c. Sophia and Philosophia (in Aristotle) (2022) (original) (raw)
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Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda - New Essays, edited by Christph Horn, Boston/Berlin 2016 (Philosophie der Antike. Veröffentlichungen der Karl und Gertrud Abel-Stiftung, Bd. 33), 2016
In Metaphysics A 6-7 Aristotle gives a more precise elaboration of several features which characterize the mode of being of the first principle (eternal, pure actuality, free of matter, metaphysically simple; moving without itself being moved, in the highest degree intelligible and desirable; pure thinking, best and eternal life). In this article I will be concerned exclusively with the feature of thinking in the sense that the first principle is not only the highest object of thinking, but it is itself pure thinking. When at Met. A 7, 1072b14-26 Aristotle ascribes to the first principle a certain kind of life, and qualifies this more specifically as the activity of reason in the mode of contemplation, he argues for this feature in a significantly different way from the previous ch aracte ristics. In what f o llows I will develop and defend an interpretation of this passage according to which we are here dealing with an argument � rom analogy. _ On my reading, Aristotle wants to show in this passage how lt is that we can determine the 'pure actuality' of the first principle based on � he highes t realization of human thought. He succeeds in doing so by show ing that in human thinking there is a special 'structure of actuality', which, h ? wever, due to his ontological perfection has to be present in God in a hig her form. I will show that, contrary to the usual reading of this passage, t � e inte rpretation developed in this essay requires fewer additional assump tio ns, is closer to the text and, in general, can better accommodate the unique to pic discussed at Met. A 6-7. The following article is a reworked and shortened version of chapter 4 of Herzberg, S. 2013: Menschli che und göttliche Kontemplation. Eine Untersuchung zum bios theoretikos bei Arist oteles, Heidelberg. I thank Manfred Weltecke for translating my text into English. 4 Cf. also E. N. X 4, 1175al2: iJ 6e �Tl tvepyeux �-5 See Laks, A. 2000: Metaphysics A 7, in: M. Frede/D. Charles (eds.), Aristotle's Metaphysics Lambda. Symposium Aristotelicum, Oxford, 232: "Whether one renders the term by 'way of life' or, perhaps more neutrally, by 'occupation', something more than mere existence is presupposed, namely a life." See also Bordt, M. 2006: Aristoteles' Metaphysik XII, Darm stadt, 116 f. 6 Cf. Met. A 6, 1071b19 f.: 6ei 6.pa elvat apxi)v-rowiiT11V �<; iJ ou<rla tv&pyew. See also A 7 , 1072a32; A 8, 1074a35 f. 7 Cf. Bordt (see note 5), 101. God as Pure Thinking. An Interpretation of Metaphysics A 7, 1072b14-26 159 something that can guarantee an eternal and continuous motion must be conceived. This then leads him to the concept of 'pure actuality'. This con cept describes the essence of the first principle of motion and the other (two) cha racteristics are connected with this concept via a conceptual necessity. 8 Within a second series of predicates the first principle is qualified further; more precisely, it is thus qualified with regard to the eternal and uninterrupt ed motion of the first heaven. The first feature in this series characterizes the first principle as moving other things, while it itself is unmoved.9 In support of this claim Aristotle gives the following argument: "There is therefore also something which moves them. And since that which is moved and moves is in ter mediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eter nal, substance, and actuality" (A 7, 1072a23-26). 10 Aristotle develops this argument further at Phys. VIII 5. Here he proves the necessary existence of some unmoved moving being. 1 1 The eternal and immaterial substance, which essence consists in actuality and which is identified as unmoved, moves in the way an object of desire and thought moves other things, and this is the second feature in this series of predicates. For objects of desire and thought �ove as mere final causes, without being moved themselves. In order to JUstify that the first principle does de facto move other things in this way, 12 Aristotle tries to show that the primary instances of what is desirable and what is thinkable are identical: The primarily desirable is not that which just 8 9 To this first series other characteristics can be added, e.g. that owing to its pure actuality this principle "can in no way be otherwise than as it is" (A 7, 107268) and that it is "absolutely necessary" (b13); or the characteristics that this principle exists "separate from sensible things" (1073a4 f.), is "without parts and indivisible" (1073a6f.; see also A9, l075a6 f.) and "one both in formula and in number" (A 8, 1074a36 f.; I owe this last point to Lloyd Gerson). Following Horn (see note 3) one may indeed call these "divine attributes" (32 f.) or also "predicates of perfection" (41). Bordt, M. 2011: Why Aristotle's God is Not the Unmoved Mover, in: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 40, 91-109 is right to point out that to be an unmoved mover is not an essential feature of the first substance, but merely a relational one, i.e., it has this feature only in relation to the realm of the perceptible and changeable substances (see previously Menn, S. 1992: Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good, in: Review of Meta physics, 45, 545). The first substance is later identified with God (1072b30), not insofar as it is an unmoved mover but insofar as it leads the best kind of life, which is the activity of reason. lO At this point it becomes clear that the second series of predicates is joined with the first Series (CXfaWV tcai ouoia Kai 6V&pr6UX OOO'll). 11 There is no agreement as to which passage of Phys. VIII 5 Aristotle is referring here. See Laks (see note 5), 217-219, for more details on this question. 12 See Bordt (see note 9), 107: "Aristotle is not interested only in some general claim to the effect that there are cases where something unmoved can move something eise; rather, he is aiming eo show that one very particular state of affairs actually obtains, namely that the unmoved mover in fact does move (what it moves) as an object of thought and desire". 1028 h27-32 (x6tepov e!al nv� ,rapa t� alalhJt� ii ou,c eia{, Kal CMal itli><; sla{, Kal x6tepov llan � XOJPIO'rr(ouala ...) and A 1, 1069a33 f.