The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy

THE IMPACT OF ARISTOTELIANISM ON MODERN PHILOSOPHY STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY General Editor: Jude P.Dougherty STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 39

The Impact of Aristotelianism on Modern Philosophy Edited by Riccardo Pozzo

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA PRESS Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library materials, ansi z39.48-1984. ∞ library of congress cataloging-in-publication data The impact of Aristotelianism on modern philosophy / edited by Riccardo Pozzo. mmmp. cm. — (Studies in philosophy and the history of philosophy; v. 39) mmIncludes bibliographical references and index. mmisbn 978-0-8132-3202-7(alk. paper) mm1. Aristotle—Inﬂuence. 2. Philosophy, Modern. I. Pozzo, Riccardo, 1959– II. Series. b485 .i525 2003 149' .91—dc21 2002014872 Contents

riccardo pozzo, Introduction vii

1. edward p. mahoney, Aristotle and Some 1 Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers

2. antonino poppi, Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as 35 a Rigorous Science

3. william a. wallace, The Inﬂuence of Aristotle 64 on Galileo’s Logic and Its Use in His Science

4. john p. doyle, Wrestling with a Wraith: 84 André Semery, S.J. (1630–1717) on Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable

5. christia mercer, Leibniz, Aristotle, and 113 Ethical Knowledge

6. richard l. velkley, Speech, Imagination, Origins: 148 Rousseau and the Political Animal

7. riccardo pozzo, Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 173

8. alfredo ferrarin, Hegel’s Appropriation of the 193 Aristotelian Intellect

9. michael davis, Tragedy in the Philosophic Age 210 of the Greeks: Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche

10. richard cobb-stevens, The Presence of Aristotelian 231 Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy

v vi contents

11. stanley rosen, Phronesis or Ontology: 248 Aristotle and Heidegger

12. daniel o. dahlstrom, Wittgenstein’s 266 Intellectual Virtues

13. enrico berti, The Reception of Aristotle’s 285 Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer and the Hermeneutic Philosophy

Contributors 301 Bibliography 307 Index of Names 329 Introduction RICCARDO POZZO

This volume presents the papers delivered during the Fall 1999 lecture series of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. It originates from the wish to trace across the centuries the continuous presence of the ﬁve intellectual virtues set forth by Aristotle in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. All speakers were asked to consider their author’s position as regards the concepts of art, prudence, science, wisdom, and understanding; and look for reactions to Aristotle’s original understanding of them. Of course, this was a very speciﬁc question, and although the speakers were encouraged to consider this issue, they were not required to do so. It was rather suggested they looked into the general issue of the impact of Aristotle on the philosophers they were familiar with, namely two dozen late Scholastics and Renaissance Philosophers, and Zabarella, Galilei, Suárez, Semery, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Gada- mer. For the sake of precision, the scope of the volume was limited to modern philosophy, i.e., to the period that begins with the Renaissance and ends with the twentieth century. It is true that many representative philosophers are considered in the volume, but just as many are missing. On the other side, the inclusion of Hellenistic1 or early and late medieval philosophy2 would have made a thorough reconstruction of the impact of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues a sheer impossibility. Obviously, the restriction of the diachronic scope does not bring with itself a claim

1. See ﬁrst and foremost Paul Moraux, Der Aristotelismus bei den Griechen: Von Andronikos bis Alexander von Aphrodisias (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973); idem, Die Renaissance des Aristotelis- mus im 1. Jahrhundert vor Christi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973); idem, Der Aristotelismus im 1. und 2. Jahrhundert nach Christi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1984). 2. See especially Fernand van Steenberghen, Thomas Aquinas and Radical Aristotelianism (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1980); Husain Kassim, Aristotle and Aristotelianism in Medieval, Jewish, and Christian Philosophy (Lanham, Md.: Austin & Win- ﬁeld, 2000); Cary J. Nederman, Medieval Aristotelianism and its Limits: Classical Traditions in Moral and Political Philosophy, 12th–15th Centuries (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997).

vii viii riccardo pozzo at completeness. Finally, it needs to be recognized that it was not only and not simply Aristotle who influenced modern philosophy. The impact the contributors have written about is rather the impact of a tradition, the tradition Renaissance Aristotelianism, which was first molded by Aldo Manuzio’s edition of Aristotle’s Opera (Venice, 1495–98), found its standing in the monumental edition of the Giunti with Averroes’ commentary (Venice, 1550–52), and reached its blossoming by means of the European diffusion of the results of the Paduan School.3 It has never been obvious to deal with Aristotle, and Sir Anthony Ken- ny’s recent essays on Aristotelianism, the volume on the questions “whose Aristotle? whose Aristotelianism?” edited by R. W. Sharples, and the volume on the impact of the Paduan School on early modern philosophy edited by Gregorio Piaia prove that.4 Aristotle is both the most praised and the most condemned philosopher of all times. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ernst Cassirer described the shift that took place from sixteenth- to seventeenth-century philosophy as a shift from the concept of substance to the concept of relation.5 As long as the concept of substance and the idea that a property is predicated of an individual subject maintained scientific primacy, Aristotelianism was in great demand and was able to defeat threatening alternatives such as Ramism; but as soon as Descartes established the convenience of expressing all scientific problems in terms of function, i.e., in terms of the relation of two or more ideas or bodies in space and time, Aristotelian- ism began an inexorable descent. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Aristotelianism virtually disappeared from university curricula and from scientific publications all over Europe. This did not mean, however, that Aristotle was forgotten. Kant kept referring to Aristotle all of his life, and the sections dedicated to Aristo-

