1973], 1–25.
Edelstein, L., The Idea of Progress in
Classical Antiquity, Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1967.
Frede, M., “Aristotle’s Account of the
Origins of Philosophy,” Rhizai, 1 (2004),
9–44.
188
Guthrie, W. K. C., “Aristotle as a Historian
of Philosophy: Some Preliminaries,”
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957),
35–41.
Jaeger, W., Aristotle: Fundamentals of the
History of his Development, 2nd edn,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1948.
—, Aristotelis Metaphysica, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1989 [1957].
Long, C. P., Aristotle on the Nature of
Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Owens, J. C., Aristotle’s Gradations of Being
in Metaphysics E-Z, ed. L. P. Gerson,
South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007.
Reale, G., The Concept of First Philosophy
and the Unity of the Metaphysics of
Aristotle, trans. J. R. Catan, Albany:
SUNY, 1980.
Ross, W. D., Aristotle. Metaphysics: A
Revised Text with Introduction and
Commentary, 2 vols, Oxford: Clarendon,
1997 [1924].
eˉthos
 10
ARISTOTLE ON HUMAN NATURE
AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS,
WITH AN ADDENDUM

The whole race is a poet that writes down

The eccentric propositions of its fate.
Wallace Stevens, “Men Made out of Words”

And language he has taught himself

And thought swift as the wind
And city-dwelling inclinations.
Sophocles, Antigone

Aristotle repeatedly mentions human nature in
connection with ethical questions. Appeals to
facts about our nature as human beings enter
at crucial junctures into ethical arguments of
various types, as if they did some sort of ethi-
cal work. But it is difficult to determine what
sort of work they are intended to do, and how
they do it. Take one example. Toward the
beginning of Nicomachean Ethics I, Aristotle
tells us that the best life would seem to be
one that is self-sufficient, autarke-s. This might
naturally call to mind the solitary contempla-
tive self-sufficiency of the Platonic philosopher.
But now Aristotle adds a qualification. “By
self-sufficient I mean not for the person him-
self, leading a solitary life, but for the person
along with parents and children and a wife and
in general his friends and fellow citizens, since
the human being is by nature a political being”
(1097b7–11). A fact about human nature is used
to defend an ethical conclusion, the conclusion
191
that we should prefer a communal conception
of the good life to a more solitary conception.
How does this work? For it seems that a seri-
ous opponent could object to Aristotle’s pro-
posal in at least two different ways. First, he
could concede that Aristotle is correct about
the facts of human nature, but deny that they
have the alleged normative implications. So it
is a fact about us that we need to live with oth-
ers. This gives us no reason not to try to climb
above our nature and repudiate these parts of
it. Certainly it gives us no reason to ascribe
to social pursuits any positive value. Or, sec-
ond, he could deny that Aristotle has correctly
described the human, saying, for example, that
our true nature as human beings is to be pure
intellectual souls, only contingently bound up
with the elements (viz., the emotions and appe-
tites) that give rise to our need for community.
What can Aristotle now say in defense of his
argument?
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
My purpose here is to ask how the idea of
human nature works inside Aristotle’s ethical
arguments. Where does this idea come from,
and what sort of idea is it? What is its relation-
ship to ordinary beliefs and to science? And
how, if at all, does it yield normative conclu-
sions? How, if at all, can it escape the charge
that such accounts substitute for experience
a useless abstract theory, which cannot really
resolve any practical dilemma? Answering this
question in some detail will contribute, I hope,
to the larger inquiry pursued in Williams’
Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy.1 For
Williams suggests that, among the attempts
to give a foundation to ethics, the Aristotelian
approach is the most promising. And yet
he holds that it fails, for several reasons. So
a clear look at his charges and at Aristotle’s
arguments may shed light on the larger ques-
tion: is there any coherent way of establishing
a foundation for our attempts to answer the
question, “How should one live?”
Williams’ Aristotle
I shall be arguing that some of Williams’
­criticisms of Aristotle fail because the account
he gives of Aristotle’s human nature project
(an account that he shares with numerous
other influential writers, past and present)2
is, in some important respects, inaccurate.
Aristotle’s actual position is stronger than the
position Williams describes and then attacks,
and is not vulnerable to all of his criticisms.
Williams does not give a detailed textual expo-
sition of Aristotle’s arguments on this issue;
so I shall be reconstructing his interpretation
both from the general account of Aristotle in
Ethics and the Limits and from some reveal-
ing statements in the concluding section of his
article published in 1986, “Hylomorphism,”
192
an article in which he appears more sympa-
thetic to Aristotle’s ethical use of the concept
“human being” than he does in the book, but
in which he offers approximately the same
account of what Aristotle is attempting to do.3
Williams’ account of Aristotle makes, as I
understand it, three claims:
(1) Questions about essential human nature
are, for Aristotle, matters of natural sci-
entific fact, not of ethical value. They
can be grasped from outside practices
and the point of view that guides them,
from the totally external viewpoint of a
­neutral observer—from, as ELP puts it,
“an absolute understanding of nature”
(52); and they are entirely independent
of ethical conceptions and judgments.
Nothing human beings do, believe, or
choose can alter the status of some puta-
tive element in our human nature.4
(1a) I t seems to be a corollary of this
claim that the Aristotelian account
of human nature is not based (or not
primarily or solely based) upon the
endoxa, upon ordinary beliefs and
conceptions. Such facts about nature
are what they are independently of
what ordinary people believe, and
ordinary belief will probably not
even be a very reliable guide to such
facts.5
(2) Questions of essential nature are (for
Aristotle) uncontroversial in a way that
ethical questions usually are not. Although
the answers to such questions may be
­difficult to discover, the fact that they are
matters for scientific inquiry means that
they can, in principle, be settled in a more
satisfyingly decisive way than questions
of ethical value judgment.6
(3) The discovery of the essential nature of
the human being does important work
in reaching normative ethical conclu-
sions. Its source in the external view-
point ­provides us with fixed points that
effectively rule out certain ethical alter-
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
natives, and perhaps also give positive
support for certain others. In this way, a
human nature inquiry contributes to the
resolution of our most troublesome nor-
mative disputes.7
This seems to be the core of Williams’
account of Aristotle, and the common ground
between the article and the book. There are
differences, of emphasis at least. The article
thinks of the concept “human being” as pro-
viding hard value-neutral constraints against
“atrocity”—so that, for example, a theory of
human nature will tell us what we may not
do to the helpless, handicapped infant, or to
the senile elderly.8 The book seems to envis-
age a richer and more ubiquitous role for the
account of nature, thinking of it as giving us a
full story of human natural perfection, from
which a rather full account of ethical con-
duct would straightforwardly flow.9 There
are also differences of evaluation. The arti-
cle (written earlier, though published later)
seems favorable to the Aristotelian project,
and, in particular, to the idea that we might
find, in an external account of humanness,
the foundation for some absolute prohi-
bitions that could not be altered by our
choices. The book is more pessimistic, con-
cluding that the strong assumptions on
which the Aristotelian project is based “have
collapsed,” and that the project of ground-
ing ethics in this sort of “outside view” has
collapsed with them (53). But these three
claims are clear enough, in both versions;
and it is clear, too, that for Williams it is pre-
cisely the alleged externality of the account
of human nature that makes it (at least ini-
tially) promising as a starting-point for eth-
ics, and as a source of solutions to difficult
ethical problems.
Williams’ objections to Aristotle’s account,
as set out in the book, seem to be of two
kinds. First of all, he suggests that Aristotle’s
193
external account of human capabilities and
perfections is not available to us—is not one
that we can plausibly believe. Furthermore,
he suggests that it is very likely that no such
external account of human nature will fill
the gap left by Aristotle’s: there seems to be
no way of plausibly linking facts of nature
to ethical considerations, at least in a way
that “will adequately determine one kind of
ethical life as against others” (47). Second,
he suggests that such external accounts
may, in any case, be of dubious relevance to
human ethical choice. If they do not already
contain ethical thought, it is not at all clear
what relevance they have to ethical thought,
or why we should care about them.10
There is, I believe, a considerable tension
in Williams’ thought on just this issue—
a tension revealed, as well, by the juxta-
position of article and book, published at
almost the same time. On the one hand,
Williams appears to be deeply drawn to the
idea that an external account of what we are
might tell us what we should and should not
do. The article approves of this idea, appeal-
ing to it (and to Aristotle) to criticize the
grounding of ethics on an explicitly internal
and ethical concept, the concept “person,”
which can, on account of its internality as part
of a structure of human evaluative beliefs, be
applied or withheld according to our ethical
judgments. The book, again, shows consider-
able sympathy for the project of moving to
an external view in order to ground ethical
choices; it offers an attractive and detailed
account of what such an external theory of
human nature would have to look like if it
were to offer us the foundation we want.11
And it suggests that when this project fails it
is a considerable loss, the loss of a significant
hope. On the other hand, the book’s objec-
tion about relevance, repeated in more than
one section, seems, to me at least, to cast
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
doubt not only on some particular projects
of giving ethics a scientific foundation (such
as sociobiology, in connection with which
Williams makes the objection), but on the
whole idea that ethics could be meaningfully
and convincingly grounded on an account
given from the external perspective, or from
what Williams calls the “absolute view of
nature.”12
I shall argue here that such an external
account is not the account that Aristotle offers
us; but that this is no great loss, because the
external account, as Williams characterizes
it, is neither necessary nor sufficient for pro-
viding ethics with a foundation. A founda-
tion of a different and more promising kind
is given in the account that Williams actually
develops.
The General Strategy
A series of connected passages in which
Aristotle appeals to questions of kind mem-
bership and essential nature will provide a
starting-point, giving us a sense of his gen-
eral approach. During the discussion of
philia in NE VIII, Aristotle observes that,
in general, friends wish for one another
very great goods. But, he adds, perhaps we
should not go so far as to wish our friends
transformed into gods: for then they would
be too far away from us to be our friends.
He then makes a further, most significant
remark about such wishing:
If it is well said that a friend wishes goods
for his friend for that person’s own sake,
then that person will have to remain
the type of being he is (hoios pot’ estin
ekeinos). Then it is to him as a human
194
being [or: on condition of his remain-
ing a human being] (anthro-po-i onti) that
the friend will wish the greatest goods.
(1159a8–12)
A later passage makes the same point in con-
nection with well-wishing for oneself:
Being is a good thing for the good per-
son, and each person wishes good things
for himself. But nobody would choose to
have everything on condition of becom-
ing other (genomenos allos)—as, for
example, the god right now has the good.
He will wish to have the good while con-
tinuing to be whatever he is (ho ti pot’
estin). (1166a19)
These passages restrict ethical aspiration
by bringing in considerations of personal
identity and kind membership. How do they
do this? When I imagine a picture of the
good or valuable life, and think of wishing
it for myself or for another, I ought to get
clear about the relationship between that
valuable life and the conditions of my (my
friend’s) continued existence. I ought, that
is, to ask closely whether this imagined life
is a life that could be lived by a being such
as I am—by a being, that is, who shares with
me all those characteristics that I consider
to be truly constitutive of my (my friend’s)
identity. For it might emerge that the life
was so remote from mine that I could not
imagine in it a person whom I could accept
as identical with myself. Certain changes in
a person and a way of life are compatible
with continued personal identity; others
are not. Certain changes make me better;
certain other changes, however apparently
splendid, bring into existence a new being
who is not me. Aristotle assumes that ethical
well wishing is aimed at realizing a good life
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
for me and my friends, not at the realization
of some ideal situation in which none of us
exists. So our views about who we essen-
tially are and what changes we can endure
while remaining ourselves set limits of a
kind upon what we can wish, on what our
ethical theories can commend. As Aristotle
remarks elsewhere, “It would be peculiar
(atopon) if someone chose for himself not
his own life, but that of someone else” (NE
1178a2–3).
Strictly speaking, there might seem to be
two separate questions here: (1) What are
necessary and sufficient conditions of my
continuing to exist as a human being? (What
lives are and are not human lives?) and (2)
What are necessary and sufficient condi-
tions of my continuing to exist as myself?
For there might be changes that would be
sufficient to make me other than the indi-
vidual I am, without making a creature of a
different species come into being. Our first
passage clearly focuses on the first question;
and our second, though less explicit, appears
(from its example) to have the same focus:
the imagined transformation is to a differ-
ent species. Now for Aristotle—and this
seems plainly true—continued existence as
a member of the species one is in is at least
a necessary condition of continued personal
identity.13 For Aristotle it is probably (if we
add a fuller account of “continued”) a suf-
ficient condition as well14—though here he
might encounter more opposition. In any
case, it is with the fulfillment of this necessary
and central species condition that Aristotle
is concerned in these passages; and it is this
condition that we shall be ­examining in the
balance of this chapter. He is asking what
transitions are such that they create a form
of life that is not human at all, and so, a for-
tiori, not livable by a person whose identity
195
includes humanness as (at least) a necessary
element. Certain lives that gods cherish are
unavailable as human lives.
We can link these passages with others
in which Aristotle cryptically contrasts the
human form of life with the lives of both
gods and beasts: for example, with Politics
1253a1ff. (to be analyzed in detail later), in
which he states that it is part of the nature
of a human being to have social or political
concerns, and that a creature who totally
lacks such concerns must be “either a beast
or a god”; and with the similar passage in
NE VII, in which Aristotle insists that ethi-
cal assessment itself is a part of the human
form of life, poised as it is between the beast
and the god:15 “And just as there is no ethi-
cal excellence or deficiency for beasts, so not
for gods either: the one is above the excel-
lences, and (the deficiency of) the other is not
the same thing as ethical deficiency” (VII.1,
1145a25–7). Here Aristotle is, once again,
pursuing our first question, but in a slightly
different way, asking what forms of life, and
what creatures, we count as human, and on
what basis; what distinctions between the
human and other kinds we employ when locat-
ing a creature or a life. The question about
essential human nature, having been asked
from the point of view of the subject who
wishes to continue in existence, is now asked
from the point of view of the classifier of
lives, who wishes to know what beings or
putative continuants of beings to count as
beings of the same kind.
It would be getting ahead of our argument
to try to determine where the account of
human nature comes from in these passages,
and whether it is or is not independent of
ethical beliefs. For the arguments that in the
end explain these judgments are arguments
that we shall examine later, concerning the
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
political nature of the human being. But we
must at least try to give these statements
some philosophical motivation, asking what
genuine human problem or problems they
address, and how. Is there anyone who might
have wished for a transformation into a god-
like condition, not fully realizing that this
condition is incompatible with his own con-
tinued existence as just the sort of being he
is? Who might have made theoretical state-
ments that clash with some of his deeper
beliefs about identity and continuity?
The answer is not simple: for many human
beings, in many ways, at many times, have
been guilty of some such incoherence. But
one prominent opponent of Aristotle’s, in the
passage from NE VIII–IX, is certainly Plato.
And, if we try to see how considerations of
our human species nature might be brought
to bear against some of Plato’s arguments,
we will be in a better position to begin to see
that Aristotle has identified a serious prob-
lem here, and what sort of problem it is.
Let us, then, consider the following pas-
sage from the Phaedo:
My friends, I have not convinced Crito
that I am this Socrates here, the one who
is now talking philosophy with you and
setting in order each item of our discus-
sion. He thinks that I am that being that
he will shortly see as a corpse; he even
asks how he should bury me. But I have
already given you a substantial argument
to the effect that, when I drink the drug,
I shall not remain with you, but depart
to the happy life of the blessed. . . . When
you see my body being either burned
or buried, you must not fret as if I am
undergoing something fearful. And at
the burial you must not say that Socrates
is being laid out, or carried out, or bur-
ied . . . You must be confident and insist
that you are burying my body, and bury
196
it in whatever way you like and consider
most appropriate. (115c–e)
Socrates here expresses the view that death,
which he has defined as the separation of soul
from body, is something that he can perfectly
happily wish for himself; he urges his friends
to wish it along with him. Aristotle’s remarks
about continuing press us to ask, however,
whether this future post-mortem state is
one in which the human being Socrates who
is wishing, and whom his friends love, will
continue to exist. We might ask, for exam-
ple: how could Socrates talk philosophy and
set the discussion in order without a body?
But if he could not, and if the interlocutors
believe that the ability to participate in the
give and take of dialectic is essential, as part
of being human, to the Socrates they know
(as even Socrates strongly suggests), then we
must concede that there is some incoherence
in the wish that Socrates go off from his body
to the happy life of the blessed. The wish for
this event might seem to have just the pecu-
liarity mentioned by Aristotle: Socrates is
wishing not for his own life, but for someone
else’s, the life of an intellectual substance that
is nonidentical with him.16
In order to resolve this question we need
an account of what it is to be a human being.
But what we require from such an account, if
it is really to speak to what troubles us, is an
evaluation of elements of lives, one that will
tell us what among the properties and doings
of Socrates are the most important, the truly
essential ones, the ones without which he
could not continue. But it would seem that
there is no answer to this question from a
totally external perspective. A certain entity,
let us grant to Plato, continues to exist—
namely, an intellectual soul. The question is,
whether this soul and its life contain enough
of what makes Socrates Socrates to count,
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
for us, as him. This is an evaluative ques-
tion, and in the broad (Aristotelian) sense
of the word, an ethical one; it is the ques-
tion of what are the most important things
in human living. And, if there is a resolution
of the difference between Plato and Aristotle
here, it will not come from the decree of an
external judge, who will say, “Yes, that’s
right, this thing is (or is not) still human.”
It can only come by one party’s showing the
other (for example) that the internal view he
actually has, on which he relies in life and
action, is, taken as a whole, not consistent
with his theoretical claims about the suffi-
ciency of intellect for human survival. In any
case, the inquiry, to be productive, will have
to be internal (i.e. conducted in and through
human conceptions and beliefs) and evalua-
tive, if it is to be at all relevant to the con-
cerns Simmias and Cebes have when they
consider whether they ought to wish their
friend well on these terms.
This idea that an account of what it is to
survive as a human being (or: as a person)
is an evaluative matter, requiring an evalua-
tion of the elements of lives as to which are
the most important, may appear alien to a
dominant tradition in modern discussion of
these problems—according to which ques-
tions of personal continuity are metaphysi-
cal questions. I think that, even where this
philosophical tradition is concerned, matters
are complex. For the best and deepest of the
metaphysical arguments brought forward
seem to contain an evaluative component:
that is, they ask us (implicitly or explicitly)
to consider which functions of an alleged
human being are so important, so central,
that their absence will mean the absence of
a human being or human life. One could, I
believe, support this claim by the analysis
of many such arguments—including, prob-
ably, those of Williams himself. Furthermore,
197
whenever such accounts are called upon
actually to play a role in human practices—
as, for example, in current debates about the
definition of death and about the lives of
severely demented or damaged patients, the
evaluative nature of the arguments involved
becomes especially clear—as medical ethi-
cists and doctors ask themselves whether the
functions we see before us constitute enough
of what we value to count for us as the life of
a human being (or: a person).17 The ancient
tradition, then, is not only closer to the mod-
ern tradition than it might seem, it is also the
one that emerges when people actually start
to talk about their lives.
The Tradition
Aristotle’s concern with species and their
ways of life does not arise in a vacuum. His
appeals to the reader’s beliefs about beasts
and gods suggest that he is arguing in a tra-
dition of reflection about identity that is old
and pervasive in Greek ethical thought. This
tradition tells stories about transformations
from and to the human, appealing to the
imagination of the audience to judge which
are the features whose presence or absence
makes the difference between humanness
and its absence.18 It tells stories, too, of
our near-relatives: of nonhuman anthro-
pomorphs whose form of life is sufficiently
different from our own that we judge that
these beings do not share a “nature” with us.
Such reflective stories are a preoccupation of
Greek myth: they take their bearings from
the traditional idea of phusis, “nature,” the
idea, that is, of a being’s essential nature or
character (that of its kind in almost all cases),
as revealed in its characteristic activities.19
They are stories of communal self-definition
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
and self-clarification, told to humans (espe-
cially to young ones) in order to initiate them
into, or to keep them within, or, for those
securely in, to promote reflective understand-
ing of, the way of life that is constituted by
the boundaries that the stories display. By the
beast on the one hand, the god on the other.
On the side of the god we have the count-
less stories of the Homeric gods, anthropo-
morphic beings rather similar to humans in
their desires and characteristic activities, but
differing only in their power and, above all,
in their invulnerability to death. These sto-
ries (and related stories of transformations
of former humans into gods) ask us to imagine
for ourselves how much of what is important
for us is inseparable from our mortality and
our finitude. They ask us to what extent love,
friendship, and the virtues could have a place
in a nonfinite life that would, accordingly,
lack certain opportunities for risk, effort, and
sacrifice. (Aristotle attaches himself explicitly
to this tradition when he speculates in NE X
about whether gods could have the human
virtues, concluding that characteristics such
as justice and moderation would have no
place in the context of such a life.)20 By these
means the stories lead us to grasp the extent
to which limits make us who we are, and to
see the importance of the practices and val-
ues constituted by these limits in making a
life that we can call our own.
On the side of the god, again, we have a
more radical and severe tradition of reflec-
tion about divinity, present in Xenophanes
and continued in Plato’s Republic, which
criticizes the gods of the stories for being
more like us in their ways of life, than a being
among whose essential characteristics are
immortality and self-sufficiency could possi-
bly be. These story arguments ask us to imag-
ine a being who is truly perfect and complete;
they then argue that such a being would
198
surely not perform the recognizable human
actions and motions ascribed to Olympian
gods, such as telling lies, changing shape,
travelling from place to place.21 Such a being
would have no reasons for motion from here
to there at all, no motive for self-change.
These stories ask us to see that even the idea
that one might retain a recognizable (partial)
individual identity (say, as Heracles) while
passing from the realm of finitude to the
realm of the god is suspect. The boundary is
starker, more complete than that; our needs
and limits explain far more about us, even,
than popular legends acknowledge. The
popular legends—which might themselves
have helped many young people to avoid the
incoherence of wishing for immortality while
cherishing as essential the parts of human life
that cannot survive immortalizing—this is
now itself charged with incoherence, in that
it seems both to assert and to deny that mor-
tality and related limits are essential in mak-
ing us who we are.
The side of the beast is equally revealing—
and, in a sense, even more so, since down-
ward movement is possible in a way that
upward movement is not. Thus the descrip-
tion of this boundary affirms as essential
what might possibly have been discarded
had humans decided not to accord it much
importance. That beasts lack reason and lan-
guage is proverbial and, in a sense, too eas-
ily seen to serve as the stuff of myth (though
we shall see its function later in a very sig-
nificant kind of story). More dramatic and
more central to moral education are thought
experiments in which the bestial creature is
hypothetically granted speech and a kind of
reasoning, and in which the story explores
the difference between even this sort of rea-
sonableness and a fully human use of practi-
cal reason. These stories usually focus on the
importance of ethical awareness itself, and
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
a responsiveness to the claims of others, in
making a being that is truly human.
Odysseus encounters Cyclopes, anthropo-
morphic creatures who live in isolation from
community. “They have no assemblies that
make decisions, nor do they have binding
conventions, but they inhabit the summits of
lofty mountains . . . and they have no concern
for one another” (Od. IX, 112–15). Above all,
they entirely lack sensitivity to the most sol-
emn or binding conventions that, in the human
world, link one being with another. For they
have no awareness that if you have received
a man as a guest-friend you ought not to eat
him. As Euripides says, they have no paideia
(Cycl. 493)—nor do they have, it appears, the
responsiveness to others that would enable
them to receive a human paideia. Although
these creatures look like humans, neither the
characters nor the audience of Homer’s poem
classify them as human.
In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the Erinyes begin
the final play as strange hybrids of the
human and the bestial (or bestial/divine),
both in appearance and in action. Although
in form they resemble human women, they
also resemble dogs, sniffing after their prey
with dripping eyes, thrilled by the scent of
blood. Their deeper beastliness shows in their
speech, rational yet solipsistic, impervious to
community, obsessed with revenge. When
they allow themselves to engage in social
and ethical discourse, giving and receiving
promises, yielding their revenge to the “holy
honor of persuasion,” taking their place in
the city and wishing its people well, they are
physically transformed in analogous ways.
Now Eumenides (so named for their kindly
intentions) they cease to growl, to crouch, to
sniff after blood. Standing erect, they “depart
according to nomos” (1033), robed in human
clothing, a gift from the citizens whom they
promise to protect.
199
This process has its inversion. In Euripides’
Hecuba, as I have argued elsewhere, the story
of Hecuba’s transformation from woman to
dog serves as the occasion for an exploration
of the dark side of the Aeschylean reflec-
tion about the connection between human-
ity and social/political concern.22 Stricken by
betrayal, immured within her solitary scheme
of vengeance, cut off from all love and trust
for others, Hecuba becomes, morally, a dog.
The forecast that she will become a bitch with
fiery eyes has already, in its deeper meaning,
been fulfilled. For to become a being who
trusts nobody, who accepts no promise and
hears no persuasion, is already to be some-
thing other than human. The human being is
by nature a political being.
These stories call for ethical reflection,
connecting the reflection with our related
questions of species membership and per-
sonal continuity. They ask us to evaluate the
role of promising, of other-related respon-
siveness, of trust and sociability, in our
sense of our identity. We should imagine these
tragedies as they were staged, in a theater in
which each spectator looks across the staged
action to the faces of his or her fellow citi-
zens, as the assembled group, imagining,
thinking, and feeling together, seeks to teach
its identity to the young and to affirm it in
themselves.23
The communal nature of this reflective
process, and the fact that it works through
emotional responses to tragic events, sug-
gests that the process of participating in the
exercise is already an affirmation of its con-
tent. If you care about this civic festival and
respond to the events staged before you, you
are responding as a political/social creature,
and thus affirming the importance of the
political in your own life. It would be pecu-
liar to engage in a reflective exercise of this
sort and yet to conclude that Cyclopes can
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
be humans after all, that the political is non-
essential to one’s sense of the being one is.
The “argument” is self-validating in a deep
way; you cannot withdraw your assent from
its conclusion, without withdrawing from
the entire form of life that, as a procedure,
it embodies.
One Philosophical Precedent:
The Philebus
One example of the philosophical develop-
ment of this tradition of argument will prove
illuminating. For, as our literary cases focused
on the role of sociability and responsiveness
to others in human nature, so this one focuses
on practical reason, Aristotle’s other primary
focus. Its concern with a hedonistic opponent
and its strategy against the opponent make
it appear to be the direct ancestor of
Aristotle’s argument in NE I.7. And its
explicit argumentative structure will show
us, even more clearly than our literary cases
did, exactly what is at stake in arguments of
this sort, what type of foundation for ethics
they do—and do not—provide. The argu-
ment occurs toward the beginning of Plato’s
Philebus. Its interlocutors are Socrates and
the young Protarchus (“first-beginner”);24
Protarchus has initially been drawn to the
extreme hedonist position of Philebus, who
asserts that pleasure is the (the only, the
complete) good for human beings. Socrates,
defender of reason and intellect, now
attempts to adjudicate between the claims of
pleasure and intellect, respectively, to provide
the good life for a human being. (The specifi-
cally human nature of the subject matter is
stressed at 11d5 and 19c).
The interlocutors have agreed that the
good life for a human being must be complete
200
(teleon), sufficient (hikanon), and choicewor-
thy (haireton). Socrates now asks Protarchus
to join him in a thought experiment. Let us
imagine, he says, you, Protarchus, living a life
full of large pleasures, but altogether bereft
of reason and intellect. (Socrates stresses
that the test will be carried on “in you”; it is
important that Protarchus should try to see
himself living the life.) This looks appealing
to Protarchus at first glance, sympathetic as
he is to the claims of hedonism. He says he
would gladly accept such a life, and he would
think himself lacking in nothing if he had
it (21a). Even if all reasoning and thinking
were omitted, “I would have everything, hav-
ing pleasure” (21b2). Socrates now reminds
him that, by omitting reasoning, they are also
committed to omitting from Protarchus’ life
such things as the belief that he is enjoying
himself, the memory of pleasure, the ability
to calculate for future pleasure (21b6–c6). In
fact, Socrates now suggests, what Protarchus
has left on his hands is “not the life of a
human being, but one belonging to some
jellyfish or some one of the living creatures
in the sea with bony bodies” (21e6–8). He
now asks Protarchus “A life of this kind isn’t
choiceworthy for us, is it?” (21d3) Protarchus
replies, “Socrates, this argument has left me
altogether speechless.” The claims of practi-
cal reason have been acknowledged.
What has happened here? Clearly some
significant ethical work has taken place.
Protarchus has been rapidly moved from a
complacent acceptance of extreme Phileban
hedonism to a state of uncertainty; after
a parallel thought-experiment concerning
intellect, he is ready to concede that any
good life for a human being must contain
both pleasure and intellect. Clearly, too, the
work has been done without moving outside
Protarchus’ own system of beliefs about him-
self and his life: the question is always what
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
he would say, choose, accept. Furthermore,
the responses elicited from Protarchus
look more like judgments and evaluations
than like statements of fact: for he is asked
“Would you receive” such a life; and “Is this
life choiceworthy?” In all of this, the role
played by considerations of personal conti-
nuity and species membership seems to be as
follows. Protarchus has been asked whether
he would choose for himself a certain sort of
life; he is asked to imagine himself living it. It
now develops that Protarchus really believes
(though, not being sufficiently reflective, he
did not realize it) that this life is really not
one that could be lived by a human being at
all. It can be lived by, it is the life of, anyone
who would have to be a lower sort of animal.
But if this life cannot be lived by a human
being, it cannot be the object of Protarchus’
own self-wishing and self-choosing. The
good life for him (for us) must first of all be
a life for him (for us).
Protarchus has been brought to see that
he really has believed all along that any life
that could be a life for him must involve cer-
tain uses of practical reason. Even the life
of pleasure, if it is to be properly human,
cannot do without thought and memory.
Protarchus’ Phileban position had not taken
account of some beliefs that he, Protarchus,
deeply holds. Socrates’ appeal to identity
and species nature gets him to realize both
that he holds them, and what this means for
his ethical choices. He is left speechless by
the surprise of self-discovery. No attempt is
made to correct his beliefs by appeal to some
fixed point on the outside; the aim is simply
to adjust the totality of his beliefs.
We could go further. The success of
Socrates’ argument seems to depend not
just upon the nature of Protarchus’ beliefs,
but, more specifically, upon the nature of
his evaluative beliefs. It would, in principle,
201
be open to Protarchus to choose the life
described by Socrates: no external barrier
and no matter of fact seems to prevent this.
What prevents Protarchus from seeing him-
self in such a life is the value that he attaches
to matters of the intellect: to argument, to
calculation, to memory. (Philebus might
have tried, at least, to answer differently.)
The life described seems too impoverished to
be human because of what he cares about
and thinks to be good, because he cares about
these things so much that anyone who lacks
them could not, he thinks, be identical with
him, and would have to rank as a lower form
of life. The question, “Could you accept,” is
a way of asking him about his values; and
the statement, “This is not a life for a human
being,” is an evaluative judgment.
In one respect, this argument seems differ-
ent from the dramatic cases we have consid-
ered. For here, consistently with the customs
of Socratic elenchus, the argument is with
a single individual and not a group, and it
works with this individual’s beliefs, rather
than the group’s endoxa.25 (Here, as so often,
we will find Aristotle returning to tragic tra-
ditions, in reaction against some aspects of
Plato’s procedure.) This difference is signifi-
cant—and would be even more so if the con-
tent of the argument concerned sociability
rather than individual practical reason. (An
elenctic argument on that issue would not
be self-validating in the way the communal
argument is, since the mere fact of participat-
ing in personal self-examination would not
by itself imply acceptance of the fundamental
importance of ties to others.) But we should
not overpress it. For Protarchus defines
himself as a human being (see 11d5, 19c),
and thinks of the shellfish life as a life “not
choiceworthy for us” (21d3). He seems to
accept the (tacit) premise that the humanness
of a form of life is a necessary and central
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
condition of its being a life for him, a life
in which he could see a being identifiable
as him. Conversely, the members of a tragic
audience reason and respond as individuals,
though aware of the group’s presence; they
must decide, one by one, what the tragic
events mean in relation to their own lives and
beliefs. The responsive imagination of the
spectator works within and alone, however
helped by, and committed to, the presence of
others.26
The Philebus argument has the same
self-validating character as the tragic argu-
ments. For its procedures embody a respect
for practical reason; they acknowledge the
importance of practical reason to living
humanly well. So, although it is, in principle,
open to Protarchus to reject its conclusion, he
cannot consistently do so without opting out
of the form of life that the Socratic procedure
exemplifies. Philebus does opt out, so he is to
that extent not refuted. (No doubt he could
be by a more extensive scrutiny of the role he
implicitly accords to practical reason in his
discourse and activity.) This self-validating
structure, in addition to the argument’s con-
cern with basic considerations of personal
identity and continuity, commends the argu-
ment as a good “foundation” for ethical
inquiry.
If we now return to the questions with
which we began, we can see that the tragic
and Platonic arguments do not try to move
outside of ordinary evaluative belief to an
external perspective of scientific fact. In
speaking of human nature, they deal with
beliefs that are both evaluative and, in the
broadest sense, ethical—beliefs about what
is worthwhile and worthless, liveable and
not liveable. They are matters for communal
judgment and decision, not for independent
investigation and discovery. They are thor-
oughly internal to the community, and they
202
serve to explain it to itself. They are less con-
troversial than most ethical propositions—in
particular, one cannot opt out of them with-
out opting out of the procedures of inquiry
that support them. And they are embodied
in stories that have shown their ability to
move the imaginations and hearts of people
in many different times and places. Their age
and historical depth is part of their authority.
Yet they can be disregarded and denied, espe-
cially on account of theoretical prejudices or
political interests. In this sense, important
work is done by reaffirming them: and in
this sense, affirmed, they provide a founda-
tion for further work.
Now let us see where Aristotle stands
in this tradition, examining his two most
famous appeals to human nature: his claim
that the human being is by nature political,
and the “human function” argument in NE I,
which defends the role of practical reason.
The Political Nature of Human
Beings
Williams claims that Aristotle’s view of
human nature, appealing as it does to a
natural teleology, attempts to take up an
extra-ethical, and even an extra-human,
perspective on the human situation. We can
begin to respond to this claim by pointing
out that Aristotle’s metaphysics of nature,
and his biology, are neither value-free nor
external. There is nothing anywhere in
Aristotle’s work precisely corresponding to a
modern distinction between fact and value;
and, furthermore, science, as well as ethics,
is “internal” for Aristotle in the sense that it
is the attempt to give an intelligent account
of human experience of the world. Aristotle
explicitly announces that his method in ethics
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
is just the method he uses in all other areas:
to preserve the greatest number and the most
basic of the “appearances”—human percep-
tions and beliefs—on the subject.27 I am far
more sympathetic with this as an account of
what science achieves than Williams will, no
doubt, be. His own distinction between the
methods and results of science and those of
ethics seems to me far too strong; but this is
not the place to argue that point.28 Even the
unsympathetic should, it seems to me, grant
that a philosopher who does advance such an
internal account, even for science, is rather
unlikely to have sought a completely external
foundation for the ethical.
But even if this point is accepted (and, since
it is controversial, it may well not be), we still
need to say much more about whether the
view of human nature in the ethical works
is built upon beliefs that are specifically ethi-
cal in character—beliefs, that is, that concern
the general question of the worthwhileness
of various forms of life. And we need to see
precisely what work the account of nature
does in Aristotle’s ethical project.
“The human being is by nature a politi-
cal being.” With this claim, in the first book
of the NE, Aristotle defended his ethical
choice to make the self-sufficiency involved
in human eudaimonia a communal and not a
solitary self-sufficiency. That choice was con-
troversial: for example, it might be rejected
by Plato. We want now to determine how
and from where it is defended. The social
or political nature29 of the human being is
brought forward against a Platonic account
of self-sufficiency in two further contexts:
in the accounts of the value of philia in the
ethical works, and in the account of the natu-
ralness of the polis in book I of the Politics.
We will have to look at these texts closely,
in order to grasp the nature and tone of
Aristotle’s procedure.
203
In the passages in the friendship books, it
is abundantly clear that Aristotle takes him-
self to be setting down pervasive ordinary
beliefs (which some philosophical views
ignore); and that these are taken by him
to include, prominently, evaluative beliefs,
beliefs concerning what is worthwhile in
a human life. In NE VIII, for example, he
defends the claim that philia is “most neces-
sary” for life in the following way (emphases
mine):
For without friends nobody would
choose to live, even if he had all the other
goods. For even rich people and people
who hold offices and the power of rule,
it seems (dokei), have a particularly
great need for friends. For what good
are all those goods, if benefitting is taken
away? But this happens above all, and
in the most praiseworthy way, towards
friends. And how could such a person
be protected and saved without friends?
For the greater he is, the more danger he
is in. And in poverty and other misfor-
tunes they think that the only refuge is
one’s friends. (1155a6–12)
Shortly after this, Aristotle defends the claim
that friendship is a part of human nature:
It seems likely (eoiken) that it belongs
by nature (phusei enuparchein) to the
parent towards the child and the child
towards the parent; not only among
human beings, but even among birds and
most animals; and that it belongs also to
members of the same nation towards one
another, especially among human beings.
That is why we praise those who love and
benefit other human beings (tous philan-
thropous). And one might also observe
in one’s travels to distant countries the
sense of recognition and affiliation that
links every human being to every other.
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
It seems likely that philia hold cities
together as well. (1155a16–23)
In these passages, which defend the claim
of philia and, in general, of interpersonal
responsiveness, to be a necessary and natu-
ral part of human life, Aristotle leaves us in
no doubt that he is recording and examin-
ing ordinary beliefs. The italicized phrases
attest to this clearly. And, furthermore, it is
rather clear that the naturalness of friendship
is put forward not as a matter of detached
discovery, but as a matter involving evalua-
tion and judgment. It is, of course, in some
sense physically possible to live without
others. Aristotle simply points out that we
do not choose that way and we do not
approve of people who move in that direc-
tion. Furthermore, whereas we see ourselves
as sharing with other animals a certain part
of philia—the tendency to love and care for
one’s children or partner—we think that the
human as such is distinctively character-
ized by a broader concern—by the ability to
recognize and respond to the humanness of
every other human.
This is not a knock-down argument against
someone who would insist on denying the
claims of philia. But it raises considerations
that might make such a person hesitate and
ask himself whether he had explored all of
his relevant beliefs about what makes a life
humanly liveable. The reference to travel,
with its “one might observe,” looks like an
invitation to the interlocutor/student to
engage in a Protarchan thought-experiment.
Before you say that you can do without oth-
ers, remember what it is like to travel to a
strange place, and how terrifically glad you
are, in such circumstances, to see any human
face at all. If this were put forward from the
outside, as a neutral anthropological obser-
vation, it would have little force or relevance
204
for an interlocutor whose behavior exhibits a
different pattern. But as an invitation to each
reader to consider, within him or herself, the
depth of certain evaluative beliefs, and their
implications for his project of continuing as
a member of a certain kind, it has consider-
able force.
The nature of Aristotle’s argument beco­
mes even clearer when, in book IX, he argues
against an opponent who has claimed that
the best life is a solitary life, insisting that
the eudaimo-n, the flourishing person, has no
need of friends. This is how Aristotle replies:
It seems rather peculiar (eoiken d’atopo-i)
to give all good things to the eudaimo-n
and to leave out friends, which seem
(dokei) to be the greatest of the exter-
nal goods . . . And surely it is peculiar
(atopon) to make the happy person a
solitary; for nobody would choose to
have all good things in the world all by
himself: for the human being is a politi-
cal creature (politikon gar ho anthro-pos)
and naturally disposed to living-with
(suze-n pephukos). (1169b8–10, 16–19)
Here we find, quite explicitly, an appeal to
the essential nature of the human being,
called in, as in NE I, to do some work in
an ethical argument. The context, how-
ever, once again stresses the dialectical and
“internal” nature of the procedure. Eoiken
and dokei indicate the nature of the sup-
port Aristotle is claiming for his argument.
And the emphasis on the word “peculiar”—
which we have already seen once before, in
a similar context—suggests that we have
here not so much a knock-down proof of
something from some fixed area of exter-
nal fact, but rather an appeal to the reader
to consider whether the opponent’s project
does not deal in an odd sort of incoherence,
promising the eudaimo-n life to us, while
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
depriving the eudaimo-n person of something
without which we (including the opponent)
believe no human life would be possible or
worthwhile.30
The connection between the possible and
the worthwhile here is of considerable inter-
est. I have said that Aristotle’s general strat-
egy is to show that certain ethical proposals
go against our deep beliefs about identity,
asking us to choose a life in which (we
really believe) no person identical with us
could be. I have also shown cases in which
the ethical proposal is ruled out by point-
ing out that no human being would choose
such a life. We might think that these are
two quite different strategies: for surely to
ask whether I survive in a life is not the
same as to ask whether I consider that a life
worth the living. Now these would be two
very different strategies if questions of per-
sonal identity were matters of fact that had
no connection with judgment and choice.
But is this so for Aristotle? (Is it so in any
account of personal identity that has philo-
sophical power?) Surely it was not so in the
Philebus passage: for what told Protarchus
that he would not survive in that life was
just the fact that he would not consider that
life worth accepting; it would not contain
activities that he values so highly that he
cannot regard himself as himself without
them. What was really at stake, earlier, in
our questions about the Phaedo passage,
was, once again, an evaluative matter. The
answer to the question whether that dis-
embodied intellect is or is not Socrates will
depend upon how highly the interlocutors
rank those philosophical and human func-
tions that Socrates could not do without
his body: on whether they rank them highly
enough that they are going to dig in their
heels and insist that any being who lacked
them could not be Socrates. In these two
205
cases we are invited to imagine that some
living being is living the life in question, a
being that has at least a prima facie claim
to be identical with the being doing the
thought-experiment. In a case like this, the
answer to the question about survival seems
to require, and to rest upon, evaluative judg-
ments. And in these Aristotelian passages
the same thing seems to be going on. The
claims that friendship is necessary and nat-
ural are joined to, and supported by noth-
ing beyond, claims about our preferences
and choices. Could we discover tomorrow
that the opponent is telling the truth, that
the human being is really by nature solitary
and that the good life is therefore a solitary
life? It seems that the nature of Aristotle’s
procedure here effectively rules out this pos-
sibility, short of a total change of beliefs and
ways of life. Could we turn out to be natu-
rally fitted for a life that none of us would
find worth the living, and in which none of
us would feel that the concerns and values
with which we identify ourselves survive?
This seems impossible, since to find out what
our nature is seems to be one and the same
thing as to find out what we deeply believe
to be most important and indispensable.31
If the opponent really did not care at all
about other people and happily opted for
a solitary life after considering Aristotle’s
arguments, Aristotle could only say to
him that he is not like us and will not be
included by us in our community. He is
asked to assess, in himself, the depth of a
concern that most of us share.
We must now turn more briefly to the
most famous appeal to the political nature
of the human being, the one in Politics I. It
seems to me to tell the same story, though the
ethical work it does against rival positions is
less clearly set out. In this passage Aristotle
advances two supportive considerations for
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
thinking that to be politikon is part of our
nature. One is a straightforward appeal to
deeply rooted ordinary beliefs:
It is evident that . . . the human being
is by nature a political animal, and that
the person who is citiless through nature
(apolis dia phusin) and not through luck
is either an inferior creature or greater
than a human being: just like the per-
son denounced by Homer as “without
fraternal ties, without customs, without
a hearth”—for this person is in his very
nature (hama phusei) of such a sort and
a lover of war, being “unyoked” like a
piece in the dice-game. (1253a1–7)
Shortly before this, Aristotle had made ref-
erence to Homer’s Cyclopes, whose specific
difference from us is constituted by their lack
of social and interpersonal concern alone. He
thus reminded his audience of the depth of a
tradition of thought about the human being,
according to which an anthropomorphic
being who lacked social concerns would not
be classified as human. Now he goes a step
further, considering a Homeric line32 that
refers to a being whom an external scientist
would classify as a member of the species
homo sapiens—not, then, a mythical hybrid
like the Cyclops—and reminds his audience
of the way in which their hero Achilles (or
their great poet Homer) denounces this being
and relegates him to a distant place of infe-
riority. If it is really his nature to be a soli-
tary and to love war for its own sake, not just
as a means, then, Aristotle says, he is either
below or above our kind, but he is not of it. If
we encountered such a being, we would not
count him as one of us, accord him the treat-
ment we accord to our fellow humans.
This passage clearly works within tra-
ditional beliefs, and emphasizes this fact
by appeal to the fount of tradition, Homer
206
himself. It works with beliefs that are clearly
“internal” and evaluative: Achilles judges
that he hates and despises this creature; and
this, not some scientific inquiry, is the source
of the judgment that he is less than human.
The obscure reference to the dice-game33
suggests a further evaluation. The suggestion
is that a human life is so thoroughly a life
among others that it gets its meaning from
those practices. Just as a piece in a game is
not even itself, has lost its point and iden-
tity, when severed from the rules of the game,
so the solitary human will be pointless and
meaningless, bereft of her identity. This, once
again, can only make sense as an internal
and evaluative judgment. It is only from the
point of view of social practices, and human
immersion in, concern for, them, that the
“unyoked” human looks incomplete.
The argument that follows this one might
initially seem to give more hope to the searcher
for an external perspective: for Aristotle now
defends the claim that our nature is politikon
by pointing to the fact of the presence among
humans of a language equipped to express
ethical conceptions. Surely, he suggests, that
language would not be there without some
function; its presence testifies to the impor-
tance of the social in our lives. Now, first
of all, this argument does not really appeal
beyond ordinary belief to science or meta-
physics. As Newman stresses in his commen-
tary on the passage, Aristotle, in referring to
the fact that the human being alone uses lan-
guage, is referring to an extremely common
topos in contemporary rhetoric;34 this, no
doubt, reflects a widespread ordinary belief
about the importance of language as essen-
tial trait and differentia. Does the argument
refer, even so, to a natural fact that can be
established independently of ethical beliefs?
It seems doubtful. For the beliefs about
language to which Aristotle points already
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
contain, it seems clear, an evaluative (and,
broadly speaking, ethical) component. The
claim that language is idion to the human
reflects a rhetorical tradition in which lan-
guage is made the important thing, the valu-
able gift that lifts us above the beasts. To a
person who says or believes this, Aristotle’s
argument says that it is implausible not to
acknowledge, also, the deep importance of
interpersonal and social concerns: the two
go together, they are “made for” each other;35
and it is implausible to exalt the one and
deny the other. But, to a person who does
not give language any special importance or
value, it is not clear that Aristotle’s observa-
tions would have, or ought to have, any force
at all. There are many natural items that are
idia to the human species, without becom-
ing elements in an account of our essential
nature; for many of these are trivial. It is only
because language is esteemed that the activi-
ties with which it is associated have a claim
to a high ranking. So this argument, like the
others, seems simply to show a connection
between two traditional evaluative beliefs.
Aristotle’s arguments, then, ask us to rec-
ognize the depth and pervasiveness of cer-
tain human beliefs and practices, claiming
that they are constitutive of humanness, as
we conceive it. Once we recognize how thor-
oughly sociability permeates our lives we
will, Aristotle thinks, acknowledge that any
search for the good life must go on inside a
context of relatedness. The defender of soli-
tary self-sufficiency is given a challenge: she
must either show that our conception of our
identity is not what Aristotle says it is—that
it does, after all, accommodate Cyclopes and
totally nonsocial anthropomorphs; or she
must persuade us that other aims and beliefs
require us to revise these deep beliefs about
identity; or she must grant that the proper
sort of self-sufficiency for us to aim at is
207
Aristotle’s sort; or, finally, she must dissociate
herself from the other parties to the argument,
announcing that her conception of identity
and nature is truly and deeply not the same as
theirs, and acting, henceforth, accordingly.
This means that, from the group’s viewpoint,
she too must be or become the sort of being
that Achilles shuns, apolis dia phusin, unre-
sponsive to human cares. The fact that she
had embarked as student or reader on this
course of ethical lectures, whose goal is the
communal clarification of ideas about the
human good for the purposes of advancing
the aims of the political—whose job it is to
give a good life, in community, to all who are
equipped to receive it—makes it unlikely that
she will take this most radical of the alterna-
tives. Thus, as in the tradition, the procedures
validate their conclusion.
But does this argument do any real work?
It seems clear that it does. For the claim that
each of us has, and lives by, a conception of
personal identity according to which each
of us is not only a “this” and “separate”
(claims that Aristotle has already in a similar
way established), but also a being essentially
related to others by ties of recognition and
concern, is a claim that a great deal of philo-
sophical theorizing in ethics has not really
taken to heart. If it is accepted, it follows that
many philosophical projects and a great part
of economic writing about human motiva-
tion and behavior will need to be rewritten.
For even the opposition to mainstream eco-
nomic thinking, and to its focus on rational
self-interest, usually accepts the opposition’s
characterization of the boundaries of self and
other; but it is Aristotle’s claim that in real
life selfhood is much more other-entwined
and other-identified than these theories let
on. The claim made to (let us say) the eco-
nomic theorist is that, even while defending
a theory that treats the self as something
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
essentially isolated from others, he or she
actually has, and lives by, a different concep-
tion, a conception that he could not give up
without understanding what he himself is in
a new way.
The shape of the argument is similar to
that used by John Rawls against utilitarian
moral theory.36 (Rawls himself distinguishes
his own use of an ethical “concept of the
person” from Aristotle’s use of a theory of
human nature; but his Aristotle resembles
Williams’; and if Aristotle is understood
as he has been here, he is doing something
very close to what Rawls is doing.)37 Rawls
argues that utilitarianism requires denying
the moral salience of the separateness of per-
sons and treating all desires and satisfactions
as fusable into a single system. This, he then
argues, is at odds with deeper beliefs about
the person that the utilitarian himself shares
and lives by, beliefs according to which a per-
son is a separate unit, as Aristotle would say,
a “this” and “one in number.” Once again,
the argument is claiming that the acceptance
of a theoretical position entails a cost that
the proponent of the position will be unwill-
ing to pay—for these are beliefs in terms of
which he defines himself. (Whether the argu-
ment has the self-validating character of
Aristotle’s is less clear, though there would
certainly be something to be said in favor of
the conclusion that it has.)
The Human Function
Argument38
Now we arrive at the material that is most
often used to support the picture of a move
from natural fact to ethical value, the mate-
rial on which most accounts of Aristotle’s
allegedly metaphysical view of human nature
208
most prominently rely. This is the famous
“human function” argument in NE I.7. This
argument bears a striking resemblance to the
Philebus argument that we have examined—
though it is cast in the communal form of
Aristotelian dialectic, rather than in the
one-to-one form of the elenchus.
We notice, first, that the context of
Aristotle’s argument is similar to that of the
Philebus argument. It occurs toward the very
beginning of a work concerning the good life
for a human being, a work that will concern
itself with the critical evaluation of proposed
constituents of such a life and the construc-
tion of a best life out of the available constitu-
ents. It occurs prior to any detailed discussion
of the life’s content. It is also closely associ-
ated with the rejection of an extreme form
of hedonism that would attempt to construct
the good life out of pleasures alone. Aristotle
has been telling us that one very popular
view about the good life is that it is a life
of pleasure: This, he says, is tantamount to
“choosing the life of dumb grazing animals”
(1095b20). This suggests that there is, in his
view, something less than fully human about
a life devoted to pleasure alone, the life
that many people claim, at least, to want. It
seems to leave out something that we think
a human life should have; this something is
hinted at in the word “choosing,” prohair-
oumenoi—the exercise of practical reason.
There appears to be something paradoxi-
cal in the choice to live without choice, just
as in the Philebus there was something odd
about addressing Protarchus’ practical intel-
lect with the question, “Would you choose a
life altogether without reason?” This oddness
suggests that the opponent’s picture of the
good life may be not only deficient by our
lights but also internally inconsistent: in his
way of considering and going about things,
he implicitly ascribes to practical reason a
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
value that his argument denies it. This would
give us a way of appealing to such a person
and persuading him to revise his position;39
as with Protarchus, we might be able to bring
him into some measure of agreement with
those he opposes, simply by working within
his own beliefs about who he is. I shall now
argue that the “human function” argu-
ment does this same sort of work in much
more detail, attempting to establish some
such basis of agreement from which people
of diverse opinions can proceed to further
work on the difficult matter of specifying the
good life.
The passage is introduced by a revealing
observation: we agree in saying that eudai-
monia is the best (to ariston), “but there is
a strong desire (potheitai) that something
clearer should be said about what it is.” This
remark about the limits of our agreement
refers back to 1095a19ff., where Aristotle
told us that both the “many and the refined”
agree on the name for “the top (akrotaton)
of practical goods,” namely that it is “eudai-
monia”; and they agree that living well and
doing well are the same thing as eudai-
monein. “But concerning eudaimonia, as to
what it is, they are in disagreement”—both
with one another and, Aristotle points out,
each person with himself. This situation of
extreme disagreement as to the very “what
it is” of the end in view seems to pose grave
problems for an ethical inquiry that is going
to pursue this “what is it” question, basing
itself upon people’s beliefs. It is no wonder,
then, that in the passage before us Aristotle
speaks of a pothos for a more substantial
agreement. A pothos is a strong desire for an
absent object.40
He now continues in a more optimistic
vein: “This [sc. the clearer account] might
in fact perhaps come into being, if the func-
tion of the human being should be grasped.”
209
Aristotle’s optimism is, apparently, justified
by his discoveries in the ensuing passage.
For he concludes it with the claim that it has
provided an “outline sketch” for the inquiry
into the human good (1098a20–1). We shall
return to this conclusion later; for it is very
helpful in getting an understanding of how
Aristotle sees his accomplishment. But first
we must consider the passage itself.
An assumption stated at the outset is that
if anything has a function or activity, then
its good acting will consist in doing that
thing well (1097b25–8). This assumption
needs scrutiny, since it has sometimes been
taken to be the locus of a troublesome sort
of slide from fact to value. The examples
given are from the crafts: the aulos-player,
the statue-maker, etc. What is being said
about these craftspeople is, then, that if E is
the function of the E-craftsman, then to be
a good E-craftsman would be to do E well.
So, presumably, a search for the specifica-
tion of what good activity is for that sort of
craftsman would do well to begin with an
account of E; and a clear account of E would
help such a search along. Now what does
Aristotle mean by this notion of function or
activity (ergon kai praxis)? Presumably he
does not mean a task assigned to the person
from without. The craft examples support
no such suggestion, and an examination of
Aristotle’s use of function talk elsewhere
would strongly tell against it.41 What would
most naturally be meant by “the function or
activity” of a certain sort of craftsman would
be that craftsman’s characteristic activity qua
that sort of craftsman—the activity or activi-
ties in virtue of which he is, and is counted
as, a craftsman of that sort. The ergon or
praxis of an aulos-player is aulos-playing;
this means that aulos-playing is that without
which he would not be, or be counted as, an
aulos-player.42 To say that the good activity
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
of an E-craftsman is to do E, that character-
istic thing, well, is not to say anything very
surprising. It is just to make our by now
familiar point that the search for the good
for anything must remain within the confines
of an account of what that thing is. It could
not, logically, turn out that the good activity
of an aulos-player as such was to make beau-
tiful shoes or to play the lyre. This looks like
a trivial point; but our previous examples
have prepared us to consider that in certain
circumstances such a trivial point might do
important ethical work. Here it tells us that
the search for the good activity (eudaimonia
has already been identified with eu ze-n) of a
human being must begin with an account of
characteristic human functioning, just in the
way that a treatise on the art of aulos-playing
had better begin with an account of what the
aulos is, including the ways in which it dif-
fers from other related instruments. A good
active life for a being must first of all be a
life for that being—that is, it had better
include those activities that are essential to,
definitive of, that sort of being.
Aristotle now asks, rhetorically, does the
human being as such have a function or activ-
ity, or is this creature idle by nature (argon
pephuken)? In other words, would someone
say (theie- tis an) that there is something that
we, as humans, characteristically (by nature)
do? He is asking (in a way that strongly sug-
gests an interest in ordinary beliefs) for a
specification of a characteristic way of being
active that belongs to the human being by
the nature of what it is (rather than, say, by
command from without)—something lack-
ing which, then, the human being would not
have its own nature, would not be itself. He
now considers and rejects two rival candi-
dates. We must study this passage with con-
siderable care, for it has been understood in
two quite different ways:
210
What in the world might this be, then?
After all, to live appears (phainetai) to
be common to plants as well, and what
we are looking for is something peculiar
to the human (to idion). Then we must
exclude the life of nutrition and growth
(te-n te threptike-n kai te-n auxe-tike-n
zo-e-n). Next after this would be a life
of perception (aisthe-tike- tis); but this
appears likewise to be common to the
horse and the cow and to every sort of ani-
mal. There is left, then, the practical life
of that which has reason (praktike- tis tou
logon echontos). . . . And this being said
in two ways, we must set down the one
according to activity (te-n kat’energeian).
(1097b33–1098a6)
So the ergon or praxis of the human being as
such turns out to be “activity of the soul in
accordance with reason or not without rea-
son” (psuche-s energeia kata logon e- me- aneu
logou, 1098a7–8).
To understand Aristotle’s argument and
its conclusion, we must, above all, clarify the
force of the expressions “the life of E-ing”
(in Greek, the -ike- zo-e-). For these have been
taken, in the literature, in two importantly
different ways, and the question does not
yet seem to have received the kind of atten-
tion that would be necessary to resolve the
issue.
(A) “The life of E-ing” means the part of a
total life that consists in E-ing: the threptike-
zo-e- is the self-nutritive part of a total com-
plex life. Based on this story, Aristotle would
be arguing that the life-activities that we
share with plants and animals—nourishing
ourselves, reproducing, perceiving—are no
part of the essential, characteristic activity
of a human being. We could have a properly
human life altogether without these, and the
good way of living for a human being does
not involve doing these things well.43
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
(B) On this interpretation, “the life of
E-ing” means a life organized around E-ing, a
life in which E-ing is the distinctive and guid-
ing feature that gives the life its characteristic
overall shape. On this reading, an E-ike- zo-e-
might well include G and H as well. What
makes the life E-ike-, as opposed to G-ike-, is
that E is in some way its distinctive organ-
izing principle; around E the other compo-
nent activities are structured, or by E they are
infused. G and H are done in an E-ish way, or
according to E.44
There are some very strong reasons for
preferring reading (B):
(1) It is what Aristotle’s conclusion actually
says: he says, not that the ergon of the
human being is the activity of reason,
but rather that it is the activity of the
soul according to reason or not without
reason. This more inclusive formulation
is captured by (B) and not by (A).
(2) To opt for (A) would entail a revision
of the understanding of ergon kai praxis
earlier in the argument. We had, fol-
lowing the suggestion of the examples,
understood this phrase to mean “char-
acteristic, defining activity”: that is,
everything essential and not incidental,
everything without which a being of
a certain sort would not be a being of
that sort. This would include both genus
and differentia, both the shared and the
nonshared elements. Reading (A) tells us
that only the differentia is to be consid-
ered. (For there is ample and unequivo-
cal evidence that self-nutrition, growth,
reproduction, and perception are generi-
cally essential activities of the species
anthro-pos and parts of its logos.)45 This
is tantamount to saying that an attempt
to understand good clarinet-playing (to
take the nearest contemporary relative
of the aulos) can best begin not with
an understanding of the entirety of the
clarinet-player’s activity, but rather with
211
a narrow focus on just the elements of
it that are not shared by other instru-
mentalists. In other words, we would
have to omit mention of blowing or fin-
gering or reed-making, not to mention
more general aspects of musicianship,
and focus narrowly on the properties of
certain types of mouthpieces, etc. This
would be an odd way to understand
Aristotle’s craft examples; and, so under-
stood, they would be saying something
blatantly false and rather absurd about
where the search for good craft activity
should begin in each case. Reading (B),
on the other hand would allow us to
consider all the generic musical activities
of the clarinet player, in so far as they are
done according to the particular require-
ments of the clarinet, or in a way that
is informed and shaped by the particular
characteristics of the clarinet. This gives
a much more reasonable picture of what
a treatise on good clarinet-playing would
naturally take for its starting-point.
(3) (B) is the solution that fits best with what
Aristotle goes on to do in the rest of the
NE. For he very clearly does concern
himself with good ways of nourishing
oneself and reproducing. The virtue of
so-phrosune-, as Aristotle emphasizes, is
concerned with the appropriate way of
doing these shared things. “So-phrosune-
and akolasia are concerned with those
pleasures in which the other animals
also partake” (1118a23–5; see also
1104b34–5). And, in discussing that vir-
tue, Aristotle even remarks that a crea-
ture who did not find pleasure in these
activities or did them too little would
be “far from being a human being”
(1119a9–10). His point here is that to be
human at all, to be part of a human life,
they would have to be done according
to, or not without, some reasoned plan
or other, however bad or haphazard.
(Akolasia, we recall, is a reasoned dispo-
sition.) To be done well, they would have
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
to be done in accordance with practical
wisdom. Since, as I hope we can agree,
Aristotle makes activity according to
so-phrosune- an end of intrinsic value in
the best human life, in NE I–IX at least,
it is clear that he does not omit the nutri-
tive and reproductive life—insofar as it is
pursued in a reason-infused manner.
(4) The philological evidence concerning the
meaning of an expression such as “the
E-ike- zo-e-” strongly supports (B) against
(A). It will be necessary to consider this
evidence in two stages, arguing, first,
that parallel expressions with bios con-
form to (B), not (A), and, second, that
the use of zo-e- is not in this respect dif-
ferent from the use of bios.
We consider bios first because the evidence is
more ample and because we can contribute,
in the process, to the solution of a debate
between John Cooper and David Keyt.46
Cooper has argued that expressions like “the
E-ikos bios” or “the bios of E-ing” always
indicate a total way of life in which E is in
some way a dominant function. (He takes
this to imply two further facts: (1) that an
individual can have only one bios at a time,
and (2) that the livers of different bioi must
be different people.) Thus, to leave aside
the apolaustikos bios would not be to leave
enjoyment out of a life altogether; it would
be only to leave out a life focused on this, a
life that has this as its dominant or organiz-
ing principle. In other words, his interpreta-
tion is our interpretation (B). Keyt has argued
against this, claiming that certain passages
permit a single individual to conduct, at dif-
ferent times, or in one case at the same time,
different bioi. But Cooper has made a con-
vincing reply about these passages; and in
general, if one examines the evidence, both
in Aristotle and elsewhere, Cooper is cor-
rect about what these expressions normally
212
imply: an E-ikos bios is a total way of life
organized around E. No ­evidence, even
anomalous, indicates that bios can be used
in a way that supports (A).47
Is zo-e- different? Cooper conjectured that
it might be:48 but since this was not pertinent
to his argument he did not study the ques-
tion extensively. The only evidence he put
forward came from this very passage, and
from a twelfth-century Byzantine author
whose linguistic practices are not significant
for our question.49 In fact, if one compre-
hensively surveys the evidence, one discov-
ers that zo-e- and bios function in exactly the
same way: when they are used of a type or
manner of life, they always designate a total
mode or way of life, organized around the
item named. This is very clear in Aristotle’s
usage elsewhere, and also in other fourth-
and fifth-century prose authors.50
With all this in place, reading (B) seems
strongly supported.51 If it stands, then the
ethical work done by the human function
argument is similar to that done by the
Philebus argument. Since no life will count
as a good life for us unless it is first of all a
life for us, and since a life for us must be a life
organized, in some fashion, by practical rea-
son in which all functions are informed and
infused by reason’s organizing activity, then
eudaimonia must be sought within the group
of such lives, not in a life totally given over
to bodily pleasure without reason, not in the
sleeper’s life of nonguided digestive function-
ing. To say so much is not to rule out much.
But the example of the Philebus and of the
earlier NE page on hedonism shows that it
is to rule out a serious ethical position, and
one that Aristotle believes to have serious
backing. Or rather, it is not so much to rule
it out as it is to show the defenders of it an
incoherence in their thinking. They say that
they like this life; but at the same time they
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
really believe (if they are like most of us) that
a life without the guidance of reason is not a
human life.
Aristotle is aware that the defender can
reply by refusing to value reason the way
Aristotle believes most of us do. A passage
early in the EE, which appears to be closely
related both to this passage and to the
Philebus argument, tells us that the life of
bodily pleasure without reason would seem
a worthwhile life, a life worth choosing, only
to someone “completely slavish: for it is
clear that to a person making such a choice
there wouldn’t be any difference between
being born a beast and a human being”
(1215b28–37). (And if “choosing” is really
what is going on, the person’s endorsement
of mindlessness is not consistent; it would
be consistent only if, perhaps after an ini-
tial decision, choosing were renounced and
drifting adopted as a procedure of selec-
tion.) The mindless life is not ruled out by
external facts of nature; anthropomorphs
might lead it consistently, though most of
Aristotle’s actual opponents certainly do
not lead it consistently with the rest of their
values. For this argument, like the political
argument, is self-validating; by participat-
ing at all in Aristotle’s inquiry about eudai-
monia, an inquiry that explicitly announces
that its results will be drawn from the active
practical reasoning of each participant, the
interlocutor grants implicitly the impor-
tance of practical reasoning in a human
life. And, even for a person who does not
participate in Aristotle’s discussion, it will
be very hard in daily behavior and speech
not to validate practical reason’s claims. But
still, as we have said, the mindless life is not
ruled out; what is established is the cost of
the choice, and how deeply it is at odds with
some of our firmest convictions concerning
who we are.
213
The argument establishes, furthermore,
that an anthropomorph who does lead the
mindless life will not be regarded by us as
fully human. This does not exclude many
types of irrational people, who live “with”
practical reason, though not “according to”
it. A bad plan is still a plan; bad reasoning,
even haphazard, careless reasoning, is still
reasoning. It excludes only people who live
without planning and organizing their lives
at all: the sort of creature, we might say, who
would be the survivor of a frontal lobotomy.
Such creatures are discussed by Aristotle:
they are the so-called natural slaves, anthro-
pomorphic beings who “completely lack
the deliberative faculty” (holo-s ouk echei to
bouleutikon, Pol. 1266a12, see 1280a32–3).
In virtue of this natural lack, they are said
to be different in nature from the rest of us
(1254b20–1), and, importantly, to lack a
share in eudaimonia (1280a33), as well as in
philia.52 They are said to be as far apart from
normal humans as a human being is from a
beast (1254a17). These people are, presum-
ably, people who suffer from some severe
degree of mental retardation. (Aristotle may
believe that many barbarians are like this.
This is a somewhat appalling flaw in his per-
ceptions, but it should not prevent us from
grasping his argument.) Aristotle is saying
that they are, therefore, not really human;
that no human individual could survive the
change to such a state; and that they are,
therefore, owed an ethical treatment that is
different from the treatment we owe to mem-
bers of our own species. Similar judgments
are at work in Aristotle’s treatment of “mon-
strous births” and in his policies concerning
abortion and the exposure of severely handi-
capped children.53 And here we notice that
Aristotle’s actual judgments do not employ
the concept “human being” in the way
suggested in Williams’ “Hylomorphism,”
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
drawing in a nonevaluative way an absolute
line around all offspring of human parents.
According to Aristotle it is possible to cease
to be human and still to be survived by a liv-
ing something; or to be born of two human
parents and not to be human at all.
In what sense does this argument provide
a foundation for ethical inquiry? We have
already said that it rules out certain extreme eth-
ical positions, for example, Phileban hedonism.
But we can now say more. Aristotle’s ethical
writing aims to provide instructions for the
future legislator. The job of such a legislator
is to give to the people in his city the nec-
essary conditions for choosing a flourishing
human life. The city aims at making people
capable of such choices. A life that is not
even human at all is, a fortiori, not a good
human life. And it is Aristotle’s claim that
many conceivable political and economic
arrangements do, either wholly or in part,
remove the humanity from political life by
removing choice from people—either in a
single sphere or across the board. Schemes
in which a Platonic state holds all the prop-
erty remove choices of citizens with respect
to property. Schemes in which certain classes
are debarred by poverty from sharing in
central civic institutions remove from them
the choice to exercise civic virtue. Schemes
that devote too little attention to education
deprive all citizens of choice in a more fun-
damental and general way, depriving them of
a development of practical reasoning that is
necessary in order for adult rational choice to
be possible at all.54 In such cases the individ-
uals involved may not end up leading a life so
devoid of practical reason as to be truly ani-
mal: for in many cases other associations—
the family, religious organizations, and so
forth—will bring the lives of individuals over
the threshold of mere (human) life, if not all
the way to good life. Even in circumstances
214
of great constraint, practical reason and vir-
tue can frequently find an outlet, as Aristotle
stresses. But we can still criticize the form
of government for its failure to promote the
humanity of its citizens (or its people who
ought to be citizens, but are not).55
The focus on practical reason as an essen-
tial necessary condition of humanness, and,
therefore, a basis for political assessment,
provides political thought with a direction
strikingly different from that provided by
a focus on wealth and commodities as pri-
mary objects of the legislator’s concern.56 For
it tells the legislator that these commodities
have their place in a human life as means to
the activities of practical reason. No good is
done by giving people food, money, and med-
ical care, unless government also promotes
the truly human use of these objects, in a life
governed by personal choice of the good. It
is no use giving poor people what they need,
if one at the same time maintains repressive
forms of government, or alienating struc-
tures of labor that pretty well guarantee that
this food will be used for mere “grazing,” the
medical assistance for merely animal hear-
ing and seeing. Feeding, hearing, and seeing
are parts of a human life only insofar as they
figure in the praktike- zo-e- tou logon echon-
tos. As Marx, reflecting on these Aristotelian
arguments, wrote:
It is obvious that the human eye gratifies
itself in a way different from the crude,
non-human eye; the human ear differ-
ent from the crude ear, etc. . . . The sense
caught up in crude practical need has
only a restricted sense. For the starving
man, it is not the human form of food
that exists, but only its abstract being as
food; it could just as well be there in its
crudest form, and it would be impossible
to say wherein this feeding activity dif-
fers from that of animals.57
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
Marx and Aristotle would differ in some
ways concerning the concrete implications
of this emphasis on practical reason; but in
some especially important areas they agree. In
particular, they agree in condemning societies
that promote money and commodities to the
status of ends in themselves, on the grounds
that this confuses and inverts values, debasing
humanity to the status of a mere means, and
alienates individuals from the truly human
understanding of goods. “Assume man to be
man,” wrote Marx, “and his relationship to
the world to be a human one: then you can
exchange love only for love, trust for trust,
etc.”58 Aristotle would agree. And it seems
likely that one could press this sentiment
about the noncommensurability of valuable
things in human practical reason further,
criticizing as hostile to humanness any ethi-
cal or political system based upon the idea
that values are all commensurable according
to a single standard. This would involve a
complex interweaving of the appeal to prac-
tical reason with the appeal to social/politi-
cal nature. I shall not pursue the argument
further here, but this should suffice to show
in what ways the human nature arguments,
though neither external nor value-free, are
both foundational in a perfectly respectable
sense, and also capable of yielding substan-
tive results.
Human Nature and Human
Limits
It will by now be obvious that in my account
of these two arguments I have not pursued
every part of Aristotle’s project regarding
human nature. I have focused on his attempts
to show how we divide ourselves from the
beasts, rather than on his equally important
215
reflections concerning our distance from
divine and self-sufficient beings. In reality, a
full account either of our social responsive-
ness or of our practical reason would include
both elements, since the gods have no need
either of social bonds or of the practical use of
reason in planning a life. Aristotle is explicit
on this point, insisting that the characteristic
operations and excellences of practical rea-
soning, and of our sociability, are inseparable
from the particular ways in which we find
ourselves in the world, as both capable and
limited.59 That we are mortal; that we have
bodies of a certain sort; that we need things
that we do not control; that we feel pain and
pleasure; that we have a certain range of
bodily desires and appetites—all this is not,
so to speak, external fact, but rather a more
or less permanent part of the internal per-
spective of human beings in many times and
places. The traditional emphasis on “biped,”
“featherless,” and so on has great point here,
in reminding us that some forms of life are
open to us and others not.
In another related paper60 I have addressed
this part of Aristotle’s human nature project,
arguing that Aristotle’s attempt to found a
theory of the virtues on a description of these
“grounding experiences” of human life is not
at odds with, and can incorporate whatever
is true in, the cultural relativist’s claim that
even these basic experiences have, to some
extent, been differently constructed in ­different
societies. Valuable though this historical
insight may be, we are nonetheless left with a
great deal of overlap and convergence among
cultures at the level of these experiences. We
can see ourselves in their accounts of fear
and grief and hunger and delight, and they
themselves in ours. Aristotle, we recall, said,
“One might also observe in one’s travels to
distant countries the sense of recognition
and affiliation that links every human being
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
to every other.” This seems true, and permits
the human nature project, here again, to
have broad applicability. Nature comes into
the ethical enterprise, here again, not as an
external fixed point, but as a humanly expe-
rienced context for human lives, evolving in
history, yet relatively constant, presenting
certain possibilities and foreclosing others,
our sphere of hope and finitude.
Internal and External
Williams will have many questions to press
about this account. Let me try to anticipate
just three of them, and to sketch the outline
of an Aristotelian reply. First and most obvi-
ously, Williams will point out that in making
the conception of human nature internal and
evaluative, we have lost the independence
and externality that give such an account
its value as a foundation for ethics. We
have already tried to argue that this internal
account, because of its broad acceptability
across time and place, and its self-validating
structure, does provide a foundation for fur-
ther ethical inquiry. Now we can add that it
is just because it is internal that it can pro-
vide a foundation that is really pertinent
to the lives human beings are actually try-
ing to lead. Williams vigorously insists that
ethical reflection is as natural as anything
else for humans—and, indeed, even a part
of our selfhood (ELP, 47–8). And he elo-
quently and sympathetically describes a kind
of ethical discourse whose “politics” are not
authoritarian, imposing something on peo-
ple from above, and whose aim is to “help
in continually creating a community held
together by that same disposition”—viz., the
disposition to listen to ethical reasoning.61
This is precisely the sort of “foundational”
216
discourse that we have found in Aristotle’s
text. It seems to me strange, then, that the
idea of the external viewpoint and the exter-
nally dictated basis has such appeal for him,
so that he at times suggests that ethics would
have a foundation only if it had a basis of
this sort. I want to say that this sort is nei-
ther available nor of any interest. It matters a
great deal what we ourselves think about our
selfhood and our possibilities; what a being
who stands apart from our experiences and
ways of life thinks seems to matter little, if at
all. Human nature cannot, and need not, be
validated from the outside, because human
nature just is an inside perspective, not a
thing at all, but rather the most fundamen-
tal and broadly shared experiences of human
beings living and reasoning together.
But, even if we accept the relevance of the
internal perspective and grant, as well, that
Aristotle’s results will be wisely and deeply
shared in many times and places, still, we
must ask whether there is anything in the
account that prevents its being applied in
morally objectionable and unequal ways
to different classes of beings. Aristotle, for
example, excludes many beings whom he
judges to be incapable of practical reason-
ing. For his so-called natural slaves there is
no foundation for ethics in human nature;
and, in a more limited way, this is so for all
women, because these beings are held not to
exhibit (full) human nature in the first place.
They are held to lack a set of basic capa-
bilities to function that must be present if a
being is going to count at all as a reasoner
and to be enrolled in our enquiry, which vali-
dates practical reason. Should not an ethical
foundation guard against these abuses, pre-
venting those in power from arbitrary exclu-
sions by setting up some hard barrier of fact?
This objection comes from the Williams of
“Hylomorphism,” who wanted to avoid a
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
“slippery slope” along which, without such
externally fixed points, we would be carried
to atrocity. Biological fact must inform us
that certain creatures just are human, and
worthy of our attention.
To this we can only say, once again, that
points fixed externally by some ­matter of
extra-human fact do not seem to be the
action-guiding criteria we need; nor are they
all we can find. If we are going to avoid
a certain course of action, it ought to be
because atrocity is what it is—that is, for
ethical reasons—and not because some wall
of scientific fact has blocked us. And it seems
perfectly correct in Aristotle to hold that an
ethical theory of human nature should force
us to answer for ourselves, on the basis of
our very own ethical judgment, the question,
which beings are the fully human ones and
the members of our community. It seems
reasonable, furthermore, that people with
very severe mental handicaps should not
have exactly the same political and ethi-
cal rights as people whom we all regard as
fully human. Aristotle is wrong because he
makes silly and unfounded judgments about
barbarians and women; but the question he
raises is a perfectly legitimate one. Raising
it will not license wholesale slaughter of
the deformed and the elderly, as Williams
seems to suppose. For there will be another
account of our obligations to the varied lev-
els of beings in the world around us; and
this account, which in Aristotle will be based
on the level of capability of each creature,
is well equipped to generate an attractive
story of the moral foundations for our treat-
ment of all animate beings. Nor is it ruled
out that we may be ethically entitled to give
a special place in our account to our own
parents and children, no matter what their
level of capability. Our social nature might
well support this conclusion. The important
217
point, however, is that the conclusion will
be reached, if at all, by an ethical argument
and not because a biologist has discovered
something.
Finally, Williams will surely object that
too little has been done by this account. It
is so indeterminate in its results, so general
in its conclusions, that it does not go far
toward solving our most troublesome ethical
perplexities. I have tried to show that, in fact,
a surprising amount has been accomplished
for moral, and even for political, theory. But
we must now grant that, even so, the results
are, in two ways, indeterminate: they do not
talk about the whole of human life; and the
key concepts (social responsiveness, practical
reason) are susceptible of multiple specifi-
cations. Now the question is, is this a bad
thing? Aristotle explicitly presents his results
as a “sketch” that can be filled in later:
So much for our outline sketch for the
good. For it looks as if we have to draw
an outline first, and fill it in later. It
would seem to be open to anyone to take
things further and to articulate the good
parts of the sketch. And time is a good
discoverer or ally in such things. That’s
how sciences have progressed: it is open
to anyone to supply what is lacking.
(1098a20–6)
This verdict seems appropriate, since we have
in mind here (interpreting Aristotle) a his­
torically evolving project of self-perpetuation/
inquiry/creation that can only be done well if
room is left always for the play of the imagi-
nation and for improvisatory responsiveness
to the concrete flow of history.
Heraclitus said, “You would not find
out the boundaries of the soul, even if you
should travel along every path: so deep is
its account.”62 This idea of an ongoing jour-
neying and an ever deeper searching into
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
ourselves is appropriate as an image of the
Aristotelian search for human nature. For
what is proposed here is a scrutiny that
seeks out, among our evaluative judgments,
the ones that are the deepest and the most
indispensable, the ones that lie at the heart
of the ways in which human beings over
time have defined themselves to themselves,
through the play of the story-making imagi-
nation and in countless other activities of
self-expression and self-perpetuation. Such a
search is truly unending, since, as Heraclitus
elsewhere reminds us, the story of human life
is “ever-flowing” in history, and the soul has
a way of “increasing” its own logos.63 Such a
logos may seem too elusive, too open-ended,
to serve as a foundation—if what one wants
from a foundation is a once-for-all hard-edged
solution to matters that actual human com-
munities find perplexing.64 The Aristotelians
claim, however, that no other sort of founda-
tion is truly deep or truly pertinent. Much
though at certain times we may long to
be told from outside what to do and to be,
it is only from ourselves that we can find (or
rather, go on searching for) the answer to the
question that we have actually asked. It is
only if it remains rooted in the human and
the ethical that our search can be about, and
toward, the human soul—that is, about what
is deepest and most essential about human
living.65
Martha C. Nussbaum
ADDENDUM
This chapter appeared in a volume entitled
World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the
Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams,
edited by J. E. G. Altham and Ross Harrison
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
218
1995). Williams contributed a reply to the
essays in the volume that is remarkable for
its range, depth, and subtlety. It includes,
among other things, a detailed reply to John
McDowell on the topic of “external rea-
sons” and a nuanced account of the rela-
tionship of his own philosophical project
to that of Wittgenstein (whom he carefully
distinguishes from what he calls “vulgar
Wittgensteinianism”). And it contains a
detailed reply to my article, which occupies
nine pages, and thus can hardly be summa-
rized, much less adequately discussed, here.
Williams discusses several different points
in my article: its treatment of questions of
personal identity as evaluative; the relation-
ship between such an evaluative account and
the role of luck in making it possible to have
a life of the valuable kind; the relationship
between “life in accordance with reason”
and a life characterized by virtues rather
than vices. I shall focus here, all too briefly,
on just one question, and it is the central
theme that runs throughout: can we appro-
priate Aristotle’s ethics without believing in
Aristotle’s biology, indeed while accepting
the truth of evolutionary theory, which gives
us a very different world-view?
Before we can go far with this question,
we need to state what Aristotle’s biology is.
Williams does not do so, but I have spent
some time on this question in Aristotle’s De
Motu Animalium (1978), and I shall simply
take that account as my starting point. We
can all agree, I believe, that if Aristotle had
accepted a universal teleology of nature,
as the Stoics did, this would have had
large consequences for ethics (the reason
why Stoics insisted that pupils must study
physics before moving on to ethics). Stoic
physics tells us that nature is providentially
ordered and that everything that happens in
it is good. It also tells us that the order of
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
things is morally admirable and wonderful,
far more deserving of our love and attach-
ment than anything else. This account has
large consequences for ethics, which they
are at pains to emphasize. When some-
thing happens that we are inclined to think
unfortunate, or even morally bad, we must
withdraw that judgment, because we must
understand that whatever has happened was
fated to happen and that whatever happens
by fate is good. It was for this reason that
the Stoics insisted that a major job of moral
development was the extirpation of emo-
tion, since emotions are forms of appraisal
that deem chance events either good or bad
for the person to whom they occur. There is
no room for the judgment that something
actual is bad, and it may be judged good
only insofar as it is seen as part of the over-
all ordering of the cosmos. So, if one loves
one’s children morally, one loves them in the
peculiar way epitomized in Cicero’s account
of the Stoic father who remarks, hearing of
his child’s death, “I was already aware that
I had begotten a mortal.” All along, the love
is qualified by an awareness of how nature
works.
Williams and I can agree that Stoic eth-
ics is deeply problematic, and we can agree,
too, that Stoic physics is at least one impor-
tant prop for Stoic ethics. Take that away,
and some Stoics may still try to defend the
emotionless life on practical grounds (as
some of the Romans appear to have done);
but at any rate, accepting the physics makes
it very difficult to have an ethical view that
attaches a normal degree of importance to
particular love.
Aristotle’s biology, however, involves no
universal teleology of nature. As I argued,
agreeing with most interpreters, his teleology,
applied to living things and to these alone (as
I argue), is something like a notion of inclusive
219
fitness: it is a way of thinking about the inte-
grated character of self-maintaining systems
in nature, which are adjusted to perpetuate
and reproduce the characteristic activities
of the species. Although Aristotle does not
have an evolutionary understanding of how
fitness comes about, his outlook has been
judged by some very distinguished biologists
(Max Delbrück, for example) to be closely
related to that of modern biology; others
deny this, but only because they accept an
erroneous and antiquated account of what
Aristotle was doing (Francesco Ayala, for
example, who defends Aristotelian teleologi-
cal explanations as applied to living things,
and then objects to Aristotle’s alleged exten-
sion of teleology to the lifeless). Of course
the details of his account differ from what a
modern evolutionary view would tell us, but
on balance there is, I believe, nothing there
that derails the autonomy of ethics as I have
understood it.
What does a biological account of the
innate equipment of human nature do for
ethics, if anything? First, it tells us what
resources we have to achieve our ends. Thus,
recent work by Frans de Waal and other pri-
matologists on the animal origins of com-
passion and altruism help us gain a better
understanding of hereditary resources in our
nature on which we can draw—although
Daniel Batson’s fine experimental work on
human altruism comes to similar conclusions
without turning to biology. Second, and very
important, such an account can tell us about
problems we have to overcome on the way
to our ethical ends. For example, this same
work on compassion emphasizes the narrow-
ness and partiality of untutored human com-
passion, certainly a part of our evolutionary
heritage, and an obstacle for moral education
to address, if we decide we want to promote
concern for global justice, or human rights.
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
Sometimes the obstacles biology creates for
ethics have been overrated: ideas of “natu-
ral” male dominance and aggression are to
say the least not fully convincing, given the
substantial evidence of early cultural influ-
ence on ideas of gender, and a turn to biol-
ogy can often serve as a bogus defense of an
unjust status quo. Well used, however, biol-
ogy can help us see what stands in our way.
Third, biology can make us aware of talents
or propensities that we have that might be
judged valuable, with the result that we may
judge the failure to develop them a waste—
either to society or to the individual, or both.
For example, understanding the equal apti-
tude of women for learning and arguing put
people in a position to see that the failure to
educate them and develop their talents was
something bad. Had they continued to think
that women just could not do these things,
they would have lacked a crucial ethical
insight.
In one way, our evolutionary view does
affect the way in which we will deploy
such arguments, in the area of “obstacles”
particularly. For we now know that many
things evolved because they were useful at
one time, but are not necessarily useful now.
The burgeoning field of behavioral econom-
ics uses evolutionary theory (not always
well!) to explore gaps between the way we
actually reason and the way that it might
be normatively good to reason. Research on
disgust tells us that we are stuck with a set
of responses to our bodily nature that were
no doubt useful when we had no other way
to steer ourselves away from dangerous
substances, but that often get in the way of
respect and reciprocity in our current world.
Aristotle lacked such insights, because he
did not have the idea of a historical gap
between the world for which our abilities
were “designed” and the world in which
220
we live today. So to that extent we need to
move away from Aristotle, but I do not think
that this limits the scope of the deliberations
involved in Aristotelian ethics; if anything, it
widens that scope.
Williams granted many of my points in
this area, but then he worried about what
he saw as the “looming vacuity” of the
enterprise of talking about human nature,
if it was what I say it is. If all the appeal to
human nature does is to suggest some con-
straints, where does the content of ethics
come from? Here we get yet another exam-
ple of what I call the “tension” in Williams’s
thought—and indeed he candidly says, in
his Reply, that he thinks I am right that
there is such a tension. He seems to long
for an account that will settle tough ethical
questions—while at the same time insisting
that such accounts are irrelevant to ethics. I
(and John McDowell, whose account of the
function argument is very similar to mine)
reply that we get ethical results from ethical
argument, which is exactly where we ought
to go for such results. There is no “vacuity”
here, unless one assumes that ethical argu-
ments that go on entirely within the ethical
domain are all vacuous. But why should one
assume that?
Martha C. Nussbaum
Notes
1
Williams, 1985 (hereafter ELP).
2
Elements of this account can be found in
T. H. Irwin, 1980; in MacIntyre, 1981, 50ff.,
and 1988; in Wiggins, 1980, ch. 6. There are
numerous earlier accounts that present a
similar picture; some of these were discussed
in essay 5 of Nussbaum, 1978. I discuss
MacIntyre’s Aristotle in detail in a
review article on Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? (Nussbaum, December
1989).
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
3
Williams, 1986. This paper was originally
presented, in very much the same form, at the
Princeton Conference on Ancient Philosophy,
December 1978; thus it actually predates the
writing of ELP.
4
See also ELP, 43, 45–6. Compare Wiggins’
claim that the substance concept human being
is something that is “determined from outside
of us” (Wiggins, 1980, 181), something that
gives “answers independent of ourselves to
the question what we are or even who we are
and what matters to us” (186). What it is to be
human cannot “be freely reconceptualized and
reinterpreted at any time” (181).
5
On this see especially Irwin, 1980, who argues
that the role played by extra-ethical considera-
tions in Aristotle’s ethics shows that Aristotle’s
own explicit claim that philosophy must both
begin from and return to the ordinary beliefs
can be “at best a half-truth.” The metaphysical
doctrines brought to bear in ethical argument
do not themselves derive from ordinary belief,
and are said by Irwin to be “beyond” and
“more than” the common beliefs. The pages of
ELP to which we have already referred indicate
that Williams shares this view. Contrast the
general claim about method made by Aristotle
in Nicomachean Ethics 1145b2–7, and about
ethical method in particular at Ethica Eudemia
1216b26ff.—and see the discussion of these
issues in Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 8.
6
See especially Williams, 1986, 198–9 and
Wiggins, 1980, 181–7.
7
See especially Williams, 1986, 198, where the
clear boundaries of the concept “human being”
are said to avoid the “slippery slope” that
might lead to moral atrocity against the elderly,
apparently because it is a biological and not a
(disputable) ethical concept. In a similar way,
Wiggins claims that the boundaries that come
with the concept human being will settle some
tough ethical problems and protect our other-
wise vulnerable ethical dignity:
If freedom and dignity are what we crave, we
shall find more promise of these things in the
Heraclitean prediction, “You would not find
out the bounds of the soul, though you tra-
versed every path: so deep is its logos” than
in the idea that it is for men to determine
the limits of their own nature, or mould and
221
remake themselves to the point where they
can count as their very own creation. (187)
 8
Williams, 1986, 198–9. There are actually
two different contrasts made in Williams’
brief discussion. One seems to be the one I
have emphasized: that “person” is evaluative
and “human being” is not. (Thus, on page
198 “person” is connected with “capacity for
higher mental functions”—where the determi-
nation that some are “higher” than others is
surely an evaluative matter.) The other point
is that “person” is a “scalar” concept, like
“dwarf” or “giant”: whether something is a
person is a matter of degree, and the place
where the boundary is drawn is to some extent
arbitrary. “Human being,” on the other hand,
is held to pick out a genuine natural kind that
is either all there or not there. I suspect that
these two contrasts are to some extent con-
nected: that it is in part because the question is
an evaluative one, involving further questions
such as, “how high are these faculties?” and
“how many of the really high ones are in
operation?”; that its answer seems likely to
involve differences of degree; and it is because
“human being” is understood to be a matter
of scientific fact that it does not appear that a
being can be more or less human. For Aristotle,
as we shall see, “human being” is not implicitly
comparative to an average, like “dwarf” or
“giant”; but it does involve marking off a
certain segment in the continuum of nature in
a way that would admit of dispute.
 9
ELP, 43ff.
10
See, for example, 26–7, 45–51.
11
ELP, 45–6.
12
See, ibid., 26–7, 51.
13
See Wiggins, 1980, passim; and also
Wollheim, 1984, ch. 1.
14
For an account of what needs to be added, see
Wiggins, 1980, ch. 3.
15
Compare ELP, 51.
16
See the commentary on this passage by Gallop,
1975.
17
See, for example, Brock, 1993. Elsewhere,
Brock sometimes uses “person” as a strong
evaluative concept, “human being” as imply-
ing only a lower, animal level of functioning:
a senile patient who lacks (permanently and
irreversibly) all sensation of pleasure and pain
and all consciousness, but who still has enough
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
brain function to be legally alive, but not a
person. Both concepts are, it seems, evaluative
here, since even the legal definition of death
requires the judgment that mere cardiovascular
function is not sufficient to constitute a human
life. I am not clear what the purpose of having
two such concepts is; and Aristotle would, I
think, be right to prefer a single concept.
18
See Kirk, 1970, 162ff.; Vernant, 1981. (This
theme recurs often in Vernant’s work, as
in related work by P. Vidal-Naquet and M.
Detienne.) See also Burkert, 1966.
19
See Benveniste, 1948; Holwerda, 1955;
Kahn, 1960.
20
On the complexities of Aristotle’s position
on this issue, see Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 11 and
Appendix to ch. 12.
21
See Plato, Republic, books II–III; the same
point is made by Xenophanes, Diels-Kranz
B25. See Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 5.
22
On this, see Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 13, with
references.
23
See Burkert, 1966: the particularly close
connection between tragic themes and the
initiation of the young is brought out in
Winkler, 1985. On the Athenian democracy as
a self-interpretive community, in which ethi-
cal reflection influences, and is influenced by,
immersion in social practices, see the excellent
discussion in Farrar, 1988.
24
This name, being, as seems likely, fictional,
underlines the dialogue’s concern with the
theme of moral initiation and education.
25
See Vlastos, 1983.
26
Thus it will be seen that I think that Vlastos’
account of Aristotle in “The Socratic Elenchus”
is not sufficiently complex, and assimilates
Aristotle’s procedure too much to one that
proceeds by majority vote; see also Nussbaum,
1986, ch. 8. One can further support these
claims by pointing to the insistence on the
inner activity of emotions and imagination—
both in Aristotle’s ethical thought and in the
Athenian moral tradition that he develops; see
Nussbaum, 1990, and 1986, ch. 10.
27
On appearances, see Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 8.
28
See, for example, the arguments of Putnam,
1981.
29
Neither of these words is precisely appropriate
for Aristotle’s politikon, which, as the passages
we are discussing make clear, refers to the
full range of the human being’s other-related
222
concerns, familial and friendly as well as civic
and social.
30
See also Magna Moralia 1208b5: “We see that
friendship stretches through the entirety of
life and is present on every occasion, and that
it is a good thing”; and EE 1235a1ff.: “Our
entire life and voluntary association is with
[sc. people with whom we have a relation of
philia]: for we lead our day-to-day lives with
our family or relatives or friends, or children
or parents or wife” (emphasis mine).
31
A related type of connection between ethical
truth and judgments of worthwhileness is made
by Aristotle in discussing views about the role of
luck in the good life: see Nussbaum, 1986, ch. 11.
32
Homer, Iliad IX, 63–4; see Newman’s astute
comments on Aristotle’s reinterpretation of the
passage: he compares NE 1177b9 (Newman,
1887–1902.)
33
See Newman, 1887–1902, for references and
discussion.
34
See, for example, Isocrates, De Antid. 253–7,
Nicocl. 5ff.
35
This also reflects a popular belief: see, for
example, Xen., Mem. 4.3.12.
36
Rawls, 1971.
37
On human nature and the concept of the per-
son, see Rawls, 1971 and 1980.
38
I first discussed this argument in Appendix
1 to Essay 1 of Nussbaum, 1978; but I do
not find what I said there satisfactory. Some
aspects of the argument are discussed in a
companion paper to this one, Nussbaum,
1988. The literature on the argument is
by now very large, and I shall be referring
only to some representative items, includ-
ing: Cooper, 1975; Irwin, 1980; Keyt, 1978;
Nagel, 1980; Stewart, 1892; Wilkes, 1980.
39
On persuading the interlocutor to revise his
position as a central task of an Aristotelian
ethical inquiry, see EE 1216b27–30.
40
Aristotle uses this strongly affective word of
his relation to the object of inquiry in only one
other passage: in Parts of Animals 644b27, he
speaks of our pothos for unavailable knowl-
edge of the divine heavenly bodies, comparing
our situation to that of a lover yearning for an
unavailable beloved.
41
On this, see Nussbaum, 1978, essay 1.
42
See Wilkes, 1980, 343.
43
(A) is defended by: Cooper, 1975, 160, n. 16;
Stewart, 1892, II.443–5; Nagel, 1980, 8.
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
44
(B) is defended by: Irwin, 1980, 48; Wilkes,
1980, 343ff.
45
See, for example, DA 415a23ff., 416b9ff.,
434a22, 434b23, 435b4, 435b16.
46
Cooper, 1975, 159–60; Keyt, 1978. The debate
is carried further in Cooper, 1987, and in Keyt,
1989. It should be noted that Cooper’s inter-
pretation is our interpretation B only where
the word bios is concerned. Because NE I.7
uses zo-e- instead, Cooper is inclined to prefer
reading A for that passage: see notes 42
and 47.
47
Some of the most pertinent Aristotle pas-
sages are: NE 1095b17, EE 1215a4ff.,
36ff., Topics 102b18, Politics 1254b30,
1256a10, 30, 1265a25, 1295a25, 1324a15,
27, 30, 1328b40; De Partibus Animalium
694a6, 682b7, 693a11, Historia Animalium
487a11, 14, b33, 588a17; De generatione
animalium 736b13, 753b28, 779a2, 750a5;
there are many others. Keyt brings forward
several passages as counter-evidence: Pol.
1256a40ff., and Plato, Laws 733d7 are
alleged to show that a single individual can
live different bioi at different times, or even,
in the case of the Laws passage, at the same
time. But these passages do not support
reading (A) against (B). The Politics passage
actually stresses that the shift from one bios
to another is a shift from one mode of life
to another, with a different focus and organ-
izing principle. The Laws passage is anoma-
lous because it deals with the unity
of the virtues. It is not paradoxical for Plato
to say that one person can, at one and the
same time, combine the bios of temperance
with the bios of wisdom and the bios of
courage, only because it is precisely Plato’s
point that the virtues all supply a life with
the same guiding principle or principle of
organization, so that a life according to
one virtue is also, of necessity, a life accord-
ing to, guided by, the others. For other
observations on these passages, see
Cooper, 1987.
48
Cooper, 1975, 160, n. 16.
49
Cooper also mentions Metaphysics 1072b27,
he- gar nou energeia zo-e-; but clearly this case
does not tell either way, since for the god the
activity of nous is both a single life-component
and a total way of life. Besides, zo-e- here may
mean simply “life” or “lifetime.”
223
50
I have scrutinized the use of zo-e- in the fol-
lowing authors: Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Aristophanes, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Lysias, Isaeus, Isocrates, Plato,
and Aristotle. (It is not, in fact, a common
word.) The verdict is clear and unequivocal:
(A) cannot be correct and (B) must be. To be
somewhat more precise: Zo-e- has a number
of uses that do not concern us. It can mean
“life” (as opposed to “death”); it can mean
“quantity (length) of life” (as in the expression
polle- zo-e-); it can mean “lifetime” and be used
interchangeably with aio-n; like bios, it can also
mean “livelihood” or “income.” But when it
is used of a type of life it always designates a
total mode or way of life, organized around
the item named. The following represents a
complete list of uses of zo-e- apart from the
meanings I have set aside above; and I would
submit that all support (B):
Herodotus 1, 157; 2, 77; 2, 105; 4, 112; 4, 114.
Aeschylus, fr. 401.
Plato, Republic 344e3, 521a4; Laws 712c3,
944c6; Epist. VII, 330b5.
Aristotle, HA 584a3 (though this may be in
the sense “lifetime”); 612b19; PA 680b30
(though some editors find this text corrupt, I
see no reason to emend); EE 1215a5 (where
bios and zo-e- are used interchangeably; Pol.
1260a40, 1278b16, 1280b34, 1281a1,
1283a24–5, 1288a27, 1323a23.
One representative example must stand for
the whole list: Herodotus 4, 114.
The Scythian men have succeeded in seduc-
ing the Amazon women. They are living with
them near the battlefield; the Amazons have
not shifted from their previous warlike way
of life. Herodotus tells us that, although the
Scythians prove unable to learn the women’s
language, the women soon learn the Scythians.
The Scythians now make the following pro-
posal: “We have parents and property. Let us
live this sort of life (zo-e-n toie-nde) no longer.
Let us return to live with our people.” The
women reject the offer,
saying:
We and the women of your nation could
never live together; our ways are too much at
variance. We are riders; our business is with
the bow and the spear, and we know nothing
HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
of women’s work; but in your country no
woman has anything to do with such things;
your women stay at home in their wagons
occupied with feminine tasks, and never go
out to the hunt or for any other purpose.
The Amazons’ understanding of their new
language is good. They get the point that the
proposed change in zo-e- is not the innocu-
ous adding or subtracting of one component
activity: it is a total change in mode and
organization of life.
51
Two potential objections suggest themselves;
both can be met.
(1) At 1098a2, the aisthe-tike- zo-e- is held
to be common to the horse, cow, etc.
as well as (apparently) to the human
being: phainetai de kai aute- koine- kai
hippo-i kai boi kai panti zo-io-i. Surely
only on reading (A) could this be true:
for humans precisely do not share a total
mode of life organized around aisthe-sis
(as (B) would read it). We may reply:
(a) It is not in the least clear that the
kai before hippo-i does refer to human
beings (. . . “as well”). It could just be
coordinate with the two other kai’s that
follow: so the life would just be common
both to the horse and to the cow, and to
52
every (nonhuman) animal. There would
then be no problem. (b) Furthermore, it
is true, according to Aristotle’s biologi-
cal views, that there is a time when a
53
human being leads a threptike- zo-e-, and
also another later time when it leads an
aisthe-tike- zo-e-: both are clearly marked
stages of fetal development. At first, all
embryos are said to ze-n phutou bion
(GA 736b13, 753b27, 779b33ff.); it
becomes an aisthe-tike- zo-e- when the
embryo has acquired aisthe-sis (GA
779633ff., Pol. 1335b19ff.). Finally,
with the advent of reason, if develop-
ment continues along normal lines, it
becomes a fully human life. Since these
distinctions are important in Aristotle’s
political thought, one may suspect that
the shifting use of koinon here reflects
these concerns. (Embryos are mentioned
in a similar context at 1102b1). These
two replies cannot be used together;
but either one would dispose of the
objection.
224
(2) The other objection comes from NE I.13,
where Aristotle denies to the threptike-
dunamis te-s psuche-s a role in human
excellence (1102b2–12), on the grounds
that digestion goes on during sleep, but
ethical distinctions are not applied to
what goes on during sleep. This, I believe,
does not tell against reading (B) for the
earlier passage. Reading (B) does not
require that the good human way of
life includes the good functioning of the
threptike- dunamis, except insofar as this
functioning is a part of a life organ-
ized and guided by practical reason.
In other words, it leaves in the chosen
self-nutritive and reproductive activities
that form part of a reason-guided human
life, but not the unguided functioning
of the bodily system in sleep, which
could hardly be said to be either kata
logon or meta logou (see also MA ch.
11). Aristotle tells us elsewhere that the
sleeper’s life is the life of a plant, nothing
more (NE 1176a34–5, EE 1216a5): we
are not ourselves when we sleep, we do
not live the characteristic life of a human
being.
On the complicated passages dealing with
slavery and friendship, see Nussbaum, 1980,
434, n. 54 (the first reference should read,
MM 1194b).
Pol. 1335b19ff. suggests that it should be
mandatory to expose severely handicapped
children, and permits abortion for the sake
of population control up to the time when
the fetus has developed aisthe-sis. It is worthy
of note that the merely aisthe-tike- zo-e- of an
older fetus gives it a claim not to be aborted
(Aristotle even says that to abort it is not
hosion), whereas a living child that was
handicapped in such a way that it would not
progress beyond this level of life would prob-
ably be a candidate for exposure. It would be
beyond the scope of this chapter
to try to reconstruct the views about
potentiality and actuality, as well as the
views about the late thurathen entry of
nous, that support these distinctions. What
is of most importance for us is that these
policies are based upon functional
capability, not upon human parentage
alone.
 HUMAN NATURE AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS

