GENERAL EXISTENCE

From the Categories to the Metaphysics, Aristotle changes his mind about the existence of general objects. In the Categories, they exist. In the Metaphysics, they do not.

⊕ "universal" (καθ' ὅλου or καθόλου) means "on the whole, in general" as opposed to "particular" (καθ' ἕκαστον).

The word first becomes frequent in Aristotle. Its translation as universal comes the the Latin universalis.

"Of things there are some universal and some particular. I call universal what is by its nature predicated of a number of things, and particular what is not; man, for instance, is a universal, Callias a particular" (On Interpretation 17a).

"One in number and particular are the same..., [and] universal is over them" (Metaphysics III.999b). By thinking about universal truths, we can begin to understand what Aristotle had in mind. ⊕
"Socrates... sought in ethical matters the universal and was the first to set thought on definitions. Plato followed him and assumed that the problem of definition is concerned not with any sensible thing but with beings of another kind; for the reason that there can be no common definition among the sensible things, as they are always changing. These beings he called ideas" (Metaphysics I.6.987b).

"But whereas Socrates regarded neither universals nor definitions as separate, they separated them and called these beings ideas. Hence on their view it followed by virtually the same argument that there are ideas of all terms which are predicated universally" (Metaphysics XIII.4.1078b).

"They [Plato and his followers] did not make the substances the same with sensible things. They thought the sensibles were in a state of flux, and that none of them remained, but that the universal exists besides them and is something other than them. ... Separating is the cause of the difficulties arising about the forms" (Metaphysics XIII.1086a).

When we say something is true of every man (every human being), we say something about men in general. For what we say to be true, there must be a fact of the matter about what a man (human being) is. Otherwise, what we say would be neither true nor false.

From the Categories to the Metaphysics

⊕

In the Categories, there is a fact of the matter. The general object man is a secondary substance, and something is a man just in case it is an atomic part of this general object.

"Every substance seems to signify a this. As regards the primary substances, it is indisputably true that each signifies a this; for the thing revealed is individual and one in number. But for the secondary substances, although it appears from the name--when one speaks of man or animal--that each likewise signifies a this, it is not true" (Categories 5.3b).

⊕
"It seems that separate (χωριστὸν) and a this (τόδε τι) belong most of all to substance" (Metaphysics VII.1029a).

"It is evident that nothing belonging as a universal is a substance because nothing predicated in common signifies a this [and a substance is a this]" (Metaphysics VII.1038b). In the Metaphysics, because he thinks he had been wrong about what the primary substances are, Aristotle proceeds must more cautiously. This is an improvement over the dogmatism with which he proceeded in the Categories. Now, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle sets out what he takes to be initially plausible conditions something must meet to be a substance. He knows that nothing obviously meets these conditions, and he restarts his inquiry and considers the possibility that there might be a way of thinking about forms so that they are substances.

This frees Aristotle to give up the existence of general objects altogether if his investigation gives him a different way to explain why there is a fact of the matter about what man is. If Aristotle no longer needs man for his explanation of the fact of the matter, the general objects he had recognized as secondary substances can fall out his ontology. Man is not a substance. It is not a this. Nor is it a quality. Qualities are how something is, not what something is.

Separate With and Without Qualification

If we have forms in matter, this is enough for a fact of the matter.

⊕   "We usually posit some one form in connection with each set of many things to which we apply the same name. Or don’t you understand?
  I do.
  Then in the present case, too, let’s take any set of many things you like. For example, there are, if you like, many couches and tables.
  Of course.
  But the forms connected to these manufactured items are surely just two, one of a couch and one of a table.
  Yes" (Republic X.596a). For sensible substances, like human beings, Aristotle thinks that the form of a natural body is the organization of the material so that it is a member of a natural kind. These organizations are numerically distinct but exactly the same in account. Human beings are all organizations in the form of a rational animal (given what it is to be a human is to be a rational animal), and this is the fact of the matter that makes it true to say every man is a rational animal.

This means that for there to be universal truths about human beings, the human beings themselves are enough. We do not need the general object man.

"Those who speak of the forms speak correctly that they are separate if they are substances, but incorrectly that the form is the one over many (Metaphysics VII.16.1040b).

Separate With Qualification

⊕ "Substance without matter is the what it is to be" (Metaphysics VII.1032b).

"If the line when divided perishes into its halves, or the man into flesh and bones and sinews, it does not follow that they are constituted out of these as parts of their substance, but rather that they are constituted out of them as their matter; and these are parts of the composite, but not of the form and of which the account is; and therefore neither are they included in the accounts" (Metaphysics VII.11.1035a).

"For things that are seen to be induced in specifically different materials, as a circle is in bronze and stone and wood, it seems clear that neither the bronze nor the stone belong at all to the substance of the circle, because it is separate from them. As for things which are not seen separated, there is no reason why the same should not apply to them; if all the circles that had ever been seen were bronze; for the bronze would none the less be no part of the form" (Metaphysics VII.11.1036a).

