Peripaticians

Impromptu online discussion on the subject of the source of modern Western human thought, Aristotle and his metaphysics.

The radical difference between Plato and Aristotle is that the former considers his personal and interior experience to come first, whereas the latter looks firstly at reality which is exterior to him (obviously this is less poetic!). It is fashionable to consider Plato to be a philosopher, even though he is more of a poet of the soul, and to denigrate Aristotle whom we find less amusing, and moreover whose musings are not as easily accessible. In particular, Aristotle is criticized for his theory on the spontaneous generation, his treatise on the heavens which today seems rather infantile, etc., as if this chap were a scientist… but Aristotle was first and foremost a philosopher, and was only interested in science “accidentally”, using the tools of his time!

This preference for Plato is linked to the poetry of his discourse, to the exaltation of intimacy and interiority (immanent and immediate experience), to his explanations which are often metaphorical… He has always exerted a great seduction, which is normal as he is a poet, whereas Aristotle is hardly poetic, and is sometimes lacking in humor! William of Ockam, in the 14th century, gave a new life to Plato; later Descartes brought him to the forefront, and practically permanently! Later still, some mystics like Simone Weil expressed their love of Plato and their aversion for Aristotle. It is too bad really, and this probably proceeds more from ignorance than discernment. In particular, Plato held women to be slightly more evolved than animals, and without a soul. It is Aristotle who was the first in Ancient Greece to speak of friendship – philia – between man and woman, returning dignity to women by elevating them to the rank of human beings, on an equal footing to men… I’m not certain Simone Weil knew that, and even less so for many unconditional contemporary admirers of Plato!

So one must read “Nicomacian Ethics… which is a simple book, much more so than the treatise on the soul or the treatise on metaphysics. Aristotle is the first to have given a real metaphysics to the Western world, i.e. a science beyond physics, what he called “first philosophy”, but what was later named meta-physics (beyond physics) for this treatise was found, after his death, on his bookshelves, just after his book on physics. Today one must speak of “first philosophy”... if you speak of metaphysics, you get penalty points… even if they are one and the same thing! Being that we have celebrated the death of metaphysics, this shouldn't come as that much of a surprise! :)

So, in two words if possible, what is Aristotle’s metaphysics? Precisely because he distinguishes himself from his master Plato (whom he followed for 15 years, in silence), who set thought before reality, Aristotle sets reality before the idea he makes of it, and he does this through what some call the judgement of existence”: THIS IS. One must note that in the fundamental assertion “This is”, the “this” is not “me”… !!! This is the radical difference with the notorious “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes, who sets the “I” before the “this”, or the internal experience before the perceived external reality, in other words sincerity before truth.

Consequently, Aristotle seeks foremost reality as it is other than himself and which is unmindful of the idea he makes of it to be what it is. He then looks at what intelligence is, where it comes from, what it is made of, according to what model and in view of what, five interrogations which can be associated to his five senses: what it is (sight); where it comes from (hearing); what it is made of (touch), according to which model (taste), and in view of what it is (smell). To answer your question more concretely, it is obvious that seeking what is true entails a constant back and forth between our sensible touch of reality and intelligence, in other words a perpetual round trip between the abstraction of reality through the senses, delivering the observation to intelligence, and reinjecting into reality what I understand of it, to verify the adequacy between my intelligence and reality. Thus, for Aristotle, truth is the adequacy between intelligence and reality. Well, it isn’t easy to speak of these “things” in a few lines… We’ll speak again, hopefully… and it is important to have fun around this neck of the woods, is it not? :))

Credit image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plato_Aristotle_della_Robbia_OPA_Florence.jpg

Aesthetics

The word aesthetics is not so old. I believe it was coined by Kant, borrowing on the the Greek eitésis, which signifies sensation. We find the same root in other words, like "an-esthesia", which means absence of sensation.

Consequently, aesthetics, in the first instance, is what procures a sensation. Now, many impute to beauty or aesthetics a moral value. In other words, they persuade themselves that beauty is necessarily concomitantly good. It is not very difficult to show that they err. If beauty is in effect what procures a sensation, there have been for example many an aestheticism linked to perverse ideologies or frightful dictatorships. Moreover, aesthetics seems in those cases to carry more importance: colossal architecture, apocalyptic music, magnificent uniforms, quite spectacular ceremonies and public reunions, solemn literature, etc.