54
On all of these issues, see Nussbaum, 1988.
55
On the extent of the lawgiver’s responsibility,
see the discussion in Nussbaum, 1988.
56
See ibid.
57
From Marx, 1978, 88–9.
58
Ibid., 105.
59
See Nussbaum, 1986, chs. 11–12 and
Appendix; and especially Nussbaum,
September 1988.
60
Ibid.
61
ELP, 26–7.
62
Heraclitus, DK B45, see Nussbaum, 1972.
Notice that Wiggins appeals to Heraclitus in
defense of his rather different position (above
n. 7). We can agree that the humanness sought
is not a function of people’s immediate desires
and preferences, and that people, according to
Aristotle, are not simply free to remake them-
selves in any way at all. But I would argue
that the idea of a human and internal account
of depth is more true to Heraclitus (as well
as to Aristotle) than is Wiggins’ external
account.
63
Heraclitus, DK B115.
64
Included among these will be problems con-
cerning conflicts among goods; and it is one
of Williams’ charges against Aristotle that he
underestimates the amount of such conflict.
I agree with this to some extent (see
Nussbaum, 1986, chs. 11–12), though I do
think that Aristotle does allow for some
possibilities of conflict. But I believe that the
larger measure of conflict permitted in Greek
tragedy (see Nussbaum, 1986, chs. 2–3) is
a reasonable amount to live with, and
inseparable from a certain sort of richness
of life.
65
A much earlier version of this chapter was
presented at a conference on Aristotle’s
­metaphysics at Florida State University; I
would like to thank those present on that
occasion, and many others who have read
versions of this chapter since, for illuminating
criticism. I am particularly grateful to Julia
Annas for ­helpful discussion of the issues,
and to J. Altham for most helpful written
comments. After finishing this chapter I have
found that some closely related ideas about
self-interpretation are lucidly worked out in
recent works by Charles Taylor: see especially
Taylor 1985 and 1993.
225
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University of California Press,
1980, 35–54.
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Keyt, David, “Intellectualism in Aristotle,”
Paideia, special Aristotle issue (1978),
138–57.
—, “The Meaning of Bios in Aristotle’s
Ethics and Politics,” Ancient
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Kirk, G., Myth, Cambridge: Cambridge
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MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, London:
Duckworth, 1981.
—, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
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Marx, Karl, Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin
Milligan, in The Marx-Engels Reader,
ed. R. C. Tucker, New York: Norton,
1978, 88–9.
Nagel, T., “Aristotle on Eudaimonia,” in
Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. A. Rorty,
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980, 7–14.
Newman, W. R., Aristotle’s Politics, 4 vols,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1887–1902.
Nussbaum, M., “ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I,”
Phronesis, 17 (1972), 1–17.
—, Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium,
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1978.
—, “Shame, Separateness, and Political
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Putnam, Hilary, Reason, Truth, and History,
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1981.
Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice,
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Stewart, J. A., Notes on the Nicomachean
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 11
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
1 The question as to whether or not moral
The main objective of the Nicomachean
Ethics is to examine how one should acquire
and actualize the appropriate intellectual
and ethical virtues in order to accomplish
morally good actions (praxeis). In this line
of argument, book VI is devoted to explain-
ing how practical wisdom (phrone-sis) and
ethical virtues depend upon each other and
furthermore, not to say principally, how
they constitute the necessary and sufficient
conditions for a good action to be per-
formed: if the agent possesses ethical virtues
and practical wisdom, the actions he brings
forth are necessarily good. A complemen-
tary approach is, however, required, since
moral action does not merely constitute the
outcome of a deliberate choice (prohairesis)
of the agent occurring within his psuche- but,
at the same time, an “event in the world”1
accessible to external observers who are
invited to appraise “from without,” so to
speak, whether an action is really and fully
good or not. If this appraisal were not pos-
sible, no genuine kind of praise and blame—
which are, according to Aristotle, core
constituents of moral experience—would be
possible either.2
227
actions are susceptible of being prop-
erly appraised “from without” underlies
the much-debated distinction between
agent-centered and act-centered virtue-ethics
that is grounded in the following assump-
tion: two actions can share the same exter-
nal side, though they represent the outcome
of two different intentions (motives, desires,
etc.) or, more accurately, characters. True
moral intentions involve questions of moral
decision implicating the principles to which
the agent adheres and, consequently, depend
on what kind of character he really has
(1144a18).3 Therefore, decisions, motives,
desires, etc. are not taken to be detectable
from the objective side of a single action;
instead, in order to correctly appraise moral
actions, one should also know “the motive[s],
intention[s], emotion[s] and desire[s], [that
is to say] the agent’s inner moral life.”4 As
far as this picture goes, the character of the
agent cannot be displayed and recognized, let
alone evaluated, unless one observes him act-
ing several times (or rather, throughout his
whole life) and in difficult circumstances (or
rather, in circumstances in which he encoun-
ters serious dilemmas and experiences inner
conflicts).
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
In what follows, I will argue that the pre-
vious account is out of tune with Aristotle’s
ethics. Needless to say, I do not mean to
maintain that external observers can unam-
biguously recognize whether a moral action is
“really and fully good” or not. I only mean to
clarify the nature of this ambiguity, by dem-
onstrating that, according to Aristotle, the
goodness of moral actions does not display
any specific kind of ambiguity or invisibility.
To support my thesis further, I will conclude
by highlighting the way in which the visibil-
ity of goodness is thematized and praised by
Aristotle as a practical desideratum met by
two major ethical virtues related to others
(pros heteron), namely, by friendship (philia)
and magnanimity (megalopsuchia).
25
Accessibility to external observers becomes
puzzling inasmuch as one is usually
inclined to dissociate the alleged goodness
of actions from the goodness of the agents
themselves:
Actions are called just or temperate when
they are the sort that a just or temper-
ate agent would have realized, whereas
the just and temperate agent is not the
one who realizes these actions, but the
one who also realizes his actions in
the way in which just or temperate agents
do. (1105b5–9)
In other words, the goodness of actions can-
not be appraised in its full and real signifi-
cance unless one takes into consideration the
intellectual virtue of practical wisdom and
the ethical virtues of the agent. Conversely,
these virtues are defined not by reference to
the actions themselves (which would be
228
circular), but by reference to deliberate choice
(prohairesis), the latter being defined as
“desire combined with thought” (1139b5).
It is worth emphasizing that what Aristotle
is envisaging here is the confusion about
the goodness of actions (namely, its being
true or merely apparent) to which the exter-
nal observers of actions fall prey. By contrast,
from the first-person perspective, the distinc-
tion between true and apparent goodness
is formulated in terms of “apparent good”
(phainomenon agathon). Once this confu-
sion has been clarified (i.e. once it has been
explained that nonfully virtuous agents do
not accomplish really good actions), how-
ever, accessibility to external observers
becomes more and more awkward, since it is
at odds with the undeniable empirical truth
that external observers have no access to the
practical principles and the ends taken into
consideration by the agent himself when he
acts (of course the agent too may have defec-
tive access to his ends and principles but for
different reasons).
But is an appraisal of the genuine good-
ness of actions by external observers really
possible? It should be possible precisely
because the goodness of deliberate choice
and, hence, the actuality of intellectual and
ethical virtues,6 evaporates once deliberate
choices are dissociated from the correspond-
ing actions. True, Aristotle often detaches
deliberate choice from actions in order
to maintain that the former, rather than
the latter, constitutes the proper criterion
certifying the actuality of ethical virtues:
“[deliberate choice] seems to be a better
criterion to discern (krinein) ethical charac-
ters than the actions are” (1111b6; see also
1163a22–3). Nevertheless, it is equally true
that disconnecting deliberate choices from
the corresponding actions induces serious
misunderstandings since deliberate choice

itself has moral relevance only as the effi-
cient cause of action:
deliberate choice is the starting-point
(arche-) of action—that from which
and not that for the sake of which (hou
heneka) the motion is. (1139a31–2)
Consequently, deliberate choices themselves
are morally relevant only as embodied in
actions, since goodness is not an attribute to
be assigned to mere deliberate choice irre-
spective of the action accomplished.7 The ulti-
mate practical end, that is, the good proper to
the moral realm, is acting well (1140b7). By
contrast, according to the previous passage,
deliberate choice is not an end and, thus, can-
not count as an action either. Hence, neither
deliberate choice per se (which proves to be
morally irrelevant) nor action per se (conceded
that the goodness of action presupposes the
goodness of the correlate deliberate choice),
but only actions as the vehicle for deliberate
choices instantiate the goodness one ascribes
to the virtuous agent. Thus, the real target of
Aristotle’s argument cannot be that deliber-
ate choices, instead of actions, attest to the
goodness of character.8 Actions fail to con-
stitute evidence of the actuality of goodness,
therefore, only if one falls prey to the error of
conceiving the goodness of actions in disso-
ciation from deliberate choices. That is to say,
only insofar as one assumes that actions that
originate in different deliberate choices may,
nonetheless, share the same objective side. In
reality, the objective sides of two actions that
originate in different deliberate choices are
only apparently the same. Once this confu-
sion is dispelled, actions do constitute the req-
uisite sort of evidence. Likewise, the passage
about temperate and just men (1105b5–9)
should not be considered to show that just
agents realize actions that meet two condi-
tions, namely, to be externally good and to be
229
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
also fully good. Aristotle rather says that just
agents are just only if they realize actions and
realize them on the basis of a correct deliber-
ate choice. Significantly, Aristotle concludes
his argument by blaming whomever abstains
from action “by taking refuge in arguments”
(1105b13). Hence, the previous passage does
not mean to define what a good action is but
to explain how good actions are possible.9
And they are possible only by being realized
by virtuous persons.
3
Obviously, morally different outcomes might
seem to be identical. Nonetheless, so I will
argue, that apparent sameness does not con-
stitute a peculiarity proper to moral actions
(i.e. a peculiarity due to the implication of
“invisible” intentions, desires, motives, etc.)
but holds true of productions (poie-seis) too.
I begin by quoting two well-known passages
that might seem to provide a basis for the
misleading interpretation I intend to revise:
Moreover, the case of crafts is not similar
to that of the virtues. For what is gen-
erated by the crafts has its goodness in
itself, since it is enough if it is generated
to be in a certain state. By contrast, what
is generated in accord with the virtues is
not an action of justice or temperance
if it is in a certain state, but under the
further condition that the agent is in a
certain state when he acts: first, that he
acts with knowledge, second, that he has
deliberately chosen the action and delib-
erately chosen it for its own sake, and
third, that he acts while being in a solid
and unchangeable state. (1105a26–33)
As some people, we maintain, perform
just actions and yet are not just (for
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
instance, those who do [poiountas] what
the law enjoins either unwillingly or in
ignorance or for some ulterior goal and
not for the sake of the actions them-
selves, although they are as a matter of
fact performing the actions they ought
to perform and what the good person
should), likewise there is a state enabling
the agent to act in each case in a way that
renders him good. (1144a13–19)
At first sight, it seems that Aristotle demar-
cates a radical distinction between action and
production, since two moral agents, although
they each are in a different ethical state, might
accomplish a seemingly identical action. Hence,
it is not sufficient for observers to certify that
one has accomplished what the virtuous per-
son should have done in the same circum-
stances but, in addition to that, one should
also know the kind of character the agent has.
Consequently, judgment about actions cannot
restrict itself to observing external outcomes,
since these are ambiguous and cannot dis-
play in themselves the moral worth either of
the agent or of the action. Furthermore, this
ambiguity appears to be a point of difference
vis-à-vis products. Thus, one commonly reads
that the aforementioned passages either mir-
ror “Kant’s distinction of legality and moral-
ity” (by presupposing that different intentions
result in similar worldly actions, as the refer-
ence to justice and law might also imply), or
testify to the “doctrine of the two components
of virtuous action, that is, the subjective inten-
tion and the objective work” and, in more
neutral terms, that the virtuous and the non-
virtuous person “(in a sense) do the same thing
but with a different intention.”10
The previous formulations are, however,
misleading in that they take for granted the
sharp disparity between actions and produc-
tions with respect to their ambiguity or invis-
ibility from outside the agent.
230
To refute that alleged sharp disparity, one
should first refute the hypothesis that prod-
ucts are unambiguous and univocal entities
manifested as such before our eyes. Even
though our recognizing them as products
is equivalent to our detecting in them the
actuality of the process from which they
spring, Aristotle clearly maintains that the
same beings might constitute either products
of craft (techne-) or the outcome of chance
(tuche-) and of nature. The previous passage
from book II provides us with a clear testi-
mony in this direction:
it is possible to produce something gram-
matical either by chance (apo tuche-s) or
by following someone else’s instructions.
Someone will be a grammarian, then, if
he both produces something grammati-
cal and produces it grammatically—that
is to say, produces it in accord with the
craft knowledge of grammar internal to
him. (1105a22–6)
Hence, the whole discussion of ethical virtues
and their being accessible to external observ-
ers begins by pointing out not the dispar-
ity but the continuity between actions and
productions.11
Indeed, “chance is the cause of some things
of which craft is equally the cause” (Rhetoric
1362a2; see also NE 1140a18–20). In order
to illuminate the theoretical thesis lurking
under this strange affirmation we must turn
to a discussion in the Physics. There Aristotle
says that we treat chance and spontaneity
(automaton)12 as if they represented a purpo-
sive activity if and only if their results might
have also been the outcome of human activi-
ties. In case someone comes to the market for
some other reason and then happens to meet
his debtor and recover his debt, we should
say that “the recovering of his debt was not
an end involved in the causes themselves of

the action, but was yet of the class of things
that may be the result of deliberate choice
and reason” (Phys. 197a1–3). That is why
chance and spontaneity are accidental causes
regarding what might also have been done of
its own sake. By which he means that they
are not genuinely explanatory per se causes
(haplo-s) of the result we attribute to them.
All this is familiar ground to the readers
of Aristotle’s Physics. Nevertheless, as far
as I know, no one has sufficiently exploited
the idea that the products of craft do not
bear in themselves any sign that could prove
without a shadow of doubt that they are the
outcome of production and craft. A correct
harp performance, for example, consisting
of the skillful production of certain sounds
and the accidental production of exactly
similar sounds as a result of chance may be
indistinguishable. Hence, a correct series of
sounds produced on the harp is not necessar-
ily a correct product of craft. The resulting
ambiguity inherent in products culminates
in the fact that they harbor their goodness
in themselves, thereby making room for two
different sorts of correctness: the correct-
ness of harp performance in general (which
is attributable, indifferently, either to pro-
duction or to chance) and the poietical cor-
rectness of the same performance. The first
resides in the product irrespective of how
it has been generated, whereas the second
necessitates the reference to a possessor of
the relevant craft.13 Aristotle claims that,
although the general notion of correctness
derives its meaning from the technical one,
the difference between these two crystalli-
zations of goodness is not detectable in the
things themselves.
The previous point may be strengthened.
There is a large amount of evidence showing that
the ambiguity in how one can recognize tech-
nical products from without permeates the
231
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
realm of the crafts. Let me give, indicatively,
three such cases expressly thematized by
Aristotle: First, when an observer encounters
a product already accomplished, he cannot
be confident either about the skills actually
displayed by the particular producer14 or
about which kind of skills and which kind of
craft is really the efficient cause of the good-
ness of the product in question. As Aristotle
puts it, “a badly constructed ship often
sails better though not because of itself but
because it has a good steersman” (Eudemian
Ethics 1247a25–6). Second, a glimpse at the
previous passage from the NE (1105a22–6)
proves that when one encounters a certain
product already accomplished, one cannot
judge whether the possessor of the required
craft coincides with the actual producer
of the product in question. That is to say,
although the actualization of craft is a sine
qua non for a genuine poie-ton to be brought
forth, the actual producer of this particu-
lar product may not necessarily possess the
required craft-knowledge:15 he may be a
learner or a low-level-artisan guided by the
craftsmaster or he may act under compul-
sion. Third, when one encounters a product
already accomplished, one cannot always be
in a position to certify its being the outcome
of craft at all. This time, ambiguity is not the
result of the intervention of chance but of
the way we apprehend nature in terms of
causality. In the Metaphysics VI.9, we are
told that certain products of craft could
have been generated by nature. Aristotle’s
example is that health might be either the
product of medicine or the product of nature
itself (1034a9–10; see also Physics VIII.2,
199a12–13).
When viewed from the outside, there-
fore, products of craft do not unambigu-
ously display the skills of their producers.
Nevertheless, external observers experience
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
this ambiguity without assuming that it is
somehow due to the invisibility of the “inner
self” of the producers. Instead of invoking
impediments of psychological nature,16 the
ambiguity in question testifies to a world
harboring chance as accidental cause and
supplying nature and human beings with a
shared scene to generate their products.
On the basis of the previous analysis of
the realm of craft, I will argue that the ambi-
guity as to how external observers appraise
whether a morally relevant action is fully or
only seemingly good is not different in kind
from the ambiguity proper to our under-
standing of products of craft and, hence, is
not due to the alleged exceptional invisibility
of the intentions of the agents either.
I will begin by recalling the parenthetical
clause appearing in the passage from book
VI (1144a13–19). It is plain that Aristotle
names here two kinds of outcomes that do
not constitute fully good actions, namely,
involuntary actions, such as actions per-
formed under compulsion or through igno-
rance, and actions that are performed for the
sake of a different end, such as a just action
performed for the sake of pleasure. Although
these two kinds of actions are morally differ-
ent and merit a totally different assessment,
they enjoy here a common status in that they
represent accidental outcomes. In fact, in
opposition to the enigmatic formulations of
1144a, book V.8 establishes a neat distinc-
tion between adike-ma, that is the proper
outcome of voluntary actions, and adikon,
that is what only seems to be the result of a
voluntary action without really being one. In
this context, Aristotle demarcates further dis-
tinctions that nicely mirror the parenthetical
clause previously quoted. On the one hand,
One does injustice or justice whenever
one does these actions voluntarily. For
232
when one does these actions involuntar-
ily, one does neither justice nor injustice
except accidentally (kata sumbebe-kos).
(1135a16–18; see also 1135b5–6)
What matters here, as it concerns the acces-
sibility to external observers, is that the
outcomes of the involuntary actions are acci-
dentally good actions, as Aristotle repeats five
times within the same paragraph (1135a18;
a26; b3; b6; b7–8). Seemingly good (or bad)
states of affairs may be the outcome of invol-
untary activities and, hence, although “some-
thing unjust may happen” (1135a22–3),
there is no true case of injustice and no rea-
son to blame the agent. On the other hand,
[If one acts] in knowledge but without
previous deliberation (me- probouleu-
sas), he does an action of injustice. . .
and his actions are actions of injustice,
but he is not thereby unjust or wicked,
because the harm is not out of wicked-
ness. By contrast, whenever his action is
out of deliberate choice, he is unjust and
wicked. (1135b19–25)
This time, the distinction being drawn holds
true within the category of voluntary actions.
An unjust outcome corresponds to an action
of injustice, but an action of injustice is not
unambiguously the action of an unjust agent
(that is to say, it may be termed unjust only
homonymously). The agent is unjust when
injustice is something he decides on (“out
of deliberate choice,” 1136a1) in order to
accomplish his ends. It is true that book V
identifies actions that are not done from
deliberation as being motivated “by anger or
other passions” (1135b20–1). These actions,
however, are opposed to actions done out
of deliberate choice, that is, to actions done
“for the sake of the actions themselves”—an
opposition that is again reminiscent of the

previously quoted parenthetical key-phrase
from book VI.17 The actions of injustice that
are not done “out of deliberate choice” are
accidental too, in the sense that they do not
originate in the true character of the agent.
That is why, even though he has performed
them, the agent is not considered to be unjust
or wicked, since we cannot explain the action
in question by reference to the agent’s char-
acter as being its origin.
Admittedly, Aristotle’s analysis of the dis-
tinction between really good actions and
seemingly good actions is not carried out in
terms of chance but of accidental causes and
results and, hence, it might appear that the
ambiguity proper to actions is different in
kind from the ambiguity proper to products
of craft. But these two approaches are any-
thing but irreconcilable, since chance is an
accidental cause. More importantly, similar
distinctions are employed by Aristotle when
he considers the role of chance and of nature
in the realm of moral actions. I am refer-
ring to the well-known passage from the EE
1246b37–1248b7.18
Here, first, Aristotle envisages a natural
disposition that makes people hit on the
right action from impulse, though they lack
practical wisdom (aphrones). In such cases,
one should say that people are not eutucheis
(lucky) in the literal sense of the word but
rather of good nature (euphueis). On the
basis of the comparison between moral
action and craft figuring in the text (EE
1247a21ff.), it is legitimate to argue that,
in parallel with what happens in the case of
health, Aristotle examines here how natu-
ral processes and human actions may result
in the same effect. In both cases, namely, in
action and in production, nature is consid-
ered a cause “in” things (namely, in agents
and products respectively). But whereas in
the case of productions nature denotes the
233
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
way in which matter might initiate its own
motion without any intervention of the prod­
ucer, in the realm of actions nature seems to
denote the way in which ethical states initiate
deliberate choice without any intervention of
practical wisdom.
Second, Aristotle also refers to the case of
someone who acts contrary to any natural
good disposition and, nevertheless, realizes
good actions only by chance (apo tuche-s or
dia tuche-n), even though “he wanted another
good, or a smaller one, than he got” (EE
1247b32–3). Beyond the strong differences
in style, concepts and arguments, it is easy
to recognize that the latter case corresponds
to what the NE takes to be an action done
by accident. It is also revealing that chance
is here explained by reference to the case of
crafts and, in particular, to the example of
shipbuilding I pointed to earlier. For the pur-
poses of my present argument, it is enough to
emphasize that in the EE Aristotle explains
the implication of chance in the realm of
morally relevant actions in the same terms in
which he often explains the role of chance in
our understanding of products as well as the
role of accidental causes in our understand-
ing of seemingly good actions.
Hence, there is no critical difference
between actions and productions here—
their only critical difference regards the role
of compulsion that I put aside for reasons
of space. The crucial issue is that the incon-
clusiveness or ambiguity proper to the way
we understand the outcomes of production
and action does not mirror our incapacity
to unfold, respectively, the skills of the pro-
ducers and the intentions, desires, motives,
etc. of the agents—thereby crediting the
­invisibility proper to the “inner moral life”
of moral agents with a distinct status—but
reflects an ambiguity of the world, in that it
harbors accidental causes and chance.19
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
4 that is, to the principles by which their delib-
In order to strengthen my thesis, I will subse-
quently bring the focus on the visibility of the
goodness proper to ethical virtues, a sort of
visibility that is already implied by Aristotle’s
conception of the good in terms of the fine,
to kalon: “to kalon is the end (telos) of [ethi-
cal] virtue” (1115b13).20 Actually, Aristotle’s
ideals of friendship (philia) and magnanim-
ity (megalopsuchia) constitute a praise of
­visibility. This is hardly astonishing. Visibility
to external observers presupposes a relation
to others grounded in the recognition of their
ethical virtues—whereas justice does not
always take the agent’s virtues into consid-
eration—and, furthermore, a kind of politics
inherent, so to speak, in the ethical life.
4.1
Notwithstanding the deep perplexities of the
matter, I assume that there is not much doubt
about a critical feature that Aristotle attributes
to perfect friendships, namely, reciprocal vis-
ibility. In fact, Aristotle defines perfect friend-
ships in terms of a mutual access friends have
to the true principles upon which their actions
are grounded. Let us briefly examine how vis-
ibility is implicated in this context:
(1) friendship is distinguished from good-
will (eunoia), their difference being precisely
reduced to the fact that goodwill entails a
deficient visibility, since it is directed even
toward strangers or since it might not be per-
ceived by the person concerned (1166b31) or
even lack any mutual awareness (1156a2–5).
This deficiency is inescapable to the extent
that goodwill gets growing irrespectively of
whether one observes or not the actions of
the other.
(2) Perfect friendship is defined as mutual
access to the true moral identity of friends,
234
erate choices and actions are motivated
and, what is more, this true access is what
Aristotle again and again reminds us of in
order to distinguish perfect friendship from
the lower kinds of friendships: within per-
fect friendships, friends are visible in them-
selves (1156a11), in what the friend consists
in (a16), for being what precisely he or she
is (a18). Throughout, perfect friendship pre-
supposes that friends mutually display and
recognize their true selves; furthermore, this
visibility proves to be even more perfect than
what the isolated agents might have ever
attained in privacy (1170a1–8).
(3) Flourishing by definition only between
virtuous persons, perfect friendship appears
to be not only grounded upon common prin-
ciples (this seems to hold for every kind of
friendship; 1156a9–10), but upon the prin-
ciples only virtuous persons unmistakably
and permanently recognize (1156b7–9). This
unequivocal visibility, not to say transpar-
ency, of principles hinges on the identity of
the principles virtuous friends are inspired
by. This Aristotelian thesis culminates in the
assumption that, provided that they share the
same principles, it is indifferent which among
the friends will bring forth the very realiza-
tion of a particular action (1169a32–4).
(4) Perfect friendship is a kind of a broad
common space of shared actions (1167a1–2)
displaying the common principles their
friendship is guided by. Once these principles
become invisible or disappear, that is, once
the virtue of friends becomes doubtful, per-
fect friendship cannot be sustained any more
and vanishes (1165b). That is to say, perfect
friendships exist inasmuch as they live up to
the expectations nurtured within a space of
mutual visibility; by contrast, not visibility
but utility is the criterion for lower forms of
friendship to uphold or vanish.

(5) Visibility in friendship is a genuine
source of pleasure: “someone’s own being
is choiceworthy because he perceives that
he is good, and such a perception is pleas-
ant in itself. Therefore, he must also perceive
his friend being (existing) and this will come
about through living together and sharing
conversation and thought” (1170b8–12).
Waive for now all reservations as to this
much-disputed passage;21 it is at least clear
that visibility within perfect friendships
presupposes or consists in the visibility of
goodness, in the sense that the actions and
the sayings of my friend constitute definite
embodiments of goodness.
Admittedly, Aristotle’s analysis fosters the
impression that perfect friendship ascertains
the accuracy of the claim—commonly made
by virtue-ethics—that goodness is fully ­visible
only when we know in advance or verify over
and over again the character of the agent.
On this account, perfect friendship flourishes
only on the ground of an already established
shared life of actions and is conditioned by
the common—already established too—
good principles, intentions, motives, etc. of
the friends. Part of the problem here is that,
by considering ethical goodness as being the
foundation of perfect friendship (i.e. of vis-
ibility), one relegates friendship to a simple
supplement to goodness and deprives it of
any critical ethical worth.22 To mitigate the
effects of this undesirable conclusion, the
issue of the philosophical friendship put
aside, one should qualify the aforementioned
prevailing interpretation.23 Indeed, it is pos-
sible to argue that visibility itself, far from
being reduced to an external addition to
goodness, is rather raised by Aristotle to a
criterion for goodness, by which I mean that
only whoever is visible in his or her true self
(1156a11, 16, 18; see also EE 1237b3–5) can
be virtuous too (while the inferior forms of
235
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
friendship give access to a mere aspect of our
friend’s self on account of what appears to be
the present-circumstantial source of the ben-
efit we are after). Besides, perfect friendship
does not require the friends to be perfectly
good. Otherwise, friendship could never ful-
fill its mission to serve as a source of mutual
assistance with a view at correcting the ethi-
cal imperfection of the friends (1165b19).
What is required between perfect friends is
their being recognizable (i.e. visible) in them-
selves (1165b20–2). According to this read-
ing, friendship delineates the space within
which visibility and, hence, complete good-
ness becomes possible in the first place. As
far as this picture goes, a shared life is not
necessary for friends in order for their true
character to be progressively unveiled but in
order for visibility to be constantly actual-
ized. In other words, visibility and goodness
depend on each other.
4.2
And yet perfect friendship represents nei-
ther the only topos wherein visibility of
goodness is tangible nor the most promi-
nent one. Aristotle’s demand for visibility is
paradigmatically satisfied by the virtue of
magnanimity.
This virtue is much-debated too, attached
as it is to a variety of interpretive questions.24
It is, however, prudent to take Aristotle’s
words at face value when he says that mag-
nanimity “is a sort of ornament of the vir-
tues” (1124a1–2). Indeed, magnanimity is a
very odd virtue, since it refers to the other
virtues and not to further incidents of action.
This becomes apparent once we realize, on
the one hand, that magnanimity is condit­
ioned by the acquisition of the other virtues
and even, no matter how rare it might be, of
the “complete virtue” (1124a28–9; 1123b29)
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
and, on the other, that its function consists
in “making them (i.e. the virtues) greater”
(1124a2). That is why it is closely connected
with the fine, to kalon. Before I venture to
cope with the inner perplexities of magna-
nimity by reducing them to the inner logic
of visibility, let me clarify in advance that
magnanimity exemplifies Aristotle’s praise
for visibility not to the extent that it dem-
onstrates an alleged unambiguous access to
goodness, but insofar as it clarifies that vis-
ibility is both a necessary feature of goodness
and an achievement goodness should aspire
to. It is now time to proceed in describing
magnanimity in five steps:
(1) It is worth noticing that magnanim-
ity refers to a claim and not to an object or
an external good: “magnanimous persons
claim (axiousin) to be worthy of honor”
(1123b23).25 Claiming the honor they
deserve (honor being the Greek equivalent of
public recognition) is tantamount to claiming
public visibility. Given that the reference to a
claim (1123b2) is reiterated by Aristotle at
several places, it would really be an astonish-
ing error (recurrent though it is) to maintain
that magnanimity is in search of honor: not
only is honor the proper object of another
virtue, namely of philotimia—not only is it
something given and, therefore, dependent
on the honor-giver—but also magnanim-
ity is always tied in with the awareness that
honor is relegated to an external good that
a truly virtuous agent could not evaluate as
something praiseworthy (1124a6–9). Hence,
magnanimity treats honor neither as an end
nor as a means conceived in terms of util-
ity (1233a7), but claims the right to honor,26
that is, it claims that the agent’s goodness be
recognized and praised by the community.
(2) Honor means recognition by exter-
nal observers and “great honor” (EE
1232b17–18) may only be conferred by
236
virtuous observers. From this point of
view, magnanimity seems to be inescapably
located within perfect friendships (1124b31–
1125a1). However, there is a crucial differ-
ence: while perfect friendships illustrate the
effective visibility virtuous friends really
have the benefit of, magnanimity depicts a
mere claim to visibility without presupposing
the effective virtue of the observers involved.
That is why, puzzling though it is, the mag-
nanimous person is indifferent toward
the effective honor conferred upon him
(1124a6–7) or even seems to be arrogant
(a20) and ironical (b29–30). Consequently,
the demand for honor is tantamount neither
to the desire for honor nor to the need for an
external witness certifying the agent’s mer-
its. Honor, far from being a certificate or a
means toward self-affirmation, merely repre-
sents a prize the agent deserves and claims
(1123b20, 35).
(3) It is legitimate to presume that, in
the absence of magnanimity, moral agents
remain defective insofar as they lack vis-
ibility, that is, what greatness, by essence,
claims. This visibility is not reduced to a
mere luxury virtuous persons might care
for without however being obliged to. By
contrast, its lack is identical with a sort of
moral mistake (1125a19) witnessing both a
lack of self-knowledge and a lack of energy.
Small-hearted persons (mikropsuchos) “turn
away from fine actions and accomplish-
ments” (1125a25–6) and, then, greatness
reflects the quintessence of morality, insofar
as it mirrors agents’ readiness to perform
fine actions.
(4) Being reduced to a claim rather than
to an effective recognition, and being com-
pelled in front of any observer rather than in
front of virtuous persons, magnanimity can-
not demand the effective understanding of its
principles. In fact, the community may not be

in a position to understand, let alone to ade-
quately evaluate, the real principles displayed
by virtuous actions. Let me illustrate what
the magnanimous person affirms: the virtue
of my actions (axios o-n) claims (axioi) to be
recognized and honored (time-) by the com-
munity, that is, my actions ought to be pro-
vided with a visible stand, even though this
same community may not be able to grasp
their true worth. So we arrive at the threshold
of magnanimity that proves to coincide with
the core of the paradoxical status assigned to
visibility: visibility is a necessary constituent
of goodness virtuous persons should aspire
to and, retrospectively, should be considered
a piece of evidence testifying goodness.
Greatness, goodness, and visibility are
intrinsically tied up with one another. The
subterranean passages that make this con-
nection possible are grounded in the assump-
tion that great actions enjoy a privileged
kind of visibility, precisely because great-
ness is a favorable condition for something
to be visible. Even a community that has no
real access to the principles motivating the
magnanimous person is compelled to accept
that goodness is effectively detectable, if any-
where, within great actions and, hence, to
blame on itself the inability to recognize what
is in reality out there. In other words, the case
of great actions crystallizes par excellence the
idea that the visibility of goodness is not a
question of psychological factors impeding
our access to the inner life of the agents but
rather a question of recognizing what is actu-
ally harbored in the actions themselves.
(5) That is the reason why, unless based on
complete virtue, this claim to honor is a sign
of conceited and foolish persons. On behalf
of what evidence might external observers
distinguish between claims to honor laid by
magnanimous persons and similar claims
laid by conceited persons? Aristotle copes
237
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
with this challenge by drawing a detailed
image of the actions and attitudes a mag-
nanimous person is designated to perform.
No doubt, this image might not be exhaus-
tive. Nonetheless, Aristotle is quite pedantic
in introducing sufficient delicate distinctions
and sophisticated criteria in order for observ-
ers to discriminate the true magnanimous
persons from those who merely pretend to
be. This is why the magnanimous person’s
attitude has been presented as a tremendous
and thorny everlasting balancing between
seemingly incompatible activities performed
under the permanent risk of deviations that,
no matter how slight they might appear,
prove to be sufficient to render this com-
portment an object of ridicule: interest and
disinterest, sociability and privacy, activa-
tion and retreat, willingness and reluctance,
memory and oblivion, truthfulness and irony,
etc. This extremely detailed picture, unique
as it is within books II–IV on ethical virtues,
aims at inserting external criteria in order for
magnanimity to be correctly appraised and
for the actions of the magnanimous person
to be considered as trustworthy witnesses of
the principles they are guided by.
The conviction underlying this long
description proves to be that conceited per-
sons, even though they try to imitate the
comportment proper to magnanimity, fail to
deceive us because of the inner complexity
of magnanimity: “If we examine particu-
lar cases, the magnanimous person would
appear altogether ridiculous if he were not
good” (1123b33–4; my italics). It is not an
exaggeration to claim that magnanimity pro-
vides Aristotle with the most suitable pat-
tern for establishing the connection between
chance, goodness, and visibility:
for without virtue it is hard to handle good
fortune (eutuche-mata) in a suitable way
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
. . . [those who lack virtue] act in a ran-
dom way (tucho-si). This is so because they
imitate the magnanimous person without
being like him and imitate him only in
what they can. (1124a30–1124b4)
In other words, imitation and deceit are
hardly possible within the ethical realm and
this state of affairs becomes obvious each
time we focus on particular actions, let alone
on great actions.
***
By focusing on the visibility of goodness
from outside the agent, one establishes a new
point of view, that of the external observ-
ers of morally relevant actions, and thereby
counterbalances the current tendency to
exclusively examine Aristotle’s ethics from
the first-person perspective, that is, in terms
of moral psychology. It would be a major
project to attempt to show that the pattern
of the visibility of goodness also provides the
most reliable bridge connecting Aristotle’s
ethics to his Poetics and his Politics.27
Pavlos Kontos
Notes
 1
Natali, 2004, 155.
 2
See Pakaluk, 2005, 119.
 3
Where there is no other indication, quotations
are from the NE. Translations are mine.
 4
Nussbaum, 1999, 170.
 5
I have developed with more argument the
claims made in paragraphs §§2–3 in Kontos,
2011, 9–31.
 6
Ethical virtues should not be considered
inner traits inaccessible to external observers.
On the one hand, they are expressed in our
actions. On the other, as Reeve nicely points
out, “pleasure and pain, and not action alone,
should be taken as the sign of someone’s state
of character,” that is to say, of someone’s
virtues. But pleasure and pain are effectively
238
detectable in how enthusiastically, hesitantly,
etc. we act (Reeve, 2012, 47).
 7
See Stewart, 1892, 27.
 8
My insistence on the priority of actions is in
continuity with the incompatibilist account of
character, education, and responsibility, offered
by Destrée, 2011.
 9
Contrast Williams, 1995 and Taylor, 2006,
94–6.
10
See, respectively, Ando, 1965, 196–8;
Gauthier-Jolif, 2002, 549; Broadie, 1991, 87.
11
Hardie, 1968, 105 and Pakaluk, 2005, 104
have also drawn attention, though only in
passing, to this point.
12
Chance and spontaneity differ in that the
former is restricted to what concerns the
human affairs, that is, to the realm of actions
(Physics 197b4).
13
Contrast Wolf, 2007, 68.
14
The same holds true about the indistinguish-
able results of experience and craft (see
Metaphysics I.1).
15
This is why the ultimate cause of certain prod-
ucts might be taken to coincide either with
the producer himself or with the relevant craft
(Phys. 195b22).
16
I take my suggestions to further and partially
amend Broadie’s thesis that “craft is non-
psychological” (Broadie, 2007, 100).
17
Compare Sherman, 1999, and Pearson, 2006,
with the second of which I am sympathetic
despite some differences.
18
In disagreement with Woods, 1992, 168–9, I
concur with Dirlmeyer’s interpretation of the
core section 1247b28–1248a19.
19
My analysis has purported to present the case
of an Aristotelian argument that “bears a vital
relation to models supplied by the technai”
(Angier, 2010, 1), without being however—in
opposition to the models examined by
Angier—“philosophically problematic.”
20
I meet thereby the remarks by Lear, 2006,
122–3, and the challenging analysis by Burger,
2008, 68–92, who understands the fine
(beautiful) as an “independent principle” of
goodness.
21
See, indicatively, Kraut, 1989, 139ff. and
Kosman, 2004.
22
Cooking and Kennet, 1998.
23
See Kontos, 2002, 90–3.
24
Gauthier’s 1951 prominent study remains
an authority on the subject. Nonetheless,

I do not adhere to the identification of
magnanimous men with philosophers, a
claim he reaffirmed in his comments on NE
(Gauthier-Jolif, 2002). I do not share either
the suggestion that we should “unterbe-
werten” magnanimity (Dirlmeyer, 1969,
371) or Howland’s 2002 assumption that
Aristotle’s description should be read as
conveying an objection against the very pos-
sibility of magnanimity. I believe that these
interpretations “rest on the assumption that
Aristotle could not have meant what he said
about greatness of soul” (Crisp, 2006, 175).
In his challenging book, Faulkner, 2007,
15ff., makes a number of points in line with
my reading: he opposes magnanimity to
courage (since the latter aspires to nobility,
whereas the former “involves a more com-
prehensive prudence”), points out the strong
affinity between magnanimity and truth/
truthfulness, and nicely explains the kind of
honor the magnanimous claims.
25
A brief word about translation is in order
here: I prefer to render axiousin as “claim to
be worthy of” on the ground that the Greek
term points to both, namely, to claiming and to
worthiness.
26
Contrast Schütrumpf, 1989, 19–20.
27
I read earlier versions of this chapter at the
Oxford Workshop in Ancient Philosophy
and the Roma Tre University. I am grateful to
David Charles, Riccardo Chiaradonna, Terence
Irwin, Michael Pakaluk, and Michael Weinman
for their insightful comments.
REFERENCES
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Cognition, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1965.
Angier, T., Techne- in Aristotle’s Ethics,
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Broadie, S., Aristotle and Beyond,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007.
—, Ethics with Aristotle, New York/Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1991.
239
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
Burger, R., Aristotle’s Dialogue with
Socrates, Chicago/London: University of
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Cooking, D. and J. Kennet, “Friendship
and the Self,” Ethics, 108.3 (1998),
502–27.
Cordner, C., “Aristotelian Virtue and Its
Limitations,” Philosophy, 69 (1994),
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2006, 158–78.
Destrée, P., “Aristotle on Responsibility
for One’s Character,” in Moral Psychology
and Human Action in Aristotle, ed. M.
Pakaluk and G. Pearson, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011, 285–318.
Dirlmeyer, F., Aristoteles. Nikomachische
Ethik, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1969.
—, Aristoteles. Eudemische Ethik,
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Faulkner, R., The Case for Greatness, New
Haven/London: Yale University Press,
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Gauthier, A. R. and J. Y. Jolif, Aristote.
L’ Éthique à Nicomaque (vol. II),
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Gauthier, R., Magnanimité, Paris: Vrin,
1951.
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Oxford: Clarendon, 1968.
Howland, J., “Aristotle’s Great-Souled
Man,” The Review of Politics, 64.1
(2002), 27–56.
Kontos, P., Aristotle’s Moral Realism
Reconsidered, New York/London:
Routledge, 2011.
—, L’ action morale chez Aristote, Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 2002.
THE VISIBILITY OF GOODNESS
Kraut, R., Aristotle on the Human Good,
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989.
Kosman, A., “Aristotle on the Desirability
of Friends,” Ancient Philosophy, XXIV.1
(2004), 135–54.
Lear, G. R., “Aristotle on Moral Virtue and
the Fine,” in The Blackwell Guide to
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
ed. R. Kraut, Cambridge, MA/Oxford:
Blackwell, 2006, 116–36.
Natali, C., L’action efficace, Louvain-
la-neuve: Peeters, 2004.
Nussbaum, M., “Virtue Ethics: A Misleading
Category?,” Journal of Ethics, 3 (1999),
163–201.
Pakaluk, M., “The Meaning of Aristotelian
Magnanimity,” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy, XXVI (2004), 241–75.
—, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2005.
Pearson, G., “Aristotle on Acting Unjustly
without being Unjust,” Oxford Studies in
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211–33.
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Reeve, D. C., Action, Contemplation, and
Happiness, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012.
Schütrumpf, E., “Magnanimity,
Megalopsychia, and the System of
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der Philosophie, 71 (1989), 10–22.
Sherman, D., “Aristotle and the Problem
of Particular Injustice,” Philosophical
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Stewart J. A., Notes on the Nicomachean
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Williams, B., “Acting as the Virtuous Person
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Woods, M., Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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 12
TO KAKON POLLACHO ˉ S LEGETAI:
THE PLURIVOCITY OF THE NOTION
OF EVIL IN ARISTOTELIAN ETHICS

Evil takes various forms (τὸ μὲν . . . κακὸν πολυειδές), where good has only one.
Aristotle, Magna Moralia I.24, 1192a10–111

Error is multiform (τὸ μὲν ἁμαρτάνειν πολλαχῶς ἔστιν).

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics II.6, 1106b28–92

Introduction morality, in which the agent does not experi-

This paper examines the very broad notion
of moral evil3 in the Aristotelian ethical trea-
tises.4 This inquiry is rendered problematic,
however, by the fact that in the opening of
Nicomachean Ethics, the notion of evil is,
de jure, removed by the statement that eve-
rything aims to the good.5 Analogously, in
other passages of the ethical treatises, the
Stagirite reminds us that human beings are
naturally inclined to the Good, and that this
is seen in the natural virtues.6
A second issue concerns the interpretative
koine- on this topic, inclined, on the one hand,
to affirm the Philosopher’s limited interest in the
topics of evil and the negative,7 and, on the other
hand, to describe Aristotelian ethics as “paci-
fied ethics,” or rather as a “non-conflictual”
ence turmoil and interior “disorders.”
Notwithstanding these two problems, it can
be shown that de facto the theme of moral evil
is extremely pervasive and absolutely relevant,
both historically8 and conceptually. Moreover,
evil, described by Aristotle as disorder and
lack of measure,9 plays a crucial role on sev-
eral levels: on the level of the soul, on the level
of the moral subject, and on that of human
life, which strives for a harmonious, measured,
and happy existence, but is forced in daily life
to face innumerable disharmonizing elements.
In fact, despite its apparent exclusion from
ethical inquiry, moral evil receives particular
attention precisely in this specific field10 and
presents a series of very interesting repercussions
in psychological, anthropological, epistemo-
logical, and political-juridical debates, which, in

241
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
this article, can only be mentioned en passant,
beyond the field of ethics stricto sensu. Thus this
work seeks to examine the multifaceted notion
of evil, analyzing the words used by Aristotle in
the ethical treatises to name it, and then noting
how these words are linked to each other and
probing their semantic specificities.
The second step of the inquiry consists in
the attempt to work out the conceptual dis-
tinction between the two fundamental sides
of evil that emerge from the Aristotelian
opus: in a certain sense, evil can be “suf-
fered,” and in another sense, it can be “acted”
or “caused.”11
Within this multiplicity of semantic levels,
furthermore, we can find other fundamental
articulations of the question that demand the
research be expanded to include identifica-
tion and comparison of two very crucial fig-
ures of evil: the notion of vice (kakia) and that
of lack of self-control or incontinence (akra-
sia). In addition, our inquiry should include
the study of the links between the notion of
vice and the very complex and amply studied
one of ignorance (agnoia).
Grammar of evil
To observe the words used by Aristotle to
designate the notion of evil and to note their
use in his Ethics and, more in general, in his
corpus, it is necessary to have recourse to the
lexicon,12 focusing, in particular, on three
fundamental lemmata: kakos,13 phaulote-s,14
and mochthe-ria.15 Besides these lemmata, it
is also fruitful to consider other fundamen-
tal expressions used by Aristotle to speak of
evil, more or less technical nouns and adjec-
tives that have a very rich background.16
Using these expressions, Aristotle seems not
to indicate a particular kind of evil, but the
242
moral evil qua talis. In other words, human
beings can be bad in many ways, as we read
in NE II.6, 1106b35: “good men in one way,
but bad in many” (ἐσθλοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς,
παντοδαπῶς δὲ κακοί). However, it seems
that when Aristotle uses one of these terms,
and the respective adjectives, he refers to the
notion of evil without qualification.
In this sense it can be said that human
beings who are kakoi, phauloi, or mochthe-roi
can be considered generically bad or evil17
and that, as has been rightly observed, these
words (to which can be added pone-ria18 as
well), must be consi­dered synonymous.19
Kakia,20 phaulote-s, and mochthe-ria,21 in
fact, represent the opposite pole to the good
(agathon): in the Aristotelian lexicon, as in
the Greek language there is a dynamic of ref-
erences and oppositions between the sphere
dominated by agathos and “the negative
determinations that coagulate themselves . . .
in phaulos.”22
This polarity also concerns things, given
that wickedness, or nastiness (meant here as
inadequacy) can also concern inanimate enti-
ties. There are excellent persons or houses that
function at their best and achieve their task,
their specific function (i.e. their ergon),23 and
there are evil persons and things, inadequate
to their function, that is, “un-functioning,”
“unsuccessful.”24 But within this polarity that
crosses without distinction both the animate
and inanimate universe, some important dif-
ferentiations can be found.
There are many ways to be wrong, and
each of these ways represents a kind of evil,
as confirmed, for instance, by the wide range
of evil passions and actions, linked, in NE
II.6, 1107a9–13, to the general notion of
phaulote-s:
Not every action or emotion however
admits the observance of a due mean.
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo

Indeed the very names of some directly
imply evil (phaulote-tos), for instance
malice (epichairekakia), shamelessness
(anaischuntia), envy (phthonos) and,
of actions, adultery (moicheia), theft
(klope-), murder (androphonia).25
And, as there are many ways to be phauloi,
there are also many ways to be kakoi, vicious.
Every vice, as excess or defect in comparison
with the right measure (i.e. with the good),
is an evil, but there are many ways to realize
vice, many ways to be excessive or defective.
It is no accident that Aristotle attributes dif-
ferent names to the modalities of realization
and externalization of evil:26
[excess] [defect]
However, this chapter does not focus on
these specific forms of moral evil, but on the
notion of moral evil before its specification.
It can be seen that this notion is intrinsi-
cally polymorphic, and that evil can be
spoken of in many ways not only because
many forms of evil exist27 but also because
moral evil itself is, for Aristotle, a πολλαχῶς
λεγόμενον.
Evil “suffered”
Evil destroys and does not build; it rips
and it does not mend; it cuts and it does
not bind. It strives always and everywhere
to annihilate, to turn to nothing.28

Irascibility Spiritlessness
As indicated in the introduction, the first
(o’ ργ ιλóτης) (ἀναλγησία) fundamental distinction in the notion of
Rashness (θρασυ′ της) Cowardice (δειλία)
evil is that between “evil suffered” and “evil
acted.”
Shamelessness Diffidence
(ἀναισχυντία) (κατάπληξις)
Evil “suffered” can be understood as
the evil a human being happens to suffer
Profligacy Insensitiveness
(ἀκολασία) (ἀναισθησία)
involuntarily and unexpectedly (paralogo-s),
something a person happens to experience
Envy (φθόνος) (nameless) (ἀνώ νυμον)
independently of his will29 and, therefore,
Profit (κέρδος) Loss (ζημία)
of his responsibility. It is a kind of evil that,
Prodigality Meanness
as we read in Rhetoric II.7, 1386a5–15,30
(ἀσωτία) (ἀνελευθερία)
moves us to pity:
Boastfulness Self-depreciation
(ἀλαζονεία) (εἰρωνεία)
Flattery (κολακεία) Surliness (ἀπέχθεια)
They are all painful and distressing
things that are also destructive, and
Subservience Stubbornness
all that are ruinous; and all evils of
(ἀρέσκεια) (αὐθάδεια)
which fortune is the cause, if they are
Luxuriousness Endurance great. Things dist­ressing and destruc-
(τρυφερότης) (κακοπάθεια) tive are various kinds of death, per-
Vanity Smallness of Spirit sonal ill-treatment and injuries, old
(χαυνότης) (μικροψυχία) age, disease, and lack of food. The
Extravagance Shabbiness evils for which fortune is responsible
(δαπανηρία) (μικροπρέπεια) are lack of friends, or few friends
Rascality Simpleness (wherefore it is pitiable to be torn
(πανουργία) (εὐήθεια) away from friends and intimates), ugli-
ness, weakness, mutilation; if some

243
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
misfortune comes to pass from a quar-
ter whence one might have reasonably
expected something good; and if this
happens often; and if good fortune
does not come until a man has already
suffered.
The wide and extremely varied gradations
of “evils that happen” all share the fact that
the person who suffers them is not responsi-
ble for their occurrence. This is an evil that,
stricto sensu, lies outside the ethical field
and concerns, instead, the physical or bio-
logical one.
Certainly, in some specific cases, as
Aristo­tle points out, one puts oneself in the
conditions of suffering evil (e.g. when one
becomes sick because he has not sufficiently
taken care of himself31), but in general, “evil
that happens,” like pain, suffering, and
death, can be counted among those “guilt-
less” evils that in German are expressed as
Übel, distinguishing them from the various
ramifications of “acted evil,” of “bad evil,”
namely of Böse.32 Among the forms of “suf-
fered evil” we can find death, pain (which
Aristotle defines as “disintegration,”33
an evil to avoid34), and the passions that
Aristotle deems neither good nor evil35
in and of themselves; they are something
that human beings cannot help but suffer,
as the term pathos itself says. It would be
like trying to persuade someone not to feel
warmth, pain, or hunger.36 The individual
happens to suffer these evils; people are in
a certain way possessed by them,37 and can-
not avoid them. In fact, Aristotle reminds
us in Eudemian Ethics VII.2, 1238a16–17,
that such evils are by nature under the influ-
ence of fortune and misfortune.38
Whether these human evils are the prod-
uct of an opposing tuche- or of an inescapable
Ate sent by the superior powers, according
244
to the ancient Greek religious conception,
or whether they are sent by God himself,
according to the hypothesis offered in MM
II.8,39 in any case, they lie beyond the hori-
zon of praxis and, therefore, outside the
sphere of the human being’s responsibility.40
However, in the Aristotelian view, seeing that
the human being is not responsible for the
occurrence of a certain kind of evil does not
mean that the person is completely exempt
from all responsibility.
On the contrary, asserts the Stagirite, it
is precisely in the face of the greatest evils
that the human being is called upon to show
his caliber. This does not mean being coura-
geous regardless of the cost, or not fearing
the evils at all. In fact, it would be absurd
not to fear some evils,41 given that they are
terrifying for anyone who has the use of
reason. These evils exceed the capacity of
human endurance42 and are so awful that,
faced with them, it is better to die or not
ever to have been born:
For many of life’s events are such that
they cause men to throw life away,
for instance, diseases, excessive pains,
storms; so that it is clear that on account
of these things any way it would actually
be preferable, if someone offered us the
choice, not to be born at all.43
There is no doubt that, faced with the devas-
tating chances of life, not even the wise per-
son is able to stand. In fact, the phronimos,
the person able to build a good life and to
provide it with stability, to base it on solid
foundations, is certainly capable of handling
little misadventures44 and of harmonizing
them within a happy existence,45 but he is
not able to be happy when faced with dev-
astating misadventures. In the face of terri-
ble evils, Aristotle teaches, wisdom itself is
helpless:

