god's transcendent activity ontotheology in metaphysics 12

God's Transcendent Activity: Ontotheology in "Metaphysics" 12Author(s): Markus GabrielSource: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Dec., 2009), pp. 385-414Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40387697 .Accessed: 07/03/2014 16:58

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Philosophy Education Society Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheReview of Metaphysics.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 181.118.153.57 on Fri, 7 Mar 2014 16:58:49 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY: ONTOTHEOLOGY IN METAPHYSICS 12

MARKUS GABRIEL

Heidegger criticized Aristotle's first philosophy for being a logging path which leads to the identification of being and objective representation, that is, the identification of being with an object of thought or perception. Heidegger argues that Aristotle's theologik is both ontology as a metaphysica generalis and theology in the sense of a theory of God's essence. Being and God are identified by showing that the sense of being in its purest form is represented by God who is, thus, himself understood as being or substance. Any theory with these broadly Aristotelian outlines he calls "ontotheology."1

Contemporary Aristotelian scholarship, however, tends to isolate Metaphysics 12 and, hence, to sever Aristotle's most explicit theological account from his ontology - the theory of being qua being as it is defined in Metaphysics 4. Michael Frede, for example, has argued that Metaphysics 12 can be read as a self-standing treatise and should be read in this way in order to avoid misleading questions about the relation between ontology and theology which he believes to be absent from 12. 2 This seems to contradict a traditional interpretation prominent at least from Plotinus to Hegel, the later

Correspondence to: Markus Gabriel, Universitt Bonn, Institut fr Philosophie, Lehrstuhl fr Erkenntnistheorie, Lennstr. 39, 53115 Bonn, DE.

Martin Heidegger, "Die onto-theologische Verfassung der Metaphysik," Identitt und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), 35-73.

Michael Frede Introduction, in Aristotle s Metaphysics Lamba: Symposium Aristotelicum, eds. Michael Frede and David Charles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 1-52. Frede argues that we cannot readily identify the sense in which Metaphysics A is part of the metaphysical enterprise of first philosophy which Aristotle defines both as ontology and as theology (50). Recently Christoph Horn defended the view that is primarily concerned with theology. See Horn, "In welchem Sinn enthlt Metaphysik Lambda eine Theologie?" Jahrbuch fr Religionsphilosophie 1 (2002): 28-49. Contrary to Frede and Horn I roughly agree with Helen Lang that the treatise's focus is which, in my view, leads Aristotle to the identification of being and God. See Lang, "The Structure and Subject of Metaphysics ," Phronesis 33 (1993): 257-80.

The Review of Metaphysics 250 (December 2009): 385-414. Copyright 2009 by The Review of Metaphysics.


386 MARKUS GABRIEL

Schelling, Brentano, and Heidegger. All of them had a metaphysical interest in Aristotle precisely because they thought he offered an understanding of how being as being and divine thought relate to each other.3

In what follows, I shall sketch a different ontotheological reading of Metaphysics 12, which both establishes new ties to the traditional ontotheological interpretation and shows its shortcomings. My interpretation departs from an explanation of pure energeia as transcending the intellect and intentional thought altogether, as recently proposed by Aryeh Kosman.4 This explanation partly bases itself on the famous fragment from On Prayer where Aristotle considers the possibility that God might be "something beyond intellect ( )"* In Metaphysics 12 and in the Eudemian Ethics6 Aristotle seems to have precisely this latter possibility in mind when, for example, asserting that God is "superior to intellect (' )"1 or that his activity is "more ()"8 and "more astonishing (-)"9 than human intellect even at its best.10

3 1 already tried to defend the traditional view in Markus Gabriel, "Gottes transzendenter Seinsvollzug. Zur aristotelischen Ontotheologie im der Metaphysik," Jahrbuch fr Religionsphilosophie 5 (2006): 97-119. However, in the present article I have cleary changed an important part of my view because I stopped believing that Aristotle's identifies God with any sort of intellection or self-awareness.

Aryeh Kosman, "Metaphysics A 9: Divine Thought," in Aristotle's Metaphysics Lamba, 307-26; see also "Aristotle's Prime Mover," in Selfmotion. From Aristotle to Newton, eds. Mary Louise Gill and James G. Lennox (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19941 135-54. 5 Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, ed. Valentinus Rose (Leipzig: Teubner, 1886), fr. 49: b $ . Eudemian Ethics 7.14.1248al6-b3. For the Greek text, I use the standard Oxford editions: De anima, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1956), Ethica Eudemia, ed. R.R. Walzer et J.M. Mingay (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1991), Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford: Oxford Press: 1894), Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1957). In this paper, I use Jonathan Barnes' translation of Aristotle. See The Complete Works of Aristotle, revised Oxford translation, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols., (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984). 7 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a32.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b25. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b26. An interpretation, which is based on the fragment trom Un Frayer, and

which argues for the identification of the and the insofar as divine thought thinking itself can be argued to transcend human


GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 387

Aristotle clearly points out that everything depends on a "principle, whose very substance is activity (

388 MARKUS GABRIEL

status of this Oneness from dynamis to pure energeia. And yet, he sticks to a Platonic strategy which he integrates into his more immanentist framework. In my view, Aristotle succeeds in explaining both God's immanence in the world order and his transcendence without postulating a realm of ideas, which he shows to be made superfluous by the introduction of an unmoved mover into his cosmology. He does so by rejecting the metaphysics of participation or imitation and replacing it with his concept of a teleology based on the pros hen relation, as I shall argue.

I shall proceed in three steps. First (Part I), I shall argue that Aristotle's theology in Metaphysics 12.7 presents God as an activity which even transcends intentional thought and, therefore, intellect altogether. Second (Part II), I sketch my interpretation of teleology on the basis of the pros hen relation, as it appears in Metaphysics 12.10. Despite obvious similarities, I shall finally (Part III) point out some differences between Aristotle's God and the neoplatonic One.

Aristotle seems to offer a way out of the problem of how thought can relate to itself without always already essentially being of itself, thereby anticipating the idea of an immediate pure self-awareness of the One later introduced by Plotinus. This similarity should however not mask the fundamental differences between Aristotle and Plotinus, partly pointed out by Plotinus. Nevertheless, I believe it is illuminating for both Aristotelian and Plotinean scholarship to be aware of the degree to which Plotinus' concept of the One builds on Aristotelian assumptions about life and activity transcending intentional thought even at its best.

As far as my methodology is concerned, I shall not mask my own metaphysical interest in Aristotle. This means that I shall avoid what are in my view unanswerable philological questions about the date or composition of the text. Moreover, I shall not try to answer the questions: whether the God of Metaphysics is the Prime Mover of the Physics and what exact causal role he plays in the mechanical transmission of energy through the whole of nature. In what follows, I shall consequently obviate any substantial comment about the role of Metaphysics 12.8 because it is the least interesting chapter of that book for someone with particularly metaphysical interests in Aristotle. Besides, I agree with Kosman that even if none of the details of his astronomical theory could seriously be defended nowadays, Aristotle's



insight into the divinity of the human intellect and its relation to a pure self-awareness which it can never fully grasp except "by the way ( )" might still be considered a relevant contribution to the metaphysics of intentionality.15 In contrast to his metaphysics of intentionality, his astronomical theory of the unmoved mover as an efficient cause moving the first heaven has not seriously been defended by any reader for some hundreds of years. However, I do not mean to suggest that Aristotle does not believe in a mechanical transmission of energy through the spheres down to the sublunar. But the details of his astronomical views might be reasonably neglected, if our purpose is to understand his ontotheology. My reading fosters Aristotle's naturalism in that it denies that he conceives of the principle, on which everything depends, as of a mind or an intellect. Life and being are primary to thought even though thought is the best human beings can hope to achieve because it comes closest to a pure, that is, fully self-sufficient activity.