"[W]e have stated that the material parts of a thing cannot be present in the account of the substance since they are not parts of that substance" (Metaphysics VII.11.1037a). Now we can begin to see how Aristotle replies to an argument for separate forms we saw in the Phaedo and that Aristotle himself knew from his time as a student in Plato's Academy.

       1.  Sensible objects change, but the what the forms do not.
       2.  If (1) is true, then the forms exist separately from the sensible objects.
     ----
       3.  The forms exist separately from the sensible objects.

Aristotle, in the Metaphysics, accepts the first premise of this argument but rejects the second if it means that the forms of sensible substances exist separately from matter.

Aristotle does not think we need a general object to explain why what it is to be human does not change. It is enough that the forms of human beings are separate in account from the matter they organize. Human beings are material beings who have the potential to change, but separateness from matter in account means that the forms of human beings do not change.

Aristotle thinks that if premise (1) is true, we cannot give an account of being human by saying that it is being a rational animal made of this flesh and these bones. In this account, because the flesh and the bones are different at different times, the account is too. From premise (1), though, Aristotle does not think it follows that the form of a human being exists separately without qualification. Aristotle thinks that Plato was wrong to draw this conclusion.

How Aristotle Sees Plato's Theory

⊕    "This is what I mean, Cebes. It is nothing new, but the same thing I have always been saying, both in our previous conversation and elsewhere. I am going to try to explain to you the nature of that cause which I have been studying, and I will revert to those familiar subjects of ours as my point of departure and assume that there are such things as absolute beauty and good and greatness and the like. If you grant this and agree that these exist, I believe I shall explain cause to you and shall prove that the soul is immortal.
   You may assume, Socrates, that I grant it, and go on.
Then, see if you agree with me in the next step. I think that if anything is beautiful besides the beautiful itself (αὐτὸ τὸ καλόν) it is beautiful for no other reason than because it shares in (μετέχει) this beauty; and this applies to everything. Do you assent to this view of cause?
   I do.
   Now I do not yet, understand, nor can I perceive those other ingenious causes. If anyone tells me that what makes a thing beautiful is its color, or its shape or anything else of the sort, I let all that go, for all those things confuse me, and I hold simply and plainly and perhaps foolishly to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful but the presence (παρουσία) or communion (κοινωνία), call it which you please, of the beautiful itself, however it may have been gained; about the way in which it happens, I make no positive statement as yet, but I do insist that beautiful things are made beautiful by beauty. For I think this is the safest answer I can give to myself or to others, and if I cleave fast to this, I think I shall never be overthrown, and I believe it is safe for me or anyone else to give this answer, that beautiful things are beautiful through beauty. Do you agree?
   I do, Socrates" (Phaedo 100b).

"Is there such thing as fire itself in it self (πῦρ αὐτὸ ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ), and everything that we constantly refer to in this way, each as things in themselves? Or is it only what we look at and anything else we perceive through the body that possesses this sort of truth, and is there nothing else besides these in any sense whatsoever, and do we speak idly every time we declare that there is an intelligible form of each (εἶδος ἑκάστου νοητόν)? Is this, in the end, nothing but words? Now it would be unworthy either to dismiss the present issue by asserting that this is how matters stand, without any deliberation or judgement; nor should we insert another lengthy secondary topic into an already lengthy discourse. Yet if it proved possible to make a significant distinction quite briefly, that would be most appropriate to our purpose. So I cast my own vote as follows: if intellect and true opinion (νοῦς καὶ δόξα ἀληθής) are two kinds, then, definitively, there are these forms, themselves according to themselves, incapable of being perceived by our senses, known by intellect alone. However if, as it appears to some, true opinion does not differ at all from intellect, then, by contrast, everything that we perceive by means of the body must be designated as most firm. I say we must declare that these are two, because they have arisen independently and have dissimilar characteristics. One of them is engendered through instruction, the other through persuasion; one always arises along with a true account while the other is devoid of an account, and one is unmoved by persuasion while the other is amenable to persuasion. Indeed all men may be said to partake of opinion but only the gods and some small class of humanity partake of intellect. And since this is how matters stand, we must agree that there is the form which is always the same, ungenerated, undecaying, neither receiving anything into itself from anywhere else nor entering into anything else anywhere, invisible and imperceptible; intellect has been assigned the task of investigating this. Second is what bears the same name as the former and is similar thereto; perceptible, generated, constantly being moved, coming into being in some location, then perishing out of that place once more; it is apprehended by opinion accompanied by sense perception" (Timaeus 51b). "Plato called these ideas and ... [said that] the many things that have the same name as the forms are [what they are] through participation in them. As for participation he changed only the name. For the Pythagoreans say that beings are by imitating the numbers, whereas Plato says that they are by participation, changing the name. What this participation or this imitation of the f could be, however, they left an open question" (Metaphysics I.6.987b).

As Aristotle sees him, Plato went wrong under the influence of Pythagoreanism.