The happy man can never become mis-
erable; though it is true he will not be
supremely blessed if he encounters the
misfortunes of a Priam. Nor yet will
he be variable and liable to change; for
he will not be dislodged from his happi-
ness easily, nor by ordinary misfortunes,
but only by severe and frequent disaster,
nor will he recover from such disaster
and become happy again quickly.46
Thus, among the various forms of suffering,
understood as evil that occurs, we find both
pain (problematically defined by Aristotle as
passion and what follows it47) and passion,48
the nature of which is intrinsically polymor-
phic and shifting.49
While (1) passion, in itself, is neither good
nor bad but is something that unavoidably
occurs, it is also true that Aristotle asserts
that there are both (2) intrinsically good50
passions and (3) intrinsically bad ones.
Thus:
(1) In the first case, the person in whom
such passions occur cannot be consid-
ered culpable for them or responsible
for experiencing them, given that, as
we read in NE II.5, 1105b31–2, “nor
are we either praised or blamed for our
emotions.”
(2) The second case regards passions
explicitly defined as “praiseworthy” (see
EE III.7, 1234a24–7: “None of these
middle states, though praiseworthy,
are virtues, nor are the opposite states
vices, for they do not involve pur-
posive choice . . . each of them is an
emotion”).
(3) The third and most interesting case deals
with absolutely blameworthy and inher-
ently malicious passions. An emblem-
atic passage is found in Nicomachean
Ethics II, which offers a list of irreparably
245
ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
malicious passions, by which one always
goes wrong:
Not every action or emotion however
admits the observance of a due mean.
Indeed the very names of some directly
imply evil, for instance malice, shameless-
ness, envy . . . All these and similar actions
and feelings are blamed as being bad in
themselves; it is not the excess or deficiency
of them we blame. It is impossible therefore
ever to go right in regard to them–one must
always be wrong (ἀεὶ ἀμαρτάνειν).51
Evil “acted”
While, as we have briefly outlined, the first
form of evil, “suffered evil,” is almost com-
pletely excluded from the horizon of respon-
sibility, of what is up to us and then, more in
general, from the moral horizon stricto sensu,
the second form, the “evil we do” presents a
very different picture.
The Aristotelian texts identify subtle but
fundamental distinctions between various
kinds of “acted evil.” Each of these elements
will be reviewed briefly below.
Vice52
Vice as Chronic Disease
A first and fundamental form of “acted evil”
is vice. Aristotle compares a person marked
by vice, in particular the vice of intemper-
ance, to a consumptive. Consumption, unlike
more or less short-lived or episodic evils, is a
durable disease and thus all the more serious.
The psychological state of the wicked per-
son is worsened by the fact he does not even
know he is “ill,” that is, in the wrong:
All wicked men are ignorant of what
they ought to do and refrain from doing,
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
and this error is the cause of injustice
and of vice in general. . . . The ignorance
(agnoia) that makes an act blamewor-
thy is not ignorance displayed in moral
choice (that sort of ignorance constitutes
vice).53
The complex theme of ignorance will be
addressed below.
It should be noted that the ignorance that
characterizes the wicked person, far from
rendering the action involuntary and void
of responsibility, is precisely the constitutive
emblem of the vice itself. The person marked
by vice, in fact, acts not only completely
voluntarily,54 without compulsion,55 but also
by means of choice: in fact, he or she
does what is evil, and his rational Principle
consents thereto, and he believes that
he ought to do what he does, the guide
within him is diseased.56
The wicked person knowingly chooses to
behave in a certain manner (the wrong
one), but since he does not know that57 he
is wrong, does it without regrets and with-
out contrition; in fact, Aristotle notes, he
“does not feel remorse (οὐ μεταμελητικός),
for he abides by his choice (ἐμμένει . . . τῇ
προαιρέσει).”58
The wicked, therefore, does not experi-
ence internal conflict, the quarrel between
reason and desire,59 given that in him rea-
son and desire travel in the same direction:
the wrong one. The wicked person, in fact,
sees badly, since what is evil seems good to
him. So though he does not want evil,60 he is
directed to it. Aristotle explains:
The thing desired and wished is either
the good or the apparent good (ἢ τὸ
φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν).61
246
The good that the wicked person thinks he
aspires to is only an apparent good, but he
does not know that, because his habitus, his
capacity to “see” an end rightly has been
corrupted by wrong choices, by giving in
to desire and passions, all factors that irre-
versibly distort the ends.62 Expressed in
other terms, in the course of doing wrong
actions, perhaps initially obtorto collo, or
simply by imitating other people’s behavior,
one comes not to recognize the wickedness
of that action. Completely unaware of the
possibility of another reason,63 the person
marked by vice chooses in an incorrect way
and acts badly, like an archer aiming for the
wrong target. The fact that the archer aims
for the wrong target depends, precisely, on
the fact that his reason is ill and disposed
incorrectly (kako-s).64 The wicked person,
therefore, does not zero in on the right tar-
get because he sees and will always see evil:
the rooting of the wrong habitus, the per-
manent acquisition of a wrong perception
of reality, prevents him from taking other
views and, by means of desire, aiming, for
other targets.
Incontinence65
Incontinence as an Episodic Disease
The wicked person, therefore, is ill, and his/
her disease is chronic, like consumption or
dropsy.66 The incontinent, on the contrary,
who knows that what he is on the point of
doing (or even what he is doing) is wrong,
and yet does it the same, is compared by
Aristotle to the person affected by grand
mal, or to the drunk person, one who can
“go off his head” for a short period, but once
he comes to his senses, is absolutely and per-
fectly judicious.
The incontinent, therefore, at least
to a certain degree, knows,67 while the

intemperate, the wicked in a strict sense,
does not know (though, as we have seen, this
ignorance does not remove the responsibil-
ity). Notwithstanding the apparent exterior
similarity between incontinent and intemper-
ate behavior (seeing that both are mistaken
and directed in a wrong direction), they are
based on radical anthropological differences.
In fact, while the reason of the intemper-
ate person is diseased and prevents him/
her from making the right choice, that of
the incontinent person is healthy, solid, and
“uncorrupt.”68 This explains why Aristotle
holds that though the intemperate person is
more curable than the incontinent69 one, he is
in a worse condition than the person affected
by akrasia, because “the most precious part
of him is corrupted,”70 and he believes he
is acting rightly, and does not repent for
his actions. In fact, though the wicked per-
son is not divided in his inner being, and
though, exactly like the virtuous person, he
is endowed with a soul at peace,71 Aristotle is
of the mind that he is irreparably malicious,
because he has definitively acquired a habitus
he can no longer change.72 This habitus is so
deeply rooted and has so spoiled his phusis,
his perception of the world, that unlike the
incontinent who “repents (metamele-tikos),”73
he does not perceive the wrongness of his
choice.
The incontinent, on the contrary, sees the
true target well, given that his principle, his
reason, is in good condition, but desire, aim-
ing toward a different direction from that
indicated by reason, does not allow him to
aim rightly and makes him miss his aim.74
In this sense, as has been observed: “in
Aristotle’s view . . . the incontinent does not
think he ought to do the incontinent action
before he is influenced by his passion.”75
Reason conducts him in one direction and
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ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
desire in another, exactly as occurs with a
person whose limbs are paralyzed:
In continent and incontinent people we
approve their principle, or the rational
part of their souls, because it urges them
in the right way and exhorts them to the
best course; but their nature seems also
to contain another element beside that
of rational principle, which combats
and resists that principle. Exactly the
same thing may take place in the soul as
occurs with the body in a case of paraly-
sis: when the patient wills to move his
limbs to the right they swerve to the left;
and similarly in the incontinent person
their impulses run counter to their prin-
ciple. But whereas in the body we see the
erratic member, in the case of the soul we
do not see it.76
In this sense, the incontinent is of course ill,
given that he is unable to control himself.
He is unable to resist the impact of desires,
but his illness has not yet become chronic. In
other words, the incontinent person is inti-
mately divided and dissociated, experiencing
the interior laceration between the dictates
of reason and the inability to follow them,
because he “did not succeed in transforming
his life’s ideal in an e-thos.”77
Therefore the incontinent person is wrong
and knows he is wrong but, according to the
subtle distinctions of Aristotelian discourse,
he does not choose to do the wrong thing.
On this issue, Aristotle is very clear:
An incontinent person acts from desire
but not from choice;78
For incontinence acts against deliberate
choice, vice in accordance with it.79
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
The element of awareness of the act, in fact,
does not imply in itself the choice,80 since
proairesis, in Aristotle’s opinion, impli-
cates that synergy of reason and desire that,
instead, the internal divorce of the inconti-
nent excludes totally.
Virtue, on the contrary, just as vice,
involves choice (see NE VII.8, 1151a7: κατὰ
τὴν προαίρεσίν ἐστιν), namely the coopera-
tion between desire and reason toward the
attainment of the goal. In this sense, it can
be said81 that the incontinent is in some way
in an intermediate position between the tem-
perate and the intemperate, between one
who chooses rightly (and he chooses rightly
because, being virtuous, “he sees the truth in
each kind”82) and one who chooses wrongly.
In fact, the incontinent person does not
choose to do evil, yet he does it, pressed by
desire to a situation different from the one
indicated by reason.83
Incontinence is not vice, because it does
not involve choice, but also because vice
is what corrupts reason (“virtue preserves
the fundamental principle,84 vice destroys it
[phtheirei]”85), the reason that, instead, in the
incontinent is solid and in good condition, as
we have seen.86 In this sense Aristotle must
emphasize that
It is the intemperate who cannot be cured,
whereas the incontinent man can.87
Evil as error
A third form of “acted evil,” namely evil as
error, requires a much closer examination
because, in a certain way, it bridges the two
figures of “suffered” and “acted” evil. A fun-
damental passage of NE V.8, 1135b11–25
248
can be useful in beginning to examine this
notion:
There are then three ways in which a man
may injure his fellow. An injury done
in ignorance (μετ’ ἀγνοίας) is an error
(ἁμαρτήματά ἐστιν), the person affected
or the act or the instrument or the result
being other than the agent supposed;
for example, he did not think to hit, or
not with this missile, or not this person,
or not with this result, but it happened
that either the result was other than he
expected (for instance he did not mean
to inflict a wound but only a prick),
or the person, or the missile. When the
injury happens contrary to reasonable
expectation (paralogo-s), it is a misad-
venture (atuche-ma); when, though not
contrary to reasonable expectation, it is
done without evil intent, it is a culpable
error (ὅταν δὲ μὴ παραλόγως, ἄνευ δὲ
κακίας, ἁμάρτημα); for an error is cul-
pable when the cause of one’s ignorance
lies in oneself (ἁμαρτάνει μὲν γὰρ ὅταν
ἡ ἀρχὴ ἐν αὐτῷ ᾖ τῆς αἰτίας), but only a
misadventure when the cause lies outside
oneself (ἀτυχεῖ δ’ ὅταν ἔξωθεν). When
an injury is done knowingly but not delib-
erately (εἰδὼς μὲν μὴ προβουλεύσας),
it is an act of injustice or wrong; such,
for instance, are injuries done through
anger, or any other unavoidable or natu-
ral passion to which men are liable; since
in committing these injures and errors a
man acts unjustly, and his action is an
act of injustice, but he is not ipso facto
unjust or wicked, for the injury was not
done out of wickedness. When however
an injury is done from choice, the doer is
unjust and wicked.
The three kinds of damage or injury (τριῶν
δὴ οὐσῶν βλαβῶν) can be visualized in the
following table:
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo

Misadventures (ἀτυχήματα) Errors (ἁμαρτήματα) Unjust acts (ἀδικήματα)

Agent not guilty
[suffered evil]
(1) Contrary to reasonable
­expectation (παραλόγως)
Agent guilty but not wicked
[acted evil]
(1) Performed in state of
­ignorance (τὰ μὲν μετ’
ἀγνοίας)
(2) Not contrary to reason-
able expectation (μὴ
παραλόγως)
(3) Without evil intent (ἄνευ
κακίας)88
Agent guilty but not wicked
[acted evil]
(1) Acts performed knowingly
(εἰδὼς)
(2) But not deliberately (μὴ
προβουλεύσας)89
(3) Acts of injustice but not
wicked90 (ἄδικοι διὰ ταῦτα
οὐδὲ πονηροί)

Error91 lies somewhat midway between
misadventures, which are unexpected and
for which one is not responsible (and which,
therefore, lie within the notion of “suffered
evil”) and unjust acts (for which one is fully
responsible, and must therefore be counted as
one of the “acted evils”). Like unjust action,
error is certainly something voluntary, and
therefore something for which the person
must answer (and so, it is an “acted evil”
as well), but its connection to the notion of
ignorance makes it a very particular object,
sui generis.
On the other hand, the link between the
fundamental question of not knowing92 and
the notion of error, a link that raises many
important ethical and juridical questions
that cannot be addressed here,93 poses the
following question: if someone makes an
error because he does not know it is an error,
how is it possible to consider him responsi-
ble? Concerning this, the Stagirite establishes
a fundamental distinction for the notion of
ignorance, because of its implications for the
question of responsibility.
(1) An action can be performed in a state
of ignorance, in the sense that the
person puts himself in a condition of not
knowing. This kind of mistake, which
is unforgivable,94 depends on who does
it. This person, being the cause of his
own ignorance, is fully responsible for
the ignorance itself: “when ignorance is
the cause of an action, the agent acts
involuntarily and so is innocent; except
when he is the cause of his own igno-
rance. In that case, when he acts in
self-caused ignorance (ἀγνοίας αὐτὸς ᾖ
αἴτιος) [and harms another] he inflicts
a wrong, and will rightly be termed
unjust.”95
(2) But it can also be said that an action has
been done out of ignorance, that is, due
to ignorance.96 The person who does an
unjust action due to ignorance, namely
“without knowing either the person
injured, the instrument used, or the end
aimed at,”97 “is only unfortunate (ἀτυχεῖ
δέ).”98 In fact, when ignorance is the
cause of doing an action, this action is
not done voluntarily, and thus one does
not commit an injustice.99
Here we see in play again the question of
“suffered evil” that is not imputable to the
agent, and see how the various profiles of the
notion of evil interweave.

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 ˉ S LEGETAI
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Evil “acted”: concluding
remarks
Summing up briefly, evil can be performed
for a number of reasons.
(1) Because there is the choice (proairesis) to
perform it, and, in this case, one is “bad”
and “wicked,” namely, one has acquired
the habitus of vice (kakia). This kind of
person is faulty, from Aristotle’s perspec-
tive, not only because he performs evil,
but because he has acquired that specific
bad disposition (hexis).100
(2) Because one does not manage to control
himself, namely because one is charac-
terized by akrasia, a lack of self-control,
incontinence, and, in this case, goes
wrong and is aware of it. This person
does not so much choose to act wrongly
as he is swept into doing the wrong
action by passion;
(3) There are evils and errors done by one
who acts in state of ignorance (agnoia)
(a complex notion that requires many
distinctions). Such a person is considered
responsible for his own actions, but his
responsibility must always be calibrated
secundum quid.
In this brief overview of the notion of moral evil
in Aristotle it emerges that, in every case, evil in
and of itself is not desired because, as indicated
in the beginning of the NE and, more in general,
the overall teleological shape of the Aristotelian
view, everything aims for the good.
By nature (φύσει)101 the end is always a
good . . . but in contravention of nature
and by perversion (παρὰ φύσιν δὲ καὶ
διαστροφὴν) not the good but the appar-
ent good is the end.102
Evil, therefore, cannot be wanted by any-
one, and in fact it is wanted neither by the
250
wicked, who is inclined to it believing erro-
neously that it is good, nor by the inconti-
nent, who does not want it (given that the
incontinent person acts against his will and
performs an action that he himself thinks he
should not to do103 but, because of his weak-
ness, is attracted by it and so performs it,
though knowing it is evil). It is no accident
that Aristotle underlines that:
By nature good is the object of wish (ἡ
βούλησις φύσει μὲν τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἐστί),
but evil is also its object in contraven-
tion of nature (παρὰ φύσιν δὲ καὶ τοῦ
κακοῦ), by nature one wishes good,
against nature and by perversion one
even wishes evil.104
Nevertheless, Aristotle sees evil as a real-
ity to measure oneself against, to examine
analytically in its different forms and facets,
yet a reality that in many aspects is “insub-
stantial.” For the Stagirite, “there is nothing
that is good in itself or evil in itself; good
and evil can be applied to every category
of nature.”105 In other words, evil is experi-
enced, in many forms and in many ways, but
Aristotle refuses to make it an “autonomous”
reality. In this sense,
(1) Evil does not have a substantiality on
the ontological level. Given that there is
no principle of evil (and given that “evil
does not exist apart from things (οὐκ ἔστι
τὸ κακὸν παρὰ τὰ πράγματα,” as we
can read clearly in Metaphysics IX.9,
1151a17–18106), evil is reduced to priva-
tion107 or to defect.
(2) At the logical level, as well, it depends on
the notion of good.108
(3) Thus, on the ethical level, the question
of evil, as we have said before, is at once
formally excluded (because it is totally
extraneous to the teleological horizon
to which the human being belongs) and

rooted strongly and in myriad ways in
the ground of “human philosophy.”
It is true, according to Aristotle, that there
are no human beings who want evil,109 but
it is also true that there are many bad human
beings, and that human beings are wrong in
many ways.
When one reads Aristotle, it is important
not to yield to the temptation to simplify
all the articulations and variables of his dis-
course. Instead, one should try to let the poly-
chromy of his discourse live and respect it
as such, integrating the various components
in order to delineate as much as possible
the extreme variety and richness of reality.
“Each thought structure, or truth system, is
an instrument through which the world can
be understood and integrated . . . Perceptions
of reality are multiple, and truth systems are
multiple. Multiplicity produces a view of
the world that is rich and broad. This atti-
tude toward truth means the rejection of all
reductionism.”110
So in Aristotle evil can be “said in many
ways,” and not only because it has many
facets, but because moral evil itself is
many things. In fact, evil is each of the vices,
but not only,111 for some evils exceed the
strict horizon of vice (as in the case of “bad”
passions, or incontinence and—a question
not examined here—of brutishness112), yet
they are and remain evils.
Evil can be committed because one does
not know, or because one is not capable of
restraining oneself, or because one does not
succeed in avoiding the excess or the defect,
failing to follow the fundamental rule of the
golden mean, or one can be wrong even by
simply acting or by feeling a passion, given
that, as we have seen, there are intrinsically
malicious passions and actions, to which one
cannot apply the rule of the golden mean
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ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
since these are always wrong.113 In any case,
at least “acted” evil—given that there is and
there can be no responsibility for “suffered”
evil—is voluntary, albeit not wished for (but
per accidens).
To come back to the initial quotation,
then, evil has many forms (polueides), or in
other words, it is a πολλαχῶς λεγόμενον.
But these different forms are united, avoid-
ing dispersion and, at the same time, the
equivocity or homonymy of the term kakon,
by the fact that all these forms of evil (both
moral and, more generally, linked to the
ontological, physical, or logical spheres)
concern a common term, pros hen.114 Evil,
in fact, in every case and in the different
meanings that it assumes, indicates a bad
functioning, a failed realization of one’s
ergon, of one’s nature (phusis). The soul
of a wicked man115 who does not know
what good is functions badly. The soul of
an incontinent person, who does not con-
trol his desire and channel it into a right
end functions badly. In terms of ontology, a
being that does not direct itself completely
toward its ultimate end,116 that is hindered
in the process toward the realization of
its form and toward the good, functions
badly.
Aristotelian thought does not have a prin-
ciple of evil;117 evil as separate substance is
not envisioned. But evil is inside the sub-
stance when it fails to realize itself, when it
lacks the capacity to follow its nature118 and,
therefore, to realize it.119 Because if it is true
that
Man is one of the things that are excel-
lent by nature,120
it is also true that
A bad man can do ten thousand times
more harm than an animal.121
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
In this sense, according to Aristotle, evil not
only exists, but exists in many ways. Indeed,
even more, in endless ways.122
Arianna Fermani
Notes
 1
The translation of Magna Moralia is (with
some alterations) by G. C. Armstrong, 2006.
From now on the work will be cited as MM.
 2
The translation of Nicomachean Ethics is
(with some alterations) by H. Rackham, 1962.
 3
The notion of evil has many shades of mean-
ing: ontological, metaphysical, gnoseological,
but also anthropological and political. It is
obviously impossible to examine all these
meanings and their implications in this paper.
There is the notion of stere-sis (approached,
specifically, in Metaphysics V.22), the fun-
damental articulation of the notion of evil
in ontological-metaphysical terms. Another
fundamental question for the understand-
ing of evil in ontological terms is matter (see
Fitzgerald, 1965, 59–78 and Owens, 1965,
79–93). For an overview of the fundamental
articulations of the notion of evil in the three
ethical treatises, consult the heading Male/
Mali in my Indice ragionato dei concetti, in
Fermani, 2008, 1295–6.
 4
There is a great debate about the authentic-
ity of the three ethical treatises and, in par-
ticular, about MM, which is generally held
to be doubtful. I cannot pursue the ques-
tion here, but encourage the reader to see
my Saggio Introduttivo, in Fermani, 2008,
XCVIIIff.
 5
See NE I.1, 1094a3: “Good is that at which all
things aim” (τἀγαθόν, οὗ πάντ’ ἐφίεται).
 6
See, for instance, besides NE VI.13, 1144b4ff.,
MM I.34, 1197b37–1987a1: “in every prov-
ince there is a kind of excellence which arises
spontaneously by nature; irrational impulses
towards what is brave and just”; MM II.3,
1199b38–1200a1: “we have stated that in the
case of those virtues which arise by nature,
the mere impulse towards what is good exists
apart from reason.”
252
 7
It is no coincidence that Russell, 1977,
149, n. 16, considers it best not to dwell on
Aristotelian’s thought at all: “I do not treat
the work of Aristotle here for two reasons.
First, the influence of Aristotle upon subse-
quent thought before his revival in the twelfth
century was minimal in comparison with
that of Plato. Second, Aristotle for the most
part turned back from Plato’s dualism in the
direction of monism. All motion comes from
the First Cause and is directed toward the
Final Cause. Good and Evil are not separate
forms.” It is viewed differently by Bolotin,
1999, 159–69. “Although Greek has no word
that quite corresponds to the English word
‘evil,’ Aristotle speaks clearly enough of what
we have in mind when we say that Hitler and
Stalin were evil” (159).
 8
In this context, the very important figure of
Socrates cannot be examined; we can only
refer, among others, to Burger, 2008.
 9
See NE II.6, 110b29–31.
10
This theme would have had in Aristotle, dif-
ferently from other philosophers, “a sort of
eclipse” (Brogi, 2006, 43, my translation).
11
Naturally this is only one of the possible
articulations of the theme. Russell suggests
an analogous distinction: “A distinction is
conventionally made between ‘natural evil’
and ‘moral evil.’ Natural evil consists of
destructive ‘acts of God’ or of nature, such as
tornadoes or cancer, and moral evil proceeds
from the will of a human or other intelligent
being” (Russell, 1977, 24). Another division
is that offered in the work Divisions (I do not
deal here with the wide and debated question
of the authenticity of this work; see E. Berti,
in Rossitto, 2005, 5ff.). Division 57 distin-
guishes, in fact, in accordance with the divi-
sion of the goods, evil of the soul (as injustice),
of the body (as disease), and exterior evils
(hard luck).
12
Radice and Bombacigno, 2005.
13
The adjective kakos means: “of person: bad”;
“of things: evil, pernicious,” while as substan-
tive, it means: “evil, ill” (Liddell-Scott, 1961,
863).
14
Phaulote-s: “badness, of persons and things”
(Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1920).

15
“Bad condition; mostly in the moral sense:
wickedness, depravity” (Liddell-Scott, 1961,
1149).
16
Consider, for example, the term kakia (which
occurs 122 times in the whole corpus, 40 in
NE, 15 in MM, and 15 in EE), or the adjec-
tives phaulos (384 total occurrences, of which
71 in NE, 73 in MM, and 26 in EE) and
aischros (meaning: causing shame, dishonor-
ing, base; 107 total occurrences, of which 38 in
NE, 3 in MM, and 5 in EE).
17
Mochthe-ros: in bad condition . . . knav-
ish, rascally (Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1149);
phaulos has, among the other meanings,
mean, bad (Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1919). On
the social-political level, all these figures, as
observed by Silvia Gastaldi, 1987, have in
common the fact of being excluded by the
(very restricted, to tell the truth) circle of the
best men (see, in particular, Gastaldi, 1987,
69–70).
18
Pone-ros: “in moral sense, worthless, knavish”
(Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1447). The a-specific
meaning of pone-ros is attested by Rhetoric II,
1401b, in which we read that “all thieves are
bad (pone-roi).”
19
See Gastaldi, 1987, 70. Others view it dif-
ferently, for instance, Develin, 1973, 71–9,
76–7; Irrera, 2008, 289–313, 293, n. 10, who
does not think that phaulos can be considered
synonymous with kakos (although Irrera
reminds us, rightly, that phaulos, in EE VIII.3,
1249b16–21, is opposed to kalos, beauty. For
more on the topic of beauty and its links with
the notion of good, we refer to Irrera, 2011, in
particular 48ff.
20
“Badness in quality, opp. ἀρετή (excellence) . . .
moral badness, vice” (Liddell-Scott, 1961,
861).
21
Mochthe-ria: “mostly in moral sense, wicked-
ness, depravity” (Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1149).
22
Gastaldi, 1987, 65.
23
See Gastaldi, 1987, 91.
24
The same can be said for the notion of
mochthe-ria, which, in addition to the already
mentioned meanings, also means “lack of skill,
incapacity” (Liddell-Scott, 1961, 1149).
25
Speaking of the different kinds of evil actions
and of their various implications on the
juridical level, in NE IX.3, 1165b12, the term
253
ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
kakourgia also appears, a term that in English
can be translated as “wrongdoing.”
26
EE II.3, 1220b4–1221a12. The translation of
Eudemian Ethics is by H. Rackham, 1971.
27
See Fermani, 2012, chapter “Modulazioni della
nozione di vizio,” 135ff.
28
Russell, 1977, 23.
29
On the widely discussed topic of will and of
its link with the notion of freedom and of free
will, see Gauthier-Jolif, 2002, II, 1, 218ff. I
share fully the opinion of Berti, expressed in
“Ragione pratica e normatività in Aristotele”
(Berti, 2008, 25–38): “The rational desire of
the end, that is of the Good, for Aristotle is the
‘will’ (βούλησις), which is not free, because
whether it has as its object a real Good or an
apparent Good depends on character (ἦθος):
the will of the virtuous person has, in fact,
as its object a real Good, while the one of
the vicious man has as its object an apparent
Good” (37, my translation).
30
The translation of Rhetoric is by J. H. Freese,
1959.
31
NE III.5, 1114a4–7: “men are themselves
responsible for having become careless through
living carelessly, as they are for being unjust
or profligate if they do wrong or pass their
time in drinking and dissipation. They acquire
a particular quality by constantly acting in a
particular way.”
32
See X. Tilliette, 2001, 11.
33
“Pain is the destruction (ἡ λύπη φθορά)” (NE
X.2, 1173b7).
34
NE X.2, 1172b19: “pain is intrinsically an
object of avoidance at all.” All pain, in fact, “is
either absolutely evil, or evil as being in some
way an impediment to activity” (NE VII.13,
1153b1ff.).
35
In reality there are various articulations of the
notion of passion, as we have seen well above.
36
NE III.5, 1113b28–30: “nobody tries to
encourage us to do things that do not depend
upon ourselves and are not voluntary, since it
is no good our being persuaded not to feel heat
or pain or hunger or the like, because we shall
feel them all the same.”
37
“When I am afraid, something is frightening
me; when I am angry, something is angering
me. When in general I am experiencing an
emotion or feeling of the sort which Aristotle
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
would call a pathos, something is affecting me”
(Kosman, 1980, 104–5).
38
While in EE VIII.2, 1247b3–4 it is stated that
luck is “a cause of goods or evils.”
39
MM II.8, 1207a7–8: “we look to God, as
controlling good and evil things.”
40
See, for instance, Vegetti, 1996, 26.
41
NE III.5, 1115a22–4: “nor yet is a man cow-
ardly if he fears insult to his wife and children,
or envy, or the like; nor courageous if he
shows a bold face when about to undergo a
flogging.”
42
“There are some terrors which we pronounce
beyond human endurance, and these of course
are fearful to everyone in his senses”
(NE III.10, 1115b6–7). Those who, faced with
these evils, go wrong, must be excused, since
these evils are unbearable for human nature:
“in some cases again, such submission though
not praised is condoned, when a man does
something wrong through fear of penalties that
impose too great a strain on human nature
(τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν), and that no one
could endure” (NE III.1, 1110a23–6).
43
EE I.5, 1215b18–22.
44
“The accidents of fortune are many and vary
in degree of magnitude; and although small
pieces of good luck, also of misfortune, clearly
do not change the whole course of life, yet
great and repeated successes will render it
more blissful, since both of their own nature
they help to embellish it, and also they can
be nobly and virtuously utilized” (NE I.11,
1100b18–33).
45
“The happy man therefore will possess the ele-
ment of stability in question, and will remain
happy all his life; since he will be always or at
least most often employed in doing and con-
templating the things that are in conformity
with virtue. And he will bear changes of for-
tunes most nobly, and with perfect propriety
in every way, being as he is ‘good in very truth’
and ‘four-square without reproach’” (NE I.10,
1100b18–22).
46
NE I.11, 1101a6–13. Even if these evils cannot
be endured and even if in the moment in which
the wise person experiences them he cannot be
happy, he, unlike other human beings, has the
possibility of looking toward the recomposi-
tion of that ordered whole that is the good
life. For further development of this idea, see
Fermani, 2006, 102ff.
254
47
In fact, both in EE II.2, 1220b12–14, NE II.5,
1105b21–3, and in MM I.7, 1186a12–14, a list
of passions is proposed and identified as those
phenomena followed by pleasure and pain.
Elsewhere, instead, pleasure is identified with
pathos. In NE II.3, 1105a1–3, in fact, we read
that “the susceptibility to pleasure has grown up
with all of us from the cradle. Hence this feeling
(τὸ πάθος) is hard to eradicate.” Also more
clearly, in MM I.8, 1186a33–4, we read that “the
affections are . . . themselves pains or pleasures
(τὰ δὲ πάθη ἤτοι λῦπαί εἰσιν ἢ ἡδοναὶ).”
48
On this topic see Konstan and Rutter, 2003.
49
I am not able here to focus on the different
articulations of the notion of pathos. See
the chapter “La passione come nozione ‘in
molti modi polivoca’” in Fermani, 2012,
155ff.
50
They are passions that arise in some way
already good and measured: see NE II.7,
1108a30–1: “there are also modes of observing
a mean in the sphere of and in relation to the
emotions (εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ ἐν τοῖς παθήμασι καὶ
περὶ τὰ πάθη μεσότητες).”
51
NE II.6, 1107a8–15. For a comment on this
passage, similar to EE II.3, 1221b18–26, see
Gauthier-Jolif, 2002, II, 2, 151–2.
52
For a deep analysis of this notion see, among
others, Brickhouse, 2003.
53
NE III.1, 1110b31–2.
54
Vice is something voluntary, as is written in
NE III.5, 1113b16–17; 1114a21–2.
55
This is one of the fundamental criteria for
considering an action voluntary.
56
MM II.6, 1203a27–9. Choice, in addition
to awareness and disposition, constitutes for
Aristotle the mark of virtuous and wicked
actions. See NE II.4, 1105a28–33 “acts done
in conformity with the virtues are not done
justly or temperately if they themselves are of
a certain sort, but only if the agent also is in
a certain state of mind when he does them:
first he must act with knowledge; secondly he
must deliberately choose the act, and choose
it for its own sake; and thirdly the act must
spring from a fixed and permanent disposition
of character.” In this sense it can be said that
the temperate and the intemperate person act
knowingly, on the basis of a choice and of a
sound habitus and that, therefore, their action
is deeply different from those of the enkrate-s
and of akrate-s. But it is a difference that, as it

has been rightly stated, is only interior, since
their exterior behavior proves identical (see
Gould, 1999, 377: “The enkrate-s and the
sophron differ internally but not in their exter-
nal behaviour”).
57
“L’ignorance du vicieux est en réalité une
erreur, ἁμαρτία . . . lorsque nous disons qu’il
ignore ce qu’il doit faire, nous devrions dire en
réalité qu’il se trompe sur ce qu’il doit faire;
le mot grec, ἀγνοεῖ, a les deux sens, ce qui
permet à Aristote de passer facilement de l’un
à l’autre” (Gauthier-Jolif, 2002, II, 1, 183).
58
NE VII.7, 1150b29–30.
59
This is the most characteristic sign of the
incontinent. As stated by Woods, 1990,
229: “Thus, the phenomenon of akrasia is
associated by Aristotle, as by many other
philosophers, with the possibility of a strug-
gle or conflict between the rational and the
non-rational elements in a human being. The
outcome of the struggle may be that reason
fails to maintain its position.”
60
The topic of will is discussed further at the end
of the paper.
61
EE VII.2, 1235b25–6.
62
See Natali, 1989, 92.
63
Cupido, 2002, 142, says that, differently from
the incontinent, “the akolastos . . . is bad and
not tragic because he . . . ignores totally the
possibility of ‘another reason,’ and therefore
the experience of the conflict” (my translation).
64
See NE VI.12, 1144a34–6: “vice perverts the
mind and causes it to hold false views about
the first principles of conduct.”
65
The very widely studied issue of incontinence
obviously cannot be examined in depth here.
For more on this notion and its problemati-
cal links with that of kakia consult Fermani,
2009, and the chapter “Lungo i sentieri della
continenza e dell’incontinenza” in Fermani,
2012, 101–25. Some of the contributions I
have found especially helpful are Vigo, 2011,
325–57; Irwin, 2008 (this is a very interesting
essay because it is one of the few taking into
account the important contribution given by
the Magna Moralia).
66
NE VII.8, 1150b33: “vice resembles disease
like dropsy and consumption.”
67
The awareness of the incontinent is a moot
point. Some scholars, as for instance Price,
1995, suggest introducing a distinction
255
ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
between hard akrasia and soft akrasia (see
Cupido, 2002, 165).
68
MM II.6, 1203a17. “‘Ακρασία . . . is a defect
affecting part of the soul, not the whole of it.’
More specifically, ‘the uncontrolled person
does not have his entire soul corrupt, but in
a way possesses reason’ . . . In the acratic the
desires are corrupted but reason is not, in
contrast both with the ἀκόλαστος, in whom
both parts are corrupt, and with the virtuous
person, in whom both parts are uncorrupted”
(Sedley, 1999, 164).
69
“For if a rational Rule were set up within
him which showed him that his deeds were
evil, he would cease to do them; whilst the
self-indulgent possesses that Rule or Principle
and yet does evil; so that one might regard him
as incurable” (MM II.6, 1203a9–12). The same
question of “curability,” moreover, acquires
further articulations in connection with the
notion of incontinence. Aristotle, in fact, in
NE VII.10, 1152a27–31, reminds us that
“reformation is more possible with that type
of unrestraint which is displayed by person of
an excitable temperament than it is with those
who deliberate as to what they ought to do,
but do not keep to the resolution they form.
And those who have become unrestrained
through habit are more easily cured than those
who are unrestrained by nature, since habit is
easier to change than nature; for even habit is
hard to change, precisely because it is a sort of
nature.”
70
MM II.6, 1203a12–13.
71
In this sense, if on the one hand, it can be said
that both the soul of the temperate and that of
the intemperate are characterized by harmony
(as has been observed by Woods, 1990, 232),
on the other hand it is correct to say that “the
akratic agent is not the only one who confronts
an enemy within. For, like the akrate-s, the en­
k­rate-s struggles with unruly desires, but unlike
him, successfully enlists the force of rationality
to subdue them” (Gould, 1999, 369). As stated
by Achtenberg, 1991, 70, the continent person
is one who acts according to the right logos
without desiring it.
72
See Vigo, 2011, in particular 351ff.
73
NE VII.7, 1150b30–1.
74
“Several times in Book 7 Aristotle affirms
that the incontinent has the right decision
 ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
(προαίρεσις) and acts against it. The MM
describes what is sound in the incontinent
person by saying that he has correct reason
that opposes his going after the things that his
appetite leads him toward” (Irwin, 2008, 35).
75
Irwin, 2008, 34–5.
76
NE I.13, 1102b14–24.
77
Vigo, 2011, 338: “el incontinente no ha
logrado transformar su ideal de vida en un
ἦθος, sino que carácter e ideal de vida per-
manecen en él ampliamente disociados.” On
the importance of the process of formation of
dispositions (hexeis) and for a correct interpre-
tation of the complex figure of incontinence
see Vigo, 2011, 338ff.
78
NE III.2, 1111b13–14.
79
NE VII.8, 1151a8–9.
80
Or at least, clarifies Aristotle, with the extreme
suppleness that always characterizes his
thought, does not exclude it (see NE II.5,
1106a4–5: “the virtues are certain modes of
choice, or at all events involve choice”).
81
As done, for instance, by Vigo, 2011, 354.
82
NE III.4, 1113a32–3. “For the good man
judges everything correctly; what things truly
are, that they seem to him to be, in every
department” (NE III.4, 1113a29–31).
83
“En atención a esta particolar disociación inte-
rior, puede decirse que el incontinente ocupa,
desde el punto de vista sistemático, una suerte
de posición intermedia entre el temperante y
el intemperante. Tanto el temperante como,
paradójicamente, también el intemperante
revelan, cada uno a su manera, una integración
unitaria de ἦθος e ideal de vida” (Vigo, 2011,
354).
84
The identification between principle and
logos is attested unmistakably by MM II.6,
1203a15–16: ἔτι ἐστὶν ὁ λόγος ἑκάστου
ἀρχή (“each possess a rational Principle as his
guide”).
85
NE VII.8, 1151a15–16.
86
“That is why he takes the claim that the
incontinent has correct reason to be equivalent
to the claim that he has the correct principle
(ἀρχή, 1203a15)” (Irwin, 2008, 36).
87
NE VII.8, 1150b32.
88
Literally “without vice.”
89
Probouleusas, the aorist participle of pro­
bouleuo-, implicates directly the notion of
bouleusis, that is of evaluation. The latter con-
stitutes precisely the discriminating element in
256
relation to the notions of virtue and vice and,
more in general, of “habitual state.” In fact,
only if there is choice can one strictly speak
of vice. On the contrary, as pointed out in the
passage in question, one can act with aware-
ness, for example, on the basis of heat and of
the other passions, but if there is no choice,
there cannot be vice stricto sensu.
90
In fact, one can act unjustly without having the
habitus of vice, namely without being wicked.
91
And as it is confirmed by other analogous pas-
sages. See, for instance, Rhet. I.13, 1374b5–10.
92
We have partly focused on the question, ana-
lyzing the notion of vice.
93
On the question of responsibility inside the
juridical field, see Villers, 1989.
94
“In the case of the intoxicated, for example,
those who do harm under the influence of
drink inflict a wrong; since they are the cause
of their own ignorance (τῆς γὰρ ἀγνοίας αὐτοί
εἰσιν αἴτιοι). They were free to refrain from the
excess which robbed them of their wits, and
allowed them [for example] to strike a father.
And so it is with all other kinds of self-caused
ignorance. Those who inflict injury therein, are
unjust; while those who act in ignorance of
which they are not the cause–whose ignorance,
on the contrary, is of itself the cause of their
acting as they do–are not unjust” (MM I.33,
1195a31–7). It is very interesting to notice
how the distinction, on the ethical level,
between two forms of ignorance has an exact
confirmation on juridical ground. As Aristotle
reminds us in Pol. II.12, 1274b18–23, the
ancient legislator Pittacus made a law contem-
plating the fact that one who commits a crime
because of drunkenness, not only must not be
absolved, but must be doubly punished: “a
special law of his is that if men commit an
assault when drunk they are to pay a larger
fine than those who offend when sober;
because since more men are insolent when
drunk than when sober he had regard not to
the view that drunken offenders are rightly
held less guilty, but to expediency” (the transla-
tion of Politics is by H. Rackham, 1959).
95
MM I.33, 1195a28–31. For more on the
nexus between ignorance and injustice refer to
Fermani, 2007, in particular 183 ff.
96
On the distinction between action done out
of lack of knowledge and not knowing see
Bertrand, 2004, 33–41.

