Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Brian McNally

The Question of The Episteme Sought In
Aristotle’s Metaphysics & Physics

This essay is an examination of the issues of contention surrounding the examination of which science (episteme) Aristotle pursued in the work of The Metaphysics and its relation to the project of The Physics. A great deal of scholarship has been committed to clarifying this point as it relates to the question about the unity of the work of The Metaphysics as a whole. The issues are examined by many modern scholars, but for the purposes of this essay, I have focused my examination on two strong theses on the issue by Werner Jaeger and Giovanni Reale. Werner Jaeger holds that Aristotle’s work has two clearly contradictory inquiries into the appropriate episteme for the first principle (proton arche) of Being. According to Jaeger, The first line of reasoning at work in The Metaphysics is to be understood as an episteme for the proton arche as in terms of theology (qua immoveable ousia), and the second is the episteme for the proton arche in terms of ontology similar in terms of The Physics (qua moveable ousia). He holds that these two differing lines of development are in conflict within The Metaphysics simultaneously and leaves the work on the whole in confusion. How Jaeger approaches these two tracks of development shall be explored in this essay with the goal of discerning the differences and inconsistencies of Jaeger’s thesis. His work concludes with the thesis that the text we know as The Metaphysics is not the work of Aristotle but rather an assemblage of concepts threaded together by later editors and interpreters through the history of the life of the manuscript.
The second position that disagrees with Jaeger is represented by Giovanni Reale who holds that the works are united and the position of Aristotle in the same text is actually whole and consistent[1]. Reale is quick to point out that besides a literary or philological unity, one must especially consider the conceptual unity that belies any issues that may be at discord in the work as a whole.
Werner Jaeger argues that Aristotle’s works have undergone extensive editing in the version of the text of The Metaphysics that we see today[2]. In two works, the first in 1921, he forwarded his theory on the development of The Metaphysics and later in 1923, culminated his work into Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. In this book he defined the position further to claim that there is a fundamental error in the way readers have understood Aristotle since the Neo-Platonists and most notably, since the medievals. From the introduction of his work, Jaeger sets out an explanation of his thesis:
“This book, being at once treatise and monograph, demands a brief word of explanation. It does not seek to give a systematic account, but to analyze Aristotle's writings so as to discover in them the half obliterated traces of his mental progress. Its biographical framework is intended merely to make more palpable the fact that his previously undifferentiated mass of compositions falls into three distinct periods of evolution. Owing to the meagerness of the material the picture that we thus obtain is of course fragmentary; yet its outlines constitute a distinctly clearer view of Aristotle's intellectual nature and of the forces that inspired his thinking. Primarily, this is a gain to the history of philosophical problems and origins. The author's intention is, however, not to make a contribution to systematic philosophy, but to throw light on the portion of the history of the Greek mind that is designated by the name of Aristotle.” (Jaeger, Introduction p. ii)
Jaeger’s book is set to question if The Metaphysics was a unified work by Aristotle at a single phase of his development or if what we have been handed down by history is an edited work from a later era follower that assembled two metaphysical treatises. The first possible work Jaeger theorizes is an earlier Platonic-influenced theory and the other is a more empirically founded theory concerned with the ontological investigation of moveable ousia in phusis (nature). In this, Jaeger sees the third and fifth identifications in the text as contradictory.
In his examination, Jaeger makes an extensive analysis of the linguistic and conceptual breakdown of the books of The Metaphysics and places two competing and conflicting lines of development within the one text. Jaeger starts his examination by a textual identification that he claims discloses that there are two conflicting episteme which Aristotle states he is seeking for use in reaching an understanding of the proton arche of Being (Jaeger, 198-203 ). The first development Jaeger identifies is an earlier Platonic notion, according to which divine entities or separated substances are the subject matter of a different episteme as theology. The second line of reasoning from a later period of work conflicts with this and Jaeger claims he announces a dual result with the result of the episteme for Being qua Being (on! h on!). On the first view, Jaeger says Aristotle is examining an episteme that does not take any notion that it is not coterminous with the set/ genus of all ousia. Thus, metaphysics is ontology. The latter empirical reading is one that also is more in line with the position presented in the work of The Physics VII (Ibid, 203).