3. Wilhelm Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holz- boog, 1964–70), vol. 1, 12. See also Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal XIV al XVI secolo (Florence: Sansoni, 1958); Antonino Poppi, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano, 2d edition (Padua: Antenore, 1991); idem, L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele (Naples: Città del Sole, 1997); idem, Ricerche sulla teologia e la scienza nella Scuola Padovana del Cinque e Seicento (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2001). 4. Sir Anthony Kenny, Essays on the Aristotelian Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, ed. R. W. Shaprles (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001); La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua: Antenore, 2002). See also L’attualità della problematica aristotelica: Atti del convegno franco-italiano su Aristotele (Padova, 6–8 Apr. 1967), ed. Carlo Diano (Padua: Antenore, 1970). 5. Ernst Cassirer, Substance and Function and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, trans. William Curtis Swabey and Marie Collins Swabey (New York: Dover, 1953), 9. Aristotelianism and Cartesianism are at the origin for Cassirer of two “chief forms of logic, which are especially opposed to each other in the modern scientific development,” and they “are distinguished .l.l. by the different value which is placed upon thing-concepts and relation-concepts.” Introduction ix tle in Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy6 prepared the Aris- totelian Renaissance of the early nineteenth century, which was made possible by Immanuel Becker’s edition of the Opera (Berlin, 1831–36).7 Finally, that Aristotle experienced a further Renaissance all over the twentieth century was due to Leo XIII’s proclamation of Thomism as the official doctrine of the Catholic Church in the encyclical letter Aeterni Patris of August 4, 1879; and it was also due to the reappraisal of his philosophy that began with Werner Jaeger8 and ended with Gadamer.9 This volume is about the history of a tradition, the tradition of Re- naissance and modern Aristotelianism. It does not aim at replacing any of the existing works that have been dedicated to the whole or to parts of the history of Aristotelianism.10 It aims, however, at tracing the impact of Aristotelianism on modern philosophy in the form of a clear line that goes through the writings of the philosophers of the Western tradition. Each paper of this volume provides an original contribution in so far as it illuminates the role played by Aristotelianism as one of the sources, if not as the dominant one, of one individual philosopher. Often, to deal with Aristotle or Aristotelianism meant to take a stance concerning an issue that was discussed in one’s own age—this was the case, e.g., for Kant when he looked into a new understanding of the concepts of art, prudence, science, wisdom, and understanding. However, one should not look into this volume for an exposition of the history of the five concepts that constitute Aristotle’s theory of the intellectual virtues. No individual contributor has pursued this object. What they have rather

6. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The Lectures of 1825–1826, ed. Robert F. Brown, trans. Robert F. Brown and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of Henry S. Harris (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990). 7. Aristotle, Aristotelis Opera: Ex recensione Immanuelis Bekkeri edidit Academia regia borussi- ca: Accedunt fragmenta scholia index Aristotelicus, 2d edition, 5 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960–87). 8. Werner Jaeger, Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung (Berlin: Wei- dmann, 1923) (Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, trans. Richard Robinson [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934]); idem, Paideia: Die Formung des griechischen Menschen (Berlin: De Gruyer, 1934) (Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, trans. Gilbert Highet [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945]). 9. See Enrico Berti’s reconstruction in his monograph on Aristotle in the twentieth century, Aristotele nel Novecento (Rome: Laterza, 1992). 10. See Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophie im protestantischen Deutsch- land (Leipzig: Meiner, 1921; reprint, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964); Charles B. Schmitt, A Critical Survey of Bibliographies and Studies on Renaissance Aris- totelianism: 1958–1969 (Padua: Antenore, 1971); Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. Luigi Olivieri (Padua: Antenore, 1983); Charles B. Schmitt, Problemi dell’aristotelismo rinascimentale (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985); Aristotelismus und Renaissance: In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, ed. Eckhard Keßler (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988); Ezio Riondato, Aristotelis- mo neolatino (Padua: Antenore, 1997); Sapientiam amemus: Humanismus und Aristotelismus in der Renaissance: Festschrift für Eckhard Kessler, ed. Paul Richard Blum (Munich: Fink, 2000). x riccardo pozzo tried to reconstruct, and what they have accomplished all together is a thoughtful discussion of a problem that crosses the ages and is always actual, namely the problem whether one may consider Aristotle’s list of five intellectual virtues to be complete, and, if not, by means of what other virtues it might be completed. Edward P. Mahoney fulfills the indeed burdensome but rewarding task of opening the floor by providing an extensive and deep appreciation of the philosophers who contributed to the shift from the way of doing philosophy during the so-called Middle Ages to that of the Re- naissance beginning with Gemistos Plethon at the turn of the fifteenth century and ending with Gianfrancesco Pico at the end of the sixteenth century. After remarking that the relationship toward Averroes proves to be pivotal for determining the attitudes toward Aristotle among all Renaissance Aristotelians, he considers Renaissance Thomism and Re- naissance Scotism. Mahoney then delves into the methods of translating verbum ad sententiam as a much more viable alternative to the verbum ad verbum current in the Middle Ages, into the renewed fortune of the Greek commentators of Aristotle, and into the attempts to compare and reconcile Plato and Aristotle. The conclusion of Mahoney’s paper is dedicated to reviewing the negative attitudes toward Aristotle expressed during the Renaissance together with their Medieval predecessors. Antonino Poppi delves into the philosophy of Iacopo Zabarella in order to clarify the scientific standards developed within the Paduan School, which proposed a renewed direct approach to Aristotle beyond the contamination of the medieval traditions. This is the first paper published in English by Poppi, who is one of the most authoritative interpreters of Zabarella. Poppi starts by outlining Zabarella’s project of returning to the purity of the Aristotelian sources and of enucleating from the Posterior Analytics the doctrine of demonstrative regressus. He continues by presenting Zabarella’s discussion of all intellectual virtues, which he considers to be part of logic as well as of theoretical and practical sciences. The problem is that the nous, being the result of an inductive procedure from the same to the same, is unable to provide a theoretical foundation for episteme, which eventually does not need any, in so far as episteme finds its foundation in its own universality and necessity. William A. Wallace details the influence of Aristotelian logic, or rather, of sixteenth-century Aristotelianism, on Galileo Galilei’s scientific method. It may seem odd, Wallace remarks, to include Galileo among the modern philosophers influenced by Aristotle discussed in this volume. In fact, with his telescope and laws of falling bodies Galileo suc- ceeded in dethroning Aristotle and his system of the world. What is more, Galileo’s frontal assault on Aristotle bore immediate fruit in the Introduction xi

Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. However, Wallace’s careful reconstruction of Galileo’s writings before 1611 shows that Galileo’s position against Aristotle contains more than just a polemic; instead, Galileo’s ideas mirrored in some ways those proposed by leading Aristotelians of his time such as Benedetti, Clavius, and Bellarmine. This is no surprise, says Wallace, because Galileo had been taught Aris- totle’s logic from Camaldolese monks before entering the school of medicine at the University of Pisa in 1581. If it is true that his discoveries with the telescope touched on the difference between the Aris- totelian-Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems of the heavens, it is also true that his manner of reporting them in The Starry Messenger gave his adversaries among the Aristotelians little ground for rejecting them. The main problem posed by Galileo’s results was their factual status, because those who did not have access to a telescope with sufficient magnification and resolving power tended to dismiss the phenomena he reported as optical illusions. Instead of opposing Galileo on philosophical grounds, Aristotelian astronomers such as the Jesuit professors at the Collegium Romanum actually set out to verify Galileo’s findings as soon as they had constructed a good telescope themselves. Of course, the herb polemics of the years after 1611 were still to come. Still, Wallace points out, the influence of Aristotle in Galileo’s logic of discovery is unmistakable. Just like his Aristotelian colleagues, Galileo relied on Aristotle’s logic and theory of demonstration for both his logica docens and his logica utens. Also focusing on the Collegium Romanum, John Doyle looks into the question whether we can know the unknowable. If one considers a goat- stag, one at first tends to exclude it from the subject of Aristotelian metaphysics, because for Aristotle both being per accidens and being as true lie outside the subject of metaphysics, which is “being insofar as it is being.” Suárez maintained this exclusion and specified that the subject of metaphysics is “being insofar as it is real being,” while the beings that have existence only in the intellect are to be called “beings of reason” and are equivalent to Aristotle’s being as true. Doyle points out that within seventeenth-century Jesuit philosophy there was a continuous debate about what is possible or impossible. A primary text in this respect turns out to be a disputation written by André Semery, S.J., a professor at the Collegium Romanum, which was included in his philosophy textbook, Triennium philosophicum (published in 1674 in three volumes). Se- mery’s sophisticated analysis relies on the difference between the act of knowing itself (exercite) and its results (signate), whereby the former refers to what is implicitly unknowable and the latter to what is objectively knowable. Semery achieves thus a definition of “transcendental xii riccardo pozzo unknowability,” and stops short of delving into what one may call, using the terminology of Suárez, “supertranscendental unknowability,” that is, an unknowability that would allow objects like the goat-stag to be knowable inasmuch as they are within the compass of the mind, but that may go farther on the basis of some imagined congruence between itself and an absolute nothing beyond the actual. Doyle’s paper is another proof of the need of considering textbooks for academic teaching, which, although being only seldom original philosophical texts, were the vehicles of decisive and radical philosophical turns. Christia Mercer writes on Leibniz’ reception of Aristotle’s Ethics. In her paper, Mercer begins by presenting the epistemology that grounded Leibniz’s ethics and by showing that it is self-consciously Platonic. But in order to appreciate Leibniz’s attempt to ground a profoundly innovative philosophical system in a relatively traditional epistemology, Mercer sit- uates his proposals within the state of ethical research in seventeenth- century Protestant Germany. By combining a Platonic epistemology with an Aristotelian conception of nature, Leibniz constructed a radical and innovative system. Mercer suggests that Leibniz’s moral epistemology (and the ethics based on it) is part of an elaborate metaphysics, whose elements were intended to solve all the great philosophy problems and whose beauty was supposed to effect philosophical and religious peace. Richard Velkley’s paper proposes the role that was played by Aristo- tle’s Politics in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1755 second discourse, on the origin of inequality among men. Velkley shows that although Rousseau presents his central argument as a critique of his modern predecessors, who opposed Aristotle on the necessity of looking to man’s rational end for the ordering of political and moral life, he knew Aristotle well, and he contrasted him with his modern critics. In fact, if on one side it seems that Rousseau suggests the possibility of a universal revolution to overcome alienation wrought by reason and society, on the other side a closer reading suggests that Rousseau is much closer to Aristotle than to Kant and Hegel with respect to the hope of a general human progress. Velkley shows that Rousseau’s initial contrast with Aristotle and antiquity must be more subtly formulated, because if it is true that the idea of the best life derives from our original nature, it is also true that our original nature must contain the seeds, or the earliest forms of rationality. My own paper investigates several passages in which Immanuel Kant considers each of Aristotle’s five virtues. Its goal is to show that not only was Kant well acquainted with Nicomachean Ethics VI; he also used it to set up the question of how to provide an introduction to logic. It delves into the tradition of Aristotelianism within German Protestant Philoso- Introduction xiii phy and traces a line of transmission of thought that connects Aristotle and Kant through the mediation of Zabarella, the Helmstedt Aris- totelian Cornelius Martini, the Königsberg Aristotelian Paul Rabe, Wolff, the Wolffian Friedrich Christian Baumeister, and, finally, the co- founder of aesthetics Georg Friedrich Meier. A close examination of published and unpublished Kantian texts proves that the philosopher from Königsberg understood in a way that is thoroughly Aristotelian the boundaries of art, prudence, science, wisdom, and intellect. Does this mean that Kant was thinking like Aristotle? No, it does not. It means rather that Kant accepted Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues as a comprehensive account of the ways the human mind “affirms and denies,” whose systematic foundation are in need of no critique. This is perhaps the best compliment Kant could have paid to Aristotle. Alfredo Ferrarin explains how and why Hegel can be considered the most prominent Aristotelian of the modern age. If Kant was critically attentive to Aristotle, Hegel goes far beyond the stage of critique: he ac- complishes a straightforward appropriation. His enthusiasm for the Aristotelian theory of nous is unqualified, as everybody knows from the famous quote from Metaphysics Lambda on the divine nous that closes the Encyclopedia. However, Hegel’s interpretation has been chastised as arbitrary, misconstrued, even based on an incompetent translation, in sum, denounced as a superimposition of Hegel’s own philosophy onto Aristotle’s, by a host of scholars and philosophers from Schelling down to Heidegger and Gadamer. Sometimes it is indeed the case that Hegel’s reconstruction turns out to be arbitrary; but one should try to keep separate mistakes or intentionally tendentious moves from Hegel’s attempts at making sense of a theory of the nous, which is intrinsically incomplete, controversial, tremendously obscure, if not contradictory. Ferrarin does not assume that Hegel gave a solution to the problem of the status of the nous. What Hegel provided was fitting for his own time, but not forever. Still, this does not mean that we can discard Hegel’s interpretation as misguided. Instead, Ferrarin believes that it should be analyzed philosophically, that is, problematically. Michael Davis considers Friedrich Nietzsche’s reaction to the Poetics and Aristotle’s own implications. Davis talks about Nietzsche’s identification of the cause of the decline of tragedy in Socrates’ intellectualistic view that virtue is knowledge. Nietzsche makes tragedy the alternative to philosophy. Aristotle, however, had made clear that “poetry is more philosophic and more serious than history” (Poetic 1451b 5–6). Begin- ning with a reconstruction of the Greek uses of poiein and prattein (which recall the Aristotelian distinction between art and prudence, whereby the former indicates the activity of playwriting and the latter xiv riccardo pozzo the acting of the actor), Davis points out that Nietzsche is right in minimizing Aristotle’s grasp of the intimacy of the relation between the rational and the irrational, because Aristotle did not so much rationalize poetry as see how the poetic was a necessary moment of reason. Nietz- sche is right, again, when he maintains that science cannot ground the question of science because, as directed toward answers, it is not sufficiently in awe of its activity. Although Nietzsche’s conclusion is diametri- cally opposed to that of Aristotle, concludes Davis, his approach is nonetheless Aristotelian. Starting from Robert Sokolowski’s remark that phenomenology restores an essentially Aristotelian understanding of human intelligence and its access to truth, Richard Cobb-Stevens investigates the way Husserl integrated what is best in modern thought with a revitalized appreciation of the ancient understanding of reason. In fact, Husserl’s exposition of the relation between perceptual discriminations and categorial articulations is very similar to Aristotle’s description of the relation between particulars and their species. Going into fascinating details about the history of the problem of the perception of numbers, Cobb- Stevens observes that Husserl is close to Aristotle when he maintains that essences should be regarded as incomplete modes of being even after they are thematized and named as subjects of predication. Yet, he argues, when Husserl describes the manner in which the categories corresponding to the algebraic mode of thinking are derived from ordinary experience, he goes beyond Aristotle. In fact, the phenomenological concept of formalization is distinct from that of mere generalization, because formalization is a one-step procedure that brackets all determinate contents and yields a structure that can be applied to any content whatsoever. Cobb-Stevens concludes that, like Aristotle’s, Husserl’s distinctions make it possible for things to manifest themselves more clearly, thus complementing, rather than just repeating or rejecting, Aris- totelian themes. Stanley Rosen writes on the joint concepts “phronesis” and “ontology” in Heidegger. Rosen observes that Heidegger is more like Plato than Aristotle to the extent that he transforms praxis into ontology. Yet, Hei- degger wrote also an extensive commentary on Book VI of the Nico- machean Ethics and delved into the five intellectual virtues in Being and Time. And in fact, argues Rosen, the transformation of phronesis into fundamental ontology is based upon the transformation of Aristotelian ethical virtue and happiness into anxiety in the face of death (Angst vor dem Tode). If phronesis, however, is to be interpreted along the lines of a temporal structure, says Rosen, this temporal structure cannot be ontological. It is rather “practical” or “political,” in the broad sense of the terms. Introduction xv