97
MM I.33, 1195a.
98
MM I.33, 1195a24.
99
MM I.33, 1195a28–9. A similar picture is
provided in NE V.8, 1136a5–9: “Of involuntary
actions some are pardonable and some are not.
Errors not merely committed in ignorance but
caused by ignorance are pardonable; those com-
mitted in ignorance, but caused not by that igno-
rance but by unnatural or inhuman passion, are
unpardonable.” On the question of ignorance
and of its links with error, a theme that cannot
be pursued here, refer to my paper “L’errore, il
falso e le scienze in Aristotele” (forthcoming).
100
NE III.5, 1114a10–11: “only an utterly
senseless person can fail to know that our
characters are the result of our conduct.”
101
On the topic of nature we will return before
long.
102
EE II.10, 1227a18–22.
103
NE V.9, 1136b6–9: “the incontinent man . . .
acts contrary to wish, since no one wishes for
a thing that he does not think to be good, and
the incontinent man does what he thinks he
ought not to do.”
104
EE II.10, 1227a28–30.
105
Russell, 1977, 149, n. 16.
106
Metaphysics IX.9, 1051a17–18. The transla-
tion of Metaphysics is by H. Tredennik, 2003.
107
See notes 3 and 118.
108
As seen clearly in Topics, in which we read
that evil must be defined in relation to
good, and not the contrary (see Topics VI.9,
147b17–25).
109
There are neither technologies nor sciences
that aim for it. See, for instance, the already
quoted passage of the beginning of the NE (I.1,
1094a1ff.): “every art and every investiga-
tion, and likewise every practical pursuit or
undertaking, seems to aim at some good”; MM
I.1, 1182a34–5: “no science and no faculty
exists for the sake of an evil end (οὐδεμία γὰρ
οὔτ’ἐπιστήμη οὔτε δύναμις ἕνεκεν κακοῦ
ἐστίν).”
110
Russell, 1977, 37.
111
There are those who, like Bolotin, 1999, 160,
reduce the theme of evil to that of injustice:
“Aristotle does, of course, discuss the theme
of evil, or injustice, in his political writings”
(my italics).
257
ˉ S LEGETAI
TO KAKON POLLACHo
112
On this topic refer to Fermani, 2012, chapter
“L’eccesso nel vizio: l’esempio della bestial-
ità,” 138ff.
113
See NE II.6, 1107a8–15.
114
For more on the very complex topic of pros
hen or focal meaning, see Owen, 1986;
Ferejohn, 1980.
115
“The function of man is the active exercise of
the soul’s faculties in conformity with rational
principle” (NE I.7, 1098a7–8).
116
See, for instance, Riconda, 2011, 26–7.
117
Russell, 1977, 149: “The thought of
Aristotle . . . did not admit a principle of
evil.” “There was nothing in the thought of
Aristotle to encourage the concept of a prin-
ciple of evil, or its personification. Unformed
matter as such, hule, may hinder progress
toward the ultimate goal, but it cannot be
considered a principle of evil” (Russell, 1977,
149, n. 16).
118
Privation, in fact, means precisely the incapac-
ity of something to be and, therefore, to real-
ize itself: “We speak of ‘privation’: a) in one
sense, if a thing does not possess an attribute
which is a natural possession” (Met. V.22,
1022b22–4).
119
The notion of nature has, in Aristotle, both
descriptive and normative value.
120
EE VII.2, 1237a16.
121
NE VII.6, 1150a7–8.
122
“Evil is a form of the unlimited (τὸ γὰρ
κακὸν τοῦ ἀπείρου)” (NE II.6, 1106b29–30).
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227–61.
Polis
 13
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-
POLITICAL ENERGEIA1
Introduction: Education and
the unity of ethics and politics
as one first philosophical
inquiry
This essay joins a body of work2 arguing
that—for Aristotle and not only for him—(1)
ethics and politics are one inquiry, and (2)
that inquiry is first philosophical, and that
these two claims are true because of the first
philosophical character of this inquiry’s gov-
erning concepts. To speak of this inquiry as
first philosophical is likely jarring. What is
meant by the term here is that the proper
object of this ethico-political inquiry rests
beyond the limits of all actual or possible
arrangements of civic institutions, even as it
is always pursued through the consideration
of such institutions. It is in this sense that I
shall here argue for the first philosophi-
cal dimensions of education as the primary
mode by which human beings fulfill their
nature as political animals within the polis
as an “organic whole” and not as the aggre-
gation of natural beings and artificial prod-
ucts. Following this interpretive approach,
my conclusion is that education uniquely
effects this being-toward-an-ordered-whole
263
of the polis. For this reason, I will argue that
it is in education that we must seek the first
philosophical ground of Aristotle’s thinking
about the ethical and political, on the ground
of the orienting claim to be enunciated and
defended here: the first philosophical charac-
ter of ethics and politics as one inquiry is the
result of the context independence of educa-
tion.3 My ultimate contention that education
is the ethico-political energeia will bring to
light just what about the governing concepts
of Aristotle’s ethics and politics makes them
first philosophical.4
The case for education’s status as the
political activity that underwrites the first
philosophical character of the inquiry into
the political is based on the following three
claims. (1) To take on a virtue is to actualize
with respect to the universal that which has
already been actualized with respect to the
particular in one’s own soul.5 This claim is
the focus of the next section, where I turn
to the analysis of learning as an alteration
(in Physics VII.3, 245b–248a) to argue that
learning, a unique kind of change or motion
(kine-sis), is the energeia of an energeia,
and not the energeia of a dunamis. Calling
attention to the aporetic element of this
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
claim—namely, that the great explanatory
power of the energeia-dunamis model comes
from the fact that each energeia is the energeia
of a dunamis;6 while Phys. VII.3 claims that
when one learns, one actualizes an actuality
rather than a potency—I shall also make a
brief case for the uniqueness of education as
the “actualization of an actuality,” in distinc-
tion from the account of first and second
actuality in De Anima.
On the basis of this understanding of edu-
cation from Phys., I will put forward the
second and third claims; viz: (2) music has
a very profound function in this learning; (3)
such learning comes to be in and through the
cultivation of phrone-sis. These claims form
the focus of the concluding section, where
the anomaly of education as the actualization
of the actualization of the universal in the
particular, in one’s own soul, is explained
through a close reading of key moments in
Aristotle’s account of education in Politics
VII and VIII. Here we will see how the intri-
cate interrelation of the attunement of the
part of the soul that takes on virtues of char-
acter and the actualization of the universal
constitutive of the virtues of intellect is itself
conditioned on, or at least most likely to
occur through, the institutionalization of an
education that is both common to all citizens
and grounded in music.
Understanding learning as
energeia of an energeia:
Physics VII.3
Phys. VII is concerned with the relation of
mover and moved. It is in this context, some-
what surprisingly, that Aristotle provides
his most sustained account of learning as a
unique activity, as an energeia of an energeia.
264
Our surprise might arise from an expectation
that such an account should be found in the
Organon, the works devoted to a theory of
knowledge and of scientific method.7 If not
there, we might suspect, then in some one
or other of the “political” works, where the
practice and institutionalization of learn-
ing is discussed at length. In concluding this
section, we return to the significance of the
account’s textual origin; for now, let us come
to terms with its details.
Phys. VII.3 elucidates the difference
between coming-into-being (genesis) and
alteration (alloio-sis). The heart of the matter
is this: coming-into-being involves the first
creation of something in some other thing,
while alteration is merely the morphing of
something already present in a thing into
something else in that thing. Without losing
ourselves too much in this argument, itself
subordinated to other arguments concern-
ing the relationship between movers and that
which they move, what is of interest to us is
the example that Aristotle chooses to make
this distinction clear. His example is virtue
acquisition, making quite clear that any dis-
cussion of the human good and its cultivation
through education is ultimately an instance
of a natural process.
Aristotle begins (246a10–17) by argu-
ing that—since (1) it is when each thing is
“most in accord with its nature” (μάλιστα
ἔστι τὸ κατὰ φύσιν) that it is “complete” (tel-
eion), and (2) when each thing is complete
it “takes on its virtue”—virtue is “a certain
completion” (teleio-sis tis), just as a circle is
“complete” (teleios) when it has most of all
become a circle and is “best.” For this reason,
no hexis can be an alteration, neither those of
the body nor those of the soul. What is most
immediately striking here is the fact that the
achievement of completion or perfection in
a human being when they act virtuously is
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
said to be “just like” when a circle has been
drawn completely, and achieves the inner
completion and perfection of being a circle.
This is especially striking as it contradicts
what Metaphysics says about the actuality
of mathematical entities: a geometric figure,
and that of which it is composed, never actu-
alizes a potency precisely because such enti-
ties are not by nature, but abstractions from
nature. Is Aristotle simply being sloppy here
in Phys. VII? I suggest that the actualization
of a potency he has in mind here is compat-
ible with the account of the mathematicals
in Met.; while he is there concerned with
the being of the thing known in itself, he is
here addressing the connection between the
circle-as-universal in the soul of the knower
and the circle-as-universal in the soul of
the learner, and not the circle-as-universal
as such. In this sense, the completion of
the awareness of the circle as universal in
the learner, occasioned by that learner’s
becoming-aware of their existing awareness
of some particular circle, does involve such
an actualization of a potency. Here, though,
and unlike in the discussion of the comple-
tion of the circle in Met., the alteration is
not in the ontological status of that which is
known, but in the taking-on of (intellectual)
virtue in the learner’s soul.
To illustrate the need of this conclusion’s
necessity, Aristotle evokes (in 246a18–b3)
one of his favored images, comparing the
acquisition of virtue to the building of a
house: just as we would never call the com-
pletion (teleio-ma) of a house an alteration,
so too virtues are “completions” (teleio-seis)
and not alterations. Here, too, Aristotle com-
pares unlike things—though a house being
built and a human being taking on virtue
are less unlike than the latter and a circle
“coming-into-being” are. But again, our
surprise is meant to be aroused. Aristotle is
265
saying here—in Phys., recall—that all these
ways of coming-into-being are alike precisely
in that each involves an internal completion
of a potency within the thing (the circle, the
house, the human being) itself.
Having asserted that the virtues come into
being and are not alterations, Aristotle (in
247a5–9) asks how they come into being,
concluding that it must be through the altera-
tion of the perceptive part (of the soul), and
that such alteration must be brought about
in the perceiver’s soul by the perceptible
things themselves, specifically by causing the
perceiver to perceive this same thing in a dif-
ferent way. This is so because “all virtue is
involved with pleasures and pains,” and it is
through the alteration of perception that the
human being comes to perceive the proper
objects as pleasurable and painful, and thus
to be capable of virtuous action.8 Those
familiar with the definitive account of virtue
acquisition in Nicomachean Ethics II–IV will
see that Aristotle is here a bit fast and loose
about the nexus of pleasure, perception, and
virtue. What NE works out in detail, though,
is the hint provided here that the hinge on
which the taking on of virtue depends is that
which is perceived, what is sometimes called
the “common sensible.”9 The crucial principle
is that in order to “take on virtue,” the human
being must go to work on their own soul, so
as to bring about a “change of state” in the
manner in which a certain memory, expecta-
tion, or immediate sensation is perceived by
the part of the soul that can listen to, but does
not authoritatively possess, logos. There is a
change in the way the object of ethical inter-
est (the memory, the action, the expectation)
is perceived by the soul, and this change in
the soul is a new perception of pleasure or
pain, possible only when a memory—a state
of the soul shared with animals—is refined
in a recollection that is accessible to logos
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
proper.10 This “proper perception of pleas-
ure” brings about the hexis that is responsible
for virtuous action. What remains mysterious
here is that this coming-into-being (of virtue),
by means of alteration (of perception), is the
energeia of an energeia, and not of a dunamis,
and how such an account can be compatible
with the understanding of the completion
of a circle as the actualization of a potency
advanced above.
Before trying to explain this mystery, how-
ever, let us follow Aristotle as he accounts (in
247b1–15) for the cultivation of intellectual
virtue, which turns out to be even trickier,
since there is neither alteration nor a com-
ing into being for such virtue. And yet, to be
sure, it is nevertheless the case that there are
times when a human being takes on virtue.
Indeed, the perhaps surprising premise of
Phys. VII.3, is that learning something—like,
say, the definition of a circle—is a moment of
virtue acquisition. Here Aristotle is dealing
with the same impasse that he refers to—in
Met. IX, 1049b3211—as “the sophistical
objection that someone who does not have
knowledge would be doing the things that
the knowledge is about, since the one learn-
ing does not have knowledge.”12 Socrates,
in his famous account in the Meno—itself a
dialogue devoted to the question of whether
or not virtue can be taught—solves (or fails
to solve) this impasse in terms of the soul’s
“recollection” of what was dormant within
from prior lives. For Aristotle in the passage
from Met., this problem is cast in terms of
the motions of the soul—where we look for
any energeia:
But since something of what comes
into being has already come into being,
and in general something of what is in
motion has always already been moved
(which is made clear in the writing about
motion), presumably the one learning
266
must also already have something of the
knowledge. But then also it is clear from
the same considerations that being-at-
work takes precedence in this way too
over potency, in respect to coming into
being and time. (1049b35–1050a3)
This is Aristotle’s attempt to refine the
Socratic story that learning is a moving from
passive knowledge to active knowledge—that
learning is “somehow” about recollection;
specifically recollecting as energeia a know-
ing that is at this moment just a potency in
the learner’s soul.
How, exactly, is “the writing about
motion” helpful here? Aristotle has in mind,
I believe, the statement that follows where
we left off our discussion of virtue acquisi-
tion (Phys. VII.3, 247b4–6), namely: “what
is potentially knowing becomes knowing
not by being itself moved in any way, but by
the becoming-present of something else.”13
For there to be a genuine coming into being
when a human being learns it would have
to be the case that something previously
not present in the soul somehow came to
be present through a kind of motion. But
this is not the case. Therefore it must be a
kind of rearrangement, where some other
thing comes to be present, rather than some-
thing new within itself. But what is this new
arrangement of knowing soul and known
object that was not before but is now, but
yet is not something newly existent as an
independent something? Aristotle (247b7–8)
clarifies: “For whenever a particular thing
has happened, the thinking part of the soul
somehow knows the universal through the
particular.” This is a one-sentence version
of one of the most complicated ideas in the
corpus,14 and hence it likely will remain at
least somewhat ambiguous in this treat-
ment. What we must not fail to understand
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
is this: nothing new is generated, nor is any-
thing already present altered, when a human
being acquires knowledge. Rather, a new
relation is established between a universal
and a particular that are already in the soul.
It is not that a genuinely new bit of a data
(a new ­particular) has forced itself into the
soul where it was not already, nor that a new
framework for that knowledge has moved
outward from the soul. Instead, the soul—or
rather the intellectual virtue of nous as a hexis
of the soul—has made the universal present in
the particular in some way that Aristotle does
not expand on here. This is how we should
understand Aristotle’s claim (at 247b2–4)
that: “Most of all by far do we say that one
who has knowledge does so by holding in a
certain relation.” The hexis—note the etymo-
logical link to echein—of knowledge, shows
that the taking-on of virtue is not about some
“what” that must come to be, but about
“how” the soul is arranged.
This is telling because it shows how this
knowledge acquisition, a special kind of vir-
tue acquisition, is a natural process unfold-
ing through the would-be knower, but is
also more. As Aristotle states (247b12–13,
17–18) in providing further evidence for his
thesis that knowledge acquisition is about
achieving a relation, and not either creat-
ing or altering something new: “It is by the
coming to rest and standing still of the think-
ing part that we are said to know and be
mindful (phronein),” for “it is by the soul’s
calming down out of its natural disorder
that it becomes something understanding
(episte-mon) and mindful (phronimon).” Here
we see, in the quasi-passivity of the would-be
learner coming to be who she is, both
the naturalness of the activity—the soul “calms
down” and “comes to be” something that has
understanding and knowing—and how the
creation of a new relation between universal
267
and particular (i.e. how learning) is a natu-
ral motion. The arrival of phrone-sis here is
crucial. While one cannot take for granted
that the ethical content associated with
phrone-sis is at work here, as one would pre-
sume that it is not (for instance) in the uses of
phrone-sis and cognates with respect to bees
in the opening chapter of Met. (980b22f.), I
do insist that such content is at work here,
though I cannot fully speak for this. One can
see at least reasons to suspect this might be
true since this chapter combines instances of
intellectual achievement with instances of
moral development, and this is precisely the
kind of joint phrone-sis serves as in NE VI. We
see from this that the one who would learn
anything must choose to be a certain way in
order to learn, and thus that nature alone,
that by which a dunamis comes to be at work
as energeia, is not enough to account for the
unique way of being in the world that the
maturing human being presents to analysis.
Such an understanding of this chapter
from Phys., and even the very project of
relying on this chapter to illuminate what
is meant by the claim that learning is the
actualization (of the universal) of the actual
(particular) in the learner’s soul, occasioned
by a particular object of knowledge, through
the work of an educator, is not obvious.
Having said what I have on its behalf, I will
ask the reader’s patience in presuming this
note on which we have ended—namely, the
sense that phrone-sis is a necessary condi-
tion for the possibility of such learning—
for the sake of now arguing both why this
is true, and how this is related to education
in music. (These being the second and third
of the claims noted in the introduction as the
basis for the central conclusion of this chap-
ter.) On this interpretation, education cannot
come to be outside the natural setting of all
the motions of the human soul, but neither
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
is it an exclusively natural phenomenon. The
unique feature of the educated being-at-work
as something that was already at-work, rather
than as something that was once in potency,
then, is the mark of the deeper uniqueness
of education: it is the ethico-political ener-
geia. Education alone involves the energeia
of energeia because education alone is the
political institution that effects change in the
conditions of the possibility for living souls.
This vivid representation not only enriches
our understanding of Aristotle’s concern
about the relation of mover and moved,
it also helps us see the expressly political
character of the more-than-natural process
of being a learner. Aristotle holds, across
the corpus, that children are incomplete
human beings, incapable of virtue as such.
Here (248a2–7) we are told why: since the
child’s soul is naturally disordered, and “its
motion is great”; every child needs for their
soul to be calmed and brought to rest, and
this happens for some from their own nature,
but for others by means of others. This calm-
ing is precisely the work of those responsi-
ble for their education, and both the nature
of that responsibility and the manner of its
discharge are matters for the rational delib-
eration of the child’s community. While it is
a natural process for the individual human
being to move from a chaotically arranged
soul without knowledge to an orderly soul
with knowledge, this nevertheless (1) will not
always be done in the same way from child
to child and place to place, and (2) how-
ever it is to be achieved, it can only be done
through a kind of habituation of the body. A
child can only learn about the incommensu-
rability of the diagonal of the square if she is
attending to a conversation with the person
charged with her education. This habituation
of the soul, as a bodily phenomenon, into the
careful and caring context of shared inquiry
268
is accomplished only through the settling
down of the soul, both natural and political,
and it is also necessary for intellectual virtue.
The details of just how the period in which
children’s souls are “settled down out of their
natural disorder” makes such a difference are
at the heart of the analysis of education in
Pol. VII–VIII, to which we turn now.
Practicing learning as
energeia of an energeia:
Politics VII–VIII
We begin our account of the intertwined
importance of music and phrone-sis for ­learning
by noting with Nussbaum that education
is required for “each of the major func-
tionings” of the human being and “choice
itself.”15 Our charge is to think through
exactly how and why. An answer begins
to emerge when we reflect that the former
(“each of the major functionings”) is a gloss
on the human as political animal, and the lat-
ter (“choice itself”), the human as rational
animal.16 Education thus emerges as the cen-
tral junction of ethics and politics as a first
philosophical inquiry. We see, that is, why
some account of both the content and the
aim of education as that which “settles the
soul out of its natural disorder” is necessary
for Aristotle’s understanding of knowledge,
which itself is necessary for the articula-
tion of his understanding of what it is to be
as such, and the place of the human in the
cosmos. Here we are immediately faced with
the paradox that right education, embracing
the inculcation of virtue leading to the fulfill-
ment of human nature, is actually achieved
by very few (if any) human beings. It appears,
then, that the nature of the human being is to
fail to acquire the nature of the human being.
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
This is what Davis has called “the problem”
that Pol. is about, namely: how “to recon-
cile the polis as a product of growth with
the polis as a product of human freedom.”17
Thus understood, Aristotle’s project is first
and foremost an attempt to reconcile nature
and freedom—perhaps the greatest problem
for theoretical speculation, as it intersects
with matters human.
While Pol. is a very problematic text, I
will not be able to address the various con-
troversies that face its readers.18 Moreover,
I will not attempt some definitive statement
of what Pol. has to say about education, as
Simpson has done;19 I do hope, however,
to engage profitably in the “speculation”
he acknowledges is necessary, concerning
questions about education and the best life
that arise in the first four books but remain
unanswered in the text as we have it. Others
have, in recent times, stressed the connec-
tion between education and citizenship in
Aristotle, in connection to the institution of
democracy in particular.20 Thus, my central
contention concerning education’s central-
ity is not itself new.21 What is novel here, to
the best of my knowledge, is the attempt to
ground this centrality of education not only
in the broader concern for virtue and living
well as the that-for-the-sake-of-which the
polis exists, or even in Aristotle’s account of
character and the virtuous human being, but
in the “first philosophical” ground of educa-
tion, as the energeia of an energeia.
We begin by noting how Aristotle, in the
course of an argument concerning the “nec-
essary classes and functions” of the polis
(1328b–1329a), reaffirms that the best polis
is one in which the whole of the community
is turned to virtue. Aristotle (1329a21–4)
states: “For as is clear from what was said, it
is together with virtue that happiness neces-
sarily arises, but a polis is said to be happy not
269
with respect to a part of it, but with respect
to all its citizens.”22 Aristotle is emphatic that
anyone who is to be a citizen must receive
the same education as any other citizen. This
view, that there should be one education for
all the citizens, and that it should be public
was, as Kraut notes,23 so far from common-
place that there was no extant example of
such a program, nor was there any extant
theorization quite like it. It is true, of course,
that Aristotle was often in conversation with
Plato’s views in the Laws and Republic, not
least with respect to the importance of music
for the cultivation of virtue, about which
more as we continue.
But why is it, exactly, that the happiness
belongs to the city as a whole, and that it
consists of the general cultivation of vir-
tue (among the citizens, at least)? Aristotle
answers (1331b24–1332b10) this question
with another: what is the end of a human life?
Citing the famous definition of the ultimate
good from NE, Aristotle (1332a9) claims
that: “happiness is the complete energeia and
use of virtue, not with conditions but simply
(haplo-s).” As in the ethical writings, though,
it is far from clear what “complete virtue”
is: is it some one of the virtues—presumably,
the highest of them, sophia—or is it the culti-
vation of all the virtues together?24 Aristotle
first asserts (1332a20–35) that the virtue of
the polis—actually its capacity for “serious-
ness” (spoude-)—is not the work of fortune,
but of “knowledge and choice,” specifically
the “knowledge and choice” that constitutes
the being-serious of the citizens, that is, their
virtue. Aristotle then turns (1332a36) to dis-
cuss “the question we must now chiefly con-
sider,” namely, “how does a man25 become
spoudaios?” The transition here from arete-
to spoude-, as I have argued with respect to a
similar movement in NE,26 signals that how-
ever superior its inherent content, the pursuit
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
or possession of intellectual virtue alone can-
not be understood to constitute the ultimate
end of a human life. Indeed, strictly speaking
such an “energeia and use” of intellectual vir-
tue, independent of virtuous character, is not
even possible.27
Aristotle moves on to the content of
the education in the best polis. He begins
(1332b10–25) with the reminder that what
remains to be said is how such education will
be carried out, for “of those who learn, some
do by habit (ta ethizomenoi), while others
by instruction (ta akouontes).” This contrast
echoes the ambivalent contrast with which
NE II begins (1103b11f.). This ambivalence
concerning what is the same and what is
different in the education of citizens who
are to be spoudaioi, so that the polis might
acquire virtue and thus be happy, anticipates
the ambivalence that drives the remainder of
the detailed account of the education system
in the best city: is the education of the ruler
and the ruled to be the same or different?
To decide this question, it appears, we must
decide to what extent the citizens, rulers and
ruled, are equal. Aristotle (1333a1) answers
this by saying that, just as the rulers and the
ruled are both the same (as citizens) and dif-
ferent (as commanding and obeying, respec-
tively), so too must their education be both
the same and different. Ultimately, though, the
sameness of the citizens—their basic equal-
ity—is the defining feature of the best polis,
since, in this city, the same person ought first
to be ruled and then to rule (1333a13). This
necessitates an answer, first in those who
will educate this citizen, and then in the
one educated, to two mutually implicative
questions: (1) how does a good man come
to be? (2) what is the end of the best life?
(1333a14–15). The presumed mutual impli-
cation of these two questions that the edu-
cation in the best city must address suggests
270
that Aristotle believes that “even” the life of
political virtue, for which the citizens are
being educated in the best city, is impossible
without the cultivation of intellectual virtue;
political life, then, would be impossible with-
out the life of theo-ria.28
The difficult interpretive question remains:
of what precisely does the life of theo-ria, the
so-called contemplative life, consist? Aristotle
here (1333a37–b4), at least, is clear that
the citizen who would lead the best life is one
“more able” to live at peace and in leisure
than at war, and should “more do” what is
beautiful than what is useful, and thus the
education in the best city will not, as the
Spartan education, privilege military disci-
pline and manly virtue above all. This is so,
Aristotle continues (in the partially corrupt
text of 1334a5–15), because the best life is
only possible if the human being begins from
the best possible beginning, which is itself
a “natural end.” This rather oblique state-
ment is then parsed as meaning that the body
must be trained for the sake of the soul, and
the two parts of the soul, the desiring and
the reasoning turned together toward nous.
More precisely, Aristotle (1334b25–7) con-
cludes that the body must be trained before
the soul, and desires before the intellect, but
that both kinds of “education by habit” must
be for the sake of the intellect. Political virtue
involves, indeed, begins and ends, with nous.
How does this help us to see the unique work
of education as energeia? And how does this
relate to the unity of ethics and politics as
one first philosophical discourse? Put dif-
ferently, what does the need to cultivate
intellect, as integral to the project of educa-
tion for life of theo-ria, have to do with the
context-independence of the governing con-
cepts of political inquiry?
For this we turn to Politics VIII. Aristotle
begins (1337a21) by stating more emphatically
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
than he had earlier that, insofar as the “whole
polis is one,” the education of the citizens
must be “the same for all” and supervised
in a manner that is “common (koine-n), and
not private (idian).” Any remaining ambi-
guity about the wisdom of dividing the
management of the education of the citi-
zens, for instance, along the lines that the
labor of the citizens is so divided, is hereby
expunged. So, too, is any question concern-
ing whether it is better for the young citizen
to be educated privately or in public. That
completed, Aristotle turns (1337b4–8) to
address the obvious question of what the
content of such “commonly supervised”
education ought to be, beginning with the
foundational claim that, while the young
(citizens) “must be taught those of the use-
ful arts which are absolutely necessary,” they
must not be taught all the useful arts, since it
is absolutely vital to keep “works” that are
“free” separate from those that are “unfree,”
such “slavish useful arts” being those that
are (merely) mechanical, and have no share
of anything other than production (poie-sis).
Noteworthy here is the discussion of ergon,
the cognates of which appear four times in
1337b5–18, beginning with this division of
works into free and unfree, and concluding
with the rejoinder that even the pursuit “of
the free kinds of knowledge (τῶν ἐλευθερίων
ἐπιστημῶν)” can lead the youth away from
virtue, if the ends of the study are not right.
From the outset, then, we see that the edu-
cation of the citizens has everything to do
with the way they are to be set-to-work in
the world. The unique way of being is, as
Aristotle describes in the following passages,
to be at leisure, scholazein, which so far from
being restful or slack, involves the near con-
stant stimulation of the highest part of the
soul. Music, as Aristotle goes on to discuss
at length here, is of such vital importance
271
precisely because it molds the soul, from the
earliest age, so as to take on just this kind of
“leisurely” activity.
Summarizing the “main conclusions”
of these first forays into the nature of edu-
cation in the best city, Aristotle concludes
(1338a30–5) that the youth—“the sons”
perhaps emphasizing the common interest in
the citizens, even when taken as family mem-
bers—“are to be educated . . . as is free and
beautiful (kale-n),” as is “made clear by the
musical arts (hai mousikai).” No argument
is given here for the assertion—and, sadly,
our text ends while Aristotle is in the middle
of an extensive account of the nature of the
musical education in the best city—but what
is clear from what Aristotle sets down as the
basis of education is that being educated in
the musical shows us what it means to be
educated for freedom.29 Thus, pace Nichols,30
who stresses the instrumental character of
education, and especially musical education,
I, like Davis31 and Lord,32 believe that the
deep and rich account of education in music
is meant to illuminate the way in which edu-
cation, as the sole means for polis-dwelling
human beings to achieve our logos-holding
form of life, is at work in every moment of
a child’s development from their first rattle
(1340b26–9) through the age of responsible
citizenship.
This is so because it is not the content
of the subject matter that makes the educa-
tion proper for freedom, as Aristotle makes
clear by next (1338a35–1339a10) describing
how and why this education includes draw-
ing, literacy, and numeracy, and gymnastic
training (but, again, not in the manner of the
Spartans, which is faulty in many respects). It
is, rather, the manner in which one cultivates
one’s knowledge that matters. Education
for freedom is concerned with the way the
knowledge is at work (in energeia) in the
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
learner’s soul. Both the deep intimacy of
musical education and freedom, and the
ultimate (relative) indifference of the sub-
jects taught in general, point to the deeper
truth exposed through our reading of Phys.
VII.3 above: the taking-on of virtue, that
is to say the learning that embraces the
training of the body and the instruction of
the soul, is about the work (ergon) of the
human being; a unique natural end that,
rather than being the energeia of a dunamis,
is the energeia (of the universal) of an ener-
geia (of the particular).
Let us state for the moment that this
account of learning is right, and that there
is this kind of education that uniquely pre-
pares a human being—a citizen, crucially—to
be what a human being most fundamentally
is, namely, free. We are left with a pressing
question: how does that happen, actually?
Aristotle’s answer is: phrone-sis. Burger—who
reads phrone-sis in NE VI as the joint of the
various virtues (of intellect, and of intellect
and character) that make it possible to speak
of virtue in the singular, and of the human
soul as such—argues that what is most fun-
damentally at stake in the account of the
energeia of the human soul as the human
ergon in NE I.7 is that this account is fun-
damentally incomplete, precisely in its being
an outline (tupos) that will only be filled out
with time as a coworker (sunergon).33 That to
which the ergon account reaches out, insofar
as it secures the single wholeness of the soul
that is in energeia when the human ergon is
fulfilled, Burger argues, is phrone-sis.34 The
details of Aristotle’s account of musical edu-
cation, I claim here, confirm Burger’s view,
and demonstrate what I have called learn-
ing as the energeia of an energeia. That is, if
the mature human being is to live virtuously,
she has to have, somehow, taken on all the vir-
tues, as the famous definition of the good life
272
in NE I.7 entails. This seeming impossibility
is actually possible through phrone-sis, which
alone constitutes and is constituted by the
cultivation of the other virtues of intellect
and character. Setting this potency to work
vitally depends on “how a child is brought up
from earliest youth”; this early experience,
Aristotle says, “makes a great difference; or
rather all the difference” (NE 1103b23–5).
Such a beginning, Politics shows, is made
most likely by a common education for all
citizens, grounded in music, which from the
beginning of life has the power to tune the
soul toward virtue, or virtuosity.
Making more clear the ultimate ends
of musical education, Aristotle begins
(1339b30–40) by saying that we need to
reflect on how it has come to pass that the
pleasure of experiencing musical perform-
ance is seen as its own end—since, on the one
hand, “perhaps some pleasure and the end
are the same,” but the pleasure people “these
days” are seeking for its own sake does
not appear to be this pleasure. Aristotle
(1340a1–4) next argues that music’s “nature
is more honorable than” that of which he has
spoken, for “everyone has an aisthe-sis of this
common pleasure” in music, since “music
is pleasurable by nature,” but it is necessary “to
see (horan) if music is in some way directed
to the character and the soul.” I flag the
occurrence of perception and seeing here, as
it echoes a consistent pattern throughout the
corpus, in which Aristotle figures phrone-sis
as a kind of perception.35 Thus, we ought not
be surprised that Aristotle does find some-
thing “to be seen” by way of music’s being
directed to the soul and to character, and that
that something has to do precisely with the
education with respect to pleasure and pain,
that is, with phrone-sis. Aristotle concludes
(1340b12–14): “It is clear that it is possible
for music to bring about a character in the
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
soul, and if this is possible, then one must
bring this to the education of the young.”
Far from being merely instrumental to future
education, music serves precisely as the “set-
tling down of the soul out of its natural dis-
order” that Phys. VII.3 asserts is necessary
for learning to begin. It does so, this passage
tells us, by shaping the soul’s attunement to
the true pleasure of the musical encounter;
by bringing about a harmony. And, after all,
“many wise men” say that “the soul either is
a harmony, or holds a harmony” (1340b20).
But again, we are left with the question
of how. The mystery here is not so great,
since such “finding the right note,” through-
out the corpus, is identified with phrone-sis.
Here too, music’s ethical mode must be the
result of the soul’s taking-on this virtue, or
else be an early indicator of future emer-
gence. We do not find a clear statement of
this—say, in the conclusion of the account—
perhaps because there is no conclusion of the
account. The text does end, however artifi-
cially, with a rebuke of the Socratic position36
that “relaxed” modes were not to be enjoyed,
as they undermine virtue. Consonant with
his repeated repudiations of Spartan culture
throughout the text, Aristotle here endorses
the principle of enjoining the young to
find the proper pleasure in all harmonies and
rhythms, so long as they are not inherently
base. This learning begins precisely when the
young take pleasure in the natural pleasure
of music in the right way. In this way, har-
monizing the soul through musical education
is integral to the virtues of character: virtues
related to self-governance, understood in
Aristotle’s sense.
We come now to what we must accept
as Politics’s last words (1342b34–5), which
state: “It is clear that these three are the limits
for education: the middle, the possible and the
suitable.” While not named here, these limits
273
surely point to the cultivation of phrone-sis,
that hexis of the soul that makes it possible to
find the middle, to know what is possible, and
to determine how things are suited to be. The
preservation, indeed the very inauguration
of the soul’s harmony, the capacity to enjoy
true pleasure in musical performance and in
every act, inquiry, choice, and knowledge,
then, is the end of the best education. This is
so precisely because to take on this virtue is to
actualize, with respect to the universal, what
has already been actualized, with respect to
the particular, in one’s own soul. That might
be the universal of a particular object of per-
ception (the site of the virtues of character)
or a particular object of intellect (the site of
those of intellect). The nature of learning, as
the change in the relationship of the universal
and particular, is the energeia of the human
ergon, and it begins, under the proper condi-
tions of educational institutionalization, with
the cultivation of the reasoning and desir-
ing parts of the soul, jointly, in music. This
comes to be in and through the cultivation of
phrone-sis, which underscores both why eth-
ics and politics are one inquiry for Aristotle,
and the first philosophical nature of the true
education, itself the source of the being of the
true citizen of the true polis.
Michael Weinman
Notes
1
The author gratefully acknowledges the
helpful comments of Andrew German, Jacob
Greenstine, Pavlos Kontos, Matthew Linck,
David McNeill, and Russell Winslow on earlier
drafts of this chapter.
2
Aubenque, 1980, 1988, 1993; Baracchi, 2008;
Burger, 2008; Davis, 1996; Heinaman, ed., 1995;
Kontos, 2002, 2011; Kraut, 1989, 2002, 2007;
Long, 2004; Nussbaum, 1986, 1994, 2002;
Vergnières, 1995; Winslow, 2007; Yack, 1993.
EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
 3
Tessitore, 2002, emphasizes, against
MacIntyre, the natural, rather than historical,
source of education, but does not insist on the
first philosophical valence of this claim.
 4
This makes good on a promise expressed but
unfulfilled in Goodman and Talisse, 2007,
9–10, who note that it is “perhaps” with
respect to education that “Aristotle can be the
most informative to our political thinking,”
but offer no substantial thematic discussion of
education.
 5
Winslow, 2006, 164–7, reading Nicomachean
Ethics, provides a parallel account of the ener-
geia of virtue in logos.
 6
Metaphysics IX is another site for the dilemma
of “energeiai of energeiai.” Witt, 2003,
provides a comprehensive treatment.
 7
Indeed, Posterior Analytics I.1–2 offers a hint
of the argument presented here, in response to
the problem of “Meno’s paradox,” with which
the treatise begins. Winslow, 2012, offers a
sympathetic account of this treatment of the
problem.
 8
See Nussbaum, 2002, 58–9, 95n32, where she
notes that this is why education is intricately
connected with desire.
 9
While this is not made explicit anywhere in
the corpus, Kontos, 2011, 43–53 provides
a very persuasive account of how virtue is
brought about through the proper perception
of the “common sensibles” that are given to
“phronetic perception.”
10
See De Anima (414b–415a) and On Memory
and Recollection for more on this.
11
Translations of Metaphysics are my responsi-
bility, though I benefited from a careful consul-
tation of Sachs, 1999, and Apostle, 1979.
12
APo, 71a30 provides another formulation of
this false paradox.
13
Translations of Physics are my responsibility,
though I benefited from a careful consultation
of Sachs, 1995.
14
The same idea is at work in the famous
account of epago-ge- in APo II.19, with its
image of the “falling-back-into-ordered-ranks”
of a (previously) routed army, such order being
the source (arche-) of their being an army at all,
in anything but name.
15
See Nussbaum, 2002, 79.
16
See Davis, 1996, 5–9 for what serves as
my understanding of the human as the
274
logos-holding being conditioned by its being
of-the-polis.
17
See Davis, 1996, 2.
18
Simpson, 1997, 1998, provides a definitive
account of these difficulties, as well as contro-
versial solutions.
19
See Simpson, 1998, 231–83. Also of note here
are the relevant portions of the commentaries
of Kraut, 1997, 123–213 and of Davis, 1996,
the latter especially in conjunction with his
commentary on the Poetics (Davis, 1999).
20
See, for instance: Tessitore, 2002; Yack, 1993,
2002; Nussbaum, 2002; Vergnières, 1995,
257–80; Nichols, 1992; Woodruff, 2005;
Johnson, 2007, 115–40.
21
Curren, 2000, offers a book-length treatment
of the issue.
22
Translations of Politics mostly reproduce that
of Kraut, 1997, though there are occasional
deviations, undertaken in consultation with
Lord, 1984; Apostle and Gerson, 1986; and
Simpson, 1997.
23
See Kraut, 2002, 206–10.
24
White, 1992, 6–15—especially nn. 13 and
18—provides a critical review of this “intel-
lectualist vs. inclusivist” debate.
25
Here, and throughout this discussion, it is
ane-r, the male human being.
26
Weinman, 2007, 105–10, 112–17, 133–5, in
response to the account of pleasure that fol-
lows the discussion of akrasia in Nicomachean
Ethics VII and that which opens Nicomachean
Ethics X.
27
Kraut, 1997, 123–8 also understands these
passages, together with the “intellectualist
chapters” of NE X, as expressing just one
view about the “primary, but not entirely
self-sufficient” nature of theo-ria as the life of
virtue.
28
Simpson, 1998, 237–9 presents a different, but
compatible, attempt to harmonize Aristotle’s
views on the ultimate decision of the shape of
the best life with those found in the “theo-ria
chapters” of NE X.
29
This “being educated for freedom” echoes
what Salkever, 2002, 345, 354–6 calls the
human capacity for raising “natural questions”
for deliberation within a community.
30
See Nichols, 1992, 51–63.
31
See Davis, 1996.
32
See Lord, 1982.
 EDUCATION: THE ETHICO-POLITICAL ENERGEIA
33
See Burger, 2008, 35–6.
34
See ibid., 42–3, 124–5. Davis, 2003, 176–7
offers a substantially similar account.
35
See my discussion of Kontos, 2011, on
“phronetic perception” above.
36
Argued in Republic 338e.
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Liberalism and the Good, ed.
R. B. Douglas, G. M. Mara, and
H. S. Richardson, London: Routledge,
1990, 203–52; reprinted in Aristotle
and Modern Politics: The Persistence of
Political Philosophy, ed. A. Tessitore,
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2002.
Polansky, R., Aristotle’s De Anima: A
Critical Commentary, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Rorty A. (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics,
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1980.
Sachs, J. (trans.), Aristotle. Physics, New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
—, Aristotle. Metaphysics, Sante Fe: Green
Lion Press, 1999.
Salkever, S., “The Deliberative Model of
Democracy and Aristotle’s Ethics of
Natural Questions,” in Aristotle and
Modern Politics: The Persistence of
Political Philosophy, ed. A. Tessitore,
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2002, 342–74.
Saxonhouse, A. W., “Democracy, Equality
and Eide: A Radical View from Book 8
of Plato’s Republic,” American Political
Science Review, 92 (1998), 273–84.
Simpson, P. L. (trans.), The Politics of
Aristotle: Translated with an Introduction,
276
Analysis and Notes, Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
—, A Philosophical Commentary on the
Politics, Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1998.
Tessitore, A. (ed.), Aristotle and Modern
Politics: The Persistence of Political
Philosophy, Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2002.
Vergnières, S., Éthique et Politique chez
Aristote: phusis, ethos, nomos, Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1995.
Weinman, M., Pleasure in Aristotle’s Ethics,
London: Continuum, 2007.
White, S. A., Sovereign Virtue, Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1992.
Winslow, R., “On the Nature of Logos in
Aristotle,” Revue Philosophie Antique,
6 (2006), 163–80.
—, Aristotle and Rational Discovery,
London: Continuum, 2007.
Witt, C., Ways of Being: Potency and
Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
2003.
Woodruff, P., First Democracy: The
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Oxford University Press, 2005.
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University of California Press, 1993.
PoiEˉsis
 14
TOWARD THE SUBLIME CALCULUS
OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
“Nothing too much,” not even righteousness.
Historical Juxtapositions
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing once compared
the Poetics to Euclid’s Elements for its ana-
lytical clarity, which acted as a force of law
upon dramatists and literary theorists alike.2
Today the Poetics’ claim to fame assumes a
different—rather fittingly tragic—descrip-
tion: its grandness is that of an “indomita-
ble ‘survivor,’” in Stephen Halliwell’s words,
reaching us through a history of reception
that has alternated between admiration and
demonization ever since the text’s rediscov-
ery in the Renaissance (Halliwell, 1995, 21).
Even more pointedly, F. L. Lucas reminds us
that its allegedly infallible laws proved so
fragile as to be eventually broken, one by
one, in the history of theater (1958, 33). “But
though they have been broken, their history
is the history of Tragedy” (34), Lucas con-
cludes, intimating that both admirers and
critics recognize the impact of this book in
asking the most pertinent questions about
literature and its effects, even if it does not
always provide the most adequate answers.3
279
F. L. Lucas1
Incomplete yet indispensable, the Poetics.
bequeaths us a “foundational strategy” for
approaching literature even as it also with-
holds some of its meanings in a Sphinx-like
manner, provoking an ongoing history of
critical debates.4 Here are some of the ques-
tions that have continued to preoccupy com-
mentators: Was the tragic effect meant to
convey a direct moral lesson to the audience,
or to represent life’s adversity in a manner
that elicited and enriched human feeling?
How should we understand the scope, and
thus translate properly the meaning, of eleos
and phobos (usually rendered as “pity” and
“fear”) in view of temporal and cultural shifts
in the psychology of emotions? Do these
feelings arise in and resolve themselves at the
level of the tragic plot, or involve primarily
the emotional state of the audience? And
finally, and directly related to the tragic emo-
tions, does catharsis signify the psychologi-
cal purification or bodily purgation of excess
emotions in the audience, or does it refer to
the plot’s structural fulfillment through the
processes of reversals and recognitions?
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
While most Enlightenment thinkers opted
for the strictly moralist approach to the
first question, recent theorizations—some
inspired by Nietzsche’s antididactic view
of tragedy5—have abandoned this explicit
Enlightenment moralism. This does not
mean, however, that the Poet. considers art as
a purely formal enterprise, and much con-
temporary scholarship recognizes that
Aristotle’s refusal to reduce art to a moral
handbook hardly makes of him a proponent
of l’art pour l’art. Tragedy, and art in general,
has an ethical thrust for Aristotle, but he pre-
fers to think of its impact in more nuanced
terms than his overtly moralistic mentor did.
Art can enrich us emotionally and morally
because, according to Aristotle, our emotions
are not exclusively relegated to the darkness
of unreason as Plato thought. Instead, feel-
ings often agree out of their own accord with
reason’s judgments, thus serving virtuous
purposes. While Plato feared the incendiary
character of art for exciting irrational appe-
tites, his pupil gave a more psychologically
realistic account of the emotions, consider-
ing them to be both educative and educa-
ble, capable in themselves of following and
expressing good judgment.6
How Aristotle aligns the tragic emotions
with the expectations of reason, and how he
manages more generally to adjoin art and
moral conduct without compromising aes-
thetic freedom, are what I call his “calculus.”
Furthermore, because this is a psychological
calculus—a logos that reveals the measure
of something as dynamic and unpredictable
as the human soul—I call it a “sublime” cal-
culus.7 The ensuing discussion of the tragic
emotions begins to manifest signs of this
calculus, but I will further address this issue
in the next section of the essay. I will do so
with Gerald Else’s stately monograph on the
Poet. in mind, since its analyses of several
280
tragic categories also attest to the sense of
measure and proportion the ancient philoso-
pher found even in the genre of excess par
excellence. For now, however, it will suffice
to repeat Else’s cautioning remark that to
consider these emotions as being “amenable
to reason” does not mean that they “can be
made acceptable to reason afterwards, by
some ulterior means. Rather they are brought
before the bar of reason to begin with, by the
spectator himself, and his emotional com-
mitment is given or withheld in accordance
with its judgment” (1957, 374–5). This pas-
sage stresses again the spontaneity of the
feelings’ coherence with reason. “Without
recourse to metaphysics or theology,” writes
Else, Aristotle shows that it is inherent in the
mechanism of the tragic emotions to con-
form to reason’s demands (374). The logic of
the emotions, in other words, is not all that
illogical. Consequently, a good tragic plot
incites our feelings of pity and fear in a way
that reason also finds agreeable and justifia-
ble. Thus the mention of pity and fear brings
us to the next debated topic in our list.
Concerning the proper translation of these
tragic emotions, Lessing’s contributions in
the second part of his Hamburg Dramaturgy
have garnered significant theoretical atten-
tion. In his quarrel with Corneille and French
Classicism in general, Lessing enlisted the
Poet. to legitimize his own dramatic practice
of bürgerliches Trauerspiel (bourgeois, or
domestic tragedy). He insisted on Aristotle’s
stipulation that undeserved affliction elicits
the spectators’ pity, while fear connects them
to the hero or heroine by way of resem-
blance: we feel compassion for those who
suffer disproportionately and we fear for
them because their similarity to us (homoios)
reminds us that we could be in their shoes
(Poet. 13, 1453a3–6). Yet, it should be noted
that Aristotle qualifies this similarity as being
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
not too close: while the hero should not be
completely blameless (for this would produce
revulsion rather than pity at his dispropor-
tionate sufferings), he should undoubtedly
be of higher stature than the average specta-
tor. Aristotle’s hero lies in between (metaxu)
the perfect and the average (13, 1453a7),
and contra Lessing, the Greek philosopher’s
explicit preference is for a hero approaching
the higher rather than the lower boundary of
this range: “a character either like that stated
[similar to us], or better rather than worse”
(13, 1453a13–16).
Lessing’s emphasis on the resemblance of
spectator and tragic sufferer has been viewed
as a creative mistranslation that resulted, for
better or for worse, in the democratization
of theater.8 In other words, by highlighting
resemblance while downplaying Aristotle’s
equally relevant caveat of heroic distance,
Lessing could attack the Classicists for pro-
ducing grossly outdated heroes with whom
no one could identify or sympathize in the
modern era. Such anticlassicist polemic
simultaneously authorized the novel conven-
tions of his own Miss Sara Sampson, where
the stage became a bourgeois household
and the heroine was no longer like an ordi-
nary person, but herself an ordinary person.
Of course, it is arguable that Lessing’s
democratization constitutes an innovation
only in a narrow sense, as it also misses a cru-
cial psychological insight behind Aristotle’s
requirement that the hero be well above aver-
age though below perfect. By interpreting
homoios to mean “same” instead of “similar,”
Lessing indeed showed tragic experience to
be the mortal share of the social majority no
less than of the aristocracy, but such a real-
ist, egalitarian concept was already nascent
in Euripides, who famously brought charac-
ters in rags on the tragic stage. Furthermore,
if we bracket the pronounced social realism
281
of Lessing’s stage for a moment, we can still
see that a certain democratic feature lies at
the core of all tragic plots, and that Aristotle
underscored rather than understated this
feature by insisting precisely on the hero’s
idealized distance: for what better reveals the
democracy of suffering than the recognition
that even persons better than ourselves can-
not avoid life’s terrible misfortunes? How
can one express more poignantly the fact
that death and bad luck do not care for social
status than by juxtaposing the ordinary with
the illustrious and showing that both meet
the same end?
Aristotle’s double requirement of just
enough resemblance and just enough dif-
ference between hero and spectator respects
a rather common psychological fact that
underlies the process of identification:
because we all would prefer to see ourselves
reflected in an idealizing mirror rather than
one showing us as we merely are, we also
become more intensely affected when see-
ing the nobler images of ourselves unable to
avoid ­suffering. Hence, Aristotle compares
the good playwright to good portrait paint-
ers who “produce likenesses, yet enhance
people’s beauty” (15, 1454b8–12). If, on the
contrary, the hero were merely average, his
fate would not be significant one way or the
other, as Else remarks (377): we would hardly
be riveted by his life’s experience, which is no
more than a reduplication of our quotidian
existence. There would be neither pleasure
nor learning in this kind of imitation, since it
does not take us beyond ourselves nor does it
reveal anything more than what we already
know. Aristotle postulates heroic elevation
as key to tragic pleasure neither because of
a sociopolitical bias against ordinary people,
nor because of a metaphysical fixation on
valor. Instead, he is brought to this conclu-
sion by the sound psychological observation
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
that the arousal of tragic emotions requires
an element of sublimity toward which most
of us, if not all of us, are drawn. Certainly,
the distance is there to be collapsed, but in
the process of this collapse our sympathetic
feelings emerge even more intensely and
meaningfully. Distance facilitates the height-
ening of the emotions and amplifies the
tragic effect.
Regarding the final, twofold issue of
the rise and resolution of these sentiments
on either side of the divide—stage or audi-
ence—Goethe’s 1827 essay “On Interpreting
Aristotle’s Poetics” is a significant stop on this
historical journey. Convinced that Aristotle
was exclusively interested in the formal
structure of tragedy, and that he would not
digress from such an objective description to
speculate about audience psychology, Goethe
argued that pity and fear arise from the tragic
action and resolve themselves in it. He thus
translated the last part of Aristotle’s famous
definition of tragedy9 to correspond with
his interpretation. In it, he renders the con-
troversial term “catharsis” as neutraliza-
tion, or resolution: “after a certain course of
events which evoke pity (Mitleid) and fear
(Furcht), the tragedy concludes by neutral-
izing those emotions (Ausgleichung solcher
Leidenschaften)” (198). Goethe departs from
the standard explanation that the catharsis
of these emotions takes place homeopathi-
cally through their arousal in the spectator.
Furthermore, he avoids the medical and rit-
ual translations of catharsis as purgation or
purification, opting for a mathematical and
economic metaphor: Ausgleichung as equali-
zation also applies to the balancing of a bank
account, and it is used here to convey tragedy’s
internal restoration of order, its self-adjusting
economy and conciliatory mechanisms.
Still, Goethe’s definition is somewhat
at odds with his actual examples of tragic
282
resolution. On the one hand, the definition
suggests that resolution involves the balanc-
ing out of the emotions themselves (solcher
Leidenschaften), albeit on stage and not in
the hearts of the spectators as it was tradi-
tionally thought. (It is worth noting that
Goethe, like many others, assumes Aristotle’s
pathe-mato-n to mean emotions rather than
sufferings—the latter being Else’s translation,
which, as we will see, allows him to fulfill
more systematically Goethe’s reading.) On
the other hand, Goethe’s example of apothe-
osis as restitution for extreme suffering at
the end of Oedipus Coloneus, and his claims
that reconciliation is often “accomplished
by some type of human sacrifice” in trag-
edy, and in comedy by “marriage as a means
of disentangling all sorts of predicaments”
(198), imply that resolution is a question of
structure and not simply of emotional resto-
ration.10 It is this route of structural rather
than emotional resolution that Else, the most
notable recent proponent of this theory of
catharsis, follows.
Else questions the tautology of the homeo-
pathic argument according to which pity and
fear reconcile or purify themselves through
pity and fear. Even though the term “cathar-
sis” is never repeated or explicitly clarified
in the extant part of the Poet., Else takes
his cue from the words adjacent to it: τὴν
τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν (the
catharsis of such passions). After a sustained
analysis of the meaning and typology of τὰ
πάθη that Aristotle employs in the Poet.—
namely, of the tragic ordeals resulting from
deliberate, necessary, or accidental acts and
of the relative degree of pollution attached
to them—Else concludes that catharsis must
be understood as an inextricable part of a
cluster of auxiliary terms and ideas: “pathos,
hamartia, recognition, pity and fear, and
(perhaps) the tragic pleasure” (441).11 In fact,
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
the necessary and exclusive relation cathar-
sis bears to these terms leads Else to reject
the customary notion that all tragedy (and
even all successful art) is in essence cathartic:
“The total nexus to which catharsis belongs
is defined so tightly by the interlocking of
its parts—pathos, hamartia, recognition,
and catharsis—that it will actually fit only
a few tragedies” (445). Apparently, it will
not fit even all the tragedies that are based
on complex plots, the kind of plot Aristotle
commends: while all complex plots rely on
peripeteia qua change of fate,12 they do not
necessarily presuppose tragic error (hamar-
tia) or recognition—those other elements to
which catharsis is closely tied, and which also
happen to heighten the tragic effect (445).
This said, ancient theater did not have
curtains, as Lucas cautions, thus making
it harder to distinguish so neatly between
the pathos of the stage and the emotions of
the bleachers. On the contrary, the seats of the
koilon curved around, embracing half of the
circle of the orchestra (Lucas, 1958, 165).
Even Nietzsche, who viewed the chorus as
a kind of curtain between audience and suf-
fering heroes, thought of this separation as a
precondition for fusion: in the image of the
Satyr, the Greek remembered his origins in
the natural world and recognized his own
primordial being. While in section 7 of the
Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche speaks of the
chorus “as a living wall” that tragedy builds
between itself and the surroundings (58), in
section 8 he stresses the fact that “there was
at bottom no opposition between public and
chorus” (62). Thus, the chorus divides only in
order to precipitate fusion. And thus, even if
catharsis, strictly speaking, refers to processes
internal to the work, it may not be outlandish
to think that the structural resolution of the
play is mimetically reflected and refracted in
the emotional relief of its audience.13
283
We have begun tracing only the faintest
outlines of a long, rich, but also fraught and
potentially obfuscating history of debates,
elaborations, reappraisals, and so forth. Let
alone that all these complications eventually
return to that one short passage in chapter 6,
where Aristotle offers a summary definition
of tragedy. In his intent to distill the essence of
tragedy, the philosopher—as if by some
tragic irony, it seems—has left us with more
questions about the nature of tragedy in this
definition than in his entire Poet.14
How then to approach the Poet. with fresh
eyes, as fresh as the eyes of its author when
he first reflected on the nature and purpose
of these early tragedies? Can we engage
Aristotle with the same unflinching clarity
he afforded to the tragedians so as to find
something unexpected but not obscuran-
tist in his work—something impossible yet
plausible instead of something possible yet
implausible? This would mean to model our
reading after his own specifications for what
makes the best plot—namely, ingredients
that are necessary and probable, compel-
ling but coherent.15 Can we attempt to elu-
cidate him even at the risk of being charged
with an anachronistic insistence on clarity?
Conversely, can we resist obfuscating him in
our wish to satisfy the theoretical demand for
nuance that has rendered disclosure virtually
synonymous with concealment?16
Perhaps not. After all, it is possible that
even the most enduring works can be some-
times exhausted of their greater significance,
and then they risk becoming empty screens
onto which the critic freely projects his or her
interpretive fantasies in the name of theoreti-
cal novelty. Perhaps the time is ripe then for
such works to go into oblivion, to rest in
darkness for a while as the Poet. did before
the Renaissance. There they can be kept safe
from the aggression of rhetorical hairsplitting
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
and the formalism of professional commen-
tary, so that when they resurface, they can be
read not only anew but as of old, for their
plausible meanings. After years of forgetful-
ness, their old, strong meanings can be given
back to them once again, appearing to us as
fresh because of this interlude. Perhaps we
need a break from these works if we are to
reconstitute our interpretive courage and
speak their splendid patency. Still, with this
fraught history in mind, and with the hum-
ble dream that I may illuminate rather than
obscure, I will offer some preliminary reflec-
tions on Aristotle’s passion for measure.
Pan metron ariston, or Nature
Is Believable
It was the poet Friedrich Hölderlin who first
proposed a tragic calculus for modernity,
after having studied the “mechane of the
ancients” (1988, 101), by which he meant
not only the rhythmic mechanism of the
Sophoclean caesura17 but also the stress on
proportion and “lawful calculation” (ibid.)
throughout Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. I
argue that Aristotle assembles a constellation
of terms including nature, imitation, neces-
sity, probability, and plausibility in a manner
that guarantees immanently a sense of pur-
poseful measure to the tragic work and to the
audience response as well. These concepts
explain the internal logic of drama in view of
its optimum tragic effect and compel the tra-
gedian to produce teleonomic works—works
whose plot construction heightens the tragic
effect and thus fulfills the essence of the
genre. At the same time, the aforementioned
concepts account for the universal capability
of tragedy to arouse certain emotions that
are aesthetically pleasurable (even though
284
painful) and potentially morally enriching
(most likely because they are painful). Much
like Else’s cluster of terms that explained
the mechanism behind catharsis, this cluster
issues forth the “laws” of tragic verisimilitude
and of the universality of the tragic effect: the
terms interrelate so as to provide tragedy
with the yardstick by which its fiction must
be measured against reality; in short, they
ensure that the tragic plot depicts life suffi-
ciently intensely but always believably.
Let us begin with the importance of nature
and natural observation in Aristotle’s under-
standing of tragedy as mimesis. I suggest
that the naturalism inherent in his concept
of mimesis serves as the precondition for
the other terms of this cluster to be effica-
cious in lending measure to tragedy and its
effects: for what might be considered nec-
essary, probable, and plausible in the tragic
plot so as to make us shed tears and fear for
our fate presupposes a natural or norma-
tive common sense. It is this naturalness that
makes necessity, probability, and plausibil-
ity the laws of plot structure such that we
may say that this turn of events is believable
by everyone with common sense, whereas
that one is not. Surely, this way of thinking
is very distant from ours. Modern thought
often critiques Aristotle’s appeal to norma-
tivity as an outdated and potentially coercive
gesture, which naturalizes the exclusion of
other logics that fall outside his own precon-
ceived median range. It is as if our age of sub-
jectivity can only project extreme subjectivity
onto Aristotle as well, as if this range were
his speculative figment with no reference to
empirical reality (but then again, this reality
is now also at stake, considered entirely in
terms of our mental construction), as if the
natural were only an ideological misnomer for
what is actually naturalized. Hence, moder-
nity has proposed a cult of exaggeration—an
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
obsession with what lies always at the limit,
with the exception to all rules. But it is pre-
cisely this dismissal of the middle for the
embrace of subjectivity’s extremities that has
contributed to the notorious lack of measure
in modernity, and to the concomitant philo-
sophical conclusion that modernity cannot
produce tragic works. It seems that writing
tragedies requires a culture that understands
lawful restraint above all else, that represent-
ing excess requires poets and listeners who
can conform to measure. Aristotle’s reliance
on natural observation, which shows imita-
tion to be part of the human Gestalt, sets the
epistemological ground for developing such a
calculus of tragedy—that is, for developing a
logic that pervades even what is extreme and
unpredictable.
In defining tragedy as a form of imitation,
Aristotle compares it to painting’s represen-
tation of nature. However, his description of
the imitative thrust of painting does not stop
at the fact that painters copy the outer world.
What intrigues him is the equal pleasure we
all take in the precise rendering of both beau-
tiful and repulsive objects:
For it is an instinct of human beings, from
childhood, to engage in mimesis (indeed,
this distinguishes them from other ani-
mals: man is the most mimetic of all, and
it is through mimesis that he develops his
earlier understanding); and equally natu-
ral that everyone enjoys mimetic objects.
A common occurrence indicates this: we
enjoy contemplating the most precise
images (eikonas) of things whose actual
sight is painful to us, such as the forms
of the vilest animals and of corpses. The
explanation of this too is that under-
standing gives great pleasure not only to
philosophers but likewise to others too,
though the latter have a smaller share in
it. (4, 1448b4–14)
285
No matter what its object, mimesis is our
natural comportment in the world. We are
born to imitate, and imitation is born in us:
“τό μιμεῖσθαι σύμφυτον τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἐκ
παίδων ἐστὶ” (4, 1448b5). Furthermore, it is
through the practice of imitation that we live
and learn in the world. But living and learn-
ing in this world means also brushing against
its sufferings, confronting its bitter truths.
It now becomes evident how Aristotle’s
insistence on our natural appreciation even
of horrible images bears on his consideration
of tragedy: the painter’s fascination with the
corpse is directly related to the tragedian’s
portrayal of the abominable, which is nonethe-
less enthralling and perhaps even instructive
for human beings. The moral capacity of
tragedy involves this paradoxical attraction
we feel when presented with the lifelike image
of suffering, since at this moment an unlikely
convergence occurs between the instinct for
pleasure and hard-hitting ­reality, between
enjoyment and bitter truth. As Lucas suc-
cinctly puts it, “Some other forms of art may
be merely beautiful; by Tragedy . . . we imply
also something fundamentally true to life. It
need not be the whole truth, but it must be
true” (73–4).
It is important to note at this juncture
the etymological connection between the
mimetic image (eiko-n) and Aristotle’s term
for what is probable in the tragic plot: eikos.
Aristotle privileges the figurative image
because it furnishes us with a probable and
plausible version of the world, one that
everyone can relate to without delving into
the private idiom of its creator. Similarly, a
tragic change of fate is probable and plau-
sible when it is true to life, when it depicts
calamities that could be reasonably expected
to happen, even if they have not yet actually
happened or will never happen. The iconic
likeness of mimesis is thus intimately linked
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
to the likelihood of tragic events, for what is
likely is also lifelike.
Certainly, imitation has undergone a long
history of critical reception that is beyond
the purview of this essay. Indeed, after the
advent of modern art, we have learned to
appreciate the conceptual strides of abstrac-
tion to the point that we might dismiss
figurative artworks as being less theoreti-
cally complex, perhaps even as being facile
subordinations of the medium to the mes-
sage. Still, Aristotle might well have coun-
tered that this is only a theoretical response
on our part—an acquired, cultivated taste,
which is not necessarily bad for that, but
which does not exhaust or explain away
the inborn human impulse to represent the
world and to be attracted to its figures. That
we have learnt to appreciate the flat mono-
chrome does not mean that modern chil-
dren have stopped trying to paint animals,
flowers, or their house on the prairie, just as
much as they might smudge a surface with
colors most likely because they are not yet
physically adept at producing a contoured
image. Aristotle may have had interesting,
even positive, things to say about modern
art’s experiments with abstraction, but
when he insists that mimesis is our natural
predilection, there is little evidence we can
present to counter his observation outside
our stubbornness, which, theoretically and
only theoretically, registers an unease that
imitation should be viewed as a grounding
psychological reality. Aristotle’s acknowl-
edgment of this spontaneous tendency is
what allows him to generate his tragic
calculus—to produce a theory of literature
that is cognitively and emotionally tangi-
ble because it is universally believable in its
iconicity—while we risk being left with the
paralyzing effects of our hyperbolic prob-
lematizations of nature.
286
But let us briefly return to the remaining
concepts of necessity, probability, and plau-
sibility, which have already been signaled
earlier in this discussion. These terms work
together to ensure the believability of the
plot’s change of outcome (metabole-). They
preside over the conditions the poet contrives
to bring about this tragic turn: How intense
should the plot twist be before it becomes
sensationalist? What type of accident can be
reasoned retroactively to be necessary rather
than an obviously artificial plot device? The
success of the tragic effect depends precisely
on such fine-tuning: we are moved by ine-
luctable necessity, by what is probable and
convincing, not by hyperbole, caricature, and
indulgence; otherwise, we have passed from
tragedy to soap, from the serious to the ridic-
ulous. In a sense, the calculus of the Poet.
aims to identify the proper conditions under
which one is said to deserve one’s tragic fate
and the audience is said to deserve its tragic
emotions.
Aristotle discusses at length the possi-
ble plot twists in relation to the emotional
effect they produce (13, 1452b27–1453a10).
Here they are schematically: (1) a good per-
son ending in unhappiness; (2) a bad person
ending in happiness; (3) a bad person ending
in unhappiness. Else remarks that a fourth
possibility—a good person ending in happi-
ness—is so obviously untragic that Aristotle
omits it altogether (367). Through a process
of elimination, however, Aristotle shows that
none of the above kinds of plot construction
is truly tragic either. In the first case, the dis-
aster of an upright man produces in us revul-
sion rather than pity at his fate (for instance,
the plot of Job is not a tragedy). The second
option, fate’s rewarding of a wicked person,
is utterly unjust, arouses neither pity nor
fear, and is ruled out as the “least tragic of
all” (1452b37). In the third scenario, where
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
a villain is punished, we may feel a “philan-
thropic” sympathy toward him, but philan-
thropy is not exactly pity. Philanthropy is a
feeling of regret directed potentially at every
suffering person—even at those who suffer
justifiably—but it lacks that singular ingredi-
ent of relenting sorrow we reserve for those
who endure punishments far bigger than their
crimes. Pity, then, seems to be located some-
where between our outrage at the injustice
perpetrated against the righteous and our phi-
lanthropy that extends to all suffering crea-
tures. Though it must somehow have a hint
of the outrage resulting from the injustice of
the first scenario, in order for pity to be pity,
this injustice should not be so disproportion-
ate as to appear like fate’s utter whim visiting
an entirely innocent person. This is why pity
requires as its only plausible object someone
who is decent enough, but not inculpable, so
that his misfortune appears undeserved, but
not utterly capricious. Thus Aristotle reveals
the truly tragic shift of fortune to lie between
the two limits, between options (1) and (3) in
our schema: neither a thoroughly good nor
a thoroughly wicked person, but a person of
good renown, suffering undeserved misfor-
tune—hence, Oedipus, the transgressor who
duly atones for an unwitting error.
In other words, the unexpected turn, which
involves hamartia (a tragic error), should
never be arbitrary or fantastical: it should
retroactively appear as necessary if the plot
is to give a serious but feasible representa-
tion of life. The operative term is “appear.”
Aristotle does not say that the probable is
the actual or even the possible. While the
possible is speculatively imaginable, it is not
always practically (thus naturally, spontane-
ously) believable. The possible is a legitimate
thought-construct; it obeys formal logical
laws, but does not necessarily convey a cred-
ible eventuality. The probable, on the other
287
hand, is the feasible, what could potentially
occur in actuality even if it never comes to
be actualized. In sum, the possible can be
thought, but the probable could take place.
Tragedy, then, as imitation of action, must
rely on what can happen, not only on what
can be thought. This is also why Aristotle
clarifies that in tragedy transpires the fear-
ful (τὸ φοβερὸν), not the monstrous (τὸ
τερατῶδες), for fear refers to reality whereas
monstrosity to fiction (14, 1453b9).18
Following a similar logic, Aristotle deter-
mines the type of acts the plot should unravel
if it is to achieve the maximum tragic effect:
the acts cannot involve outright enemies,
since any harm incurred would seem rather
justifiable; nor should the action be between
neutral agents, since this does not carry
enough pathos. Rather, genuine tragic action
involves the unexpected, and often unwit-
ting, harm brought upon one’s own (14,
1453b15–21).
This subtle psychological calculus aims
not simply at producing a prescriptive man-
ual for aspiring tragedians, which is how
the Poet. has been at times misrecognized.
To assume this is to reduce the normativity
of the Poet. only to prescription. But this is
not the case: Aristotle’s theory on what a
successful tragedy should be relies on what
human emotions normally are, and thus, the
tragic norm refers both to prescriptive and
descriptive registers. The Poet. is above all
a systematic effort to respond philosophi-
cally to Plato’s indictment of tragic poetry
and the passions it fuels. Plato objected to
poetry’s espousal of immorality, examples
of which he found in stories that promoted
an unjust vision of reality with good men
ending in misfortune and bad men receiving
rewards. He critiqued the tragic poets, more
specifically, for appealing to the irrational
desires of the soul, and for exacerbating
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
the emotions of grief and fear that are par-
ticularly dangerous to the welfare of a city:
no city can defend itself if its citizens are
overtaken by grief at war losses or by fear
at confronting their own death in battle. It
is no surprise, then, that pity and fear take
center stage in Aristotle’s theory of tragedy.
In developing the psychology of these spe-
cifically contested emotions, Aristotle meets
Plato’s objections:
If we survey the list of the four possible
modes of the tragic μεταβολή, we find
that those to which Plato most objected
[namely, (1) and (2)] are ruled out imme-
diately—not for metaphysical reasons,
however, but simply because they are not
really tragic, they do not arouse the tragic
emotions. . . . Thus, Aristotle implies, the
unaided moral sense of the ordinary
man performs the duties of censorship
which Plato had laid upon the philoso-
pher. We do not need to be saved from
immoral stories by decree or revelation,
because our own consciousness screens
the reversals of fortune presented by the
drama and accords pity and fear to some
but denies them to others. For—and this
is the nub of the whole matter—the emo-
tions are not merely irrational, as Plato
had made them out to be, they also have
their rational side or at least are amena-
ble to reason. (Else, 1957, 374–5)
As Else later clarifies, the tragic emotions are
amenable to reason because they are them-
selves effects of reasonable causes. In Else’s
words, fear and pity are the respective emo-
tional expressions of two “judgments” that
“a normal spectator or hearer or reader”
is called to make “when confronted with a
tragic story”: “(1) that the hero is ‘like him-
self,’ and (2) that he does not deserve his mis-
fortune. These judgments are not after-effects
of the spectator’s feeling, they are the
288
prerequisites to it. The condition which must
be satisfied before his psyche (that is, the
rational element in his soul) will allow the
emotions to be felt” (436).
The presupposition of a “normal,” “aver-
age” spectator can hardly be overestimated at
this point: in the symmetrical relation Aristotle
draws between the reception and produc-
tion of tragedy, the normality demanded
of the audience mirrors the necessity and
plausibility demanded of the plot structure.
The average spectator is a barometer for the
tragic effect. He/she provides the tragedian
with a good sense of what is fearful but not
sensationalist, of what deserves tragic pity
and not mere charity. Just as genuine fear is
produced only when the horrible arises out
of unexpected but plausible (i.e. normal and
not fantastical) circumstances, so the average
spectator exemplifies a median emotional
range: he/she is located somewhere between
utter frenzy (the option that really worried
Plato) and utter apathy19 (the option that
also worried Plato, at least in the Phaedrus).
Tragedy shown to an audience of sociopaths,
for instance, might well result in complete
lack of sympathy and fear, perhaps even in
an overidentification with the transgressor to
the point that the spectators are provoked to
reduplicate the crime in the real world. But if
this is what most distressed Plato about art’s
contagion, the other alternative is no better,
Aristotle seems to say: an audience whose
emotional capacities have atrophied makes
for a morally and socially impoverished pop-
ulace, lacking all empathy for others and fear
for itself. Aristotle’s insistence on the average
spectator forms the ultimate reference point
of his calculus, thus offering itself as the most
appropriate but also most challenging con-
clusion, particularly in our post-Freudian
world that thinks of normalcy only in rela-
tion to neurosis.
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
Hoi polloi
In a relatively neglected chapter of the Poetics
on tragic diction, Aristotle offers a piece of
advice concerning language embellishment
that I find especially pertinent to our dis-
cussion of measure and the average specta-
tor: he notes that a good tragedy should use
neither too many metaphors, for this would
render the work a riddle, nor too many for-
eign words, for this would render it a bar-
barism (22, 1458a23–4). If we bracket for a
moment the offensive connotations the term
“barbaric” has for us,20 we begin to see that
Aristotle’s concern is the universal compre-
hensibility of tragedy. In both these cases,
an extremity in language usage prevents the
average spectator from properly entering the
tragic space. To the untrained ear, a work that
piles up figurative tropes ends up sounding
no less foreign than a work that is regularly
interspersed with foreign words. It is argu-
able that such illegibility verges on comic
absurdity and directly contravenes tragedy’s
purpose. The average spectator is thus diso-
riented: the more language overwhelms him,
the more likely he is to miss the tragic effect,
and thus the universality of tragedy is com-
promised. Indeed, for the tragic effect to take
place, the spectator must feel the tragic emo-
tions of pity and fear, and he cannot tap into
these emotions unless the plot is legible.
This is the reason why for Aristotle it is
plot above all else that matters in the tragic
work: plot ranks above spectacle, language,
character, thought, and diction. Pity and fear
can be shown by spectacle, but it is better to
be shown in the plot, the philosopher states,
adding that the tragic effect can occur even
when the plot is read or narrated rather than
staged (14, 1453b1–5). Similarly, it is not the
craftiness of language—the puns, neologisms,
and other embellishments—that ultimately
289
determines the tragic effect. The tragic effect
rests in the architectonics of the plot. Used
in proportion, figurative language and spec-
tacle can certainly enhance the tragic effect,
but they cannot save a poor plot structure.
Put differently, formal and rhetorical con-
volutions cannot compensate for the lack
of tragic content, for insufficient meaning
in the tragic act. In fact, Aristotle’s warning
against too many figures and loan words
suggests that excessive rhetoric undermines
rather than heightens the tragic effect.
Aristotle’s assumption of an average audi-
ence as qualitatively and quantitatively repre-
sentative of tragedy’s universality constitutes
for us moderns an interesting political—if not
also epistemological—quandary. How can we
know what is average or in-common in our
complex world, and furthermore, what are
the ethico-political problems of conforming
to social attitudes that designate themselves
as “normal” in various historical epochs? In
trying to answer these questions, modern
thought has steadily moved away from the
logic of the middle and the search for meas-
ure to embrace instead the logic of polarity,
excess, and exaggeration. In our emphatic
concern with singularity, any appeal to the
median and any expectation that “common
sense” may at all impinge upon our notion of
universality have been discarded as ruins of a
foregone and deluded belief in Reason. With
the notions of majority and common sense
reduced to being synonyms for “dominant
normativity,” modern and postmodern ethical
theory simultaneously legitimizes its critique
of Aristotelian (and Enlightenment) reason
as being exclusionary, while safeguarding its
own taste for the marginal against charges
of elitism. I invoke elitism because contem-
porary theory’s “margin” refers at least as
much—if not more—to its own aestheticized
posture of intellectual difficulty as it does to
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
actual constituencies experiencing historical
oppression.
Thus, in a certain scenario—and I concede
that my scenario is itself exaggerated here for
heuristic reasons—we authorize ourselves to
question Aristotle’s assumption of a normal
audience as a risky naturalization that caters
to the lowest common denominator, and at
the same time to remain blind to our own
error. For we, who are too politically sensi-
tive to admit the word “barbaric” into our
vocabulary, and who, contra Aristotle, advo-
cate for the incomprehensibility of the art-
work, we too need our own “barbarians”:
the philistines, those unsophisticated masses
who, for instance, do not understand the
nuances of the aesthetic avant-garde. Indeed,
for an aspiring Adornian, let us say, it is not
only the average person unable to grasp “high
art” who must be condemned to the ranks
of the philistines but also anyone preferring
Mozart over Schoenberg, or Tolstoy over
Beckett. Namely, preferring high mimetic art
over the so-called difficulty of abstraction
is incriminating. Those barbarians seem to
remain forever a kind of a solution.21
What would it be like—after the exhausted
modernist and postmodernist experiments
with self-referentiality and exaggeration—to
pause for a moment and contemplate
Aristotle’s suppler sense of poetry? Respecting
poetry’s immanent laws, and acknowledg-
ing that its purpose is not overtly pedagogi-
cal, Aristotle nonetheless refused to divorce
poetry’s universality from its relative com-
prehensibility. The modern arguments that
language should not be a means of commu-
nication, or that communication should be
more than comprehensibility, can only take
us so far. After all, if tragedy communicates,
it does so not by relating dry information,
but by pointing us toward the enigma of our
very existence. Yet it does so intelligibly. It
290
is precisely in this ­communication of some-
thing—even if this something turns out to
be the void of human existence—that poetry
ranks for Aristotle higher than history (9,
1451b5–6). Poetry relates to us truths that are
ahead of us, truths that have not shown and
may never show themselves through actual
events. But if it did not manage to make
these truths somehow palpable, to transmit
their meaning in a manner legible to most of
us, what else would be the worth of art? In
what would its universality consist except its
empty, formal solipsism?
The universality of poetry, Aristotle would
exhort us, might still be thought in terms of
content and common appeal without itself
becoming a common—that is, vulgar—matter.
Could we not imagine a poetry that reaches
and touches the core of (most of) us because
of its sparseness of affectation? A poetry that,
without embellishment, even as the simple
kernel of a prodigious act, is so compelling
as to speak across the vastness of human
types and experiences? Most probably this is
a question to which I should be wise not to
expect any consensus, but I think that this is
the vision of poetry Aristotle had in his Poet.,
for the Poet. treats not only a genre that has
been ever since recognized for its profundity
but also a genre that was popular. This may
indeed have been the greatest of tragedy’s
enigmas that Aristotle tried to unlock theo-
retically: a sublime art offered up equally to
the philosopher as to the layperson.
Kalliopi Nikolopoulou
Notes
1
Lucas, 1958, 55.
2
“I do not however hesitate to acknowledge (even
if I should therefore be laughed to scorn in these
enlightened times) that I consider the work as
infallible as the Elements of Euclid” (1962, 263).
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
3
“The truth is that we should go back to
Aristotle not so much for the right answers as
for the right questions,” writes Lucas (12), add-
ing that “there is to this day no better starting
point for the study of serious drama than the
Poetics—regarded as a questionnaire” (13).
Although Lucas somewhat overstates the fail-
ure of the Poetics to address the issues it raises,
his insistence on a skeptical reading is not
entirely misplaced: in questioning Aristotle’s
text, we remain faithful to that element of
“unfaith” that marks Greek philosophical
inquiry (12).
4
The Poetics aimed at a comprehensive theory
of literature for the main Greek genres (epic,
tragedy, and comedy), but since its treatment of
comedy is lost, and since it subordinates epic
to tragedy, the work is chiefly considered as a
theory of tragedy. I borrow Halliwell’s term
“foundational strategy” from his introduction
to the Poetics (1995, 6). According to Halliwell,
such strategy relies on a “rational procedure”
to analyze the formal components as well as
moral and psychological effects of the literary
arts, and it is exactly this analytical quality that
has “elicited admiration in some readers, and
discomfort in others” (7). All citations from the
Poetics refer to the Loeb bilingual edition with
translation by Stephen Halliwell. They include
chapter as well as paragraph and line numbers.
5
In his eagerness to critique Enlightenment
classicism, Nietzsche identified Aristotle with
the moralism of his modern readers. As a
result, Nietzsche couched his own antidi-
dactic approach to tragedy in terms of an
anti-Aristotelianism as well.
6
For a more recent elaboration of Aristotle’s
favorable treatment of the emotions, see
Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness.
That the emotions are educable led some schol-
ars to infer that their cultivation in the theater
could translate over time into the acquisition
of good moral habits, nurturing a person’s
overall ethical improvement. For an interpre-
tation of catharsis as a cultivation of moral
habit, see Richard Janko. Following Goethe,
who thought of good literature as implicitly
pedagogical, Lucas writes: “Tragedy may teach
us to live more wisely; but that is not why we
go to it; we go to have the experience, not to
use it” (75).
291
 7
See Heidegger on immeasurable measure in
“. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .” (220–1). This
is in reference to Friedrich Hölderlin, who tried
to develop a modern “tragic calculus” through
his translations of Sophocles.
 8
K. A. Dickson maintains that Lessing’s
misinterpretation of Aristotelian resemblance
“paves the way for the democratization
of tragedy” (57), engendering much great
European drama (58).
 9
For the reader’s sake I provide Aristotle’s
complete definition of tragedy in the origi-
nal, followed by Halliwell’s translation as an
example of the standard rendering: “ἔστιν οὖν
τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ
τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ
χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις,
δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾽ἀπαγγελίας, δι᾽ἐλέου
καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων
παθημάτων κάθαρσιν” (6, 1449b24–8).
[Tragedy, then, is mimesis of an action that
is elevated, complete, and of magnitude; in
language embellished by distinct forms in its
sections; employing the mode of enactment,
not narrative; and through pity and fear
accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions.]
10
That the two might be interwoven is shown
more clearly in Goethe’s entry “On Greek
Tetralogies.” Here Goethe describes the climax-
ing and dénouement that took place over
the duration of a trilogy of tragic works and
was followed sometimes by the release of a
satyr play: “The first part offered exposition,
background and the central theme of the entire
work. In the second, frightening consequences
assumed monstrous proportions. In the third,
however, despite additional developments, a
reconciliation occurred in some manner or
other. It was optional, and sometimes quite
inappropriate, to add a fourth, more cheerful
part, so that the audience, simple people in
need of peace of mind and domestic comfort,
could go home happy” (195–6).
11
What I find philologically satisfying about
Else’s analysis is that it accounts for the mean-
ing of “τοιούτων,” a word that has also posed
a number of interpretive problems, being
translated sometimes as “of those emotions
[of pity and fear],” and other times as “of such
emotions.” However, if it were meant to denote
those exact emotions Aristotle might have
TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
used “τούτων” instead, and if it were meant to
describe suchlike emotions we are left to won-
der why Aristotle leaves those unnamed. The
choice of “τοιούτων” is vindicated by Else’s
interpretation and subsequent translation,
which refers it back to all those tragic acts
capable of arousing pity and fear: “Tragedy,
then, is an imitation of an action . . . with per-
sons performing the action rather than through
narrative carrying to completion, through a
course of events involving pity and fear, the
purification of those painful or fatal acts which
have that quality” (221, my emphasis).
12
Simple plots also rely on the change of fate
(metabole-), but peripeteia is a special kind of
shift germane only to complex plots: it is “an
unexpected yet logical shift in the events of the
play” (Else, 344).
13
For a concise but poignantly sampled exposi-
tion of the various debates on catharsis,
see Halliwell’s Appendix 5 in his Aristotle’s
Poetics. In chapter 6 of this book (espe-
cially 184–201), Halliwell offers his own
theory drawing on both Aristotelian and
pre-Aristotelian concepts.
14
Else maintains that part of the problem in
interpreting this definition, and the meaning
of catharsis more specifically, has to do with
the critics’ insistence on importing Aristotelian
notions from outside the Poetics to explain
it. It is Else’s stated aim to elucidate as much
as possible of the Poetics from within its own
logic (443).
15
“Poetic needs make something plausible
though impossible preferable to what is pos-
sible but implausible” (25, 1461b11–12).
16
George William Foote writes of Lessing’s simi-
lar worry concerning the critical obfuscation of
Aristotle: “The glosses and interpretations of
Dacier and Curtius, Corneille and Voltaire, he
regarded as a sort of Talmud, overgrowing and
hiding the original body of Holy Writ” (333).
17
Hölderlin uses this term to describe Sophocles’
way of distributing the action over the dura-
tion of the play. Hölderlin considered the
entrance of Teiresias as such a turning point: if
the weight of the action falls on the later part
of the play, Teiresias appears early on (as in
Oedipus Tyrannus); if it falls on the first part,
Teiresias appears later on (as in Antigone).
292
18
This statement begs a comparison between
Aristotle’s plot specifications and Kant’s math-
ematical sublime as awe-inspiring but not mon-
strous (Critique of Judgment, 109). Additionally,
the Aristotelian distance between audience and
tragic hero recalls the safe distance Kant requires
between the spectator and the dynamic sublime
in nature (121). However, such a comparison
deserves independent treatment.
19
I am in complete agreement with Dickson on
this point: “Despite the organized hysteria of
Nazism or race-hatred, and the commercial
emotionalism of the modern teenager, is not
the most apparent threat to our culture pre-
cisely a lack of spontaneous feeling, a blunting
of our emotional awareness?” (60).
20
Without delving into the question of how
foreignness was dealt with in Aristotle’s time
and by Aristotle himself, it is worth
noting that the term “barbaric” referred
primarily to the Greeks’ incomprehension of
non-Greek tongues. Greeks, particularly the
Athenians, would also use it to deride other
Greeks. Aristotle was a metoikos (a resident
alien) in Athens, and thus his own experience
was marked by some sense of foreignness.
21
A playful borrowing from the last couplet of
C. P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians” (19).
REFERENCES
Cavafy, C. P., “Waiting for the Barbarians,”
Collected Poems, ed. George Savidis,
trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip
Sherrard, revised edn, Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992, 18–19.
Dickson, K. A., “Lessing’s Creative
Misinterpretation of Aristotle,” Greece &
Rome, 14.1 (April 1967), 53–60.
Else, Gerald F., Aristotle’s Poetics: The
Argument, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1957.
Foote, George William, “Tragedy: Aristotle
and Lessing,” Progress, 3–4, London:
Progressive Pub. Co., 1884,
332–9.
 TOWARD SUBLIME CALCULUS OF ARISTOTLE’S POETICS
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, “Greek
Tetralogies,” Essays on Art and
Literature, ed. John Gearey, trans. Ellen
von Nardoff and Ernest H. von Nardoff,
New York: Suhrkamp, 1986,
195–7.
—, “On Interpreting Aristotle’s Poetics,”
Essays on Art and Literature, ed. John
Gearey, trans. Ellen von Nardoff and
Ernest H. von Nardoff, New York:
Suhrkamp, 1986, 197–9.
Halliwell, Stephen, Aristotle’s Poetics,
London: Duckworth, 1986.
Halliwell, Stephen (ed. and trans.), Aristotle.
Poetics, Longinus. On the Sublime,
Demetrius. On Style, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press,
1995.
Heidegger, Martin, “. . . Poetically Man
Dwells . . .” Poetry, Language, Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstadter, New York:
HarperCollins, 2001, 211–27.
Hölderlin, Friedrich, “Remarks on
‘Oedipus,’” Essays and Letters on Theory,
293
ed. and trans. Thomas Pfau, Albany:
SUNY Press, 1988, 101–8.
Janko, Richard, “From Catharsis to
the Aristotelian Mean,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s Poetics, ed. Amélie Rorty,
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992, 341–58.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment,
trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Hamburg
Dramaturgy, trans. Helen Zimmern,
New York: Dover, 1962.
Lucas, F. L., Tragedy: Serious Drama in
Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics, New York:
Macmillan, 1958.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy
and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter
Kaufmann, New York: Random House,
Vintage Books, 1967.
Nussbaum, Martha, The Fragility of
Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek
Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986.
 Part II:
Disseminations
 15
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL
DWELLING OF INTELLECT
Übersetzung ist eine Form. Sie als solche zu erfassen, gilt es zurückzugehen auf das Original. Denn
in ihm liegt deren Gesetz als in dessen Übersetzbarkeit beschlossen.
Prologue
Just as a translation is a mode governed by
a law of translatability, so also is transmis-
sion a mode governed by a law of transmis-
sibility. The mode in which the law governing
transmissibility is understood and expressed
as intrinsic or extrinsic to the original deter-
mines the mode in which its past will appear
and affect the present either as governed
by necessity and hence justified, even if not
just, or as capable of being otherwise. The
interpretation of the law of transmissibil-
ity is as true of traditions, in this case the
philosophical tradition, as it is of individual
books; it determines the mode in which the
tradition is received and hence decides the
intelligibility—in fact, legitimacy—of other
possible modes of transmission. Nowhere
in my view is such a decision more evident
and more authoritative than in what has
come to be understood as the tradition of
Aristotelian epistemic and moral psychology,
whose determination in the West culminated
during the Renaissance in the appropriation
297
Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen1
of Aristotle’s work, especially De Anima,
Nicomachean Ethics, and Metaphysics, into
a Christo-Platonic framework. The over-
whelming success of this process, a success
greatly aided by the ecclesiastico-political
attempts to silence all aspects of the Latin
Averroist so called heresies, foremost among
which was the denial of human individual
immortality, inevitably assured the occlu-
sion or loss of another Aristotelian tradi-
tion, the Arabic and Judeo-Arabic one.
Notwithstanding the important, if ironic,
light that this occlusion sheds on the role
played by religious/political forces in the
shaping of what comes to be understood
as the single history of the philosophical
tradition, in this essay I seek to retrieve an
occluded, materialist tradition of the DA and
NE, especially in their inseparability. For it is
the indissoluble relation between these two
major expressions of Aristotle’s thought that
both establishes the political dwelling of the
human “soul” and accounts for the hereti-
cal status of an other Aristotle and Aristo­
telian tradition, the repression of which,
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
owing to its spectral afterlife, must be con-
tinuously repeated. Ironically, and in inverse
proportion to the disappearance of the
materialist readings from the single philo-
sophical canon, the rage against them is
glaring. Foremost among those targeted for
condemnation in the Islamicate tradition
are Averroes, Maimonides, and Gersonides
whose works inform my reading of Aristotle
in this paper.
Reading and Rereading
ARISTOTLE Through a
Materialist Lens
The uncanny silence characterizing the
various Christo-Platonic appropriations of
the NE not only renders possible its incor-
poration into Scholastic moral philoso-
phy but, in turn, is also rendered necessary
by the appropriation of the DA. My con-
cern in this essay is with three distinct but
closely related aspects of this silence. First,
Aristotle’s “strange” or uncanny definition
of the human being as a principle, an arche-,
which is a desiring intellect or thinking desire
(ὀρεκτικὸς νοῦς . . . ἢ ὄρεξις διανοητική)2 is
ignored by the Christian commentators and,
furthermore, this ignorance is, in my view,
an exemplary deliberate forgetting. Second,
such a forgetting makes possible the elimina-
tion of desire qua desire, that is, qua embod-
ied and finite, from the discussion of nous
in the DA. Third, this concomitantly makes
possible the assertion that the agent intel­
lect (νοῦς ποιητικός), and as a consequence
the human intellect in act, is not only ana-
lytically separable but can become ontologi-
cally separate. Succinctly stated, the ignoring
of desire qua desire is at the same time the
affirmation of the ontological immateriality
298
of the human intellect, an immateriality that
renders possible individual immortality. In
this light, it is not surprising that the desire
motivating and inaugurating Aristotle’s
inquiry in the Metaphysics, expressed in the
opening statement (“by nature all human
beings desire to know”),3 is either ignored
or dematerialized. It is striking, nonetheless,
that in contrast to the materialist Aristotelian
tradition, the embodied nature of this desire,
embodied insofar as it belongs to the human
as anthrōpos, that is, as a natural desidera-
tive animal (rather than the human as anēr,
the rational entity and political construct,
who is other than an animal), is entirely
ignored, transposed into an extra-historical
and extra-political realm. More precisely
stated, then, not only does the doctrinal con-
cern with individual immortality occasion
the repression of the originary desiderative,
bodily nature of human activity, includ-
ing the activity of knowing in Aristotle, but
also, and more important, it thereby, even if
only implicitly, abandons the human realm,
as distinctly human, to destitution by sever-
ing the dialectical relation between nature/
reason and convention, between the under-
standing of the necessary and the orienting
of desire toward the possible.
In striking contrast, the specific materi-
alist Aristotelian tradition exemplified by
Averroes, and vilified as Averroist, reads the
DA in tandem with the NE or, more pre-
cisely, these readings of the DA are fully
(in)formed by the NE and vice versa. Hence,
just as Averroes, Maimonides and Gersonides
devote extended portions of their diverse dis-
cussions of the DA to desire and appetition,
rather than narrowly restrict their consider-
ation of desire to their readings of the end of
book III (as it appears in Aristotle), so also
they recognize that the discourse of the DA
is devoted to the physics of psuchē rather
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
than to accounts of cognition, which cogni-
tion is but one of the possible motions of
the soul. Conversely, they approach the NE
as arguably the most extensive account of
the physics of knowledge, the other being
the Posterior Analytics.4 Since the philo-
sophical locus classicus of the claims to
individual immortality is book III of DA,
I shall focus my re-reading of Aristotle on
two short passages crucial to the polemi-
cal debates—precisely because, unlike
their materialist predecessors and against
them, the narrow, indeed myopic, concern
with the immortality of the individual soul
not only deliberately brackets off all other
discussions pertaining to human phusis
including the Physics and NE, but also
entirely ignores the fact that appetition ends
the discussion of psuche- in the DA.
Insofar as the consideration of principles
of motion studied in the DA, especially the
locomotion characteristic of all modes of
existence that are capable of some degree of
self-motion, is the primary concern motivat-
ing the discourse, the question of knowledge
for Aristotle (and his materialist heirs) is a
secondary or subsidiary one, and one that can
be addressed only after a clarification of the
complex motions characteristic of sensible,
temporal finite entities. Moreover, insofar as,
and to the extent that, the question of human
knowing belongs to the study of phusis, it is
a question whose ongoing clarification can-
not be examined abstractly or independently
of the concrete, that is, ethical/political con-
ditions of the habituation of desire in which
it may come to be or be prevented from so
becoming.
The natural motions that express diverse
modes of individual becoming—being
moved and self-motion—reflect a com-
plex web of motility, including the motions
peculiar to distinct modes of learning and
299
coming to know. Accordingly, mathe-sis,
episte-me-, and dianoia in relation to hexis,
that is, having “knowledge,”5 are motions
from determinate powers to their actualiza-
tion. Complete actuality is a termination of
motion and time as temporalities and, hence,
of finite life. For even if we take the “agent
intellect” or νοῦς ποιητικός of the DA to be
some actualized a-temporal, infinite entity
and even if its a-temporality and infinity are
unrelated to sensibility, in fact, especially if
we do, its relation to finite motion, in par-
ticular finite self-motion, remains entirely
opaque. For, from an Aristotelian perspec-
tive, all motion from potency to act is appe-
titive and appetition cannot come about
without sensation, sensibly-based memory,
and imagination.
As I already indicated, the primary differ-
ences between the two Aristotelian traditions
of concern in this paper are (1) the finitude
or immortality of the individual human soul
and (2) the materially or immaterially desid-
erative origin of knowledge. The latter ques-
tion constitutes the key link between the DA
and the NE, and the responses to it determine
the respective understanding of all normative
categories. Hence, I must now turn to a con-
sideration of the text whose interpretation is
most disputed:
Intellect in this sense is separate (cho-ris­
tos), impassive, and unmixed, since in
substance it is an actuality; for the agent
is always superior to the patient, and the
origin to the matter.6
And:
Separated (cho-ristheis) it is as such just
that, and only this is immortal and eter-
nal. But, we do not remember because,
although this cannot be affected, the
intellect which is affected is destructible
and without it cannot think.7
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
Since these are the proof texts for claims
for individual immortality, since they are
the bases for claims to the real separability
of the human intellect, and since the Greek
terms for separation, here, “cho-ristos” and
“cho-ristheis,” do not distinguish between
“the separate” and “the separable,” I must
first consider the problem of separability in
the Physics in order to shed light on this dif-
ficulty as it appears in the DA.8
After briefly addressing the difference
between things that are by nature and those
that are not, and roughly sketching the many
senses of nature at the beginning of Physics II.1,
senses that in retrospect should make evi-
dent the fact that science/knowledge depends
upon separability, Aristotle turns to a con-
sideration of the different ways in which the
mathematician, the astronomer, and a physi-
cist study “physical bodies.” Notwithstanding
their differences, each of these modes of
inquiry requires that the scientist regard
what is composite by nature as incompos-
ite or separate, although it neither does nor
can exist as such. The discussion makes evi-
dent not only that separability is possible in
virtue of thought rather than in re, but also
that even with respect to the same “object,”
the “object” is objectified, that is, identified
as such an isolated “object,” in virtue of the
inquiry in question. To do so, however, is to
separate natural bodies from the motion that
defines them as natural. Thus, indeed, lines
and magnitudes are separate from the bodies
in which they inhere and without which they
do not exist, as are the different attributes
of living, moving bodies. What is especially
noteworthy in Aristotle’s discussion is that
separability literally depends upon the elimi-
nation of what is common to all natural bod-
ies, namely, motion. In contradistinction to
the mathematician, however, even when she
ignores the moving principle that identifies/
300
unifies all natural bodies as natural, the
physicist seeks to understand the causes of
motions, which not only exist in composition
and cannot cause motion except in the com-
posite but also are intricately connected and
can be designated as distinct only in thought
from that whose motions they “cause.” Most
succinctly stated, causes of motion become
such “causes,” that is, separate from their
“effects,” in virtue of the inquiry, whereas in
re they are concurrent.
Having stated that, so long as the scien-
tist does not believe that what is separable
in thought is separable in re, nor investigates
on the basis of such a belief, no falsity is
entailed by the separation of what is separa-
ble in thought, Aristotle draws an astonishing
comparison between the procedures of the
mathematicians and those of the Platonists.
“Those who posit [i]deas, too, are doing
the same but are unaware of it; for they are
separating the physical objects, although
these are less separable than the mathemati-
cal objects.”9 What is important about this
statement and why I regard it as astonishing
is not at all the claim that the Platonists, and
perhaps Plato, were unaware of what they
were doing, but the implicit claim that they
may not have regarded the ideas as separate
in re, especially Plato, precisely insofar as
these are ideas of “physical objects,” whereas
the mathematical are not. Note that Aristotle
does not claim that they are wrong, or draw
wrong conclusions but only that they are
unaware of the nature of their procedure.
It cannot be overemphasized that most
of Aristotle’s statements about Plato or the
Platonists are presented in the form of either
praise for, or criticism of, their mode of speak-
ing “well” or “badly.” Moreover, in these dis-
cussions Aristotle distinguishes between the
form of speech and conclusions that may
be derived from it, irrespective of whether
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
the form is proper or improper. That is why
most of Aristotle’s inquiries begin with the
way things are either said to be or believed
to be.10 Thus, in the DA Aristotle praises the
Platonists’ mode of speaking about forms,
whereas in the NE he criticizes the mode
of speaking about the “form of the good.”
Despite its brevity, Aristotle’s statement in
the DA succinctly makes evident his proce-
dure: “So those who say that the soul is the
place of forms speak well, except that it is
not the whole soul but only the thinking part
of it, and that is not actually but potentially
the forms.”11 So, indeed, they speak well, but
their speaking may be understood in two
radically different ways with radically differ-
ent consequences.
If, as I argue, the DA is a physics specific to
those natural entities capable of some degree
of self-motion, then the question of the sepa-
rability of the intellect must be investigated
as a question of physics. Now, it should be
evident, but is surprisingly overlooked in this
context, that, from the beginning, the discus-
sion of the soul, any soul, including that of
the plant and of the reptile, already depends
upon separability; for the soul qua soul, that
is, qua the actuality (entelecheia) of a living
body is an abstraction from the matter/sub-
ject of which it is the form. Soul is the spe-
cific difference of generic natural bodies, for
“every natural body which partakes of life
(zo-e-n) would be a substance of the compos-
ite kind (sunthete-).”12
Now, it cannot be overemphasized that to
be a living body is to be a composite of duna-
mis and entelecheia.13 Stating that plants have
organs, even if simple ones, Aristotle further
specifies the definition of soul. “If, then there
is something common to be said about every
soul this would be: the first actuality of a
natural body which has organs.”14 Insofar as
soul qua actuality defines this substance as
301
the unique this, it is the formula and what
is investigated in the primary sense. However,
again Aristotle explicitly dismisses questions
such as whether or not body and soul are
one. For to be a soul is to be a soul of some
natural body and, as its actuality, that is, as
its principle of life/self-motion, the soul is
the subject of inquiry of this physics, a phys-
ics concerned with the sameness and differ-
ence of living entities, of which the human is
only one.
In light of the fact that discussions not
only of diagonals and angles but also of
motion, sensation, and imagination do not
give rise to controversies about whether or
not Aristotle maintains that they can exist
as separate, the fact that the separation of
the intellect is attributed to him is especially
revealing of the manner of the incorporation
of his thought into the Western canon. In
fact, it is no exaggeration to claim that the
Western canonical Aristotle depends upon
the forgetting or abolition of Aristotle’s pro-
hibition against metabasis and the striving
for a mathesis universalis that can reduce
phusis to mathematics, forgetting that trian-
gles do not exist as such by nature.
Now, just as the relation between a power
of sensation, that is, the potential sensi-
ble, and the sensed, namely, actual sensible,
requires that the power “not be blended” so
that it can receive the “sensible forms” and
become an actual sensible, so also the poten-
tial intellect qua potential cannot be any of
the intelligibles if it is to receive them so as to
become an actual intellect. In both cases the
“form” is the agent/actuality (energeia) that
actualizes the potential power.
The determination of the status of the
human intellect or of its separability depends
upon the interpretation of the status of the
potential intellect, or rather on the nature
of that potentiality. Situating the discussion
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
of intellect in nature, Aristotle distinguishes
between its two natural aspects, and identi-
fies one aspect as the matter that is poten-
tially each intelligible, and the other as the
productive intellect that causes their intelli-
gibility. Just as light is productive of actual
color, so the actual intellect produces actual
intelligibles. In light of the very compact
nature of the text, let alone its radically dif-
ferent appropriations,15 I shall first quote it
and then comment upon the difficulties.
Since in each genus of things there is
something, e.g., matter, as in every case
of nature (and matter is that which is
potentially each of these things), and
also something else which, by producing
those things, is the cause and is capable
of acting, as in the case of art in relation
to its material, these different [aspects]
must belong to the soul also.16
The compactness of the passage notwith-
standing, it is clear that from the beginning
Aristotle emphasizes the fact that the inquiry
about the intellect and intellection, knowl-
edge and knowing, in their sameness and
difference, is an inquiry into nature regarded
specifically rather than generally; for the dis-
cussion is delimited not so much by its being
by nature (κατὰ φύσιν), but by its being
by generation (κατὰ γένεσιν). Materially
stated, the question of knowledge is always
already a question of its generation and cor-
ruption simultaneously as it is a question of
permanence/eternity. Nonetheless, insofar as
both aspects belong to the soul by nature, it
is also clear that coming to be (and thereby
also destruction17) and permanence are not
contradictories but rather natural contraries,
or that nothing that comes to be by nature
can exist outside nature.18 That is, to the
extent that the discussion of intellect and
intellection belongs to nature, to that same
302
extent, at least with respect to the human
psuche-, it must be concerned with change
and permanence, mortality and immortal-
ity. Insofar as nature is always, that is, per-
manent and immortal, so also there is always
actual knowledge, separable from the poten-
tial knowers whose knowledge it generates.
In this sense the agent intellect can be said to
be separate, rather than exist as such, since
where there is no sensibility, there is no imag-
ination, no memory and no intellection.19
The best gloss on this is provided by Aristotle
in a paragraph preceding the discussion of
the intellect that is “immortal”:
. . . the intellect itself is intelligible like
the other intelligibles. For, in the case of
immaterial “things” that which thinks
and that which is being thought are the
same, for theoretical knowledge and its
knowable are the same, and as for the
reason why it does not think always, this
matter should be examined.20
What this passage makes amply evident is
that Aristotle is speaking about a single intel-
lect, namely the intellect that, when it thinks,
is also an actual intelligible, and when it does
not is not an actual intellect or intelligible.
More succinctly stated, knowable natural
“things” qua material, are not intelligible but
are only potentially so, which potentiality of
being thought is “the intellect” prior to think-
ing (for “it does not always think”). Later, in
book III.7, Aristotle emphasizes the tempo-
ral priority of potential knowledge to actual
knowledge, a priority that makes manifest the
fact that the sensible image is the “unmoved”
moving cause of thinking. For, in that respect
in which the sensible image is not as itself
affected by thinking, its actuality/motion is
complete, whereas in that same respect in
which the thinking is affected, or is caused
by the sensible image, that is, insofar as it is
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
moved, neither its motion nor its actuality are
complete. This is where desire comes in.
So long as Aristotle discusses the physics
of the intellect’s becoming, so long as he dis-
cusses it theoretically as intelligible, that is,
as separate, the discussion is limited to one
of its motions, a motion abstracted from its
belonging to the psuche- that is the principle
of concrete, material, living animals, whose
preservation depends upon locomotion. To
this extent, the discussion is not only par-
tial but may also be misleading. For, insofar
as the intellect is the intelligible, insofar as
it thinks of intelligibles as separate from mat-
ter, its knowledge is not only impassible and
always true, but also, properly speaking, it
involves no affirmation or denial, pursuit or
avoidance. Just as actual sensation, insofar as
it is actual, is always true, so also is intellec-
tion; it either is or is not and in this sense can
be said to be divine. In contradistinction, as
soon as intellect is concerned with affirma-
tion or denial about something that is not
itself, that is, something that has matter and
is a potential intelligible, it is also affected by
pleasure or pain, is concerned with pursuit
or avoidance, and its principle of motion is
desire (orexis). Likewise, the discussion of
the intellect as separate is partial and may be
misleading in another and more important
sense, namely, since it omits a consideration
of the central role of the imagination in the
becoming of intellect, even though imagina-
tion is one of the necessary conditions of its
becoming. “The thinking part . . . thinks the
forms in the images.”21 And this is the aspect
of intellect in virtue of which the human ani-
mal is a political animal.
Aristotle’s discussion of the actual intel-
lect may be misleading only if we view it in
isolation from the discussions of sensibil-
ity in DA II, and the discussions of imagi-
nation and appetition that follow the few
303
paragraphs devoted to separability.22 Even
independently of biases arising from strictly
doctrinal concerns, the persistent difficulty
encountered by all attempts at translations
into English (which has lost its inflection,
or whose inflected forms are grammatically
awkward) cannot be entirely eliminated.
For, to discuss intellect and intelligibility as
separable is also to isolate them from the
psuche- whose powers they are, powers that
exist only as composite and whose different
aspects, as aspects of the same powers, are
literally lost in translation. For the “thinking
part” that cannot think without images, the
noe-tikon, is the same power underlying the-
oretical (separable) intelligibility and prac-
tical, materially concrete and desiderative
intelligibility. In other words, the material
inseparability of the two aspects of know-
ing (the “theoretical” and the “practical”)
can only be occluded if and when both are
regarded as capable of separate existence
from the beginning or when the theoreti-
cal is regarded as divine and immortal, the
practical as human and corruptible. In both
cases the purported separation is substan-
tial, and originates in an onto-theological
distinction between divi­nity and animality
that constitute the contradictory existence of
the Christo-Platonic human, whose desire is
divided against itself. Differently stated, the
desire for God as the human end, as the only
mode of human flourishing, is, at best, indif-
ferent to the preservation of the animal and
therefore, to human suffering.
Indeed, the intelligible intellect, as sepa-
rate, is divine insofar as it is separated,
whereas the desiderative intellect, the intel-
lect that affirms or denies, suffers pleasure
or pain, pursues or avoids, is bodily, human,
and necessary for corporeal preservation; for
the divine is permanently “preserved.” Hence,
if and to the extent that desire is necessary
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
for the self-preservation of any animal, and
if and to the extent that in the human ani-
mal it is related to thinking—the reason why
human beings by nature live in the polis—
deliberation and judgment about what is or
may be, that is, what exists by/as nature, is
either inseparable from what is always or
related to it as a principle of local-motion.
For, again the intelligible intellect is always
and as such is “preserved.” Conversely, inso-
far as, for Aristotle, it does not exist as sepa-
rate, its condition of existence quite literally
depends upon locomotion whose human
flourishing or restriction depend upon politi-
cal circumstances.
Now, although Aristotle never explicitly
states, let alone discusses, the ways in which
the very possibility of thinking can be pre-
vented or undermined by the enforcement
of the dogmata of the polis, whether in the
DA or the NE, most of his Islamicate heirs,
most notably Al-Farabi, Maimonides, and
Averroes, discuss this issue at length with
the help of Plato, whose political works
served to supplement the first part of politi-
cal science, that is, NE, in the absence of the
Politics.23 Nonetheless, insofar as the dis-
cussion of desire (orexis) and the appetitive
“part” (orektikon) of the soul constitutes
the last part of the DA, and insofar as this
discussion establishes an essential relation
between appetition, locomotion, and living
well, its political nature is made fully evident
here and is not only confirmed but rein-
forced by the reintroduction of desire in NE
VI precisely in relation to intellect and the
authoritative arche- of human motion, which
is also the precise concern of latter part of
DA III.
Having considered the possible causes of
locomotion in relation to different individ-
ual psychic powers, dismissing all of them as
lacking authority or possessing insufficient
304
or the wrong kind of authority, Aristotle
concludes that “[t]here appear, then, to be at
least two movers here, desire and the intel-
lect, provided that one were to posit imagi-
nation as a kind of thinking.”24 Insofar as
locomotion is necessary for the preservation
and well-being of most animals, and insofar
as locomotion extends much further than
to animals endowed with intellect, if some
form of knowledge is to be one of the causes
of motion or at least partially authoritative,
it would have to extend to all other animals,
for whom locomotion is the condition not
only of self-preservation stricto sensu but,
more important, of thriving. That imagi-
nation provides the link between human
locomotion and that of other animals is
not surprising. It may, however, be mislead-
ing, were intellect to be considered as the
specific human difference pertinent to this
discussion. For, although all animals capa-
ble of locomotion share (albeit in differ-
ent forms) an imaginative power, it is also
the case that many, perhaps most humans,
possess “knowledge” strictly limited to the
imaginative forms. Differently stated, at
the moment at which concrete well-being is
considered in the DA, desire and imagina-
tion provide the material continuity between
human and other forms of animal locomo-
tion; for, it is this motion, a motion oriented
by the material and singular, whose origin
is imagination, that is attractive or repulsive
for the sake of both self-preservation and
living well. More important, whereas ani-
mal desire and imagination are unaffected
by normative dogmata, nor do they require
the polis for living-well, the discussion of
human locomotion cannot ignore the differ-
ences among human animals whose habitu-
ation determines what they regard/imagine
as desirable (τὸ ὀρεκτόν), that is, as the
good or bad that are to be pursued/desired
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
or avoided/repelled. Thus, as Aristotle is
quick to acknowledge, properly speaking,
“what always causes motion is the object of
desire.”25 Nowhere is the aspectival relation
between passion and action, being moved
and moving that constitutes a natural power,
more evident than in the discussion of loco-
motion, that is, appetitive motion. Insofar as
the desirable always appears in the form of
an image, the power of the soul that can be
moved by it in a manner such that the image
gives rise to locomotion, that is, to pursuit
and avoidance, is desire.26 Viewed in this
light, one of the specific, constitutive differ-
ences between the human and other animals
is that human desire can be destructive. For,
whereas the nonhuman movement of the
animal’s desire is always and only according
to nature (κατὰ φύσιν), the human animal’s
desire may not be and, in fact, rarely is. The
mode in which desire is not κατὰ φύσιν will
determine the extent to which the movement
of desire is generative or destructive. In short,
properly speaking, the NE is the physics of
the specifically human psuche-, a physics that
is always already political.
The beginning of NE II brings into
sharp relief not only the radical difference
between theoretical and ethical virtue but
also the important respect in which the polis
is simultaneously κατὰ φύσιν and not κατὰ
φύσιν, that is, the respect in which habitua-
tion is a directing of natural desire, as well
as the generation of “unnatural” ones, in a
manner such that may either promote or
harm living well. Its disappearance from
the philosophical canon notwithstand-
ing, Aristotle’s claim that ethical virtue is
not by nature is explicit: “. . . it is also
clear that none of the ethical virtues arise
in us by nature, for no thing which exists
by nature can be changed into something
else by habituation.”27 Not even repeated
305
force, that is, contrary motion, could
change something that exists by nature
into something else without destroying it.
Conversely, the “generation” of ethical vir-
tues (and vices) is by human art rather than
nature. That is, habituation is the genera-
tion of habits through repeated activities,
the exercise of which can be excessive or
deficient and hence, destructive of the very
power that habituation seeks to establish.
Moreover, insofar as ethical virtue not only
comes about by means of activity but also
is manifest only in/as right action, it cannot
be universal nor can a universal be formed
about it. More precisely, qua universal,
statements are always mistaken about
ethical virtue because they fail to take into
account the concrete material conditions
that determine “the rightness” or “wrong-
ness” of any action whatsoever.28 Properly
understood, then, ethical virtue is nothing
but a direction of desire, the coming to
regard certain “things” or modes of being
and acting as attractive or repulsive. For by
nature nothing is good or bad.
Whereas a virtue κατὰ φύσιν is an actual-
ity (entelecheia, energeia) preceded by a nat-
ural power (dunamis), whereas the power
precedes activity, the power that is ethical
virtue comes about only after repeated
activity. The former cannot be changed into
another power, let alone be lost, the latter
can be changed into its contrary, or become
a “vice,” and can be lost. It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, that Aristotle considers the
political art, the art of legislating and gov-
erning to be the architectonic art.29 “For it
is by making citizens acquire certain habits
that legislators make them good, and this
is what every legislator wishes, but legisla-
tors who do not do this well are making
a mistake; and good government differs
from bad government in this respect.”30
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
Insofar as ethical virtues are orientations of
desire, insofar as pleasure or pain govern
all animal activities, Aristotle’s claim that
legislators who fail to make citizens good
are making a mistake is no naïve assump-
tion about human nature. On the contrary,
insofar as good and bad are not by nature,
the legislator is she who determines what
should be regarded as good or bad, that is,
what should give rise to pleasure or pain.
For in all cases what is pleasurable is what
is pursued as a good even when it may not
be or may harm the human animal, since
bad can only mean harmful to the animal’s
well-being. It is not surprising, therefore,
that for Aristotle “the whole study of vir-
tue or of politics is concerned with pleas-
ures and pains; for he who uses these well
will become good, but he who uses them
badly will become bad.”31 Nor is it surpris-
ing, then, that in the second part of political
science, that is, the Politics, Aristotle exam-
ines different regimes of pleasure and pain
in order to determine what the best one
may be.32
Insofar as the formation of habits is the
orientation of desire(s) in and of the polis,
the NE is concerned simultaneously with
action and belief; for action always aims at
that which is deemed to be good, where the
good is what is desired. Having defined the
mean at which ethical habituation aims as
the dictate of “right reason” (ὀρθὸς λόγος),
Aristotle turns to a consideration of what
this strange hybrid entity, an entity half
ethical half theoretical, may be. In order
to do so Aristotle returns the discussion
to the physics of psuche-. In addition to
the distinction between the a-rational and
rational powers of the soul Aristotle draws
a distinction within reason, between the
“scientific”(episte-monikon), whose concern
is the necessary and unchanging, and the
306
“estimative” (logistikon), whose concern is
what can be otherwise, which is the “reason”
governing action and the polis.33 For, no one
deliberates about what cannot be otherwise.
Moreover, its nobility or “divine” status not-
withstanding, the thought that is theo-ria
and is a complete and self-sufficient activ-
ity ironically is powerless per se or has no
independent authority. As Aristotle explicitly
states, “[i]t is not thought as such that can
move anything, but thought which is for the
sake of something and is practical, for it is
this that rules productive thought also. . . .”34
In this respect, practical thought, especially
that whose end is good action (eupraxia) and
is unqualified, is more powerful and authori-
tative than theo-ria. In this light, noble and
divine as theo-ria may be, its place in the polis
and the leisure or even permissibility of its
pursuit depend upon the practical, which is
the proper, that is, authoritative, human dif-
ference from both animals and gods.
Thus, the general concern with and debate
about the esteem with which Aristotle (and
Plato) held the theoretical life over the prac-
tical/political life is, in my view, misguided;
indeed, the theoretical life is held in the high-
est esteem, but this life is not a human life.
As Aristotle explicitly states, “[s]uch a life, of
course, would be above that of a man, for a
man will live in this manner not insofar as
he is a man, but insofar as he has something
divine in him. . . .”35 And, having described
the activity of a god, contemplation, as most
blessed and happy, Aristotle returns to the
human domain, stating that unlike gods who
indeed are without need, humans are not
self-sufficient even for that aspect of con-
templation that is human, which requires
“a healthy body and nourishment and other
services.”36 Returning the discussion to the
specifically human realm, the thinking that
determines what and how human needs are
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
best met, in short political thinking, concerns
what can be otherwise and what should be
desired materially and concretely.
Since the concern of the NE is the spe-
cifically human motion named “action”
(praxis), which is the human mode of com-
plete, self-sufficient activity, an activity that
is its own end, Aristotle lays down the three
powers of the soul that may have authority
(kuria) over both action and truth: sensa-
tion (aisthe-sis), intellect (nous), and desire
(orexis), and concludes that only the latter
two are principles of action. Indeed, in all
animals sensation has authority but it can-
not be regarded as a principle of self-motion,
let alone of action, in animals capable of
pursuit and avoidance; on the contrary, were
sensation to have authority with respect to
motion, pursuit and avoidance will not be
possible. In addition, it immediately becomes
evident that, properly speaking, intellect and
desire are not two principles of action but
only one, unified by intention (proairesis),
which Aristotle defines as “desire through
deliberation.”37 Insofar as intention is the
principle or cause (arche-) of the specifically
human motion named “action,” being a cause
only of motion, it is insufficient to account
for its completeness and self-sufficiency; that
is, intention cannot provide the reason why
an action is desirable or should be pursued
or avoided. The latter principle, which is
the cause of intention understood strictly as
choice (worthiness), is the composite unity of
desire and reason, a composite whose loss to
a great extent accounts for the Western fate
of the NE. “Now the principle of action is
intention (as a source of motion rather than
purpose), whereas the principle of intention
is desire and reason for some purpose.”38
The hybrid named right reason, the measure
of ethical virtue, in fact reflects the hybrid
that is specifically the human who is not
307
self-sufficient, either in the manner of gods,
whose activity is without desire, or in the
manner of other animals, whose well-being
and self-sufficiency do not require delibera-
tion and whose form of appetition is not
intention.39 That is why as a principle of
action the human being is itself the hybrid
that is intention, which/whom Aristotle
names “a desiring intellect or thinking
desire.”40 And, in light of the DA, it cannot
be overemphasized that the intellect that has
some authority with respect to locomotion
includes imagination. In fact, I want to sug-
gest that, were it not for imagination, the
desired sensible will have complete authority
with respect to pursuit and avoidance, nor
would there be a practical intellect, which
intellect deliberates only about the concrete,
material, and singular, not as it is sensed but
rather as it is represented; for as sensed the
sensible cannot be other than it is.
In light of the radical distinction between
the human and the divine, it is not surpris-
ing that the NE ends with a reminder that
theoretical knowledge per se is inadequate to
human well-being. More important, Aristotle
explicitly says that human beings are not
inclined to ethical virtue by nature, and that
education and arguments, that is, reason, is
inadequate to ethical habituation, that is, the
habituation of the affects, of the nobly and
basely disposed alike. The difference between
the former and the latter is not a matter of
reason but rather a matter of which affect
exercises greater power over them, shame or
fear. Since most people are guided by passion
rather than thought, especially the young
whose habituation is in question, and since
passion is common to all whereas thought
is not, Aristotle’s NE ends with a discussion
of the laws and lawgiver. For laws and cus-
toms are indeed the means by which what
is viewed as noble and ignoble, desirable
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT
and undesirable, comes to be experienced
as pleasurable or painful, to be hoped for or
feared. In sum, the lawgiver is a physician of
the psuche-, whose knowledge is a physics
of the affects and whose art is their guid-
ance. The different forms that this guidance
may assume are studied in the second part of
political science, and is beyond our concern
here.
Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
Notes
 1
Benjamin, 1955. “Translation is a mode. To
comprehend it as a mode one must go back
to the original, for that contains the law
governing the translation: its translatability”
(Benjamin, 1968, 70).
 2
Nicomachean Ethics 1139b4–6. References to
NE in Greek are from Rackham, 1926.
 3
Metaphysics 980a22. References to Met. in
English are from Apostle, 1966.
 4
This formulation is somewhat inadequate
and misleading, since questions of knowledge,
as well as affective obstacles to it, appear in
all of Aristotle’s texts as well as those of his
materialist readers. Still, with the exception of
the NE, Posterior Analytics, and Topics, whose
discussions are concerned with knowing sim-
pliciter, in the other texts the questions differ
according as they are limited by the specificity
of the subject matter. Nonetheless, that the
APo is a physics of knowledge is evident from
its first sentence whose concern is precisely the
becoming of knowledge.
 5
Awkward as this formulation may be, as will
become evident below, it is essential for under-
standing the differences between theoretical
and ethical virtue in the materialist Aristotelian
tradition.
 6
430a18–20. References to De Anima in
English are from Apostle, 1981.
 7
430a23–5. Translation modifies and omits
Apostle’s additions. Emphases in the English
are mine.
 8
Again, since my concern is with appropriations
of Aristotle’s DA and NE, my consideration of
separability will be limited to the Physics, of
308
which the DA is a specific, consequent inquiry,
as stated above. I am not concerned here with
the question whether or not there exists some-
thing separate in re, or with the question of the
divine, except in the limited way as it pertains
to or is said to affect human beings, for exam-
ple, in the NE. Hence, I forego discussion of
separability in the Met.
 9
Phys. 193b36–194a1. References to Phys. in
English are from Apostle, 1980; my emphases.
10
The role of language in belief cannot be over-
emphasized although its discussion is beyond
the scope of this paper.
11
DA 429a27–30; my emphasis.
12
DA 412a15–16.
13
This discussion is still an oversimplification
owing to the limits of my current concern.
Still, it must be noted that “a natural body” is
already a composite and a determinate subject.
That is why soul belongs to a subject whereas
the body is a subject. Nonetheless, it is only in
composition that they form a substance and a
this.
14
DA 412b4–6.
15
The most notable differences are those
between the Christian Latin tradition and
the Islamicate one. But even within each
broad tradition the interpretations vary
significantly. Nonetheless, broadly speaking,
in the Islamicate tradition the potential intel-
lect is a hylic intellect and the agent intellect
is single, whereas in the Latin Christian
tradition a “hylic intellect” is inconceivable,
the potential intellect is separable a parte
ante and hence capable of self-subsistence.
It is no exaggeration to argue that the denial
of individual immortality, explicitly in
Averroes but implicit also in Al-Farabi and
Maimonides, is the foremost motive of the
ecclesiastical condemnations of philosophy
beginning in 1272. Book 1, 2 of Gersonides’
Wars of the Lord and several questions in
Thomas Aquinas’ Questions on the Soul
provide excellent glimpses into the extent of
the differences.
16
DA 430a10–14.
17
Properly speaking, it is not knowledge that is
destroyed, but rather this or that knower who
ceases to be.
18
Contradictories cannot be other than they are.
The positing of the one entails the immediate
negation of the other. For example, being and
 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT

nonbeing, necessary and impossible, and finite 36

NE 1178b33–5; my emphasis.
and infinite. 37
NE 1139b24.
19
See DA 432a4–14, where Aristotle explicitly 38
NE 1139a32–4.
states that since nothing exists without magni- 39
The relation between self-sufficiency and
tude, there can be no learning or understand- self-motion in Aristotle is worth emphasizing,
ing without sensing, nor speculation without although a discussion of their relation and
images, which are “like sense impressions distinction is far beyond the present context.
except without matter.” 40
NE 1139b5–6.
20
DA 430a1–7. Translation modified.
21
DA 431b2–3.
22
The inverse proportion between the length of
the discussion of what I shall henceforth name References
the intelligible intellect as distinct from the
desiring intellect, and the rest of the investiga- Apostle, H. (trans.), Aristotle. Metaphysics,
tion of psuche- is so clear as to render further Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic Press, 1966.
remark either superfluous or polemical.
23
Insofar as the Islamicate philosophers regard
––, Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, Grinnell,
Plato and Aristotle as friends, I have no doubt IA: Peripatetic Press, 1975.
that even had the Politics been available to ––, Aristotle. Physics, Grinnell, IA:
them, they would still have supplemented Peripatetic Press, 1980.
it with Plato’s political writings, especially ––, Aristotle. On the Soul, Grinnell, IA:
since it made possible the identification
Peripatetic Press, 1981.
of the prophet with the lawmaker and
philosopher-king. Bouyges, M. (ed.), Al-Farabi, Risala fi'l-'aql
24
DA 433a10–11. (De Intellectu), Beirut: Imprimerie
25
DA 433a28. Catholique, 1938.
26
DA 433a31–2. Benjamin, W., Illuminationen, Frankfurt:
27
NE 1103a18–21. With occasional variations,
Suhrkamp, 1955.
the references to NE in English are from
Apostle, 1975; my emphasis. ––, “The Task of the Translator,” in
28
See NE 1137a32–1138a3 where Aristotle Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, New
draws the key distinction between legal justice York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
and equity, on which basis he argues that inso- Gersonides, L., Chapters 9–12 of
far as laws are general, they may be unjust. Gersonides’ Supercommentary on
29
NE I.1.
Averroes’ Epitome of the De Anima:
30
NE 1103b4–7; my emphasis.
31
NE 1105a10–13. The internal Senses, trans. J. Mashbaum,
32
Aristotle’s conclusion that aristocracy is the Ann Arbor: University Microfilms
best form of government is not only irrelevant International, 1995.
to my concern but also concern about it is, at ––, The Wars of the Lord, vol. 1, trans.
best, anachronistic. What I seek to empha-
Seymour Feldman, Philadelphia: The Jewish
size here is the nature of the inquiry and its
material, concrete, that is, nonuniversalizable, Publication Society of America, 1984.
subject matter. Hett, W. S. (trans.), Aristotle. On the Soul,
33
Note that neither here nor elsewhere does Parva Naturalia, On Breath, Cambridge,
Aristotle claim a real separation constitutive of MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
the soul. Rather it is the “object,” unchange-
Ivry, A. (trans.), Averroes. Middle
able and changeable, which determines the
nature of the specific reasoning activity.
Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima,
34
NE 1139a35–1139b1. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University
35
NE 1177b26–8. Press, 2002.