Hence, beauty has no finality of itself. In other words, it is not sufficient or capable of itself to lead to the completion of the human person. It is ordered to something other than itself. Without redeveloping here an entire metaphysics, some would hang the phone up, lol, we can nevertheless try to look at that towards which beauty is ordered.

In Greek philosophy, but also in other philosophies, like Hindu metaphysics for example, there are 5 recognized transcendentals. A transcendental is what suffices to itself, or what does not have any cause other than itself, or again what is finalized by itself and attracts the rest in as much as it is precisely first cause and final cause (which is absolutely not the case of beauty, and this well and truly constitutes one of the major errors of the contemporaries who elevate beauty to the rank of transcendental. Beauty is an errant cause of sorts, neither good nor bad of itself, it all depends on what it is associated to…).

In reality, Being is THE transcendental par excellence, but since Being is also aliquid (something), and since Being is true, and since Being is one (indivisible), and finally since Being is good, we turned aliquid, truth, one and good into four other full-fledged transcendentals, which isn’t wrong, but those four are in reality more like acolytes of Being. In other words, they are four other ways of naming Being.

Furthermore, as we quite rapidly ceased to understand what One is, we substituted it by Beauty, which is a singularly toxic error, the consequences of which are massive. This has lead including to physical massacres... for beauty ultimately substituted itself to good by veiling it and by sometimes justifying the most horrifying acts (not always, let's not exaggerate either).

Nonetheless, we must recognize that beauty is typically human. Animals do not make art or craft. Art and craft are one of the ways of differentiating man from beast. The animal does not wear ornaments, or clothes, which confers to clothing a foremost value of aestheticism, maybe even before any notion of moral value or modesty. :)

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30037324@N06/3324238235/

Symbolism

What is a symbol? There are a good few who revel in the word with a knowing air, and who make it a speciality of theirs or even consider themselves to be a quasi occult elite.

The root of the word is strong, it is the same as in the word symbiosis, sympathetic, etc. All right, let's cut the chase, a symbol is something that unites the visible and the invisible. Well I think it's time we said something about it that is not solely idiotic. It is not easy to pinpoint what a symbol is. As we practically only have the root to move forward with, it is tempting to seek its inverse or contrary. Now the contrary of “sym” is “dia”, as in dialysis. Now pay attention, this is where it gets amusing, watch: therefore, what is the strict contrary of symbolic (symbolique)? Yep, you got that right: diabolical (diabolique). On the one hand we have something that unites, and on the other something that divides.

So let us imagine your friend is sick, and just before the big jump, he gives you a present, with no monetary value, which he is holding in his outstretched hand. You have thus inherited something without value yet which is eminently symbolic, thus precious. Hence, the value of the object you have inherited lays not in its price but in what it represents - i.e. in its capacity to manifest a link between the visible and the invisible. Besides, if your friend had given you an expensive gift, what would make it foremost valuable would be no more its price, but what it represents, in other words its capacity to manifest a link between the visible and the invisible.

So what are we doing when we hold this object to be a trinket, or when we sell it because we can get some money for it? Well we disunite and divide, that is all, nothing more, but one should be honest and not hesitate to say it. We therefore radically trample a link. What good could we then expect for he who is at the other end of the link? When you knock your Hi-Fi with a hammer, are you surprised when it doesn't work as well? Well, some are surprised... Yes, positively, I assure you! Naturally, I do not speak of a case of force majeure, as when one is forced to sell an object laden with symbol because of a food shortage. In that case, in my view, the symbol would be even stronger, even without the object. :)

Credit picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elirook/3116349267/

The moderns

Tolstoi in 1868

A modern is someone who does not distinguish the past, the present and the future. It seems silly to say this, yet it is true. What interests a modern in the past is the present; what interests him in the present is the future; and even, what interests him in the future is the present. This is why a modern has no chance of being understood or taken seriously. But he doesn't care, his public are the angels, some crazies of his time too, but mostly the angels.

A modern has nothing in common with a contemporary; he is quite incidentally contemporary. He borrows from his epoch, whereas a contemporary is borrowed by his epoch. A modern could be from any place at any period. Everyone has got that wrong. The contemporary cannot last: he is current news, burned by the moment, greased on the summer sand, the buzz of the town back from the beaches. In fact, a modern always gets on the wrong side of a contemporary, even if unwittingly, not surprisingly.