I

In Metaphysics 12.6 Aristotle argues for the necessity of a "principle, whose very substance is its activity { )'1.16 Such a principle is supposed to explain how the first heaven and, hence, everything else can be in eternal movement. This principle must not be identified with a mechanistic and, thus, materially instantiated cause which causes the first heaven's movement by somehow literally being in touch with it. Nevertheless, it has to fulfill the function of an efficient cause in the Aristotelian sense, as that from which movement comes ($ ). However, this by no means excludes the possibility that the supposed principle is also a final cause. On the contrary, it has to be a final and an efficient cause

15 "The philosophical arguments that might lead an Aristotelian to embrace the theory of an unmoved mover would be seen as unaffected by his conversion to a new scientific theory. For there is no story to be told about philosophical theory analogous to that which we have told about astrophysics." Kosman, "Aristotle's Prime Mover", 151. I also agree with Kosman when he compares the with Sartre's cogito prrflexiv (323 and following). See Gabriel, "Gottes transzendenter Seinsvollzug," 113. 10 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1071b20.


390 MARKUS GABRIEL

at the same time. Otherwise it could not be both transcendent and moving. In order to be transcendent it must not be contiguous with the first heaven and in order to be moving there must be a sense in which it is an efficient cause.17 Without approaching the delicate question of how exactly the prime mover can be both an efficient and a final cause, it is necessary to further specify what the principle, whose substance is activity, is in itself.

The activity of the principle, "on which the universe and nature depend {hi xa )"

18 is something familiar to us. Aristotle reminds us that the best way of being which is possible for us resembles the principle's activity.19 As one might expect from Nicomachean Ethics 10, he does not immediately say that our best way of being is abstract philosophical thought. Otherwise he could not claim that "[the principle's] activity" was "pleasure"20 and that the pleasure of the principle's activity was known to us in the forms of "waking, perception and thinking ( , ^, -)"21 Waking, perception, and thinking are obviously introduced as manifestations of the principle's activity. Even if abstract philosophical thought might be the closest we can get to a principle whose substance is activity, it should not be ignored that its activity is also present in other forms of conscious activity that display at least a minimal self-awareness without being reducible to some self-conscious or reflective activity. Animals are as awake as human beings, but are not capable of theoretical science.

Given the list in Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl7 and Aristotle's explicit statement that waking, perception, and thinking are altogether of "the most pleasant ()" I think Elders is wrong when he argues that Aristotle has the kind of pleasure in mind which derives from contemplation. Elders quotes two instructive fragments from the Protrepticus which can easily be used against his reading. In the Protrepticus Aristotle says: "but further, perfect and unimpeded

17 1 opt with Berti (pace Broadie) for the thesis that there must be a "coincidence of efficient and final causality" in the case of the Prime Mover (PM). See Enrico Berti, "Metaphysics 6," in Aristotle's Metaphysics Lamba, 181-206. 0 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl3-14.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl4-16. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl7.



activity contains in itself delight, so that the activity of contemplation must be the most pleasant of all."22 Since the fragment is taken from an introductory work that recommends philosophy as a form of life, it is clear that Aristotle is here speaking of the most pleasant activity for a human being (in particular the philosopher) and not for God. Given the list in Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl7 I think (contra Elders) it is obvious that Aristotle actually refers to the pleasure that "seems to flow forth from one's very existence and life."23

In the famous text on transcendence () in the De Celo Aristotle nowhere says that eternity thinks, but only ascribes the best life ( ' ) to it.24 That refers to the principle on which everything depends is obvious from the whole passage and particularly follows from De Celo 1.9.279a28-30: "from this [the ] depends () the being and life (t eha'i ) which other things, some more or less articulately but others feebly, enjoy." The way everything depends on the principle can, thus, not only be related to its being a thinking activity. What is crucial is activity and not thinking. In order to see this and to approach my general thesis that the Aristotelian God is an active oneness beyond intellect, it is important to emphasize the fact that the whole passage at Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl8-24 does not concern God's thought but describes a way to achieve an insight into what a pure activity might possibly be like.25

It has rightly been stressed by most commentators that the passage describes the process of the intellect becoming identical with its thoughts, a process that is also characterized in On the Soul 3.4. In both texts, Aristotle gives an account of how our intellect grasps itself

22 This quote is from the Ross translation. See The Works of Aristotle, tr. and ed. Bym David Ross. vol. 12, (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), 51. The Greek reads: . 23 Leo Elders, Aristotle's Theology. A Commentary on Book A of the Metaphysics (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), 183. Compare with Nicomachean Ethics 9.9.1170al8 where Aristotle claims that life in a more intensive sense is represented by perception and thought, that is, as awareness of something: %% . ~ Aristotle, De Celo, 1.9.279a21.

The assignment of Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl8-24 to human intellect has correctly been made by many commentators. See for example Jacques , "Metaphysics 9: A Short-Lived Thought-Experiment?," in Aristotle's Metaphysics Lamba, 275-326, especially 302-3.


392 MARKUS GABRIEL

by grasping thoughts. However, even if we grasp the best and even if our active thinking is thinking as such and of the best, it can only be thinking by "grasping an intelligible { )"2* This also accounts for the parergon thesis, according to which it is a necessary condition of our intellect's self-awareness that it grasp some intelligible which is potentially distinct from itself, insofar as it is that which is grasped. However, the intelligible is at the same time identical with our intellect, insofar as it does not exist outside of the intellect in the same way it exists inside of the intellect, namely "without matter { )"27 Therefore, our intellect only becomes {) active thinking by touching {^) an intelligible, that is by actually thinking it.28

Evidently, this whole set of assertions cannot characterize the principle we are still looking for. Otherwise, it would have to become an activity, but this is exactly what Aristotle has to rule out in order to guarantee the eternal movement of the first heaven. It would have a beginning if its moving principle had a starting point, or if it had to activate itself in order to become actual.

It is obvious that our intellect is not always already an active thinking because it only thinks when it has thoughts whose contents it does not produce in the act of thinking them. Our intellect is, therefore, only potential, a "receptacle of thoughts { )."29 Hence, the divine principle that the intellect seems {) to have, insofar as it is divine, is more or better than the intellect even at its best, as I read Metaphysics 12.7.1072b23: "the latter rather than the former is the divine element which thought seems to contain { $ )" In my view refers to the which is our intellect. The divine (namely activity), which the intellect

26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b20; see Eudemian Ethics, 7.12.1245a6. Aristotle, De Anima, 3.4.430a3-5; 3.8.432alO.

"Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b20-21. With Elders (see Aristotle's Theology, 261) I believe that the same doctrine underlies the discussion in De Anima, 3.4-5. See De Anima, 3.4.429b5-9: ' 1 ( di* ) f , $ . The passage is also paralleled by the famous non- propositional 3- in Metaphysics, 9.10.1051b24.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b22; see Aristotle, De Anima, 3.4.429al5: .



seems to have, is even better than the intellect, which is only a receptacle.30 This is why the contemplation (namely of the principle, the substance of which is its activity) is the most pleasant and the best (for us).31 Contrary to the possible readings of the sentence listed by Elders, I believe that what is being compared in this difficult sentence is pure activity and our activity of thinking.32 Pure activity is distinguished from the activity of thinking because it is not restricted to thought and therefore to intentionality. Otherwise it would have to be activated by some intelligible, that is by a thought. The very intentional structure of intellect makes it potential, dependent upon some intelligible or other.

If there is a principle, the substance of which is its activity, then it must be more than the passive intellect whose essence consists in nothing but its potentiality and which is merely a receptacle for given forms.33 If there is to be anything divine in the intellect it cannot be its passivity and, therefore, its potentiality. However, its receiving forms

30 Compare with Hans Joachim Kramer's reconstruction of the sentence in: Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Piatonismus zwischen Piaton und Plotin (Amsterdam: Schippers, 1967), 166, n. 134: "Sinn: Die Aktualitt ( in der Subjekt-Objekt-Einheit = se. ) ist in hherem Grade als die Potentialitt ( = ) dasjenige, was der Nus Gttliches zu haben scheint." It is amazing that Krmer says in the main text that the passage (Metaphysics, 12.18.1072bl8sq.) undisputedly characterizes divine thinking (166), but in a footnote (n. 135) concedes that the whole set of assertions "gilt genauer fr das gttliche und menschliche Denken gemeinsam." 31 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b24.

"One could think of the following things being compared: (a) nous and its object; (b) nous in actuality with nous in potentiality; (c) the object and reality, (d) the divine mind and the not-divine mind." Elders, Aristotle's Theology, 192. I completely endorse Elders' statement that: "If our interpretation is correct, Aristotle here formulates the primacy of being over knowledge." Ibid., 194. Elders even quotes the crucial passage from Eudemian Ethics 7.14.1248a27 which is equally important for my interpretation: 0s' . oh $. Elders himself however adopts (a). One of the passages in the Corpus which seem to contradict my reading is Nicomachean Ethics 10.8.1178b20-32 where Aristotle says that "God's activity . . . most probably is theoretical ( 3- . . . /)" 10.8.1178b21- 22. He continues, however, to mark a difference between our theoretical form of life and God's life, in as far as our life "is somehow something similar to an activity of that [divine] sort (sV - ) 10.8.1178b26-27.

Aristotle, De Anima, 3.4.


394 MARKUS GABRIEL

is its potentiality as opposed to the activity of thinking forms. Thus, what is divine about intellect is its activity and not the fact that thinking that is identical to its thinking thoughts and, therefore, forms. Nevertheless, the only way its activity is realized is by its thinking forms and thereby becoming identical to them in theoretical science and cognition in general.

Up to this point, Aristotle has not affirmed anything about the principle's essence except that it must be activity. The analogy with the intellect does not show that the principle is thinking in the sense of an intellect which has thoughts and actualizes itself by thinking them. On the contrary, the whole section, Metaphysics 12.7.1072b23-30, seems to avoid characterizing the principle, which is identified with the God, by intellectual attributes. If it turned out at this stage of the argument that the principle is thinking or even thought thinking itself, we simply could not explain how its activity could manifest itself in waking or in perception, both of which are states not exclusively attributed to human beings or to the heavenly unmoved movers, but are also actualized by nonintellectual animals. Moreover, Aristotle does not exclude the animal realm from participation in the divine. On the contrary, he even claims that "all things have by nature something divine in them ( )"34 Hence, he does not restrict the claim to the human being qua intelligent agent or to the divine in every animal, but explicitly quantifies over everything.

However, it is clear from many passages of the Corpus that the best way to approach the principle, the substance of which is its activity, is through theoretical thought precisely because it is the "most pleasant and the best ( )" phenomenon known to us. Even so, three conclusions that are traditionally derived from Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24 in fact do not follow from that passage:36

34 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.13.1153b32. Elders explains this as follows: "According to Aristotle all beings strive for pleasure. The basis for this striving is a divine element in their nature, that is, a certain likeness with God, who is in a state of uninterrupted pleasure, - his activity being characterized by immobility. ... All things imitate the first; when striving for pleasure they imitate a supreme pleasure in the First Principle, whose very activity is pleasure." Elders, Aristotle's Theology, 184.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b24. "He now turns to an examination of its [the principle's] activity. The

inquiry is inspired by the principle that the noblest human acts will show



(1) Aristotle does not (yet) identify the principle, on which everything depends, either with the intellect or with thought thinking itself. (2) He does not (yet) identify the ultimate principle with God. (3) He does not identify God with the intellect.

For my understanding of the Aristotelian God as a transcendent active oneness, the section immediately following at Metaphysics 12.7.1072b24-30 is crucial. There, Aristotle does not only claim that sometimes, namely whenever we engage in theoretical science, we reach out to God, who practises theoretical science all the time. He explicitly asserts that God's well being, his , is even better and even more astonishing than the activity we actualize when we engage in theoretical science. It is remarkable that he uses the hi, which might even be interpreted as a slight hint at Plato's hi , 37 because it points towards an ultimate principle, whose substance is its activity, which transcends even our intellect.38

Contrary to a principle whose substance is its activity, our intellect is passively actualized by thinking thoughts, that is by standing in relation to intelligibles that it does not produce. It only thinks itself by grasping an intelligible, , whereas the principle we are looking for must be beyond this dichotomy of subject and object because in thinking thoughts there is always something potential, even material (in the sense of On the Soul 3.5.430al0-14) involved. Thinking is not essentially thinking of itself and even the supposedly divine has to actualize itself by thinking thoughts (and thus must be distinguished from the principle

some similarity with the activity of unchangeable entity. Aristotle furthermore argues that this first being, since it is the object of desire, must be supreme pleasure; hence it has a cognitive activity, because this activity involves pleasure. . . . The assertion that man's noblest pass-time or activity is that of God, is apparently based upon the assumption of an analogy between man and God, that is, on the conviction that man shares in the Nous." Elders, Aristotle's Theology, 181; see also 186-92. Elders rightly reads 1072b22 as a statement about the human intellect (190-1). 37 Plato, Republic, 6.509b9.

This similarity is also affirmed by Elders: Yet the very use ot the terms and indicates that God's activity (and thus God's being) is something which man cannot fully understand." Elders, , Aristotle's Theology, 197. Elsewhere he writes: "the being of the first principle must be different from the things man knows." Ibid., 262. See also Brunschwig, ''Metaphysics 9: A Short-Lived Thought-Experiment," 310-12.


396 MARKUS GABRIEL

that is always already activity). Therefore, Aristotle does not claim that God is the intellect whose self-reference is analyzed at Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24. Aristotle does not assert that God is intellect but that the intellect's activity is God and that this activity is life: "for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality ( , S )."

