Abstract
The indefensible ideas of Aristotle with which we shall be dealing are ideas such as that eels arise, not from eels, but from mud and slime, that the faculty of reason is not seated in the brain or in any other bodily organ, and that some humans are slaves by nature, ideas that are known, some twenty-three hundred years after they were written down, to be false. These ideas are a problem for a contemporary Aristotelian if they have been validly derived from the general principles of Aristotle’s philosophy. For in that case the indefensibility of the idea will stem from one or more of his general principles. This might, and probably should, lead one to conclude that no reasonable person should be an Aristotelian in the twenty-first century. No dedicated Aristotelian, including this one, can welcome this conclusion. Hence, the goal of this paper is to show how it can be avoided.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I saw such a glass case in Athens.
- 2.
Occam’s eraser, according to an infamous pun of Paul Ziff.
- 3.
“We suppose that the gods are superlatively blessed and happy. But what sort of actions should we assign to them? Just ones? Won’t they appear laughable making contracts and returning deposits and things of that sort? Or the actions of a brave man, then, enduring terrors and facing danger because it is noble? Or freehanded actions? To whom will they give? It would be strange, too, if they’ll have coinage or some such thing. As for temperate actions, what would they be? Is such praise not unseemly, that [the gods] do not have bad appetites? To those who run through every sort [of action], the circumstances of action would appear petty and unworthy of gods. But yet everyone supposes them to be alive and hence to be active; for of course they do not suppose them to be asleep like Endymion. But if one takes away from a living thing acting, and still more making, what is left except contemplating? Therefore, the activity of god, surpassing [all other] in blessedness, would be contemplative” (NE X.1178b8-23). All translations from Greek are my own.
- 4.
ἡ νόησις νοήσεως νόησις.
- 5.
See Dicks (1970), pp. 211–14.
- 6.
For an interpretation of Aristotle that preserves and emphasizes the traces of Plato, see Gerson (2005).
- 7.
- 8.
Here is Aristotle’s argument: “It is clear that there is no place or void or time outside the heaven [i.e. beyond the celestial spheres]. For in every place it is possible for body to be present; and void is said to be that in which body is not present, although it is possible for it to become present; and time is a number of motion, and motion without natural body is not possible. But it has been shown that, outside of the heaven, body neither exists nor can come into existence. It is evident then …” (Cael I.9.279a11-17).
- 9.
The Galilean principle is entertained by Aristotle himself in arguing that every sublunary body has a definite lightness or heaviness (Cael III.2.301a22-b17). “If a moving body possessing neither lightness nor heaviness is to be,” he says, “it will be necessary for this body to be moved by force, and being moved by force makes the motion endless (ἄπειρον)” (301b1-4). Aristotle thinks such motion impossible; but we Galileans know he is mistaken—that a body in outer space is neither light nor heavy and, if given the slightest nudge, will move and never stop moving. I’m indebted to Fred Miller for drawing my attention to Aristotle’s statement.
- 10.
The suggestion to not stop with Newton is due to my erstwhile colleague, the philosopher of science John Manchak.
- 11.
The theory of general relativity is Einstein’s mathematical expression of this idea. In this theory gravity, rather than being a force, is the four-dimensional curvature of spacetime, and the trajectory of a freely falling body is a geodesic of this curve.
- 12.