309
ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURAL DWELLING OF INTELLECT

Maimonides, M., The Guide of the Thomas Aquinas, Questions on the

Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Rackham, H. (trans.), Aristotle.
Nicomachean Ethics, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1926.
Soul, trans. James Robb, Milwaukee:
Marquette University Press, 1984.
Wicksteed, P. H. and F. M. Cornford (trans.),
Aristotle. Physics Books I-IV, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.

310
 16
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD:
WALKING WITH WOODBRIDGE,
THINKING WITH ARISTOTLE
. . . thinking and walking are different ways of getting about in a common world which has a make-
up agreeable to each of these ways.
Preamble
Walking the streets of the Greenwich Village
on a rather bitter, early January day, a year
after defending my dissertation and months
before receiving my first job offer, I stum-
bled upon one of those inconspicuous little
bookstores tucked away from the bustle of
things, just below street level. Descending
three stairs, I entered, drawn more by the
promise of warmth than by the hope of
inspiration. As I made my way toward the
Philosophy section, I was prepared to feel
my reigning mood of uncertainty aug-
mented by the daunting quantity of words
to be read, new ideas somehow to be
digested.
Almost immediately, I found myself
addressed by a rather pathetic looking lit-
tle volume: it seemed to be a photocopy of
a text, bound in plastic with a spine of burnt
orange and nothing to identify its content.
Pulling it from the shelf, I was at first put off
by its announced title, Aristotle’s Vision of
311
Woodbridge, The Realm of Mind, 19261
Nature, so critical as I was at the time of the
metaphysics of vision.
And yet, there was this name, Woodbridge,
and another, Randall, that seemed to give the
thing a kind of weight. Someone had taken
care to photocopy these pages, to bind them
together, to preserve them for posterity, per-
haps, indeed, for me.
Plus, it only cost a dollar.
And so it was, with a certain hesitation,
and yet in wonder, that I opened the book
and began to read.
“This small volume is offered,” wrote
Randall in the introduction, “in the convic-
tion that it is the most important writing on
Aristotle’s thought since the revolutionary
study of Werner Jaeger in 1923.”2 The state-
ment comes as a shock and one is tempted
initially to dismiss it as nothing more than
yet another one of those generous, but hyper-
bolic gestures of respect students tend to
bestow upon their teachers.
However, somewhere along the paths
of thinking Woodbridge traverses in these
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
lectures, this initial impression gives way to
the growing realization that Woodbridge,
drawing upon his own great mentor, George
Santayana, has indeed charted a methodo-
logical approach to Aristotle’s thinking that
surpasses that of Jaeger’s developmentalism.
Although Woodbridge offers only a rough
topography of what I have elsewhere called
Aristotle’s peripatetic legomenology, to pur-
sue the tack Woodbridge takes in these lec-
tures is to be led back to an Aristotle who
brings his thinking to life by allowing life to
animate his thinking.3
***
Peripatetic Legomenology
To say more than human things with
­human voice,
That cannot be; to say human things with
more
Than human voice, that, also, cannot be;
To speak humanly from the height or
from the depth
Of human things, that is acutest speech.
Wallace Stevens, “Chocorua to
its Neighbor”4
These lines from Wallace Stevens articulate
something of the spirit in which Aristotle’s
thinking unfolds; for his philosophical
endeavor involves precisely that “acutest
speech” that attempts “to speak humanly
from the height or from the depth of human
things.” But as the Stevens poem itself brings
to language, the realm “of human things” is
bound intimately up with the realm of natu-
ral things.5 This intimacy between human-be-
ing and natural being is at the very root of
Aristotle’s thinking. Thus, although Aristotle
has sometimes been accused of seeking “to
say more than human things with human
312
voice,” in fact, everything he says is said in an
attempt to give voice to the nature of things.6
The manner in which nature expresses itself
is, for Aristotle, so deeply integrated into the
power of human articulation that each genu-
ine attempt to articulate the truth concerning
the nature of things touches upon something
of that nature however ultimately elusive.7
The attempt to speak humanly from the
height and depth of human things is, then, to
embark on a path of speaking and thinking
that uncovers something of the highest and
deepest truths of nature itself. This is pre-
cisely the path toward which Woodbridge’s
engagement with Aristotle points; it is the
path that Randall recognizes as on par with
the contributions of Jaeger, but it is also a
path so deeply rooted in Aristotle’s thinking
that it remains discernible in Jaeger’s own
developmental approach.
In his seminal book, Aristoteles,
Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner
Entwicklung, Werner Jaeger shows that “at
the root of [the Aristotelian texts], there is a
process of development.”8 His great insight
is the recognition that Aristotle’s texts give
voice to a thinking that lives and develops.9
The book’s appearance in 1923 might best
be traced along a line of scholarship that
extends back through F. A. Trendelenburg
to Hegel, who, a century earlier, argued in
his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der
Philosophie that Aristotle is not to be read
as a “unspeculative empiricist” but rather as
a great idealist whose thinking was alive to
the life of thinking itself.10 If Hegel’s inter-
pretation excited his students because it chal-
lenged the “the axiom defended by Locke to
Kant up to Schleiermacher, that Aristotle was
an unspeculative empiricist,” Trendelenburg,
challenging Hegel’s own tendency to privi-
lege pure thinking, emphasized the organic
interaction between the human mind and

the environment.11 As Rosenstock puts it,
Trendelenburg “views the role of reason
in the context of its genesis and operation
in nature.”12 Situating Jaeger in this tradi-
tion at once accounts for a central tension
in his reading of Aristotle and connects him
to a tradition that had a deep influence on
Frederick Woodbridge.13
The central tension in Jaeger’s work is
between a certain tendency toward systema-
ticity and an affirmation of the living context
in which Aristotelian thinking unfolds. The
developmental approach to Aristotle’s work
resolves the tension beautifully by turning a
specific biographical story about Aristotle
into the organizing principle of his philoso-
phy. More specifically, Jaeger appeals to
Aristotle’s relationship to his teacher, Plato,
and his alleged struggle to come to his own
terms with the world in the shadow of Plato’s
“unlimited genius,” in order to explain away
the inconsistencies one encounters if one
reads Aristotle’s work as the articulation of
fully developed system.14 But the develop-
mental approach, despite its great recog-
nition of the living nature of Aristotelian
thinking, ultimately reinforced the seduc-
tion of hermeneutical consistency: it remains
animated by an attempt to explain away the
apparent contradictions in Aristotle’s think-
ing. However, the appearing of ­contradiction
is for Aristotle the very sort of diction that
announces the presence of a matter for
thinking. Aristotle attends to such dictions
carefully, not as intractable contadictories,
one side of which must be destroyed to
allow the other to reign, but as indications
of impasses to be navigated, oriented always
by the beacon of the appearing of things.15
His is a thinking on the way. It is peripatetic,
just as those who followed him as he walked
the grounds of the Lyceum were called
“peripatoi,” the ones who walk.
313
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
Although Woodbridge does not speak of
Aristotle’s thinking as peripatetic, the great
insight of his own engagement with Aristotle
is precisely this attempt to walk with him as
he “goes directly without preliminary to the
subject-matter involved and follows where
it leads him.”16 Like Jaeger, Woodbridge rec-
ognizes the living dimension of Aristotelian
thinking; but unlike Jaeger, for Woodbridge,
the deepest expression of this living thinking is
experienced in Aristotle’s philosophical meth-
odology. Here, “methodology” speaks with
a decidedly Greek accent: it names a way of
following along after, meta-hodos, the logos
of things.17 But the logos of things expresses a
structure accessible to the powers of the human
soul, even if our finite powers can never cap-
ture the full depth of nature’s expression. John
E. Smith at once articulates the meaning of the
term “expression” that should be amplified
here and emphasizes the dimension of inacces-
sibility that cannot be eclipsed:
In any present, something is expressed
or made manifest, but much is not
expressed. I do not mean that the mani-
fest or surface is “appearance” and the
depth “reality,” since both are equally
real in relation to the individual express-
ing itself; it is rather that with respect to
the expression of any individual in any
specific situation, there is always “more
to come.”18
For Smith as for Aristotle, the surface and
the depth are part of the same reality at work
expressing itself. Human access to the depth
of things is, however, mediated by the power
of human articulation that itself, as Smith
rightly suggests, “is integral to Being.”19 Thus,
the way to the depth of things is mediated by
the human capacity for articulation that itself
ought not to be understood to fundamen-
tally distort the nature of things, but rather,
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
to correspond to and with the expression of
nature in ways that bring meaning to life.
This sense of correspondence—Woodbridge
speaks in terms of “cooperation,” “correla-
tion” and even “conformation”—between
the human power of articulation and the
natural expression of things is at the root of
Aristotle’s methodological approach.20
In an early passage from the De Anima,
Aristotle articulates the manner in which his
investigation into the soul follows along after
the things said beautifully about it:
While inquiring concerning the soul,
going through the impasses (diaporoun-
tas) concerning which there is a need to
find a way (euporein) in order to move
forward, it is at the same time necessary
to take up along the way the opinions of
those who came before, however many
showed forth (arephe-nanto) something
concerning the soul, in order that we
may take hold of the things said beauti-
fully, but, if any are not said beautifully,
that we may beware of these.21
The peripatetic methodology is thus a legom­
enology: the things said, τὰ λεγόμενα, open a
path into the nature of things. In this passage
the appearance of words related to the Greek,
poros—road, passage, way—testifies to the
dynamic nature of Aristotle’s thinking as a
thinking on the way. In the Physics, Aristotle
has famously designated his way of thinking
as a “natural road from what is more famil-
iar and clearer to us to what is more famil-
iar and clearer by nature.”22 In practicing a
peripatetic legomenology, however, Aristotle
recognizes that this natural path to nature is
itself made possible by the nature of language.
Woodbridge puts it this way:
Metaphysics thus follows and may refine
the uses of common speech. We need not
314
be metaphysicians to claim mind and
body as our rightful possessions. For
just as it is natural for us to speak of a
man who walks far and lustily, as a great
walker, and to endow him with a strong
body, so it is natural for us to speak of
him who thinks profoundly, as a great
thinker, and to endow him with a great
mind. Thus common speech condenses
into single words meanings which require
many sentences for their full expression.
Such words economize speech and give
to language its wealth of significance.23
From this perspective, it is unnecessary to
posit two separate methodological appro­
aches in Aristotle, the one empirical, deal-
ing with the appearances of sense, the other,
dialectical, dealing with the common manner
in which people speak.24 Rather, Aristotle’s
naturalistic understanding of language roots
the things people say in the very nature of
things in a way that undercuts the standard
dichotomy between naturalism and conven-
tionalism. That dichotomy is predicated on
a conception of human-being and human
language fundamentally uprooted from the
world of nature.25 The wealth of signifi-
cance endemic to human language is itself
an expression of the wealth of significance
endemic to nature.
Woodbridge emphasizes this deep correla-
tion between language and nature in his lec-
tures on Aristotle when he writes:
But [Aristotle] will not let the natural-
ness of language be natural in admission
only. He makes it natural in nature. It
becomes one of nature’s supreme prod-
ucts, the product in which all other
products find articulated linkage. For
things to go into language is a going, just
as much of a going on their part, and just
as natural, as their going into air or water,
up or down, or from seed to flower.26

Thus, when Aristotle speaks, again and again,
of how things are said, when he attends care-
fully to the various ways they are said and
when he rehearses what others have said
about them, his manner of speaking must be
heard as organically bound to a way of think-
ing rooted in the natural community of com-
munication between the powers of the soul
and things of nature. Aristotle’s phenomeno-
logical attunement to the ways things express
themselves and his assiduous attempts to get
things said beautifully are thus two dimen-
sions of a peripatetic legomenology that
speaks with and attends to the language
of nature in an attempt to do justice to the
nature of things.
The Surface of Things
It is as if being was to be observed,
As if, among the possible purposes
Of what one sees, is the purpose to be
seen,
The property of the moon, what it evokes.
Wallace Stevens, “Note on Moonlight”27
Peripatetic legomenology is rooted in Arist­
otle’s naturalistic understanding of the rela-
tionship between the powers of the soul
and the things with which they cooperate.
Woodbridge puts it this way: “The correla-
tion between the powers of the soul and
the natural conditions of their exercise is,
perhaps, the one dominant and outstanding
characteristic of Aristotle’s psychology.”28
Yet, what Woodbridge identifies as the key to
Aristotle’s psychology, is in fact the organic
enabling condition of Aristotelian thinking
itself. His peripatetic legomenology is predi-
cated on the recognition that the logos at
work in nature is also somehow at work in
the soul.
315
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
In DA II.5, Aristotle pursues a legomenol-
ogy of perceiving, “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,” in
order to lend determination to the precise
manner in which the power of perceiv-
ing cooperates with that which can be per-
ceived. Attending first to the things said
about aisthe- sis, Aristotle identifies the limits
of understanding perceiving in purely pas-
sive terms.29 He proceeds then to consider
the way perceiving itself is said. The articu-
lar infinitive that designates the activity of
perceiving, “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,” speaks in the
middle voice and so points to perceiving as
an active condition of the soul, a hexis with
the power to actively receive what presents
itself in perceiving. By attending to the way
perceiving is said, Aristotle is himself able to
hear the manner in which perceiving is itself
the expression of a cooperation between the
power of the soul and the nature of the thing
perceived. He begins by delineating the two
ways perceiving is said:
Since we say perceiving (τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι)
doubly (for what has the potency of hear-
ing and seeing we say hears and sees, even
if it happens to be asleep, as well as what is
already at-work [τὸ ἤδη ἐνεργοῦν]
seeing and hearing), so too should the
power of perceiving (ἡ αἴσθησις) be said
doubly, on the one hand, as in potency,
and on the other, as being-at-work; also
similarly that which is perceived (τὸ
αἰσθητόν) is a being both in potency and
at-work.30
The way we speak about perceiving suggests
something decisive about the nature of the
phenomenon itself: namely, that it must be
twofold. Not only is the Greek word itself
articulated in the middle voice, suggest-
ing already that it is not simply passive, but
we also speak about hearing and seeing as
active powers even when they are not actively
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
at work. The cascading structure of this
­passage that moves from “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι,”
to “ἡ αἴσθησις” and ultimately, to “τὸ
αἰσθητόν” itself illustrates beautifully the
manner in which the way we speak about
“τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι” uncovers something of
the truth about the power of perceiving in its
relation to what is perceived.
By the end of II.5, Aristotle is thus in a
position to recognize on the basis of his
legomenology of “τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι” both the
limits of our ways of saying things and the
insights we gain from attending carefully to
the ways things are said:
But since these differences [with respect
to the senses of potency] are with-
out names, though it has been marked
out that they are different and how they
are different, there is a need to use the
words “to be acted upon” and “to be
altered” as though they were appropriate.
And the ability to perceive is in potency
such as the perceived thing is already
in its being-at-work-staying-itself (ἤδη
ἐντελεχείᾳ), just as has been said. So it
is acted upon when it is not like [the per-
ceived thing], but when it has been acted
upon (peponthos), then it has become
likened (ho-moio-tai) to it, and is such as
that is.31
Although the double nature of perceiving
finds articulation in the ways perceiving is
said, still, our ways of speaking about things
do not always articulate clearly the differ-
ences heard in our ways of saying things.
Aristotle here remains willing to use the com-
mon way of speaking about the nature of per-
ceiving as a kind of being acted upon, but he
emphasizes the limitations of understanding
the encounter between the power of perceiv-
ing and what is perceived in purely passive
terms. Indeed, his own careful language—and
316
here particularly his use of the perfect
tense—gestures to the moment of perceptual
encounter between the power of perceiving
and what is perceived that cannot quite be
captured in purely passive terms. The perfect
tense—“peponthos” and “ho-moio-tai”—ar­
ticulates the moment of perceptual encounter
as having already happened; this Aristotle is
forced to do here because as he himself says:
“there is a need to use the words ‘to be acted
upon’ and ‘to be altered’ as though they were
appropriate.” The need to use these words
that amplify the passive dimension of per-
ceiving require Aristotle to speak in the per-
fect tense in order to give voice to the active
side of the cooperative relationship that ena-
bles perceiving itself.32
A legomenological reading of Aristotle
as he himself pursues a legomenology of
perceiving uncovers his teaching on the
nature of perceiving as a cooperative activity
between the power of perceiving and what is
perceived. This teaching on the cooperative
nature of perceptual encounter finds its cor-
relate in Aristotle’s teaching on the nature of
thinking itself. Woodbridge rightly makes the
correlation between perceiving and think-
ing central to his own reading of Aristotle’s
account of the soul. Thus, according to
Woodbridge, the most significant sentence
of the DA extends the correlation between
the powers of perceiving and the perceivable
things with which they cooperate to what
Woodbridge calls the realm of mind: “just as
the power of perceiving is to that which is
perceptible, so too is the intellect (τὸ νοῦν)
to that which is intelligible.”33 Aristotle puts
it this way in DA III.4 on the so-called pas-
sive intellect:
[Thinking] must be unaffected (apathes)
but capable of being receptive (dektikon)
of the form and in potency it must not

be the form, but such as it is, and it must
hold similarly (ὁμοίως ἔχειν), with the
result that as the ability to perceive is to
the thing perceived, so too is thinking to
the thing thought.34
Although Aristotle here speaks of think-
ing as “unaffected,” he immediately refers
to the specific capacity thinking has—it is
“dektikon”—and indeed, to the manner in
which it holds itself as similar—“ὁμοίως
ἔχειν”—to the form in order to explain
how thinking is itself possible. The model to
which he gestures as he attempts to articu-
late the nature of thinking is, in fact, that of
perceiving.
Woodbridge emphasizes how this analogy
between the powers of perceiving and the
power of the intellect articulates the manner
in which each of these natural powers of the
soul operates in “realms of being congruent
with their exercise.”35 Thus, just as vision
may be said to operate in the realm of the vis-
ible, intellect is said to operate in a realm of
the intelligible. Such realms, for Woodbridge,
are not separate worlds independent of one
another—the one bodily, the other mental—
rather, they are different ways the natural
world expresses itself, each of which is dis-
cernible to and by a corresponding power of
the soul. Thus, Woodbridge writes:
Men think and reason as well as perceive
and take nourishment. Both are equally
natural activities on man’s part. But just
as the taking of nourishment involves a
field of food or food objects, so the exer-
cise of reason involves a field of ideas or
ideal objects. In other words, the rational
life of man is not something superim-
posed on his other lives or growing out
of them, but is life in a realm of being
different from theirs. Nature in its own
right must possess such a realm of being,
317
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
or man could not think at all, just as he
could not see at all if nature in its own
right were never visible.36
What the mind thinks and what the eyes
see are different aspects of the same natu-
ral world operating in what Woodbridge
calls distinct “realms of being.” But for
Woodbridge, a “realm” does not fragment the
integrity of the natural world. Although an
idea can no more nourish our physical bodies
than a carrot can feed our mind, still the idea
and the carrot remain natural expressions of
a natural world to which our human diges-
tive and intellectual capacities correspond.
Even so, however, in speaking the language
of “realms,” Woodbridge risks introducing a
chasm between the nutritive, perceptive soul
and the intellect that is nowhere present in
Aristotle.37
For Woodbridge, inquiry begins with the
things we encounter in the world. He writes:
“So men find rocks and trees, seas and
stars, memories and fancies, and look to see
what these things are and what can be said
about them. All inquiry starts in this way
and not with ‘phenomena’ or ‘experience’ or
‘sense-data.’”38 To use the Aristotelian lan-
guage of the Metaphysics, we begin “wonder-
ing about the strange things at hand.”39 Yet
for Aristotle, these are precisely the wholes
“better known by perceiving” that lead
somehow along a natural road to the nature
of each thing.40 By insisting that these things
we encounter are not “phenomena” or “expe-
rience” or “sense-data,” Woodbridge seeks
to emphasize that these encountered things
are not at first encountered in philosophical
terms. And even if this point resonates with
Aristotle’s own starting point in the world
of common human interactions, Aristotle’s
thinking always already takes the things
encountered themselves as phenomena;
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
not, indeed, as phenomena disjoined from
being, but as appearances in and through
which being expresses itself. Thus, although
Woodbridge follows Aristotle in his attempt
to begin with the things encountered, he nev-
ertheless parts ways with Aristotle insofar
as he refuses to pursue the manner in which
thinking does in fact grow somehow out of
perceiving even if perceiving and thinking
operate in distinct, albeit parallel, “realms.”
Spinoza, it seems, has exerted a bit too much
influence on Woodbridge in this regard, for
the sort of parallelism Woodbridge seems to
advocate is more at home in Spinoza than in
Aristotle who, despite Woodbridge’s claims to
the contrary, sought to weave perceiving and
thinking together into the fabric of nature.41
A Path Phantastic
The imagination loses vitality as it ceases
to adhere to what is real.
Wallace Stevens42
In The Realm of Mind, Woodbridge argues
that walking, perceiving and thinking are
thoroughly natural and yet also, that they
belong to different “realms” within one
“realm of being.”43 Woodbridge is careful
to insist that to speak of a realm of mind
found within the realm of being is neither
to exclude nor to devalue the other realms
in which being expresses itself differently.
Yet his own tendency to insist that the realm
of mind is incommensurable with the other
realms of being threatens the organic coher-
ence of nature. To put this in terms of the his-
tory of philosophy gestured to above, there
remains in Woodbridge a residual segregation
of mind and body that seems to be more the
result of a Spinozistic response to Cartesian
318
dualism than that of a genuine engagement
with Aristotle. Although Woodbridge does
not speak of nature as an expression of God’s
infinite attributes, two of which are thought
and extension, nevertheless, like Spinoza,
Woodbridge insists that thinking can be nei-
ther derived from nor reduced to the opera-
tions of the body. If Spinoza calls thinking an
attribute of God, Woodbridge designates it
as an operation at work in a realm of mind as
part of the overarching realm of being.
Yet, by introducing the spatial metaphor
of the “realm,” which itself, according to
Woodbridge, names “neither a place nor
an event” but rather a “region inhabited,”
Woodridge reinforces the impression that the
life of the mind is in some fundamental way
divorced from the life of walking and per-
ceiving.44 This impression is augmented by
Woodbridge’s tendency to emphasize precisely
the difference between the realms in which
walking, perceiving, and thinking operate.
In the Realm of Mind, for example, even as
Woodbridge insists that thinking is also an
embodied activity, nevertheless, he writes: “But
when these bodies think, they do something
incomparable with what they do when they
walk.”45 The impulse to emphasize the differ-
ence seems animated by Woodbridge’s desire to
insist that what the mind discovers by means
of its operation is not a mere construct of the
mind, but a genuine discovery that belongs
to the logical structure of nature itself.46 In
his admirable attempt to avoid the pitfalls
endemic to the modern conception of the con-
structive, agent mind, however, Woodbridge
relinquishes something of Aristotle’s powerful
but difficult understanding of the life of the
mind as organically bound up with the per-
ceiving life and the walking life.
Although Woodbridge insists, rightly, that
the life of the mind is not superimposed
upon the life of perceiving and walking, and

further, that there is in Aristotle no evolu-
tion of the powers of the soul, still, however,
Aristotle himself is driven to account for the
manner in which what is given in perceiving
is itself ultimately also given to thinking, not
as something expressed differently in differ-
ent realms, but as something that emerges
from or indeed grows out of our most rudi-
mentary encounters with things. This can be
felt already in Aristotle’s account of perceiv-
ing, which is said to operate at its deepest
level both according to a certain logos and
indeed with a kind of discerning (krinein).47
It can be heard in Aristotle’s various attempts
to delineate the operation of the phantasia
or imagination as rooted in but somehow
also different from perceiving even as it ena-
bles thinking. Somehow this community of
powers operates according to a logos that
belongs as much to them as to nature itself.
Indeed, this is a community of communica-
tion, a joint accomplishment of the soul and
the things it encounters made possible by a
logos that lives an amphibious life, at home
in the body as much as the mind.
To pursue this living logos as it makes the
passage from perceiving through imagining
to thinking possible is a longer, more com-
plicated and yet more beautiful path than it
is possible to take here.48 Woodbridge, how-
ever, in his 1940 book, An Essay on Nature,
has gone some distance down the path and
has left us the following words that trace the
contours of a difficult itinerary:
The only magic worth having is that
born of a happy marriage of sense and
intellect, the touch, not of Midas, but of
metaphor, which so transmutes existence
into speech that what things are and what
they are said to be become increasingly a
profounder intimacy with Nature. She is
metaphor, pantomime punctuated with
sounds, and is not out-of-doors waiting
319
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
to be admitted to conversation. She is
jointly translating and translated.49
Aristotle’s peripatetic legomenology is rooted
in nature’s metaphorical power, and one of
nature’s most powerful metaphors is the
human imagination. If, as Aristotle says in
the Poetics, “a good metaphor is to theorize
things that are similar,” then the phantasia
in Aristotle is a good metaphor indeed, for
it enables Aristotle to theorize the manner in
which that which is encountered in perceiv-
ing nevertheless gives itself to be thought.50
The enigmatic account of the phantasia in
Aristotle is enigmatic precisely because it
attempts to articulate the manner in which
what is given in perceiving can and in fact
does become a matter for thinking.51 To
understand the phantasia as a metaphor is
to theorize it as that which carries perceiv-
ings over into thinking—metapherein—thus
enabling a passage from one dimension into
another without either reducing thinking to
perceiving or perceiving to thought.
On the one hand, the phantasia in Aristotle
is rooted in perceiving. Aristotle calls it “a cer-
tain motion and not to come into being with-
out the power of perceiving.” And he goes on
to claim that “this motion would be neither
possible without the power of perceiving nor
present in beings that do not perceive. . . .”52
On the other hand, there is no thinking
without an appearance (phantasmatos), as
Aristotle says repeatedly.53 As a metaphor
in the sense suggested here, the phantasia
is somehow capable of translating what is
encountered in perceiving into the vernacu-
lar of thinking. In Aristotle, the metaphor
that accounts for the metaphorical activity
of the phantasia is that of the lever or joint.
The intimate connection between the joint
and articulation is heard in the Greek word
“arthron,” which means first of all, “joint,”
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
but then also “to articulate,” “arthroun.”54
The joint, which for Aristotle functions like a
lever insofar as small movements on one side
of the fulcrum can cause greater movements
further from the fulcrum, offers a powerful
way to understand the manner in which two
phenomena as different from one another as
perceiving is from thinking can, nevertheless,
be intimately and organically connected. The
analogy would go something like this: just
as the lever manifests the intimate connec-
tion between distance and weight or force,
two phenomena that seem disparate and dis-
connected, so too, the phantasia manifests
the intimate connection between perceiving
and thinking.55 That something like this is at
work in Aristotle may be heard in this pas-
sage from the De Motu Animalium:
But appearances (phantasia) and sense-
perceptions and ideas are ways of
becoming-other. For on the one hand,
sense-perceptions arise straight away,
being a kind of becoming-other, on the
other hand, being-appeared to (phanta­
sia) and thinking (noe-sis) have the power
of the things (τὴν τῶν πραγμάτων .  .  .
δύναμιν). For the form (eidos) that is
thought of [the warm or cold] or pleas-
ant or fearful happens to be in some
way like each of the things themselves;
and because of this those who are just
thinking [these things] shudder and are
frightened. All these things are affections
(pathe-) and ways of becoming-other.
And when body parts become-other,
some become larger, some smaller. It is
not unclear, then, that a small change
generated in the origin produces great
and numerous differences at a distance—
just as, if the rudder is briefly shifted, a
great shift of the prow is generated.56
The example of the rudder illustrates the
point that small shifts close to the fulcrum
320
can widely alter the course of the ship. In this
passage, Aristotle connects the phenomena of
the rudder, which functions here on the lever
principle, with the origins of perceiving, being
appeared to (phantasia) and thinking in the
things encountered in the world. Indeed, it is
the power of the things themselves that moves
us to shudder and be frightened not only when
we perceive them but also when we imagine
or think them. The vitality of the imagination
and the life of thinking itself is rooted in the
power of things expressing themselves.
Ultimately however, it is not simply, as the
above passage suggests, the form or look, the
eidos, of things that is taken up by perceiving,
imagining, and thinking, but the logos express-
ing itself in and through the eidos that enables
the cooperative connection between the pow-
ers of the soul and the power of things to move
us in certain ways. This logos too is at work
in the things encountered in perceiving, and
it can be translated by the imagination into
the vernacular of thinking precisely because it
belongs to things as an expression of nature
itself. To borrow from Woodbridge, perhaps
it might be said this way: for things perceived
to go into thinking is a going, just as much of
a going on their part, and just as natural, as
their going into air or water, or up or down,
or from seed to flower, or, indeed, for a winter
walk in the city. Thus, by attending to the logos
of things, Aristotle’s own imaginative thinking
is able to chart a path to a profounder inti-
macy with nature in which the things said are
heard to give voice to the nature of things.
***
Postamble
The longer, more difficult and more beau-
tiful path toward which I point here but

cannot follow further in this chapter has
been marked by the words and poetry of
Wallace Stevens. Stevens’ writing gives
voice to the recognition at the root of
Aristotle’s peripatetic legomenology and
Woodbridge’s naturalism: human-being is
at home in nature even if nature remains
always also alien to us. Stevens emphasizes
the connection between human-being and
natural being by focusing on the power of
the imagination: “. . . absolute fact includes
everything that the imagination includes.
This is our intimidating thesis.”57 The the-
sis, however intimidating, implies that even
the human imagination must be experi-
enced as a way, perhaps as an extraordinar-
ily powerful way, nature expresses itself.
The thesis may indeed be intimidating
precisely because it requires us to consider
the degree to which we are bound inti-
mately up with—now to use Woodbridge’s
words—the “whole vast scheme of things,”
which “seems to be engaged in expressing
what it is.”58
The dialogue between the guitarist and his
audience that opens Stevens’ poem “The Man
with the Blue Guitar” suggests the depth of
the human connection with the things that
are, even as it articulates the impossibility of
reducing the reality of things to our attempts
to articulate them well:
The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”
The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”
And they said then, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are.”59
321
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
Play, we must, a tune beyond us, yet our-
selves: this indeed articulates something of
the path along which Aristotle’s thinking
unfolds. And if the tune he plays attempts
assiduously to say things exactly as they are,
we too must recognize that things as they are
are changed upon the blue guitar, not indeed
by being rendered other than what they are;
but rather, things are exactly what they are
in relational dialogue with the things they
encounter. One path toward this recognition
was marked for me on that bitter January
day when I encountered a strangely bound
burnt orange volume on a walk through the
streets of Greenwich Village.
Christopher P. Long
Notes
1
See Woodbridge, 1926.
2
Ibid., xvi.
3
The idea of a phenomenology of the things
said is developed in Long, 2006. The term,
“legomenology,” however, was ­introduced first
in an essay on Aeschylus and Hesiod as a way to
articulate the ­methodological approach to read-
ing the Theogony and the Oresteia. See, Long,
2007, 68.
4
See Stevens, 1997, 266–7.
5
Gyorgyi Voros mentions “Chocorua to Its
Neighbor” when he speaks both about the
degree to which Stevens “joyfully affirms
human nature, while allowing nonhuman
Nature its own integrity and domain” and,
later in his life, “more and more sang of a self
subsumed under a greater natural order.” See
Voros, 1997, 113, 151–2.
6
For one poignant example, see Dewey, 1958,
48. For a more detailed discussion of Dewey’s
misreading of Aristotle and of why Dewey, of
all people, should have known better, see Long,
2011, 15–19.
7
A passage from book II of the Metaphysics,
993a30–b3, emphasizes at once the accessibil-
ity and the elusiveness of the nature of things.
For a discussion of this passage, see Long,
2011, 50–6.
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
 8
See Jaeger, 1923, 5. The translation is my own.
 9
Ibid., 4. The formulation seems to have been
borrowed from Goethe.
10
Hegel thus writes in typical fashion: “The
Platonic is the objective in general, but the
living principle, the principle of Subjectivity is
missing; and the living principle, Subjectivity,
not in the sense of an accidental and merely
particular Subjectivity, but rather pure
Subjectivity is proper to Aristotle.” See Hegel,
1986, vol. 19, 153.
11
Michelet reports that the students in Hegel’s
seminars on Aristotle were eager to hear this
new, living Aristotle. See, Michelet, 1837,
686.
12
See Rosenstock, 1964, 20.
13
Trendelenburg is the connection between
Woodbridge and Jaeger. As Suzanne Marchand
notes: “Upon Jaeger’s induction into the
Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1924,
Gustav Roethe claimed that the philosophi-
cally oriented philologist represented a link
to the tradition of Schleiermacher and
Adolf Trendelenburg as well as an unswerv-
ing defender of text-critical accuracy.” See
Marchand, 2003, 320. Woodbridge’s own
interest in Aristotle was cultivated during
the period he spent in Berlin studying with
Friedrich Paulsen. See, Lachs and Talisse, 2008,
345. In his book on the character and develop-
ment of German Universities, Paulsen speaks
in compelling and personal terms of the way
Trendelenburg, “the restorer of Aristotelian
philosophy,” gave “his pupils heart for the
study of Aristotle.” See, Paulsen, 1895, 69, 147.
There is, then, an important line of scholarship
stemming from Trendelenburg that connects
American pragmatic naturalism to
a German philosophical and philological
tradition that includes not only Jaeger but
also Dilthey, Brentano, and Heidegger. The
American tradition of naturalism can be traced
from Trendelenburg to Paulsen to Woodbridge,
George Santyana and George Sylvester
Morris, and thus to Dewey and John Herman
Randall. For its part, the philological side of
the German tradition might be traced from
Trendelenburg to Wilamovitz and Hermann
Diels to Jaeger, while on the phenomenologi-
cal side it might be traced from Trendelenburg
to Dilthey, Brentano, and Heidegger. For an
322
attempt to bring the tradition of American
naturalism back into dialogue with German
phenomenology via a reading of Aristotle that
is informed by that German tradition of close
philological attention, see Long, 2011.
14
See Jaeger, 1923, 11. There is no question that
Aristotle was influenced by Plato and, indeed,
that their relationship must have been a pro-
found and perhaps, at times, a tense one. The
issue is that reading Aristotle in the shadow of
Plato eclipses the extent to which Aristotle, as
Woodbridge insisted, sought always to address
and pursue the things at hand (Met. I.1,
982b13).
15
Joseph Owens draws upon precisely this rec-
ognition of the important role such impasses
or aporiai play in Aristotle’s thinking in his
seminal study of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. See
Owens, 1978.
16
See Woodbridge, 1965, 17.
17
See Long, 2011, 6–8.
18
Smith, 1971, 599.
19
Ibid., 605. The difference between expression
and articulation is important. Articulation,
following Smith, “means the making of
something distinct so that it stands out as
an identifiable unit with its parts arranged
in significant patterns. On the other hand,
articulation means that the manner of
­making something distinct requires its being
set in precise relations to other things. The
term, therefore, focuses attention on what is
­individual and on the fact of its belonging to a
system or world at the same time.” Ibid., 602.
For a more detailed discussion of expression
and ­articulation, see Long, 2011.
20
Woodbridge writes: “The correlation is . . .
between an act and a field of action, and an
act and a field of action are as different as can
be, but it is only the cooperation of the two
that is ever effective. The effect of this correla-
tion in operation is the ‘conformation’ of the
soul to what is perceives.” See Woodbridge,
1965, 46.
21
See De Anima 403b20–4. All translations are
my own.
22
See Physics 184a16–8. For a further discussion
of Aristotle’s path of inquiry in relation to the
things said, see Long, 2006, 253–9. See too,
Long, 2011, 1–20, 49–71.
23
See Woodbridge, 1926, 6.

24
See Irwin, 1988, 29–30. John Cleary argues the
case for a unified methodological approach in
Aristotle along the lines of the legomenology
developed here. See Cleary, 1994.
25
Deborah Modrak calls the traditional
dichotomy into question when she insists that
Aristotle advocates a conventionalism with
respect to the relationship between phoneme
and meaning and a naturalism with respect to
the relationship between meaning and refer-
ence. See Modrak, 2001, 19.
26
See Woodbridge, 1965, 24.
27
Stevens, 1984, 449.
28
Woodbridge, 1926, 45.
29
DA 416b32–417a9.
30
DA 417a10–14.
31
DA 418a1–6. The translation of entelecheia as
“being-at-work-staying-itself” is drawn from
Joe Sachs. See Sachs, 2001.
32
For another example of the use of the perfect
tense to gesture to that moment of transforma-
tion that is difficult to articulate, see the discus-
sion of praxis in Met. IX.6, in which Aristotle
speaks of complete actions as actions in which
we can say, at once, the same thing is seeing
and has seen, or is thinking and has thought.
Met. IX.6, 1048b30–5. For a discussion of that
passage along lines similar to those pursued
here, see Long, 2004, 98–103.
33
See Woodbridge, 1965, 136, 45–6. Woodbridge
calls this an “algebraic sentence,” but it is
more geometric than algebraic insofar as, on
Woodbridge’s own account, it establishes an
analogy between terms that are correlated
without being connected.
34
DA III.4, 429a15–18.
35
See Woodbridge, 1965, 46.
36
Ibid., 47.
37
To be sure, Aristotle distinguishes between
various parts of the soul, but he thinks of
these “parts” most often in terms of capaci-
ties or powers that may best be articulated
in terms of various dimensions of the soul
as opposed to segregated parts. Aristotle
articulates the various dimensions of the
soul, for example, in DA II.2, by talking
about the various senses in which we speak
about ­living: “thinking, perceiving, motion
and stasis with respect to place, and the
motion that results from nourishment, that is,
­perishing and growth.” DA 413a23–5. In II.3,
323
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
he speaks more explicitly of the “powers of
the soul” (τῶν δὲ δυνάμεων τῆς ψυχῆς) as he
delineates its nutritive, perceptive, locomotive
and deliberative capacities (DA 414a29–32).
To be fair, Woodbridge himself argues
eloquently against the modern tendency to
divorce the mind from the body. In his 1926
book, The Realm of Mind, Woodbridge
draws on precisely this vision of nature in
order at once to critique and explain the
origins of the modern dichotomy between
mind and body. There he shows how the
modern assumption that the mind is an agent
separable from but operating with the body,
specifically the brain, leads to the notion that
the immediate objects of the mind are “nerv-
ous processes in the brain.” But, he argues,
this is patently untrue for although the tree
may stimulate a brain, what the mind thinks
is not these brain processes, but the tree. The
recognition that the idea of the tree is differ-
ent from the processes of the brain leads, on
the assumption of the mind as agent, to the
positing of a dichotomy between mind and
body. See Woodbridge, 1926, 13–15.
38
See Woodbridge et al., 1937, 163.
39
Met. 982b13–14.
40
Phys. 184a31–3.
41
Spinoza recognizes thinking and corporeality
as two attributes of God’s infinite substance.
This leads to a strict parallelism between ideas
and things as expressed clearly in Ethics, book
II, proposition VII: “The order and connection
of ideas is the same as the order and connec-
tion of things.” See Spinoza, 1985.
42
Stevens, 1997, 645.
43
Woodbridge, 1926, 35.
44
Ibid., 29, 34.
45
Ibid., 137. Emphasis added.
46
Woodbridge writes: “If, however, our thinking
is to be wise and sane and correct, it is not
the body which makes it so, but a genuine
coherence among the things we think about. It
is something we discover. We discover, that is,
that there is in the realm of being a structure
by virtue of which one fact or event in it may
lead our thinking on to other facts and events
what are involved, and opens us to the reaches
of space and time and what they contain. This
structure cannot be described as physical. It is
logical.” Ibid., 46.
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
47
In an unpublished 1973 paper entitled
“Aristotle on the Ontology of the Senses,”
John M. Cooper traces the connection between
aisthe-sis and krinein in order to account
for the active dimension of perceiving in
Aristotle. I am grateful to Professor Cooper
for sending me a copy of this paper. See,
Cooper, 1973. For a detailed discussion of the
role of krinein in Aristotle’s account of aisthe-
sis, see Long, 2011, 127–31. There
are a number of important passages in which
Aristotle introduces the capacity to discern—
krinein—into the logic of perceiving. See,
for example, DA II.10, 422a20–1, III.2,
425b20–2, 426b12–14, and 426b17–22;
in Parts of Animals, Aristotle insists that ani-
mals too can discern the pleasant in what
they taste. See, Parts of Animals 678b8–9.
48
This is, in fact, the longer path that was pur-
sued in Chapters 4 and 5 of Long, 2011.
49
See Woodbridge, 1940, 242.
50
Poetics 1459a7–8.
51
The nature of the phantasia in Aristotle has
given rise to a long tradition of rich scholar-
ship. In calling it a metaphor here, the intent
is decidedly not to suggest that, as Philoponus
has insisted, the phantasia is that which
“carries off from things that are and constructs
a representation of that which is not, for
instance a centaur.” See, Philoponus,
2000, 497, 24–6. Rather, metaphor here draws
on the original Greek meaning of “meta-
pherein,” to carry from one place to
another.
52
DA III.3, 428b10–19.
53
See, DA III.7, 431a16–17 and III.8,
432a13–14. Freudenthal suggests that the
difficulties associated with interpreting
the meaning of the phantasia in Aristotle result
from its position between perceiving
and thinking. See, Freudenthal, 1863, 53.
Wedin has suggested, to name only one scholar
who has taken up the question of the
phantasia as situated between perceiving and
thinking in a serious way, that the phantasia
ought not be understood as a “full fledged
faculty” at all, but rather, it should be under-
stood to serve the full faculties of aisthe-sis and
noe-sis. See Wedin, 1988, 46–52. For a detailed
discussion of these issues, see Long, 2011,
79–89.
324
54
ἄρθρον, τό, see Liddell, 1968. For a discussion
of this connection, see Whitney, 1981.
55
For a discussion of the “lever principle” on
which this analogy depends, see De Groot,
2008, 46.
56
See Nussbaum, 1985, 701b16–23. For a
justification of the translation of phantasia as
“being appeared to,” see Long, 2011, 82. See
too, Lycos, 1964.
57
Stevens, 1951, 61. For a detailed discussion of
this passage, see Critchley, 2005, 53–4.
58
Woodbridge, 1926, 62.
59
Stevens and Stevens, 1984, 133.
References
Cleary, John J., “Phainomena in Aristotle’s
Methodology,” International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, 2.1 (1994),
61–97.
Cooper, John M., “Aristotle on the Ontology
of the Senses,” Princeton University
Conference on Ancient Philosophy (1973;
unpublished).
Critchley, S., Things Merely Are: Philosophy
in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, London/
New York: Routledge, 2005.
De Groot, J., “Dunamis and the Science of
Mechanics: Aristotle on Animal Motion,”
Journal of the History of Philosophy,
46.1 (2008), 43–68.
Dewey, J., Experience and Nature,
New York: Dover Publications, 1958.
Freudenthal, J., Über den Begriff des
Wortes Phantasia bei Aristoteles,
Göttingen: Verlag von Adalbert Rente,
1863.
Hegel, G. W. F., Werke in Zwanzig Bänden,
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986.
Irwin, T., Aristotle’s First Principles, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1988.
Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm, Aristoteles:
Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner
Entwicklung, Berlin: Weidmann, 1923.

Jaeger, W. (ed.), Aristotelis Metaphysica,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1957.
Kassel, R. (ed.), Aristotelis De arte poetica
liber, Oxford: Clarendon, 1966.
Lachs, J. and Robert Talisse (eds), American
Philosophy: An Encyclopedia, New York:
Routledge, 2008.
Lennox, J. G. (trans.), Aristotle. On the
Parts of Animals, Oxford: Oxford
University Press 2001.
Liddell, G. H., and Robert Scott, A
Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1968.
Long, Christopher P., The Ethics of
Ontology: Rethinking an Aristotelian
Legacy, Albany: SUNY, 2004.
—, “Saving ta legomena: Aristotle and the
History of Philosophy,” The Review of
Metaphysics, 60 (2006), 247–67.
—, “The Daughters of Metis: Patriarchal
Dominion and the Politics of the
Between,” The Graduate Faculty
Philosophy Journal, 28.2 (2007),
67–86.
—, Aristotle on the Nature of Truth,
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Lycos, K., “Aristotle and Plato on
‘Appearing,’” Mind, 73.292 (1964),
496–514.
Marchand, Suzanne L., Down
from Olympus: Archaeology and
Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970,
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2003.
Michelet, Karl L., Geschichte der letzten
System der Philosophie in Deutschland
von Kant bis Hegel, Berlin: Verlag von
Dunder und Humbolt, 1837.
Modrak, Deborah K. W., Aristotle’s Theory
of Language and Meaning, Cambridge/
325
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
New York: Cambridge University Press,
2001.
Nussbaum, M., Aristotle’s De Motu
Animalium, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985.
Owens, J., The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian Metaphysics, Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1978.
Paulsen, F., The German Universities:
Their Character and Historical
Development, New York/London:
Macmillan, 1895.
Philoponus, J. and William Charlton., On
Aristotle’s On the soul 3.1–8, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2000.
Rosenstock, Gershon G., F. A.
Trendelenburg, Forerunner to John
Dewey, Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1964.
Ross, W. D. (ed.), Aristotelis Physica,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.
—, Aristotelis De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1956.
Sachs, J., Aristotle. On the Soul and On
Memory and Recollection, Santa Fe, NM:
Green Lion Press, 2001.
Smith, John E., “Being, Immediacy,
and Articulation,” The Review of
Metaphysics, 24.4 (1971), 593–613.
Spinoza, Benedict de, The Collected Works
of Spinoza, vol. I, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985.
Stevens, W., The Necessary Angel: Essays on
Reality and the Imagination, New York:
Vintage Books, 1951.
––, Collected Poetry and Prose, New York:
Library of America, 1997.
Stevens, W. and Holly Stevens, The Palm
at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems
and a Play, Hamden: Archon Books,
1984.
THE PERIPATETIC METHOD
Voros, G., Notations of the Wild: Ecology in
the Poetry of Wallace Stevens, Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1997.
Wedin, Michael V., Mind and Imagination
in Aristotle, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1988.
Whitney, W. D., “What Is Articulation?”
The American Journal of Philology, 2.7
(1881), 345–50.
Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene, The
Realm of Mind: An Essay in Metaphysics,
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—, An Essay on Nature, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1940.
—, Aristotle’s Vision of Nature, New York:
Columbia University Press, 1965.
Woodbridge, Frederick James Eugene,
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Essays of Frederick J. E. Woodbridge,
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Writings, New York: Columbia University
Press, 1937.
 17
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S
METAPHYSICS TODAY?
Introduction
It is widely agreed that there exist today a
number of notions, distinctions, axioms,
and even theories used by many contempo-
rary philosophers that may be teased out
of Aristotle’s metaphysics by means of a
“deconstruction” of the Heideggerian sort.
To take just a few examples: the notion of
being qua being, taken up by the scholastics,
and recently by Heidegger himself; the the-
ory of the polysemy or homonymy of being,
employed by analytic philosophers (Austin,
Ryle, Owen), and by postmodern philoso-
phers as well (Derrida, Lyotard); the notion
of being as ale-thes (taken up by Brentano,
Husserl, and, again, Heidegger); the indi-
vidual character of substance, resurgent in
Strawson and Wiggins; the notions of matter
and form employed in contemporary physics,
chemistry, and biology; and the distinction
between potentiality and actuality, shared by
many philosophers, and most recently by
Paul Ricoeur.1 Pierre Aubenque, on the
twenty-third centenary of Aristotle’s death,
added to these the principle of noncontradic-
tion, the schema of the categories, and the
affirmation of the divine as a foundation, so
327
that “we are still today frequently Aristotelian
without knowing it.”2
Moreover, as Aubenque, again, under-
scores admirably, the lesson in methodology
that Aristotle has given us remains with us
still, that is, the investigation of language as
an intermediary, an instrument, or a “filter”
for knowing and comprehending reality;
the reflective use of language or the concep-
tion of philosophy as a “metalanguage.”3
On this point Aubenque cites Heidegger
(Unterwegs zur Sprache, 106), who says:
“Philosophy is understood to be metalin-
guistic; which sounds like metaphysics, but
these are the same.” One might also cite
Gadamer (Wahrheit und Methode): “The
only being that we can understand is lan-
guage.” Contemporary hermeneuticists are
not the only ones in agreement on this point;
after the “linguistic turn” (Rorty), all analytic
philosophers are too, and in particular that
branch of analytic philosophers occupied
with the question of ordinary language.
There is, however, another aspect of
Aristotle’s metaphysics about which few peo-
ple agree, but that persists no less as a pre-
cious legacy for contemporary philosophy,
namely the very idea of metaphysics, or, better
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
yet, a certain idea of metaphysics. This idea is
not to be confused with the neo-Platonic and
medieval notion of metaphysics as natural
theology, or with the modern idea of ontol-
ogy (or, to put it otherwise, of metaphysica
generalis), or with the notion, critiqued
by Heidegger, of an “onto-theo-logy” that
would reduce Being (être) to a particular
being (étant).4 On the contrary, at issue is the
idea of a completely original discipline, one
different from all other forms of metaphysics,
ancient as well as modern and contemporary.
It is an idea of metaphysics that neither has
been outstripped nor has achieved its com-
pletion. We cannot say it has exhausted all
its possibilities, for it has not yet harnessed
them.
It is not even the idea of metaphysics
as “first philosophy,” that is, as a form of
research unsatisfied by the level of prob-
lematization attained by the particular sci-
ences, aiming instead at knowledge of “first
causes,” or rather the final conditions of all
that exists, by placing all of reality into ques-
tion, as I have elsewhere argued.5 For this
latter idea is, effectively, the idea of philoso-
phy itself and, as such, had already been con-
ceived by the first philosophers, that is, the
pre-Socratics, who sought after the arche-,
the archai, or the elements of each thing. This
idea was, furthermore, taken up by Plato,
who conceived of the Ideas as causes of the
visible world, of the Idea of the Good as the
cause of all the Ideas and—in his “unwrit-
ten” philosophy—of the One and the indefi-
nite Dyad as the supreme principles of ideal
numbers, of Ideas, and of sensible things.
The originality of the Aristotelian con-
ception of metaphysics consists, in my view,
on the one hand in the identification of the
object with regard to which one investigates
first causes, hence in the formulation of the
problem of metaphysics, and on the other
328
hand in the determination of the nature and
functions of first causes, hence in the type of
solution that Aristotle gives to this problem.
I shall attempt to illustrate these two points
briefly, rehashing and developing what I have
had the occasion to write several years ago.6
The Formulation of the
Problem
Of what is it necessary to investigate first
causes? Aristotle’s response is well known:
of being qua being. There is no difference,
in this regard, between saying “Being (être)”
and “being (étant).” The purported “onto-
logical difference” between Being and being,
which Heidegger speaks of, does not exist for
Aristotle. “Being” and “being” are two modes
of the same verb, which may be used respec-
tively to indicate the fact (or, if you prefer, the
act) of being, as well as the subject that is, but
to which are connected, for Aristotle, exactly
the same considerations. Both, in particular,
are “said in many ways” (legetai pollacho-s),
that is, they have several meanings that do
not fall under a common genus. Being, for
Aristotle, is an irreducible multiplicity of
kinds, and radically heterogeneous.7
This follows from analysis of the ways
in which we use the verb “to be (être)” in
common language, in accordance with the
method underscored by Aubenque as well
as by analytic philosophers (Austin, Ryle,
Owen, Grice, Hamlyn). It matters little
whether this polysemy concerns existence, as
Owen argues, or rather the copula and hence
predication, as Grice argues;8 in every case,
polysemy entails that being is a problematic
object, for a multiplicity absolutely deprived
of unity would be completely unintelligible;
consequently the problem arises of knowing
 WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
whether being possesses any sort of unity,
a condition without which the science of
being, that is to say, metaphysics, would be
impossible.
The reason why being—as well as the
one, which for Aristotle is no less important
than being9—is not a genus, and therefore is
radically heterogeneous, is that it is said not
only of all things but also of their differences,
which is impossible for genera.10 And the rea-
son why genera cannot be said of their differ-
ences is very clearly indicated by Aristotle (in
spite of the critiques that have been recently
addressed to him on this point by Christopher
Shields)11 where he says that, if this were the
case, differences would be reduced to the
rank of species or even individuals, that is,
that they themselves would range under the
genus, on a par with species, without being
able to be distinguished from one another or
from other species.12 This means that being
and the one, in contrast to all genera (which
merely express common aspects of their spe-
cies), do not merely express aspects common
to all things, but their differences as well.
This characteristic of being, the fact that
it is irreducibly heterogeneous, was noticed
neither by the pre-Socratics nor by Plato.
Among the pre-Socratics, Parmenides, the
only one to explicitly thematize the notion of
being, clearly conceived of it as univocal—as
Aristotle often stresses—and consequently
denied the existence of differences as well
as of movement. Yet Plato, too, who never-
theless championed, contra Parmenides, the
existence of differences and movement in
being, achieved the same result, according to
Aristotle, thanks to his introduction, along-
side of being, of another principle, non-being,
even if this is to be understood as “different”
rather than as absolute nothingness, and in
this continued “to formulate the problem in
an archaic fashion” (apore-sai archaiko-s), that
329
is, ignoring, as Parmenides had, the polysemy
of being.13
The proof that Plato had conceived of
being and the one as having a single signifi-
cation, and hence as genera, may be found,
according to Aristotle, in the fact that Plato
conceived of being and the one as ousiai, that
is, as essences or substances, by referring to
them as “being itself” or “being in itself” (auto
on) and “the one itself” or “the one in itself”
(auto hen): substances having as their proper
essence the fact that they are and the fact that
they are one. Such a conception, according to
Aristotle, has as a consequence the impossi-
bility of making sense of how some one thing
can exist apart from being and the one, that
is, how there are multiple beings.14 In sum,
if being is the essence of anything, it has a
single signification and it signifies the fact (or
the act) of being; it follows that it can only
be said of that which is, in the most proper
sense, that is, of that which has as its essence
the very fact of being, and cannot thus
be said of other beings, which in consequence
cease to exist. Whether this critique is valid
or not, it marks quite clearly the difference
posited by Aristotle himself between his own
metaphysics and all other metaphysics that
admit a “being in itself” or a “one in itself.”
The chief representative of such a meta-
physics is neo-Platonism, which in Plotinus’
or Proclus’ version admitted as a principle of
all things the One, conceived of as “beyond
being” (and in this reviving, perhaps, a sug-
gestion by Speusippus, Plato’s first succes-
sor at the head of the Academy), and in
Porphyry’s version—if we follow the work of
Pierre Hadot—accepted as that principle the
One identical with Being (seemingly reviving
the position of Plato and Xenocrates). In
both cases one hypostatizes respectively the
one and being, in conceiving of them as “the
one in itself” or “being in itself,” in explicit
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
opposition to the prohibition introduced by
Aristotle, and in such a way as to create a
metaphysics completely different from his.
It goes without saying that this conception
was reprised by Christian philosophers of a
neo-Platonic persuasion, such as Augustine
and Pseudo-Dionysius. Yet medieval phi-
losophy itself, too, in both its Muslim and
Christian or scholastic varieties, in spite of
its Aristotelian persuasion, led in the same
direction. Arab philosophers (and, in par-
ticular, Avicenna) as well as Christian phi-
losophers (including Thomas Aquinas)
conceived of God as self-subsisting Being
(Esse ipsum subsistens), that is, as a being
having as its essence the very fact or act of
being, in ignorance of Aristotle’s prohibition
and his critiques of Plato. I do not know, let
me repeat, whether these critiques are valid,
that is, whether this conception of God truly
risks leading to the negation of the exist-
ence of other things, which would result in
monism or pantheism. I know only that this
metaphysics cannot be called Aristotelian,
because it contradicts Aristotle’s position on
a fundamental point.
One might say the same thing about cer-
tain modern metaphysics, those of Descartes,
Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff, all of which
were profoundly influenced, as Jean-François
Courtine has shown, by the metaphysics of
Suarez, that is, by a form of scholasticism.
It is this Platonic-scholastic-modern meta-
physics that has given rise to what Heidegger
calls “onto-theology”; for it reduces being
(être) to a particular being (étant), namely
God, even if he has being-itself as his essence.
However, one could direct the same remark
to Heidegger himself, at least in his youth,
when, following Brentano, he reduces being
to ousia, or when, following Duns Scotus,
he conceives of being as univocal. However,
if one opposes being (être) to being (étant),
330
establishing in this way the alleged ontologi-
cal difference, one risks making an essence of
being (être), different from that other essence
that is a being (étant).
For these reasons one could say that no
one after Aristotle conceived of being as a
veritable multiplicity of genera or essences,
that is, essentially as difference. I believe that
it is thanks to this conception of being that
a postmodern philosopher, one committed
to difference, of the likes of Jean-François
Lyotard, could say: “The philosopher I feel
closest to, in the end, is Aristotle!” (Le dif-
férend). He is most likely referring to Pierre
Aubenque’s Aristotle, the most well known
in France, by whom the polysemy of being,
and thus the importance of difference, is
rather forcibly underscored.
This formulation of the problem of meta-
physics as the question of knowing how it is
possible to retrace the first causes of being
qua being, if being has many meanings, which
is equivalent to saying being is not a genus
(where being a genus is the indispensable
condition, according to Aristotle, for being
the object of a science)—this formulation
is the most radical that has ever been given,
because it underlines more than any other
that which I shall call, using an expression
that certainly does not exist in the French
language (nor even in Italian [or English—
Trans.]), the “problematicity” of being. For,
if being has no unity, it is in no way intel-
ligible. To understand anything means to
lead a multiplicity back to a unity, to a unity
whatsoever. Such is Socrates’ teaching on the
discovery of concepts: one may be said to
possess the concept of a thing if one can per-
ceive that unity back to which can be led the
many examples, cases, or instances of that
thing, which one discovers in the world of
experience. If being has no unity, the science
of being qua being, that is, metaphysics, is
 WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
not possible. This is the meaning of the first
four aporias developed by Aristotle in book
III of Metaphysics.
The Originality of the Solution
The solution that Aristotle provides to the
problem of being is exhibited in three suc-
cessive moments: (1) the discovery of the
dependence of the categories relative to one
among them, that is, to ousia; (2) the investi-
gation of the first causes of ousia, and thus of
all being, by means of the distinction between
matter and form; (3) the completion of the
investigation of the first causes of ousia by
means of the distinction between potentiality
and actuality. In each of these three moments,
as we shall see, characteristic of Aristotle’s
solution is its originality in comparison with
all other given forms of metaphysics.
First Moment
The diverse significations of being corre-
spond, as is well known, to the categories,
that is, to different types of predication and
hence to the supreme genera of beings. But
all the categories are said to be thanks to a
certain relation they have to ousia; ousia is
first among the categories, that on which the
others depend, from the ontological point of
view, that is, as concerns their existence, as
well as from the logical point of view, that
is, as concerns their notion, definition, and
essence. The categories other than ousia—for
example, quantity, quality, and relation—
in effect cannot exist, that is, have being, or
be said to be, that is, return to the notion
of being, unless they appertain to an ousia
or unless they contain in their definition
some relation to ousia. This is the celebrated
331
theory of pros hen homonymy—homonymy
relative to some thing—that J. L. Austin has
called the theory of nuclear meaning and
G. E. L. Owen has definitively consecrated as
the theory of focal meaning. Owen moreo-
ver deserves credit for having shown that this
relation not only implies an ontological, that
is, existential priority of ousia in relation to
the other categories but also a logical, or
logico-linguistic, priority.
This is well explained by Aristotle him-
self in a passage from the Eudemian Ethics
concerning the homonymy among forms of
friendship. “In every case,” says Aristotle,
“one seeks the primary sense, but because the
universal is the primary sense, one believes
that the primary is the universal; yet this is
false.” Aristotle is here alluding to the posi-
tion of the Platonists, according to which the
only thing that is primary, that is, the only
principle, the only cause capable of explain-
ing multiplicity, is the universal or the con-
cept, the indication of the common essence
that is applied in the same manner to all the
particular cases. Such is the case with univo-
cal terms, which have a single signification;
if one applies this to being, one obtains, as
the principle of being, being in itself, auto
on. However, Aristotle notes, in the case of
homonyms, that is, in the case of terms that
have many significations, as much in the case
of friendship as in the case of being, “what
is first is that of which the notion (logos) is
found in all: for example, the medical instru-
ment is one that a medical doctor would use,
but the notion of the medical instrument is
not implicit in that of the medical doctor,”
while the notion of medical doctor is implicit
in that of the medical instrument.15 The unity
established in this way, which differs from
that of a universal but is equally a true unity,
renders possible, according to Aristotle, the
science of homonyms.
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
This theory is the result of a logico-linguistic
analysis, consisting in the examination of the
definitions of different meanings of a term
and in the discovery of relations among
them, which, further, consists in the implica-
tion of the one in the other, but in the special
manner we have seen. It is for this reason
that the Aristotelian theory of focal meaning
has attracted the attention of analytic phi-
losophers; it gives, in effect, an intelligibility
to the term “being” by means of an entirely
particular sort of analysis, which is neither a
reduction nor a deduction. (By a reduction I
understand the reunion of a plurality of par-
ticular cases under a common case, that is,
under a universal, whose notion is applied
directly to every particular. By a deduction I
understand the inverse operation, which con-
sists in extracting the particular case from
the universal.) These two operations are only
possible, as Aristotle has shown, in the case
of univocal terms, that is, of genera. However,
this is not the case with homonymous terms,
where the ontological and logical priority of
the first signification in relation to the others
does not allow for a reduction of the others
to the first or a deduction of the others from
the first. Nevertheless, this has to do just as
much with an ontologico-logical connection,
that is, a unity that confers intelligibility on
homonymous terms, and consequently on
being. One might call this a unity that does
not destroy multiplicity, or an intelligibility
that does not completely efface the problem-
aticity of being.
Second Moment
At this moment the investigation of the first
causes of being is transformed into the inves-
tigation of the first causes of ousia. This is
carried out in the celebrated book VII of the
Met., one of the most difficult of Aristotle’s
332
texts. One has the impression that there are
two methods of investigation intertwined
in the text: one is simply logical and consists
in remarking that ousia, too, is homonymous,
that is, has many significations, and at stake
is discovering the first; the other method is
on the contrary also ontological and consists
in discovering the cause of the being of the
ousiai. The result, however, is the same: in
both cases, in effect, Aristotle ends up with
form, either as the first signification of ousia,
on which the others—that is, the substrate
and the composition of form and matter—
depend logically, or as the formal cause, that
is, as the cause of the being of the ousiai on
which each ousia depends in its existence. In
both cases, the form at issue is not a separate
form, as are Plato’s Ideas, but a form imma-
nent in material ousia.
The first of these two methods, again, is
a logico-linguistic method, which resembles
the analysis carried out by the theory of
focal meaning, thanks to which one could
say that, in the same way that ousia is the
focal meaning of being, form is the focal
meaning of ousia. In any event, this is the
interpretation of book VII given by certain
specialists of a Thomistic persuasion (J.
Owens) as well as of an analytic persuasion
(G. Patzig and M. Frede). If, in effect, follow-
ing Aristotle, one identifies the form, that is,
the first ousia, with the specific or ultimate
difference, as book VII seems to suggest, one
could say that this is contained in the defi-
nition of all ousiai. But the second method
is an ontological method, which consists in
investigating causes and, if we then apply
to it the Aristotelian distinction between the
different types of causes (material, formal,
final, and efficient), we can conclude that
by means of this method Aristotle comes to
identify, in books VII and VIII of the Met.,
the first material cause of the ousiai, namely
 WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
their substrate and, in the final analysis, the
elements of which it is constituted; the first
formal cause, namely the form or specific dif-
ference of the ousiai, whose supreme genera
are the categories; and the first final cause,
which is the form itself of the ousiai, con-
ceived as the terminus of their development,
that is, as their final actuality or perfection
(entelecheia).
Even in this case, the method employed
by Aristotle does not permit a reduction of
ousia to its causes, nor a deduction of ousia
from its causes, because the causes envisaged
are not universals, not Ideas, not forms of
sensible ousiai considered as separate from
them. Yet it assures an intelligibility to the
ousiai, which does not destroy their multi-
plicity, and that is in every case only a partial
explanation, because none of the causes thus
discovered, not even all of them, will suffice
to explain the ousia of which they are causes.
In books VII and VIII of the Met., in effect,
Aristotle has not yet indicated the ultimate
cause of the becoming of the ousiai, of their
generation and corruption, that is, the motive
or efficient cause.
Third Moment
The necessity of an efficient cause is estab-
lished in the course of book IX by means
of the distinction between potentiality and
actuality, and by means of the demonstra-
tion of the priority of actuality with regard
to ­potentiality—a priority that is, again, both
logical, that is, concerning a notion or an
essence, and ontological, that is, concerning
being or existence.16 However, in book IX,
Aristotle never determines the ultimate motive
cause of the ousiai. This is, as is known, the
task of book XII. Here, having implied that
the generation and corruption of terrestrial
ousiai depend on the eternal movements of
333
the heavens (which has been demonstrated
in the works on physics), Aristotle asks what
is the motive or efficient cause of the latter.
He uses the terms kine-tikon and poie-tikon,
which properly designate the motive cause,
and affirms that this cause cannot be consti-
tuted by Ideas, as the Platonists claim, because
the Ideas do not involve a principle capable of
bringing about change. “It is of no use,” says
Aristotle, “to admit eternal substances, such
as those committed to the Ideas do, unless
they contain a principle capable of bringing
about change (tis dunamene- arche- metabal-
lein).” And immediately before this he claims:
“Yet, if there is an efficient or motive cause
that does not act (me energoun), there will not
be movement, since it may happen that what
has the potentiality does not actualize it.”17
Hence the necessity of a mover that would
be entirely and solely active. It seems to me
that Aristotle denounces the insufficiency of
a simply logico-linguistic consideration, of
the sort elsewhere called logiko-s and here
attributed to the Platonists. Indeed, at the
beginning of the same book, he had said:
“Our contemporaries (hoi nun) posit that
universals are substances. For the genera are
universals, which they call principles and
even substances on account of their logical
investigation (dia to logiko-s ze-tein).”18
In lieu of this method, Aristotle elects for
a method he elsewhere describes as phusiko-s,
that is, “physical.” It is on this basis that he
affirms the necessity of a cause external to the
ousiai whose movement is to be explained,
that is to say, external to the heavens, a cause
which is no longer their form, but a further
ousia, individual and completely heterogene-
ous in relation to its effects.
It suffices to recall here the celebrated pas-
sage where, evidently addressing one of his
students, Aristotle claims that “the principle
of an individual is, indeed, an individual;
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
from the human in general could only come
the human in general, but there is no human
in general; rather, Peleus is the principle of
Achilles, and your father is the principle of
you.” A little before, he had also mentioned
“the sun and ecliptic, which are neither the
matter of a human nor its form . . . nor of
the same form.”19 And again, before, he had
mentioned “that which, being first of all
beings, moves all things.”20
Those who bring together this metaphys-
ics and that of Plato do not see the abyss that
separates them. To be sure, both philosophers
affirm the necessity of transcendent prin-
ciples, but this is characteristic of all meta-
physics. However, whereas Plato conceived
of these principles as causes that are formal,
universal, homogeneous with their effects,
and inert, Aristotle by contrast conceived of
them as causes that are efficient, individual,
heterogeneous with their effects, and active.
One might at this moment object that
Aristotle’s unmoved mover is an efficient
cause because it is final cause, and even
that it is, moreover, an exemplary cause, inas-
much as it is the object of an imitation on the
part of the heaven, which moves in a circular
motion in imitation of the unmoved mover’s
immobility. This is the traditional interpreta-
tion of the prime mover, introduced by the
middle Platonists for the purpose of reconcil-
ing Aristotle and Plato, renewed by Alexander
of Aphrodisias under the influence of the mid-
dle Platonists, and continued by neo-Platonists
of all epochs with the same intention, but an
interpretation that Theophrastus had already
denounced for being of a Platonic origin.21
However, Plato himself, in his last dialogue—
composed perhaps after the dialogue On
Philosophy by the young Aristotle, where the
theory of the prime mover must already have
been presented for the first time—seems to
allude to this theory, speaking of a soul that
334
moves the heavens from without, due to its
“marvelous powers.”22 Plato sees in this theory
neither final causality nor a form of imitation
(which for him would not involve marvelous
powers), and it is perhaps for this reason that
he does not identify with it.
This last moment, which consists in the
demonstration of the necessity of a first
unmoved mover as the efficient cause of
the movements of the heavens and hence
of the transformations of the ousiai, is not
a simple logico-linguistic explanation; it is
not based on the theory of focal meaning,
as Owens and Patzig and Frede claim, for it
is impossible to call the unmoved mover the
primary signification of ousia, or to claim
that the definitions of other ousiai contain
in themselves a reference to the prime mover.
The priority of the prime mover in relation to
other ousiai is not at all a logic priority; it is
only a priority of a causal, hence ontological
sort, and, I would add, of a physical sort as
well. The difference between Aristotle’s and
Plato’s metaphysics consists in this, the very
difference that stands, according to Aristotle,
between simple dialectic, that is, explanation
logiko-s, and the true science or philosophy,
which is an explanation phusiko-s.
Final Considerations
If what I have claimed so far is true, one might
say that the solution offered by Aristotle to
the question of being does not eliminate the
problematicity of being itself. This is neither
to say that Aristotle does not resolve the
problem of being, nor, on the other hand,
that he gives an insufficient or unsatisfactory
solution. It is simply to say that Aristotle’s
solution does not eliminate the multiplic-
ity of meanings, or polysemy, of being, or
 WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?
the multiplicity of meanings of ousia, which
therefore remain homonyms, that is, differ-
entiated, nuanced, varied notions. In the case
of Parmenides, and also, to a certain extent,
in the case of Plato, there is a principle, being
itself or being in itself, that eliminates, or
risks eliminating, the polysemy of being,
making of it an essence that is applied in the
same way to all beings (étants), or that forms
the essence of a single being (étant), denying
the being (être) of all the others.
By contrast, the ultimate principle of being
and of the ousiai admitted by Aristotle is not,
in the first place, the only cause of being but
simply one of four causes, in such a way that,
considered in isolation from the others, it
is entirely insufficient for explaining all of
being. Secondly, it is not at all the formal
cause, that is, the essence of other ousiai, but
an individual having an essence completely
different from others (i.e. as everybody
knows, pure intellectual activity), hence tran-
scendent with respect to them. Third, and in
consequence of the first two points, it is not
possible to reduce other beings to this princi-
ple, or to deduce them from it. Aristotle does
not even allow for a participation of other
beings with this ultimate principle; participa-
tion (methexis), indeed, is a Platonic notion
that expresses the relation between Ideas and
sensible things and that implies a homoge-
neity, or at least a resemblance, between
the two terms. Aristotle’s prime mover, as
we have seen, is completely heterogeneous
with respect to all other beings.
This does not mean that the prime mover
is not a being. Aristotle, to be sure, says that
it is a being, the first of beings (pro-ton to-n
onto-n), as well as an ousia, the primary ousia.
The prime mover is not beyond being, even
as it is completely heterogeneous in relation
to other beings, since being is not a genus,
but embraces rather an irreducible plurality
335
of genera, and since ousia is not a genus, but
itself embraces rather an irreducible plurality
of genera of ousiai, which are all ousiai and
hence beings. On this point, one might also
mention the multiplicity of unmoved movers
allowed for by Aristotle, corresponding to
the multiplicity of celestial spheres. Yet this
does not alter his position at all, for the rea-
son that, among the unmoved movers, there
is one, the first, that is completely heteroge-
neous from the others, even as it is an ousia
and hence a being. It is probable—although
Aristotle said nothing on the subject—that
only this unmoved mover is thought thinking
itself, for there is nothing superior to it.
Finally, one might observe that the prime
mover, inasmuch as it is pure act, realizes in
itself the first of the significations of being—
indeed, Aristotle once says that among the
multiple significations of being, actuality is
the first23—and hence constitutes the focal
meaning of being, having a priority that is
ontological as well as logical over all other
beings. However, when Aristotle claims that
actuality possess a logical priority as well
over potentiality, he is referring to the actual-
ity of a potentiality, that is, to the actuality
of something that is yet in potentiality—for
example, the actuality of constructing for
someone who is capable of constructing,
or the act of seeing for someone who is capa-
ble of seeing. It is beyond doubt, in effect,
that in this case being in potentiality is
defined in relation to its actuality; that the
former’s definition thus contains a reference
to actuality; that it depends on actuality in
a way that is logical. But the prime mover,
which is pure intellectual activity, is not the
actuality of some other thing; it is in no way
the realization, the achievement of a being
in potentiality; hence there is no other being
whose definition refers to the prime mover or
to pure intelligence.
WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?