God is obviously identified with the activity which also manifests itself in the activity that the intellect exerts by thinking the thought that God is activity. However, this does not entail that God himself is an intellect. That God is intellect's activity does not entail that he is nothing other than an intellect's activity. In my view, he is intellect's activity among other things, for example the activity of the heavenly unmoved movers, of animals, of the elements, and so forth. Everything relates to God as the standard model of activity insofar as it aspires to remain in its best form. Given that this is also the case with intellect and given that intellect can investigate into its own nature, the analysis of intellect leads to an insight into the very nature of the principle we are searching for.

Fortunately, there is further textual evidence for the reading I am proposing: it is Aristotle's explicit thesis in Eudemian Ethics 7.14.1248a20-29 that God is the activity in intellect without thereby being himself an intellect. The passage reads:

there is some starting-point [in thought and deliberation]; nor does one think after thinking previously to thinking and so on ad infinitum. Thought, then, is not the starting-point of thinking nor deliberation of deliberation. What, then, can be the starting-point except chance? Thus [according to that argument] everything would come from chance. Perhaps there is a starting-point with none other outside it, and this can act in this sort of way by being such as it is. The object of our search is this - what is the commencement of movement in the soul? The answer is clear: as in the universe, so in the soul, it is god. For in a sense the divine element in us moves everything. The starting-point of reasoning is not reasoning, but something greater. What, then, could be greater even than knowledge and intellect but God?39

39 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a20-29. Barnes' translation. The text reads: ' , ' () ,

, , / ^ , ; ' . ',



The principle we are looking for is the cause of everything's being what it is, insofar as everything is what is by its . But the of all things is activity, as we learn from Metaphysics 9.8. The is, therefore, the principle of matter in all things insofar as it ensures that they are something rather than nothing. That is why the is famously referred to as the "cause of being { )"40 at the end of Metaphysics 7, not because it creates something out of nothing but because it accounts for everything's being something determinate, distinguishable from everything else. Thanks to the active nature of our intellect we are capable of understanding activity, which becomes explicitly known to us in theoretical science. This does not entail that the activity we discover in every has to be intellectual. "Being" in Aristotle means "determinacy." Therefore, Aristotelian ontology is best understood as a tinology, that is, as a theory of determinacy. Like the neoplatonists (and maybe already Plato) Aristotle believes that all determinate being (, ) owes itself to an unifying activity, which imposes an intelligible structure on everything. That which is thereby determined is matter, understood as a passive receptacle of forms.

Returning to Metaphysics 12.7, it should by now be clear that Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24 does not describe the internal structure of God's thinking or his activity but merely gives an account of our intellect which ensures that we can have some understanding of a pure activity. Contrary to God's pleasant activity, our theoretical well being is necessarily limited by having to actualize its own potential to think determinate thoughts. These thoughts appear to be something different from thinking because of the very intentionality of the act of thinking, although the act of thinking can, in some special sense, be said to become identical to its thoughts.

Aristotle closes Metaphysics 12.7 by telling us that he has now reached the goal of proving that "there is an eternal substance which is

; ' , . ' 3-, . $ ' , ( ) $; It is important to note that this passage is textual evidence for the reading I am defending whereas there is, to my knowledge, no further passage where Aristotle asserts that God is an intellect. w Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7.17.1041b25.


398 MARKUS GABRIEL

unmoved and separated from all perceptibles ( )."*1 This proves the necessity of metaphysics as a theory of such a substance (in the sense of Metaphysics 6.1; 11.2, 7). Nevertheless, we are not told that this substance is an intellect but only that it is an activity which is, among other things, the activity of our intellect. We only learn that God is life, not that such a life must be the life of an intellect analogous to our intellect although differing from it by being able to continue its activity of thinking indefinitely, as the traditional reading has it.

As far as Metaphysics 12.7 is concerned, Aristotle does not identify his God with any intellect. In that chapter, it might well be the case that God is "something beyond intellect (- )" a possibility Aristotle entertains in the short fragment On Prayer, There is even positive evidence for such a view in Metaphysics 12.7.1072b24- 26, where we are told that God is even more astonishing than our intellectual activity. Moreover, Aristotle does not say that the principle on which everything depends is an act of thinking but rather asserts that it is activity and that, therefore, pleasure is not limited to thinking: "because of that [the fact that pleasure is the principle's activity] being awake, perception, thinking are the most pleasant." Hence, he does not imply that thinking alone is the most pleasant but that all three states of at least minimal intentional awareness are instances of the most pleasant, namely of activity.

If it is true that in Metaphysics 12.7 Aristotle describes our intellect and its actualization and characterizes God only by eternal life, without thereby committing himself to thinking of God as an active intellect thinking thoughts, one should also be able to carefully distinguish between all the passages in Metaphysics 12.9 where Aristotle talks about our intellect in opposition to the passages where he talks about God. More precisely, I now wish to show that he does not even talk about God in Metaphysics 12.9 at all. He only explicitly refers to the most divine of all phenomena (at Metaphysics 12.9.1074bl6), the august (18), the valuable (21), the most divine and most valuable (26), the most powerful (34), and so on. There is no explicit reference to God, despite the theological undertone of the chapter.

41 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1073a3-5.



There are three overall ways to interpret the general argument in Metaphysics 12.9, only two of which are compatible with my presentation of God's transcendence in Aristotle.

(1) The traditional interpretation. Aristotle continues his discussion of God from Metaphysics 12.7, who is himself the intellect. This gives rise to several aporias. According to the traditional interpretation, Aristotle continues by telling us that God himself is active thinking that thinks itself ( ). Furthermore, he either goes on to tell us that God either thinks determinate thoughts (or even all determinate thoughts like the middle platonic intellect- God) or at least contemplates himself as the perfect object.

(2) Kosman's interpretation. Aristotle continues his discussion of God and tells us that he is active thinking that thinks itself ( ). This is distinguished from our intellect, which only participates in the pure activity of God's thinking and thinks itself only in a concomitant way. God is understood as a pure self-awareness beyond the subject object dichotomy.

(3) Aristotle continues to hint at God's pure activity without ever describing its internal structure because he believes that God transcends our intellect in such a way that we can only extrapolate through analogy what God might be like by engaging in the purest activity possible for us, namely theoretical science, whose telos is the thought that there is a principle whose essence is its activity.42

Since (2) and (3) are both compatible with my account of Metaphysics 12.7, I shall briefly list my arguments against (1), which comprises two apparently contrary readings.

According to (1), God is active thinking that has an object. In my view, it does not really matter whether this object is something other than God or whether he contemplates himself as the best object "in the vicinity." For, both the middle and neoplatonic intellect-God, who thinks the totality of determinate beings by thinking the totality of intelligibles, and the Narcissus-God, who contemplates himself, are

42 For an elaborate description of Aristotle's method of analogical extrapolation, see Charles Kahn, "The Place of the Prime Mover in Aristotle's Teleology," Aristotle on Nature and Living Things, ed. Allan Gotthelf, (Cambridge: Mathesis Publications, Inc., 1985), 183-205, especially 201-2.