There are a few exceptions, like Frédéric Dard, who was clever enough to disguise himself as a yokel, made up as a jester. Dard was a mystic. Other than that, who are the moderns in literature for example? Artaud, Céline, Nietzsche, Bloy, Tolstoï, Dostoïevski, Shakespeare, maybe Cioran, there will be a handful in a few centuries. Sartre, Freud, Kant, Marx, for example, in two centuries we will come across them by mistake, and we will take them for the popular stand-up comedian of the moment, and vice versa.

Literary figures

One of my late friends knew Emile Cioran as a young man. I was not so fortunate: when I read him for the first time, not so long ago, I decided to ring at his doorbell, before learning he had committed suicide a short time before. He had an incurable disease. A cancer I believe.

Cioran never asked the why of things, which he shied away from like the pest for a simple reason, and which I think is common to a good number of artists: he was terrified of losing himself if he became truly contemplative.

It is a false alternative, at least it seems to me to be a false alternative. We imagine that art is necessarily a revolt; I do not think this to be true. Revolt or bitterness are tempting from the standpoint of inspiration, as conflict fecunds imagination. However, I do not believe in this obsession with negation from the viewpoint of artistic creation. Obviously, to not believe in it is more comfortable: it is always easier to lean on asinity to create, if only because it is without limit... whereas to lean on nothing can be daunting, and even scary. I think Cioran was frightened of that. He preferred his talent to truth. He loved his talent above all.

This is not, for example, the case of Frederic Dard, who was a delicious and tender person. Dard didn't care much for his talent. He had read Louis-Ferdinand Céline and decided there was nothing serious to be done in literature; he had wanted to do what Céline had done, and it was done. I like Dard, the writer and the man. He touches me deeply. Through his SanAntonian deliriums seeps a rare person, moving, very cultivated, a subtle soul.

Ethics

In reality, what Aristotle showed, and what few have since understood, is that ethics hinges on friendship! The main stages of ethics, which are hardly a “concept” or “customs” relative to a culture, but positively something that is universally human and natural:

1) Firstly I fall in love. At this stage, no one can do anything for me, not even me! I can not ask (myself) advice… That would mean whatever I was told “Hey Avatar, no, you’ve got it wrong, stop falling in love, come now, what are you doing?!!” No, at this stage, I undergo and I withstand.

2) Then I ask myself what is happening, and I judge if I should take it a step further or if it is best to make a run for it. Is this person “married”? I am “married”? What are the chances that this friendship can be long lasting? In short, I confer with myself ad I consider whether what attracts me is accessible or if I am taking a one way ticket to unhappiness or despair.

3) Further I ask myself if (to the extent that I have decided to take it a step ahead) what are the most appropriate means to attain my good, for the person that I love is MY good (I don’t delve here into the attitude of the other person, because obviously, in love, the vice versa is a requisite, and no one can be forced to love).

4) Then I step into action. It is the imperium, as when I decided to get up at 5 a.m. and that I prepared everything, and the alarm bell rings and I have to get up: now I must take action.

5) It is only at this stage that ethics spring up as a formalisation of PERSONAL behaviours in view of attaining a PERSONAL good as a sort of safeguard in view of taking action, i.e. of attaining MY good. Thus, Kant (for example) has ignored the first 4 stages, for it is only at this stage that the categorical moral imperative should appear, imperative which assails us. In truth, let’s be clear, 98% of good Catholics are Kantian as are 110% of Protestants!

6) It is only at this stage that justice appears, which is a universalization of individual morals, thus a moral extended to everyone else in as much as we recognize for them the possibility of living the same story as us. Moreover, and this is a parentesis, Muslims start here, at the 6th stage, for it is definitively justice which primes for them.

This begets the question, can we move from a common good to a personal good. The answer is no - at least that’s my opinion. That is also why I am dubious when I see that children in “personal difficulty” are “treated” by imposing a common good on them, presented as an individual good, even though they are devastated on a personal level. This is the same error that totalitarian ideologies such as communism make. We claim to save the person by diluting him in an encompassing whole… but we can not have a sense of the common good without one of our personal good. It’s impossible, lest we become a zombie, that is to say a living dead being.