For these reasons, I am inclined to sup- to Sein in Heidegger. French, like German,
port the view that Aristotle’s metaphysics is ­distinguishes orthographically between the
infinitive “being” (or “to be”) and the partici-
completely original in relation to all other
ple “being.” Attempts to duplicate this distinc-
forms of metaphysics, and that it therefore tion in English are awkward. Above and below,
cannot be implicated in the critique or in the unless otherwise noted, “being” translates the
condemnation that has been addressed to infinitive, être. Exceptions and ambiguities are
metaphysics in general. Moreover, thanks noted with the expressions bracketed. With
the exception of the present passage and pas-
to its attention to multiplicity, variety, dif- sages in the first paragraph of the second sec-
ferences, and mobility, Aristotle’s meta- tion below, all capitalizations (e.g. “the One”)
physics does not attempt to extinguish are the author’s.—Trans.]
the problematicity of being, and reveals  5
Berti, 1996.
in this an extraordinary actuality. Obviously,
 6
Berti, 1981.
 7
I shall forgo citing well-known passages.
today it would make no sense to reason in  8
Grice, 1988.
terms of celestial spheres, eternal move-  9
On this point I am entirely in agreement
ments, and unmoved movers. Nevertheless, with Lambros Couloubaritsis, who has
the questions “What is being?” “What frequently underlined the “henological,” and
does being mean?” or “How do we explain not only “ontological,” character of Aristotle’s
metaphysics.
being?” can still make sense without leav- 10
Metaphysics III.3, 998b22–7.
ing to one side the multiplicity, the variety, 11
Shields, 1999.
the problematicity of the world in which 12
Topics VI.6, 144a31–b3.
we live. Certainly, we could cease to pose 13
Met. XIV.2, 1088b35–1089a6.
such questions, but in this case it would
14
Met. III.4, 1001a29–b1.
15
Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics VII.2, 1236a20–5.
be difficult to claim to be philosophers. If 16
Met. IX.8, 1049b12–7.
therefore I were to respond to the question, 17
Met. XII.6, 1071b12–6.
“What remains of Aristotle’s metaphysics 18
Met. XII.1, 1069a26–8.
today?” I would say that, in addition to the 19
Met. XII.5, 1071a15–16, 19–22.
notions, distinctions, axioms, and theorems
20
Met. XII.4, 1070b34–5.
21
For a justification of these remarks, allow me
mentioned at the outset, there remains an to refer the reader to Berti, 1998.
idea of metaphysics that has not yet been 22
Plato, Laws X, 899a.
exploited and that may yet prove to be a 23
De Anima II.1, 412b8–9.
contemporary one.
Enrico Berti
Translated by Erick Raphael Jiménez
References

Notes Aubenque, P., “La philosophie

aristotélicienne et nous,” in Aristote
 1
For a more detailed illustration of Aristotle’s aujourd’hui, ed. M. A. Sinaceur,
legacy in the twentieth century, see Berti, 1992. Paris-Toulouse: Érès, 1988, 320–5.
 2
Aubenque, 1988, 20.
Berti, E., “Origine et originalité de la
 3
Ibid., 323.
 4
[In order to reflect custom in English transla- métaphysique aristotélicienne,” Archiv für
tions of Heidegger, I have capitalized the first Geschichte der Philosophie, 63 (1981),
of these terms, “Being,” for être, which refers 227–52.

336
 WHAT REMAINS OF ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS TODAY?

––, Aristotele nel Novecento, Roma-Bari: J. Follon, Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions

Laterza, 1992.
––, “La Métaphysique d’Aristote:
‘onto-théologie’ ou ‘philosophie
première’?” Revue de philosophie
ancienne, 14 (1996), 61–86.
––, “De qui est fin le moteur immobile?” in
Essais sur la théologie d’Aristote, Actes
du colloque de Dijon, ed. M. Bastit and
Peeters, 1998, 5–28.
Grice, P., “Aristotle on the Multiplicity of
Being,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly,
69 (1988), 175–200.
Shields, C., Order in Multiplicity:
Homonymy in the Philosophy of
Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999.

337
 18
WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A
COMMUNITARIAN?
In the rather lively contemporary debate, and
especially in the United States, between com-
munitarians and liberals, it is well known
that, if liberals in general support the political
philosophy of the moderns, and in particular
Rousseau’s theory of the social contract, the
better part of communitarians—from Michael
Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre to Michael
Walzer and Charles Taylor—lay claim to
Aristotle’s practical philosophy, to such an
extent that communitarianism has even been
considered one of the forms of contemporary
“neo-Aristotelianism.”1 Communitarianism
is, in a general way, a reaction against the
universalism of modern theories of human
rights, to which it opposes the specific rights
of humans who belong, above all, to a deter-
minate community, the first of these rights
consisting in the affirmation of one’s own
cultural identity and the refusal to dissolve
it in a universal, however rational. It is easy
to recognize not only the philosophical but
also the social-political contemporaneity
of this debate animating the discussion and
contributing to the determination of social
practice, within developed societies as well
as in the third world. Inasmuch as Aristotle
today remains an authority as much for
338
progressives as for conservatives (this divi-
sion not in any way reflecting the preceding
distinction, although in a way exhausting the
field of the positions concerned), it is perhaps
not without interest to ask, even if the ques-
tion is in many ways anachronistic, on what
side of the debate between communitarians
and liberals Aristotle would fall.
In order to make the terms of the discus-
sion more precise, I shall appeal to a rather
precise characterization of communitarian-
ism to be found in Carlos Thiebault (1993,
143).2 According to Thiebault, communitar-
ian thinkers, in their critique of the liberal
program, hold the following presuppositions
in common:
(1) “The priority of notions of the good with
respect to agreements of justice”;
(2) “The critique of the I without attributes
of liberal atomist thought”; and
(3) “The inevitability of contextual and his-
torical determinations in the form of com-
munitarian values and of traditions.”
My intent then is to examine whether and to
what extent these three theses may be claimed
about Aristotle’s practical philosophy. I shall
examine first the second and then the third,
 WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
leaving for the end the essential question of
justice.
1 of values is. Is it a matter, for the human
With respect to the status of the individual
in relation to a political community, one
must inevitably turn to several definitions or
characterizations of the “proper” trait of the
human that we find in Aristotle. The most cele­
brated of these are found in the beginning of
the Politics, where it is said that “the human
is by nature a political animal” (I.2, 1253a3)
and that, for this reason (my emphasis), the
human is “of all animals the only one to pos-
sess language (logos)” (1253a10). The relation
of finality between the possession of language
and the political nature of the human being
is clearly affirmed: it is in order for a human
being to be able to participate in political life
that nature, which “does nothing in vain”
(1253a9–10), has given language to humans.
Language is distinguished from simple voice
(pho-ne-), which one may find in certain other
animals as well: voice makes possible the
expression of pleasure and pain, but only
language (logos) allows for “signaling what
is advantageous and what harmful, hence the
just and the unjust” (1253a15). If it is true
that language is an essential characteristic
of the human being, we should also bear in
mind that it is an essential characteristic of a
human being that they have “perception of the
good, of the bad, of justice.” For “having these
notions in common is what makes a family
and a city (polis)” (a18–19). It is thus because
humans possess language that they possess a
perception of moral values, and it is because
humans have this perception in common with
other humans that they together constitute a
community, whether familial or political.
339
But the question posed here is that of
knowing what the nature of the link, of
which logos is the expression, between politi-
cal community (to which familial community
is subordinated) and the common perception
being, of adhering to values that belong to
the community within which by chance they
were born? In this case, it is impossible to tell
what the role of logos would be, except pas-
sively and uncritically to record the customs
of one’s tribe as norms for individual action.
But it seems rather that Aristotle attributes
to logos a higher function, namely that of
deliberating, and of deliberating in common,
about what it is good or just to do or not
to do. This is not clearly said here, but fol-
lows from the fact that belonging to a com-
munity, which is also a community of values,
is never automatic; this implies in effect two
conditions: need and capacity. An autarchic
individual who, like a god, suffices for herself
would not be in need of the mediation of a
community in order to be who she is or to real-
ize who she is potentially. However, inversely,
an individual incapable of “communicating”
(koino-nein) cannot form a part of a commu-
nity. Belonging to a community implies, on
the part of the individual, the will and the
capacity to communicate, to share, to have in
common, and to participate.3 To be sure, it is
human nature that makes a human a politi-
cal and communal animal, but this nature is
entirely contrary to a mechanistic determina-
tion; it is a potentiality that demands to be
actualized and, in the case of human nature,
it cannot be actualized without an active atti-
tude on the part of the human. This explains
the apparent paradox that, however natu-
ral it is, a community must be founded and
instituted by a “first legislator” (1253a30).
This is “the cause of the greatest good” if
and only if this institution of the city bows
WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
to considerations of justice; for justice is “the
order of the political community,” politike-s
koino-nias taxis (1253a34).
The interpretation of this last expression
puts us squarely within the ambit of contem-
porary debate. Should it, taking the genitive
in the subjective sense, be understood to say
that the just is the order that emanates from
the political community, every political com-
munity thus possessing its own characteristic
sort of order, eventually differing from other
communities of the same kind? Or should it,
taking the genitive in the objective sense, be
understood to say that justice puts a political
community into order, this order thus result-
ing not from the historical and contingent
nature of this community, but from a higher,
universal, and rational principle, imposing
itself on this community just as, in the same
way, on all others? It seems rather that the
context, which insists on the active character
of the citizen’s participation in the city and
of the institution of the city by a just legis-
lator, tends in the direction of this second
sense, that of an intentional, hence rational
and universalizable, determination of the
norms of justice that ought to instill order
in a city. Besides, it is in this very same sense
that Aristotle, as we shall see, defines the “vir-
tue” of justice in book V of the Nicomachean
Ethics.
Thus, it is clear that, for Aristotle, the polis
is not an artificial aggregation of naturally
solitary individuals who achieve political life
through a contract where each would sur-
render their independence only on condition
of the representation of a higher utility: thus
Aristotle is not a liberal in the modern sense.
For him, what is “natural” is participation in
a community, not solitude (as in Rousseau).
Yet this participation is active and voluntary:
the proof lies in the fact that the individual
can be free of it, either by excess, if they are a
340
quasi-divine being, “a god among men,” who
would be the Law itself;4 or by deficiency,
in which case they fall within the domain of
beasts. For the most part, the human being,
who is “by nature” a communal animal,
actualizes their natural tendency; but this
actualization must be aided and oriented by
logos.
2
The second trait of communitarianism is the
affirmation of the particularity of diverse
concrete communities, inevitably subject to
contextual and historical determinations.
For Aristotle, too, there is certainly a par-
ticularity and an individuality of different
cities. The community is by definition finite.
The community brings together, although
within limits, which are the very conditions
of sharing: one cannot share everything with
everyone. The idea of an open community
is contradictory. But what are the limits of
community? What constitutes the identity of
a community?
Aristotle raises this question explicitly,
most notably in book III of the Politics.
Territory seems to be the first condition
of the unity and identity of a community.
Political community is, in the first place,
holding territory in common. Territory,
which is by definition limited, cannot be too
big, nor can it be too small. If it is too small,
it will not suffice economically for itself. If it
is too big, it leaves the citizens no awareness
of belonging to the same community: such a
community might be a people (ethnos), but
not a polis. Aristotle cites the example of
Babylon, an agglomeration so immeasurably
large that after three days of being besieged
an entire part of the city was not yet aware of
 WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
what was happening. Territorial continuity
thus does not suffice for assuring a commu-
nal fate without which there cannot be one
city. The ideal is a “territory that one can see
with a single glance of the eye.”5
Territorial unity is thus a necessary condi-
tion of the existence of a city, but it is not
sufficient. Is it, then, ethnic unity that makes
for political community? Aristotle raises this
question at Pol. III.3, 1276a33: “May a city
be composed of a single people (ethnos) or
many?” Yet he attaches little importance to
the question, for it is clear that the individu-
als who populate a city are born and die, that
there is then a continual renewal, which has
no effect on the continuity of the city. Should
we then say that family relation should at
least constitute a criterion of belonging to
a determinate community? But Aristotle
speaks with irony of what today we could
call the law of blood, according to which one
is a citizen whose two parents are themselves
citizens. This criterion is strictly inapplicable,
for at which forebear or ancestor is one to
stop? Proving the citizenship of a given citi-
zen would lead to an infinite regress, which
reduces the standard of family relation to
absurdity: “It is not possible to apply to the
first inhabitants or founders of a city the def-
inition of citizen as being born from a citizen
father or citizen mother” (III.2, 1275b33).
Greek cities knew and practiced a different
means of access to citizenship: naturalization.
But Aristotle (who was himself a foreigner in
Athens) does not appreciate without mod-
eration the influx of foreigners in an already
instituted community, for “those who are
brought up under other laws are not advan-
tageous to good legislation, nor for the size of
the population” (VII.6, 1327a14). Aristotle
refers to heated discussions in Athens raised
by the decrees of Cleisthenes, who, after the
expulsion of the tyrants and in reaction to
341
their politics, “naturalized many foreigners
as well as resident slaves” (III.2, 1275b36),
thus creating a great mass of new citizens
(neopolitai). Aristotle says that one can
think what they like of Cleisthenes’ decrees,
but, insofar as they were juridical acts, they
should be adhered to and their effects com-
plied with. What is essential is not knowing
who is a citizen, but whether they are a citi-
zen justly or unjustly, that is, in virtue of the
law or not.
Citizenship is thus not founded on race,
but on the law. Ethnic considerations are not
absent from Aristotle’s political reflections,
but they are a posteriori and nonnormative.
Living memory attests to the fact that certain
peoples live in certain regions and that these
peoples each have a certain character. People
in the North are courageous, but have ­little
intelligence, so that they are incapable of
command. People in Asia are intelligent, but
without courage, which predisposes them to
living in slavery. Between the two, there are
the Greeks, “a people halfway,” who pos-
sess the qualities of the one and the other,
which renders them more apt than others
to lead free lives in the best political insti-
tutions. Still, they would have to give them-
selves these good institutions and, notably,
surmount their tendency to dissolve their
cities and adopt a single constitution, mia
politeia, for all of Greece: only then could
they legitimately command others (VII.7,
1327b19–33). When he wrote this, Aristotle
deplored that this was not yet the case.6
One finds nothing here that justifies,
in view of the plurality of ethnicities and
national characters, a plurality of communi-
ties adhering to systems of different values,
but all equally legitimate in their differenc-
es—which is today the thesis of communi-
tarians. Aristotle thinks that there are forms
of political organization better than others,
WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
even if it is true that people are more or less
predisposed to achieve them. The political
problem is that of investigating, without any
notion of ethnic membership, the best con-
stitution possible for all people, which each
community would be capable of realizing.
What makes for the unity, hence the
self-identity, of a community is thus its con-
stitution (politeia). Aristotle examines this
point in detail, together with the conse-
quences that follow from it, in chapter 3 of
book III of the Politics. When a democracy,
for example, is established in the place of
an oligarchy or a tyranny, we are no longer
dealing with the same city, even though the
inhabitants remain the same. Inversely, the
city is the same even though it is inhabited
by other human beings, so long as the con-
stitution remains the same. Aristotle is thus
skeptical—a question that has not lost its
contemporary urgency—whether a demo-
cratic regime succeeding a tyrannical regime
has to honor the debts incurred by the pre-
ceding regime, since the identity of the city
has changed.
What, then, is a constitution? It is not a
contract drawn for purposes of utility, as
the sophist Lycophron maintained; it does
not suffice for a polis when humans gather
together in order to barter or to exchange
commercially or again in order to combat
an enemy: “the city is not a commonality of
place, established for the sake of avoiding
mutual injustice and allowing for exchanges”
(III.9, 1280b30); the city is more than that:
it is “a community of living well (eu ze-n)”
(1280b34), that is, a city the end of which
is a perfect and autarchic life for the fami-
lies composing it. “The end of a city is living
well” and the relations it allows to establish
are “the task of friendship, for friendship
is the deliberate choice (prohairesis) to live
together” (1280b38–40).
342
This determination of political justice as
an ensemble of rules freely posited by the
political institution in view not only of liv-
ing together but also of the happiness of its
citizens, is perfectly universal or universal-
izable. It takes no account of local particu-
larities, which, based on territory, may be a
necessary, but are not a sufficient, condition
of political community. Aristotle nowhere
says that a community has its own history
that might give it a distinct identity; commu-
nity is defined rather by its telos, its finality,
and this telos is the same for all, that is, their
happiness.
Where then do we get the idea that
Aristotle, in opposition to modern theories
of natural right, grounds political norms and
morals, not in an abstract idea of the human
being, but in the effective historical reality
of morals as are realized in a people, articu-
lated differently by Hegel under the name
of Sittlichkeit—concrete morality as dis-
tinct from universal and abstract Moralität?
Certainly it is true that Aristotle rejects the
idea that the polis is just an aggregate of
individuals, a sort of artifact, justifiable
only inasmuch as it is an indirect instrument
of individual utility or even of individual
moral purpose. Hegel himself remarks right-
fully that Aristotle “is directly opposed to
the modern principle, which begins from the
individual, and according to which the indi-
vidual votes and solely by his vote a com-
munity can be born.”7 To put it in the terms
of contemporary debate between liberals and
communitarians, the good of the city is for
Aristotle a substantial good, not a proce-
dural one, and in this respect it is very distant
from modern liberalism. Moreover, it is this
whose absence Hegel deplored in the Greek
conception of the state: “Civil liberty is . . . a
necessary moment that the ancient states did
not know.”8
 WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
The polis is thus for Aristotle an organic
and natural totality. But it is necessary to
add—which Hegelian-minded commentators
frequently forget—that the nature that founds
the reality of the polis is, as all of phusis is, a
telos and not a historical given that produces
necessary effects. Human nature partici-
pates in this general teleology of nature, but,
further, the element of indeterminacy that
human liberty introduces renders human
nature a nature unachieved—natura incho-
ata, Cicero calls it9—which demands culture
in order to yield its most perfect fruits.10 In
the order of common life, the instrument of
this culture is logos, spoken exchange, and
more specifically deliberation (bouleusis),
which makes it possible for assembled citi-
zens to make, after an examination of argu-
ments for and against, the most reasonable
decision for the greatest good of the com-
munity.11 It is only by way of these rational
mediations that human nature can realize its
highest potentialities. This nature, even if it
is perfectible and achieved by degrees more
or less here and there, is, inasmuch as it is an
end, the same for all humans: there is thus no
place here for the recognition of natural dif-
ferences that would yield diverse, mutually
incompatible, and equally legitimate consti-
tutions and juridical systems.
Certainly there are differences between
communities, but Aristotle strives only to
classify them, and in a sense to play them
down, in pursuing above all the best possible
constitution (ariste- politeia), which would
make it possible not to eliminate borders
between communities, but to give each one
of them an identical structure and mode of
government, or, at least, an analogous one.
One might object that Aristotle frequently
invokes the diversity of opinions that arise
in the practical domain. Hence he tells us in
the NE (I.1, 1094b14f.) that “beautiful and
343
just things that are the object of politics give
rise to so many divergences and uncertainties
that they seem to exist solely by convention
and not by nature.” But this last point is only
apparently true. The political philosopher
should guard against proceeding apodicti-
cally, in the manner of mathematicians, but
nothing prevents her from reasoning, even if
still schematically (tupoi), about that which
happens for the most part (hos epi to polu)
(1094b19–21). Moreover, people profess dif-
ferent opinions about happiness, which some
place in pleasure, others in wealth, others in
honor, and others in a transcendent Good
(NE I.2). But all opinions are not equal, and
Aristotle in any event confines his account to
those “which are most prevalent and seem
most to have a rational foundation (echein
tina logon)” (1095a30). Aristotle then man-
ages to define happiness in a way liable to
common agreement: happiness “consists in
an activity of the soul in conformity with
the excellence (arete-) characteristic of the
human being and, in the event of a plurality
of excellences or virtues, in conformity with
the most excellent and perfect of them” (NE
I.6, 1098a16).
3
The preceding analysis shows that, contrary
to MacIntyre’s suggestion, nothing indicates
that Aristotelian virtues correspond to mod-
els or paradigms relative to a particular civi-
lization and susceptible to variation in space
and time from one community to another.
Here I will only consider the example of
justice, which is important for our purpose,
since justice is the virtue of order and, in par-
ticular, of political order. Without being able
to enter here into the details of the analysis
WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
given by Aristotle in book V of the NE, I
would like to insist on the universal—univer-
sal because natural—scope of Aristotle’s defi-
nition of the species of justice. It is true that,
contrary to what is claimed by modern liber-
als, justice for Aristotle is a substantial virtue,
and more fundamental than the agreements
to which it might give rise. Norms of justice
are not the result of a contractual procedure,
by means of which humans establish norms
for living in common. These norms do not
derive from convention any more than they
do from spontaneous consensus or again tacit
contracts—that is, in any case, from a proce-
dure that would found their relative validity,
a validity itself revocable by the very same
procedure (e.g. the procedure of voting). The
norms of justice are norms, nomoi, but they
derive from phusis, that is, from the nature of
things, and from the nature of human being.
This natural, hence universalizable, char-
acter follows clearly from the fact that jus-
tice, in its two properly political forms, is
founded on mathematic principles: geomet-
rical equality or proportion in the case of
distri­butive justice, and arithmetical equality
in the case of so-called commutative or cor-
rective (diortho-tike-) justice.12
In the first case, at issue is a principle
according to which the goods of the city
and its social functions, as well as the hon-
ors attached to them, should be distributed
among the citizens in proportion to the
value (axia) of each of them. This principle
is obviously mathematical, but an uncer-
tainty about its application seems introduced
by the variable of “value.” Rather than giv-
ing an objective definition of this, Aristotle
seems to leave the definition of value to the
different conceptions that one finds in dif-
ferent political regimes. “Democracies have
it that value consists in liberty, partisans of
oligarchy that it consists either in wealth or
344
in the nobility of the race, and defenders of
aristocracy that it consists in virtue” (NE V.6,
1131a28). This passage might seem to tend
toward a relativism of norms of justice, as
MacIntyre has emphasized; one might then
ask with him, since at stake are justice and
the rational laws of right: Whose Justice?
Which Rationality? Then one might defend
the following thesis, that “no tradition can
claim rational superiority to any other. For
each tradition has internal to itself its own
view of what rational superiority consists in
in respect of such topics as practical rational-
ity and justice, and the adherents of each will
judge accordingly. . . . [A]t any fundamental
level no rational debate between, rather than
within, traditions can occur.”13 But this is not
what Aristotle thinks: If one takes the crucial
example of the traditions relating to politi-
cal regimes—democracy, oligarchy, aristoc-
racy—it is possible to compare, in the name
of a superior point of reference that is the
logos, these different traditions and to evalu-
ate their respective rationality. In the present
case, it is probable that Aristotle grants a
superiority—independent of all particular
traditions—to aristocracy, the government
of the best, which defines value by virtue.
Even if in the Politics Aristotle balances this
judgment by granting preference to a mixed
regime, the polity, a mixture of aristocracy
and democracy, still his purpose is to estab-
lish an objective, universally valid hierarchy
of constitutions, detached from all prejudice
relating to history and custom.
There is another problem of knowing
whether the plurality of opinions need not be
respected in a society that we call democratic.
The legitimate plurality of opinions and of the
interests that they reflect finds the place of its
expression in a deliberative assembly (boule-).
Yet deliberation (bouleusis) allows for the
superseding of this plurality: Assembly consists
 WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
not just in exposure to adverse opinions; after
having understood and compared the argu-
ments for and against, the assembly proceeds
to a choice (prohairesis), a univocal decision
for doing what seems to be most reasonable.
In the case of commutative or corrective
justice, the mathematical determination of the
norm is yet clearer. In relations between peo-
ple, every injury of right should be repaired
by a judge in the form of an equalization: res-
titution in the case of theft, indemnity in the
case of bodily harm or murder, and, in both
cases, punishment for guilt in order to com-
pensate for the suffering inflicted on another.
Aristotle notes by way of clarification that,
in order to apply this rule strictly, the judge
should judge in the same way regardless of
the quality and social standing of the victim
and of the perpetrator (V.7, 1132a1–6). He
should not be a respecter of persons and
should treat the parties “as equals,” that is,
as equals before the law. While the distribu-
tion of goods and honors might be arithmeti-
cally unequal, since it takes into account the
unequal value and merit of the persons, there
exists a sphere, that of private life, where all
humans are intrinsically equal, bearers of the
same individual rights, and, in particular, of
an equal right everyone has to possess (and
to see acknowledged) a certain number of
basic goods: physical integrity, life, health,
property, good reputation, self-respect. With
regard to the right to possess these basic
goods, there is no legitimate discrimination,
which prohibits privileges based on family
relations or wealth as well as the preten-
sion, advanced today by communitarians, to
accord “positive” discriminations to individ-
uals belonging to minority groups.
It remains to analyze a passage frequently
invoked by those who believe themselves to
find in Aristotle a theory of concrete natu-
ral right, respectful toward the diversity of
345
traditions and circumstances, one that pro-
motes diversity in opposition to abstract
and universal natural right invoked by mod-
ern theories of human rights. The passage
is taken from chapter 10 of book V of the
NE, which distinguishes political justice or
right (dikaion politikon) from natural jus-
tice or right (dikaion phusikon). Some claim
that there is only political justice, that is,
proper to every city, since juridical norms
are variable from one country to another
and thus appear to be posited by conven-
tion (nomoi) rather than founded in nature
(phusei). Against this thesis, Aristotle objects
that variability is not opposed to nature but
that, inversely, universality may not be a sign
of nature: if ambidextrousness were univer-
sal among humans by the constraint of an
education in contrast to nature, it would not
for all that be natural. Inversely, the laws of
right, universal in principle, may be particu-
lar in their formulation at the level of rules of
application, without ceasing for that reason
to be natural. Aristotle seems to mean that
positive right, if it may not be deduced from
natural right, still must never be in opposi-
tion to it. Positive right legitimately occu-
pies the space that natural right does not
determine, since this space is indifferent to
nature and is therefore abandoned without
inconvenience to custom: thus, for example,
the amount to pay in ransom in order to free
a prisoner or—to take a more contempo-
rary example—the form or amount of taxes.
But the diversity of fiscal regulations from
one country to the next does not contradict
the principle of natural right according to
which the citizen should contribute, in prop­
ortion to her wealth, to charges incurred by
the defense and administration of the State.
One thus understands, Aristotle concludes,
that “the laws of right that are not based on
nature, but on the will of the human being,
WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
are not everywhere the same, since the form
of government is not the same.” Aristotle thus
admits as a fact the variety of constitutions,
which depend in part on the customs and
histories proper to different people, but he
emphasizes this above all, that “there is only
one form of government that is naturally the
best of all” (V.10, 1135a3–7).14
Where here he recognizes a certain natural
diversity—since it is based on natural dif-
ferences in character and situation—among
forms of organizing social life, Aristotle
maintains the teleological demand of a single
excellence, which transcends at least tenden-
tially any factual diversity.
Aristotle’s political philosophy is a phi-
losophy of a naturalist persuasion, which is
clearly opposed to the formalism or proce-
duralism of modern political philosophers.
Yet his naturalism does not necessarily lead
to relativism. For nature is not only a given,
which would entail that it is in effect diverse,
but also a telos, which in the human, the
reasoning human, takes the form, of an end
to attain in common, of a collective task to
accomplish. This task and the logos that is its
instrument are the same for all humans.
Yet Aristotelian logos—and this is its orig-
inality in relation to the modern notion of
reason—only grasps the universal by means
of spoken exchange, by means of delibera-
tion in common concerning means, by means
of reasonable discussion. It is logos itself that
is diverse and plural, owing to the diversity
of acceptable aretological models and forms
of constitution. Thus, it would be contrary
to the spirit of Aristotle to want to stall this
properly dialectical plurality in a juxtapo-
sition of insular, monological, and mutu-
ally exclusive identities; for the plurality is
intended by logos itself.
Pierre Aubenque
Translated by Erick Raphael Jiménez
346
Notes
 1
See Volpi, 1996, 1136.
 2
See also the very clear presentation of the
debate in Altable, 1995.
 3
I translate the verb koino-nein at 1253a28 as
“communicate” and not, as other translators
have done, by “belong to a community”
(P. Pellegrin) or “live in a community”
(J. Aubonnet). Taking koino-nein in this way,
Aristotle’s point would be tautological: Only
a human capable of belonging to a commu-
nity could belong to a community. Aristotle is
saying more than that: Only a human capable
of communicating with other humans, who
share the same capacity, can constitute a com-
munity with them. Communication constitutes
community, not the opposite. Belonging is the
consequence, not the cause, of participation.
 4
Politics III.13, 1284a10–14. This is one of the
reasons why “a god” has no need of living in a
community (Pol. I.2, 1253a28–9).
 5
Pol. VII.5, 1327a2f.
 6
On the problem of the constitutional unity
of Greece, such as Aristotle desired, see
Ehrenberg, 1938; and Weil, 1960, esp. 411–15.
 7
Hegel, 1979, 19, 225.
 8
Ibid., 228.
 9
Cicero, De Finibus IV.3 (here Cicero is
expounding a Peripatetic point of view).
10
Cicero, here following Theophrastus, first
among Aristotle’s disciples, illustrates this
point by means of the example of a vine: a
vine, a natural being, but whose nature is
unachieved, is in need of culture and care
(cura) in order to bring about the highest
potentialities of which its nature is capable. In
the same way, the human being is in need of
wisdom (sapientia) and reason (ratio) in order
to realize its nature (De Finibus IV.14 and
V.14). We may thus understand that the city is
situated at the intersection of nature and cul-
ture: natural institution (a human is by nature
a political being) is no less in need of the will
and intelligence of human beings in order to
become what it is.
11
No preambular deliberation is necessary for
the founding of a city. Aristotle thus rejects
Antiphon’s thesis that the laws are the result
of a contract (homologia) (87 B 44, 1–2).
However, if the city’s structure is naturally
 WOULD ARISTOTLE BE A COMMUNITARIAN?
well founded, particular decisions that the city
has to make would be the object at least of a
majority consensus consecutive with delibera-
tion. See Aubenque, 1998.
12
See Aubenque, 1995, 35–47.
13
MacIntyre, 1989, 348.
14
In this passage, from here on I understand
“everywhere” (pantachou) in the obvious
sense of “in every place.” I had tried to give
pantachou the distributive sense of “in each
place” (which would justify a plurality of con-
stitutions, each of which would naturally be
each time the best for the people considered).
Yet I recognize now that this interpretation
agrees poorly with the context, which allows
for the variability of the natural, but affirms
the teleological unicity of what is naturally the
best. See Aubenque, 1995, 44, n. 13, and, in
the same volume, the commentary of Troers
Engberg-Petersen, 55–6 (who sees in this pas-
sage “one of the clearest statements in Aristotle
of his moral realist position”).
References
Altable, M. P. G., “Liberalismo vs.
Comunitarismo (John Rawls: una
concepcíon política del bien),” Doxa,
17–18 (1995), 117–135.
Aubenque, P., “The Twofold Natural
Foundation of Justice According to
347
Aristotle,” in Aristotle and Moral
Realism, ed. R. Heinaman, London:
University College London Press, 1995.
—, “Aristote et la conception délibérative
de la démocratie,” in The Concept of
Democracy and Its Problems, Acts of
the VII Symposium of the FISP, ed.
I. Kuçuradi, Ankara, 1998; reprinted in
Problèmes aristotéliciens, II, Paris: Vrin,
2011, 195–200.
Ehrenberg, V., Alexander and the Greeks,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938.
Hegel, G. W. F., Vorlesungen über die
Geschichte der Philosophie, vols.
18–20, Werke, ed. E. Moldenhauer
and K. M. Michel, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1979.
MacIntyre, A., Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? Notre Dame, IN: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
Thiebault, C., Los límites de la
comunidad, Madrid: Centro de Estudios
Constitucionales, 1993.
Volpi, F., “Philosophie Pratique,” in
Dictionnaire d’éthique et de philosophie
morale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1996.
Weil, R., Aristote et l’histoire, Paris:
Klincksieck, 1960.
 GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
The prospect of compiling an Aristotelian
glossary, even such an extremely abbreviated
one as is here presented, is daunting for two
reasons. The first is that Aristotle employs a
lot of technical language, and technical lan-
guage frequently referencing and defined by
other technical language. The second is that
the language he employs, or, more strictly,
that he appropriates, is by his own lights
often highly ambiguous, and his attempts
at disambiguating it at times resemble the
sculpting of water. It will suffice to mention
the distinction between ποίησις and πρᾶξις;
or the variability of the adjective (here left
untouched) ἔσχατος, which may be inflected
to signify any moment of a movement or
change; or, finally, the many expressions,
most notably ἀριθμός, whose evident mean-
ings will shift from descriptions of things to
the things so described.
These are outliers. The better part of
Aristotelian terminology is limned with pre-
cision—not stiffly but with sensitivity to the
matter at hand, and nuance. For the purposes
moreover of understanding that terminology
it is rarely necessary to look beyond the trea-
tises themselves. Aristotle is explicit in his
meanings and given to candid definition of
central terminology. The degree of consist-
ency in usage across the corpus moreover
is impressive; taking this consistency for
348
granted will nearly always yield an advance
in clarity.
Aristotle himself should be one’s first and
last resource for inquiry into Aristotelian ter-
minology. To begin with, no one interested
in Aristotle will fail to benefit from close
reading of Met. V, the so-called “philosophi-
cal lexicon.” The disambiguations there are
as a general rule consistent with Aristotle’s
use across the corpus. It should be borne in
mind that these chapters are not merely lists
but frequently arguments as to the primacy
of certain basic meanings and the derivative-
ness of others. Additionally, it would do to
be on the lookout for definitions of essential
terminology at the beginning of most trea-
tises, at the beginning of the discussion of
any topic, or in the sections immediately fol-
lowing the aporetic discussion of a topic (for
Aristotle will frequently describe a topic very
broadly, discuss the difficulties pertaining to
that topic, and thereafter define it strictly—
caution about initial definitions being thus in
order).
The best external sources for inquiry into
Aristotelian terminology are Bonitz’s Index
Aristotelicus and, for more broadly contextu-
alized inquiry, the Greek-English Lexicon of
Liddell, Scott, and Jones. Both are available
online; the latter is searchable, the former is
not. The Index, included in the fifth volume

of Bekker’s edition, is available wherever
Bekker’s edition is available; LSJ is available
through the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and
Perseus web sites (see “Resources”).
Each of the below entries has five parts:
(1) the expression(s) in Greek; (2) a translit-
eration of the expression(s); (3) translations
of the expression(s), in some cases including
Latin equivalents (“eq. L”); (4) a discussion
of Aristotle’s use of the expression(s); and (5)
some references to places in Aristotle where the
term is discussed, as well as cross-references
to other terms discussed here. Expressions are
marked with an asterisk if they are elsewhere
defined in this glossary. In only one case have
I included some detailed remarks on etymol-
ogy, namely in the case of οὐσία, notoriously
poorly translated “substance.”
The purpose of this glossary is to present
some of the more philosophically important
Aristotelian locutions. Emphasis has been laid
on the main terminology of Aristotle’s phys-
ics, psychology, metaphysics, and ethics, and
secondarily on his logic and poetics. I have
attempted to bring out for each term, where
relevant, three things: (1) the main meaning
of the term; (2) the connection this term has
to other terms or topics in Aristotle’s philoso-
phy; and (3) questions and difficulties com-
mentators have attempted, or are attempting,
to parse that bear on the term at hand. The
goal in sum has been to present something of
use to the philosophically inclined; the glos-
sary is meant not as an authority but as a
prolepsis of further Aristotelian inquiries.
ἀγαθός, τὸ ἀγαθόν (agathos, to agathon)
adj. good, noble; n. the good; eq. L adj.
bonus; n. bonum
According to NE I, the good is that
at which all things aim. Aristotle
349
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
distinguishes his view of the good
from Plato’s by claiming that there are
many goods specific to different things.
However, he shares with Plato the dis-
tinction between real and apparent
goods. The good is not thus merely rela-
tive but relative to the kind (εἶδος*) of
thing at issue. The good for humans,
for example, is the same good for every
human.
To the vexation of commentators, in
Met. Aristotle seems to suggest there
is however a single science of being,
because being is said πρὸς ἕν (with a
view to one central meaning or sort of
thing) (Met. IV.1–2), and later suggests
“the good” similarly orders the cosmos
πρὸς ἕν (Met. XII.10).
See NE I.6–7 for Aristotle’s account
of the human good (i.e. happiness); Met.
XII.10 for Aristotle’s account of the good
in the cosmos generally; and see ἀρετή*
and εὐδαιμονία* below.
αἴσθησις, αἰσθάνεσθαι (aisthe-sis,
aisthanesthai)
n. sensation, perception; v. to sense, to perceive
Sensation for Aristotle is perception by
means of the five senses. The action of
sensation consists in a three-way relation
between the capacity to sense (of the sen-
sitive organ, τὸ αἰσθητήριον), the capac-
ity to be sensed (of the sensible thing, τὸ
αἰσθητόν), and the actuality or move-
ment (the αἴσθησις itself) relating the one
capacity to the other (on which see also
ἐνέργεια* and κίνησις* infra). Thus sen-
sation is the actuality of the sensible and
the sensitive, or the movement of the sen-
sitive by the sensible. Aristotle seems to
waver between a conception of sensation
as a mere material event and as a formal
act like that of consciousness. (On the
sense in which αἴσθησις is a λόγος*, see
the entry on the latter below.)
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
See DA II.5–III.2 for Aristotle’s treat-
ment of sensation, as well as De Sensu;
and see νοῦς* and φαντασία* below.
αἰτία, αἴτιον (aitia, aition)
n. cause, explanation; orig. responsibility,
blame, guilt (see αἴτιος, culpable), accusation
or charge; eq. L n. causa
A cause for Aristotle is a factor in the
simple or qualified being of something.
Thus a cause may be what produces
something as such or what produces it in
some particular way it happens to be.
There are four sorts of cause: material
(see ὕλη*); formal (see εἶδος*); efficient
or motive (κινοῦν; see κίνησις*); and
final (see τέλος*). The difference between
the sorts of cause bears on the nature of
the feature of the thing they relate to: A
material cause causes something to be
however it is because it is its matter; a
formal cause because it is its form; etc.
There is generally speaking no distinc-
tion in Aristotle between “causes” and
“explanations.” The material, formal,
efficient, and final causes are thus not
only sorts of things with causal charac-
teristics, but also sorts of accounts, and
respectively associated with the expres-
sions ἐξ οὗ (“From what?”), τί ἐστι
(“What is it?”), ὅθεν (“From where?”),
and οὗ ἕνεκα (“For the sake of what?”).
On causes, see Phys. II; Met. I; and the
relevant expressions below characteristic
of each of the four causes.
ἀλήθεια, ἀληθές, ἀληθεύειν (ale-theia, ale-thes,
ale-theuein)
n. truth; adj. true; v. to tell/to reveal the truth,
to be true; orig. n. sincerity; eq. L n. veritas,
verum; adj. verus; v. verum dicere
Truth for Aristotle is a notion that fluc-
tuates between true description and the
350
truth (i.e. what is as what is true). Thus,
while Aristotle frequently insists truth
and falsity pertain only to meaningful
and declarative propositions (e.g. De int.
1), and even once declares that truth is “in
the intellect (διάνοια), not things” (Met.
VI.4), the truth of incomposites is said to
consist in non-propositional “uttering”
(φάσις) and their being to be “the same”
as thinking them (Met. IX.10); actual
understanding (ἐπιστήμη*) is moreo-
ver said frequently to be identical to the
“things” (πράγματα) it grasps (e.g. DA
III.5 and III.7).
Truth in the case of intellectual virtue
(ἀρετή*) consists in part in the reveal-
ing of theoretical truth and in part in the
revealing of practical truth. To the former
relate ἐπιστήμη*, νοῦς*, and σοφία*
and to the latter τέχνη* and φρόνησις*.
Just what it means to say these are modes
of ἀληθεύειν may be seen to turn on the
above-mentioned ambiguity.
On propositional truth, see Cat. 10
and De Int. Aristotle discusses the intel-
lectual virtues in NE VI. See also Met.
VI and IX.
ἁμαρτία (hamartia)
n. error, mistake
The sort of act, characteristic of tragic
plots, proceeding from a good character
and productive of a bad fortune, is called
an “error.” In tragedy, the protagonist’s
“error” drives the “reversal” in fate char-
acteristic of its plot (Poet. 13).
“Errors” also take place in art (τέχνη*)
wherever an astute practitioner errs in
and through the practice of their art.
Inasmuch as nature and art are similarly
ends-oriented, “errors” in nature are also
possible. Aristotle gives the example of
“monsters” (τέρατα), which he describes
as “errors in purpose” (Phys. II.8). In all
these cases “in which the right way [to do

something consists in the achievement]
of some purpose, in the case of errors
there is a purpose in what was attempted
but that has been failed at” (ibid.).
See also ἀναγνώρισις*, περιπέτεια*,
τύχη*.
ἀνάγκη, τὸ ἀναγκαῖον (ananke-, to
anankaion)
n. necessity, the necessary, adj. necessary;
orig. force, constraint, compulsion; eq. L n.
necessitas, adj. necesse, necessarius
Aristotle conceives of necessity as “what
cannot be otherwise” (τὸ μὴ ἐνδεχόμενον
ἄλλως ἔχειν).
Aristotle distinguishes between “sim-
ple” or “unconditional” (ἁπλῶς) and
“hypothetical” (ἐξ ὑποθέσεως) necessity;
on the rudiments of the distinction, see
Phys. II.9. Hypothetical necessity is the
necessity that, if something is to achieve
some end (τέλος*), it must achieve cer-
tain intermediary stages; such necessity
is exemplified in all natural and artificial
coming-to-be and identified by Aristotle
with matter (ὕλη*). “Simple” or “uncon-
ditional” necessity on the other hand
entails no procedure or progress from
one to another stage.
One of the more notorious and dif-
ficult questions in Aristotelian interpre-
tation concerns the question of future
singulars in De Int. 9. It is not clear
whether Aristotle’s position is, to use
the well-known example, (1) that the
disjunction sea battle or no sea battle
tomorrow necessarily holds, although
neither member is yet necessarily true; or
(2) that one of (a) sea battle tomorrow or
(b) no sea battle tomorrow is necessarily
true, even if we yet know not which.
See Met. V.5 for the disambiguation;
for remarks of an introductory nature on
logical necessity, see APr I.1–3; and see
τύχη* and ὕλη* below.
351
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
ἀναγνώρισις (anagno-risis)
n. recognition
Ἀναγνώρισις, or “recognition,” is one
of two possible transformative elements
in the construction of a “complex” (as
opposed to a “simple”) “plot”; the other
is περιπέτεια*, or “reversal” (Poet. 10).
Both transformations are intended to
occur “from the very structure of the plot
(ἐξ αὐτῆς τῆς συστάσεως τοῦ μύθου),
so that what happens comes about from
what preceded it either necessarily or in
all likelihood” (ibid.). Such transforma-
tions are distinctive of tragedy.
“Recognition,” for its part, is “a
change from ignorance to knowledge
[bringing about] affection or enmity
between those destined for good or bad
fate” (Poet. 11). The sorts of recognition
possible are enumerated and described in
Poet. 16.
See περιπέτεια* below.
ἀνάλογον, ἀναλογία (analogon, analogia)
n. analogy, proportion; eq. L n. analogia
“Analogy” is one of the forms of unity
(ἕν*) (Met. V.6); it is implied also to
be one of the forms of “sameness” (τὸ
αὐτό) (Met. V.8). In both cases, anal-
ogy seems to indicate the weaker of the
forms of unity and sameness; for while
analogical unity is implicit in all of the
other forms of unity (numeric, specific,
generic), analogies do not themselves
imply other forms.
In Poet. Aristotle treats analogy as a
form of metaphor (μεταφορά), “when-
ever a second term stands to a first in a
manner similar to the fourth term’s stand-
ing to the third,” allowing for certain
inversions of terms (Poet. 21). The func-
tion of metaphors rhetorically is “to put
[something] before [the listener’s] eyes”
(πρὸ ὀμμάτων ποιεῖν); Rhet. III.10–11
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
contains a discussion of the attaining
of this goal, with copious examples and
commentary.
See ἕν* below.
ἄνθρωπος (anthro-pos)
n. human, human being; eq. L n. homo
The expression ἄνθρωπος is, for all practi-
cal intents and purposes, a gender-neutral
term; a γυνή is a woman; an ἀνήρ is a
man; an ἄνθρωπος is a human.
Physically, Aristotle seems to find the
uprightness of humans their essential
trait (see HA I.15). Aristotle’s expla-
nations as to why humans possess this
trait emphasize the divinity, articulate-
ness, intelligence, and heat (relating
to foot and brain size) distinctive of
human beings.
Other forms of distinctiveness
abound as well—to wit, these: (1) In
Pol. I.2 Aristotle famously describes
humans as “animals having λόγος*.”
This evidently relates to another epithet
there, that humans are more political
than other animals. (2) An interesting
related qualification is that humans
“fall on either side” of the distinction
between gregarious and solitary ani-
mals. (3) Humans are also described
in HA I.1 as the only animals that are
deliberative and (4) in De Mem. 2 as
the only animals capable of recollec-
tion (ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι). (5) In Poet.
Aristotle claims that humans are “most
imitative” of all animals and attracted
by nature to “harmony and rhythm”
(Poet. 4). (6) Finally, in PA III.10
Aristotle claims only humans are sub-
ject to tickling and laughter.
See Pol. I.2, HA I.1; and λόγος* below.
ἁπλῶς (haplo-s)
adv. simply, without qualification, uncondi-
tionally; eq. L adv. simpliciter
352
“Simple” is an expression of general
usage by Aristotle. What is “simple” is
opposed to what is τινί, “for something
[or ‘someone’]” or “[qualified] in some
respect.” It may characterize something
ontologically, that is, whether it is thus
and so “without qualification,” in which
case it is thus and so essentially (καθ᾽
αὑτό*) rather than accidentally (κατὰ
συμβεβηκός*); or it may characterize
knowledge, that is, whether one knows
something “unconditionally,” in which
case it is a matter of knowing something
necessarily, as for example in the case of
ἐπιστήμη*. Something, further, may be
produced “simply,” that is, as such; or it
may come to be “simply.”
See also ἀνάγκη* above.
ἀπόδειξις (apodeixis)
n. demonstration
A demonstration is a συλλογισμὸς
ἐπιστημονικός, “a scientific deduction,”
that is to say, a deduction “by the grasp-
ing of which we understand” (APo I.2).
Now understanding for Aristotle means
necessary knowledge (see ἐπιστήμη*
below). Therefore a demonstration may
be seen to differ from other sorts of
arguments in that its premises are nec-
essarily true and, in turn, that the sort
of knowledge gained is necessarily true
knowledge (see ἀνάγκη* above).
It has stirred debate in recent decades
whether (1) Aristotelian demonstrations
are possible; and whether (2) Aristotle
himself adheres to demonstrative prac-
tices, say, in his physical writings. Much
turns on the question whether the
famously stringent demand for distinc-
tively demonstrative premises—those
namely that are “true, primary, immedi-
ate, and better known than and prior to
the conclusion” (APo I.2)—is a demand
that can be realistically met.

The premises of demonstrations must
be indemonstrable (see APo I.3). Whether
it is possible to grasp such principles is one
way of parsing the nub of question (1)
above. Aristotle gives an elliptical answer
in APo II.19, that the principles are grasped
by “mind” (νοῦς*). Further complicating
this answer are ambiguities about the role
in this process of experience and induction
(see ἐμπειρία* and ἐπαγωγή*).
See ἀνάγκη*, ἀρχή*, ἐμπειρία*,
ἐπαγωγή*, ἐπιστήμη*, νοῦς*,
συλλογισμός*.
ἀπόφανσις, ἀποφαντικός, ἀποφαίνειν
(apophansis, apophantikos, apophainein)
n. assertion, declaration; adj. assertional,
assertive, declarative; v. to assert, to declare,
to make clear, to claim, to opine
An ἀπόφανσις, an “assertion,” is a prop-
osition in which one term is affirmed
or denied of another (τὶ κατά τινος ἢ
τὶ ἀπό τινος) (De Int. 5), and the adjec-
tive ἀποφαντικός describes a proposi-
tion that is “assertional” in this way. The
“assertional” criterion thus distinguishes
a proposition as one “in which there is a
conveying of truth or a deceiving,” that is,
truth or falsity (De Int. 4; see ἀλήθεια*
and ψεῦδος*). An assertional proposi-
tion must moreover join terms through
a “verb” (a ῥῆμα), that is to say, through
an expression indicating action, change,
or, in general, time (see De Int. 3 and 5).
An assertion is either a denial
(ἀπόφασις) or an affirmation (κατάφασις),
that is, an assertion that S is/was/will
be/etc. P (an affirmation) or an asser-
tion that S is not/was not/will not be P
(a denial). Where S and P are the same
terms and the modality of the connect-
ing verb is the same, the affirmation and
denial constitute a contradictory pair.
For discussion of these matters, see De
Int. 6–14.
353
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Note that De Int. is, in Aristotle’s esti-
mation, a theory of ἀπόφανσις (see De
Int. 4).
See also λόγος*, φωνή*.
ἀρετή (arete-)
n. virtue, excellence; eq. L n. virtus
A “virtue” or “excellence” in the strict
sense is a habit or tendency to exhibit
the most complete and exemplary per-
formance of a function (ἔργον*). There
are “virtues” of any of the natural con-
stituents of a thing whose capacities or
functions are subject to improvement.
Aristotle’s account of virtue turns on
three ideas: first, that human happiness
(εὐδαιμονία*) consists in performing
the human function (ἔργον*) well; sec-
ond, that this function relates in some
way to reason (λόγος*, νοῦς*); and,
third, that the psychic capacities relevant
to performing this function well are
intellectual ones as well as desiderative/
sensitive ones. (On these points, see espe-
cially NE I.7 and I.13.) In humans there
are “ethical” and “intellectual” virtues,
the first relating to the quality of one’s
“character” (ἦθος*), or habits for acting
(in ways relevant to capacities that can
be influenced by reasoning), and the sec-
ond to the quality of one’s intellect.
Virtues of character are “decisionary
states” (ἕξεις προαιρετικαί) for acting
in accordance with the means and ends
prescribed by correct practical reasoning
(see NE II.5–6). Intellectual virtues are
those states through which one espies
the correct mark determinative of the
appropriate ethical virtue (see especially
NE VI.1).
See generally NE I–II. The ethical vir-
tues are discussed in NE II–V; the intel-
lectual virtues in NE VI. See moreover
τὸ ἀγαθόν* above, ἕξις*, εὐδαιμονία*,
προαίρεσις* below.
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
ἀρχή (arche-)
n. principle, ground, beginning, origin, rule,
power; eq. L n. principium
In Met. V.1 Aristotle outlines six mean-
ings of ἀρχή. It is common to all of these
meanings, Aristotle claims, to indicate
“the first thing from which something is,
becomes, or is known,” and they are dis-
tinguished broadly by their “being imma-
nent” (ἐνυπάρχουσι) or being “external”
(ἐκτός).
“All causes are principles” (Met. V.1),
but not all principles are causes; thus the
notion of principle is for Aristotle the
wider and more elastic. A principle gen-
erally in Aristotle is any factor responsi-
ble for any sort of change or knowledge
of something.
Debate concerning how to under-
stand the knowledge and prov-
enance of principles with respect to
perception (αἴσθησις*, νοῦς*), experi-
ence (ἐμπειρία*), induction (ἐπαγωγή*),
and understanding (ἐπιστήμη*), has
admitted generally of two extremes: an
empiricist interpretation (principles are
grasped through induction [ἐπαγωγή*]);
and a rationalist interpretation (princi-
ples are grasped by the mind [νοῦς*]).
It has been wondered secondly what
the relationship is of principles to dialectic
(διαλεκτική*), that is, whether dialectic
serves any sort of justificatory or epistemic
role in the discerning of first principles.
See APo II.19 on first principles; on prin-
ciples in natural philosophy, see Phys. I.1;
see Top. I.1 on dialectic; see αἰτία* above
and, below, διαλεκτική* and νοῦς*.
βία (bia)
n. violence; eq. L n. violentia
Βία in Aristotle almost always has
meaning as a negation. “Violence” is
opposed to “choice” (προαίρεσις*),
354
in the realm of rational action, and to
“nature” (φύσις*), in the realm of move-
ment and change. This double meaning
is encompassed in the Met. V.5 formula
τὸ παρὰ τὴν ὁρμὴν καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν,
“that which is contrary to impulse and
choice,” where violence is treated as a
form of necessity (see ἀναγκή*). Βία
may be seen then to be opposed to per-
suasion in the influencing of action and
to natural movements (i.e. those either
self-generated or ἐν τοῖς οἰκείοις, “into
proper places”) (see κίνησις*).
See φύσις* below.
βίος (bios)
n. life; eq. L n. vita
Excluding ψυχή*, which has a fairly
specific meaning in Aristotle, βίος is
one of three expressions Aristotle has
recourse to for description of an activ-
ity more or less adequately translated as
“living,” the other two being διαγωγή,
“lifetime,” and ζωή*, “life” in a most
basic sense.
Βίος in the first place is measured by
time; thus βίοι may be shorter or longer
(GC II.10). Secondly, a βίος will be
inflected in accordance with the states
and capacities of the individual or of
the individual’s species or form: For a
plant, living is nourishing (DA II.3; see
GC II.3); for an animal, reproduction
and feeding (see HA VIII.1), in ways
uniquely inflected owing to its capac-
ity for self-movement (see DA III.9–13).
Lives are shaped moreover (especially
for humans) in relation to one’s habitua-
tion and action.
The question of life in the distinc-
tively human domain may be posed in
two registers, a constitutive and a nor-
mative one. Humans in the constitutive
sense are, according to HA’s mode of

classification, land-dwellers, gregarious
as well as ­solitary, and political (HA
I.1). Moreover, Aristotle characterizes
humans and distinctively human capaci-
ties as “having λόγος*.” NE X describes
the best human life as a βίος θεωρετικός
or a βίος κατὰ τὸν νοῦν (see θεωρία*
and νοῦς*). (On this, see also Pol. VII.)
See ζωή*, ψυχή*.
γένεσις, γένεσθαι (genesis, genesthai)
n. genesis, coming-to-be, becoming, genera-
tion; eq. L n. generatio
“Becoming” is a general term descrip-
tive of a process whereby something
achieves a different state or attribute.
There are five ways in which something
coming to be changes, namely in terms
of their shape, by addition, by subtrac-
tion, by combination, or by alteration.
“Becoming” for Aristotle requires three
terms: a subject (ὑποκείμενον) and two
contraries (ἐναντία). According to the
account in Phys. I.7, in the case of qual-
ified becoming (where something that
is in some respect unchanged undergoes
some change in some other respect)
the subject is the matter. Moreover,
although only οὐσίαι, “substances,”
come to be “without qualification”
(ἁπλῶς*), yet they too come to be from
some subject.
See μεταβολή* on why γένεσις is not
a movement (κίνησις*).
γένος (genos)
n. genus, kind; orig. clan, kin, stock, tribe,
family; eq. L n. genus
The expression γένος is a general term
meaning “group” or “class.” Aristotle
distinguishes four senses of γένος in
Met. V.28, which differ as to how mem-
bership is determined, and how member-
ship reflects the identity of members.
355
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Γένη have two sorts of home in the
Aristotelian corpus: one a logical home
and one a natural or “physical” home.
In Topics γένος is defined as “what is
predicated in terms of what-it-is of many
things differing in εἶδος” (Top. I.5). Thus
γένος contributes to the determination
of the essence, or what-it-is, of some-
thing, but anticipates, minimally, a more
specific εἶδος* for the completion of this
determination.
In the natural or more specifically
biological context γένη do not seem to
have fixed objective significance; the
term γένος, it is only a slight exaggera-
tion to say, is nearly always used ad hoc,
that is, in terms of categorical bounda-
ries suited to the inquiry at hand. Despite
these transformations, the relationship
between γένη and εἴδη, that is, between
broader and more specific groups—
where the more specific are distinguished
in terms characteristic of their member-
ship in the broader group—is a fairly
fixed one.
See διαφορά*, εἶδος*.
διαίρεσις (diairesis)
n. division
Division in Aristotle is a procedure,
inherited from Plato, by means of which
essences (τί ἦν εἶναι*) or forms (εἴδη*)
are discerned. It consists in drawing dis-
tinctions between members of the same
class (i.e. γένος*) in order to make out
what is distinctive essentially of one of
the members. That feature distinctive
essentially of one of the members is a
“difference” (διαφορά*). The formula
rendered then by the application of the
difference to the broader class or genus is
a “definition” (ὁρισμός*). Distinctive of
Aristotle’s use of this tool is his twofold
critique of Platonic division. Platonic divi-
sions fall short of their theoretical mark,
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
according to Aristotle, because they tend
to yield only definitions by negation, and
because the various divisions are made
arbitrarily, that is, without relation to the
nature of the broader class.
One of the more conspicuous instances
in the Aristotelian corpus is the division
articulated in DA II.1. For Aristotle’s
own remarks on division, see APr I.31;
APo II.5 and II.13; and PA I.23.
διαλεκτικός, ἡ διαλεκτική (dialektikos, he-
dialektike-)
adj. dialectical; n. dialectic
“Dialectic” is defined by Aristotle in
Topics as a “method by which it is pos-
sible to argue (συλλογίσθαι) about every
problem presented from commonly
accepted opinions” (Top. I.1). On this
last point, as a species of deduction
(συλλογισμός*), dialectic differs first of
all from demonstration (see ἀπόδειξις*);
for the principles (ἀρχαί*) of the latter
are “true and primary” and self-evident,
whereas those of dialectic are “what
appear” to be the case “to everyone, or to
most, or to the wisest, and of the wisest
to all or to most or to the most knowl-
edgeable.” On the other hand, dialectic
differs also from “eristic” (reasoning
from apparently accepted opinions) and
from reasoning inappropriately on the
basis of principles taken from another
science.
Aristotle contrasts διαλεκτική and
sophistry in Met. IV.2 by claiming that,
while both are, like philosophy, ways of
being skilled in reasoning about every-
thing, the sophist, who differs from the
dialectician by their “choice of life form”
(προαίρεσις τοῦ βίου), is merely a sem-
blance of the philosopher. He moreover
contrasts διαλεκτική and philosophy
by claiming that the former is “merely
356
critical” whereas philosophy is a form of
understanding.
διαφορά (diaphora)
n. difference; eq. L n. differentia
A difference for Aristotle in the techni-
cal sense is not merely a way in which
something differs from something else
but a way in which it differs from some-
thing else such that this difference is con-
stitutive of its essence, or what it is to
be it. “Differences” in logic for Aristotle
are what, when added to a γένος*, yield
an εἶδος*; a διαφορά is thus εἰδοποιός,
“εἶδος-making” (Top. VI.6).
In Met. X.1 Aristotle illustratively
distinguishes between difference and
otherness (ἑτερότης), claiming that to
be different entails being “different from
[a definite] something in some [definite]
way (τινὸς τινὶ διάφορον), so that there
must be some same respect in which they
differ (ταὐτό τι ᾧ διαφέρουσιν).”
On the role of διαφοραί in definition
and division, see Met. VII.12.
See γένος* and εἶδος*.
δύναμις (dunamis)
n. potential, potentiality, power, capacity, fac-
ulty; eq. L n. potentia, facultas
In his description of the various mean-
ings of δύναμις in Met. V.12, Aristotle
distinguishes five senses. Its chief mean-
ing is as a principle (ἀρχή*) of move-
ment “in something other or as other.”
Principal to Aristotle’s understanding
of potentiality is the notion that every
potentiality is (or entails) at the same
time an im-potentiality (see Met. IX.1).
In the more elaborate discussion of
Met. IX, Aristotle distinguishes between
“rational” (μετὰ λόγου) and “ara-
tional” (ἄλογοι) potentialities, the dif-
ference being that what is potential in

the second sense can only yield one sort
of movement (e.g. heat is only capable of
heating) whereas a “rational” capacity
may yield a movement and its contrary
(for example, knowledge how to heal
is also knowledge how to harm) (Met.
IX.2). The difference is made in the sec-
ond case by desire (ὄρεξις*) or decision
(προαίρεσις*) (see Met. IX.5). In every
case, potentialities relate essentially to
movements (κινήσεις*), that is, they are
all potentialities for or of movements.
Aristotle frequently (e.g. in DA II.1)
treats potentiality and matter (ὕλη*) as
equivalent, just as he treats form (εἶδος*)
and actuality (ἐνέργεια*) as equivalent.
See ἐνέργεια*, κίνησις*.
εἶδος (eidos)
n. form, shape, aspect, species; eq. L n. forma,
species
Aristotle has two basic, and fundamen-
tal, uses for the expression εἶδος—a
logical and a natural use. In a logical
context, an εἶδος is said to be com-
posed “of a genus and differences” (Met.
X.7) (on which see further γένος* and
διαφορά*)—more or less of the “animal
[genus] + risibility [difference] = human
(εἶδος)” sort, where the εἶδος is ren-
dered by the totality of differences char-
acteristic of the species. “Essences” (τὰ τί
ἦν εἶναι*) pertain only to “forms” (Met.
VII.4), and the accounts that articulate
essences (i.e. definitions; see ὁρισμός*)
articulate the differences constitutive of
forms (Met. VII.12). Aristotle will go so
far as to say that form is the οὐσία* of
something (Met. VII.10).
The “formal” cause in Aristotle’s nat-
ural philosophy accounts largely for the
role of εἶδος there. The definition of form
operative here is similar to that operative
in the logical context: A form is what
something is when it has become what
357
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
it is. It is in this sense that “form” is one
of the ways in which nature (φύσις*) is
said, as outlined in Phys II.1. Indeed, it is
a privileged way; for, although Aristotle
most closely joins nature to the final
cause and “that for the sake of which”
(see especially Phys. II.8), form is more
akin to nature than matter is, and it is
in pursuit of form that efficient causes
effect change. The εἶδος, on Aristotle’s
analogy of nature and art, is so to speak
the image had in view throughout the
transformation of something into what
it is (τί ἐστι).
What Aristotle means when, most
notably during the discussion of essence
in Met. VII, he claims that εἴδη are
“ungenerated” (see Met. VII.8; and fur-
ther Bonitz 219a54f.) is a curiosity. He
may be taken to mean at least either (1)
that forms, in the biological sense of
“species,” are eternal; or (2) that forms,
as agents of change, do not themselves
change over the course of processes for
which they are responsible.
Just as Aristotle analogizes matter to
potentiality, so he analogizes form to
actuality (see DA II.1; further, passages
in Bonitz 219a24–9).
See δύναμις*, ἐνέργεια*, οὐσία*,
τέλος*, ὕλη*.
ἐμπειρία (empeiria)
n. experience
Experience for Aristotle is acquaintance
of knowledge of a proto-causal sort. That
is, it is knowledge evidenced in the abil-
ity to reproduce a result; however, this
knowledge does not necessarily (even
if sometimes it does) include the abil-
ity to articulate what are the principles
operative in that knowledge. Knowing
that (ὅτι) a given cause reliably produces
a given effect is a question of experi-
ence; knowing why (διότι) that cause
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
produces that effect is a question of art
(τέχνη*) or understanding (ἐπιστήμη*).
It is from experience that universals (τὰ
καθόλου*) are grasped; and it is from
the grasping and further investigation
of universals that the intellectual virtues
generally arise.
See Aristotle’s discussions in APo II.19
and Met. I.1.
ἕν/εἷς/μία, ἑνότης (hen/heis/mia, henote-s)
n. one, unity; eq. L n. unum, unitas
Being (τὸ ὄν*) and unity (τὸ ἕν) “are
one and the same nature (φύσις*)
because they mutually entail one another
(ἀκολουθεῖν ἀλλήλοις) just as principle
and cause (ἀρχὴ καὶ αἴτιον) do” (Met.
IV.2). Comparison then of unity and
being on the model of the similarities,
differences, and relationship of prin-
ciple and cause (see ἀρχή*, αἴτιον*)
yields a certain clarity with regard to the
Aristotelian usage.
“One,” according to Met. V.6, is
used in two ways: “accidentally” (see
συμβεβηκός*) and “essentially” (see
καθ᾽ αὑτό*). Accidental unities include
unities of substances with accidents
(“musical Coriscus”), unities of acci-
dents with each other (“musical” and
“just” in Coriscus), and in general any
unities one of the terms of which belongs
to the other accidentally.
Essential unities by contrast to begin
with include (1) any unities that are,
with no further qualifications yet, “con-
tinuous” (συνεχής), that is, that move
as one ([τὸ] οὗ κίνησις μία)—for exam-
ple, a bundle of sticks, a line, or a body
part. And there are degrees of such unity:
“What is continuous by nature is more
a unity than what is one by art” (Met.
V.6; see also φύσις*, τέχνη*). (“Natural”
unity here just means “unity not [merely]
by contact.”) (2) Things sharing a
358
“specifically indivisible subject,” such as
any homogeneous liquid, are another sort
of essential unity, as well as (3) things
sharing a γένος*. Of special import,
finally, are (4) indivisible unities the defi-
nition or “thought” (νόησις, see νοῦς*)
of which is one; for it is in virtue of their
indivisibility, Aristotle argues, that other
forms of unity are called unities. For that
reason the things primarily called one are
“substances” (see οὐσία*).
Things may be one in four ways—
numerically, specifically, generically, or
by analogy (ἀριθμῷ, εἴδει, γένει, κατ᾽
ἀναλογίαν)—if they share, respectively,
a matter, a definition, a sort of predicate,
or a relationship structurally like another
relationship; the first mode of unity entails
the second, third, and fourth, the second
entails the third and fourth, and so on.
Detailed discussion of unity, as well as
of its kinship with similarity and equality
and of its opposition to “[the] many” and
to “otherness,” may be found in Met. X.
See ὄν*, οὐσία*, συνεχές*.
ἐνέργεια/ἐντελέχεια, ἐνεργοῦν (energeia/
entelecheia, energoun)
n. activity, actuality, enactment; v. acting, enact-
ing; eq. L n. actus, actualitas; v. esse in actu
Although they are presented here in
a single entry, since they are in many
ways treated synonymously by Aristotle,
ἐνέργεια and ἐντελέχεια are fairly dif-
ferent words. The former is formed by
the prefixing of ἐν to ἔργον* (meaning
something like “at-work-ness”). The lat-
ter, coined by Aristotle, is formed by the
joining of ἐν to τέλος*, “end” or “pur-
pose,” and ἔχειν, “to have” or (as in the
present instance) simply “to be” (mean-
ing something like “being in an ongoing
state of completeness”).
Actuality in Met. IX.6 is defined sim-
ply as the correlate to potentiality. Thus,

when what is potentially doing something
is in fact doing it, it is said to be “in actu-
ality” (ἐνεργείᾳ) or “acting” (ἐνεργοῦν).
Aristotle distinguishes fairly consistently
between actuality and κίνησις*. According
to that distinction as outlined in Met. IX,
actuality has not degrees of realization
(thus one is, for example, “either seeing or
not”), whereas movement does (thus, one
crosses the room by degrees).
In DA II Aristotle distinguishes
between three tiers of actualization. At
the first level, Alfie, being a human, is
the sort of being capable of grammati-
cal knowledge. This corresponds strictly
speaking to having a δύναμις*; it is called
by scholars a “first potentiality.” At a
second level, Alfie, having learned gram-
mar, is now capable of exercising it; this
is called a “second potentiality” or “first
actuality” (they are equivalent). Finally,
whenever Alfie exercises his grammatical
knowledge, he is “actualizing” it in the
sense of a “second actuality.”
See further all of Met. IX; and
δύναμις* above.
ἕξις (hexis)
n. state, habit; eq. L n. habitus
A “state” may be, according to Aristotle’s
disambiguation in Met. V.20, first of all
the actuality (ἐνέργεια*) of a possessor
and a possessed; secondly it may be a dis-
position (διάθεσις) good or bad relative
to something or some act (she is ill, for
example, means she is in a bad “state”);
or it may be a combination of states in
the previous sense (her head hurts, her
mouth is dry, she can’t see well—she’s
not in such a good “state”).
“States,” particularly in reference to
their role in the ethical treatises, entail
activity, and are not just “dispositions.”
This has particular import for grasping
in what sense virtue (ἀρετή*) is a “state,”
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GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
rather than a capacity (δύναμις*) or an
affection (πάθος*) (see NE II.5). The
same qualification is essential for under-
standing intellectual virtues, which are
described as “states” (e.g. NE VI.1; APo
II.19); for they too imply not only ability
but active pursuit and exercise.
ἐπαγωγή (epago-ge-)
n. induction
Induction is “the leading (ἔφοδος) from
particulars to universals” (Top. I.12).
Aristotle interestingly describes induction
as a sort of deduction in APr I.23—one in
which an attribute is claimed to hold for a
universal, given the consistent occurrence
of the attribute in particulars. That is, to
use Aristotle’s own example, supposing a
group of animals that are all long-lived, if
each of them is also bileless, then, on the
evidence of the particulars, we might infer
that long-lived animals are all bileless, or
vice versa. The difference between induc-
tion and “deduction” (i.e. συλλογισμός*)
on these terms is that in the former case
the middle, that is, the explaining term is
constituted by particulars, whereas in the
latter it is a further universal (not par-
ticular long-lived animals but long-lived
animals as such). In this sense induction
is closely linked to Aristotle’s conceiving
of the roles of similarity (ὁμοιότης) and
exemplification (παραδεῖγμα) in under-
standing and meaning generally. It is by
means of ἐπαγωγή that universals are
grasped; see APo II.19.
See ἀρχή*, ἐπιστήμη*.
ἐπὶ τὸ πόλυ (epi to polu)
n. that which holds for the most part; adv.
for the most part
Aristotle generally holds that science
(ἐπιστήμη*) is possible only for truths that
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
hold universally (see καθόλου*) and nec-
essarily (see ἀναγκή*). The expression
“for the most part” however indicates an
imperfect form of regularity on the basis
of which Aristotle thinks it is possible to
have some more or less rigorous form
of understanding. Most notably, it is in
these—and yet more compromised—
terms that Aristotle characterizes his
methodology in ethical inquiry (see NE
I.3). In the context of inquiry in physics,
the matter is less clear; for Aristotle does
seem to allow for the advent of sponta-
neity in change, and characterizes natu-
ral change as what occurs “always or for
the most part.” On these latter points, see
Phys. II.5 and II.8.
ἐπιστήμη (episte-me-)
n. understanding, science, knowledge; eq. L
n. scientia
Ἐπιστήμη may be viewed from a number
of perspectives, and perhaps especially
four. It is in the first place an intellectual
virtue (ἀρετή*), and discussed among
the other such virtues in NE VI. There
(NE VI.2) Aristotle calls it a “demon-
strative state” (ἕξις ἀποδεικτική), that is,
the ability to carry out demonstrations
(see ἀπόδειξις*). Understanding cou-
ples with νοῦς* in that, understanding
being a form of “judgment” or “belief”
(ὑπόληψις) premised on certain princi-
ples (see ἀρχή*), there is no understand-
ing of the principles themselves but only
νοῦς* (see NE VI.6; and APo II.19).
Secondly, ἐπιστήμη constitutes a
certain cognitive state achieved by
progression through certain anterior
or propaedeutic stages; it relies for the
forging of its content on—and likely
in some form of sequence—sensation
(αἴσθησις*), memory (μνήμη), and
experience (ἐμπειρία*) (see, generally,
APo II.19 and Met. I.1).
360
The Analytics, finally, articulate an
ideal toward and for understanding that
may generally be considered a theory
of ἐπιστήμη. Distinctive of this sort of
understanding is first of all that it is
causal: “We suppose ourselves to under-
stand something without qualification …
when we know the reason (αἰτία*) why
something is” (APo I.2). Distinctive also
of understanding are the nature of its
premises and in turn of its conclusions;
for its premises must be—and this view
has caused much debate among schol-
ars—“true, primary, immediate, and bet-
ter known than, prior to, and causes of
the conclusion” (ibid.). In particular, it
has been wondered whether any of what
may be called Aristotelian ἐπιστῆμαι
achieve these stringent demands, and to
what extent Aristotle himself considered
such premises necessary to projects of
understanding.
It may be helpful generally to contrast
ἐπιστήμη in various contexts—especially
in relation to first principles—to γνῶσις
and γιγνώσκειν, which have a less technical
use in Aristotle: The latter mean any form
of “awareness” or “knowledge,” extend-
ing even to sensation and opinion, and
most characteristically to νοῦς*, whereas
ἐπιστήμη, in accord with the above char-
acterizations, is bound more strictly.
See ἀπόδειξις*, ἀρχή*, νοῦς*,
συλλογισμός*.
ἔργον (ergon)
n. function, task, act, work
An ἔργον is the task performed by
something when it is doing what it
does characteristically, that is, as itself.
The argument of NE I.6–7, that happi-
ness consists in the performance of the
human “function,” is characteristic of
the Aristotelian use of ἔργα. “Functions”
are teleological, that is, they have “ends”

or “purposes” (τέλη*); hence there is
an ambiguity between an ἔργον in the
sense of the production of an end and an
ἔργον in the sense of the product thus
generated. In addition, an ἔργον may be
an act of production whose end is the act
itself—that is, a πρᾶξις*. Another way
of parsing distinctions between sorts of
function is to describe their principle as
“internal” or “external.”
See the argument of NE I.6–7; and,
further, ἀρετή* above; εὐδαιμονία*,
ποίησις*, πρᾶξις*, and τέλος* below.
εὐδαιμονία (eudaimonia)
n. happiness, fulfillment, flourishing
“Happiness” for Aristotle is the end,
articulated or implicit, wished for by all
humans (NE I.4). Inasmuch then as all act
in view of the attainment of happiness,
and supposing actions are always under-
taken with a view to some good or end,
happiness itself must be self-sufficient,
choice worthy in itself, complete, and the
most complete end and good (NE I.6–7;
see ἀγαθόν*). Since what counts as a
good and end is specific to the sort of
being at issue, happiness must in some
way index particularly human capaci-
ties. Thus Aristotle wagers that happi-
ness must consist in the performance of a
particularly human ἔργον*, “function.”
Distinctive of humans—because
it belongs to no other animal (see
διαίρεσις*)—is the having of λόγος*;
happiness, on this wager, will consist
then in the realization of virtues (see
ἀρετή*) connected to this capacity. Now
the full realization of the having of λόγος
is simultaneously being able to reason
and acting in accordance with one’s rea-
son, and actions are performed through
deliberation and desire (ὄρεξις*). The
virtues requisite to the attainment of hap-
piness then are both intellectual, as they
relate to the ability to reason, as well as
361
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
“ethical,” as they relate to the ability to
act in accordance with one’s reason.
Since for Aristotle “happiness” con-
sists in no essential way in the gratifi-
cation of pleasure (see NE X.1–5, and
ἡδονή*), but rather in the realization of
the highest human virtues, a more apt
translation of εὐδαιμονία might be “ful-
fillment” in the sense of the fulfillment of
these capacities.
See ἀγαθόν*, ἔργον*, πρᾶξις*.
ζωή, ζῆν (zo-e-, ze-n)
n. life, vitality; v. to live
In Top. I.10, Aristotle discusses problems
with defining life, holding that “life does
not seem to be said according to one
form, but rather to inhere in one way for
animals and in another for plants.” From
which, if true, it would follow that any
definition of life “as such” would not
define living things as having life, that is,
as having the distinctive sort of life they
have. “Life” as an attribute of animals,
or even of specific animals, and “life”
as an attribute of plants would then be
mere homonyms.
Connected with this may be the
well-known opening lines of On Plants
I.1: “Life is found in animals and in
plants. Yet, whereas in animals it is evi-
dent and manifest, in plants it is hidden
and not evident.” (On Plants is apocry-
phal; these first lines are, however, some-
times thought to be Aristotle’s own.) Also
of related interest is the idea that the dif-
ferences distinguishing one more complex
form of life from a less complex form of
life are in a way not differences in kind
but of degree; see especially HA VIII.1.
Aristotle nevertheless does define
“life,” at least what he means by it, in
DA: “By life we mean self-nourishment
and growth and decay” (DA II.1). Life in
this sense is closely associated with the
“nutritive” (aspect of the) soul; it is that
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
potentiality in virtue of which organ-
isms perform the nutritive functions:
nourishment and reproduction (DA
II.4). This attribute, or these attributes,
Aristotle claims, is, or are, had “poten-
tially” by all such bodies as have a soul;
later he qualifies this to mean not that
they do not have life but rather that they
do in fact have it, just as sight exists in
an eye even when out of use (DA II.1).
See βίος*, δύναμις*, ψυχή*.
ζῷον (zo-ion)
n. animal
An animal is a living thing (see ζωή*
above) distinguished from other living
things for the possession of at least two
capacities: the sensitive (τὸ αἰσθητικόν)
and the desiderative (τὸ ὀρεκτικόν) (see,
for example, DA II.3; and see αἴσθησις*
above, ὄρεξις* below). These capaci-
ties are mutually dependent: A thing
that senses must experience sensations
pleasurably or painfully, and a thing that
experiences pleasure and pain must have
desire. Additionally, animals have the
ability, which plants do not, for locomo-
tion (φορά or κίνησις κατὰ τόπον) (DA
III.9). The ability to move thus is prem-
ised on desire or decision (προαίρεσις*).
The role of φαντασία*—or in the case of
humans νοῦς*—in movement is second-
ary to desire or decision. Whereas the
role generally of perception in the practi-
cal register is to perceive means toward
the achievement of some goal, it is up to
desire or decision to resolve on a course
of action.
See αἴσθησις*, ζωή*, κίνησις*.
ᾗ (hēi)
conj. as, inasmuch as; eq. L conj. qua
The expression ᾗ is an essential piece of
many an Aristotelian puzzle. Its meaning
362
is best inferred from examples. Likely the
most important example is that relating
to “being” in Met. There Aristotle claims
that, whereas other sciences “cut off some
portion of being” and study that, there is
a science that studies “being qua being”
(τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν) (Met. IV.1, 1003a21f.).
The sense is that there are several ways
in which something may be regarded,
or may be, and that consequences for
meaning follow from the way in which
something is regarded.
ἡδονή (he-done-)
n. pleasure
Aristotle treats pleasure chiefly in two
places: NE VII.11–4 and X.1–5. In the
latter he notes that pleasure, like happi-
ness, is something “complete,” and not
a movement (κίνησις*) but an activ-
ity (ἐνέργεια*) (NE X.4). But pleasure
does not, like seeing, Aristotle argues,
encompass an activity the product of
which is the activity itself; rather, it is
a product, or byproduct, of some other
act. For that reason it is more appropri-
ate to think of pleasure as a complet-
ing rather than complete activity; it
accompanies some other activity and
gives that activity fullness and vivac-
ity. Therefore pleasure itself is properly
speaking not an end desired in itself,
although ends desired in themselves
may be pleasurable.
See NE VII.11–4, X.1–5; and EE
VI; ἀγαθόν*, ἐνέργεια*, εὐδαιμονία*
above; κίνησις* below.
ἦθος (e-thos)
n. character, comportment
Character for Aristotle is the individual
or individual source to whom or which
we attribute actions (πράξεις*). They
have a dual import for Aristotle: in
the first place for conceiving of human