400 MARKUS GABRIEL

excluded by the text.43 In general, the concept of the middle and neoplatonic intellect-God presupposes that the description of the intellect becoming identical with its object in Metaphysics 12.7 (1072bl8-24) as well as the whole of Metaphysics 12.9 somehow describe God's activity as an activity of thinking. Yet, God is nowhere in the text explicitly equated with intentional thought or thought thinking some determinate object(s). The traditional reading relies on the unquestioned assumption that Metaphysics 12.7 contains a theory of God's intellect. Contrary to that assumption, I have argued the description of the unifying act of becoming () identical with its object only applies to human thought, which is an exercise of an intellect with the twofold structure characterized in On the Soul 3.4-5, a structure situated "within the soul {iv %)"" Furthermore, as we shall see in detail, there is no additional reason to suppose that Metaphysics 12.9 talks about God or the prime mover (whatever their relation might be) at all. The chapter starts with the observation that "there are some aporias concerning the intellect ( is )" and it continues to refer to this intellect as "the most divine of phenomena ( $)"4 Yet, God cannot be referred to as the most divine of all phenomena, not so much because he is not a phenomenon (which he might well be in the widest sense of the term). Rather, the reason why Aristotle cannot be referring to God here is the impossibility of asking the immediately following question about God, namely if he might be a phenomenon that behaves like a sleeper ( $)& : given the whole argument of Metaphysics 12.6-7, there can be no legitimate question as to whether God is active or in some sense sleeping, a question which might, however, be an issue with regard to our intellect. This question is posed after the introductory remark that the intellect gives rise to several aporias. I therefore conclude that the intellect which gives rise to aporias is neither God nor the prime mover. Aristotle could not seriously be asking what is august () about God if we could not

43 The best overview about the internal development of middle platonism is still John Dillon, The Middle Platonists. A Study of Platonism 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977).

Aristotle, De Anima, 3.5.430al3. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1074bl5-6. 46 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1074bl8.



rule out the possibility that he might be sleeping.47 It is rather a question of why the intellect in general is considered to be the most divine of phenomena if there is something about the intellect that is not divine at all. And there is, namely its possibility to be asleep, that is to be passive, along with its possibility to take anything whatsoever as an object of its contemplative activity.

In the light of the discovery of a principle, the substance of which is its activity, the reason why intellect in general counts as the most divine of phenomena is that it stands for the possibility of being purely active in the act of thinking itself, that is by becoming a . Intellect becomes a by thinking determinate thoughts. And it only becomes the most divine by thinking the "most divine and the most venerable ( $ )"48 thought, namely the thought that there must be a principle, the substance of which is its activity.

If my interpretation is right, then our intellect is divine by thinking the thought that there must be a principle, the substance of which is its activity. In this manner, at the peak of its activity, it touches () God who is nothing but a transcendent pure activity of being, an actus punis. It does so by engaging in the active thought that God is a pure activity. Thus, it achieves the state of a pure self-awareness, reflecting upon its very activity of thinking. As a consequence, it has no other object than itself without thereby ever becoming itself a transcendent pure activity. Our intellect's pure self-awareness comes as close to the

47 Elders, (Aristotle's Theology, 250) believes that Aristotle is referring to Sophist 249a2. Even if it is, as a matter of fact, highly probable that Aristotle's whole discussion of draws on the Sophist, in this particular case one must not forget that Plato uses the in a pejorative sense. In Sophist 249a2, Plato links the august with lifeless being in the context of an obvious reductio: Ti ; % , avr , , , ; Elders somehow seems to repeat Plotinus' misreading of the passage in Enneads 6.7.29-34, 6.6.3.8, and elsewhere. All citations from Plotinus are from the following edition: Plotini opera. Ed. P. Henry et H.R. Schwyzer, 3 vols., Paris/Brussels: Descle de Brouwer, 1951-1973). Plotinus suggests that the eleatic stranger is referring to the One beyond intellect as the august, thereby mitigating the obviously pejorative tone of the passage.

Aristotle, Metphysics, 12.9.1074b26.


402 MARKUS GABRIEL

divine as possible by achieving a state of thinking the thought that God is a principle, the substance of which is its activity and nothing else.

My reconstruction is capable of solving the ancient quarrel about the content of the intellect in Metaphysics 12.9. Since the intellect is not God we can say that both of the following are true:

(a) the intellect thinks determinate thoughts; and (b) the intellect is thinking of thinking.

Both are true about different aspects of our intellect. Since we can only become aware of our thinking activity by thinking thoughts, the most divine of all thoughts, the thought the content of which is God, is a vehicle of referring to the activity of our thought. We thereby become aware of the divine nature of thought which lies in the activity of thinking. This very thought is self-referential, but it can only be attained as the result of thinking determinate thoughts, (a) and (b) thus describe two different aspects of human thought qua activity of intellect in our soul. In terms of On the Soul we can say that the so called active and the passive intellect are "within the soul (kv rjj )"49 which is an unsurprising result in the conext of a treatise On the Soul. Now we understand better in what sense the intellect can be said to be "the most divine in us {


terminology. Aristotle only asserts that the intellect he is talking about thinks itself because it is the most divine of all phenomena and, therefore, is the best object of thought. He neither confirms that the intellect is itself God nor that it engages in pure self-awareness all the time. One of the putative hints that Aristotle might be talking of God is his mention of the impossible "uneasiness ()"61 of the best in a context where he seems to be denying that the intellect changes in any sense by thinking the best. By contrast with finite being, the divine is clearly "at ease (ara>zW)."52 However, Aristotle does not explicitly say that the intellect would change if it did not think the best. He only says that when the intellect is active thinking () and not mere potentiality (), it thinks the best, which is its own activity. He does not say that the intellect is never uneasy, but only tells us that its activity is exercised with ease. From this it follows that the intellect would change if it did not think the best. Hence, the intellect is always threatened by the existence of something worse than its own activity which is already there to be an object of the intellect's activity. If Aristotle were referring to God as an intellect, this would imply that God's pure activity might be threatened by the very existence of something worse than himself because it might become an object of his thought. Aristotle would need an argument to the effect that God is not even able to think anything worse than himself. However, he does not give such an argument.

Another objection to (1) and (2), which both take Aristotle to be referring to God in Metaphysics 12.9, lies in the very construction of the text.53 In line with the famous thesis that the activity of thinking is in some sense or other self-referential, Aristotle immediately introduces another aporia without marking any change of subject. The aporia begins with the observation that all ordinary knowledge based

51 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1074b29. w Aristotle, De Celo, 2.1.284al4. CO _____ _ _ - . - . .-.-a* .r . -_ -_. T_r For a similar observation on the beginning ot me chapter see Lang

"The Structure and Subject," 268. Lang rightly states that the very beginning of the chapter and the whole "argument concerning mind and its object is out of place", because it poses a question which has already been solved by suddenly invoking the possibility that God might not be active. Since it has already been shown that he is a principle, whose substance is its activity, it would be completely absurd to expect another treatment of the question how God can be an actus puras if he is intentional thought.


404 MARKUS GABRIEL

on science, perception, belief, and reasoning (, -, , ) always seems to be of something other than itself. If this is true, how can we guarantee that this is different in the case of thinking and being thought? He resolves the aporia by arguing that everything in intellect which is immaterial is such that the act of thinking and its object coincide. He lists some famously obscure examples, namely poietic sciences without matter and theoretical sciences in which the act of thinking and its object are one and the same.54 Whatever the details, it is obvious that all these sciences are not activities of God, who is something .55 If the whole passage from Metaphysics 12.9.1074b35-1075al0, which immediately follows the , makes explicit more aporias about the "human intellect ( )" why should we believe that the only applies to God (even if it also applied to God)? I think these are serious problems which arise for (1) and (2), regardless of how their respective accounts flesh out the details of the putatively divine thinking of thinking.