Credit drawing: Fritz at hikingartist.com

The metaphysical touch

The metaphysical touch is to reality what an absolute ear is to music. If for example you strike a glass and you correctly recognize the sound as a B flat, you have an absolute touch. Those who do not have an absolute touch have a relative touch, and they consequently perceive essentially the intervals between the notes. For example, they hear in the same manner the series of three notes “do re mi” and the series of three notes “sol la si”: in both cases the intervals between the notes are the same. A metaphysical touch is therefore a type of absolute ear in the order of being, whereas a relative ear captures mostly modes, accidents and relations.

Credit image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilyl/

Substance

Question: in the act of knowledge, intelligence only grasping form, can we not deduct that substance is irreducibly inaccessible to it?

Answer: You write: “in the act of knowledge, intelligence only grasping form...”

Do we agree on what form is? A quick reminder on what is meant by “form”.. A form answers the question of “what is it”, or again “that by which what is exists as it exists”, and can thus beget diverse answers according to the order in which we interrogate this reality. For example, if I look at you in the order of intelligibility and ask myself what determines you firstly, I will say you are a human being. “Human being” is a form abstracted by intelligence which seeks what is most intelligible in you, what is most significant, determining. In fact, I have never met “human being”, only such and such concrete human; I thus abstract this form “human being” from a multitude of singular people I have crossed. It is very difficult to describe “human being”... I could describe you if I met you, and even take a picture of you, but “human being” is not as easy to describe as one would think! Yet Everyman understands what I signify by “human being”.

If I look at you in the order of life, after having come across a multitude of living beings, I will say what firstly determines you is your soul. Thus the soul is the form of the living.

Etc.

But contrary to what you write, intelligence does not solely know through forms, it also knows via the sensibles, for it never ceases to cooperate with the five senses, to an extent that we would know nothing of reality without them. Further, the abstract wouldn't exist, since the abstract proceeds form the concrete... it is One from the Multiple. In short, there are two ways intelligence can acquire knowledge: the abstract mode and the concrete mode... there are no others!

Now then, in the order of what exists, thus of the concrete, you are what comes first, and realist philosophers call that the first substance, in other words the subject, you, Veritas, whereas “human being” is first in the order of intelligibility, and we call that second substance or “quiddity”.

We thus have a first substance, Veritas, and a second substance: “human being”.

The substance which you are thinking of, which we can call substance-principle, is neither the first substance nor the second substance. It is what explains that Veritas is first in his order, and that “human being” is first in its order. In other words the substance-principle which you are seeking is what explains that the concrete is concrete and the abstract is abstract, that first substance is first substance and that second substance is second substance, thus it is neither one nor the other, neither concrete nor abstract... It is in fact because it has something to do with first substance and second substance that it is neither one nor the other... for if it were abstract, the concrete wouldn't exist, and vice versa. It is thus necessary, with regards to these two correlatives – the concrete and the abstract – that there be a reality that is present in both but at the same time beyond both.

Thus when you write: “can we not deduct that substance is irreducibly inaccessible to it?”...

...you are right in the sense that one can not concretely touch nor abstract substance-principle according to the form of what is! For substance-principle is neither concrete, else we could touch it, nor abstract, else it would only exist in our intelligence. So how can we be certain it is a reality since we can only know in a concrete or abstract mode? We must induce it... it is only through induction that one can find substance, principle according to the form of what is, for if substance-principle is neither concrete nor abstract, it nevertheless exists; in fact, it is!

You are thus right in expressing a doubt concerning the abstract mode of knowledge, since intelligence must simultaneously renounce the concrete and the abstract. You can neither take a picture of substance-principle, nor abstract it, nor describe it, nor figure it, not even imagine it... and that is precisely why many deny it exists, for no one has ever made a full circle around substance-principle, to the extent that if anyone tells you one day “that's it, I have seen precisely what substance-principle is”, you can rest assured that either that person is joking or he is clueless. In fact, it would be just as silly as another who would profess “that's it, I love my wife, I have gone full circle around her, I don't need to see her anymore”, for we never go full circle around a person, something always escapes us, which possibly proceeds from the substance of that person!

One must thus think about what an induction is. For the moderns an induction is often Baconian – i.e. quantitative – whereas for Aristotle an induction is qualitative... Now then, substance-principle is a reality in the order of being, thus is qualitative, not at all quantitative! The induction of substance-principle is quite poor! It hardly has the brilliance of a mathematical demonstration... which may explain why this necessary meagerness of intelligence to induce substance-principle, in other words this aspect of us which begs for what is at the heart of reality, does not go down well with a self-important spirit. Metaphysics is for the poor.