Becoming, the General Before the Particular, and Why the End Is Better Than the Means

Orientation #

He hands out “the next group of readings” (ten copies) and says readings twelve and thirteen, the first two of the group, will do “something like he did in ten and eleven”: find a common basis and become strong in it; he refers back to what “we saw” in the tenth and eleventh readings (change is by contraries; the Chinese I Ching; the modern physicists) (prev. lecture). He says he will not come next week but “the eighteenth”, and not the twenty-fifth. The previous class worked through Physics I on the principles of change and the pattern “three is enough”; the next opens with Heisenberg on Descartes before returning to the Physics.

The class, in order #

1. Prologue: readings 12 and 13 do what 10 and 11 did (“find a common basis, common thought”) #

Aristotle is “working his way from reasonable guesses and probability … towards necessity”, gradually. In 12–13, as in 10–11, he will (a) find what is common and (b) become strong in it, following “the central thinker of human thought”, Heraclitus: “Those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all … therefore we ought to follow what is common.” In 10–11 the common thing was common in two ways: found in all change, and found in the thinking of all the Greek natural philosophers (and the Chinese, and the moderns). He became strong in that by many steps, the greatest in the eleventh reading (prev. lecture).

2. Three differences from 10–11 (“there will be these three differences”) #

1. The common basis is about becoming in general, not change in general (the word becoming will be the prominent word).
2. It is common to all men, not just the natural philosophers.
3. He becomes strong in it with complete necessity. Result is similar: three things found in every becoming, as before three things in every change. In reading 13 he will determine the truth with complete necessity and correct something from reading 10 that was “not altogether necessary”: that change is between contraries. “We’ll see what that is when we get there.”

• Aside: he sometimes despairs that students see the difference between the two stretches, since “at a distance” it looks like the same thing again; Aristotle goes “wisely and slow” like Friar Lawrence (“they stumble that run fast”), like Thomas “the dumb ox” spoken of before.

3. Change vs. becoming: going vs. coming (“becoming seems to be like coming”) #

Point: change and becoming name the same reality but not as full synonyms; becoming looks at it from the end, change from the point of departure.

• Same reality: the change from sick to healthy is the sick becoming healthy; butter out of the refrigerator changing from hard to soft is the hard becoming soft.
• Not full synonyms: three feet vs. thirty-six inches — same length, but three ≠ thirty-six and foot ≠ inch, so not exactly the same meaning.
• Easier example: the student says “I’m going home for Thanksgiving,” the mother says “you’re coming home.” Same trip, different language? No — the student is at the point of departure (Assumption College), the mother at the point of destination. (Student: “That’s perspective.”) If they were synonyms the mother would say “going” as much as the student.
• Application: becoming = coming to be; you look at it from the point of view of what comes to be, at the end. Change is like going: “My, he’s changed” — he has departed from the way I remember him. “I think there’s some truth to that.”
• In teaching 10–11 the key word was change (“changes between contraries”); here it will be becoming; “I don’t know if I understand fully the significance of that.” In both cases you arrive at three things, but perhaps seen differently, “from the point of view of coming rather than going.”
• Student’s question: would all men see it from the side of becoming and the philosophers from the point of departure? — “I don’t think so … maybe it’s more reflected in their speech about becoming.”
• Student’s question: different Greek words? — Yes: metabolē for change, kinēsis motion.

4. How to find what is common to all men (“that’s not the editorial we”) #

He cannot open everyone’s head or read all men as he read the philosophers. In the second paragraph of reading 12 “we say” is not the editorial we, nor “we Greek natural philosophers”, but all of us. He begins from the way we all speak about becoming, because that speech reflects a common, confused understanding all men have of becoming; then he comes down to the things themselves. “It’s kind of unique what he does here.”

5. First paragraph read: the general before the particular (“this is the natural road”) #

Read: “Let us speak, therefore, in this way: first, considering about every becoming, for it is according to nature, and this is the natural road, to state first the general, and then to consider what is proper about each thing.” This recalls the first reading, and was illustrated in 10–11: all agreed in general that change is by contraries but disagreed about which pair is fundamental (prev. lecture).

• Aside: in other parts of philosophy people get into trouble because they do not understand the general before the particular — good, better, virtue in general. This launches the long illustration that follows.