If we adopt (3), however, there is good reason for why Aristotle caused such a sensation by connecting the divine with our intellect's possibility of becoming a . From the discussion of Metaphysics 12.7 we concluded that Aristotle refers to life in the sense of a pure activity when he talks about God because God is the principle, the substance of which is its activity. The question posed in Metaphysics 12.9 then is why intellect is divine. The obvious answer must be that it is like God in being capable of some (almost) pure

54 As a matter of fact, I do not believe that the phrase fy {Metaphysics 12.9.1075al-2) is as obscure as it seems. It is possible to translate it as follows: "In the case of manufacturing techniques the substance and the essence are without matter." According to Aristotle's account of this means that the person who produces something has an immaterial idea ofthat something that determines what that something is. The idea of a chair that I have determines the way the created chair will look. 55 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a27. This is incompatible with any interpretation according to which God is an omniscient being. De Koninck is obviously wrong when he writes: "C'est tout ce qui est potentialit - discours, changement, dpendance - qu' Alistte limine de Dieu, nullement la connaissance." "La Pense de la Pense chez Alistte," in La question de Dieu selon Avistte et Hegel, eds. Thomas de Koninck and Guy Planty- Boryour (Paris: Pr. Univ. de France, 1991), 69-151, here: 149.



activity, namely thinking of itself as of an activity. Its best thus consists in its thinking the best, that is in thinking the thought that there must be some actus purus. This thought stands the test in theoretical science because theoretical science, especially metaphysics, discovers that the sense of being is energeia. Whatever there is, whatever is something and, hence, something determinate, distinct from something else, is determined by its . As the whole discussion of the middle books 7, 8, and 9 proves, the is the "cause of being { )"56 by being active as opposed to the mere potentiality of the underlying matter. This brings me to my second topic.

II

A good part of the discussion of the in the German tradition of Aristotelian scholarship has been determined by Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle's notion of God. Hegel takes it for granted that Aristotle simply must be ascribing some sort of absolute subjectivity or absolute reflection to God because self-reference is the ultimate goal of thought (and therefore divine) in Hegel's own view.57 When Klaus Oehler, to name but one example, sees "the highest peak of Greek philosophy" in Aristotle's putative intellect-God he interprets Aristotelian theologik as a theory of divine subjectivity.58 Given the

56 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7.17.1041b26. See Avistte et Hegel, eds. de Koninck & Planty-Bonjour; Klaus Dusing,

Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie. Ontologie und Dialektik in Antike und Neuzeit (Darmstadt: 1983), 97-159; see also Dsing, "Noesis Noeseos und absoluter Geist in Hegels Bestimmung der Philosophie'," in Hegels System der Philosophie, eds. Hans-Christian Lucas, Burkhard Tuschling, and Ulrich Vogel (Frankfurt/Main 2004), 443-59; also Dsing, "Hegel und die klassische griechische Philosophie (Piaton, Aristoteles)/' in Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie, eds. Dietmar H.Heidemann, and Christian Krijnen (Darmstadt: WBG, 2007), 46-69.

Klaus Oehler, "Der hchste Punkt der antiken Philosophie," in Der unbewegte Beweger des Aristoteles (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1984), 99- 116. Contrary to Oehler, Heidegger is on the right track when he claims that the "highest peak of Aristotle's philosophizing" lies in Metaphysics (especially 10), that is, in the treatise on and . See Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles, Metaphysik 1-3. Vom Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft, 3rd edition, (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2006), here: 10.


406 MARKUS GABRIEL

common assumption that Aristotle assumes an intellect-God in the tradition of Xenophanes and the Academic philosopher Xenokrates, Hans Joachim Krmer, Klaus Oehler, and Klaus Brinkmann started a lasting discussion about the question of what, if anything, might be the content of God's intellect.59 Hegel and his followers, however different in detail, all establish a reading along the lines of (1).

As is well known, the very goal of the Metaphysics is to prove that there is some first philosophy distinct from physics by having something as its object which is neither material nor dependent upon something else. If there were no such thing, then there would be no genuine discipline called "first philosophy." The only place where Aristotle proves the necessity of first philosophy in all the books which are handed down to us as the Metaphysics, is Metaphysics 12. However loosely the various books of Metaphysics might seem to be connected from a philological point of view, we still need to make sense of the fact that they refer to each other and that they jointly elaborate the notion of first philosophy. And, the only answer to our questions about the content of first philosophy is Metaphysics 12, even though Aristotle already makes clear in Metaphysics 1.2.983a5-ll that first philosophy is divine knowledge or knowledge of the divine. If it turned out that God was nothing but a pure activity transcending intellect altogether, then this very thought would be the ultimate content of first philosophy. The object of ontology and the object of theology would be one and the same, namely energeia. If God were intellect or thinking of thinking this connection between ontology and theology, and thus the unity of first philosophy itself, would be threatened. Since it is rather implausible to look for a connection

59 The main contribution in the debate are Hans Joachim Krmer, Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik) "Zur geschichtlichen Stellung der aristotelischen Metaphysik I: Zur aristotelischen Theologie/' Kantstudien 58 (1967), 313-354; "Grundfragen der aristotelischen Theologie - Erster Teil: Die Noesis neoseos bei Aristoteles", Theologie und Philosophie 44 (1969), 363-87; "Grundfragen der aristotelischen Theologie - Zweiter Teil: Xenokrates und die Ideen im Geiste Gottes," Theologie und Philosophie 44 (1969), 481-505; Klaus Oehler, "Aristotle on Self-Knowledge," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118 (1974), 493-506; Der Unbewegte Beweger des Aristoteles (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1984); Subjektivitt und Selbstbewutsein in der Antike (Wrzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1997); Klaus Brinkmann, Aristoteles' allgemeine und spezielle Metaphysik (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1979).



between everything's activity and an intellect-God, ontology and theology only seem to complement each other if their common concern is the sense of being qua energeia.

One of the central doctrines of Aristotelian ontology is that "being is predicated in a manifold sense, but in relation to One and to one nature ( xa

408 MARKUS GABRIEL

always something determinate, as Plato points out against Parmenides in the Sophist.65 Both Plato and Aristotle fundamentally agree in understanding being something (V) as being something determinate, as being . Aristotle, however, introduces the distinction between and which allows him to speak of the as an immanent cause of being. In this context, it is important to take seriously the fact that Aristotle defines something's telos as its , which is perhaps best known from the Nicomachean Ethics9 s words for the human telos: .66 In the Metaphysics Aristotle explicity identifies something's with its and its with > ' 67 .

