Doubting Well Before Understanding Well: Aristotle's Metaphysics, Anaxagoras's Nous, and Heraclitus's Strife

Orientation #

He opens by saying “we’ve completed the first part, the two parts of the proemium” (prev. lecture) and now turns to the next book, planning to take only its first three readings (lexeis): the first, where Aristotle states his intention and its reasons, and the second and third, where he enumerates the questions of wisdom. This class does not get past the first reason of the first reading. Verified sources: the handout “The Royal Fragment”, p. 18 (the Anaxagoras fragment, read from for about 13 minutes) and DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 34. The next class works through the enumerated questions of Book III.

The class, in order #

1. Plan of the readings (“just at the first three lexeis”) #

He sets the plan: in the first reading, as Thomas explains, Aristotle states his intention to treat the problems of wisdom dialectically and gives “about four reasons”; in the second and third readings he enumerates the main questions; the rest of the book discusses them.

2. Why go through the doubts, and where they come from (“first go through those things about which one ought to doubt”) #

The point: it is necessary for the epistēmē sought (“reasoned-out knowledge”) first to go through the aporiai.

• Two sources of doubt: (a) whatever the earlier philosophers held different positions on is already doubtful (“some thought it was this, some that”), a quaestio disputata as the medievals would say; (b) something overlooked by them that Aristotle himself adds.
• Thomas’s note: Aristotle uses dialectics more in natural philosophy and ethics than in logic, because he is “sort of like the father of logic” and there were no logicians before him saying opposite things about the syllogism. Aside: there are plenty of moderns saying opposite things, “but Aristotle knows nothing about those moderns. Thank God.”

3. Doubting well, before and after (“it’s necessary to doubt well”) #

The point: for those wishing to find (hē euporia) it is a prior work to diaporēsai kalōs, Thomas’s text bene dubitare, to doubt well.

• Doubting well vs. Descartes’ doubt: Descartes doubts by an act of will, setting everything aside; doubting well is (Thomas) attaining to the things that are really doubtful, giving reasons why they are doubtful.
• The before and after: the later finding is a lusis, an untying, of what was doubted before. Lyein is not possible for those ignorant of the knot; the doubting mind is like people whose feet are tied, and neither can go forward.
• So the first reason is “kind of a double thing”: (1) the mind tied by opposed positions that each have some reason cannot go forward; (2) the very untying is the discovery of something hidden before. C. S. Lewis: you examine the knot, find a loose end, and begin to unravel it.

4. His own example: the knot in Anaxagoras’ fragment on the mind (“the great fragment about the mind”) #

The point: he did not teach the fragment much before he saw an apparent contradiction in it, and seeing it was what led to a discovery.

1. The mind is unlimited: the root is that its object is universal, and some universals cover an infinity of things (something like it already in Heraclitus).
2. The mind is self-ruling: because unlimited in its object it can know itself; because it orders things or sees order (Shakespeare, seen before), knowing itself it can rule itself. Sign of this: the existence of logic, the art about arguments Socrates asks for in the Phaedo; and conversely, that the mind rules itself is why there could be an art of logic. Aside on reading before and after the fragment: before, the mind must be self-knowing; after, the mind alone is self-knowing, so alone self-ruling, so alone fit to rule others (“you’re not fit to rule others if you can’t rule yourself”), bringing natural philosophy and ethics around the fragment.
3. The mind is not mixed with things, separated from matter; the fragment’s reason: it could not rule them in the orderly way we see if it were part of them. Hence the proposition: the ruler must be separated from the ruled. Examples attached to it: the judge must be impartial, not a part of the disputants; the army separates those who command from those who obey; in a big company (his friend at Minnesota Mining) rank is measured by degree of separation, partition around the desk, then a separate office with a door, then an entry office with a screening secretary, and the promoted man is expected to eat and play (bridge and golf, not tennis and poker) with the higher echelon; his father coming home restores discipline “without question”, while his mother, mixed up with the boys all day, has less ability to command; after the Bolshevik Revolution everybody was “comrade” and army discipline broke down, so distinctions had to be restored.

• The knot: the mind is self-ruling (reasons 1-2, witness of logic), and yet cannot be, since the ruler must be separated from the ruled.

5. Untying the knot: how the mind rules itself (“the mind is ruled in what it does not know by what it does know”) #

The point: the untying of the apparent contradiction is the discovery of what distinction and separation there must be in the mind for it to rule itself, with Socrates’ life as the clue.

• The mind is ruled in what it does not know by what it does know: coming to a new theorem in Euclid you are ruled by what you already know from earlier geometry. The needed separation is of what you truly know from what you do not know; and, as in Aristotle’s works, of the more known from the less known, ultimately the most known.
• Most people cannot make that separation (Socrates’ examining life found they had mixed them up), so they lack even what is presupposed to the mind ruling itself; then one must learn to know the unknown through the known, which Albert the Great says is the purpose of logic.
• “It’s very subtle and hard to see at first”: self-ruling does not mean the whole mind rules the whole mind, nor one part rules another part, but that the mind is ruled where it does not know by what it knows; you would probably not discover this without the apparent contradiction in DK 12. He suspects Anaxagoras’ “self-ruling” gave Socrates the hint of the need for logic.
• Student: applied to the angelic or divine mind, is “self-ruling” just a negation? Answer: yes; of God’s mind it cannot be understood affirmatively, only negatively. Parallels: “substance exists in itself” means only that it does not exist in another; a statement “known through itself” does not prove itself, it is known but not through other statements (one might say affirmatively “through its parts”, but not through itself as a statement, “it is so because it is so”, a woman’s reason as Shakespeare says).