6. Illustration: the good in general (“is it good because we want it”) #

His classroom “Platonic dialogue” on good:

1. Socrates asks the boy “What is good?”; boy: candy, pizza, vacation, bicycles, baseball. As with Meno and Euthyphro: these are examples; what do they have in common? Only that he wants them. First definition: the good is what all want / what is desired.
2. Imitating the Euthyphro: is it good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good?

• Against “good because wanted”: non-controversial cases where you yourself later saw the wanted thing was bad — the last drink at the party that makes you feel lousy; the kid who drives 100 mph, ends in a tree, in traction. Nobody forced him; he wanted it.
• Against “wanted because good”: why is the good not always wanted? and why is the bad sometimes wanted? — if good caused wanting, then (contrary causes, contrary effects) bad should cause aversion, but people want bad things.

3. A “duality on both sides”; he judges the arguments against “good because wanted” stronger.
4. Before answering objections, a simple induction — a table of fundamental goods and the corresponding desires: food/hunger, water/thirst, reproduction/desire to reproduce, knowledge/desire to know, sleep/desire to sleep. Is food good for the dog or man because of hunger, or can you see a reason apart from hunger? Everybody can; likewise water, reproduction (only way the species stays in existence), sleep. So nature did not give the dog hunger to make food good, but because food is good and necessary, gave hunger to pursue it. Inductively: not good because wanted, but wanted because good.
5. Answering the objections: “use your reason … look before and after”: is there something after the good but before desire? Romeo and Juliet: at the start Romeo loves Rosaline; Juliet was beautiful then but he had no desire for her; he went to the Capulets’ party and saw her. What comes between is his eyes (a student offers “the better”; he says no). Likewise the philosopher loves wisdom only after knowing what it is. So the good is the cause of desire insofar as it is known, by sense or reason: the good as known is the cause of love. This explains why Romeo did not love Juliet at first (did not know her), though it is her beauty that aroused desire.
6. Why the bad is desired: it can appear good — sense or reason deceived by likeness (Italians who ate poisonous mushrooms they could not tell from good ones), or knowledge incomplete (I know the drink is delicious, not that it is poisonous; I drink it because delicious, not because poisonous; people he has known who drank the wrong alcohol and went blind). “It’s the good as such that is desired … it’s got to be known somewhere.”

7. The better in general (“the ball game’s over”) #

Point: if a thing is not good because you want it, it is not better because you want it more.

• Argument by likeness: sugar is white and sweet; it is not sweet because white, so it is not sweeter because whiter — saying “sweeter because whiter” would force “sweet because white”. So the escape “it’s better for me because I want it more” is closed; “now you got to give me a reason.”
• What is better in general: most fundamentally, the end is better than the means, developed inductively first (health better than taking medicine; knowing better than studying); one can also syllogize to it. Or: the perfect better than the imperfect, perfect meaning either whole or having reached its end; more concrete: the whole is better than the part, the end better than the means. From these you later reason out the end of man, then that goods of the soul are better than goods of the body; what is closer to the end is better.
• Student’s question: why was Juliet better than Rosaline? — “she’s more beautiful”; but he is after the general proposition first.
• Apology: Socrates examines the Athenians, whose life presupposes bodily and outside goods are better than goods of the soul. You cannot say soul-goods are better for Socrates because he wants them more, and the others better for the Athenians because they want them more, once “not good because wanted” is admitted. So: divide into inside goods (soul and body) vs. outside goods, and show inductively the outside is for the sake of the inside — feet for shoes or shoes for feet? glasses for eyes? book for mind? car for transporting me to school, or I for getting the car to school? you for your clothes (then you’d be a department-store mannequin)? you for holding the chair down, or the chair for holding you up? the mattress? Since the end is better than what is for the sake of the end, necessarily inside goods are better than outside goods — outside goods get “the bronze medal.”
• Body vs. soul: if they knew body is for the sake of soul you could syllogize the same way, but they don’t know enough; so reason from goods of the soul being more godlike (if God is better, those goods are better), or from goods of the body being shared with the beast — man is more than the beast, so the goods he alone has are better. Or from the end of man already reasoned out, soul-goods being closer to it.

8. Virtue in general (“sharpness is the virtue of the knife”) #

Point: when “done well” in the end of man (the act with reason done well throughout life) is replaced by “by virtue”, virtue must first be understood generally.