Now, according to Aristotle all causes of being, all determinate are analogically ( ) the same insofar as they relate to one.68 This One is the very unifying activity of determination which is omnipresent wherever there is anything rather than nothing. Thus, everything desires to be what it is and to resist change over time because every change can only make it worse once it reaches its , which is .69 This is not only true for human beings trying to live a human life in accordance with their nature as thinking beings. This is even the case with the elements that strive to return to their

65 Plato, Sophist, 237clO-dlO. 6 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.7.1097b24-25. See Metaphysics 5.11.1019a8: , 9.8.1050a21:

, , and most explictly Met. 9.8.1050a9-10: ' , . This accounts for the overall primacy of activity/actuality over potentiality, which is argued for in Metaphysics 9.8. In line with Kahn's taxonomy, I will defend a broad view of Aristotelian teleology on the basis of the primacy of actuality. Kahn summarizes the view in the following way: "As supreme instance of unqualified actuality and divine life, the PM serves as a kind of metaphysical magnet drawing all natural potencies on to their realization in act and to the acquisition of their specific form. On this view, everything in nature aspires to the condition of deity; but each kind of thing can attain this goal only in a limited, specific way." Kahn, "The Place of the Prime Mover," 184.

Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.5.1071a4, 25, 33. There is an important parallel in Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 where Aristotle criticizes Plato's idea of the Good (which some take to be identical to the One of the Unwritten Doctrines). In this context he also explicitly claims that everything stands in an analogical relation to one which serves the function of manifesting itself in everything's telos, ' ' , ' . w Aristotle, Metaphysics, 9.8.1050a9.



, thus attempting to realize the activity of their respective . Once something realizes its it becomes what it is. Therefore, the whole of nature is organized in relation to one, namely to pure activity which everything realizes to some degree by simply being in accordance with its essence or nature (understood as its norm of being). As Sedley has it, "Aristotle's special claim for his own prime mover is that it accounts, not just for motion in the narrow sense, but for things' quite generally being the individual things that they are. It does so by setting the model of actuality to which, in realizing their potential, they are aspiring."70 In this sense, God and being are the same because he is a substance whose essence is nothing other than the sense of being, namely energeia, and thereby "an overall unifying cause/'71 This does not entail that God is an intellect or even intellectual activity. For if God were intellect, we could not explain why everything is organized in relation to his active oneness. In what sense could the elements be said to be desiring to be like an intellect- God without being endowed with intellect?

The equation of God with the sense of being and, hence, with a causa exemplaris might also lead to another solution to the question in what sense God moves by being desired ( ).72 But first of all we would have to give up the widespread view that Aristotle in his opposition to Plato became a naturalist in the modern sense of the term. In my view, the organization of the whole of nature, as Aristotle describes it, does not rest on the assumption that nature takes care of itself, once we can guarantee that there is a relevant causal connection between the spheres and the sublunary region. If Aristotle held that everything (perhaps with the exception of the prime mover) could be explained in purely causal terms in a modern sense of the word, we would indeed face a big problem in interpreting all the passages where he talks about the divine in nature, God himself, and so forth. However, such an interpretation neglects the fact that nature () in Aristotle as well as in Plato also designates a norm which everything aims at fulfilling but which is not necessarily fulfilled. The potential

70 Sedley, "Metaphysics A 10," 348. 71 Ibid. 72 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b3.


410 MARKUS GABRIEL

gap between everything's potentials and its norm or nature helps Aristotle to explain everything in teleological terms.

All this is said from a metaphysical point of view. In the context of physics, meteorology, and astrononomy, things naturally look different. But, as Aristotle tells us right at the beginning of On the Soul (De Anima), there are different methods for investigating different regions or aspects of being. Whereas physics regards being as moved or movable,73 metaphysics or first philosophy takes being qua being as its object. The distinction between physics and metaphysics is thus not merely a distinction between a science about the movable and a science about the unmoved (and, hence, about the prime mover). The difference is rather that metaphysics does not quantify over a specific genus ( ri) of being, that is, a certain region of being, but aims at the discovery of what being qua being is. In this context, physics prepares the path to ontotheology as it does in Metaphysics 12.1-6 and 8. Whatever the details of the theory of the prime mover in On the Heaven or in the Physics, they need not be central to our understanding of God's transcendent activity according to Aristotle because this would contradict his methodological remarks.

Ill

Plotinus' conception of the One that transcends all possible determination and, in this sense, transcends being as such, is obviously not inspired only by Plato's sparse official remarks about the One as ultimate principle in the Parmenides, even if it does play a crucial role in the discussion of the so called Unwritten Doctrines and even if Plotinus reads the Parmenides as a henological treatise.74 Plotinus was also an intensive reader of Aristotle, particularly of Metaphysics 12, as Poryphyry tells us.75 Altough Plotinus critizes Aristotle for not transcending the duality of the which represents, in his interpretation, the self-awareness of the intellect which distinguishes

73 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 6.1.1025b26-28. For a comprehensive discussion of this see Jens Halfwassen, Der

Aufstieg zum Einen. Untersuchungen ber Piaton und Plotin (2nd edition, Mnchen/Leipzig: Saur, 2006). 75 Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 14, 4-7.


GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 41 1

itself in , , and Plotinus' concept of the One owes as much to Aristotle as to Plato. Plotinus insinuates that Aristotle does not transcend the pure self-awareness of the intellect and, thus, misses the pure self-awareness and life of the One that some commentators ascribe to it.77 Nevertheless, Plotinus' repeated explicit and implicit characterization of the Good-One as life or true life that guarantees that everything (except matter which is properly speaking nothing) is alive by being something determinate, that is a form, owes as much to Aristotle's concept of as to Plato's One.78 Plotinus uses Aristotle's fundamental distinction between , and in order to show that the "absolute productivity ( )" of the One is a life which transcends the intellect's life and, hence, everything which can positively be known to be something determinate.80

76 Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.9; Enneads, 5.3 in its entirety, in particular 5.13.35-37; 5.4,2; 5.6 in its entirety, in particular 7.35-37; Enneads, 6.7, 37-41. 77 See John Bussanich, "On the Inner Life of the One," Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987), 163-89; Werner Beierwaltes, "Causa sui. Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung des Gedankens der Selbsturschlichkeit," in Das wahre Selbst. Studien zu Plotins Begriff des Geistes und des Einen (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2001), 123-59; Christoph Horn, "Selbstbezglichkeit des Geistes bei Plotin und Augustinus," Gott und sein Bild - Augustinus' De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwrtiger Forschung, ed. Johannes Brachtendorf (Paderborn: Schningh, 2000), 82-103; also "Plotins Philosophie des Geistes. Ideenwissen, Selbstbewusstein, Subjektivitt", in Zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Geistes, eds. Uwe Meixner and Albert Newen (Berlin/New York 2003), 57-89. For Plotinus and Aristotle see John Rist, "The One of Plotinus and the God of Aristotle," The Review of Metaphysics 27 (1973), 75-87. That the One is endowed with some "intensive thinking of itself, as if it were aware of itself, this thinking being in eternal rest and in a different thinking than the intellect's thinking ( ^ )" (Enneads 5.4.2.17-19), is at least affirmed in one place of the Enneads. In the same chapter, Plotinus alludes to On Prayer using it against Aristotle's putative identification of the self-intellection with the absolute. He explicitly says that the One is beyond intellect and then quotes Aristotle: (Enneads 5.4.2.42-3). It is obvious that Plotinus believes that Aristotle only holds the first possibility of On Prayer, that God is intellect, and probably believes that the other half is a presentation of Plato's doctrine. However, Plato nowhere explicitly says that the One is beyond intellect. The transcendence of the One is, thus, highly influenced by Aristotle even if Plotinus would not agree that Aristotle accepts anything superior to intellect. 78 See also Plotinus, Enneads, 1.4, 3-4; 3.2.1.30-31; 6.8.7.51; 15.24-25. 79 Plotinus, Enneads 6.8.20.6. 80 For an elaboration of this see my Skeptizismus und Idealismus in der Antike (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 11.