Heidegger, Rosen suggests, makes the mistake of attempting to overcome the split between theory and practice by transforming both into poetry. It turns out, then, that Heidegger’s authentic individual is far more self-centered than the Aristotelian theoretical man. The reason Aristotle’s phronesis is superior to ontology, concludes Rosen, is to be found in its aiming toward human happiness, whereas the latter, the brilliant form given to it by Heidegger notwithstanding, can bring nothing to human affairs but blindness. Daniel O. Dahlstrom provides a painstaking analysis of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s statements about the five intellectual virtues. Dahlstrom begins by acknowledging that students of Wittgenstein typically connect him to Plato, not to Aristotle, and that there is no evidence of any influence of the Aristotelian tradition on Wittgenstein, who actually took pride in maintaining he never read a word of Aristotle. Yet, the question whether Wittgenstein addresses one or more of the five intellectual virtues and does so in a way that converges with Aristotle’s treatment is worth being pursued. After having shown remarkable affinities between Aristotle’s account of intellectual excellences and Wittgenstein description and practice of philosophy, Dahlstrom suggests that the same realistic spirit evidenced in certain defining moves of Aristotle’s pervades also Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigation. Finally, Enrico Berti explains and comments on Hans-Georg Gada- mer’s commentary on Nicomachean Ethics VI, which appeared in 1998. This commentary is presumably Gadamer’s last contribution to the subject and it concludes in the worthiest way not only seventy years of Aris- totelian studies by Gadamer himself, but also the history of the reception of the Aristotelian intellectual virtues in the twentieth century. Commenting on Gadamer’s line by line commentary and comparing Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s reception of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues, Berti suggests that Heidegger emphasized the primacy claimed for theoretical wisdom by Aristotle, but he did so in order to refute Aristotle’s claim, and this in order to appropriate in a tacit manner Aristotle’s practical philosophy. Gadamer, on the contrary, does not seek to refute Aris- totle. He rather follows him. To do this, he also tries to attribute the intention of proving the primacy of practical knowledge to Aristotle, thus downplaying the role of theoria. In Berti’s view, Aristotle definitely accords primacy to theoretical knowledge, and this is not a defect, as Hei- degger supposed, but goes very much to Aristotle’s credit. In conclusion, let me remind the reader of the anachronism implied by the fact that the line traced in this volume embrace antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern age. For, as Martin Stone has put it, by virtue “of the weight of original commentary on Aristotle’s texts pro- xvi riccardo pozzo duced by Aquinas it is common to refer to him as a medieval ‘Aris- totelian’ or as a follower of ‘Aristotelianism.’ It is rarely observed, however, that these terms when they are applied to the Middle Ages are anachronistic, for stricte loquendo, the term ‘Aristotelianism’ and similar philosophical designations are neither ancient nor medieval but modern.”11 They were popularized in the eighteenth century by historians of philosophy like Jakob Brucker with the assumption that Aristotle’s text and teaching could be reduced to a pure position, a set of propositions that could be analyzed and criticized. And it is no wonder that to exemplify his understanding of “Peripateticismus,” which is the closest source of our current understanding of “Aristotelianism,” Brucker refers to the Paduan Iacopo Zabarella, whom he calls the first great philosopher among the followers of genuine Aristotelianism (sincerum Peripateticis- mum sequentes).12

11. Martin Stone, “The Debate on the Soul in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Cen- tury: A Reply to William Charlton,” in Whose Aristotle? Whose Aristotelianism?, 78–104, especially 78–79. 12. Jakob Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, 2d edition, 5 vols. (Leipzig, 1766–97; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1975). In the ﬁrst part of vol. 4, Brucker deals brieﬂy “De philosophis aristotelico-scolasticis recentioribus” (117–48), and then dedicates a very substantial systematic account “De philosophis genuinam Aristotelis philosophiam sectan- tibus” (149–352). See Brucker on Niccolò Leonico Tomeo, “qui reiecto Pseudo-Peri- pateticismo Scholasticorum, genuinam Aristotelis philosophiam restituere orbi literario conatus est” (156), and on Zabarella, “[m]agnum quoque inter philosophos sincerum Peripateticismum sequentes nomen est Iacobi Zabarellae” (200). 1 Aristotle and Some Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers BY EDWARD P. MAHONEY

The title of my paper is not meant to make the claim that within the course of an essay or lecture I could present most of the relations existing between Aristotle and a wide range of philosophers during the late middle ages and the Renaissance. Such a claim obviously could not be achieved. My aim is somewhat more modest. The university professors who were predominantly Aristotelians will be discussed, but attention will also be paid to those who were not professors. The respective attitudes toward Aristotle are surely an important element in any estimate of Aristotle’s place in Renaissance philosophy. There will also be a deliberate attempt to link some of the attitudes of the Renaissance philosophers mentioned to late medieval philosophers, including some who attacked Aristotle. Some caveats are in order. The late Charles B. Schmitt authored a book on Renaissance Aristotelianism that is rightly considered to be the basic introduction to the subject—at least in English. The book was based on his 1980 Martin Lectures at Oberlin College.1 My essay is not a correction of Schmitt’s work nor a supplement to it. It represents the outcome of spending much of my adult life reading late medieval and Renaissance philosophers with a special interest in doctrinal develop- ments. I will therefore not recount in detail various matters regarding the different translations and approaches to translating Aristotle from Greek into Latin. Those questions and others are recounted by Schmitt in his valuable book. What I will mention brieﬂy is the effect on philosophizing of the felt need to know Greek if one is to interpret Aristotle correctly. The areas of doctrinal development that will receive particular atten-

1. See Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 1983). See also Antonino Poppi’s valuable brief study, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano (Padua: Antenore, 1991).