See Einstein (2005), pp. 82–91 and Renn (2007). Historians of physics have difficulty finding anything positive to say about Aristotle’s account of motion. The distinguished American physicist and Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg in his recent book on the emergence of modern science concludes his chapter on Aristotle by remarking that “[i]t never was fruitful to ask what motions are natural” ([2016], p. 30). Weinberg and I were students at Cornell at the same time, so I emailed my classmate and asked him if Aristotle and Newton were not connected in the way I’ve just indicated. This is his response: “I accept that Aristotle was opposing natural to forced, but I don’t think that was a useful distinction, because what is forced is also part of nature, and needs to be understood along with everything else. There is no useful distinction.” This response, I think, shows impatience with Aristotle’s analysis of the concept of nature. Admittedly what is forced is a part of universal nature (for which see Cael I.2.268b11; Met. Γ.3.1005a32-33, Λ.1.1069a30-b2, 10.1075a11). But each of Aristotle’s five elements also has its own proper nature (Cael I.2), and it is in this more restricted sense of ‘nature’ (for which see Cael III.2.301b17-20 and An II.4.416a9) that the unimpeded motion of each of the elements is natural and forced motion is unnatural. I can’t forbear noting that Weinberg himself invokes the concept of nature in writing about quantum mechanics: “Lately,” he writes, “I have been thinking about a possible experimental search for signs of departure from ordinary quantum mechanics in atomic clocks. At the heart of any atomic clock is a device invented by the late Norman Ramsey for tuning the frequency of microwave or visible radiation to the known natural frequency at which the wave function of an atom oscillates when it is in a superposition of two states of different energy. This natural frequency equals the difference in the energies of the two atomic states used in the clock, divided by Planck’s constant. It is the same under all external conditions, and therefore serves as a fixed reference for frequency, in the way that a platinum-iridium cylinder at Sèvres serves as a fixed reference for mass.” ([2017], p. 53. My italics of course.)
- 13.
HA V.1.539b7-14, 19.550b32-551a13, VI.15.569a24-b9, VI.16; GA I.1.715b25-30.
- 14.
See Strick (2000).
- 15.
HA V.11.538a3-13, VI.16; VIII.2.592a1-27; and GA III.11.
- 16.
On the life cycle of eels see Leroi (2014), pp. 228–29, 231–32.
- 17.
See Balme (1962).
- 18.
See Lennox (2001).
- 19.
It is true that in biological reproduction anomalies, or monstrosities (τέρατα), occur from time to time such as a snake with two heads or a chicken with four legs (GA IV.4.770a15-25). Snake comes to be from snake and chicken from chicken not invariably, but only for the most part (ἐπὶ τὸ πολύ). The failure of nature represented by monstrosities is, in Aristotle view, due to the recalcitrance of matter, which prevents the form from fully realizing itself (3.769b10-13, 4.770b15-17).
- 20.
An II.4.415a26-b1, GA II.1.731b24-732a1, GC II.10.336b25-34.
- 21.
Even allowing for periodic setbacks. For loss and rediscovery see Cael I.3270b19-20, Met Λ.8.1074b10-12, Meteor I.3.339b27-29, 14.352a29-33, Pol VII.10.1329b25-35.
- 22.
For other passages along the same line see Anagnostopoulos (2009), pp. 116–17.
- 23.
When this passage was shown to Darwin he said, “We here see the principle of natural selection shadowed forth.” ([1988], p. xiii, n. 1).
- 24.
For an evaluation of this remark see Gotthelf (2012).
- 25.
In terms of actuality and potentiality the eyeball of a foetus has sight potentially, a potential that develops in the womb and is fully actualized by the time a baby is born (An II.5.417b16-18); and an eyeball with sight (i.e. an eyeball that can see) is, in turn, in a state of potentiality until its potential is actualized in actually seeing (417a21-b9). Thus there are two levels of actuality and potentiality, a first-level actuality being identical with a second-level potentiality.
- 26.
Fred Miller’s coinage: no such word appears in the Greek lexicon.
- 27.
Plato, Ti. 73cd. The author of On the Sacred Disease writes: Men ought to know that from no place other than there [i.e. the brain] pleasures, glad thoughts, laughter, and jests come to us, as well as pains, sorrows, cares, and tears. And by this, in particular, we think, see, hear, and distinguish the ugly and beautiful, bad and good, pleasant and unpleasant, discerning some by convention and perceiving others by their utility. By this same thing we are mad and distraught, and fears and terrors assail us, some by night and some by day, sleeplessness and inopportune wanderings, and improper thoughts, and absent-mindedness and unaccustomed acts. And all these things we suffer from the brain, when it is not healthy … ([Hippocrates], On the Sacred Disease XVII. Dated to the second half of the fifth century BCE [Craik (2015), p. 195].) For an account of Aristotle’s views about the brain see Gross (1998), pp. 18–24.