What is Jaeger’s examination leading to? Is the textual confusion Jaeger argues for between the examinations of episteme appropriate for either or both moveable and immoveable ousia enough to cast doubt on the whole of Aristotle’s Proton Philosophia? Jaeger seems to think that the confusion is enough to reveal a literary disunity in Aristotle’s thinking about the proton arche for ousia that has roots equally in both The Physics and The Metaphysics. The problem for the modern reader is to wonder what was originally intended by Aristotle to be the correct episteme in order to comprehend the proton arche of Being given these two positions?
To explain the origin of the confusion and how the work was edited into this state, Jaeger has woven together what he calls the “genetic interpretation” of Aristotle’s body of work. In this he divides Aristotle’s work into three distinct periods which are defined as an early, middle and late period. The early phase is primarily characterized during his twenty years at Plato’s Academy which defined his influence. Jaeger reports that Aristotle developed a series of Platonic style dialogues from this period of his development that have been cited by authors of antiquity but are now lost to us. Jaeger claims editors may have used sections of these early dialogues in later works, most notably from the lost work On Philosophy in The Metaphysics, book I (Ibid, 125-166). The second period is a transitional time (aka. The Assos period) in Macedonia when Aristotle left The Academy following Plato’s death. The late period is defined by Aristotle’s full development into the unique philosophic position of proto-scientist. Jaeger argues that in this period Aristotle is largely concerned almost exclusively with the general sciences and origins of phusis. This latest period shows the Aristotle that has fully broken away from his teachings at the Academy and has developed his own voice and philosophy according to Jaeger’s theory.
Jaeger makes out the case that The Metaphysics reveals work from the first and last periods and the two orientations have been confusingly interwoven within the treatises themselves. Because of this, there are sections of The Metaphysics that are “Platonic” (early) and “Aristotelian” (later) sections at conflict within the one work. It is not always the case that there are some books that are earlier-period and other books wholly later-period, but rather that the two have been edited together so closely he says that only a lifetime of painstaking philological scholarship will ever separate them[3] (Ibid, 167-292). His work is only the “red flag” that requires deeper study in his analysis of the work. Jaeger interprets Aristotle wavering between these two positions in The Metaphysics and does not offer any way for the two of them to be consolable. If we accept only the later more empirical reading we end up with Aristotle’s Proton Philosophia as a episteme of ousia in terms of ontology. If we accept the earlier view the text is a special noble epsiteme bearing on a unique ousia that is set apart from all others as immoveable, pure eidos, pure energia, the highest entelechy, the highest good, the unmoved mover; Theon as separate ousia.
Jaeger is careful to point out that Aristotle was not necessarily more sympathetic earlier in his development to theology and later was seeking a more empirical ontology. Rather, it is the case that Aristotle himself was at odds throughout his whole career over the two sciences, and the tension and conflicting positions were never fully resolved. Jaeger points this out in a central passage that he thinks shows the conflict between the earlier and later positions when Aristotle allows for three different episteme to inquire into Being.
But if there is something which is eternal and immoveable and separable, clearly the knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science -- not, however, to physics (for physics deals with certain movable things) nor to mathematics, but to a science prior to both. For physics deals with things which exist separately but are not immovable, and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable but presumably do not exist separately, but as embodied in matter; while the first science deals with things which both exist separately and are unmovable. [The Metaphysics, 1037a10][4]
Jaeger argues that this passage lends itself to reveal that Aristotle is at odds for what the science is his inquiry seeks. He allows for different investigations of being through the three episteme simultaneously to phusis, mathematics and Proton Philosophia. The Physics inquiry and method of episteme is concerned with inseparable and changeable ousia; mathematics episteme with unchangeable but inseparable ousia; and first philosophy episteme inquires to separate and changeless ousia. Jaeger argues also that he reads Aristotle to say that if theos exists anywhere it will be comprehended in episteme of Proton Philosophia which will result in a theoria of theology. Also, he says that the episteme of Proton Philosophia would be then of the more honorable because its inquiry is into more honorable things and thus the most honorable of the theoretical sciences. According to Jaeger he continues to support this tension between the multiple episteme further when he also says…
For one might raise the question whether first philosophy is universal, or deals with one genus, i.e. some one kind of being; for not even the mathematical sciences are all alike in this respect -- geometry and astronomy deal with a certain particular kind of being, while universal mathematics applies alike to all. We answer that if there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and must be first philosophy, and universal in this way, because it is first. And it will belong to it to consider being qua being -- both what it is and the attributes which belong to it qua being. [The Metaphysics, 1026a22 ff]
Jaeger’s analysis ultimately concludes that Aristotle’s seeming solution is no more than a gloss over of the issue of which episteme he is seeking, so he announces that it can be both and makes the issue that the proper episteme of Proton Philosophia even more obvious (Ibid, 218). He goes on to say that this is further evidence of his position that this mediation shows that Aristotle himself did not develop this at one stage or even in the same reflection, but rather again this was condensed together by later successive editors over time.