1 2 edward p. mahoney tion are psychology, theory of knowledge, and metaphysics. Highly accomplished scholars have studied Renaissance discussions of methodology that arose from Aristotle’s own works and the earlier Aristotelian tradition. Much attention has especially been paid to the notion of regressus.2 One other caveat that must be mentioned involves the term “Renais- sance Philosophy.” By using this term one may intend no more than de- lineating the period that extends roughly from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century. But one may intend something else, namely, to stress a mode of philosophizing that is to some degree different from the way of doing philosophy during the so-called Middle Ages. What I am about involves a bit of both. A ﬁnal caveat regards “Aristotle.” There are many Aristotelianisms, but there are also many Aristotles. They include Aristotle the logician and also Aristotle the student of methodology, Aristotle the physicist, Aristotle the psychologist, Aristotle the biologist, Aristotle the metaphysician and theologian, Aristotle the ethicist, and Aristotle the political thinker. Obviously we cannot examine all the views set forth by these various “Aristotles” let alone all the interpretations of them. But what we can offer should make better known some of the reactions to his views by some philosophers of the late medieval and Renaissance periods.3 i. attitudes toward aristotle among renaissance aristotelians A. Following Earlier Medieval Traditions Late medieval and Renaissance philosophy witnessed a division of loyalties in the Aristotelian camp that follows to some extent different medieval traditions.4 Perhaps the most powerful tradition, at least in Italy, was that which we call “Averroism.” It is taken here to mean simply that the works of Averroes are considered to be the best key for determining the true mind of Aristotle. Some would of course make systematic use of Averroes’s works to explicate the doctrines of Aristotle but others would use Averroes selectively, rejecting particular interpretations of

2. For an overview see Nicholas Jardine, “Epistemology of the Sciences,” in The Cam- bridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, and Eck- hard Kessler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 685–711. 3. I will not draw a sharp distinction between the two periods. 4. For a general overview of Renaissance Aristotelianism, see Edward P. Mahoney and James South, “Aristotelianism, Renaissance,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 404–13. The fundamental bibliography remains Charles B. Schmitt, A Critical Survey and Bibliography of Studies on Renaissance Aristotelianism, 1958– 1969 (Padua: Antenore, 1969). Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 3

Averroes, for example, the unity of the intellect. The latter philosophers would not qualify as Averroist in orientation.5 While Averroes’s influence appears to have waned at Paris during the fourteenth century, it remained strong in Italy from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries.6 There were printings of Latin versions of the collected works of Aristotle accompanied by Latin versions of the commentaries of Averroes published in the Veneto toward the end of the fifteenth century.7 Nicoletto Vernia (d. 1499) edited a 1483 edition and Agostino Nifo (ca. 1470–1538) edited a similar edition published in 1497–1498.8 Vernia’s early position on the interpretation of Aristotle is that Averroes has grasped the mind of Aristotle and is his “most faithful interpreter” (fidelissimus ille Aristotelis interpres).9 In like fashion, Nifo’s early position was that Averroes is the best interpreter of Aristotle. In- deed Nifo calls him “Aristotle transposed” (Aristoteles transpositus), “Aris- totle’s priest” (sacerdos Aristotelis) and “the Arab Aristotle” (Aristoteles arabs). However, both Vernia and Nifo would soon reject Averroes as the true interpreter of Aristotle and show preference for the Greek Com- mentators.10 Nifo explains his shift regarding Aristotle and the unity of the intellect as the result of learning Greek.11 On the other hand, Elia del Medigo (1460–1493), the Jewish scholar-philosopher, considered

5. Some late medieval and Renaissance philosophers pursue the task of explicating Averroes, that is establishing what was the mind of the Latin Averroes, but they do not necessarily accept as true the doctrines that they have explicated. 6. For valuable studies on Renaissance Averrroism see Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence: Sansoni, 1958); Averroïsme bolonais au XIVe siè- cle: Edition des textes, ed. Zdzislaw Kuksewicz (Wroclaw: Editions de l’Academie Polon- aise des Sciences, 1965); L’Averroismo in Italia 40 (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1979); Antonino Poppi, La filosofia nello Studio Francescano del Santo a Padova (Padua: Cen- tro Studi Antoniani, 1989), 219–70; Averroismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Friedrich Niewöhner and Loris Sturlese (Zurich: Spur Verlag, 1994). 7. For an overall discussion, see Charles B. Schmitt, “Renaissance Averroism Studied through the Venetian Editions of Aristotle-Averroes (with particular reference to the Giunta Edition of 1550–52),” in L’averroismo in Italia, 121–42. 8. See Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, vol. II (Leipzig, 1926), n. 2337–38, cols. 563–68, n. 2340, cols. 572–74; vol. III (Leipzig, 1928), no. 3106, cols. 216–17. On the significance of these editions, see Lorenzo Minio-Paluello, “Attività filosofico-editoriale aristotelica del- l’umanesimo,” in Umanesimo europeo e umanesimo veneziano, ed. Vittore Branca (Florence: Sansoni, 1964), 251, 257–60. 9. See Edward P. Mahoney, Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance: Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo (Aldershot: Ashgate-Variorum, 2000), Essay I, 138–40, 154, 181. 10. On Vernia see Two Aristotelians, Essay III, 144–63. On the importance of Vernia’s shift from Averroes to the Commentators as the true interpreters of Aristotle, see Eckhard Kessler, “Nicoletto Vernia oder die Rettung eines Averroisten,” in Averroismus im Mittelalter, 269–308; idem, “The Transformation of Aristotelianism during the Renaissance” in New Perspectives on Renaissance Thought: Essays in the History of Science, Education and Philosophy in Memory of Charles B. Schmitt, ed. John Henry and Sarah Sutton (London: Duckworth and Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 1990), 137–76, at 140–41. 11. See Two Aristotelians, Essay VII, 451–60. 4 edward p. mahoney