6. Heraclitus: war and the hidden harmony (“the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony”) #

The point: something of Aristotle’s doctrine was anticipated by Heraclitus, “the central thinker in human thought”.

• “War is the father of all things”: whatever its universal truth, applied to knowing, contradiction is a kind of war and the way one goes forward to great discoveries.
• Apparent vs. hidden harmony: most men are in apparent harmony, thinking many things they suppose compatible, which (immediately or when combined) contradict; Socrates leads them out of apparent harmony into contradiction, beneath which lies the hidden, true and better harmony.
• Slave boy in the Meno, doubling the square: he says double the side; with side 2 the square is 4, side 4 gives 16, but 16 is not double 4 while 4 is double 2; he must give up one of the three, and the more known ones win, so he denies that the square with double side is double in size; the hidden harmony is that the diagonal of the original square is the side of the double square. “Hey, I never thought of that.”

7. Scientists and theologians say the same (“all the essential ideas in science were born of a conflict”) #

• Bohr: his application of the quantum to the atom arose from the contradiction between the atom’s stability on the solar-system model and the discrete, jump-like emissions of energy against electromagnetic theory’s continuous emission; where colleagues saw hopeless contradiction he saw the germ of a wider harmony; before he died he said particle studies lacked a startling enough contradiction to show where to modify ideas. “Get it from the horse’s mouth.”
• Einstein, The Evolution of Physics: relativity arose from serious contradictions with no escape; the universal statement that all essential ideas in science were born of a conflict, the aim being to “knock down the wall of contradictions”, a different metaphor from Aristotle’s tied feet but the same stopping. Aside: his three Nobel-worthy papers in one year (relativity, photoelectric effect, Brownian movement). He playfully calls Heraclitus “the father of the progress of the human mind”.
• Augustine on the necessity of heresy for theology: the heretic contradicts an article with reasons from philosophy or scripture, the Fathers untie it, and the untying is a deeper understanding of the article. The medievals formalise this in the quaestiones disputatae; every article of the Summa, a contraction of that method, begins from a contradiction and the body unties it.
• Conclusion: despite the differences in how philosophy, science and theology go forward, in all of them contradiction plays a fundamental role.

8. Student’s question and the break-off (“even the devil can quote scriptures”) #

Student: is there a basic reason for this, our senses or knowing parts first? Answer, left loose: in a sense it arises without our knowing exactly why; one finds that different men reach opposite conclusions with some probability, “and even the devil can quote scriptures”; he begins on Our Lord in “the twenty-second chapter, I think” and the recording drops. The fragment that follows (Our Lord proceeding by God’s effects such as water made wine, miracles in nature before spiritual ones as Thomas divides them, Philip at the Last Supper “show us the Father”) is cut off [unclear in recording].

His words #

• epistēmē; “reasoned-out knowledge, or reasoned-out understanding”.
• aporia; the things about which one ought to doubt.
• quaestio disputata; a question the predecessors answered oppositely.
• hē euporia; “wishing to find”, the discovery afterwards.
• diaporēsai kalōs / bene dubitare; to doubt well, attaining to what is really doubtful.
• lusis, lyein; untying; the finding as the untying of what was doubted before.
• “the knot”; the mind tied by opposed positions each with some reason.
• self-ruling; the mind ruled in what it does not know by what it does know.
• apparent vs. hidden harmony (Heraclitus); many opinions supposed compatible vs. the true harmony beneath the contradiction.
• “war is the father of all things”; contradiction as the way the mind goes forward.
• quaestiones disputatae; the medieval formalising of beginning from contradiction.

Texts #

Read in class

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, opening of the book on the questions (Book III, inferred), first reading: the passage on going through the aporiai, doubting well, the untying, and the tied feet.
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the same reading (bene dubitare; dialectics less used in logic).
• Anaxagoras, fragment DK 12 (handout “The Royal Fragment”, p. 18): mind unlimited, self-ruling, unmixed.

Mentioned

• DHB Vol I, The First Philosophers, p. 34 (verified source).
• Heraclitus, fragments on war as father of all and the hidden harmony.
• Plato, Phaedo (the art about arguments); Meno (slave boy doubling the square).
• Euclid (a new theorem ruled by earlier ones).
• Albert the Great on the purpose of logic.
• Shakespeare (the mind sees order; “a woman’s reason”).
• C. S. Lewis (the loose end of the knot).
• Descartes (doubt by will).
• Bohr; Einstein, The Evolution of Physics.
• Augustine on heresy; Thomas Aquinas, Summa and quaestiones disputatae.
• Scripture: “twenty-second chapter, I think”; Philip at the Last Supper.

His questions #

• Why is it necessary first to go through the things to be doubted? Because the mind tied by opposed positions cannot go forward, and the untying is itself the discovery of what was hidden.
• Where do the doubts come from? From predecessors’ opposite answers, and from problems they overlooked that Aristotle adds.
• Is it enough to doubt, as Descartes does? No; one must doubt well, attaining with reasons to what is really doubtful.
• How can the mind be self-ruling if the ruler must be separated from the ruled? It is ruled in what it does not know by what it does know, the more known ruling the less known.
• Is “self-ruling” of the divine mind only a negation? (student) Yes, understood negatively, like “substance exists in itself” or a statement “known through itself”.
• How do you double a square? (Socrates to the slave boy) Not by doubling the side; the diagonal of the original is the side of the double square.
• What is the basic reason contradiction plays this role, senses or knowing parts first? (student) Left open; men reach opposite conclusions with some probability, “even the devil can quote scriptures”.