ph354 aristotle god. introduction (i) in metaphysics book (xii) lambda l, aristotle discusses god,...

PH354 Aristotle

God

Introduction

• (i) In Metaphysics Book (XII) Lambda L, Aristotle discusses God, and the role, or roles, of God.

• (ii) He offers a wide-ranging discussion, drawing on the conclusions of the discussion of substance in the Metaphysics, in the course of which he appears to suggest a theological backing for the most basic parts of physics, as well as a range of different ideas about how human beings relate to God.

• (iii) We will think about what kind of view of God emerges from this discussion, and reflect on what role God plays in Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Lecture Plan

• (i) Work through some of the major claims Aristotle makes about God in Metaphysics Lambda.

• (ii) Spell out a conjecture that Jonathan Lear makes about the role of God, and how these various claims are to be understood as relating to one another.

• (iii) Revisit some questions about Lear’s conception of active form and the activity of God.

Metaphysics Book Lambda: Introduction

• (i) It is substance, and the causes and principles of substance that is the object of our study

• (ii) Aristotle says that there are three kinds of substances (they are of two kinds)

• (iii) There are two kinds of sensible substances (capable of being perceived).

• (a) Eternal (the heavenly bodies, for example)• (b) Perishable (animals, plants, etc.)• (iv) These are investigated by natural science. They are

both things that can change; they are changeable.

Metaphysics Book Lambda: Introduction

• (v) There is another kind of substance that is not investigated by this kind of study. He describes it as ‘unmoveable’ (See 1071b5)

• (vi) Aristotle assumes that the changeable is corporeal. So substances that are nonchangeable or unmovable are noncorporeal.

The unmoved mover (or the prime mover)

• In Lambda chapter 6, Aristotle revisits an argument from the Physics.

• He argues that there must be something, an ‘unmoved mover’ or a ‘prime mover’ that underlies and explains all change.

• The activities and role of this unmoved mover are the activities and role of God

The Argument for an Unmoved Mover

• “Since there were three kinds of substance, two of them natural and one unmovable, regarding the latter we must assert that it is necessary that there should be an eternal unmovable substance. For substances are the first of existing things, and if they are all destructible, all things are destructible. But it is impossible that movement should come into being or cease to be; for there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist. Movement also is continuous, then, in the sense in which time is; for time is either the same as movement or an attribute of movement. And there is no continuous movement except movement in place, and of this only that which is circular is continuous.” (1071b3-11)

The Argument for the Unmoved Mover

• 1. There is eternal and continuous motion• 2. If there is eternal and continuous motion

there is an unmoved mover.• 3. There is an unmoved mover


• Why is premise 1 true? (See Physics, VIII.1 for a clearer statement of the thoughts on which premise 1 depends)

• (a) There cannot be a beginning or an end of time (time is eternal).

• The reason: Any instant of time, any ‘now’, is a point which divides the before and after. So for any time t, there must be time before and after it.


• (b) Time is the measure of change with respect to the before and after (There is no time without change or time is necessarily something ‘of change’)

• The reason: We cannot be aware of time passing without being aware of change.

What is the Unmoved Mover?

“But if there is something which is capable of moving things or acting on them, but is not actually doing so, there will not be movement; for that which has a capacity need not exercise it. Nothing, then, is gained even if we suppose eternal substances, as the believers in the Forms do, unless there is to be in them some principle which can cause movement; and even this is not enough, nor is another substance besides the Forms enough; for if it does not act, there will be no movement…


• Further, even if it acts, this will not be enough, if its substance is potentiality; for there will not be eternal movement; for that which is potentially may possibly not be. There must, then, be such a principle, whose very substance is actuality. Further, then, these substances must be without matter; for they must be eternal, at least if anything else is eternal. Therefore they must be actuality.” (1071b12-22)


• The unmoved mover is not merely something that has the capacity to move things. It must actually continually move things.

• The substance of this thing must be ‘actuality’. It is without matter.

• It is form or being at its highest level of realization.

How does an unmoved mover move things, if it doesn’t move?

• And the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and thought move in this way; they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of wish. But desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting point.


• And thought is moved by the object of thought, and one side of the list of opposites is in itself the object of thought; and in this, substance is first, and in substance, that which is simple and exists actually… But the good, also, and that which is in itself desirable are on this side of the list; and the first in any class is always best, or analogous to the best.


• That that for the sake of which is found among the unmovables is shown by making a distinction; for that for the sake of which is both that for which and that towards which, and of these the one is unmovable and the other is not. Thus it produces motion by being loved, and it moves the other moving things. Now if something is moved it is capable of being otherwise than it is. Therefore if the actuality of the heavens is primary motion, then in so far as they are in motion, in this respect they are capable of being otherwise,--in place, even if not in substance.


• But since there is something which moves while itself unmoved, existing actually, this can in no way be otherwise than as it is. For motion in space is the first of the kinds of change, and motion in a circle the first kind of spatial motion; and this the first mover produces. The first mover, then, of necessity exists; and in so far as it is necessary, it is good, and in this sense a first principle.” (1072b1- 13)


1. The unmoved mover moves things in the way that the objects of desire and thought move things.

2. The unmoved mover moves things because it functions as a final cause.

3. The unmoved mover is the good and it draws things towards it without itself moving.

The Divinity of Thought

• On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and the world of nature. And its life is such as the best we can enjoy, and enjoy it for but a short time. For it is every in this state (which we cannot be), since its actuality is also pleasure. (And therefore waking, perception and thinking are most pleasant, and hopes and memories are so because of their reference to these)…


• …And thought in itself deals with that which is best in itself, and that which is thought in the fullest sense with that which is best in the fullest sense. And thought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and the object of thought are the same. For that which is capable of receiving the object of thought, i.e. the substance, is thought. And it is active when it possesses this object. Therefore the latter rather than the former is the divine element which thought seems to contain, and the action of contemplation is what is most pleasant and best.