Aristotle to be “the father of all philosophers” (pater omnium philosophorum) and Averroes to be his “most faithful Commentator” (Commentator fidelissimus). Elia never surrendered his loyalty to Averroes, whom he called “divine Averroes” (divinus Averroes).12 It is instructive to note that in his early psychological questions (1503), Pietro Pomponazzi took the mind of Aristotle to be the same as the mind of Averroes as regards the unity of the intellect, though he is careful to declare that view to be erroneous (falsa), chimerical (chimerica), and bestial (bestialis), and Aristo- tle to be capable of error since he was human.13 The interpretations of Aristotle that had been put forth by John of Jandun (ca. 1280/1289–1328) at Paris in the early fourteenth century were also influential.14 Vernia annotated his copy of Jandun’s questions on the De anima.15 Toward the end of the fifteenth century there were printings at Venice and Padua of several of Jandun’s writings. Indeed Nifo points out that in his day no one was considered a follower of Averroes (Averroista) who was not a Jandunian (Gandavensis).16 In fact he admits that he had himself previously followed Jandun as a God.17 How- ever, both he and also Elia considered Jandun’s interpretations of Aver- roes to be fundamentally flawed. Moreover, it is noteworthy that both Vernia and Nifo considered Jandun to have fallen into heresy.18 Another philosopher who took a dim view of Jandun as a reliable guide to Averroes was Elia’s patron, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94). In his Conclusiones he underscores that Jandun understood Averroes in a perverse and erroneous fashion and accuses him of having totally corrupted and depraved Averroes’s teaching on almost all philosophical topics.19 Although it is well known that Albert the Great had followers among

12. For discussion, see my study “Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Elia del Medigo, Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo,” in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494–1994), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini 5 (Florence: Olschki, 1997), 128–29. 13. See Pietro Pomponazzi, Corsi inediti dell’insegnamento padovano, vol. II: Quaestiones physicae et animasticae decem, ed. Antonino Poppi (Padua: Antenore, 1970), 10, 42, 46, 47. Cf. Antonino Poppi, Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi (Padua: Antenore, 1970), 41, 54; Martin Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance (Padua: An- tenore, 1986). 14. See my article, “John of Jandun,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 5 (London: Routledge, 1998), 106–109. 15. See Two Aristotelians, Essay IV, 573–93. 16. Agostino Nifo, De sensu agente, in Destructiones destructionum (Venice, 1597), f. 129rb. 17. Nifo, Expositio Destructio Destructionum, III, dub. 19, in Destructiones destructionum, fol. 52ra. 18. See my Two Aristotelians, Essay IV, 577–79 and Essay XII, 477. 19. See Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones, in Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Stud- ies, 1998), 252. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 5 the German Dominicans during the fourteenth century, it is less well known that Albert also had influence in Renaissance Italy.20 He had a particular influence on Vernia and Nifo, both of whom taught at Pad- ua.21 Another contemporary philosopher who concerned himself with Albert was Marcantonio Zimara (c. 1475–1532), who also criticized him.22 Not surprisingly, Thomas Aquinas’s interpretations of Aristotle were also known during the Italian Renaissance.23 Late medieval and Renais- sance philosophers like Jandun and Nifo took Thomas to be an important exegete of Aristotle’s writings. That is the significance of their referring to him by the honorific title of Expositor or Expositor antiquus.24 There was a current of Thomism during the Renaissance, but not all Do- minicans uniformly followed Aquinas on Aristotle. Tommaso de Vio (1468–1534) Cardinal Cajetan, did write commentaries on some of Aristotle’s writings. However, he eventually gave up philosophy and took the position—opposed both to Thomas and also to Albert the Great— that Aristotle did not hold to the immortality of the human soul and that such an immortality could not be demonstrated by human reason.25

20. On the history of Albertism in Germany, see M. J. F. M. Hoenen and Alain de Lib- era, Albertus Magnus und der Albertismus: Deutsche philosophische Kultur des Mittelalters (Lei- den: Brill, 1995). 21. See Edward P. Mahoney, “Albert the Great and the Studio Patavino in the Late Fif- teenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays 1980, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980), 537–56, at 546–59. The overriding inﬂuence of Albert the Great on Nifo’s De intellectu appears to be ignored by Christia Mercer. See her “Vitality and Importance of Early Modern Aristotelianism,” in The Rise of Modern Philosophy: The Tension between the New and Traditional Philosophy from Machiavelli to Leibniz, ed. Tom Sorell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 33–67. 22. Ibid., 555–59. See also Luca Bianchi: “Rusticus Mendax. Marcantonio Zimara e la fortuna di Alberto Magno nel Rinascimento italiano,” in Albert le Grand et sa réception au moyen âge: Hommage à Zénon Kaluza, ed. F. Cheneval, R. Imbach, and T. Ricklin (Fribourg: Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie, 1998), 264–78. 23. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Thomism and the Italian Thought of the Renaissance,” in Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning, ed. and trans. Edward P. Mahoney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 27–91, at 51–55; Edward P. Mahoney, “Saint Thomas and the School of Padua at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 48 (1974): 277–83; idem, “Agostino Nifo and Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Two Aristotelians, Essay X, 195–226; Romanus Cessario, Le thomisme et les thomistes (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1999), 83–85. For a survey of recent scholarship regarding Thomas and the Renaissance, see Edward P. Mahoney and James South, “Studies on St. Thomas and the Italian Renaissance (1974–1991): An Overview,” in Medieval Aspects 167–78. 24. See Giovanni Di Napoli, L’immortalità dell’anima nel Rinascimento (Turin: Società Ed- itrice Internazionale, 1963), 208–12. 25. See Edward P. Mahoney, “Cajetan (Thomas de Vio) (1468–1534),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2 (London: Routledge, 1998), 171–75. See also Marcos F. Man- zanedo, “La immortalidad del alma humana segun Cayetano,” Angelicum 76 (1999): 309–40. 6 edward p. mahoney

