PH354 Aristotle

1. PH354 Aristotle Week 1. The Desire to Understand & Nature t.crowther@warwick.ac.uk

2. Why Study Aristotle? • In almost every area of philosophy, Aristotle’s treatments of those topics are the starting points for all subsequent accounts. • Aristotle’s own views provide a rich source of insight into contemporary philosophical problems. Philosophers are increasingly turning to Aristotle to develop neo-Aristotelian accounts across a range of contemporary literature.

3. A Brief Biography • Born in Stagira, Northern Greece, 384 BC • At 17, commenced study in Plato’s Academy in Athens • Left Athens after Plato’s death, to set up his own academy at Assos, North West Turkey. • Returned to Athens in 334 BC to found the Lyceum. Period of composition of mature work. • Left Athens again in 323BC after the collapse of Macedonian Empire, and died in Chalcis, Euboea in 321 BC.

4. A Guiding Thought • “Aristotle believed that to understand ourselves we must understand the world. He also believed that to understand the world one must understand oneself.” (Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand, 1988, 14)

5. Lecture Plan • What do the famous opening lines of Aristotle’s Metaphysics mean? What arguments does Aristotle offer for the truth of the claim he makes? We will identify some difficulties. • We will consider Aristotle’s famous discussion of the ‘four causes’ in Physics, Book II. We will look in more detail at the idea of a ‘final cause’; at what Aristotle’s ‘teleology’ involves, and what arguments he offers for this approach. • In the final part of the lecture we will see if this discussion can provide us with some clues about the lines from the Metaphysics.

6. Metaphysics Book 1(A) • 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 anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. (980a21-26)

7. Metaphysics Book 1 (A) • Nature – An inner principle (explanation) of change, growth and development • Desire – To have a desire to F is to be motivated to get F • Knowledge – Translates ‘episteme’. To know in this sense is to know why something occurs, rather than merely to know that it occurs. (Lear (1988) translates ‘episteme’ as ‘understand’ to mark this)

8. Metaphysics Book 1 (A): Arguments • That we have a desire for knowledge is the best explanation of ‘the delight we take in our senses’. • That we have a desire for knowledge is the best explanation of the natural curiosity of human beings, and capacity for ‘awe and wonder’.

9. Physics Book II: The notion of cause (aitia) • …(W)e must see if we can characterize and enumerate the various sorts of cause. For since the aim of our investigation is knowledge, and we think we have knowledge of a thing only when we can answer the question about it ‘On account of what?’ and that is to grasp the primary cause—it is clear that we must do this over coming to be, passing away, and all natural change; so that knowing their sources, we may try to bring all particular objects of inquiry back to them. (194b, 17- 23)

10. Physics Book II: The notion of cause (aitia) • ‘Aitia’ is usually translated as either ‘cause’ or ‘explanation’. • A ‘cause’ in Aristotle’s sense is an answer to a ‘Why?...’ question (e.g. Why are teeth sharp?, Why did the glass smash?) • Causes are things or features in the mind-independent world, which we grasp through their being things which can be given in answers to questions.

11. Physics Book II: The Four Causes • The Material Cause: That out of which (e.g. the bronze of which this statue is made) • The Formal Cause: The ‘what it is to be’ something. (e.g. what it is to be this statue of Venus is to be something intentionally produced to look like Venus) • The Efficient Cause: That which produced or brought this thing about (e.g. the father is the cause of the child) • The Final Cause: What something is for (e.g. health is what medicine, or taking a walk, is for).

12. Physics Book II: The Final Cause • It is easy to make sense of the notion of final causes for the intentional actions performed by rational beings. Actions have aims or ends which are determined by the intentions that agents perform them with. • But Aristotle thinks that there are final causes or aims in nature independent of the purposiveness of the actions of rational beings.

13. Physics Book II The Final Cause • The Inadequacy of Materialist Explanation with respect to the explanations of regularity • The Evidence of Ends in Nature • The Structural Similarity between Craft (i.e. agential activity) and Nature 4. An overarching thesis: final cause is form

14. Physics Book II: On Materialist Explanation If something comes to be regularly, then it cannot come about out of luck or spontaneity. Things (i.e. the growth of teeth in a way that makes them suitable for taking on nutrition effectively) areeither a coincidental outcome (due to luck or spontaneity) or for something. The growth of teeth in such a way that makes them suitable for taking on nutrition effectively) cannot be a coincidental or lucky outcome (because the growth is regular). Therefore the growth of teeth must be for something. (See Shields (2007), Charles (1991), Matthen (2009) for further discussion of this argument)

15. Physics Book II: Final Cause as Form “And since nature is twofold, nature as matter and nature as form, and the latter is an end, and everything else is for the end, the cause as that for which must be the latter.” 199a 30- 31 “The last three (causes) often coincide. What a thing is, and what it is for, are one and the same, and that from which the change originates is the same in form as these.” 198a 25- 27 The final cause is form considered in a certain way.