• If then God is always in that good state, in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in better that compels it yet more. And God is in a better state. And life also belongs to God; for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s essential actuality is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration and continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God. (1072b, 14-30)


• God’s existence or actuality is a life eternal and good; that’s what God is.

• God is always in the best state; ‘the act of contemplation which is most pleasant and best’

• We can (by thinking, or perhaps by thinking certain kinds of thoughts, or thinking in a certain way) sometimes be in that best state that God is always in.

Divine Thought Thinks Itself

• “The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems; for while thought is held to be the most divine of phenomena, the question what it must be in order to have that character involves difficulties. For if it thinks nothing, what is there here of dignity? It is just like one who sleeps. And if it thinks, but this depends on something else, then (as that which is its substance is not the act of thinking, but a capacity) it cannot be the best substance; for it is through thinking that its value belongs to it. Further, whether substance is the faculty of thought or the act of thinking, what does it think?


• Either itself or something else; and if something else, either the same always or something different. Does it matter, then, or not, whether it thinks the good or any chance thing? Are there not some things about which it is incredible that it should think? Evidently, then, it thinks that which is most divine and precious, and it does not change; for change would be change for the worse, and this would be already a movement. First, then, if it is not the act of thinking but a capacity, it would be reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is wearisome to it.


• Secondly, there would evidently be something else more precious than thought, viz. that which is thought. For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to one who has the worst of thoughts. Therefore if this ought to be avoided (and it ought, for there are even some things which it is better not to see than to see), the act of thinking cannot be the best of things. Therefore it must be itself that thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.”


• (i) Aristotle draws out a range of consequences about the nature of divine thought from the fact of its divinity (i.e. its being good, but being unchangingly or eternally good).

• (ii) Divine thought must have an object. (It can’t be like something that sleeps)

• (iii) Divine thought cannot depend on something else for its existence (like a capacity or faculty) because then it wouldn’t be the most fundamental substance

• (iv) Divine thought must ‘think itself’ (‘and its thinking is a thinking on thinking’)

How is Good Present in the World?

• “We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the universe contains the good or the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts. Probably in both ways, as an army does. For the good is found both in the order and in the leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the order but it depends on him. And all things are ordered together somehow, but not all alike,--both fishes and fowls and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to do with another, but they are connected. For all are ordered together to one end.”

•

How Good is Present in the World

• (i) The good can be present as a self-sufficient entity and it can be present in things through being a particular kind of order or arrangement of things.

• (ii) The order or arrangement of things is not a different order even though the things which are ordered may be different.

• (iii) The order is the same because the end or aim is the same (the good).

•

Aspects of the Divine

• 1. Divine substance itself; eternal divine life• 2. The thought of human thinkers• 3. The structure of the world; the nature of

things in the universe outside the mind of human thinkers

God and Contemplation/Thought

• In Lambda, Aristotle claims that in thinking human beings come to be in a state that God is in always. There is, it seems, something divine even about human thinking. We have seen this thought in Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics. A human being lives the contemplative life ‘in so far as something divine is present in him’.

God and the Structure of the World

• Aristotle says that non-human plants and animals are capable of sharing in the divine. He describes the world as one which involves a kind of order, which is the order conferred by the good. And the basic thesis developed in the opening chapters of Lambda, and in Physics III.1 is that the eternal circular movement of the outer sphere of the heavens is the most immediate manifestation of the unmoved mover.

Lear on Aristotle’s God

• “What is needed is a conception of the order of the world as a response to God. God does not intervene in the world, but the world can be conceived as an expression of desire for God. And this expression of desire must be conceived within the general framework of Aristotle’s world. I should like to offer a conjecture. Suppose that God is actively thinking the primary substances to be found in the world. Suppose further that his thinking forms a well-ordered whole. Then we can see the world as a whole as dependent on God: for the realization of form in the natural world depends upon the antecedent existence of form at its highest level of actuality.


• But the form or primary substance at its highest-level actuality simply is God. And the desire which God inspires is none other than the desire of each organism to realize its form. Each natural organism has within it a desire to do those things necessary to realizing and maintaining its form. This desire is part of the organism’s form or nature itself: form is a force in the organism for the realization and maintenance of form. It is the desire in each individual organism to sustain its life and reproduce that is responsible for the eternality of the species. By reproducing, the individual organism can partake in (divine) immortality of the only sort available to it—the immortality of the species.


• From the perspective of a physicist or a biologist, all that a developing natural organism is trying to do is realize its form. However, from a metaphysical perspective, one can see that in trying to realize its form, the organism is doing all that it can do to become intelligible. It is doing the best job it can do to become intelligible. It is also doing the best job it can do to imitate God’s thought—and thus to imitate God himself. God’s thought does not reproduce the structure of the world: the order of the world as a whole is an attempted physical realization of God’s thought.” (1988: 295-6)

Understanding the World and Ourselves

• “Aristotle believed that to understand ourselves we must understand the world. He also believed that to understand the world one must understand oneself.” (1988, 14)

• “In particular, one cannot understand the world if one remains ignorant of the role the desire to understand plays in one’s own soul as well as in the world at large, if one remains ignorant of the human mind and its capacity to understand, if one remains ignorant of the cost to others of pursuing one’s desire.” (1988, 14)

ph354 aristotle god. introduction (i) in metaphysics book (xii) lambda l, aristotle discusses god,...

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