- 28.
An II.9.421b23-25, 10.422a32-33, 12.424a28-30; III.2.426a30-b3, 4.429a31-b3, 13.435b7-19.
- 29.
For a more granular rendition of Aristotle’s argument see Shields (2016), pp. 299–303.
- 30.
‘An’ rather than ‘the’ since the negation of the conclusion may be exchanged for the negation of any one of the three premises. The four sentences (1), (2), (3), not-(4) compose an inconsistent tetrad. The affirmation of any three entails the denial of the fourth.
- 31.
There are three different manuscript readings of the passage cited: φάντασμά τι: ‘a sort of image’; φαντάσματι: ‘by means of an image’; and φαντάσματα: ‘images’. See Miller (2018b) ad loc. Whichever reading is adopted the flagged sentence expresses a truth by Aristotle’s lights. Aristotle explains his view in more detail at Mem 1.449b30-450a7.
- 32.
See Cael I.9.279a17-22, the passage flagged by footnote marker 8 above.
- 33.
According to Plotinus, the threefold hierarchy of the One, reason (νοῦς), and soul (ψύχη), which constitutes the backbone of his philosophy and comes directly from Plato (Ennead V.1.8.1-14), exists in each individual human being as well as in the cosmos as a whole (V.1.10.1-6). Cosmic Νοῦς is equated with the divine intellect of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Λ.9, the active intellect of de Anima III.5, and the Demiurge, or Νοῦς, of Plato’s Timaeus (V.1.8.4-6; Emilsson (1999), p. 238). An inchoate, or potential, Νοῦς is derived atemporally from the One and becomes fully actualized and filled with Platonic Forms when it ‘looks’ back at the One (V.1.7.1-13, V.3.11.1-16, V.5.1-3). “The One is none of the things in Νοῦς” (V.1.7.21-22), which is to say that it is not an object of reason (νοητόν) (i.e. not conceptualizable). An object of reason has form and definition; the One has not (V.1.7.13-26). In Plotinus the shortcoming of reason, or νοῦς, is intrinsic to reason itself, not to any direct or indirect connection with the body.
- 34.
“God cannot be seen in His essence by a mere human being, except he be separated from this mortal life. The reason is because … the mode of knowledge follows the mode of the nature of the knower. But our soul, as long as we live in this life, has its being in corporeal matter; hence naturally it knows only what has a form in matter, or what can be known by such a form. Now it is evident that the Divine essence cannot be known through the nature of material things.” (Summa Theologica I, Q. 12, Art. 11 translator unknown).
- 35.
According to Kant the sensible world, or the world of appearances, is constructed by the human mind by imposing a priori forms—space and time, as well as cause and effect and the rest of the categories—which are supplied by our cognitive faculties, upon sensory matter, which we receive passively. The noumenal world, which exists independently of the human mind and thus free of these a priori forms, is entirely unknown to us.
There is a great deal of Aristotle in all of this. Not only is the world of appearances given a hylomorphic analysis, but the noumenal world, lying outside space, time, and causality, closely resembles the realm in Aristotle’s universe that lies beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, for which see Cael 1.9.279a11-22 (quoted above in footnote 8 and the passage flagged by the footnote marker).
- 36.
Newman (1887–1902), vol. 2, p. 146.
- 37.
In addition to the earlier references see NE VIII.11.1161b4; EE VII.9.1241b17-19, b22-24, 10.1242a28-29.
- 38.
Implied by Aristotle’s words: “if not, this is absurd since they are humans and share in reason.”