However, others who were not Dominicans made use of key doctrines of Aquinas, for example participation and metaphysical hierarchy.26 The approach to Aristotle of John Duns Scotus (c. 1266–1308) has been of recent scholarly interest.27 His followers during the Renaissance were mainly but not exclusively Franciscans.28 The existence of a chair at Padua dedicated to the teaching of Duns Scotus gave Scotism an important institutional underpinning within the university. The first holder of the chair was the Franciscan Antonio Trombetta (1436–1517).29 While Scotus held that the immortality of the human soul could not be demonstrated by human reason and that what Aristotle held was uncertain and therefore a “neutral problem” (problema neutrum), Trombetta held that immortality was demonstrable.30 B. Emphasis on the Greek Text and New Translations: The Influence of Humanism Renaissance Humanism had a remarkable influence on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century culture in Italy and elsewhere. Not surprisingly that influence is evident in the realm of philosophy, most notably in translating and commenting on Plato and Aristotle and in making available new philosophical sources. These include various works of the Greek Commentators on Aristotle not translated previously.31 There was

26. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1943); Ardis B. Collins, The Secular is Sacred: Platonism and Thomism in Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974); Edward P. Mahoney, “Metaphysical Foundations of the Hierarchy of Being according to Some Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers,” in Philosophies of Existence: Ancient and Medieval, ed. Parviz Morewedge (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 169–72, 188–90; Cornelio Fabro, “Influenze tomistiche nella filosofia del Ficino,” Studia Patavina 6 (1969): 396–413. 27. See A. Vos, “Duns Scotus and Aristotle,” in John Duns Scotus: Renewal of Philosophy. Acts of the Third Symposium Organized by the Dutch Society for Medieval Philosophy. Medium Ae- vum (May 23 and 24, 1996), ed. E. P. Bos, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), 49–74. 28. Edward P. Mahoney, “Duns Scotus and the School of Padua around 1500,” in Reg- num Hominis et Regnum Dei, ed. Camille Bérubé, vol. II: La tradizione scotista veneto-padovana (Rome: Societas Internationalis Scotistica, 1978), 215–27. 29. On Trombetta see especially Antonino Poppi, La filosofia nello Studio Francescano del Santo a Padova (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1989), 63–115. 30. For discussion see Poppi, La filosofia nello Studio Francescano, 101–06. On the question of immortality in the Franciscan tradition, see Sofia Vanni Rovighi, L’immortalità del- l’anima nei maestri Francescani del Secolo XIII (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1936). 31. On the general question of humanism and philosophy, see Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Classics and Renaissance Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955); idem, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1979); Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Re- naissance (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); Jill Kraye, “Philologists and Philosophers,” in Renaissance Humanism, ed. J. Kraye (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 142–60. For an informative overview see now James Hankins, “Two Twentieth-Century In- terpreters of Renaissance Humanism: Eugenio Garin and Paul Oskar Kristeller,” Compara- tive Criticism 23 (2001): 3–19. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 7 in particular criticism of the medieval method of translating verbum ad verbum that had been followed by William of Moerbeke. But even Leo- nardo Bruni (1370–1444) followed that method when the occasion called for its use. Bruni himself adopted as his basic mode of translating that of ad sententiam in place of the ad verbum method. His claim was that by following such a method his translation of the Nicomachean Ethics was understandable to a wide range of people rather than simply to the few trained in scholastic terminology and modes of thought.32 Bruni judged the medieval scholastics to have misinterpreted Aristotle because they used faulty translations. He both encouraged new translations of Aristo- tle and also formulated a new conception of Aristotelianism, today appropriately called “humanistic Aristotelianism.” It stressed ethics, political thought, and rhetoric, all disciplines that would produce the good citizen and lead him to the perfection of the practical and moral life.33 By the end of the fifteenth century Aristotle’s philosophy as found in the Greek text was being taught at Padua. Ermolao Barbaro did so but outside the university.34 In 1497 the Venetian Senate established a chair for Niccolò Leonico Tomeo, enabling him to teach Aristotle based on the Greek text.35 Moreover, Francesco Caballus’s opusculum regarding the number and ordering of Aristotle’s writings revealed both knowledge of the Greek text of Aristotle and also knowledge of the Greek Commentators, namely Alexander, Theophrastus, Themistius, Simpli-

32. See James Hankins, “Translation Practice in the Renaissance: The case of Leonar- do Bruni,” in Actes du Colloque: Methodologie de la traduction: De l’antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. Charles Marie Ternes, M. Mund (Luxembourg: Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg, 1994), 154–75; idem, “Traduire l’Ethique d’Aristote: Leonardo Bruni et ses critiques,” in Penser entre les lignes: Philosophie et philologie au Quattrocento, ed. Fosca Mariani-Zini (Vil- leneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, s.d. [2001]), 133–59; Helene Harth, “Leonardo Brunis Selbstverständis als Übersetzer,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 50 (1968): 41–63; David A. Lines, “Ethics as Philology: A Developing Approach to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in Florentine Humanism,” in Renaissance Readings of the “Corpus Aris- totelicum”: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Copenhagen 23–25 April 1998 , ed. Marianne Pade (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press—University of Copenhagen, 2001), 27–42. 33. For brief remarks on Bruni and “humanistic Aristotelianism,” see Edward P. Ma- honey, “From the Medievals to the Early Moderns: Themes and Problems in Renaissance Political Thought,” in Les philosophes morales et politiques au Moyen Age, ed. B. C. Bazán, E. Andújar, and L. G. Sbrocchi (New York: Legas, 1992), 193–225. 34. On Ermolao see Joseph Trumbull Stickney, De Hermolai Barbari vita atque ingenio (Paris: Société nouvelle de librairie et d’édition, 1903); Arnaldo Ferriguto, Almoro Barbaro, l’alta cultura del settentrione d’Italia nel 400, i “sacri canones” di Roma e le “sanctissime leze” di Venezia (con documenti inediti) (Venice: Real Deputazione Veneta di Storia Patria, 1922); Pio Paschini, Tre illustri prelati del Rinascimento: Ermolao Barbaro, Adriano Castellesi, Giovanni Gri- mani (Rome: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1957). 35. See Daniela De Bellis, “Niccolò Leonico Tomeo interprete di Aristotele naturalista,” Physis 17 (1975): 71–93; ead., “La vita e l’ambiente di Niccolò Leonico Tomeo,” Quaderni per la storia dell’Università di Padova 13 (1980): 37–75. 8 edward p. mahoney cius, and John Philoponus.36 The fundamental importance of establishing a correct translation of Aristotle would lead major professors of philosophy to learn Greek and then to use it in their commentaries on Aris- totle. Two important examples are Agostino Nifo (ca. 1470–1538) and Jacopo Zabarella (1533–89). Nifo deliberately learned Greek when in his late twenties and early thirties. He later appealed to the Greek text against Pomponazzi during the immortality controversy.37 C. Following the Greek Commentators The Greek Commentators on Aristotle, notably Alexander of Aphro- disias, Themistius, Simplicius, and John Philoponus were certainly known during the middle ages. However, given that many more works of the Commentators were translated into Latin and given too that many of the commentaries written during the Renaissance pay serious attention to the Greek Commentators, we can safely claim that the Commen- tators played a larger role in the enterprise of interpreting Aristotle during the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries than was previously the case.38 Some philosophers of the period were even perceived to be “Themistians” (Themistici) and “Simplicians” (Simpliciani) since they were distinguished by their loyalty to Themistius or Simplicius. There appears to have been a waning of interest in the Greek Commentators during the fourteenth century and a large part of the fifteenth century. Only at the end of the fifteeenth century, when new translations were made into Latin, did interest in the Commentators begin again in earnest. One example of this interest is that of Francesco Caballus mentioned above, who refers to the graeci, latini, and arabes, a formula also to be found in Vernia and Nifo.39