nature generally; and secondly for con-
ceiving of the specifically practical aspect
of human life.
In his ethics, Aristotle stresses that
in order to be happy, that is to say, ful-
filled in the characteristically human
(i.e. intellectual) way (see εὐδαιμονία*),
one must not only cultivate capacities
for thinking but for acting as well—
these latter capacities relating to char-
acter. Characters in Aristotle are not
fixed sets of beliefs or personalities, but
dynamic: They are subject to incremen-
tal change in light of action. The con-
nection between character and action
is an essential one; thus the “virtues of
character” or “ethical virtues” (ἀρεταὶ
ἠθικαί) are all virtues relating to action
(on which, see the specific discussions
in NE III.6–V.11). Although actions
then are attributable to characters, yet
one may act in ways unanticipated by
one’s character. Action is thus in a sense
primary; for it is in light of actions that
characters are formed.
Character plays an important role in
Aristotle’s conception of human represen-
tation and self-representation. Character
in itself according to Rhet. I.2 is one of
the modes of persuasion (πεῖσαι) (and see
further Rhet. II.12–7). Moreover charac-
ter—good character—is, second to plot,
an essential element in the construction
of tragedies (see especially Poet. 6).
See ἀρετή*, πρᾶξις*.
θεός, θεῖος (theos, theios)
n. god; adj. divine
Supposing Aristotle’s god and his
“unmoved mover” (κινοῦν ἀκινητόν)
are the same, Aristotle may be seen to
θεωρία (theo-ria)
develop his conception of divinity chiefly
n. study, contemplation; eq. L n. contemplatio
in two places: Phys. VIII and Met. XII.
These two texts seem to approach a
similar sort of conclusion, but they do
so by asking a question from two fairly
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GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
different perspectives, namely those
of movement (κίνησις*) and actuality
(ἐνέργεια*) respectively.
The argument in Phys. VIII is fairly
straightforward: Since there is always
movement (i.e. it is eternal), and move-
ments must be caused by something
unmoved, then there must be some
unmoved mover responsible for the eter-
nity of movement. This itself must be
eternal, hence necessarily existent; oth-
erwise it could not be the cause of that
movement. It must exhibit a number of
other attributes as well, such as being
continuous, circular, and locomotive,
for the arguments of which see Phys.
VIII.6–10. The unmoved mover here
seems to operate as an efficient cause of
other movements.
In Met. XII it is asked whether there
is a substance (οὐσία*) that is unmoved
that is responsible, again, for the eter-
nity of other movements. The emphasis
in Aristotle’s response however is on the
actuality or activity (ἐνέργεια*) of this
unmoved mover; and on its causality
in terms of being a final cause (τέλος*)
(see especially Met. XII.7). In expand-
ing upon his conclusion, Aristotle seems
to identify this god with “intellect” (see
νοῦς*); in Met. XII.9, he argues that this
unmoved-moving god’s activity consists
in thinking its own thinking (νόησις
νοήσεως νόησις). It may be seen to dif-
fer from the unmoved mover of Phys.,
however, in that, although suggestions
abound as to its efficient causality of
movement in the cosmos, it is said in
Met. XII to move ὡς ἐρώμενον, “as a
beloved.”
“Study” is used frequently in comple-
ment to ἐπιστήμη*, “understanding”
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
or “science,” in order to elucidate a
distinction between sorts of actuality
(ἐνέργεια*) (e.g. in DA II.1). The con-
trast is like this. Understanding is the
actual possession of a body of knowl-
edge; θεωρεῖν, on the other hand, is the
exercise of that knowledge.
Aristotle will frequently use the adjec-
tival θεωρετικός, “contemplative,” in
opposition to πρακτικός, “practical,”
or λογιστικός, “calculative,” as a way to
distinguish the λόγος*-having part of the
soul that perceives what is not otherwise
(σοφία* and ἐπιστήμη*) from the part
of the soul having λόγος* that perceives
what may be otherwise (φρόνησις* and
τέχνη*) (on which, see especially NE
VI.1–2).
Contemplation deals in none of the
questions relating immediately to human
practical affairs and happiness (see, for
example, NE VI.12). However, inasmuch
as θεωρία consists not just in the exercise
of the highest forms of human intellec-
tual virtue, then, since human happiness
consists in the full exercise of characteris-
tically human capacities, namely intellec-
tual ones, and of these those concerning
what is not otherwise are the highest, it
is as θεωρητικός that a life attaining to
the fullest form of human happiness is
described (see especially NE X.7–8).
See ἀρετή*, ἐπιστήμη*, εὐδαιμονία*,
νοῦς*, σοφία*.
κάθαρσις (katharsis)
n. catharsis, purification
The most notable appearance of cathar-
sis is in the Poetics. Aristotle employs
the expression only once, however,
namely in the definition of tragedy of
Poet. 6, where he describes tragedy as,
among other things, “through pity and
fear accomplishing a κάθαρσις of these
affections.” The parallel discussion of
364
the meaning of this “catharsis” in Poet.
9 describes this alteration in terms of
“wonder.” The sense seems generally to
be one of “clarification”; tragedies make
more clear to an audience the substance
and content of these affections.
See also πάθος*.
καθ᾽ αὑτό (kath’ hauto)
adj./adv. in itself, essential(ly); eq. L adj./adv.
per se
The expression καθ᾽ αὑτό describes the
nature of a relationship between terms
(ὅροι). A καθ᾽ αὑτό relationship is one
where the belonging (see ὑπάρχειν*)
of one term to another is necessary (see
ἀναγκή*) and essential, that is, to put
the matter grammatically, the predicate
tells something about what it is to be the
subject. The preposition κατά is used
in the context of predication generally
to describe the relation between terms:
One term is said “of” (κατά) of another
term. Thus a καθ᾽ αὑτό relation is one
where B is said “of” (κατά) A inasmuch
as B belongs to (ὑπάρχει) A “itself”
(αὑτό). Καθ᾽ αὑτό relations serve as
the basis for the espying of universals
(τὰ καθόλου*). They serve moreover as
the basis for the articulation of essences
(τὰ τί ἦν εἶναι*), that is, in definitions
(ὁρισμοί). On this last point, see espe-
cially Met. VII.4.
(τὸ) καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ([to] kath' hekaston)
n. particular; adj. particular
What is καθ᾽ ἕκαστον is not, to use a
traditional distinction, singular but par-
ticular. Thus it stands in definite relation
with what is καθόλου*. An Aristotelian
“particular” should not however be
thought of as a thing but as a way in
which predicates belong to a subject;
thus one should speak most properly

of “what is particular” rather than of
“particulars.”
Particulars are nevertheless opposed
to universals psychologically in that
evidence of them is revealed by sensa-
tion (αἴσθησις*) rather than the intel-
lect (νοῦς*). It is through sensible
evidence of particulars that universals
are grasped, but they are grasped not
by sensation but by the intellect. In this
sense sensation is not only “of” par-
ticulars but also of universals (see APo
II.19). Particulars for this reason are not
“understandable” as such but objects
only of sensation.
See καθόλου*.
(τὸ) καθόλου ([to] katholou)
n. universal; adj. universal
Two points about the meaning of this
expression are in order. In the first place,
what is universal is simply opposed to
what is particular, as in De Int. 7’s dis-
tinction between “universal” and “partic-
ular” as forms of predicating something
of many things and not of many things.
As with particulars, secondly, it is more
appropriate and illuminating in the
Aristotelian context to speak of “what is
universal” than of “universals.”
In APo I.4, Aristotle describes as “uni-
versal” what belongs to everything (of
a given class) “essentially and as such”
(καθ᾽ αὑτό καὶ ᾗ αὐτό). Properly speak-
ing, “universal” is a mode of predication.
It is used frequently in conjunction with
“essential” (καθ᾽ αὑτό*) attributes, that
is, as a description of the fact that these
attributes belong to every instance of the
kind or species of which they are members.
Again, when Aristotle treats a γένος* or
εἶδος* as “universal,” the intention is to
describe in what way the attributes bear-
ing on the genus or species apply to the
individuals ranging under them.
365
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
See καθ᾽ ἕκαστον*.
κίνησις, κινεῖν (kine-sis, kinein)
n. motion, movement; v. to move; eq. L n.
motio; v. movere
According to its Aristotelian definition,
κίνησις is “the actuality of the potential
as such [i.e. as potential]” (ἡ τοῦ δυνάμει
ὄντος ἐντελέχεια ᾗ τοιοῦτον) (Phys.
III.1). The definition is slightly mislead-
ing, as it seems to treat movement as
a species of actuality. The difference
between movement and actuality in the
strict sense, as expounded in Met. IX, is
twofold. On the one hand, movements as
actualizations admit of degrees of actu-
alization (getting closer to the door, for
example), whereas actualities are either
actualized or not (one, for example, sees
or does not see). On the other hand,
movements are “incomplete” in that they
are actual only shy of the achievement
of their ends (at which point they cease
to exist as such), whereas actualities are
complete at every moment of their actu-
alization. On which, see also ἐνέργεια*
above.
Two notions may be seen to frame
Aristotle’s general outlook on the phe-
nomenon of movement: first, that
movement is eternal (there is always
movement, the world itself being eter-
nal); and second, that every movement
involves a finite number of terms. Thus,
while there is always movement (and
therefore no beginning or end proper to
movement as such), and some individual
movements (like that of the first heaven)
are even eternal, yet in every case move-
ment is an actualization relating to
specific things. For movement is a phe-
nomenon depending for its actuality on
the existence of actual things, that is, on
πράγματα or οὐσίαι (thus, for example,
Phys. VIII.1; Met. XII.5).
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
There are either three or four sorts of
movement: (1) movement with respect to
“place” (τόπος) or “where” (ποῦ), called
“locomotion” (φορά); (2) movement
with respect to “affection” (πάθος*)
or “what sort” (ποιόν), called “altera-
tion” (ἀλλοίωσις); (3) movement with
respect to “magnitude” (μέγεθος) or
“how much” (ποσόν), called “growth”
or “decay” (αὔξησις, φθίσις); and (4)
movement with respect to “being,” called
“generation” or “destruction” (γένεσις*,
φθορά) (see Phys. III.1, VIII.7; and
Met. XII.2). Aristotle in Phys. V.1–2
however argues that generation and
destruction are not in fact movements
properly speaking, since they relate to
substances, and of substances there are
not contraries.
Movements have the following five
terms: something causing the move-
ment (τὸ κινοῦν), something moved (τὸ
κινούμενον), an “in which” (τὸ ἐν ᾧ), a
“from which” (τὸ ἐξ οὗ, the terminus a
quo), and an “into which” (εἰς ὅ, the ter-
minus ad quem) (Phys. V.1, 224a34–b1).
The terms “from which” and “into
which” are “contraries.”
Movement is either “essential”
(καθ᾽ αὑτό*) or “accidental” (κατὰ
συμβεβηκός), and all accidental move-
ment results from essential movement.
Now, all movements are either “natural”
(see φύσις*) or “violent” (see βία*). A
movement that is “natural” derives from
the nature of the thing moved, and one
that is “violent” from something contrary
to or opposite that. Now something that
is moved “naturally” is either moved by
itself (like an animal) or not (like a stone).
In the former case, however, the animal
does not move itself qua one continuous
whole, for movement requires that one
part (the moved) be passive and another
part (the mover) be active; and in short
an animal only moves itself inasmuch as
it is composed of parts moving as well as
366
moved. Therefore, since accidental, vio-
lent, and stone-like natural movements
are all caused by something else, and
the remaining case, animal-like natural
movements, are caused, too, by the same
thing inasmuch as it is other, then eve-
rything moved is moved by something
else (see all of Phys. VIII.4). This argu-
ment, or something like it, is an essen-
tial piece of a larger Aristotelian puzzle
concerning the causes of movement in
the kosmos. On “the unmoved mover,”
see θεός*.
See δύναμις*, ἐνέργεια*, φύσις*.
λόγος (logos)
n. account, definition, reason, speech, pro-
portion; eq. L n. ratio
Aristotle uses λόγος to mean a number of
things, among them (1) spoken language;
(2) definitions and arguments generally;
(3) the (human) rational faculty; and (4)
proportion.
The most explicit usage in the sense
of “speech” is that proffered in De Int.,
that (a) λόγος is a “voiced sound, mean-
ingful by convention, some part of which
is separately meaningful” (De Int. 4).
The “declarative λόγοι” that form the
centerpiece of the De Int. discussion, it
is worth noting, constitute by Aristotle’s
own admission a partial account; for
they include only λόγοι that are “either
true or false,” and not, for example,
statements of wish. (See ἀπόφανσις*.)
The broadest usage of λόγος is that
which includes definition and argument.
A “definition” is a causal account of the
essence of something; thus a definition of
you will explain why it is you are who or
what you are essentially (see ὁρισμος*).
Aristotle will frequently contrast
λόγος, as a form of evidence, to evidence
of the senses. Implicit in this are two cru-
cial ideas: first, that λόγοι for Aristotle
are not simply abbreviations of sensible

experience; and second, which relates
to questions concerning, for exam-
ple, the meaning of ἔνδοξα relative to
questions of “first principles,” that λόγοι
themselves may be evidence, over and
above sensation.
On Aristotle’s characterization of
the human being as an “animal having
λόγος” (Pol. I.2), see ἄνθρωπος* above.
It is vitally important, finally, to bear
in mind the breadth of possible meaning
of λόγος in cases like that in DA, where
Aristotle describes sensation as affected
by sensibles κατὰ τὸν λόγον, that is,
“according to a proportion” (DA II.12).
See ἄνθρωπος*, ὁρισμός*, τί ἦν
εἶναι*, φωνή*.
μεσότης (mesotēs)
n. mean, intermediary
A mean is a midway point determined to be
midway depending on the nature of what
is measured. A numerical or arithmetical
mean is the most obvious sort; Aristotle
will also use the expression μεσότης to
mean a midway point spatially and tem-
porally, as well as to mean the “middle”
of an argument (i.e. the center point of
a relationship between two terms that is
explanatory of their relation).
Aristotle’s understanding of “the mean”
is especially central to his ethics; there what
is “intermediary” or a “mean” is not at all
an arithmetical mean, of course (because
ethical are not mathematical phenomena),
and what will count as a mean will differ
in accordance with the predispositions of
the individual (see NE I.6).
μεταβολή (metabole-)
n. change
Change is frequently employed by
Aristotle in ways entirely synonymous
with κίνησις*, “movement.” In Phys.
367
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
V.1, however, Aristotle does distinguish
between the two, claiming that there are
three sorts of change (μεταβολή): from
what is a subject (ὑποκείμενον) to what
is a subject; from what is not a subject
to what is a subject; and from what is a
subject to what is not a subject. Of these
the first is κίνησις; the second two are
“changes” in some other respect, spe-
cifically, γένεσις* (coming-to-be) and
φθίσις (passing-away). Thus μεταβολή
is a more general term for change at all,
and κίνησις a term specifically reserved
for changes implying some persistent
subject.
μῦθος (muthos)
n. plot, story, account
“Plot” is the central feature of Aristotle’s
theory of tragedy. A dramatic plot con-
sists generally in the imitation of action
(πρᾶξις*), foremost in the presentation
of which is the goal or purpose of that
action. A “plot” is thus the “ordering”
(τάξις) of events leading to the attain-
ing or frustration of such a goal. In trag-
edy characteristic of such actions are
περιπέτεια*, the “(tragic) reversal,” and
ἀναγνώρισις*, or “(tragic) recognition.”
(On the preceding, see Poet. 6.)
In the specific discussion of μῦθος in
Poet. 7–10, Aristotle emphasizes that a
plot must constitute a “whole,” that is,
have beginning, middle, and end, and
be arranged as an animal is arranged
(Poet. 7). However, what gives it its
proper unity is not the unity of the agent
represented but the unity of the action
(Poet. 8).
See ἀναγνώρισις* and περιπέτεια*.
νοῦς, νοεῖν (nous, noein)
n. intellect, intelligence, mind, intuition; v. to
think, to intellect; eq. L n. intellectus, intui-
tus, intelligentia; v. intelligere
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Νοῦς is on the most general approxima-
tion “that [faculty] by which one thinks”
(DA III.3), most frequently translated
“intellect.” Having intellect is distinctive
of human beings, and indeed it is a “life
in accordance with the intellect” that
is regarded in NE X as the highest and
“most human” life (see ἄνθρωπος* and
βίος*).
Aristotle assigns to νοῦς the thinking
of the most basic of epistemic entities—
principles and essences (see, for example,
DA III.6 and APo II.19). Commentators
have wondered what it entails for
Aristotle’s epistemology generally when
in APo II.19 he attributes to ἐπαγωγή*
the grasping of universals (τὰ καθόλου*)
but goes on to say that principles are
grasped by νοῦς.
Of note in recent conversation concern-
ing νοῦς is also the question whether for
Aristotle it is embodied. Aristotle claims
that it is impossible without φαντασία
(for a description of which relation see
De Mem. 1), and seems thereby to imply
that it is impossible without the body
(see DA III.7). However he does (as in
DA III.5) seem to attribute to it “immor-
tality.” Connected with these questions is
a further question relating to a strange
claim in GA II, that in the development
of the human embryo, rather than being
delivered by the male parent’s semen
(along with αἴσθησις* and φαντασία*),
the intellect “comes in from outside.”
Like ἐπιστήμη*, νοῦς is frequently
identified with its objects (νοητά) (see,
for example, Met. XII.9). In Met. IX.10
Aristotle claims that intellect thinks
“indivisibles,” and there and elsewhere
(DA III.6) adds that it is incapable, like
αἴσθησις*, of ever “erring” (ψεύδεσθαι*).
It is thus essential to distinguish νοεῖν
from an activity like διανοεῖσθαι,
“thinking through something,” and the
­corresponding διάνοια, often rendered
“discursive intellect.” By comparison
368
then it has become customary for some
to think of νοεῖν as “non-propositional
thinking,” but this view has been
challenged.
In Met. XII, Aristotle evidently identi-
fies νοῦς with the unmoved mover; the
arguments of Met. XII.9 have then been
taken to bear strictly on the god’s intel-
lect—on which, see θεός* above.
See αἴσθησις*, ἐπιστήμη*, θεός*,
φαντασία*.
ὄν, εἶναι (on, einai)
n. being, entity; v. to be, to exist; eq. L n. ens,
esse; v. esse
According to Met., “being” is said in “as
many ways as” or “just as” “one,” and
vice versa (see, for example, Met. VII.4;
see ἕν*). Therefore the ways of saying ὄν
and ἕν share a sort of basic structure.
Accordingly, being (τὸ ὄν) on
Aristotle’s account in Met. V.7 “is said in
many ways,” and chiefly in two: “acci-
dentally” (κατὰ συμβεβηκός*) and
“essentially” (καθ᾽ αὑτό*). Accidental
ways of saying being are those ways
according to which P is an accident of S,
either because (1) S is a substance hav-
ing accident P, or because (2) S and P are
both accidents of some unarticulated x,
or because (3) S is an accident of x and
P in turn an accident of S, or because (4)
P is an accident of x and S in turn an
accident of P.
The “essential” ways in which being
is said are “those indicated by the sche-
mas of predication; for being is said in
as many ways as these indicate.” By this
Aristotle may be taken to mean any of
the following: that the categories them-
selves are the essential ways in which
being is said; that the things indicated
in predicative assertions are essentially
beings; or that, in every predicative asser-
tion, whatever the composition of terms,
either (1) S or P indicates a substance, or

(2) some unarticulated x is a substance
indicated by S or P, or (3) S and P in
some joint way indicate a substance.
Being, thirdly, may be taken to mean
the truth of a proposition, and non-be-
ing the falsity of a proposition (see
ἀλήθεια*). Finally, being, that is, that
in virtue of which we say something “is
x,” may mean either what something
is actually or what it is potentially (see
δύναμις* and ἐνέργεια*).
Aristotle seems to vacillate on the
question whether there can be a science
(ἐπιστήμη*) of being, an ambiguity of
some importance for determining the
meaning of his notion of being more gen-
erally. According to a claim in EE, there
is no one science of being, just as there is
no one science of the good (EE I.8; see
also NE I.6), more or less on the reason-
ing that a science is one science inasmuch
as it relates to one genus (see APo I.28),
but being is not a genus (Met. III.3).
In Met. however it is supposed
throughout that there is indeed some-
thing like a “science of being [qua
being].” The argument in Met. IV states
first of all that the science of being dif-
fers from other sciences in that it does
not “cleave off some part of being” and
study that (i.e. being qua, for example,
number or movement, as in mathemat-
ics and physics respectively) but rather
studies “being qua being” (Met. IV.1).
Aristotle then argues that the many ways
in which being is said, while “manifold,”
are “not equivocal” but rather tend πρὸς
ἕν or πρὸς μίαν φύσιν, “toward one
[meaning] [or ‘one nature’],” namely sub-
stance (Met. IV.2; see οὐσία*). This line
of thinking has been said to claim that
being is a “pros hen equivocal” or exhib-
its “focal meaning,” in contrast to the
simple equivocity elsewhere espoused.
The argument linking this claim to
the problematic status of “the science of
being” posits that, since being and unity
369
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
are to some extent semantically inter-
changeable (called the “convertibility
thesis”), and unity is a genus, then being
exhibits, through unity, sufficient epis-
temic integrity to be treated by a single
science (see again Met. IV.2).
See ἀλήθεια*, δύναμις*, ἕν*,
ἐνέργεια*, οὐσία*.
ὄρεξις (orexis)
n. desire, appetite, longing
Ὄρεξις is “desire,” and more literally any
form of “longing.” Desire in Aristotle’s
psychology is the principal factor in deci-
sion (προαίρεσις*) and action (πρᾶξις*)
and generally the self-movement of
animals—on which see DA III.9–13 and
De Motu. It is, after Plato, distinguished
by Aristotle from ἐπιθυμία, “irrational
desire,” and frequently translators will
render ὄρεξις “rational desire.” The
reason for doing so is that for Aristotle
ὄρεξις is subject to the influence of
λόγος* as well as habituation through
the cultivation of ethical and intellec-
tual virtue (ἀρετή*). In discussion of the
psychology of decision, Aristotle will fre-
quently join to ὄρεξις a perceptual fac-
ulty, νοῦς* or φαντασία*.
ὁρισμός (horismos)
n. definition
A ὁρισμός is a sort of λόγος*, and spe-
cifically a λόγος τῆς οὐσίας, that is, an
account of “substance” (see οὐσία*).
Especially in his Analytics, Aristotle
seems to conceive of definitions as
the ultimate objects of the pursuit of
understanding or science (ἐπιστήμη*).
Definitions—established, in APo, by
division (διαίρεσις*)—are explanations
why (see αἰτία*) individuals of a given
form (εἶδος*) exhibit their characteristic
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
or “essential” (see καθ᾽ αὑτό*) attributes
(see all of APr II). Definitions function as
sorts of principles (see ἀρχή*), and the
discovery of them will then connect in an
essential way with the discovery of first
principles generally.
The expression ὁρισμός is sometimes
treated synonymously with the expression
ὅρος, that is, where the latter is intended
to mean not only a single “term,” but
a two-term “account.” As a rule, to be
weighted against context, ὅρος should
be conceived of as distinct from ὁρισμός,
however, in the way just outlined.
οὐσία (ousia)
n. substance, being, essence; eq. L n. essentia,
substantia
Colloquially, οὐσία denotes “property.”
The expression οὐσία is formed by the
addition of an abstract suffix (“-ness”)
to the feminine participle οὖσα (fr. ὄν*)
(“being”); hence, most literally, it means
“beingness.” In that way it is morpho-
logically equivalent to the Latin essentia
(essens + abstract suffix), which seems to
have been the translation popular among
Roman authors, such as Cicero.
The translation of οὐσία as substan-
tia, whence “substance,” is prima facie
arbitrary: In order to grasp the transfor-
mations of meaning leading to this prima
facie arbitrary connection, one should
bear in mind three external influences: (1)
the later Platonic approximation of
οὐσία to ὑπόστασις (=substantia), as
in Plotinus; (2) early Christian theo-
logical doctrine, as in Tertullian, which
codified this approximation in terms of
the translation of οὐσία as substantia;
and, finally and most definitively, (3)
Boethius’ translations of Aristotle where
the identification is standardized.
There is no obvious reason to try
to see this translation as rooted in the
370
Aristotelian texts themselves: Aristotle
never makes use of the appropriate
expression, ὑπόστασις, in any way associ-
ated with οὐσία; and the mild association
of οὐσία with grammatical subjecthood
(see ὑποκείμενον=suppositum, “that
which is posited”) in Cat. 5 does not
justify the association with substantia
(“that which stands underneath”) either.
Nevertheless, “substance” is widely—
and generally on the evidence of tradi-
tion and now convenience—the accepted
translation of οὐσία. A more appropriate
translation would be “being.”
Οὐσία plays an immensely important
role in Aristotelian philosophy. On it
depend the metaphysical doctrines of the
Categories and Metaphysics, most con-
spicuously—on which, see especially Cat.
5 and Met. VII. The account of substance
as the fundament of all predication and
of all change and accidents in Cat. 5 and
Met. IV may more or less be taken as a
mainstay of Aristotelian thinking.
There are, however, some notorious
ambiguities of this teaching. Categories
seems to conceive of individual sub-
stances, or “thises” (τόδε τι), as the basic
objects of meaning, even describing εἴδη*
and γένη* as “secondary οὐσίαι” as com-
pared to the “primary οὐσίαι” that pop-
ulate the immediately evident sensible
world. Metaphysics VII, however, begin-
ning from the proposition that substance
must be either a genus (γένος*), a subject
(ὑποκείμενον), a universal (καθόλου*),
or an essence (τί ἦν εἶναι*), goes on to
argue that substances are essences, but
essences hold of species (εἴδη*), not indi-
viduals. Whether then substances are
for Aristotle the immediate, “separate”
objects of sense perception or rather
the forms of which these individuals are
members, has stirred some fairly continu-
ous debate among scholars.
A substance is something the account
(λόγος*) of which is a definition

(ὁρισμός*). Thus attributes of sub-
stances are all καθ᾽ αὑτό* or “essen-
tial” attributes; whether this individual
human being has brown or red hair is
not part of her substance but an “acci-
dent” (κατὰ συμβεβηκός*). All the affec-
tions (πάθη*) and other attributes of a
substance have their existence and being
“in reference to” (πρός) substance. Thus
it is on substances that the existence of
all else depends. Substances themselves
are “separate.”
In addition to Met. VII, Met. XII may
be regarded as a meditation on substance.
There Aristotle asks what sorts of οὐσίαι
there are, and goes on to argue there are
three sorts: sensible, changeable οὐσίαι;
sensible, unchangeable οὐσίαι (like the
planets); and (a) non-sensible, unchange-
able οὐσία(ι), the unmoved mover
or movers (on which see θεός*). The
Aristotelian cosmic order rests on the
balance and relations achieved between
these several things.
πάθος, πάσχειν (pathos, paschein)
n. affect, affection, occurrence; v. to be
affected, to undergo, to suffer
Affects play two roles in Aristotle’s
thinking—a metaphysical and a psycho-
logical role. In the metaphysical context,
an affect is the capacity to be altered, or
the undergoing of that alteration itself
(on which, see especially Met. V.21). In
this regard, since affects are character-
istics of things rather than things them-
selves, affects share many of the features
of “accidents” (see συμβεβηκός*).
Πάθη play, on the other hand, an
essential role in Aristotle’s psychology,
and in that role constitute an important
centralizing node for Aristotelian inquiry
into discourse, ethics, and rhetoric. Now
affections are just, broadly speaking,
movements or principles of movements in
the soul (ψυχή*). In Rhet. II.1, Aristotle
371
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
describes them as causing differences in
judgment, and it is toward them that the
orator should direct her arguments. In
a sense affects are thus for Aristotle the
medium of human discourse.
Aristotle has an extended discussion
of particular affects in Rhet. II.2–11.
περιπέτεια (peripeteia)
n. reversal
Περιπέτεια is an essential ingredient of
tragedy, as defined in Poetics 6; it bears
on a transition of circumstances, rela-
tive to some action, to the contrary of
what was intended by the action. Thus in
Poetics 11 Aristotle defines περιπέτεια as
a process by which an action is changed
into its opposite; the process, he stresses,
must however, if the tragedy is to be suc-
cessful, be effected probably or necessar-
ily. The best sort of tragedy, he claims,
is one in which the reversal happens at
the same time as the “recognition” (see
ἀναγνώρισις*).
ποίησις, ποιεῖν (poie-sis, poiein)
n. production, making; v. to produce, to
make, to act, to do
In general use, ποεῖν may mean either
“to produce” or “to act”—this lack of
distinction persists generally in Greek.
However, Aristotle himself distinguishes
fairly starkly between production and
action—on which, see πρᾶξις* below.
According to that distinction, πρᾶξις
and ποίησις are both sorts of move-
ments effected for the sake of something,
and differ as their “principle” (ἀρχή*) is
either internal (in the case of “action”)
or external (in the case of “production”).
Ποίησις is action for the sake of produc-
ing some product.
Aristotle uses ποίησις generally
to mean “production” or “action.”
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
However, internal to the rhetorical
works—Poetics and Rhetoric—ποίησις
will frequently take on the meaning par-
ticular to “poetry,” always referring to
spoken poetry; for the same purpose he
will use the adjective ποιητικός, although
this again is not restricted to poetry.
See πρᾶξις*.
πόλις (polis)
n. city, polis
According to the first lines of Pol., a
πόλις is a kind of community, and a
community bound with a view to some
good; inasmuch as the good pursued by
a city comprehends the individual goods
of each of its citizens, a πόλις would
seem to be constituted with a view to the
most comprehensive good of all. Though
having its origin in the need humans
have for one another, its goal is the reali-
zation, through some common “effort”
(ἔργον*), of not a mere but a good life.
Pol. III, the more specific discussion
of what it is to be a city, thus takes as
essentially related and co-determining
the notions of city and of citizen
(πολίτης). A citizen is someone who has
a share in the deliberative practices of a
city, and a city is a “multitude of such
citizens sufficing for self-sufficiency of
life” (Pol. III.1). Cities differ in kind as
their πολιτεῖαι, “constitutions,” differ,
and their πολιτεῖαι differ in accordance
with the allotment of sovereign power
(τὸ κύριον)—whether it is to one person
or a few or many (Pol. III.6). Aristotle
stresses that there is no meaningful dis-
tinction between the constitutions of a
city and the acts committed by those
to whom the constitutions allot power
(Pol. III.7).
πρᾶξις, πράττειν (praxis, prattein)
n. action, performance; v. to act, to do
372
Aristotle in NE VI.5, in the context of
describing φρόνησις, draws a distinc-
tion between action and production (see
ποίησις*) in an immediately helpful,
albeit perhaps eventually tenuous, way:
the purpose or end (τέλος*) of produc-
tion is something other than production
itself; whereas actions’ ends are con-
tained in the actions themselves. Thus,
whereas while “producing” (ποιεῖν)
something one is effecting a product
external to oneself, and this product, or
the further product to which the prod-
uct is directed, is the intended goal, in
the case of action the goal is the action
itself; the good of the action is simply to
do the action. Inquiring after what sort
of knowledge expertise vis-à-vis either
object entails, as well as where to draw
the line between an external and an
immanent good, this distinction may be
seen to wobble somewhat.
Πρακτικός is an adjective Aristotle
uses to describe generally that part of the
rational soul that reasons about what
may be otherwise, that is, the contingent.
Synonymously he will use the adjec-
tive λογιστικός. (See, for example, NE
VI.1.) These he opposes to θεωρετικός
(on which see θεωρία*). Whatever the
psychological fixity of this opposition,
and whatever broader fixity there is in
the “practical-theoretical” distinction,
in describing θεωρία as a kind of “life”
(βίος*), Aristotle describes it as “practi-
cal” (see Pol. VII.3).
See further θεωρία*, φρόνησις*.
προαίρεσις (proairesis or prohairesis)
n. choice, decision
“Decision” is twofold. It may be con-
crete or universal. It is concretely that act
by which one selects, from a previously
deliberated-upon spectrum of possible
means, some one determinate means in
order to effect a goal previously wished

for. More broadly speaking, it is the
selection of some way of life, that is, a
universal presentation of one’s goals and
commitments. (On the former, see espe-
cially NE III.2; but see III.3.) In NE VI.2,
Aristotle defines decision as a confluence
of desire (ὄρεξις*) and intellect (νοῦς*).
It is that act in which one directs one’s
actions under the influence simultane-
ously of clarity about the correct goals
toward which to direct one’s actions;
perspicuity in the perception of means to
effect them; and a clear desire to effect
this goal by these means.
See further ὄρεξις* and νοῦς*.
πρός τι (pros ti)
n. relative, relation; adj. relative
What is πρός τι—literally “toward
something”—stands in some manner
of relation to something else. For that
reason it is fairly universally translated
“relation,” “relative,” or similar. Now
this second thing may contribute to the
being of that thing; it may be entirely
extraneous to that thing; or its account
may depend on the account of that thing.
In Met. V.15, Aristotle distinguishes then
between things that relate to (or “are
πρός”) another thing inasmuch as they
are inflections of it (as 2 is an inflec-
tion of 1, or unity); or inasmuch as they
have some past relation essential to their
existence or meaning (as father relates
to son); or because their meaning relates
immediately to something else (as think-
able relates to thought or intellect).
σπουδαῖος (spoudaios)
n. a serious person; adj. serious
Seriousness in Aristotle means deliber-
ateness in purpose, and nuance in exe-
cution; and the σπουδαῖος, “serious”
373
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
or “thoughtful,” person is a sort of
moral model in Aristotelian ethics. Thus
Aristotle will frequently say things on
the order that one should strive to care
for those things for which the serious
care; act in the way that the serious
act; desire what the serious desire; find
pleasure in what pleases the serious; and
so on. That is, it is in light of this ideal
representation of “thoughtfulness” that
Aristotle constructs ethical imperatives.
Comparable methodological claims like
that, in order to understand φρόνησις*,
we should look to φρόνιμοι (people
exhibiting φρόνησις) (NE VI) evidence
the nature of the connection. For a
description of the σπουδαῖος (here as
a model of friendship), see NE IX.4; on
the link between seriousness and happi-
ness, see NE X.6.
σοφία (sophia)
n. wisdom, expertise; eq. L n. sapientia
“Wisdom” is an intellectual vir-
tue in Aristotle that suffers from
over-clarification. It is described in two
places chiefly, Met. I and NE VI, and in
both places under a heap of technical
vocabulary. For example, in the latter, it
is characterized simply as “understand-
ing and intellect of what is naturally
most honorable” (NE VI.7). Thus clarity
about wisdom will turn on clariy about
νοῦς* and ἐπιστήμη*. In Met. I it is
called “knowledge of first principles and
causes,” so that its sense will fluctuate
depending on the epistemological and
metaphysical meanings one attributes to
ἀρχή* and αἰτία* here. Wisdom to be
sure is one of the ways in which Aristotle
characterizes the activities of happi-
ness (NE X), and his question whether
φρόνησις* or σοφία* is most typical of
human excellence is answered in favor of
the latter.
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Curious about Aristotle’s conception
of σοφία is the way in which, although
he fairly strictly assigns it to the part of
the rational soul by which one thinks
what cannot be otherwise (i.e. what
is necessary), he describes it in ways
suggestive of continuity with practical
forms of intellectual virtue (but see also
νοῦς*). The NE VI.7 discussion begins
with a characterization of σοφία that
sounds identical to τέχνη; and in Met.
I.1–2 he characterizes σοφία as linked
in important ways to the forms of
knowledge attendant on manual labor
and the history of the development
of the sciences out of the progress of
knowledge in technical and industrial
enterprise.
Σοφία as characterized in Met. I.1–2
is, it should be noted, likely Aristotle’s
nearest characterization of the business
of (πρώτη) φιλοσοφία, “(first) philoso-
phy,” strictly speaking.
See NE VI.7, X.6–7; and Met. I.1–2;
and, further, ἐπιστήμη*, εὐδαιμονία*,
νοῦς*, τέχνη*, φρόνησις*.
στέρησις (stere-sis)
n. privation
A privation is generally a lack, and
specifically of attributes relevant to
the form or genus (εἶδος*, γένος*) of
the thing to which the privation refers,
and differing in sort according as the
inherence of the attribute in members
exhibiting the form or genus itself dif-
fers in kind. Thus Aristotle distinguishes
four sorts of privation in Met. V.22,
corresponding to four ways in which
something might be said to belong to a
member of a group as a member of the
group. Humans are thus not “deprived”
of the ability to fly properly speaking;
but a blind adult human being is prop-
erly speaking “deprived” of sight. See
also Met. X.4.
374
στοιχεῖον (stoicheion)
n. element; eq. L n. elementum
“Elements” are those things the compo-
sition of which constitutes some ordered
or otherwise coherent whole. In Met.
V.1 Aristotle defines a στοιχεῖον first
as “that primary, immanent, specifically
indivisible thing from which something
is composed.” It is essential to being
an “element” not only to be “basic” or
“primary,” but also to be “immanent”
(see ἀρχή*). In a “metaphorical” second
sense, an element is sometimes called
that which is contained in “all or most
things” in the universe. In every case, in
any event, an “element” is “the primary
immanent thing” from which a whole is
composed (see also DC III.3).
In Aristotle’s theory of matter, an “ele-
ment” is a simple, indivisible body into
which a composite body may be divided
but that cannot be divided into other
bodies except of an identical sort; further,
the elements possess natural dispositions
for one of the simple movements—up,
down, or in a circle—toward their “nat-
ural place.” Thus elements may exist
either actually or potentially in com-
posite bodies; they come about through
mutual interaction. For the details of this
theory, see GC II.1–8 and DC III.
See αἰτία*, ἀρχή*.
συλλογισμός (sullogismos)
n. syllogism, deduction, inference, argument
Aristotle’s use of συλλογισμός evidences
a meaning wider than that of the trans-
literal “syllogism”; contemporary use of
expressions such as “deduction,” “argu-
ment,” or “inference” grasps the broader
sense.
Συλλογισμοί have at least two terms
and are propositional; characteristic of
συλλογισμοί is the entailment relation

exhibited between these terms. Thus
Aristotle defines a συλλογισμός in Top.
I.1 as “a λόγος in which, certain things
being laid down, something follows
from [or ‘is entailed by’] them necessar-
ily.” “Demonstrations” (ἀποδείξεις*)
are that species of inference in which
the “things laid down” are first princi-
ples (see ἀρχή*; and further APo I.2).
“Inference” is moreover opposed to
ἐπαγωγή*, “induction” (Top. I.12),
although the latter is sometimes treated
as a species of inference. The difference
in any event seems to have to do not with
the nature of the relation of terms but
with the modality of the inference; for
inductions do not hold of necessity.
Roughly speaking, APr is a theory
of συλλογισμός; APo is a theory of
ἀπόδειξις. See further ἀπόδειξις* and
ἐπαγωγή* above.
συμβεβηκός, κατὰ συμβεβηκός (sumbebe-kos,
kata sumbebe-kos)
n. accident; adj. incidental
What is κατὰ συμβεβηκός is “incidental”
to something; it does not belong among
those attributes descriptive of what the
thing is καθ᾽ αὑτό*. It is crucial to dis-
tinguish between what is “essential” in
the latter sense from what is necessary.
For example, the color of the flesh of a
human being is for Aristotle an entirely
“incidental” feature of a human being,
but it is of course entirely necessary that
humans have skin and that this skin
have some color. And there are of course
plenty of “incidental” characteristics that
are necessarily characteristics of this or
that sort of thing; they rank as “inciden-
tal” rather than “essential” owing chiefly
to the fact that they are not distinctive.
For example, having skin, and having
skin color, is a feature not only of human
beings, but also of much animal life; for
375
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Aristotle it is thus inessential (οὐ καθ᾽
αὑτό) to (because not distinguishing of)
being human.
τὸ συνεχές, συνεχής (to suneches, suneche-s)
n. continuity, continuum; adj. continuous
A number of Aristotle’s teachings
touch on or allude to his conception
of continuity—among them not only
claims in the physical domain but in
the grammatical and logical domains
as well. Continuity is distinct from a
number of seemingly related notions,
and especially “simultaneity” (being
in the same place or time); “separate-
ness” (non-simultaneity); “succession”
(coming one after another); and “con-
secutiveness” (contiguous succession).
Continuity is like consecutiveness, the
difference being that what is consecu-
tive is divisible into constituting parts,
whereas what is continuous is “indivis-
ible.” On which, see, for example, Phys.
V.3 and VII.1; and Met. X.12.
τέλος (telos)
n. end, purpose; eq. L n. finis
The notion of a τέλος, and in particu-
lar of an “end” of a movement, is a cen-
tral notion in Aristotle; it has two main
meanings. In the first place, it is used
to mean the end, strictly, of a move-
ment, that is, the point at which the
movement arrives when the movement
is completed. Another, wider usage is
connected to the sense of “purpose”: A
τέλος in this sense is “that for the sake
of which” (τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα) the movement
is undertaken. This may be understood
either as (1) a projection on the part of
a practical agent (in the sense in which
σκόπος, “target,” is used in the open-
ing of NE), where the τέλος of the
action (πρᾶξις*) is simply the explicit
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
intended goal of the agent acting; or
(2) as an end conduced to “by nature”
(φύσει). Thus Aristotle argues in Phys.
II that φύσις* is most closely associ-
ated with the final cause; for it is that
under the influence of which natural
movements are directed toward natural
“ends.”
τέχνη (techne-)
n. art, craft, know-how
Τέχνη is one of the intellectual virtues;
it is virtue, according to NE VI.4, in
reasoning correctly about how to make
something. Thus it belongs to the class
of intellectual virtues dealing with things
that may be otherwise, and more par-
ticularly with things that are “up to us,”
that is, belonging to the domain of things
subject to change through human effort.
Just as production (ποίησις*) is opposite
action (πρᾶξις*), τέχνη, which is intel-
lectual virtue with respect to making, is
opposite φρόνησις*, intellectual virtue
with respect to acting.
Aristotle frequently analogizes nature
and art, and most evidently in Phys.
II. His reasons generally are that both
nature and art are purposive (i.e. act
toward an end) and that both nature
and art begin causal processes by the
positing of a form (εἶδος*) and then
proceed to assign to the realization of
the form requisite material supports and
configurations (see ὕλη*). The mean-
ing of this analogy may be taken in a
number of ways. It may mean, among
other possibilities, that (1) Aristotle
understands nature merely on the model
of art (or “reduces” nature to art); (2)
Aristotle understands art as a conspicu-
ous example of natural processes; or (3)
knowledge pertaining to art contains
knowledge of nature put to work in
the manipulation of nature. In contrast
376
however, note, Aristotle also stresses,
as again in NE VI.4, that the domain
of τέχνη is coterminous with that of
chance (see τύχη*), which he frequently
opposes to nature and purpose.
See further ἀρετή*, ποίησις*,
φρόνησις*.
τί ἦν εἶναι (ti e-n einai)
n. essence, what it was to be; eq. L n. essentia
The unwieldy phrase, τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι—
literally, “the what it was to be”—is an
Aristotelian neologism and an obscure
one. It is only a slight exaggeration to
say that its translation into Latin as
essentia—which is identical in sense to
οὐσία—is the single most damning blun-
der of Latin translators of Aristotle.
In Met. VII.4–6 Aristotle no doubt
identifies οὐσία* and τί ἦν εἶναι. He
there also restricts its scope, claiming
that only a “species of a genus” will
have an essence. This identification
however does little to clarify the expres-
sion itself.
Discussion of the meaning of the
expression has centered on the imper-
fect ἦν, with three views generally
offered: that ἦν indicates (1) the imper-
fect or ongoing aspect of the being of
οὐσίαι; (2) the historical past of οὐσίαι
as an essential feature of what it is
to be them; and (3) what is logically
or naturally prior about οὐσίαι as an
essential determination of what it is to
be them.
Aristotle does not seem to distinguish
between the expression τί ἦν εἶναι and
the expression τί ἐστι (“what [it] is,” or
“what is it?”); and translators frequently
render both as “essence.” Aristotle’s own
usage certainly suggests some proximity
of meaning. Consensus suggests there is
no distinction.
See ὄν*, οὐσία*.

τόδε τι (tode ti)
n. this, this something, some this
The expression τόδε τι means literally,
“this something,” where “this” (τόδε)
has indexical force. Supposing the
Aristotelian treatises were originally
intended as lecture notes, it has been
conjectured that τόδε τι might have
entailed something performative, that is,
an actual act of pointing.
The importance of the expression has
to do with Aristotle’s use of it to charac-
terize the features bearing on the “indi-
viduals” forming the basic primitives of
the Aristotelian universe. Thus in Met.
VII.3 Aristotle treats τόδε τι as a feature
belonging characteristically to substances
(οὐσίαι*); they are, as the phrase is usu-
ally translated, “individual.” In Cat. 5
Aristotle seems to suggest that substance
and τόδε τι have the same “meaning”
(σημαίνειν).
See, further, οὐσία*.
τύχη (tuche-)
n. chance, fate, fortune
Aristotle discusses chance and spontane-
ity (τὸ αὐτόματον) in Phys. I.4–6 as part
of a larger attempt to outline exhaus-
tively what are the kinds of causes of
natural change (see φύσίς* and αἰτία*).
The attempt in itself is provocative, as
Aristotle frequently opposes chance to
nature. Having in the preceding chap-
ters outlined the four Aristotelian causes,
Aristotle proceeds to explain that chance
and spontaneity are not causes on a par
with those four—they are not equiva-
lently basic—but rather accidents of
them. Thus Aristotle groups chance
under the cause for-the-sake-of-which
(τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα), claiming that for some-
thing to appear to be “by chance” is for
it to conflict with some other projected
outcome. Now for this reason, secondly,
377
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
chance relates only to what occurs as a
result of “decision” (προαίρεσις*); for,
absent decision, there is no contingency
with regard to the means for the accom-
plishment of some goal.
See τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα, φύσις*.
ὕλη (hule-)
n. matter; eq. L n. materia
“Matter” for Aristotle is not a thing
but an aspect of a thing; it is a princi-
ple explanatory of movement or change
(κίνησις*, μεταβολή*). As such a cause
or principle, matter, in one way of sum-
marizing the matter, is explanatory of
changes of two sorts: those incidental
to substances (e.g. skin changing color)
and those necessary to the fulfillment of
some function (of a kind of substance)
(e.g. the joints, ligaments, muscles,
etc. necessary for standing upright). It
is along these two lines that Aristotle
extensively has recourse to the identifi-
cation of matter with potentiality (see
δύναμις* above). Matter constitutes one
of the basic ways for the accounting of
change relative to substances, then, along
with form (see εἶδος*) (which provides
a kind of blueprint) and privation (see
στέρησις*) (which is that from which
such changes proceed, but that is extin-
guished by them)—on all of which, see
Met. XII.2–5. Thus Aristotle’s definitions
of matter in Phys. and Met. (e.g. Phys.
I.9; Met. VII.3) present matter generally
as that “from which” (ἐξ οὗ) a change
occurs, which “remains” or “is left over”
after the change has occurred.
Matter enjoys a strange relation with
the notion in Aristotle of individualiza-
tion. His frequent claim that matter is
“not a this” (i.e. not τόδε τι*) (see, for
example, Met. XII.3), given his claim
that substances, that is, “thises,” are pre-
cisely those things from and to which
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
all changes proceed (see, for example,
Met. IV.2; and οὐσία* above), perhaps
seems prima facie to pair oddly with this
notion; for it would seem that matter is
in some sense most basic to change at all.
This is the difficulty articulated in Met.
VII.3: that on the view that substance is
what remains when all other determina-
tions are stripped away, matter is sub-
stance. The response in brief is to claim
that the “ultimate substrate,” that is, the
“matter,” of a thing is not individuated,
whereas substances must be.
Some decades ago a somewhat ran-
corous debate emerged, or reemerged,
concerning the question of so-called
prime matter in Aristotle. Traditionally
prime (πρώτη, “first”), as opposed
to proximate (ἐσχάτη, “last”), matter
has been taken as the antipode in the
Aristotelian universe to the prime mover
(see θεός* above); the latter being pure
actuality, the former pure potentiality.
One of the chief reasons for positing the
existence of prime matter has to do with
accounting for elemental change. For,
since one of the conditions of change
is that something persists, although the
elements serve as that persisting subject
in all other physical changes, the change
from one to another element requires
some yet-more basic subject—incipit
prime matter, “stuff” completely free of
all properties except that of openness to
determination. The arguments surround-
ing this question concern GC I.4 and II.4
and Met. VII.3. Detractors note, however,
that Aristotle nowhere uses an expression
like “prime matter” in this sense (where
he does use it is, with slightly different
salience, in Met. IV.4 and IX.7), and
that he explicitly rejects such a doctrine
(see, for example, GC I.3). Moreover, it
seems to contradict basic Aristotelian
tenets about matter, such as one already
mentioned, that matter, although not a
“this,” is always particular.
378
While in the preponderance of
Aristotelian usages matter is spoken
of in reference to sensible substances,
Aristotle in some places refers to “intel-
ligible (νοητική) matter” or similar; see
especially Met. VII.10.
See δύναμις*, εἶδος*, ἐνέργεια*.
ὑπάρχειν (huparchein)
v. to inhere, to be an attribute of, to exist
Aristotle has two main uses for the verb
ὑπάρχειν. They are (1) to indicate the
inherence of an attribute A in a subject B
or (2) to indicate, simply, the existence of
something. In general, τὰ ὑπάρχοντα in
Aristotle mean “attributes.”
An expression like τὸ Α ὑπάρχει τῷ Β,
used extensively, for example, in APr and
APo, means “A inheres in B,” “A belongs
to B,” or “A is an attribute of B.” It is
in the various modes of such inherence
or belonging that a number of essential
relations are described by Aristotle. For
example, what is universal “belongs
(ὑπάρχῃ) to every instance [of a kind of
thing] essentially and as such” (APo I.4;
see καθόλου*).
φαντασία (phantasia)
n. imagination, representation, presentation
Along with αἴσθησις* and νοῦς*,
φαντασία constitutes one of the modes
of perception or “discerning” (κρινεῖν)
discussed in DA II–III, and specifically
in DA III.3. In the culmination of this
discussion Aristotle defines imagination
very broadly as “a movement resulting
from an actual sensation.”
The use Aristotle makes of φαντασία—
and of the “images” (φαντάσματα) said
to be imagination’s objects—is fairly
wide-ranging and essential. In the first
place thinking (νοεῖν*) and judgment

or belief (ὑπόληψις) generally are said
to be impossible without images (DA
III.7). The meaning of this connection
may be taken in either of two ways, the
first being that thinking itself consists
in part in the generation of an image
(see, for example, De Mem. 1). It may
be taken also to indicate the means by
which perceptible contents, later to be
forged into universals, are “conveyed”
from sensation via memory and expe-
rience, that is, as an “image” retained
(see, for example, APo II.19; Met. I.1).
Aristotle’s understanding of memory
indeed relies heavily on his understand-
ing of φαντασία. In other animals more-
over imagination is a sort of surrogate
for νοῦς, that is, as a proto-calculative
means of planning (see DA III.10; De
Motu 6).
See αἴσθησις* and νοῦς*.
φρόνησις (phrone-sis)
n. prudence, practical wisdom; eq. L n.
prudentia
Aristotle’s use of the term is somewhat
idiosyncratic and technical. Φρόνησις,
“prudence” or “practical wisdom,” is one
of the intellectual virtues (see ἀρετή*)—
and discussed in NE VI.5 most program-
matically—specifically having to do with
the “practical” (πρακτικός) as opposed
to the “theoretical” part of the rational
soul. Two distinctions relevant to the
determination of φρόνησις may be noted
here—that its domain consists in what is
“up to us” rather than not (see ἐπιστήμη*
and σοφία*) and that it is concerned
with what can be accomplished by means
of action (πρᾶξις*) rather than through
production (ποίησις*) (see τέχνη*).
Thus practical wisdom is an intellectual
virtue “concerning human goods,” that
is, in the achievement of human happi-
ness through action (NE VI.5).
379
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
The role and standing of φρόνησις in
NE has left many the scholar confused.
Consider Aristotle’s claim that human
happiness consists in the achievement
of characteristically human virtues, and
characteristically human virtues bear not
only on the development of intellectual
virtue but also on character (ἦθος*) of
the sort to yield to the promptings of
the intellect (see NE I.6–7). From this it
follows that the achievement of happi-
ness consists in the cultivation not only
of intellectual virtues but also of virtues
of character, for which action—indeed,
right action—is necessary (see, for exam-
ple, NE II.1). Inasmuch as φρόνησις
demands intellectual acumen as well
as good character (see NE VI.12), and
moreover as the other intellectual vir-
tues demand φρόνησις (NE VI.13), it
might seem the “highest,” that is, full-
est, intellectual virtue is precisely that of
φρόνησις—but Aristotle in NE X argues
that the achievement of “wisdom”
(σοφια*) rather than φρόνησις consti-
tutes happiness in the highest degree (see
NE X.7).
See ἀρετή*, ἐπιστήμη*, εὐδαιμονία*,
νοῦς*, σοφία*, τέχνη*.
φύσις (phusis)
n. nature, essence, origin, growth, appear-
ance; eq. L n. natura
In his discussion of φύσις in Met. V.4
Aristotle distinguishes six senses. Of
these the fundamental sort is the fifth
sort, “the οὐσία* of those things that
have a principle of movement and rest in
themselves as themselves.” For each of the
other ways of speaking of nature refers in
some way to this sort: matter because its
features derive from such things; “gen-
eration” and “growth” because they are
movements from or toward or otherwise
relative to such things.
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
Of central significance in Aristotle’s
notion of nature is its distinction from
“chance” (τύχη*) and “art” (τέχνη*).
What exists “by nature” (φύσει) “seems
to have within itself a principle of
φωνή, φωνεῖν (pho-ne-, pho-nein)
movement and rest” (Phys. II.1). (See
n. sound, voice; v. to make a sound
τύχη* and τέχνη* in this respect.) Thus
non-natural things, qua non-natural,
“have no innate impulse to change.”
“Nature” is this “innate” impulse and
principle; what “has a nature” has such
an impulse and principle.
It is essential further to distinguish
between, again along the lines of the Phys.
II.1 account, (1) “[what is] [a] nature”
(φύσις) and “[what] has [a] nature” (ἔχει
φύσιν), on the one hand, from (2) being
“natural” (φύσει) or being “naturally”
(κατὰ φύσιν) thus and so, on the other.
Thus, although the material constituents
of artifacts (e.g. since they are composed
of certain “elements” [see στοιχεῖον*])
may exhibit something like the “innate
impulse” of “what is [or ‘has’] a nature,”
the artifacts themselves exhibit such fea-
tures not qua themselves (καθ᾽ αὑτά*),
only “incidentally” (κατὰ συμβεβηκός*)
(see again Phys. II.1). For the artifacts
only “happen” (τετύχηκε, συμβέβηκεν)
to be composed of these materials.
The term “nature” applies, finally,
to the form (εἶδος*) rather, or more
properly or strictly, than to the matter
(ὕλη*) of a thing (see Phys. II.1). For
matter exhibits features characteristic
of “(a) nature” only to the extent that
these characteristics derive from a form.
Moreover, the various ways in which
nature is spoken of refer in some way
to this conception, that is, of nature as
the form of a natural thing, or as the
inherent principle of movement these
natural things possess inasmuch as they
are natural.
Nature, either in this or in a broader
sense, is for Aristotle a cause generally of
order (τᾶξις).
380
See Phys. II.1 especially, and Met. V.4;
moreover see εἶδος*, κίνησις*, ὕλη*,
τέλος*.
According to the discussion of sound and
hearing in DA II.8, φωνή is “a sort of
sound of the living (ἔμψυκος).” Lifeless
things do not emit “voices” or “vocali-
zations,” only “noise” (ψόφος*). Not all
animals however have φωνή, “voice,”
for not all of them have the physiologi-
cal means, that is, a respiratory system
(in DA II.8 the presence of blood is also
mentioned; but fish have blood); and
moreover some, like fish, do not live in
air, the medium of sound.
Voice is the soul’s taking “breath
drawn from the air” and “striking” it
against the trachea (DA II.8). Requisite
therefore to the production of φωνή are
a soul (and the capacity for imagina-
tion), a respiratory system, and a tongue.
Voice thus exhibits the peculiarity that
its physiology consists in the functioning
of parts otherwise necessary to the life of
the organism (lungs for breathing, tongue
for tasting) in ways relevant rather to the
“well-being” of the organism.
As a form of σημαίνειν, or “meaning,”
φωνή stands halfway between ψόφος,
“noise” or “sound,” and λόγος*, “articu-
late speech.” Thus just as Aristotle in DA
characterizes φωνή as σημαντικός τις
ψόφος “a sort of meaningful noise” (DA
II.8), elsewhere he characterizes λόγος as
φωνὴ σημαντική, “meaningful vocaliza-
tion” (De Int. 4). In each case the more
intricately inflected sort of articulation
consists in the discerning or assignment
of meaning to phenomena already dif-
ferently meaningful, that is, at a simpler
level.
On the differences between the
voices—even “dialects” or “languages”

(διάλεκτοι)—of animals, see HA IV.9;
and moreover ψόφος* below.
See λόγος*, ψόφος*.
χρόνος
n. time; eq. L n. tempus
Aristotle’s discussion of time is to be
found in Phys. IV.10–4. According to a
precept of Phys. III.1, “nature” (φύσις*)
is a principle of movement (κίνησις*),
and movement is thought to be impos-
sible without, among other attributes,
time. The investigation of time in Phys.
therefore connects essentially with the
investigation of nature and more specifi-
cally of movement.
Time according to Aristotle is
“number of movement with respect to
the before and after” (ἀριθμὸς κινήσεως
κατὰ τὸ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον) or, as
he glosses this definition, “movement
inasmuch as it admits of number” (ᾗ
ἀριθμὸν ἔχει ἡ κίνησις) (Phys. IV.11).
The operative notion of “number” here
deserves two sorts of specification.
First, it is not the intellectual operation
of counting or the ideal instruments of
counting (i.e. what we in English might
call “numbers”: 1, 2, 3, etc.) that are
meant by “number”; rather, “number”
here means “what is counted,” as in
quartet, which is counted by the number
four; “quartet” being like “number” in
the definition. Secondly, counting as
it relates to Aristotle’s conception of
time is not “tracking,” in the sense of
saying, “one, two, three, etc.” For time
consists in a form of judgment about a
change, specifically with regard to the
extremities of change, which relies on
an anterior summary judgment about
the change as one change, that is, as
exhibiting at least two terms internal to
which the change occurs.
See ἀριθμός*, κίνησις*.
381
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
ψεῦδος, ψεύδεσθαι (pseudos, pseudesthai)
n. lie, deception, falsehood; v. to lie, to
deceive; eq. L n. falsum; v. falsum dicere,
fallere
The expressions ψεῦδος and ψεύδεσθαι
are closer in meaning to “deception” or
“cheating” and less like “falsity” in the
sense of a failure to hit upon the truth.
This difference may be illustrated by
the fact that falsity in the latter sense is
failure and unintentional; deception and
cheating are intentional.
Aristotle no doubt makes use of the
expression in both senses. Thus τὸ ψεῦδος
in the sense of “falsity” is merely a nega-
tive phenomenon of “truth.” Frequently
then Aristotle will describe truth as “say-
ing of what it is, that it is,” and posit fal-
sity as “opposite” or “contrary” to this
(see, for example, Met. IX.10), supplying
for falsity the twofold formula “saying
of what is, that it is not, or of what is
not, that it is” (Met. IV.7). In this sense,
ψεύδεσθαι seems just one of the forms a
λόγος might take, that is, inasmuch as an
“account” must be “either true or false”
(see λόγος*).
In his exploration of the meanings of
ψεῦδος in Met. V.29, Aristotle begins
with its meaning—foreign to the notion
of “falsity” to be sure—as “deceptive
thing” (πρᾶγμα ψεῦδος). A “deceptive
thing” is something that deceives either
because it seems to be so and so, but is
not (e.g. the diagonal seeming commen-
surate or you seeming to be sitting when
you are not), or because it seems to be
otherwise than it is or not to be at all
(e.g. a drawing or a dream). “Deception”
therefore is a feature of these very things;
“they are in a way, but not in the way
one’s imagination construes them to
be.” It is in its evocation or creation of
such “things,” secondly, that a λόγος is
then said to be “deceptive”; for they, on
a tandem with the previous distinction,
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
attempt to show something to be other
than it is, or to exist if it does not, or
not to exist if it does. By a further degree
removed a “deceptive person” is some-
one given to such arguments. In sum,
what is ψεῦδος is therefore either itself a
thing that deceives or so called given its
relation to such things.
Imaginations (see φαντασία*) are
said for the most part to be “false” and
animals other than humans are said to
act for the most part on the basis of
imaginations (DA III.3)—this in con-
trast with the idea that sensations, from
which imaginations are constructed, are
“always true” (on which, see αἴσθησις*).
Deception, or, better, the representation
of a percept “before one’s eyes,” as if
the thing perceived were there, where
the perceiver however is not confused
by this paradoxical intention, thus
plays some fundamental role in animal
perception.
On falsity in deductions (συλλογισμοί),
see APr II.2–4.
Further, see ἀλήθεια*, λόγος*,
φαντασία*.
ψόφος (psophos)
n. sound, noise
Aristotle discusses ψόφος, in the broad
sense of “sound,” in DA II.8 and there
defines it as “a movement of what can be
moved in such a way as to rebound off
smooth surfaces when it strikes them.”
Sound occurs through the impact on one
such body of another, and in an appro-
priate medium. In this psychological
context, ψόφος is just the objective cor-
relate to the perceptual capacity “hear-
ing” (ἀκοή).
In another sense ψόφος constitutes
the most basic level of sound and its
production. Accordingly HA IV.9 dis-
tinguishes between (1) ψόφος, which
constitutes any sort of sound an animal
382
may make; (2) φωνή*, which is sound
emitted through the pharynx, requir-
ing therefore a respiratory system;
and (3) διάλεκτος, “the articulation
(διάρθρωσις) of φωνή by the tongue,”
that is, the juxtaposition of “voiced”
and “unvoiced” (consonantal) sounds.
Thus ψόφοι do not even constitute
“names” (ὀνόματα) (De int. 2).
See λόγος*, φωνή*.
ψυχή (psuchē)
n. soul, life; orig. breath of life; eq. L n.
anima; syn. ζωή (life)
Aristotle in DA I provides a historical
overview of conceptions from Homer to
Plato of the soul. Chief among his ques-
tions as they arise from that discussion
are whether the soul has parts (about
which he is ultimately skeptical: see DA
III.9); whether the soul is separate from
the body (he thinks it is not: see DA II.1;
but see νοῦς* above); and what the func-
tions of the soul are, with special empha-
sis on the soul’s role in movement (DA
III.9–11) and perception (DA II.5–III.2,
on αἴσθησις*; DA III.3, on φαντασία*;
DA III.4–7, on νοῦς*). Characteristic of
Aristotle’s own view is that, while the
soul is not at all separate from the body,
it is not itself a body, nor does it function
as a body, in the sense championed by
certain of his materialist predecessors.
Aristotle’s description and defini-
tion of soul is to be found in DA II.1–2.
The soul he defines as the “first actual-
ity” of “a body potentially having life”
(see ἐνέργεια*). Elsewhere he employs a
number of surrogate expressions that tell
the range of this idea. Two complemen-
tary expressions especially are worthy of
mention: that the soul is a (or the) princi-
ple of a living being; and that the soul is
a form or λόγος. By the former he means
that it is “with,” “by means of,” “in,” or

“through” (ᾧ) soul that the living being
executes its characteristic functions:
metabolizing, sensing, thinking, moving
(for this expression, see DA II.2; but also
DA I.4: “Perhaps it is better not to say
that the soul pities or learns or thinks,
but that the human being [pities, etc.]
with the soul (τῇ ψυχῇ)”).
Now it is in two senses that λόγος
seems for Aristotle to relate to soul: as
383
GLOSSARY OF ARISTOTELIAN TERMS
relates to proportionality in the context
of perception (on which, see αἴσθησις*)
and as relates to account-giving of living
beings or their vital functions. In this sec-
ond sense the soul-as-λόγος is the equiv-
alent of the “form” (εἶδος*) or “essence”
(τί ἦν εἶναι*) of a living body.
See αἴσθησις*, ἐνέργεια*, κίνησις*,
νοῦς*, φαντασία*.
Erick Raphael Jiménez
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
I do not pretend that what follows is exhaus-
tive—or, for that matter, anything but a reflec-
tion of a dominant mainstream—nor that
it identifies The Most Important Works of
Aristotle Scholarship in the twentieth cen-
tury. The former is not possible, and the latter
would be a more substantive piece of research
than is appropriate here. Thinking about the
temporal movement of Aristotle scholarship is
of value insofar as it highlights something that
might otherwise go unnoticed. That is my aim.
In addition to the essays in this volume,
readers interested in pursuing the themes
identified here should consult Jiménez’s
“Bibliography” below, which presents a
greater variety of complete references.
Modern and contemporary Aristotle
scholarship is the result of the confluence of
three factors in the mid-nineteenth century,
above all in Germany:
(1) Philosophy was becoming the professional
academic discipline that it is today. An
increasing academic workforce led to a
greater division of labor, which in turn led
to increasing specialization of research.
(2) There was a widespread interest in mak-
ing classical antiquity available to and for
modernity, rooted in German Classicism
and Romanticism.
(3) There was institutional support, both
academic and state, for philosophical
and philological scholarship.
384
Between 1831 and 1870, under the auspices
of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences,
Immanuel Bekker published the first authori-
tative modern critical edition of the extant
Aristotelian texts.1 Volume 5 of Bekker’s edi-
tion, published in 1870, includes Hermann
Bonitz’s Index Aristotelicus, a massive index
of terms and concepts keyed to Bekker’s edi-
tion. Similarly monumental work was also
done on texts surrounding the Aristotelian
corpus. Between 1882 and 1909, under the
editorship of Hermann Diels, critical editions
of the extant late ancient commentaries on
the Aristotelian texts were published in 23
volumes as the Commentaria in aristotelem
graeca. And in 1903, Diels published the first
edition of his Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
relying in large part on the recent editions of
the Aristotelian texts and commentaries to
assemble evidence of Presocratic philosophy.
With that stage set, Aristotle research
almost immediately proliferates across a wide
range of philosophical and philological con-
cerns. Research on Aristotelian philosophy has
been a point of reference, if not inspiration,
for major developments in philosophy more
broadly, and Aristotle scholarship more nar-
rowly construed has tended to mirror changes
in the broader philosophical landscape. In what
follows, I highlight some of the most signifi-
cant developments in that relationship. Rather
than trying to gather them in one continuous

chronology—which proves impossible—I
briefly track the chronology of each.
Textual Criticism
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, renewed interest in textual criti-
cism produced five major series of critical
editions of the Aristotelian (and other clas-
sical) texts.
1850s–1930s: Bibliotheca Scriptorum
Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana
(Teubner).
1920–1960s: Collection Budé (Budé).
Includes facing-page French translations.
1920s–1960s: Critical editions with
substantial introductions and notes
published by Oxford University at the
Clarendon Press.
1950s–1960s: Scriptorum Classicorum
Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford Classical
Texts).
1920s–1970s: Loeb Classical Library.
Includes facing-page English translations,
but does not include a critical apparatus.
That progression also tracks a more gen-
eral shift in the relative prominence from
German-language scholarship, to French,
and then to English. And, for the most part,
those are the texts we read today.2
History and Historiography
Interest in getting the Aristotelian texts
right—or at least getting them in print in an
authoritative version—overlapped with the
broader interest in making classical antiquity
385
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
available to modernity, and thus with a
prominent concern with historiography and
method in Aristotle scholarship in the early
and mid-twentieth century. Three distinct
areas of concern stand out in this respect:
the ancient doxographical and biographical
traditions, Aristotle’s role or status as a his-
torian of philosophy, and Aristotle’s philo-
sophical development.
Prominent works on the ancient doxo-
graphical and biographical traditions
include:
Düring, I., Aristotle in the Ancient
Biographical Tradition, Göteborg:
Almqvist & Wiksell, 1957.
Moraux, P., Les listes anciennes des
ouvrages d’Aristote, Louvain:
Universitaires de Louvain, 1951.
Zeller, E., Die Philosophie der Griechen,
3 vols, Leipzig: R. Reisland, 1844–52.
See also Moraux’s study of Aristotelianism
between the first century bce and the second
century ce:
Moraux, P., Der Aristotelismus bei den
Griechen, 3 vols, Berlin: de Gruyter,
1973, 1984, and 2001.
More recently, The Ancient Commentators
Project (1987–present), led by Richard
Sorabji, has been publishing English trans-
lations of the commentaries edited in Diels’
Commentaria in Aristotelem graeca, making
the late ancient commentary traditions avail-
able to a wider audience.3
Given that the Aristotelian texts and
commentaries on them are one of the pri-
mary sources for information about early
Greek philosophy, Aristotle’s role or status
as a historian of philosophy also became
a crucial issue in this period. Perhaps most
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
notable here are Harold Cherniss’ criticisms
of Aristotle in two works:
Cherniss, H., Aristotle’s Criticism of
Presocratic Philosophy, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University, 1935.
—, Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato and the
Academy, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1944.
Prominent responses to the issues raised
by Cherniss’ arguments include:
Furley, D. and R. E. Allen (eds), Studies in
Presocratic Philosophy, 2 vols, London:
Routledge, 1970 and 1975.
Guthrie, W. K. C., “Aristotle as a Historian
of Philosophy: Some Preliminaries,” The
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77.1 (1957),
35–41.
McDiarmid, J. B., “Theophrastus on the
Presocratic Causes,” Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, 61 (1953),
35–41.
Mansion, S. (ed.), Aristote et les problèmes
de méthode, Louvain: Publications
Universitaires de Louvain,
1961.
The third major area of research driven
by historical and historiographical concerns
was Aristotle’s philosophical development—
above all, his relationship to Plato and
Platonic thought—and thus the relation-
ship among various parts of the Aristotelian
corpus. Two works by Werner Jaeger were
decisive in establishing this as a, if not the,
central issue:
Jaeger, W., Studien zur
Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik
der Aristoteles, Berlin: Weidmann, 1912.
386
—, Aristoteles, Grundlegung einer
Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, Berlin:
Weidmann, 1923.
Of the mountain of research respond-
ing to Jaeger’s arguments, I note just the
following:4
Arnim, H. von, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte
der aristotelischen Politik. Die drei
aristotelischen Ethiken. Arius Didymus’
Abriss der peripatetischen Ethik, Vienna
and Leipzig: Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky,
1924–6.
—, Eudemische Ethik und
Metaphysik, Vienna and Leipzig:
Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1928.
—, Die Entstehung der Gotteslehre
der Aristoteles, Vienna: Wiener Akademie
der Wissenschaft, 1931.
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 1962.
Guthrie, W. K. C., “The Development of
Aristotle’s Theology,” Classical
Quarterly, 27–8 (1933–4); 27:
162–71, 28: 90–8.
Mansion, A., “La genèse de l’Oeuvre
d’Aristote,” Revue Néoscolastique
de Philosophie, 29 (1927), 307–41.
Owens, J., The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian Metaphysics, Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1951.
Solmsen, F., Die Entwicklung der
Aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik,
Berlin: Weidmann, 1929.
More recently, see:
Gerson, L., Aristotle and Other
Platonists, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2005.
Wians, W. (ed.), Aristotle’s Philosophical
Development: Problems and Prospects,
Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1996.