- 39.
The square brackets here and in the next step signal that Aristotle does not take either step explicitly.
- 40.
For an opposite approach to Aristotle’s odious doctrine see Howard Curzer (2012), pp. 374–82. Curzer maintains that “Aristotle’s description of natural slaves match[es] a subset of the people we call mentally ill” and that “Aristotle’s proposal for treating such people does not differ substantially from the way in which we [enlightened folk] actually treat some of these people today” (p. 379). “Natural slavery,” he claims, “is Aristotle’s infelicitously named version of a for-profit, involuntary commitment facility for the mentally ill” (p. 380). Such an interpretation of Aristotle’s doctrine is called for, he thinks, by the principle of charity (pp. 381–82). Curzer’s approach illustrates a straightforward way of dealing with an indefensible Aristotelian idea that has so far gone unmentioned—namely, by embracing it.
- 41.
In the Nicomachean Ethics called ‘the theoretical life’ (ὁ θεωρητικὸς βίος) (I.5.1095b19) or ‘the life of reason’ (ὁ κατὰ τὸν νοῦν βίος) (X.7.1178a6-7).
- 42.
These three lives are discussed in Keyt (2017), pp. 73–109.
- 43.
ὁ ποιητικὸς βίος, an expression that does not occur in Aristotle.
- 44.
In Aristotle’s view theoretical activity outranks practical on the happiness scale (NE X.8.1178a9). Productive activity would be a tertiary form of happiness (see VI.2.1139a35-b3).
- 45.
This topic is pursued in more depth in Keyt (2017), pp. 223–39.
- 46.
Pol I.2.1252b30, 1253a2, 1253a25; VII.8.1328a21-2.
- 47.
Met Δ.11.1019a2-4; and see Cat 12.14a29-35, Phys VIII.7.260b17-19.
- 48.
See Pol I.5.1254a28-33.
- 49.
Although Aristotle knew a lot about bees and writes at length about them in the History of Animals at V.21-22 and IX.40, he seems to have been unaware how perfectly a colony of honeybees exemplifies the priority principle.
- 50.
For a detailed analysis of Politics I.2 see Keyt (1987/2017, pp. 111–38). My conclusion “that according to Aristotle’s own principles the [polis] is an artifact of practical reason, not a product of nature, and that, consequently, there is a blunder at the very root of Aristotle’s political philosophy” was not warmly received by all members of the coterie of philosophers and scholars who were currently studying the Politics. As a sample of the reaction I cannot do better than quote the words of the honoree of this Festschrift. In response to my remark about a blundering Aristotle, he says that the objections to the notion that a polis is a natural whole that are presented in my article “are so devastating and the confusions so far reaching that they tend to produce a sense of disquiet. Aristotle is of course capable on non sequiturs and inconsistencies. But it strains credulity to suppose that he would have been so obtuse regarding the implications of his own definitions, so blind to manifest contradictions with his own central doctrines, and so inept in laying the foundations of the Politics” (Miller (1989), p. 211). One aim of revisiting the issue is to allay our honoree’s sense of disquiet.
- 51.
There is one occurrence of the saying among the proverbs ascribed to Aesop, who lived in the sixth century BCE. But given the six centuries that separate it from the second occurrence, one may be skeptical of this attribution.
- 52.
This would not be the only metaphor in the Politics. Most notably Aristotle uses metaphor to characterize deviant constitutions. When he says that deviant constitutions are δεσποτικαί, he is transferring the word δεσπότης (‘master’) from the domestic to the political realm. The citizens under every constitution, even a deviant one, are legally free (and presumably free by nature), and do not have masters (δεσπόται) literally. Thus, when Aristotle says that deviant constitutions are δεσποτικαί, he is speaking metaphorically: the rulers under such a constitution are metaphorical masters of their subjects, and their subjects are metaphorical slaves. Once again this is a metaphor by analogy: since the rule of a master over slaves stands to the domestic realm as the self-aggrandizing rule of officials stands to the political realm, one can speak of the latter as despotic rule. See Keyt (2018).
