Metaphysics IX: Motion as the Most Known Act, and Heraclitus and Hegel

Orientation #

He begins “again upon the distinction of act and ability” and says Aristotle will say what ability is more completely “in the second part of the book”; the definition of the possible will be used “towards the end of the second part of this reading” against the second mistake (prev. lecture: the refutation of the Megarians, that ability exists only when exercised). Verified sources: handout on Metaphysics IX (p. 4) and Aquinas on Metaphysics VI, lectio 4 (p. 14); the treatment of Book VI in this transcript is a brief back-reference (sophistry and the accidental).

The previous class gave Aristotle’s four arguments against the Megarians; the next turns to De Interpretatione on possibility and the diagonal.

The class, in order #

1. The special definition of the possible (“nothing impossible results”) #

The point: Aristotle (handout, around line 24, esti de dunaton) gives a working notion of the able/possible: that to which, if there exists in it the act of which it is said to be able, nothing impossible results.

• Examples he reads: able to sit, and it sits, nothing impossible follows; likewise to move or be moved, stand or make stand, be or come to be, not be or not come to be.
• Student: is this the contrary of the earlier argument “if somebody can’t stand, he’ll never stand”? Answer: no, that was a separate argument; here he is giving a notion he can reason from later.
• Student: is the impossible more known than the possible, since he uses it in the definition? Answer: it seems you define impossible by possible (“what is not able to be”); this definition is given for a special purpose, to argue from.
• Parallel: Metaphysics V on the one gives a “strange” definition of the continuous as “that of which the motion is one” — not the fundamental definition, but it brings out that a straight line is more one than an angle (you can move one part of an angle; a straight line cannot be moved without the whole moving). Same kind of special definition here.
• Use: someone says the diagonal’s being commensurable with the side is possible “but it will never be”; by this definition, if it did come about, nothing impossible would be in what came about — which is used against him.

2. Two errors and the mean (“everything is possible”) #

The point: the first error (Megarians) in effect says nothing is possible, since ability exists only when the act is there; the second says everything is possible though some things will never be; the truth is between.

• The second error is “not as impressive” as the first.
• Modern parallel: scientists saying everything is necessary, determined, vs. the existentialist saying everything is contingent; truth in between. Academics today run around thinking everything is possible.
• He notes Aristotle in the last part will distinguish the false from the impossible; they do not mean the same.

3. Truth as a mean: “nor more, nor clipped, but so” (“the truth, the whole truth”) #

The point: truth lies between saying more and saying less than the truth, like moral virtue between extremes.

• Kent in King Lear: “all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more, nor clipped, but so”; Falstaff: those who say “more or less than the truth” are liars.
• Court oath: most take “the whole truth” and “nothing but the truth” as mere emphasis; actually “the whole truth” is against less than the truth, “nothing but the truth” against more.
• Aristotle: you say the truth when you say what is in things is, and what is not is not; hence two ways of being mistaken.
• Bartender example: Joe and Tom were at the bar; saying “just Joe” is less than the truth (saying who was there was not); saying “Joe, Tom and Bill” is more (saying who was not there was).
• Student objection: if you say only one was there without “just”, you say something true but not everything you ought. Answer: that is “complicating the matter”; the whole truth means you may not withhold.
• Applied: those who say nothing is possible subtract from the truth; those who say everything is possible add to it. Aristotle goes “with the modest truth”.
• Aside: Shakespeare says “nor … nor” for “neither … nor”, “or … or” for “either … or”.

4. “Act seems to be especially motion”: most known to us (“things in motion sooner catch the eye”) #

The point (handout, line 30): the name energeia seems to have come most of all from motions; motion is not the most actual act but the act most known to us, and so seems most real.

1. Our knowledge begins with the senses.
2. “Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs” (Shakespeare).
3. So motion is the act most known to us, and seems most actual and most real.

• Heraclitus: all things flow, nothing abides; you cannot step twice into the same river; “the situation is fluid” uses the same likeness. Cratylus, Heraclitus’s student and Plato’s teacher: you cannot step even once, since the water flows past as your foot goes down.
• Plato’s teachers: Cratylus, the Pythagoreans in Italy (after he left Athens in disgust at Socrates’ death), and above all Socrates; in the dialogue Cratylus Socrates is put somewhat above Cratylus, yet Aristotle (Metaphysics I, “if I remember rightly”) says Plato in old age still held things taught by Cratylus.
• Plato’s problem: how know what is always changing? Episteme comes from “to come to a halt”; compare “understand”: what does not stand cannot be understood. Cratylus said all you can do is point. His illustration: walking before the first row while asking “where is Berquist?” — before the sentence ends he has moved on.
• Plato’s proportion: being / becoming / non-being to episteme / opinion / sophistry. Aristotle in Metaphysics VI on accidental being: Plato was not far wrong that sophistry is about nothing, since it is about the accidental, which hardly is. Timaeus: these things cannot really be known; mathematics is brought in.
• Moderns: Hegel, Marx, Stalin (“the movie stopped” is abstraction from moving reality; no medieval man, modern man, proletariat man with an unchanging essence), Heidegger (being in time). His summary of the existentialist position: “man has no nature, just a history”; Hegel: philosophy is the history of philosophy, so man is the history of man.
• Aside: Assumptionist seminarians in Boston were laughed at in the Jesuit house for speaking of human nature.

5. Student question: entelecheia vs energeia in line 30 (“placed upon perfection”) #

The point: the line says the name “act”, placed upon perfection (entelecheia) and other things, has come most of all from motions; a student asks whether he is opposing the two words.