The proof of this condensing lies in the passage which shows Jaeger argues that Aristotle indeed had an inconsistency or a tension between holding that Proton Philosophia, the culminating telos of philosophy, as a general episteme i.e. ontology qua physics or as a particular episteme that is notable from other particular episteme (i.e. theology). Jaeger makes the case that if it is a general science, it will be impossible for Aristotle to distinguish it from natural philosophy (Physics). It will be an episteme of the theoria of a high level of generality of physical objects (changeable ousia) in the supra-lunar sphere. This would connect the episteme of investigation between mathematicals and phusis together more closely (Jaeger p. 219). Aristotle, according to Jaeger would be tempted at this, as a later period, more epistemologically grounded thinker, but it would mean the full end of the earlier Platonic project that runs parallel in the text.
Jaeger holds that the fact that Aristotle announces in the passage of 1026a22 (above) that first philosophy can be both, i.e. first philosophy can be a general science, thus it cannot have a particular subject (separate immoveable ousia), but it can also be the science of the separate and immobile (the supersensible) ousia: theos. Jaeger holds that the later era editors make Aristotle contradictory when this happens. Jaeger moreover claims then that this represents the noble failure of The Metaphysics, and the end of the Platonic influence on the project and of the earlier period genetic reading. This is the crux of his work on why The Metaphysics cannot be read as a whole and a position must be taken to select a reading of the work as we have done in the class this term.
The problem I personally question about Jaeger’s project is that through all his work he never explicitly considers which Aristotle (early, middle or late) is “the real” Aristotle? This may seem like a sophomoric question, influenced the struggle I have to suppress my inner-pragmatist. I want to know where he stands as an interpreter. Is the historian or classicist one who risks his objective examination if he risks an opinion about the work and not just focuses the historical context and philological tools he uses to make his analysis? The closest we get to his opinion is his comparison of Aristotle’s work to some of Aristotle’s later-era followers that show his influence to establish the work of the later Aristotle as the most influential upon them. Jaeger gives such an examination in his work on Diocles of Carystus (Ibid, 405-425). In this he shows how Aristotle’s work as the proto-scientist is evident in the work of this biologist, medical doctor and philosopher of the post-Aristotelian Lyceum.
Another problem I have in reading Jaeger is that he never adequately defines what the correct explicit metaphysical orientation is to understand the content of the work. In other words, does Aristotle at anytime in his work not think that Being is the one? Being is necessary? Being is eternal? Being is not the sum of beings, but more? etc…(i.e. the Advanced Philosophic Orientation). I cannot find any reflection on this in Jaeger. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of his historical investigation. But as a philosopher, I again must ask which Aristotle is the one I ought to be reading. Jaeger systematically says on one hand it could be the earlier pro-Platonic period, or, on the other hand, it could be the later more empirical founded. However, amidst all this hand washing Jaeger never spells out what he thinks the correct metaphysical orientation is or if there is a developmental theory between the two that weds them together. Of course, it goes to say that the central point of Jaeger’s thesis is that there is an expressed tension in Aristotle’s works of The Metaphysics that reflect the differing periods of Aristotle’s development and show a phasing change in the orientation. I am not oblivious to his project. But he claims in the immediate post-Platonic Assos period, when Aristotle still considered himself a Platonist, is when also started his transition to his empirically founded method[5]. But is it really fair for Jaeger to claim that this middle period “Aristotle” is more “Aristotle” than the time when he was close to Plato? This seems biased to me to think that only the scientist Aristotle is the “true” Aristotle. Why is developing uniqueness as a scientist that who broke from his Platonic education and developed his own thoughts and now intellectually liberated following his 20 years in the Academy. It seems implicit that Jaeger seems to clearly favor the later Aristotle as the proto scientist, which I think taints his ultimate thesis[6].