- 53.
Hobbes (1651), ch. 19, p. 95.
- 54.
Cael I.2.300a23; see also Phys IV.8.215a1–3, V.6.230a29–30; GA V.8.788b27; Rhet I.11.1370a9.
- 55.
For further discussion of deviant constitutions along these lines see Keyt (2017), pp. 153–55.
- 56.
For the inference from nature to justice see Pol. I.5.1255a1–3, III.17.1287b37–39, VII.9.1329a13–17. For the expression see III.6.1279a19.
- 57.
Pol. III.6.1279a17–19 together with 7.1279a32–39.
- 58.
This interpretation is congruent with Aristotle’s account of natural political justice in Nicomachean Ethics V.7, for which see Keyt (2017), pp. 14–19.
- 59.
As I once thought he did (Keyt (2017), p. 170).
- 60.
Keyt (2017), pp. 243–46
- 61.
For charitable interpretation see Cohen and Keyt (1992).
- 62.
Thus, William Galston says that his neo-Aristotelian work Justice and the Human Good “is not a slavish transcription of Aristotle; it is not even, strictly speaking, updated Aristotelianism. Rather it is an attempt, inspired by Aristotle, to think about contemporary problems from a perspective that differs from both contemporary orthodoxies and heterodoxies” (Galston (1980), p. xi).
- 63.
Unlike words on the stems νέο- and πάλαι-, those on the stem μέσο-, such as μέσος (‘middle’) and μεσότης (‘mean’), are prominent in Aristotle—e.g. the middle term in Aristotle’s syllogistic (An. Pr I.4.25b32–36); the middle of Aristotle’s cosmos toward which water and earth move by nature, away from which air and fire move by nature, and around which the ether revolves by nature (Cael I.2.268b22-269b16); the mean between two vices in Aristotle’s account of moral virtue (NE II.6.1106b36-1107a2); and the midpoint, the ‘now’, dividing past and future in Aristotle’s analysis of time (Phys VIII.1.251b20). There are over eight hundred occurrences of these two terms in the Aristotelian corpus. To use the prefix ‘meso-’ to name a kind of Aristotelianism that lies between two others could not be more Aristotelian.
- 64.
Keyt (1999).
- 65.
Along the same lines Fred Miller distinguishes three hermeneutical methods for dealing with Aristotle. See Miller (1995), pp. 21–22. Only the coinage is mine.
- 66.
Annas (2011).
- 67.
Miller (2018a).
- 68.
Since this paper is likely be my swansong, it is fitting that, at the very point in time when professor morphed into professor emeritus, the original version was given as a Larwill Lecture at Kenyon College (my alma mater) where I first caught the charm of Aristotle. An intermediate version was presented at a conference in Chicago on neo-Aristotelianism sponsored by the Center for the Aristotelian Tradition at the University of Notre Dame.
The written comments I received from Fred Miller and my wife Christine Keyt improved the current version markedly.
References
Anagnostopoulos, G. (2009). Aristotle’s methods. In G. Anagnostopoulos (ed.), A companion to Aristotle (pp. 101–22). Wiley-Blackwell.
Annas, J. (2011). Intelligent virtue. Oxford University Press.
Balme, D. (1962). Development of biology in Aristotle and Theophrastus, Phronesis, 7, 91–104.
Cohen, S. M., & D. Keyt, (1992). Analyzing Plato’s arguments: Plato and Platonism. In J. C. Klagge & N. D. Smith (Eds.), Methods of interpreting Plato and his dialogues (Supplementary volume of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy) (pp. 173–200). Clarendon Press.
Craik, E. M. (2015). The ‘Hippocratic’ corpus: Content and context. Routledge.