• Virtue is “as broad as a thing’s own act”: whatever has its own act — the act it alone can do or does better than other things — can have its own virtue or vice; virtue is what makes its own act good. Knife: own act is cutting; sharpness the virtue, dullness the vice. Then: what enables man to do his own act well? — that is where the virtues begin. Ethics does go into details and circumstances, but ignorance of the general makes it impossible to think well of the particular; Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics first teaches the good and the better.
• Aristotle in the Rhetoric: “wealth is the virtue of money” — money’s own act is to buy; poverty is the vice of money, not of the man; “can’t buy poorly.”
• Warren Murray’s kitchen plaque: “Much virtue in herbs, little in men.” The Lord compares the apostles to salt: salt that loses its flavour is cast out and trampled — “tough words.” Stale herbs lose their vigour and “become vicious”; the herb does what it is supposed to, the man does not, because he lacks the virtue of man.

9. Back to the text: the general before the particular in knowledge and being (“define triangle before isosceles triangle”) #

Aristotle will do the same here: state the general first, then what is proper. Euclid does it too: triangle before isosceles, quadrilateral before square, rectilineal plane figure before quadrilateral. You cannot understand the particular without the general, but can the general without the particular; this before and after in knowledge resembles before and after in being — “this can be without that, but not vice versa.” “Wealth is the virtue of money” is his closing example that one must understand virtue before human virtue.

• Scheduling aside: not next week; the eighteenth (a Tuesday); not the twenty-fifth; brief talk about families visiting at Christmas.

His words #

• “common basis / common thought”: what is found in all change (or all becoming) and in the thinking of all (philosophers, or all men).
• “become strong in it”: Heraclitus’s advice; here, with complete necessity.
• “becoming” = “coming to be”: looked at from the point of view of what comes to be, the end; vs. “change”, like “going”, from the point of departure.
• metabolē: change; kinēsis: motion.
• “we say”: not the editorial we, not “we Greek natural philosophers”, but all of us.
• “the natural road”: to state first the general, then what is proper to each.
• “the good is what all want / what is wanted”: the first definition of good.
• “the good as known is the cause of love”: what comes after the good but before desire is knowing it (eyes or reason).
• “the end is better than the means”: the most fundamental statement of the better; also “the perfect is better than the imperfect” (perfect = whole, or having reached its end).
• “inside goods / outside goods”: goods of soul and body vs. external goods.
• “virtue”: what makes a thing’s own act good; “vice”: its contrary (sharpness/dullness of a knife; wealth/poverty of money).

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Physics I, opening paragraph of the twelfth reading (“Let us speak, therefore, in this way … the natural road”) — Aquinas’s commentary lectio 12 per verified source; handout “Becoming: the underlying subject and the opposite”, p. 1.
• Heraclitus (as quoted): those who speak with understanding must be strong in what is common to all; we ought to follow what is common.

Mentioned

• Readings 10, 11, 13 of the course (the latter forthcoming).
• Handout “A Note on Practical Philosophy”, p. 9 (per verified source; matches the good/better/virtue discussion).
• Plato, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology.
• Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (Friar Lawrence; Romeo, Rosaline, Juliet).
• Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (teaches good and better first); Rhetoric (“wealth is the virtue of money”).
• Euclid (order of definitions).
• The Gospel saying on salt losing its flavour (no locus given).
• The I Ching, modern physicists, Thomas Aquinas “the dumb ox” (prev. lecture references).

His questions #

• Are “change” and “becoming” naming a different reality? No — the same reality (sick becoming healthy; butter becoming soft), but not full synonyms, like going vs. coming.
• Are you and your mother talking about a different trip when you say “going home” and she says “coming home”? No; you speak from the point of departure, she from the point of arrival.
• Is there a different Greek word for the two? Yes: metabolē (change), kinēsis (motion).
• How can he find what’s common to the thinking of all men about becoming? From the way we all speak about it (“we say”), which reflects a common confused understanding, then down to the things.
• Is it good because we want it, or do we want it because it is good? Wanted because good — shown inductively (food/hunger, water/thirst, reproduction, sleep).
• Why is the good not always wanted, and why is the bad sometimes wanted? The good causes desire only as known; the bad appears good through deception by likeness or incomplete knowledge.
• Is something better for me because I want it more? No — as sugar is not sweeter because whiter; you must give a reason (the end is better than the means).
• Are your feet for the sake of your shoes, your glasses for your eyes …? Inductively, outside goods are for the sake of inside goods, so inside goods are better.
• What’s the virtue of a knife? What’s the vice? Sharpness; dullness.