I am still interested in the question of whether Aristotle’s work can be read as a unified work with a solid metaphysical foundation throughout the entirety of the work. Reale takes up this point in broad opposition to Jaeger and offers a different account of the corpus’ historical development arguing that Aristotle is developmental but consistent through his works never reaching the extreme position of the proto empirical scientist that Jaeger argues for. Both of these positions take on enormous philosophical and philological arguments which are well beyond the limited scope of this essay to fully refute, however the goal of this essay is to rally the position offered by Reale and defend Aristotle as a consistent point of view. Reale’s position however will be expanded upon with consideration of an additional explanation of the metaphysical orientation unconsidered in his largely correct reading and the metaphysical position as offered by the lectures and writing of Dr. Daniel Guerriere. I believe the combined thought of Guerriere and Reale together make a fully comprehensive understanding of Aristotle that considers both the Platonic heritage of Aristotle and likewise shows the unique development of the Stagrite’s work which offers insight and resolution to the problems presented by the work of Jaeger.
Giovanni Reale argues that the proper method of understanding the unity of The Metaphysics is though the content unity of the work, as opposed to the questions of philological, historical, or linguistic analyses that Jaeger examines. Reale says is it characteristic of Aristotle to vigorously debate the two opposing sides of argumentation. Reale feels that current critics isolate the issues that Aristotle examines and does this to such a degree that misleads their line of criticism, loosing sight of the proverbial forest because of all the troublesome trees in the way. Reale summarizes his point when he explains that the critic fails when he analyzes the thesis and the antithesis of the debate on their own merits rather than as part of the larger debate that Aristotle presents on the whole. He loses the sight of the synthesis that the debate is working toward (Reale, 36).
To me as a philosopher, the debate is not whether or not there is a literary or linguistic unity, but if there is an ideological or metaphysical unity that Aristotle reveals that makes the work as a whole consistent? For Reale, the answer is emphatically yes. Reale does an excellent job of constructing a foundation to understanding an approach to Aristotle that allows the reader to approach the work as a conceptual unity. The brief form of this essay does not allow for the space to outline the foundation, but the reader is referred to Chapters 2 to 4 of the work of Reale from the bibliography. There he lays out an explicit list of the aprorias (first principles) and episteme sought for The Metaphysics and how one can approach the work as a content unity[7].
It seems further that Jaeger places the primary leading or founding element of Aristotle’s entire philosophic opera to be the logical treatise rather than a metaphysical orientation. He reports, “Aristotle’s huge achievement in logical inquiry shall be touched on here, as it characterizes the whole spirit of his philosophy” (Jaeger, 369). He continues to elaborate that Aristotle does not allow one to speak of a metaphysical logic, in this he holds that Aristotle had broken down the old ontological thoughts of his predecessors into the elements of word (logos) and being (on1) (Ibid, 370). This, to me, is the wrong idea, for Aristotle tells us that metaphysical arche are not known by merely logic, but epigoge and nous.
In epigoge, one comes to know the universal though anyone particular thing. The term epigoge typically is thought of as insight, or intuition but this does not convey the notion fully. Martin Heidegger offer some thoughts on epigoge in a way he calls it “Forehaben” a pre-conceptual or attunement (Stimmung) to the universals in Being that any one being conveys in the process of Being as the whole. The character of epigoge gives us the ability to have immediate contact with universals. Aristotle sites one of the characteristics of being human as the ability to conceive and identify universals. The epigoge (pre-conceptualization) that comes to one is the same for all inquiry into all ousia be it either mathematics, phusis or first philosophy because all of them as a whole are of one Being. A confusion seems to seems to occur Jaeger, that I could be wrong about, but it seems to me that he almost seems to hold that there is an Being (on1) as objects of math, an Being (on1) as phusis, another Being (on1) as Theon, but they are each mutually exclusive and not co-terminus or participating in Being as beings. This lack of a proper orientation is the deepest problem that I find in Jaeger’s reading. Aristotle is very clear to me that there is only one Being. When Jaeger reads Aristotle in such a way there must seem to him that there is a logical epistemic system for each Being (on1) worthy of inquiry (math, phusis, Theon) and thus, when Jaeger comes to the analysis of changeable ousia and immoveable ousia he thinks Aristotle is contradicting himself. Jaeger explicitly shows this confusion between the ousia of natural science, logic, mathematics and Theon in his analysis of the scholar Bonitz’s commentary (Ibid, 221).