Curzer, H. J. (2012). Aristotle and the virtues. Oxford University Press.
Darwin, C. (1988). The origin of species 1876. Vol. 16 of P. H. Barrett & R. B. Freeman (eds.), The works of Charles Darwin. New York University Press.
Dicks, D. R. (1970). Early Greek astronomy to Aristotle. Cornell University Press.
Einstein, A. (2005). Relativity: The special and general theory (R. W. Lawson, trans). Pearson Education. Originally published in 1920.
Elders, L. (1965). Aristotle’s cosmology: A commentary on the de Caelo. Van Gorcum.
Emilsson, E. K. (1999). Cognition and its object. In L. P. Gerson (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Plotinus (pp. 217–49). Cambridge University Press.
Galston, W. A. (1980). Justice and the human good. University of Chicago Press.
Gerson, L. P. (2005). Aristotle and other Platonists. Cornell University Press.
Gotthelf, A. (2012). Darwin on Aristotle. In his Teleology, first principles, and scientific method in Aristotle’s biology (pp. 345–69). Oxford University Press.
Gross, C. G. (1998). Brain, vision, memory: Tales in the history of neuroscience. MIT Press.
Hankinson, R. J. (2009). Natural, unnatural, and preternatural motions: Contrariety and the argument for the elements in De Caelo I.2-4. In A. C. Bowen & C. Wildberg (Eds.), New perpectives on Aristotle’s de Caelo (pp. 83–118). Brill.
Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. Crooke.
Keyt, D. (1987). Three fundamental theorems in Aristotle’s Politics. Phronesis, 32, 54–79.
Keyt, D. (1999). Aristotle Politics, books V and VI: Translated with an introduction and commentary. Clarendon Press.
Keyt, D. (2017). Nature and justice: Studies in the ethical and political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Peeters.
Keyt, D. (2018). Aristotelian freedom. In D. Schmidtz & C. E. Pavel (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of freedom (pp. 160–75). Oxford University Press.
Lennox, J. G. (2001). Teleology, chance, and Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation. In his Aristotle’s philosophy of biology (pp. 229–49). Cambridge University Press.
Leroi, A. M. (2014). The lagoon: How Aristotle invented science. Viking Penguin.
Miller, F. D. (1989). Aristotle’s political naturalism. Apeiron, 22, 195–218.
Miller, F. D. (1995). Nature, justice, and rights in Aristotle’s Politics. Clarendon Press.
Miller, F. D. (2018a). Aristotle on democracy and the marketplace. In G. Anagnostopoulos & G. Santas (Eds.), Democracy, justice, and equality in ancient Greece: Historical and philosophical perspectives (pp. 269–86). Springer.
Miller, F. D. (2018b). Aristotle On the Soul and other psychological works: Translated with an introduction and notes. Oxford University Press.
Newman, W. L. (1887–1901). The Politics of Aristotle. With an introduction, two prefatory essays, and notes critical and explanatory. 4 vols. Clarendon Press.
Renn, J. (2007). Classical physics in disarray: The emergence of the riddle of gravitation. In M. Janssen, J. D. Norton, J. Renn, T. Sauer, & J. Stachel (Eds.), The genesis of general relativity (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 250) (Vol. 1, pp. 21–80). Springer.
Shields, C. (2016). Aristotle De Anima: Translated with an introduction and commentary. Clarendon Press.
Strick, J. E. (2000). Sparks of life: Darwinism and the Victorian debates over spontaneous generation. Harvard University Press.
Weinberg, S. (2016). To explain the world: The discovery of modern science. Harper Perennial.
Weinberg, S. (2017). The trouble with quantum mechanics. New York Review of Books, 64, 51–53.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keyt, D. (2024). Dealing with Aristotle’s Indefensible Ideas. In: Keyt, D., Shields, C. (eds) Principles and Praxis in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 155. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51146-2_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51146-2_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-51145-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-51146-2
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)