• Entelecheia, a word Aristotle is said to have invented, is used more of form (the soul as first act); its etymology signifies perfection, an end. Energeia is closer to “activity”. In English “act” alone suggests activity, first of all motion; the average person would never call form an act.
• Motion is an imperfect act, for the sake of an end but never the end.
• Yet here they are used “more or less synonymously”. Parallel: in the proemium of Wisdom the sequence sensing, memory, experience, art or science uses “art or science” interchangeably for knowledge of the universal (experience being of singulars), though the Ethics distinguishes them.
• Check with the definition of motion (Book Kappa, ch. 9, at 933): he tou dunatou he dunaton entelecheia kinesis estin — “the act of the able in so far as it is able is motion” — uses entelecheia, while the chapter opens with energeia. So synonymous there too.
• His reading of the apparent opposition: the word “act” is placed first of all upon motion, most known to us, and carried over to the more perfect acts less known to us; entelecheia by etymology lends itself to the perfect act. To be watched in the second part, on act.

6. Daily signs that motion seems real (“that’s where the action is”) #

The point: ordinary life confirms Aristotle’s remark.

• French newsreels in Quebec called les actualités — the “real things going on”.
• The student going downtown “where the action is”; studying in his room does not seem real; wars and revolutions seem more real.
• Monsignor Dionne: a Canadian grant request with no “locomotion” is refused; conferences waste time yet count as doing something; you must go to Paris and London to “do research”.
• The philosopher reading in the living room: his wife interrupts only when he stops to think, i.e. when “he’s not doing anything” — though that is when it gels.

7. Motion is the least actual act; non-beings are not in motion (“it’s hardly there”) #

The point: Aristotle says dokei — seems; by the definition of motion in Physics (Natural Hearing) III, motion is the least actual of all acts.

1. When I walk across the room, my motion is always partly gone by and partly to come.
2. For it to be fully actual at once it would have to be in two places.
3. So motion is least actual, yet most known to us, and therefore seems most real.

• Text: to things that do not exist (ta me onta) we do not attribute motion, though we say they are understood and desired; one can think of, desire, imagine what does not exist, never say it is in motion. Reason: to attribute motion is to attribute actuality.
• Student: children especially want motion; less need of it is a sign of maturity.
• Student: then one would have to say there is motion but nothing moving — as with light waves once the ether is denied: a wave with nothing waving.
• Max Born, The Restless Universe: “It’s strange we have a name for what doesn’t exist: rest” — the book’s theme; he cites it when teaching Heraclitus.
• Text: of non-beings some are in ability, but simply speaking they are not, because they are not in act; what is in motion seems to us at first to be simply. Student asks for an example of a non-being; a student offers the omelet before cooking, desired and understood but not existing; tofu at TAC as the standing joke for prime matter.
• Supreme case of “more known to us, less known by nature”: God, pure act, is least known to us; motion, least actual, most known. The first proof of God reasons from motion, least actual, to the most actual.
• That we do not know what is most actual (God, separated substances) is Aristotle’s sign that the difficulty of knowing is in us — as not loving the most lovable shows a defect in the heart.
• Descartes goes wrong here, making the clear and distinct to us the more certain. “I’m drinking dry red wine” is clear to me but not clear simply; what is most clear is not clear to me.
• Closing aside: Stalin’s account of materialism, reality as constant motion, abstract thinkers “stopping the movie”; Hegel’s system moves on its own accord.

His words #

• ability — his term for dunamis [ed.: potency]; here considered only in reference to motion.
• the able / possible (dunaton) — that to which, if the act exists in it, nothing impossible results; a special definition to reason from.
• continuous — “that of which the motion is one” (Metaphysics V), a special, not fundamental, definition.
• more than / less than the truth — saying what is not is, saying what is is not.
• energeia — “act”; closer to activity; said first of all of motion.
• entelecheia — “act” as perfection; by etymology names the perfect act, form; here used more or less synonymously with energeia.
• Wisdom — his name for the Metaphysics; Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics].
• episteme — from “to come to a halt”; compare “understand”.
• ta me onta — things not existing; understood and desired but never in motion.
• more known to us vs. more known by nature — motion vs. God, pure act.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics IX (handout, line 24: esti de dunaton; line 30 ff.: the name energeia, motion, non-beings understood and desired, non-beings in ability)
• Aristotle, Metaphysics XI (Kappa) ch. 9, definition of motion (“933”) Mentioned
• Aristotle, Metaphysics V (the continuous); Metaphysics I (Plato and Cratylus; proemium: sensing, memory, experience, art or science); Metaphysics VI (sophistry about the accidental; Aquinas lectio 4 per handout)
• Aristotle, Physics III (definition of motion); Ethics (art vs science); De Anima (soul as first act) (inferred)
• Plato, Cratylus; Timaeus
• Shakespeare, King Lear (Kent); Falstaff (Henry IV, inferred); “Things in motion sooner catch the eye”
• Max Born, The Restless Universe; Stalin on materialism; Soviet encyclopedia; Descartes, clear and distinct ideas; first proof of God from motion

His questions #

• Why does Aristotle define the possible through the impossible? It is a special definition, like “continuous” in Book V, to be reasoned from against the second error.
• Is this the contrary of “if he can’t stand, he’ll never stand”? No; that was a separate argument.
• Do those who say nothing is possible add to or subtract from the truth? Subtract; those who say everything is possible add.
• What is Aristotle saying about the act called motion? It is the most known to us, not the most actual.
• Is entelecheia opposed to energeia in line 30? Used more or less synonymously; “act” is placed first on motion, then carried to perfect acts; to be seen in the second part.
• Can what does not exist be in motion? No; it can be understood, desired, imagined, but motion would attribute actuality.
• Why don’t we attribute motion to what doesn’t exist? Because motion seems most actual and so most real.
• Give an example of a non-being? The omelet before it is cooked (student’s answer); tofu, the TAC joke for prime matter.