Another source of confusion could stem from the fact that Jaeger isolates The Metaphysics 1 as an editorial insertion and not by the hand of Aristotle (Ibid, 177). In fact, Jaeger’s analysis holds that Book 1 is an excerpt likely repeated from Aristotle’s missing dialogue “On Philosophy” written during his time at the Academy.
The objection against this is made by Reale when he reconstructs The Metaphysics of Theophrastus. Much of the editorial work that has been confused is the editorial work of Theophrastus according to Jaeger. The problem is that if this were so, then the work of Theophrastus ought to show the later influence of his master and not the earlier work the pro-Platonic period. It would seem that if the thesis of Jaeger is to hold, then the later work of Aristotle is the more empirically founded aspect of the work would be dominate in the mind of his successor and editor. Reale shows this is not the case, such that when analyzed, The Metaphysics of Theophrastus shows a close unity with The Metaphysics I & XII (theology). Reale asks, if Theophrastus was as loyal and true to the work of his master, why would he revert to an earlier (theological) position held and abandoned as Jaeger has proposed? Reale spells this out rather well (Reale, xxiii and 365) and makes the point again that Jaeger has lost sight of the conceptual unity in his analysis of the literary and philological aspects. Much more needs be said, but shall have to be explored in a longer form essay with greater charting of the text of Aristotle compared with that of Theophrastus.
In conclusion, much more needs to be explored on this topic but in this essay I have attempted to layout a criticism against the thesis of Jaeger that the work of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is not a unity. Rather, that given the proper metaphysical orientation toward the project of the text as a whole allows a conceptual unity to arise. Also, given Reale’s analysis of The Metaphysics of Theophrastus the historical claims against of Aristotle’s by Jaeger may also be in question. Bibliography

Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm. Aristotle. Fundamentals of the History of his Development. [1923], trans Richard Robinson. New York: Oxford University Press 1948.

Owens, Joseph. The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian “Metaphysics”, 3rd rev. ed Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978.

Reale, Giovanni. The Concept of First Philosophy and the Unity of the Metaphysics of Aristotle. [1967] trans. John A Catan. Albany: SUNY Press 1980
[1] Also allied largely with this position is Joseph Owens, who holds a less controversial position on the work of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and sides with Reale that the work is a whole consistent unity. A detailed examination of Owens, along with Reale and Jaeger, is beyond the space limitation allotted to this work but will be forthcoming for personal research.
[2] Jaeger makes great mention of how scrolls were collected in series and not books in the modern sense. This allows him to cast a shadow of doubt about the editing and reproduction of the body of work since antiquity.
[3] I would love to spell out the details of which sections are early and later, but it is beyond the confines of this introductory essay and general assessment of the single question about episteme.
[4] The provided translation is Jaeger’s own (Ibid, 199) in our text, The Ross translation reads as such “Whether there is, apart from the matter of such substances, another kind of matter, and one should look for some substance other than these, e.g. numbers or something of the sort, must be considered later. For it is for the sake of this that we are trying to determine the nature of perceptible substances is the work of physics, i.e. of the second philosophy; for the physicist must come to know not only about the matter but also about the substance expressed in the formula, and even more than about the other.”
[5] The driving force of this change to empirical sciences was the practical application of the realpolitik that Aristotle was to call upon in his dealing with the Macedonia court. Aristotle stopped teaching the concepts of Plato’s Republic and was urged by circumstance to think in a utility based political ways in the very ambitious court of Phillip, prompting his opportunity to be a tutor to Phillip’s son. Aristotle became well known enough during Phillip’s reign but not yet the intellectual leader of Greece (Ibid, 120).
[6] Professor, in a class lecture you once questioned if Aristotle understood Plato correctly. Could it be possible that this favored reading of Aristotle as proto scientist is what has left us historically with the idea that Aristotle misunderstood Plato? This is very large speculation and a much larger speculative topic for later investigation.
[7] Interestingly the orientation of the listed aprorias is very similar to your lecture and writing on The Advanced Philosophic Orientation by Dr. Daniel Guerriere. When one takes the proper orientation to what must be admitted about the process of “to-be” then much of Aristotle’s work comes into focus, without the derivations in the text that is such a concern to Jaeger.