16. Physics Book II: Final Cause as Form • The final cause is the formal cause (form) of a thing (i.e. the ‘what it is to be’ something). • There are forms in (non-human, non-deliberating) nature. • Therefore, there must be final causes in (non-human, non-deliberating, nature). This is a view that is emphasized by, amongst others, Lear (1988), Shields (2007) and Johnson (2005)

17. Physics Book II: Final Cause as Form • Form can be present in something in a state in which it is not fully present or real; i.e. potentially. It can also be present actually, or in actuality. • Form is actually present when potential is realized; when whatever is spelled out in the what it is to besomething is, in fact, how that thing is. • The final cause is form in its actual(rather than potential) state; the form as realized. It is the thing being as it is supposed to be, given that it is of the kind that it is. (This is the normative significance of form, again).

18. Physics Book II: Final Cause as Form in Things • A way to think about form as potential and actual is that form is potential in the left and actual in the right: • An acorn The mature oak tree • A newborn baby The mature human being • A network of fungus mycelia A mushroom

19. Physics Book II: Final Causes of Changes or Processes • As well as things, processes or changes in nature are aimed at things, or have ends. • Some examples: • Maturation (becoming sexually reproductive) • The process of reproduction • Taking on nutrition (active preservation of the organism) • Fight and flight (active preservation of the organism)

20. A Minimal Teleology • Biological entities are just those things that can be understood in terms of biological ends or aims (like survival, growth and reproduction) • There are final causes in nature because there are biological entities (things with biological natures). “That there is such a thing as nature it would be ridiculous to try to show; for it is plain that there are many things of the sort just described” (Physics, Book II, 193a3- 5)

21. Metaphysics Book 1 (A) Again: Two Ideas • All human beings by nature desire to know = All human beings have knowledge as their final cause/end/the good for things of that kind. • All human beings have knowledge as their final cause/end/the good for things of that kind = All human beings (in so far as they are human beings) live a life that can be understood in terms of knowledge.

22. Metaphysics Book 1 (A) Again: An Interpretive Line of Thought • Your good (that which is your end or aim) is that which you desire not for anything else but ‘for its own sake’. • Knowledge is what we human beings desire ‘for its own sake’. • So, knowledge is the chief good for human beings.

23. Metaphysics, Book 1 (A) Again: Premise 1 • ‘If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything else for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good.’ (Nicomachean Ethics, 1094a 18- 22)

24. Metaphysics, Book 1 (A) Again: Premise 2 • “And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant… therefore since they philosophized in order to escape ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.” (Metaphysics, 982b,17- 22)

25. Metaphysics Book I (A) Again: An Epistemic Life • Consider, the sentence that opens the third paragraph of the first book of the Metaphysics: • The animals other than man live by appearance and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race also lives by art and reasonings. (980b, 25- 27)

26. Metaphysics Book I (A) Again: An Epistemic Life in the Nicomachean Ethics • A clearer account of it (i.e. ‘good’ or ‘the chief good’ of human beings) is still desired. This might perhaps be given, if we could first ascertain the function of man…. Life seems to be common even to plants, but we are seeking what is peculiar to man. Let us exclude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be a life of perception, but it also seems common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There remains then, an active life of the element that has a rational principle. 1097a 24- 1098a 5 • ‘The function of man (is) a certain kind of life, and this to be an activity or actions of the soul implying a rational principle…’ 1098a13-14

27. Metaphysics Book I (A) Again • Faculties: The ‘delight we take in our senses’ is valuing the senses, and that is a way of saying that the senses are a good for the rational being. They are good because they are a route to knowing. So, we understand the faculty of sense through its knowledge providing role • Character traits: Curiosity is something that can be understood in terms of knowledge. We understand the trait by thinking of the aim of knowing. • Activities: Some are conscious attempts to get knowledge, some are being taught, or teaching. Some are reaching to the fridge for ice-cream. But they can all be understood in terms of knowing things.

28. Lecture Summary • There are difficulties in explaining the notion of a ‘desire to know’ exclusively in terms of something like ‘natural curiosity’. • The ‘final cause’ is what things are aimed at, or what they are for. We looked at some arguments that established something of a case, and then at the fundamental idea that final cause is form as active. • I then built a case that for the view that at the start of the Metaphysics, Aristotle is inviting us to think of human beings as beings the function of which is to live a life that can be understood in terms of knowledge (the most basic rational principle). We can explain what a human being is, most fundamentally, in terms of knowledge.