412 MARKUS GABRIEL

Otherwise we could not explain why everything which is alive can participate in happiness deriving from the One-Good.81 Similar to Aristotle's thought in Metaphysics 12.7, as I understand it, Plotinus argues in his treatise On Happiness (Enneads 1.4) that even animals and plants are happy, because they are alive. Being alive means being active, that is being something determinate in the sense of an . In the wake of Platonic and Aristotelian hylemorphism, Plotinus defines the One by its activity which is "everywhere and nowhere ( )"82 precisely because it is nothing but activity, pure life. Therefore, the One is "nothing of all things (ovUv )"83 as it acts in everything by being its unifying cause of being: "all beings are beings due to the One ( evi )."84

If I am right, Plotinus owes this idea as much to Plato's negative henology (which may or may not be "disclosed" in the first hypothesis of the Parmenides) as to Aristotle's laconic remarks about the actus purus. However, Plotinus would not agree that Aristotle's God transcends intellect in the very sense in which I have tried to show because this would relate Plotinus more closely to Aristotle than to Plato.85 Be that as it may, one of the consequences of my interpretation of the Aristotelian God as actus purus, which even transcends thought altogether, is that it defends Aristotle against Plotinus' objection according to which Aristotle's God is caught up in the subject object dichotomy. For this would raise the well known problems with the object of God's intellect such that we would necessarily oscillate between an omniscient middle-platonic intellect-God contemplating the totality of forms and the Narcissus-God who contemplates himself because he is the best. The middle-platonic option reintroduces some

81 Plotinus, Enneads, 1.4. " Plotinus, Enneads, 3.9.4. 83 Plotinus, Enneads, 3.8.9.53. 84 Plotinus, Enneads, 6.9.1.1. That Plotinus is more neo-Aristotelean than neo-Platonic because

Plotinus puts the activity of a center stage is precisely Hegel's view: he explicitly says that Plotinus reached the highest region of thought by entering "in das aristotelische Denken des Denkens; er hat viel mehr von diesem als vom Piaton." TWA, 19, 462. De Koninck agrees with Hegel that Plotinus' concept of the One is inspired by Aristotle's concept of God being beyond the subject-object-dichotomy. "La Pense de la Pense chez Alistte", 131-5. On this question see also Rist, "The One of Plotinus and the God of Aristotle" and Ppin, "De la Prire."


GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 41 3

version of the realm of forms qua content of divine thought, while the Narcissus-God generates the problem of why God is the best. Since it would be question begging to answer that he must be the best because he contemplates himself, we need additional reasons for believing that he is the best. But, what should be good in the Narcissus-God except for himself?

Because of the dilemma of omniscience and question begging narcissicism, I do not believe that Aristotle identifies God and thought thinking itself. Fortunately, Aristotle nowhere in Metaphysics 12 explicitly says anything to the effect that he believes God to be an intellect. He does not claim to be engaged in philosophical theology when he is talking of and . Thus, there is a reading which allows him to avoid the dilemma and make sense of ontotheology, the theory that God is the paradigmatic instance of the sense of being, that is activity.

This leads me to the conclusion that Heidegger's critique of Aristotle's ontotheology is not fully justified because Aristotle does not conceive of God and the sense of being as representation. God transcends the subject object dichotomy by being nothing but a principle, the substance of which is its activity. At the same time, Aristotelian transcendence avoids the trap of the Platonic theory of forms, which is one of Aristotle's clear cut philosophical goals. God's life, that is his active oneness, transcends everything while at the same time being present in everything as the model for everything's respective cause of being. This does not mean that he creates the world out of nothing, especially because according to Aristotle there can be no initial nothingness as in the systems of "the theologians who generate the world from night (- )" The kosmos is always already there, and we can understand why this is so by thinking the thought that the eternity of time and, therefore, of movement, can only be adequately accounted for by postulating an actus purus. By analyzing the structure of our intellectual self- awareness we come close to its active oneness, although there is an unbridgeable gap between us and God. This is the reason why Aristotle recommends that we "make ourselves immortal as far as it

86 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.6.1071b27. Barnes inadequately translates with "mythologists" instead of "theologians."


414 MARKUS GABRIEL

is possible (' )1 echoing the Platonic S- .88 Whatever finite beings endowed with reason and intellect may do, they will never become God, allthough they will continue to aim at an actus purus.

New School for Social Research

87 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.7.1177b33. "Plato, Theaetetus 176bl. See David Sedley, "The Ideal of Godlikeness,"

in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail Fine (Oxford: 1999), 309-28; also '"Becoming Like God' in the Timaeus and Aristotle", in Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias, eds. Toms Calvo Martnez and Luc Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia-Veri., 1997), 327-39.


Article Contentsp. [385]p. 386p. 387p. 388p. 389p. 390p. 391p. 392p. 393p. 394p. 395p. 396p. 397p. 398p. 399p. 400p. 401p. 402p. 403p. 404p. 405p. 406p. 407p. 408p. 409p. 410p. 411p. 412p. 413p. 414

Issue Table of ContentsThe Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 63, No. 2 (Dec., 2009), pp. 307-526Front MatterMetaphysics and the Origin of Culture [pp. 307-328]Dummett and the Origins of Analytical Philosophy [pp. 329-347]Is There an "Arch Kakou" in Plato? [pp. 349-384]God's Transcendent Activity: Ontotheology in "Metaphysics" 12 [pp. 385-414]Beyond Nature: Karol Wojtyla's Development of the Traditional Definition of Personhood [pp. 415-454]Book Reviews: Summaries and CommentsReview: untitled [pp. 455-457]Review: untitled [pp. 457-458]Review: untitled [pp. 459-460]Review: untitled [pp. 460-463]Review: untitled [pp. 463-465]Review: untitled [pp. 465-467]Review: untitled [pp. 467-468]Review: untitled [pp. 468-472]Review: untitled [pp. 472-473]Review: untitled [pp. 473-475]Review: untitled [pp. 475-477]Review: untitled [pp. 478-479]Review: untitled [pp. 479-481]Review: untitled [pp. 481-483]Review: untitled [pp. 483-485]Review: untitled [pp. 485-486]Review: untitled [pp. 486-488]Review: untitled [pp. 488-489]Review: untitled [pp. 489-491]Review: untitled [pp. 491-493]Review: untitled [pp. 493-494]Review: untitled [pp. 495-496]Review: untitled [pp. 496-498]Review: untitled [pp. 498-500]

Current Periodical Articles [pp. 503-523]Back Matter

god's transcendent activity ontotheology in metaphysics 12

Documents

thereview of metaphysics

jstor terms

jstor archive

aristotle s metaphysics

michael frede introduction

markus gabriel heidegger

terms conditions of

philosophy education