If we assume that forms are the substances of the sensible things and that they are separate from the sensible things, we have to explain the connection between the many sensible things and these forms. Plato says that the many "participate" in the one. This, as Aristotle understands it, makes the forms universals. Each is a one over many, and now we have contradicted our initial assumption. No form, if it is a universal, can be a substance because every substance is a this.

Aristotle tries to correct the mistake he thinks Plato made. Aristotle takes the forms of sensible substances to be forms in matter that exist separately from matter only with qualification. They are separate in account. There is no man over the many men. The substances of the men are numerically distinct forms in matter all of which in account are exactly the same.

The Parmenidean Tradition

There are more questions we can ask about Aristotle's ontology, his understanding of universals, his theory of forms, and how his theory is different from Plato's.

One is about the the concrete objects Aristotle calls as primary substances in the Categories and the sensible substances he understands in the Metaphysics as composites of form and matter.

We can begin to see the answer to this question if we think about it this way.

Aristotle, like Plato, is part the tradition that we saw in Parmenides and that sees permanence as the mark of the real. For a sensible substance, Socrates for example, Aristotle puts forward the form in matter as this reality. Socrates is this composite together with his accidental properties. His height and other accidents come and go. His form in matter remains.

This, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle thinks, is the truth in Socrates remarks in the Phaedo.

   "Is the reality itself (αὐτὴ ἡ οὐσία), whose reality we give an account in our dialectic process of question and answer, always the same or is it liable to change? Does the equal itself, the beautiful itself, what each thing itself is, the reality, ever admit of any change whatsoever? Or does what each of them is, being uniform and existing by itself, remain the same and never in any way admit of any change?
   It must necessarily remain the same, Socrates.
   But how about the many things, for example, men, or horses, or cloaks, or any other such things, which bear the same names as those objects and are called beautiful or equal or the like? Are they always the same? Or are they, in direct opposition to those others, constantly changing in themselves, unlike each other, and, so to speak, never the same?
   The latter, they are never the same.
   And you can see these and touch them and perceive them by the other senses, whereas the things which are always the same can be grasped only by the reasoning of the intellect (τῷ τῆς διανοίας λογισμῷ), and are invisible and not to be seen?
   Certainly that is true.
   Now, shall we assume two kinds of existences, one visible, the other invisible?
   Let us assume them, Socrates" (Phaedo 78c).

Forward to the Ethical Works

These are other questions, too, whose answers are important for understanding what Aristotle was thinking and how he was trying to get out from under the Platonist ontology he knew when he was a student in the Academy. We might, for example, think about whether Aristotle also comes to reject his view in the Categories that there are general properties and thus by the time of the Metaphysics comes to believe that existence contains nothing general at all.

We, however, in this course, are going to move forward in the corpus to the ethical works.

In these works, Aristotle takes up the question of what the good life is for a human being.

Perseus Digital Library

Aristotle, Metaphysics

Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon

⊕ καθόλου (from κατά + ὅλου), katholou, adverb, "on the whole, in general"

κατά ὅλου elides to καθ' ὅλου. Authors before Aristotle use κατά ὅλου and καθ' ὅλου.

"[Y]ou must try and fulfil your promise by telling me what virtue is as a whole (κατὰ ὅλου)" (Plato, Meno 77a).

"[L]ike men who are unable to express themselves I won't try to deal with the matter as a whole (κατὰ ὅλον) but will take up a part and use it as an example to try to show you my meaning" (Plato, Republic III.392d).

τι, ti, indefinite prounoun, (τόδε τι = "a this," "some this," "a something")
τόδε, tode, demonstrative pronoun, "this"
χωριστός, chōristos, adjective, "separable"

"[In Metaphysics Z 13, Aristotle] argues at length that no universal can be a substance. But since he also wants forms to be substances, he has to deny that forms are universal. And, in fact, we do find him claiming that the form of a particular object is peculiar to that object, just as its matter is; Socrates' form, i.e., his soul, is different from Plato's form, i.e., Plato's soul (Met. Δ 1, 1071a 24-29). ⊕ We even find Aristotle claiming that the form is a particular this (a tode ti [a τόδε τι]; 8, 1017b 25; Η I, 1042a 29; Δ 7, 1049a 28-29; De gen. et corr. 318b 32). And, of course, he has to claim that a form is a particular this, if he wants forms to be substances, since he assumes that a substance has to be a particular this. It was for this reason that Aristotle rejected the claim of matter to be substance; matter is only potentially a particular this" (Michael Frede, "Substance in Aristotle's Metaphysics," 77. Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 72-80).

"It is a basic nontrivial fact about the world [according to Aristotle] that things come with forms that are exactly alike, and not just sufficiently similar to class them together in one kind. The reality of kinds amounts to no more than this: that the specification of the form of particular objects turns out to be exactly the same for a variety of objects. But for this to be true, there is no need for a universal form or a universal kind, either a species or a genus. And, in fact, the import of [Metaphysics] Z 13 seems to be that there are no substantial genera or species in the ontology of the Metaphysics" (Michael Frede, "Substance in Aristotle's Metaphysics," 78. Essays in Ancient Philosophy, 72-80).