Twentieth-Century Philosophy (I)
Of course, research into the origins and
development of Aristotle’s thinking was not
the only thing going on in the first half of the
twentieth century. The broader philosophical
landscape was changing dramatically, and
changes in the focus of Aristotle scholarship
tended to mirror those broader changes.
Phenomenology
Growing dissatisfaction with traditional
metaphysics led to two major developments
in European philosophy at the beginning of
the twentieth century: phenomenology and
analytic philosophy. In the phenomenologi-
cal tradition, two works by Franz Brentano
played an early crucial role:
Brentano, F., Die Psychologie des
Aristoteles, insbesondere seine Lehre vom
Nous Poietikos, Mainz: F. Kirchheim,
1867.
—, Aristoteles und seine Weltanschauung,
Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1911.
Brentano’s influence on Edmund Husserl,
and on Martin Heidegger, is well docu-
mented. Heidegger’s readings of, and lec-
tures on, Aristotle in the 1920s and 1930s
had a dramatic impact on both Heidegger’s
thinking, and on the trajectory of European
philosophy. Their impact on Aristotle schol-
arship, though, was more mediated. In part,
this is because many of those influenced by
Heidegger’s work on Aristotle (e.g. Hannah
Arendt, Hans Jonas, Jacob Klein, Leo Strauss,
Hans-Georg Gadamer) did not go on to work
primarily as Aristotle scholars. In part, as
well, this is because most of Heidegger’s work
on Aristotle took the form of lecture courses
delivered at the Universities of Marburg and
387
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
Freiburg in the 1920s and 1930s, which were
only edited and published a half-century later.
Nevertheless, that tradition had a significant
impact on Aristotle scholarship, particularly
in France. See in particular:
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1962.
—, La prudence chez Aristote, Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1963.
Brague, R., Du temps chez Platon et
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1982.
—, Aristote et la question du monde, Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1988.
Analytic Philosophy
Under the imprecise heading of analytic
philosophy, I here mean three more spe-
cific developments. In the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, philosophi-
cal and mathematical logic—often taken to
have gone largely unchanged since Aristotle
and then Kant—underwent radical and
far-reaching transformations. Here, too,
Aristotle was a point of reference for the
broader changes, and Aristotle scholarship
responded. See:
Ackrill, J. L., Aristotle’s Categories and
De Interpretatione, Oxford: Clarendon,
1961.
Berti, E. (ed.), Aristotle on Science: The
Posterior Analytics, Rome: Editrice
Antenore, 1981.
Hintikka, J., Time and Necessity, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1973.
LeBlond, J. M., Logique et méthode chez
Aristote, Paris: Vrin, 1939.
Łukasiewicz, J., O Zasadzie Sprzeczności
u Arystotelesa (On the Principle of
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
Contradiction in Aristotle), Kraków:
Akademia Umiejętności, 1910.
—, Aristotle’s Syllogistic from the
Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1951.
Solmsen, F., Die Entwicklung der
Aristotelischen Logik und Rhetorik,
Berlin: Weidmann, 1929.
What came to be known as ordinary lan-
guage philosophy had a similar, if briefer,
impact. On which see:
Austin, J. L., “A Plea for Excuses,” in
Philosophical Papers, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1961, 123–92.
Nussbaum, M., “Saving Aristotle’s
Appearances,” in Language and Logos:
Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy,
ed. M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum,
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982, 240–63.
Owen, G. E. L., “Tithenai ta phainomena,”
in Aristote et les problèmes de méthode,
ed. S. Mansion, Louvain: Publications
Universitaires de Louvain, 1961, 83–103.
And, more generally, as emphasis on the
(formal) logical analysis of arguments came
to dominate philosophical method, espe-
cially in England, that method, perhaps more
than any specific thematic concern, gained a
similar prominence in Aristotle scholarship.
Examples are too numerous to list.
Pragmatism
Although American pragmatism and natu-
ralism have not been as prominent as other
Anglo and European traditions in the twen-
tieth century, nor had the same impact on
Aristotle scholarship, Aristotle played an
analogous role as a point of reference in
388
classical American pragmatism. See, for
example:
Anton, J. (ed.), Naturalism and Historical
Understanding: Essays on the Philosophy
of John Herman Randall, Jr., Albany, NY:
SUNY, 1967.
Dewey, J., Experience and Nature, Chicago:
Open Court, 1925.
Long, C. P., Aristotle on the Nature of
Truth, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Randall, Jr., J. H., Nature and Historical
Experience, New York: Columbia
University, 1958.
—, Aristotle, New York: Columbia
University, 1960.
Woodbridge, F. J. E., Aristotle’s Vision of Nature,
New York: Columbia University, 1965.
—, An Essay on Nature, New York:
Columbia University, 1940.
Twentieth-Century Philosophy (II)
The past half-century of research in and
around the Aristotelian texts has, in one
way, continued the pattern of the first half
of the twentieth century. There has been an
even greater division of academic labor, and
thus even greater specialization of research.
Aristotle continues to be a prominent point
of reference for philosophy more broadly,
and Aristotle scholarship more narrowly
continues to largely mirror changes in that
broader landscape. In another way, though,
increasing specialization and differentia-
tion have led to a nonlinear proliferation of
research that may mark a qualitative change.
For further references to work of the last
half-century, see Jiménez’s “Bibliography”
below. I here limit myself to three prominent

trajectories, namely, those in ethics, philoso-
phy of mind, and philosophy of biology.
Ethics
Interest in Aristotelian ethics never fully dis-
appeared. But as far as a broader philosophi-
cal interest in Aristotle’s ethics is concerned, a
major shift is marked by the emergence in the
mid-twentieth century of what became known
as virtue ethics as an alternative to broadly
Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories. See:
Anscombe, G. E. M., “Modern Moral
Philosophy,” Philosophy, 33.124 (1958), 1–19.
Foot, P., Natural Goodness, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001.
Hursthouse, R., On Virtue Ethics, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
McIntyre, A., After Virtue, Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame, 1981.
Murdoch, I., The Sovereignty of Good,
London: Ark, 1970.
Nussbaum, M., The Fragility of Goodness,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986.
Smart, J. J. C. and B. Williams, Utilitarianism:
For and Against, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1973.
Thompson, M., Life and Action, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University, 2008.5
Williams, B., Morality: An Introduction to
Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1972.
—, Moral Luck, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981.
—, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1985.
Philosophy of Mind
Beginning (roughly) in the 1970s, the center
of gravity of Anglophone philosophy shifted
389
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
from philosophy of language and episte-
mology to philosophy of mind.6 As debates
consolidated around various types of physi-
calism and functionalism, Aristotle’s poten-
tial contributions to the conversation came
to the fore, most notably in works such as:
Ackrill, J. L., “Aristotle’s Definitions of
psuche-,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, 73 (1972/3), 119–33.
Caston, V., “The Spirit and the Letter:
Aristotle on Perception,” in Metaphysics,
Soul, and Ethics, ed. R. Salles, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005, 245–320.
Everson, S., Aristotle on Perception, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1997.
Johansen, T., Aristotle on the Sense Organs,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
Lloyd, G. E. R. and G. E. L. Owen (eds),
Aristotle on Mind and the Senses, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Nussbaum, M., Aristotle’s De Motu
Animalium, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978.
Nussbaum, M. and A. Rorty (eds), Essays
on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Putnam, H., “Philosophy and Our Mental
Life,” in Mind, Language and Reality,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1975, 291–303.
Sorabji, R., “Body and Soul in Aristotle,”
Philosophy, 49 (1974), 63–89.
—, “From Aristotle to Brentano,” in
Aristotle and the Later Tradition, ed. H.
Blumenthal and H. Robinson, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1991, 227–60.
Biology
One of the most striking results of the past
half-century of Aristotle research is an
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
unprecedented understanding and apprecia-
tion of Aristotle’s biological works.7 David
Balme’s work was pioneering in this respect;
see:
Balme, D. (trans. and ed.), Aristotle’s
De Partibus Animalium I and De
Generatione Animalium I, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1972.
Several of Balme’s papers—along with
many other notable contributions—are col-
lected in
Gotthelf, A. (ed.), Aristotle on Nature and
Living Things, Pittsburg and Bristol:
Mathesis, 1985.
Gotthelf, A. and J. Lennox, (eds),
Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987.
See also:
Lennox, J., Aristotle’s Philosophy of
Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Leunissen, M., Explanation and Teleology in
Aristotle’s Science of Nature, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Lloyd, G. E. R., Method and Problems in
Greek Science, Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Kullmann, W., Wissenschaft und Methode,
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974.
—, Die Teleologie in der aristotelischen
Biologie, Heidelberg: Winter, 1979.
Kullman, W. and S. Föllinger, (eds),
Aristotelische Biologie, Stuttgart: Steiner,
1997.
Pellegrin, P., La classification des animaux
chez Aristote, Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1982.
390
Pellegrin, P. and D. Devereux (eds),
Biologie, logique et métaphysique chez
Aristote, Paris: Éditions du CNRS,
1990.
Preus, A., Science and Philosophy in
Aristotle’s Biological Works, Hildesheim/
New York: Olms, 1972.
As the other chapters in this volume
make clear, this is but a small fraction and
a pale reflection of the rich variety of recent
research surrounding the Aristotelian texts.
The Western tradition of philosophy, in all
its variety, is virtually coextensive with the
Aristotelian tradition, in all its variety. There
is no area of the broader philosophical land-
scape in the twentieth century that does not
bear its mark, and that appears to be con-
tinuing into the twenty-first century.
Benjamin J. Grazzini
Notes
1
There had been others—at least Aldus
Manutius’ fifteenth-century edition, and
J. G. Buhle’s edition published in 1791–3. But
nothing appears to have had the impact of
Bekker’s Aristotelis opera omnia. See Jiménez,
“Bibliography,” §1.1.
2
Notable exceptions include Rudolfus
Kassel’s 1976 edition of the Rhetoric,
Martha Nussbaum’s 1978 edition of the De
Motu Animalium, and David Balme’s edition
of the History of Animals (published post-
humously in 2002). More recently, Marwan
Rashed has prepared a new Budé text of
De Generatione et Corruptione (2005), and
David Bloch a new text of De memoria et
Reminiscentia (2007). As more and more medi-
eval manuscripts become available online, this
may change.
3
See Jiménez, “Bibliography,” §2.
4
For a much more detailed and well-documented
survey, see A. H. Chroust, “The First Thirty

Years of Modern Aristotle Scholarship (1912–
1942),” Classica et Mediaevalia, 24 (1963),
27–57.
5
More recently, see the renewed interest in
Aristotelian discussions of akrasia, leading
to the seventeenth Symposium Aristotelicum
391
CHRONOLOGY OF RECENT RESEARCH
(2005) focusing on Nicomachean Ethics VII.
(The proceedings of the 2005 Symposium
were published in 2009, edited by Carlo
Natali.)
6
See further Jiménez, “Bibliography,” §2.3.
7
See also Jiménez, “Bibliography,” §2.4.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Research in Aristotle today entails acquaint­
ance with a number of resources, some of
them general with regard to ancient philo­
sophy (on which see my and Ben Grazzini’s
“Resources” below) and others particular
to the Aristotelian. The present essay, which
speaks to the latter regard, has two parts. The
first presents editions of works by Aristotle
taken to be standard or important, in Greek
(§1.1) and in English translation (§1.2). The
list is not exhaustive of the corpus; it focuses
on those works of more acute interest to phi­
losophers. Standard fare for scholarship of
Aristotle is presented, arranged topically, in
§2. I have restricted my focus in the main to
works of the last half-century. For a broader
narrative account of the life of Aristotelian
studies in the last century and a half, see
Grazzini’s “Chronology” above.
1. Works by Aristotle
1.1 Greek Editions
The now-classic edition of the Aristotelian
corpus1 is:
Aristotle, Opera, ed. I. Bekker, 5 vols,
Akademie, 1831–70.
Volumes 1 and 2 contain Aristotle’s works; vol­
ume 3 contains Renaissance Latin ­translations
392
of Aristotelian works; volume 4 (ed. C.  A.
Brandis) contains ancient scholia; volume
5 contains fragments (ed. V. Rose), supple­
ments to scholia (ed. H. Usenet), and the Index
Aristotelicus (Bonitz). Aristotelis Opera was
re-edited by O. Gigon (De Gruyter, 1960–87).
This edition is (with the exception of vol. 3) a
photomechanical copy of the 1831–70 edition:
Volumes 1 and 2 contain Aristotle’s works; vol­
ume 3 Gigon’s revision and supplementation of
Aristotle’s fragments; volume 4 a selection of
classical commentaries on Aristotle, together
with a concordance with the Commentaria
in Aristotelem Graeca; volume 5 contains
the Index. Two notable predecessors to the
Akademie edition may be mentioned:
Opera, ed. A. Manutius, 5 vols, Venice,
1495–8.
Opera, ed. Erasmus and S. Grynaeus,
2 vols, Basel, 1531.
Also of interest, in many cases decisive
interest, are the Latin translations of the
Aristotelian corpus, on which see the transla­
tion project at
A. Latinus Aristoteles Latinus Project,
http://hiw.kuleuven.be/
dwmc/al/
All scholars when citing Aristotle cite
Bekker’s edition, and do so by “Bekker
number.” Given along with the name of the

work, a Bekker number consists in three
or four pieces of information: (1) the book
number, where relevant (usually in Roman
numeral); (2) the chapter number (usually
in Arabic numeral); (3) the page number;
(4) the column (“a” for left column; “b” for
right column); and (5) the line number(s).
The first line of Physics would thus be cited:
“Phys. I.1, 184a10.”
The Bekker edition is no longer the defini­
tive edition, and no definitive edition of the
corpus as a whole exists; scholars rely on
individual texts. Of those—listed below in
the order of Bekker’s edition—particularly
useful to philosophers, and also still widely
available, are these:
1.1.1 Logic and Science
Cat./De int. Categoriae et Liber De
Interpretatione, ed.
L. Minio-Paluello, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1936.
APr/APo Prior and Posterior Analytics,
ed. W. D. Ross, repr. Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000.
Top./SE Topica et Sophistici Elenchi,
ed. W. D. Ross, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1958.
Topiques, ed. J. Brunschwig, 2
vols., 3rd edn, Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 2009 (vol. 1) and 2007
(vol. 2).
1.1.2 Natural Science
Phys. Physics, ed. W. D. Ross,
revd. edn, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1936.
DC De Caelo, ed. D. J. Allan,
3rd edn, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1961.
393
Bibliography
Du ciel, ed. P. Moraux, Paris: Les
Belles Lettres, 1965.
GC On Coming-to-Be and
Passing-Away, ed. H. H. Joachim,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1922.
De la génération et la corruption,
ed. M. Rashed, Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 2005.
1.1.3 Psychology
Of all of Aristotle’s “philosophical” works,
De Anima is most widely acknowledged as
a textual mess; it is thus essential to compare
texts. In addition to Ross’, which is only the
easiest to find, one might, minimally, consult
two further editions:
DA On the Soul, ed. R. D. Hicks,
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1907.
De Anima, ed. W. D. Ross,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1956.
De l’âme, ed. A. Jannone, Paris:
Les Belles Lettres, 2002.
The Parva Naturalia—De Sensu, De Mem.,
De Somn., De Insomn., De Div., De Long.,
De Iuv.—may all be found in:
Parva Naturalia, ed. W.D. Ross, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1955.
1.1.4 Biology
HA Historia Animalium, ed. D. M.
Balme, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002.
PA Les parties des animaux, ed.
P. Louis, Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
1956.
Bibliography
MA De Motu Animalium, ed.
M. Nussbaum, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1978.
GA De Generatione Animalium, ed.
H. J. Drossart Lulofs, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1965.
1.1.5 Metaphysics
Met. Metaphysics, ed. W. D. Ross,
2 vols., revd. edn, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1953.
Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1957.
1.1.6 Moral and Political Philosophy
NE Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1894.
L’Éthique à Nicomaque, ed. R.
A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, 2nd
edn, 2 vols, Louvain: Publications
Universitaires, 1958.
EE Ethica Eudemia, ed. R. R. Walzer
and J. M. Mingay, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991.
Pol. Politica, ed. W. D. Ross, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1957.
Politik, ed. A. Dreizehnter, Munich:
Wilhelm Fink, 1970.
1.1.7 Rhetoric and Poetics
Rhet. Ars rhetorica, ed. W. D. Ross,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1959.
Ars rhetorica, ed. R. Kassel, Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1976.
Poet. De arte poetica, ed. R. Kassel,
Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1966.
394
1.1.8 Fragments
Frag. Fragmenta selecta, ed. W.
D. Ross, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1955.
Fragmenta, ed. O. Gigon,
Berlin: De Gruyter, 1987.
1.2 English Translations
All of Aristotle’s known works were trans­
lated into English in:
The Collected Works, ed. W. D. Ross and
J. A. Smith, 12 vols., Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1908–54.
This edition is known as “The Oxford
Translation.” A widely available edition,
which is based on the former, is called “The
Revised Oxford Translation,” and it is pres­
ently treated more or less as a standard.
The Collected Works, ed. J. Barnes, 2 vols,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
A number of shorter edited collections exist,
most notably:
A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J. L. Ackrill,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Selections, ed. T. Irwin and G. Fine,
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995.
In addition to the translations available in
these collections (which include, for exam­
ple, the Ackrill translation of Cat. and De
Int. and the Barnes translation of APo; see
§2.1 below), the following may also be fruit­
fully consulted:

1.2.1 Logic and Science
Cat./De Int. Categories and Propositions,
trans. H. G. Apostle, Grinnell,
IA: Peripatetic Press, 1980.
APr Prior Analytics, trans. and
ed. R. Smith, Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1989.
APo Posterior Analytics, trans. H. G.
Apostle, Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic
Press, 1981.
Top.      T
 opics: Books I and VIII,
trans. and ed. R. Smith,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
1.2.2 Natural Science
Phys. Physics, trans. R. Hope,
Lincoln: University of
Nebraska, 1961.
Physics, trans. H. G. Apostle,
Peripatetic Press, 1969.
Physics: A Guided Study, trans.
J. Sachs, Newark: Rutgers
University, 1995.
Physics, trans. R. Waterfield,
ed. D. Bostock, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1996.
DC On the Heavens, trans. and ed.
W. K. C. Guthrie, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University, 1939.
GC De Generatione et Corruptione,
trans. and ed. C. J. F. Williams,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1982.
1.2.3 Psychology
DA De Anima II and III, trans.
D.W. Hamlyn, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993.
395
Bibliography
On the Soul, trans. H.
G. Apostle, Grinnell, IA:
Peripatetic Press, 2001.
De Anima, trans.
M. Shiffman, Newburyport:
Focus, 2010.
DA/De Mem. On the Soul and On
Memory and Recollection,
trans. J. Sachs, Santa Fe:
Green Lion, 2001.
1.2.4 Biology
HA History of Animals, trans.
and ed. A. L. Peck, 3 vols.,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University,
1965.
PA/MA Parts of Animals, Movement
of Animals, Progression
of Animals, trans. and ed.
A. L. Peck and E. M. Forster,
revd. edn, Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University, 1937.
GA Generation of Animals,
trans. and ed. A. L. Peck,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, 1942.
1.2.5 Metaphysics
Met. Metaphysics, trans. R. Hope,
St. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan, 1952.
Metaphysics, trans. H.
G. Apostle, Grinnell, IA:
Peripatetic Press, 1979.
Metaphysics: Books
VII–X, trans. M. Furth,
Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1985.
Bibliography
Metaphysics, trans. J. Sachs, 2nd
edn, Santa Fe: Green Lion, 2002.
1.2.6 Moral and Political Philosophy
NE Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
M. Ostwald, Upper Saddle River:
Prentice Hall, 1962.
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. G.
Apostle, Grinnell, IA: Peripatetic
Press, 1984.
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. H.
Irwin, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999.
Nicomachean Ethics, trans. S.
Broadie and C. Rowe, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Pol. The Politics, trans. C. Lord, Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1984.
The Politics of Aristotle, trans. P.
Simpson, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina, 1997.
1.2.7 Rhetoric and Poetics
Rhet. On Rhetoric, trans. G. A. Kennedy,
2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2006.
Plato’s Gorgias and Aristotle’s
Rhetoric, trans. J. Sachs,
Newburyport: Focus, 2008.
 n Poetics, trans. S. Benardete and
Poet. O
M. Davis, South Bend: St. Augustine,
2002.
Poetics, trans. J. Sachs,
Newburyport: Focus, 2005.
2. Works on Aristotle
Aristotelian scholarship ranks among the
vastest of fields of commentary in the history
of philosophy, for it is not only one of the old­
est continuous fields of interpretation but also
396
perhaps the most diverse and divisive. I have
trimmed my focus to mostly English-language
studies, and mostly from the latter half of the
twentieth century to the present.
Ancient and medieval commentaries remain
however mainstays of theAristotelian ­conversation.
The former were collated and ­collected in:
Diels, H. (ed.), Commentaria in Aristotelem
Graeca, 23 vols, Berlin: Reimer,
1882–1909.
These works are presently being translated
into English in the following series:
Sorabji, R. (ed.), Ancient Commentaries on
Aristotle, 80 vols, London: Duckworth, 1987–.
A further 20 volumes are projected. For a
selection of works, see:
Sorabji, R., The Philosophy of the
Commentators 200–600 AD: A Sourcebook,
3 vols, London: Duckworth, 2005.
The publication and translation of later
medieval commentary on the other hand is
a phenomenon far more diffuse. Here I shall
mention just some places to begin in research
on Aquinas’ and Averroes’ works. The works
of Averroes, first of all, are presently being
compiled online at:
DARE Digital Averroes Research
Environment, http://dare.uni-koeln.de/
The entirety of Aquinas’ works are also avail­
able (albeit in non-critical, html editions)
online at:
Opera Thomas Aquinas, Opera Omnia,
http://www.corpusthomisticum.
org/iopera.html

Editions of Averroes’ commentaries in
English translation are available, notably by
St. Augustine Press and by Brigham Young
University Press. Aquinas’ commentaries
are also widely available and translated into
English, most notably by Dumb Ox Books,
an imprint of St. Augustine Press.
For contemporary commentary work
on the Aristotelian texts, mention-worthy
especially is the Clarendon Aristotle Series.
Each volume includes translation and very
good philosophical and philological com­
mentary, as well as, customarily, an exten­
sive bibliography. Relevant volumes are
mentioned below. For further bibliographi­
cal information, as well as helpful general
commentary on the Aristotelian corpus,
see:
Barnes, J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to Aristotle, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
Anagnostopolous, G. (ed.), A Companion to
Aristotle, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
2.1 Logic and Science
For commentary on the texts of the Organon,
see Ross’ commentaries on APr and APo in
his texts, cited in §1.1.1; and all of the trans­
lations cited in §1.2.1. Additionally see:
Ackrill, J. L. (trans. and ed.), Categories and
De Interpretatione, Oxford: Clarendon,
1961.
Striker, G. (trans. and ed.), Prior Analytics I,
Oxford: Clarendon, 2009.
Barnes, J. (trans. and ed.), Posterior Analytics,
2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
For more general commentary see these
works:
397
Bibliography
LeBlond, J. M., Logique et méthode chez
Aristote, Paris: Vrin, 1939.
Łukasiewicz, J., Aristotle’s Syllogistic from
the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic,
2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1957.
Dancy, R., Sense and Contradiction,
Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1975.
Lear, J., Aristotle and Logical Theory,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980.
Aristotle’s theory of modality has been the
subject of a number of works, among them
notably:
Hintikka, J., Time and Necessity; Studies in
Aristotle’s Theory of Modality, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1973.
Waterlow (=Broadie), S. Passage and
Possibility: A Study of Aristotle’s Modal
Concepts, Oxford: Clarendon,
1982.
Patterson, R., Aristotle’s Modal Logic: Essence
and Entailment in the Organon, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995.
From an excellent collection of articles on
APo, see esp.:
Barnes, J., “Proof and the Syllogism,”
in Aristotle on Science: The Posterior
Analytics, ed. E. Berti, Padua: Editrice
Antenore, 1981, 17–59.
Burnyeat, M., “Aristotle on Understanding
Knowledge,” in Aristotle on Science:
The Posterior Analytics, ed. Berti., Padua:
Editrice Antenore, 1981, 97–139.
See also, on Top. and SE, the essays in:
Owen, G. E. L. (ed.), Aristotle on Dialectic:
The Topics, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968.
Bibliography
On the question of the nature of first princi­
ples, and the relation between them and dia­
lectic, see, to begin,
Owen, G. E. L., “ΤΙΘΕΝΑΙ ΤΑ
ΦΑΙΝΟΜΕΝΑ,” in Aristote et les
problèmes de méthode, ed. S. Mansion,
Leuven: Peeters, 1961.
Bolton, R., “The Epistemological Basis
of Aristotelian Dialectic,” in Biologie,
logique, et metaphysique chez Aristote,
ed. D. Devereux and P. Pellegrin, Paris:
Éditions du CNRS, 1990, 186–236.
See also, on APo II.19,
Lesher, J. H., “The Meaning of ΝΟΥΣ in the
Posterior Analytics,” Phronesis, 18 (1973),
44–68.
Kosman, A., “Understanding, Explanation,
and Insight,” in Exegesis and Argument,
ed. E. N. Lee, A. D. Mourelatos, and R. M.
Rorty, Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973,
374–92.
2.2 Natural Science
For commentary on the relevant texts, see
those in §§1.1.2 and 1.2.2. Additionally, on
Physics, see:
Charlton, W. (trans. and ed.), Physics I–II,
Oxford: Clarendon, 2nd edn, 1970.
Hussey, E. (trans. and ed.), Physics III–IV,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.
Graham, D. W. (trans. and ed.), Physics VIII,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.
Works of a sort introductory to Aristotle’s
notion of nature and to his project for natu­
ral science include:
398
Heidegger, M., “On the Essence and
Concept of ΦΥΣΙΣ in Aristotle’s Physics
B 1,” trans. W. McNeil, in Pathmarks,
ed. W. McNeill, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998.
Kosman, L., “Aristotle’s Definition of
Motion,” Phronesis, 14 (1969), 40–62.
Lang, H. S., The Order of Nature in
Aristotle’s Physics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Solmsen, F., Aristotle’s System of the
Physical World, Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1960.
Waterlow (=Broadie), S., Nature, Change,
and Agency in Aristotle’s Physics, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1982.
Wieland, W., Die aristotelische Physik,
3rd edn, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and
Ruprecht, 1997.
For further essays on Phys., see:
Judson, L., ed., Aristotle’s Physics: A
Collection of Essays, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995.
2.3 Psychology
For commentary on DA and the Parva
Naturalia, see the texts in §§1.1.3 and 1.2.3.
A number of very good essays on DA may
be found in:
Nussbaum, M. and A. Rorty (eds.), Essays
on Aristotle’s De Anima, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Barnes, J., M. Schofield, and R. Sorabji (eds.),
Articles on Aristotle, vol. 4, Psychology
and Aesthetics, London: Duckworth, 1979.
For introductory accounts of soul in Aristotle,
see:

Bolton, R., “Aristotle’s Definition of the
Soul: De Anima II.1–3,” Phronesis, 23
(1978), 258–78.
Frede, M., “On Aristotle’s Conception of
Soul,” in Essays on Aristotle’s
De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A.
Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992.
Matthews, G., “De Anima II.2–4 and the
Meaning of Life,” in Essays on Aristotle’s
De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
A particularly lively argument between “spir­
itualism” and “literalism” emerged surround­
ing the following few, among other, accounts:2
Burnyeat, M., “Is an Aristotelian Philosophy of
Mind Still Credible?” in Essays on Aristotle’s
De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum and A. Rorty,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Sorabji, R., “Intentionality and
Physiological Processes,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum
and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992.
On the varieties of perception—sensation,
imagination, and intellect—see generally:
Brentano, F., The Psychology of Aristotle,
trans. R. George, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977.
Modrak, D., Aristotle: The Power of
Perception, Chicago: University of
Chicago, 1987.
Lloyd, G. E. R. and G. E. L. Owen (eds.),
Aristotle on Mind and the Senses, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978.
On sensation, in addition to Burnyeat’s and
Sorabji’s essays, see, respectively, on ques­
399
Bibliography
tions of physiology and on the self-reflexivity
of sensation,
Johansen, T., Aristotle on the Sense
Organs, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997.
Kosman, L., “Perceiving that We Perceive,”
Philosophical Review, 84 (1975),
499–519.
On imagination, see:
Frede, D., “The Cognitive Role of
ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑ in Aristotle,” in Essays on
Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M. Nussbaum
and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992, 279–96.
Schofield, M., “Aristotle on the Imagination,”
in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M.
Nussbaum and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992, 249–77.
On the intellect, see:
Barnes, J., “Aristotle’s Concept of Mind,”
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
72 (1971–2), 101–14.
Kahn, C., “Aristotle on Thinking,” in
Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. M.
Nussbaum and A. Rorty, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992.
Wedin M., Mind and Imagination in Aristotle,
New Haven: Yale University, 1988.
2.4 Biology3
For commentary on relevant texts, see those
in §§1.1.4 and 1.2.4. See also:
Balme, D. M. (trans. and ed.), De Partibus
Animalium I and De Generatione
Animalium I (with Passages from II.1–3),
Bibliography
revd. edn, Oxford: Clarendon,
1992.
Düring, I., Aristotle’s De Partibus
Animalium: Critical and Literary
Commentaries, 1943; repr. New York:
Garland Publishing, 1980.
Lennox, J. (trans. and ed.), On the Parts of
Animals I–IV, Oxford: Clarendon, 2002.
Philosophers interested in biological issues
will profitably make use, above all, of:
Gotthelf, A. and J. Lennox (eds.), Philosophical
Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
See also:
Lennox, J., Aristotle’s Philosophy of
Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
Lennox, J. and R. Bolton (eds.), Being,
Nature, and Life in Aristotle, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Pellegrin, P., Aristotle’s Classification of
Animals: Biology and the Conceptual
Unity of the Aristotelian Corpus, trans. A.
Preus, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986.
Thompson W., On Aristotle as a Biologist,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912.
2.5 Metaphysics
Again, for commentary, see the texts in
§§1.1.5 and 1.2.5. See further the Clarendon
Aristotle volumes:
Annas, J. (trans. and ed.), Metaphysics Mu
and Nu, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988.
Bostock, D. (trans. and ed.), Metaphysics
Zeta and Eta, Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
400
Kirwan, C. (trans. and ed.), Metaphysics
Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993.
Madigan, A. (trans. and ed.), Metaphysics
Beta and Kappa 1–2, Oxford: Clarendon,
1999.
Makin, S. (trans. and ed.), Metaphysics
Theta, Oxford: Clarendon, 2006.
Some helpful general studies of the
Metaphysics include:
Aubenque, P., Le problème de l’être chez
Aristote, Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1962.
Owens, J., The Doctrine of Being in the
Aristotelian Metaphysics, Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies,
1978.
Reale, G., The Concept of First Philosophy
and the Unity of the Metaphysics of
Aristotle, New York: SUNY, 1980.
On substance (οὐσία), the central theme of
Metaphysics generally and specifically most
of all of book VII, see:
Burnyeat, M., A Map of Metaphysics Zeta,
Pittsburgh: Mathesis, 2001.
Charles, D., Aristotle on Meaning and Essence,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Frede and Patzig, Aristoteles Metaphysik Z,
Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988.
Gill, M. L., Aristotle on Substance: The
Paradox of Unity, Princeton: Princeton
University, 1989.
Kosman, L., “Animals and Other Beings
in Aristotle,” in Philosophical Issues in
Aristotle’s Biology, ed. A. Gotthelf and
J. G. Lennox, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987.

Loux, M., Primary ΟΥΣΙΑ: An Essay on
Aristotle’s Metaphysics Zeta and Theta,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Wedin, M., Aristotle’s Theory of Substance,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
On potentiality and actuality, see:
Heidegger, M., The Essence and Actuality
of Force, trans. W. Brogan and P. Warnek,
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1995.
Kosman, L., “Substance, Being, and
ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑ,” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 2 (1984), 121–49.
Witt, C., Ways of Being: Potentiality and
Actuality in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
On book XII generally, and on the unmoved
mover, see:
Frede, M. and D. Charles (eds.), Aristotle’s
Metaphysics Lambda, Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000.
Lang, H. L., “The Structure and Subject of
Metaphysics Lambda,” Phronesis, 38.3
(1993), 257–80.
2.6 Moral and Political Philosophy4
For commentary on Nicomachean Ethics,
see the Gauthier-Jolif volumes in §1.1.6
and the translations, especially Irwin’s, of
§1.2.6 above. For further commentary on
Aristotelian ethics, see:
Broadie, S., Ethics with Aristotle, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sparshott, F., Taking Life Seriously, Toronto:
University of Toronto, 1994.
For an introductory collection of scholarly
articles, see:
401
Bibliography
Rorty, A. (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
On Aristotle’s vision of the good, in a specifi­
cally human context, see generally:
Cooper, J., Reason and Human Good in
Aristotle, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986.
Gadamer, H. G., The Idea of the Good in
Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, trans.
P. Christopher Smith, New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986.
Kraut, R., Aristotle on the Human Good,
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989.
Sherman, N., The Fabric of Character,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
Additionally, on the constitution and psy­
chology of ethical action, see:
Charles, D., Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action,
London: Duckworth, 1984.
Dahl, N., Practical Reason, Aristotle,
and Weakness of Will, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Meyer, S. S., Aristotle on Moral Res­ponsibility:
Character and Cause, revd. edn, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012.
With special emphasis on the ethical and polit­
ical dimensions of Aristotelian thought, three
volumes of essays charting paths for feminist
commentary should also be mentioned:
Bar On, B. (ed.), Engendering Origins:
Critical Feminist Readings in Plato and
Aristotle, New York: SUNY, 1994.
Freeland, C. (ed.), Feminist Interpretations
of Aristotle, State College: Pennsylvania
State University, 1998.
Ward, J. (ed.), Feminism and Ancient
Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1996.
Bibliography
Of intense interest in the last decades has been
the question of the status of women in Aristotle’s
Politics, on which one might consult:
Fortenbaugh, W. W., “Aristotle on Slaves
and Women,” in Articles on Aristotle,
vol. 2, ed. J. Barnes, M. Schofield, and
R. Sorabji, St. Martin’s, 1977, 135–9.
Modrak, D., “Aristotle: Women,
Deliberation, and Nature,” in
Engendering Origins: Critical Feminist
Readings in Plato and Aristotle, ed. B. Bar
On, New York: SUNY, 1994.
On the Politics, useful general commentary,
in addition to that found in the texts of
§§1.1.6 and 1.2.6, is to be found in:
Newman, W. L., The Politics of Aristotle, 4
vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1888–1902.
Simpson, P., Aristotle’s Politics: A
Philosophical Commentary, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina, 1998.
Politics is also covered by the following
Clarendon volumes:
Keyt, D., Politics V–VI, Oxford: Clarendon,
1999.
Kraut, R., Politics VII–VIII, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1997.
Robinson, R., Politics III–IV, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995.
Saunders, T. J., Politics I–II, Oxford:
Clarendon, 1995.
2.7 Rhetoric and Poetics
For an introduction to scholarship on the
Rhetoric and the Poetics, one can count on
the Rorty readers:
402
Rorty, A. (ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics,
Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1992.
—, Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996.
On Rhetoric, see also:
Furley, D. J. and A. Nehamas (eds),
Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Gross, A. G. and A. E. Walzer, Rereading
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University, 2000.
For detailed textual commentary on
Rhetoric, see the commentary in the volumes
of §§1.1.7 and 1.2.7, but especially:
Grimaldi, W., Rhetoric I: A Commentary,
New York: Fordham University, 1980.
—, Rhetoric II: A Commentary, New York:
Fordham University, 1988.
The “affects” or “emotions” forming the
center of Aristotle’s Rhetoric are the topic of:
Fortenbaugh, W. W., Aristotle on Emotion, 2nd
edn, Bristol: Bristol Classical Press 2002.
The “affects” also play a central role in the
argument of:
Heidegger, M., Basic Concepts of
Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. R. D.
Metcalf and M. B. Tanzer, Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University, 2009.
Of particular interest with respect to Rhetoric
are the notions of enthymeme and example,
discussed in:

Benoit, W. L. “The Most Significant Passage
in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society
Quarterly, 12 (1982), 2–9.
—, “On Aristotle’s Example,” Philosophy
and Rhetoric, 20 (1987), 261–7.
Burnyeat, M. “Enthymeme: Aristotle on
the Rationality of Rhetoric,” in Essays
on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, ed. A. Rorty,
Berkeley: University of California Press,
1996.
—, “Enthymeme: Aristotle on the Logic
of Persuasion,” in Aristotle’s Rhetoric:
Philosophical Essays, ed. D. J. Furley
and A. Nehamas, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994.
Hauser, G. A. “Aristotle’s Example
Revisited,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 18.3
(1985), 171–80.
Lanigan, R. “Enthymeme: The Rhetorical
Species of Aristotle’s Syllogism,” Southern
Speech Communication Journal, 39
(1974), 207–22.
Two commentaries on Poetics will prove
helpful:
Else, G. F., Aristotle’s Poetics: The
Argument, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, 1963.
Halliwell, S., Aristotle’s Poetics, Chicago:
University of Chicago, 1998.
Some attempts have been made in recent
years to reconstruct Aristotle’s lost account
of comedy, most notably:
Jenko, R., Aristotle on Comedy: Towards
a Reconstruction of Poetics II, Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1984.
403
Bibliography
The question of “tragic error” has been the
topic of a number of works, and especially of:
Bremer, J. L., Hamartia: Tragic Error in the
“Poetic” of Aristotle and in Greek Tragedy,
Amsterdam: Adolf A. Hakkert, 1969.
Dawe, R. D., “Some Reflections on Ate and
Hamartia,” Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 72 (1967), 89–123.
Stinton, T. C. W., “Hamartia in Aristotle and
Greek Tragedy,” Classical Quarterly, 25
(1975), 221–54.
“Catharsis,” the most vexing of notions in
Poetics, has naturally generated a mountain of
scholarship. To begin with one might consult:
Bernays, J. “Aristotle on the Effects of
Tragedy,” trans. J. Barnes, in Articles
on Aristotle, vol. 4, ed. J. Barnes, M.
Schofield, and R. Sorabji, London:
Duckworth, 1969, 164–5.
Golden, L., “The Clarification Theory of
Catharsis,” Hermes, 104 (1976), 437–52.
Keesey, D., “On Some Recent Interpretations
of Catharsis,” Classical World, 72 (1979),
193–205.
Nicev, A., L’énigme de la catharsis tragique
dans Aristote, Sofia: Académie Bulgare
des Sciences, 1970.
Erick Raphael Jiménez
Notes
1
See, further, the introductory discussion in
Grazzini’s “Chronology” above.
2
A fuller listing of works is to be found in
Grazzini’s “Chronology,” Twentieth-Century
Philosophy (II).
3
See ibid.
4
On the rise of interest in Aristotelian ethics, see
ibid.
 RESOURCES
Research in Aristotle entails acquaint-
ance with the Aristotelian texts, in Greek
and in translation, as outlined in §1 of the
“Bibliography,” as well as knowledge of
Aristotelian interpretation, as outlined in the
“Bibliography,” §2; and it entails in addition
the ability to make use of a number of other
Ancient Greek-specific and Aristotle-specific
resources, as outlined here.
The channels of contemporary Aristotelian
scholarship are becoming electronic ones.
Many of the best and most frequently used
resources are relatively antique as well and,
because therefore out of print, they are
widely and freely available online. So we
have focused in particular here on collecting
some of the essential materials for study in
the Aristotelian tradition now thus available.
Below we have clumped together five groups
of such resources: (1) resources generally for
work with Ancient Greek texts; some sites at
which to find Aristotle’s texts (2) in Greek
and (3) in translation; (4) some academic
journals with which the Aristotelian ought
be conversant; and (5) some professional
organizations centered around the study
of Aristotle or of ancient philosophy more
broadly.
404
General Ancient Greek
Resources
The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is an
immense, digitally searchable compilation
of Ancient Greek texts, including Aristotle’s
own, and it is housed online at:
TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, www.
tlg.uci.edu.
The Perseus Project is a similar venture; it
may be found at:
Perseus Perseus Digital Library, www.
perseus.tufts.edu.
In addition to the texts available at these
sites, they maintain a number of incredible
resources—to begin with, the best existing
Ancient Greek lexicon:
LSJ Greek-English Lexicon, ed. H. G.
Liddell, A. Scott, and H. S. Jones,
9th edn, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1925.
(n.b. A new Greek lexicon is presently
being compiled by a team at Cambridge
University.)

The LSJ is available both at the TLG
(www.tlg.uci.edu/lsj) and at Perseus (www.
perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseu
s:text:1999.04.0057); in both places it is
searchable.
Aristotle’s Texts in Greek
The five volumes of Bekker’s Opera (see §1.1
of the “Bibliography”) are available entirely
for free online as well. At this writing, one
may find it at a number of sites. An especially
easy-to-use copy is available at:
archive.org Volume 1: archive.org/stream/
aristotelisopera01arisrich
 olume 2: archive.org/stream/
V See also the vast manuscript collection at
aristotelisopera02arisrich
Etc.
In addition to making a still-valuable and
complete Greek text of Aristotle’s works
available, the Opera also includes the
still-unrivaled:
Index Index Aristotelicus, ed. H. Bonitz,
vol. 5 of Opera, ed. I. Bekker, archive.
org/stream/aristotelisopera05arisrich
Copies of the Bekker edition are also avail-
able on:
Google  Google Books, books.google.com
Readers should note, however, that at present
the labeling and naming of volumes suffers from
some confusion there, owing to an influx into
the e-book marketplace of print-on-demand
volumes frequently misunderstood by their
publishers. (E.g. a volume labeled “Aristotelis
405
RESOURCES
Opera, Volume 1,” is in fact Langkavel’s 1868
edition of PA.) Excepting the copies of the
Aristotelian texts available at the TLG (some
of which are taken from OCT editions), no
copies of the Bekker edition are searchable.
Other editions of Aristotelian texts are
available at Perseus and the TLG (see §1
above); many of these are based on the OCT
editions. The majority of “standard” critical
editions listed in the “Bibliography,” §1.1 are
not available online, except where copyrights
have lapsed. For other, mostly older editions,
see, to begin with, the links at:
UPenn Online Books by Aristotle,
http://onlinebooks.library.
upenn.edu/webbin/book/
lookupname?key=Aristotle
France’s Bibliothèque Nationale:
Gallica Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
http://gallica.bnf.fr
Digitized versions of much of the BNF col-
lection, including their medieval manu-
scripts, can be found there, and image files
of manuscripts can be viewed online or
downloaded.
Aristotle’s Texts in English
Translation
Most of the translations of Aristotle from
Ross’s and Smith’s Collected Works (see §1.2
of the “Bibliography”) are available for free
online. In particular, see:
ICA The Internet Classics Archive, clas-
sics.mit.edu
RESOURCES
Adelaide eBooks@Adelaide, ebooks.
adelaide.edu.au
Gutenberg Project Gutenberg, www.
gutenberg.org
Text from all three sites may be downloaded
in html format, and is searchable thus.
n.b. The valuable commentary of The
Oxford Translation volumes is not available
in the ICA, Adelaide, or Gutenberg texts.
However, some of these editions may be
found by searching Google Books; but see
the relevant cautionary note in §2 above.
Journals
The best way to keep abreast of contempo-
rary research in Aristotle is to read actively
journals specializing in Aristotelian or more
broadly ancient studies. Some of the more
well-known ones include the following:
Ancient Philosophy
Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient
Philosophy and Science
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie
British Journal for the History of
Philosophy
The Classical Quarterly
Elenchos: rivista di studi sul pensiero
antico
Epoché: A Journal for the History of
Philosophy
Les Études Philosophiques
Journal of Ancient Philosophy (online:
www.revistas.usp.br/filosofiaantiga/
index)
Journal of the History of Philosophy
Methexis: Rivista internazionale di
filosofia antica
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Philosophie Antique
406
Phronesis: A Journal for Ancient
Philosophy
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society
Proceedings of the Boston Area
Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy
Review of Metaphysics
Rhizai: A Journal for Ancient
Philosophy and Science
Professional Organizations
Another way to keep in the loop of
Aristotelian commentary is to keep track of
the activities, such as conferences and collo-
quia, of professional organizations devoted
to the study of ancient philosophy or of
Aristotle in particular. The following are a
few such organizations presently active:
Ancient Philosophy Society (www.
ancientphilosophysociety.org)
The Aristotelian Society (www.aristo-
teliansociety.org.uk/)
La Asociación Latinoamericana de
Filosofía Antigua (http://inif.ucr.ac.cr/
component/content/article/1/26-alfa-asoc
iacion-latinoamericana-filosofia-antigua)
The Australasian Society for Ancient
Philosophy
Centre d’études sur la pensée antique
(Kairos kai Logos) (www.kairoskailogos.
com/)
European Society for Ancient
Philosophy
HOPOS: The International Society
for the History of Philosophy of Science
(www.hopos.org)
International Association for Greek
Philosophy (www.hri.org/iagp)
Midwest Seminar in Ancient and
Medieval Philosophy (academic.mu.edu/
taylorr/Midwest-Seminar/Welcome.html)
The Northern Association of Ancient
Philosophy (www.ncl.ac.uk/historical/
research/groups/naap.htm)
 RESOURCES

Sociedad Ibérica de Filosofía Griega up.ac.za/default.asp?ipkCategoryID=18

(www.sifg.org) 434&subid=18434&ipklookid=9)
Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy The Southern Association of Ancient
(www.societyforancientgreekphiloso- Philosophy (www.uea.ac.uk/phi/
phy.com/) eventsnews/SAAP)
South African Society for Greek Benjamin J. Grazzini
Philosophy and Humanities (http://web. Erick Raphael Jiménez

407
 SOURCES OF TRANSLATED/
REPRINTED ESSAYS
Aubenque, P., “Aristote était-il
communitariste?” in En torno a
Aristóteles. Homenaje al profesor
Pierre Aubenque, ed. A. Álvarez Gómez
and R. Martínez Castro, Santiago de
Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de
Compostela, 1998, 31–43.
Berti, E., “Que reste-t-il aujourd’hui de
la Métaphysique d’Aristote?” in La
Métaphysique d’Aristote. Perspectives
contemporaines. Première rencontre
aristotélicienne (Aix-en-Provence, 21–24
octobre 1999), ed. M. Narcy and A.
Tordesillas, Paris/Bruxelles: Vrin/Ousia,
2005, 227–38.
Brague, R., “Sur la formule aristotélicienne
Ὅ ΠΟΤΕ ὌΝ (Physique, IV, 11 et 14),”
Du temps chez Platon et Aristote, Paris:
PUF, 2003, 97–144.
408
Cassin, B., “Dire ce qu’on voit, faire voir ce qu’on
dit,” Cahiers de l’Ecole des sciences philo-
sophiques et religieuses 5 (1989), 7–37.
Nussbaum, M. C., “Aristotle on Human
Nature and the Foundations of Ethics,” in
World, Mind, and Ethics: Essays on the
Ethical Philosophy of Bernard Williams, ed.
J. E. J. Altham and R. Harrison, Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1995, 86–131.
***
Note: Regarding the utilization of Greek font
and/or transliteration, the essays reprinted/
translated here rigorously follow the decisions
in the original publication, however disparate.
In the essays published here for the first time,
in general the passages from ancient texts
appear in Greek font, while isolated Greek
terms are transliterated.
 Index
abstraction  4, 9, 12–13, 41, 45, 49, 106,
115, 133, 178, 192, 214, 265, 286, 290,
299–301, 303, 342, 345
accident (sumbebēkos)  26–8, 69, 79, 108,
117–18, 151–5, 157–63, 173, 231–3,
243, 250, 282, 286, 352, 358, 366, 368,
377 see also essence
account  see logos
act (ergon, energeia)  35, 38, 75–6, 95–9,
108–11, 119, 153, 159, 165–6,
184–5, 227–31, 246–50, 264, 273,
289–90, 298–9, 328–30, 333–5, 372–3
see also activity; actuality
action (praxis)  12, 64, 99–101, 109, 112,
115–16, 158, 166, 176, 179, 197–9,
217, 227–38, 242–50, 265–6, 282,
287, 305–7, 339, 362–3, 369–72
see also practical (praktikon); work
(ergon)
activity (energeia)  35, 43–5, 47–8, 108,
130–4, 166, 179–81, 184–6, 202,
209–14, 230, 264–7, 271, 298, 305–7,
318–19, 335, 358
actuality (energeia, entelecheia)  99–100,
106–11, 116, 132–3, 175–7, 184,
228–30, 264–5, 270, 287, 299–305,
331–6, 358
affect (pathos)  95, 98–100, 132–3, 136–8,
184, 307, 371
affection (paschein)  see affect
aisthēsis  24, 44, 48, 109–11, 130–2, 349
see also sense
alloiōsis  132, 264 see also other
409
altruism  219 see also other
anachronism  2, 6, 12, 101, 283, 309n. 32,
338 see also historicity
analogy (analogia)  34–5, 49, 85, 140, 158,
165, 317, 343, 350 see also logos;
proportion
analysis (analutikē)  4, 9, 30, 48, 66–7,
75–7, 106–8, 267, 332, 388
analytic philosophy  327–32, 387–8
Andronicus  2–6, 173
Anglo-American philosophy  6–7, 13,
389–90 see also analytic philosophy
animal (zōion)  4, 7, 9, 12, 24–6, 41, 62, 65,
68, 95, 106, 110–19, 130–1, 148–50,
160–3, 181, 201–11, 215, 219–21, 251,
263–5, 268, 285–6, 303–7, 339–40,
352, 362 see also life; soul
anthropology  62, 247 see also human
Anzahl  see arithmos
aporia  10, 29, 331
appearance (phainomenon)  25–8, 59, 66,
98, 111, 203, 313–14, 318–20, 379
see also phenomenology
appetite (epithumia)  119, 191, 215, 280,
369 see also desire
archē  4, 41–50, 147–9, 152, 229, 298, 304,
307, 332 see also principle; source
Aristotelianism  91, 338, 385
see also Peripatetic school
arithmos  78–85 see also number; time
art (techn ē)  12, 29, 35, 67, 148, 167, 280,
283–5, 290, 302, 308, 376
aspect  78, 85, 184, 235, 302–3, 357
Index
assertion (apophansis)  353, 368
see also logos; statement
atomism  6, 60–2, 67–8 see also matter
Ausgleichung  282
Averroes  298, 304, 396
Avicenna  6, 330
bad  see evil
becoming (genesis)  4, 45, 75, 132, 139, 194,
265–6, 299, 303, 320, 332, 355
being (to on, einai)  5–6, 9, 11–15, 27–9,
35–6, 43–5, 47–51, 76–9, 83–4, 101,
119, 133, 150–5, 157–9, 162–4,
174–86, 283, 318–20, 327–36, 349,
368, 370 see also essence; substance
belief (pistis)  30–1, 47, 117, 175, 180, 184,
192–200, 204–8, 250, 306–8
biology  4, 11, 47, 59, 130–1, 150, 194,
202, 219–20, 327, 389–90 see also life;
nature
blindness  11 see also sight
body  10, 13, 21, 32, 59–69, 91–101,
106–15, 119, 132–4, 137, 152–3, 194,
205, 247, 264, 268–70, 272, 301,
306–8 see also life; nature
calculation  200–1, 284, 364 see arithmos;
number
canon (kanōn)  27, 34, 298, 300–1, 305
see also rule
capability  135, 217, 284 see also capacity
capacity  32, 41, 45, 112, 118, 131–4,
137–40, 159, 233, 244, 259, 269, 273,
285, 313, 339, 356 see also power
catharsis (katharsis)  279, 282–4, 364
cause (aitia, aition)  62, 65, 68, 114, 134,
148–9, 152, 163–7, 180–6, 229–33,
243–4, 248–9, 300–2, 307, 320, 331–5,
339, 350
chance (tuchē)  219, 230–3, 237–8, 339,
377
change (metabolē)  59, 78, 80, 82, 136, 151,
165–6, 177, 198, 205, 213, 245–7, 263,
265, 268, 302, 305, 320, 333, 367,
383–6 see also alloiōsis; becoming;
motion
410
character (ēthos)  30, 98, 118, 198, 203,
281, 289, 340–6, 350, 362
virtues of  227–38, 264, 268–73, 305–7,
353 see also choice
cheating  see deception
choice (prohairesis, proairesis)  193,
203–5, 208, 213–14, 227–33, 244–8,
250, 268–73, 307, 342, 345, 372
see also deliberation; practical wisdom
Christian philosophy  13, 297–8, 330, 370
Cicero  1–2, 219, 343, 370
citizen (politēs)  42, 191, 199, 214,
264, 269–73, 288, 305–6, 340–5
see also constitution; polis
city (polis)  31–3, 131, 199, 214, 269–71,
288, 320, 372 see also polis
common sense  35, 94, 109, 133–5, 284,
289 see also aisthēsis; works by
Aristotle, De Anima
community  7, 11, 191, 199, 205, 207, 216–
17, 236–7, 268–9, 315, 319, 338–43
communitarianism  13, 338–46
see also MacIntyre, Alasdair
comportment (hexis)  45, 47, 50–1, 114,
237, 285, 362 see also hexis
consciousness  4, 10, 28, 128–30, 133,
137–40, 288 see also aisthēsis;
intellect
constitution  75, 140, 148, 159, 163, 341–6
contemplation (theōria)  6–7, 98, 179–80,
306, 363 see also study
continuity (to suneches, sunecheia)  45–7,
65–9, 82, 100, 131–3, 149, 164–6,
194–7, 199–202, 216, 298, 304, 341,
358, 375
cosmos (kosmos)  4, 7, 65–7, 69, 166, 219,
268, 349, 363 see also nature
craft (technē)  177, 209–11, 229–33, 289,
376 see also art; making
Cratylus  27–9
deception  381 see also falsehood
decision (prohairesis, proairesis)  118, 199,
202, 213, 227, 297, 343, 356, 369, 372
see also choice
deconstruction  327

deduction (sullogismos)  3, 30, 332–3, 352,
356, 374
deed  see act; work
definition (horismos)  3, 8, 26, 30, 33–4,
41–51, 61–9, 80–4, 154, 162–4, 183,
266, 331–5, 355, 366, 369
deliberation (bouleusis)  42, 51, 107,
118–20, 232, 268, 304, 307, 343–4
see also choice
demonstration (apodeixis)  3–4, 27–30,
33, 43, 45–9, 80, 333–4, 352
see also knowledge; science
Descartes, René  6, 26, 60, 91, 330
desire  11, 13, 31, 34, 64, 92, 95, 99–100,
115–18, 138, 166, 176–9, 208–9,
215, 227–9, 233, 236, 246–51, 270,
287, 298–9, 303–7, 357, 361, 369
see also appetite
dialectic (dialektikē)  3–8, 29–30, 42–5,
48, 50–1, 82–4, 92, 178, 185, 196,
204, 208, 298, 314, 334, 346, 356
see also demonstration
difference (diaphora)  7, 41, 50, 63–5, 94,
109–11, 128–9, 135–9, 158, 163, 272,
301–2, 304–6, 316, 328–30, 332–6,
345, 356
division (diairesis)  30, 78, 82, 84, 95,
106–7, 117–18, 355 see also dialectic
echo/Echo  21–3, 26, 29, 35, 270, 272
education  4, 7, 12, 198, 214, 219, 262–73,
307, 345 see also hexis; virtue
ekphrasis  29, 33, 36–8 see also rhetoric
Eleatics  44, 60, 62, 182, 185
element (stoicheion)  49–50, 60–9, 76, 82–4,
96, 111, 118, 147, 160, 163–4, 178,
195–7, 207, 279, 282–3, 328, 333, 343,
374 see also archē
empirical  9, 42, 45, 47–8, 59, 68–9, 176,
181, 228, 284, 314
enactment  see act
end (telos)  31, 38, 92, 99–100, 165, 167,
175–6, 182, 229–36, 246, 249–51,
269–73, 303, 306–7, 342–3, 351, 358,
375–6
ens commune  157
411
Index
enthymeme  29, 402–3 see also
demonstration; performance; rhetoric
entity  42, 196, 298–9, 306, 368; see being;
essence; substance
environment (periechon)  9, 95, 106,
108–11, 118–19, 313
epistēmē  see science
epistemology  151, 368, 389
error (hamartia)  26, 116–18, 183, 229,
236, 246, 248–50, 283, 287, 290, 350
see also evil
essence (ti esti, ti ēn einai)  9, 44, 68–9, 92,
94, 101, 151, 159–63, 166, 177, 184–5,
329–31, 333, 335, 355, 370, 376, 379
see also being; substance
ethical virtues  see character (ēthos),
virtues of
ethics  5–6, 11–13, 32, 191–4, 199–207,
216–20, 228, 235, 238, 241–2,
263, 268, 270, 273, 363, 367, 389
see also virtue
Euclid  44, 48–50, 102n. 5, 279
eudaimonia  see happiness; well-being
evil (kakon)  11, 131, 176, 241–52
excellence  7, 11, 33, 195, 215, 224, 343,
346, 353 see also virtue
experience (empeiria)  6, 8–9, 11, 27, 42–5,
48–50, 59–61, 67–9, 98, 109, 112, 119,
134–40, 148, 177, 184, 192, 202, 215–
16, 227, 231, 250, 272, 281, 290, 317,
321, 330, 354, 357 see also empirical
explanation (aition)  see cause
faculty  30, 64, 91, 94, 99, 130–3, 183, 213,
356
falsehood (pseudos)  25–6, 116–19, 381
“fatal flaw”  see error
fate (tuchē)  191, 219, 281–7, 377
see also chance
Fink, Eugen  135–6, 140
first philosophy (philosophia prōtē)  4–6,
10–12, 147–59, 164–7, 173–4, 181–2,
184–5, 328 see also metaphysics
flourishing  204, 213, 234, 303–4, 361
see also happiness; well-being
force  see violence
Index
form (eidos, morphē)  9, 22, 25–6, 31,
42–50, 62–9, 75–6, 79, 83, 91–3, 96–8,
107–8, 111–12, 116, 135–8, 147–8,
151, 153–4, 160–5, 174, 195, 199–200,
214, 251, 301, 304–7, 316–20, 327–34,
357 see also matter; soul
fortune  237, 243–4, 269, 287–7, 377
friendship  2, 11, 198, 203–4, 228, 234–5,
331, 342
fulfillment  6, 92–3, 101, 147, 195, 268,
279, 361
function (ergon)  12, 21, 41, 43, 47, 76–9,
84–5, 97, 100, 130, 134, 164, 198, 204,
208–16, 220, 236, 242, 264, 339, 353,
360 see also act; work
generation  9, 60, 182, 185, 302, 305, 333,
355
genus  34–5, 41–2, 150–63, 211, 302,
328–30, 335, 355
god (theos)  35–6, 62–3, 67, 159, 166–7,
179–81, 194–5, 198, 244, 303, 306,
318, 330, 339–40, 363 see also being;
substance
good (agathon)  12, 23, 38, 91, 99, 112–15,
119, 131, 133, 166–7, 176, 191, 194,
200–14, 217–20, 227–39, 241–52, 264,
269–73, 280–1, 286–8, 304–6, 319,
338–45, 349 see also virtue
government  167, 214, 305, 343–6
see also constitution
gnōsis  42–5, 48–50 see also knowledge
ground  see archē
growth  176–7, 210–11, 269, 361, 366, 379
see also life; nature
habit (ethos)  29, 42, 95, 246–7, 250, 268–
70, 299, 303–8, 359 see also education;
virtue
happiness  176, 245, 269, 286, 342–3, 361
see also well-being
health  132, 152–3, 231, 233, 247, 306, 345
see also body
Hegel, G. W. F.  3, 21, 30, 85, 149, 312,
342–3
Heidegger, Martin  22–9, 38, 79, 85, 135,
327–8, 330, 387
412
Hellenistic philosophy  2, 6
Heraclitus  27, 128–9, 132, 135–6, 139–40,
217–18
Hesiod  36, 182, 321n. 3
hexis  42, 45, 50, 250, 264, 266–7, 273,
299, 315, 335, 359 see also character
(ēthos); choice
historicity  see history
history  5, 10, 14, 22, 36, 68, 94–5, 131,
149, 159, 173–86, 216–18, 279, 290,
318, 342–4
homonyms  33–4, 150–2, 157, 232, 251,
327, 331–2, 335
horismos  46, 83, 162, 369
see also definition
human being  7, 11, 41–3, 117, 128–9, 132,
135–6, 140, 147, 150–1, 166, 185,
191–201, 241–2, 244, 251, 263–73,
285, 298, 304, 314, 321, 339–46, 352
see also human nature
human nature  42, 191–2, 202–15, 268–9,
339
human rights  219, 338, 345
huparchein  see archē
Husserl, Edmund  10, 26, 69, 133, 140, 327,
387
hylomorphism  108, 192, 213–14, 216
see also body; soul
idealism  6, 281, 312, 317, 328
see also Descartes; Hegel; Kant
identity  11, 33, 42, 148, 151, 154, 159,
161–3, 194–202, 205–6, 218, 234, 338,
340, 342, 355 see also self
illusion (apatē)  38, 137–9
see also deception
imagination (phantasia)  9–10, 96–9,
106–7, 112, 114–19, 137, 197, 202,
217–18, 299, 301–4, 307, 318–21, 378
see also intellect; knowledge
imitation  36, 238, 281, 284–7, 334, 367
impasse  see aporia
in itself (kath’ hauto)  8, 38, 62, 128, 130,
133, 148, 159, 166, 189, 235, 265–6,
329–31, 335 see also essence
incontinence (akrasia)  12, 242, 246–8,
250–1

Index Aristotelicus (Bonitz)  87, 348, 384,
392
individuality  3, 6–7, 11, 42, 45, 48,
61–9, 106–7, 114, 148, 151, 160–1,
163–4, 176, 179, 195, 198, 201–2,
212–15, 220, 244, 268, 297–300,
313, 327–9, 333–5, 339–42, 345–6
see also particular
indivisibility  60–1, 66–7, 78, 109, 178, 358
induction (epagōgē)  30, 43, 353, 354, 359
see also knowledge
inference  175, 374 see also deduction;
syllogism
infinite (apeiron)  46, 60–1, 65–9, 139, 166,
175, 299, 315, 318, 341
intellect (nous)  9–10, 12–13, 26–7, 41–2,
45, 50, 95, 98, 100, 115–16, 119, 186,
191, 196–7, 200, 335, 367
divine intellect  166, 181, 185
as natural phenomenon  107–8, 205,
297–308
passive and intelligible object
(noētikon)  233, 303, 316–19
virtue of (aretē noētikē)  98, 100, 227–8,
265–70, 272–3 see also mind
intellectual virtues  see intellect, virtue of
intermediary  176, 327, 367 see also mean
intuition  see intellect
Jaeger, Werner  13, 156–7, 164, 167,
311–13, 386
judgment  24, 26–7, 36, 95, 98, 101, 116–18,
164, 192–3, 195, 201–2, 204–6, 213,
217–19, 230, 280, 288, 304, 344
see also practical wisdom
justice  29, 38, 48, 77, 157–8, 198, 219,
229–34, 248–9, 287, 315, 338–40,
342–5
Kant, Immanuel  6, 27, 48, 68–9, 230, 312,
387–9
kind (genos)  4, 27, 62–3, 66–7, 69, 111,
158, 185, 194–5, 204–6, 232–4,
248–50, 266–8, 270–3, 286, 290, 328,
340, 355
knowledge (epistēmē, technē)  6–7, 9,
11, 33–6, 41–51, 62–6, 118, 128–9,
413
Index
138, 147–9, 162–6, 175–80, 183,
229–36, 265–8, 271–3, 299, 302–7,
360, 376 see also intellect; science;
understanding
language  see logos
Laws (Plato)  223, 269, 336
lie  see falsehood
life (zōē, bios)  4, 7, 11, 35–6, 47, 106–8,
112, 115–19, 128–34, 138–41, 166–7,
174–6, 193–219, 233–5, 241–4,
269–72, 284–5, 299–301, 306, 312–14,
317–19, 339–40, 342–3, 345–6, 354,
361, 382 see also animal; motion; soul
literature  36, 182, 279, 286
logic  3–4, 8–9, 41, 45, 60, 66, 154, 174,
236, 285 see also demonstration;
knowledge; logos
logos  3, 8, 22–4, 26–7, 32–3, 43–6, 48, 50,
76–7, 83–5, 131, 182, 185, 211, 218,
265, 271, 280, 313–15, 319–20, 331,
339–40, 343–6, 374 see also assertion;
demonstration; reason
longing  37, 369 see also appetite; desire
McDowell, John  218, 220
MacIntyre, Alasdair  220, 274, 338, 344
magnanimity  228, 234–7
magnitude (megethos)  62, 66–9, 77–8, 108,
133, 179, 366
Maimonides  298, 304
making (poiēsis)  12, 29, 35, 177, 198, 211,
218, 371 see also act; production
Marx, Karl  214–15, 225
material  see matter
mathematics  7, 45, 49, 150–1, 156, 167,
174, 177–8, 181, 185, 265, 282,
300–1, 343–5 see also science, as
demonstrative
matter (hulē)  4, 9, 14, 31, 59, 62–9, 91–4,
100–1, 107, 110–12, 118–19, 160–5,
181, 185, 192, 301–3, 331–2, 377
see also body; hylomorphism; nature
mean (mesotēs)  109, 111, 114–15, 242,
245, 251, 306, 367
meaning (sēmainein)  25, 28, 33, 43–4,
46, 50, 83, 151–2, 157, 331–4, 349,
Index
380 see also works by Aristotle, De
Interpretatione
measure (metron)  12, 68, 111, 117, 241,
243, 250, 280, 284–5, 289, 307
memory  44, 64–5, 95, 115, 130, 138, 148,
200–1, 237, 265, 299, 302, 341
Meno (Plato)  42, 44–5, 266
metaphor  29, 33–7, 130, 282, 318–19
metaphysics  4–5, 7, 22, 29, 149, 157,
159, 169, 202, 206, 280, 327–31,
334–6, 349 see also archē; first
philosophy; works by Aristotle,
Metaphysics
method  1–8, 23, 30, 41–2, 48–9, 59–60, 79,
174, 202–3, 264, 328, 333
mimesis  see imitation
mind  91–101, 119, 179–84, 312–19, 367,
389 see also intellect
mistake  236, 247–9, 305–6, 350
see also error
mode  33, 42–6, 48, 50–1, 77–8, 129,
133–4, 140, 151, 185, 297, 301–3, 307
moment  see now see also time
motion (kinēsis)  4, 9, 47, 60–7, 107–8,
111–16, 184, 198, 229, 233, 263,
266–8, 299, 303–5, 365
self-motion  112, 299, 301, 307
“unmoved mover”  10, 344–5, 363, 366,
371 see also soul; substance; time
myth  14, 21–2, 38, 133, 197–8, 367
naturalism  8, 13, 284, 314, 321, 346, 388
nature (phusis)  4–5, 8–9, 12–13, 33, 36–8,
41–3, 45–50, 91, 117–19, 138, 152,
156–8, 164–7, 173–4, 181–5, 197–209,
231–3, 245–7, 263–5, 267, 284–6,
298–301, 318–21, 343, 346
by nature (phusei)  47, 59–60, 62–9,
133, 147, 178–80, 231, 244, 250–2,
265, 272–3, 302–7, 314, 339–40
see also human nature
necessity (anankē)  30, 44, 79, 92–5, 99,
118, 176, 181, 284, 286, 288, 297,
333–4, 351 see also demonstration
neo-Platonism  1, 328–30, 334
Nietzsche, Friedrich  31, 280, 283
414
noise (psophos)  27, 112, 380 see also sound
now (nun)  9, 76–80, 83–5, 114–16, 117,
137, 194–6, 266–7 see also time
objectivity  8, 14, 24, 30, 116, 149, 184–5,
229–30, 282, 340, 344
occurrence  27, 177, 244, 272, 285, 371
oneness (hen/heis/mia, henotēs)  1–3, 9,
12, 45, 47, 82–4, 106–9, 147, 150–2,
162–3, 167, 176, 184, 263, 270, 307,
328–32, 340–2, 358 see also being
ontology  8, 29, 150, 155–9, 251, 328
see also first philosophy; metaphysics
order  2, 5, 7, 9, 30, 65, 107, 167, 173–4, 180,
183–4, 196, 218, 282–3, 339–40, 343
Oresteia (Aeschylus)  199
organism  9, 12, 48, 99–100, 106–8, 111,
380 see also body; life; soul
origin  8, 11, 43, 59, 136, 141, 183, 233,
264, 299, 304, 320, 354 see also archē;
becoming
other  11, 41–3, 45–7, 63–4, 109–11,
113–15, 119, 132–6, 139–40, 161–4,
194–7, 199, 203, 205, 207, 216, 248,
266, 313, 320, 332
ousia  10, 45–6, 49, 62, 94, 152, 155, 330–5
see also being; substance
Ovid  21
Parmenides  27, 29, 44, 59–60, 151, 177,
184, 329, 335
particular (kath’ hekaston)  82, 98, 148, 150,
154–6, 158–9, 163–4, 175–8, 182–3,
219, 234, 237, 263–7, 272–3, 331–2,
364
performance  29–32, 141, 231, 272–3, 353,
360 see also definition (horismos);
demonstration
Peripatetic school  2–3, 13, 173, 311–21
Phaedo (Plato)  1, 196, 205
phenomenology  22–30, 33, 35, 37, 59–62,
67–9, 139–40, 147, 387
phenomenon  3–4, 8–9, 11–12, 22–33, 36–8,
49, 68, 76–8, 81, 128–30, 139, 268, 315
see also appearance; phenomenology
Philebus (Plato)  200–2, 205, 208, 212–13

philia  194, 203–4, 213, 228, 234
see also friendship
Plato  1, 6–7, 11, 22, 31–3, 37, 44, 60, 75,
82–3, 128–9, 133, 138, 149, 157, 163,
166, 174–5, 182–3, 185, 191, 196–8,
202–3, 214, 269, 280, 287–8, 297–8,
300, 304, 306, 329–30, 332, 344–5
Platonism  13, 45, 157, 300, 302–3, 331,
333
pleasure (hēdon ē)  34, 37–8, 112, 114, 133,
200–1, 208, 211–12, 215, 232, 235,
265–6, 272–3, 281–2, 285, 303, 306,
339, 343, 361, 362
plot (muthos)  279–90, 367
Plotinus  60, 329, 370
polis  7, 12, 176, 203, 269–73, 304–6,
339–43, 372 see also city; politics;
politikon
politics  5–6, 11–12, 31–2, 216, 263, 304,
306, 341, 346, 399
politikon  204, 206, 345 see also human;
politics
polity  see constitution; government
posterior  9, 68, 75, 78–80, 83–5, 341
see also being; time
potential (dunamis)  62–8, 85, 91, 101,
108–11, 113–19, 132–3, 166, 175–7,
183–5, 266, 283–4, 287, 301–4,
327, 331, 333, 335, 339, 354, 356
see also capability; capacity; power
power (dunamis)  32, 38, 106–19, 135–6,
180–4, 198, 264, 272, 301, 303–7,
317–20 see also capability; potential
practical (praktikos)  49, 82, 99–100, 108,
112, 115–19, 156, 177–8, 181, 192,
198, 200–2, 208–9, 212–19, 227–33,
306–8, 338, 343–4
practical wisdom (phron ē sis)  212, 227–8,
233, 264, 267–8, 272–3, 379
practice (praxis)  3, 78, 80, 100, 209–11,
244, 264, 280, 338, 372
Pragmatism  388
predication (katēgorein)  3, 9–10, 26, 38,
66–8, 75–7, 79–80, 84–5, 150–5, 159–
64, 184–5, 328, 331 see also assertion;
demonstration; logos
415
Index
presentation  14, 96, 98, 164, 378
see also representation
principle  4–5, 10, 27, 31, 43–5, 47–50,
59–61, 64–9, 77, 79, 99–100, 107–8,
110–11, 118–19, 152–5, 162, 165–6,
174, 212, 246–8, 250–1, 273, 298,
300, 304–7, 320, 331–5, 340–2, 344–5
see also archē
prior  4, 8–9, 28, 78–80, 83–4, 109–11,
114–19, 156, 164, 173, 208, 266, 302
see also being; time
privation (sterēsis)  131, 141, 152, 165, 250,
374
production (poiēsis)  12–14, 33–8, 60–9,
100, 112, 115, 118, 136–8, 156,
229–33, 263, 269, 271, 284–8, 302,
306, 314, 320, 343, 371–2
proportion (analogon, analogia)  280–1,
284, 287–9, 344, 351, 366, 398
see also analogy
Protagoras  27–8
prudence  see practical wisdom
psychology  64, 92–3, 114–15, 238, 279,
282, 288, 297, 315
purification  see catharsis (katharsis)
purpose  see end
puzzle  see aporia
Quintilian  2
rationalism  6, 13, 101, 175, 185, 344, 354
see also reason
reason  6, 13, 33, 77, 98, 109, 131–2, 165,
175, 198–202, 208, 210–20, 231–3,
246–50, 270, 273, 280, 285–6, 289,
298, 306–7, 317, 343, 345–6, 366
see also logos
recognition (anagnōrisis)  203, 207, 215,
234, 236, 279, 281–3, 313, 315, 321,
351 see also knowledge
recollection (anamnēsis)  115, 138, 265–6,
352 see also knowledge; Meno
regime  see constitution; government
relation (pros ti)  41, 48, 63–4, 67–9,
78–81, 84, 91–3, 95–6, 100–1, 109–13,
118–19, 151–3, 156–9, 162–3, 166–7,
Index
234, 264–8, 302–5, 314–16, 331–6,
341, 345–6, 373
representation  25–6, 37, 50, 94–8,
138, 141, 268, 285, 287, 363, 378
see also imitation
reproduction  112, 211 see also life
Republic (Plato)  7, 129, 138, 198, 269
reversal (peripeteia)  279, 288, 371
rhetoric  5, 8, 14, 29–35, 43, 48, 175,
206–7, 210, 283, 289, 351, 371–2
rule  44–5, 47–8, 50, 176, 203, 205–6,
251, 270, 285, 306, 342, 345, 354
see also archē; canon (kanōn)
science (epistēmē)  6, 9, 27–9, 62–9, 167,
191–2, 202–3, 206, 208, 300, 306–7,
329–31, 360–1
of causes  106, 119, 147–52, 164, 334
as demonstrative  29–31, 41, 47, 50
and desire  175, 178–9, 181–2
as empirical  9, 47–8, 59, 68–9, 176,
314
of first principles  10, 155–9, 176–82
see also intellect; knowledge
self  207, 216
self-governance  140, 242–3, 250, 273
self-knowledge  5, 11–12, 108, 110–12,
116, 197–8, 236, 249
self-motion  see motion
self-sufficient (autarkēs)  176, 191, 198,
201, 203, 207, 215–19, 306–7, 330
see also identity
sense  8–10, 24–30, 34–6, 38, 42, 47–9,
51, 59–69, 81–4, 94–101, 106–15,
118–19, 129–40, 150, 152–3, 156–9,
161–7, 178–84, 203, 214–15, 265,
267, 299–304, 307, 316–20, 328,
335–6, 349–50 see also aisthēsis
separate (chōristos)  5, 10, 82, 91–4, 97,
107–10, 118, 129, 156, 161–3, 167,
184, 207–8, 251, 298–304, 317,
332–3, 370–1, 375
serious (spoudaios)  212, 249, 269, 286–7,
373
shape  see form
sight  22, 28–9, 32, 34, 37, 64, 94, 134–5,
140, 285, 362 see also sense; vision
416
simply (haplōs)  5, 11, 44–5, 50, 112, 116–17,
136, 139–40, 269, 282, 333–5, 352
sleep  10, 128–41
Socrates  21, 30, 32, 69, 128, 151, 196,
200–1, 205, 266, 330
Sophist (Plato)  22, 122
sophistry  6, 32, 35–8, 342, 356
sōphrosunē  211, 212
soul (psuchē)  9–10, 13, 23–4, 26, 29, 32,
76, 85, 93–5, 99, 106–19, 130–1, 150,
174, 180, 191, 196, 210–11, 217–18,
241, 247, 251, 263–8, 270–3, 283, 287,
297, 303, 305, 308, 382 see also desire;
reason; sense
sound (phōn ē, psophos)  21–6, 28–9, 33, 36,
38, 112, 115, 129, 174, 231, 289, 319,
380, 382 see also logos
source  see archē
species  30, 33–4, 41–2, 48, 91, 112, 119,
150–1, 155, 163–4, 195–7, 199, 201,
206–7, 211, 213, 219, 329, 344, 357
spectacle  38, 289
speech  21–2, 24, 28, 30, 32–3, 35, 44, 46,
48–9, 175, 184, 198–201, 213, 300,
312, 314, 319, 366 see also logos
state (hexis)  42, 45, 50, 99, 106, 112,
116–18, 128–30, 136–40, 213, 229–30,
232, 238, 245, 249–50, 265, 279, 359
see also comportment; hexis
state (polis)  131, 214, 342, 344–5; see city;
government; polis
statement (apophansis)  26, 30, 50, 68,
131, 151, 153–4, 163, 181, 185
see also assertion
Stevens, Wallace  191, 312, 315, 318, 321
study (theōria)  14, 96, 106–8, 119, 129,
136, 155–9, 173–4, 181, 271, 299, 363
see also spectacle
substance (ousia)  10, 28, 46, 60–2, 66, 106,
152–67, 173–4, 184, 196, 251, 299,
301, 327, 349, 370 see also being; first
philosophy
substrate (hupokeimenon)  76–7, 79, 132,
154, 159–63, 165, 333, 378
syllogism (sullogismos)  29, 33, 43, 45–8,
50, 99, 374 see also demonstration;
knowledge

system  1–3, 5–6, 10, 29–30, 60, 81, 129,
147, 150, 167, 183, 200, 208, 215, 219,
251, 270, 282, 287, 313, 341, 343
territory  340–1
textual  2, 14, 192, 264, 385
thinking  3, 5–6, 10, 13, 48, 62, 75, 91–101,
107–8, 116, 118–19, 139–40, 166, 174,
177, 179, 184, 193, 199–200, 206–7,
212–13, 219, 263, 266–7, 284, 298,
301–7, 311–21, 335 see also intellect
thisness (tode ti)  308, 377 see also separate
ti ēn einai  see being; essence
Timaeus (Plato)  82, 166
time (chronos)  4, 9, 28, 65, 67, 75–85,
95–7, 109, 129, 162, 165, 176, 180,
183, 185, 217–18, 266, 272, 329, 343,
381
tragedy  176–7, 280, 282–9
triangle  44, 49–50, 82
truth (alētheia)  8, 10–11, 12, 23–30, 48, 98,
116–19, 153–4, 173–7, 179–85, 205,
218, 228, 248, 251, 272, 285, 307, 312,
316, 350
understanding (epistēmē)  see knowledge
unity  see oneness
universal (katholou)  2, 30–1, 33, 41–5, 62,
65, 67–8, 92–3, 140, 148, 150, 154–6,
158–9, 163, 173–4, 176, 178–9, 181–2,
218–19, 263–7, 272–3, 284, 289, 305,
331–4, 338, 340, 342, 344–6, 365
unjust  32, 131, 220, 232–3, 248–9, 286–7,
339 see also vice
vice  152, 218, 242–8, 250–1, 305
see also evil
violence (bia)  82, 134–6, 180, 183–5, 217,
267, 279, 305, 320, 351, 354, 366
see also motion; nature
virtue (aretē)  2, 33, 62, 133, 211, 214,
227–8, 248, 263–7, 305, 353
ethical virtue (aretē ēthikē)  see character
(ēthos)
intellectual virtue (aretē
noētikē)  see intellect
see also good
417
Index
vision  43, 45, 50, 166, 185, 287, 290, 311,
317 see also aisthēsis
vitality  see life
voice  see sound
wakefulness  128, 131, 133–4, 136–8
weakness of will (akrasia)  see incontinence
well-being (eudaimonia)  174, 304, 306–7,
380 see also happiness
wholeness  3–4, 6–7, 37, 68, 79, 82, 111,
113–15, 119, 165, 167, 174, 179,
181–4, 197, 217, 227, 230, 263,
269–71, 288, 301, 321, 366, 367, 374
Williams, Bernard  23, 192–4
wisdom (sophia)  7, 31–2, 38, 114, 128,
147–50, 164, 173, 175–8, 182, 212,
244, 271, 373 see also intellect,
virtue of
Woodbridge, Frederick  13, 311–21
work (ergon)  33, 42–3, 113, 115–18, 130,
175, 185, 209–13, 267–9, 271–2,
315–16, 318, 358, 360–1 see also act
works by (attributed to) Aristotle, 
Alexander or On Colonies  2
De Anima  4, 9, 13, 24, 26, 81–2, 92–4,
96–8, 100, 106–9, 111–12, 115, 116,
119, 132, 136, 264, 297–304, 307,
314–16
De Caelo  4, 9, 60, 66–7
De Insomniis  129, 134, 136–7
De Interpretatione  3, 23, 25–6, 32
De Motu Animalium  113, 218, 320
De Philosophia  4
Eudemian Ethics  213, 231, 233, 235–6,
244, 331, 362, 369
Magna Moralia  241, 244
Metaphysics  4–6, 10, 13, 24, 27–8, 31,
34–5, 45, 47, 64, 95, 147–55, 159–66,
173–5, 177, 179, 180–6, 231, 250,
265–7, 297–8, 314, 317, 327–8, 331–3,
336, 370
Nicomachean Ethics  4, 5, 7, 31, 48, 50,
147–8, 166, 174, 191, 194–8, 200,
202–4, 208, 211–12, 227, 230–3,
241–2, 245, 248–50, 265, 267,
269–70, 272, 297–9, 301, 304–7, 340,
343–5
Index
On the Cosmos  2
On Divination in Sleep (De divinatione
per somnum)  10, 129, 136
On Kingship  2
On Memory and Recollection  115, 138,
274
On Sleep and Wakefulness (De Somno et
Vigilia)  10, 129, 131, 134, 136, 137
Organon  3, 8, 264
Physics  3, 4, 6, 9, 30, 35, 42–9, 60, 64–8,
75, 78, 106, 151, 157, 173, 182, 230–1,
263–7, 272–3, 299–300, 314
Poetics  5, 8, 12, 33–5, 176, 238, 279,
282, 289, 319
Politics  11, 31, 131, 176, 195, 205, 264,
268–73, 306, 339–44
418
Posterior Analytics  3, 4, 30, 33–4, 42–3,
45–6, 50, 81, 95, 150–2, 154, 299
Prior Analytics  3, 4, 29, 72, 351, 356,
359, 370, 375, 382
Rhetoric  5, 8, 29–36, 230, 243, 351, 363,
371–2
Sophistical Refutations  3, 175
Topics  3, 33, 54, 72, 154, 257, 308, 356
world  4–5, 8, 33, 34, 36, 41–2, 44–5, 47,
49–50, 59–60, 69, 81, 98, 111–12,
114–19, 128–9, 139–40, 156, 166,
175, 183, 199, 202, 204, 210, 215,
217–20, 227, 232–3, 247, 251, 267,
271, 283, 285–6, 288–9, 311, 313–14,
317, 320, 328, 330, 336, 338, 365, 370
see also cosmos; nature