36. See Francesco Caballus, De numero partium ac librorum physicae doctrinae Aristotelis (Venice: ca. 1490–95: GW n. 5832). On Cavalli see Marco Palma, “Cavalli, Francesco,” in Dizionario biograﬁco degli italiani, vol. 22 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1979), 724–25; Charles B. Schmitt, “Aristotelian Textual Studies at Padova: The Case of Francesco Cavalli,” in idem, The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities (London: Variorium Reprints, 1984), Essay XIII. 37. The nature of the Latin translations made of Aristotle’s writings during the Renais- sance is a separate and involved subject of investigation. The theory of translation adopted by some, that is, by larger units, produced at times translations that were no doubt stylisti- cally pleasing but that were in fact rather ﬂawed when it came to doing technical philosophy. On Zabarella see now Heikki Mikkeli, An Aristotelian Response to Renaissance Human- ism: Jacopo Zabarella on the Nature of Arts and Sciences (Helsinki: Academia Fenica, 1992). 38. For general discussion, see Edward P. Mahoney, “Neoplatonism, the Greek Com- mentators, and Renaissance Aristotelianism,” in Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, ed. Dominic J. O’Meara, (Norfolk, Va.: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1982), 169–77, 264–82. 39. See Bruno Nardi, Saggi, 365–441. See also Robert B. Todd, “Balthasar Meliavacca, Andronicus Callistus, and the Greek Aristotelian Commentators in Fifteenth-Century Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 9

A translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’s De anima by Girolamo Do- nato was printed at Brescia in 1495.40 It appears to have had an impact on Pietro Pomponazzi who was teaching at Padua at the time.41 The apparent message of the work seemed to be that Alexander considered Aristotle’s view to be that the human soul was mortal. However, that reading of Aristotle was challenged both by Giovanni Pico della Miran- dola and also by Nicoletto Vernia. Vernia argued in his late work against Averroes on the unity of the intellect that Alexander meant that the soul was immortal. Nifo, a former student of Vernia’s, set forth a sharp reply in his own De intellectu, ﬁrst published in 1503. He examines Alexan- der’s De anima carefully, submitting it to a line-by-line analysis and de- molishing Vernia’s arguments.42 In his opusculum, Vernia also cites works of Themistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus. Ermolao Barbaro’s (1454–93) translation of Themistius’s paraphr ases on Aristotle had been published a few years earlier.43 William of Moerbeke had translated Themistius’s paraphrases on the De anima. Thomas Aquinas made use of Moerbeke’s translation in his own De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas in order to argue that Averroes had mis- represented Themistius’s thought by presenting him as upholding the unity of the intellect. Aquinas used quotations from Moerbeke’s translation to argue that Themistius maintained individual intellects in human beings.44 Siger of Brabant also referred to Themistius’s paraphrases on the De anima in Moerbeke’s translation in his own De anima intellectiva.45 Ermolao, on the other hand, maintained that Averroes had stolen from Themistius the notion of the unity of the intellect. Ermolao’s translation of Themistius had a strong impact on various Renaissance Aristotelians,

Italy,” Italia medioevale e umanistica 37 (1994): 67–75, especially for information regarding knowledge of Themistius. See also note 37 above. 40. See Alexandri Aphrodisei enarratio de anima ex Aristotelis institutione interprete Hieronymo Donato patritio veneto (Brescia, 1495; GW n. 859). 41. See Antonino Poppi, Saggi sul pensiero inedito di Pietro Pomponazzi (Padua: Antenore, 1970); Martin Pine, Pietro Pomponazzi: Radical Philosopher of the Renaissance (Padua: An- tenore, 1986); Olaf Pluta, “The Transformation of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ Interpreta- tion of Aristotle’s Theory of the Soul,” in Renaissance Readings, 147–65. 42. See Edward P. Mahoney, “Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo on Alexander of Aphrodisias: An Unnoticed Dispute,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 23 (1968): 209–96. In his opusculum, Vernia also cites works of Themistius, Simplicius, and Philo- ponus. 43. Themistius, Paraphrasis in Aristotelem, trans. Ermolao Barbaro (Treviso, 1481). 44. See Edward P. Mahoney, “Aquinas’s Critique of Averroes’ Doctrine of the Unity of the Intellect,” in Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy, ed. David M. Gallagher (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 83–106. 45. See Edward P. Mahoney, “Themistius and the Agent Intellect in James of Viterbo and Other Thirteenth-Century Philosophers (Saint Thomas, Siger of Brabant and Henry Bate),” Augustiniana 23 (1973): 422–67; idem, “Saint Thomas and Siger of Brabant Revis- ited,” Review of Metaphysics 27 (1974): 531–53. 10 edward p. mahoney especially in the disputes regarding the true interpretation of Aristotle.46 One reason for this development may simply have been that Saint Thomas’s opuscula, including the De unitate intellectus, were published three times toward the end of the fifteenth century.47 The high regard that philosophers in Italy had for Themistius at the end of the fifteenth century was due no doubt to Ermolao’s translation. In his lectures at Padua on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, Nicoletto Vernia makes constant reference to Themistius and declares to his students: “Nemo enim fuit doctior illo. Proinde adorate verba Themistii.” Nifo refers to Themistius in Ermolao’s translation in his early De anima and De intellectu.48 More striking is the influence of the commentary on the De anima ascribed to Simplicius that seems not to have been known in the Christian West during the medieval period. It was known to Vernia, Nifo, and also Giovanni Pico della Mirandola toward the end of the fifteenth century.49 A final point should be made. Agostino Nifo provided theoretical justification for using the Greek Commentators and preferring them to the Latin Commentators. Addressing his students, he remarks that they should take as a rule that those who desire to learn good letters should make an effort to understand Greek authors (auctores) with Greek commentators (expositores) and Latin authors with Latin commentators.50 D. Attempts to Compare and Conciliate Plato and Aristotle There is good reason to question subsuming under the rubric of “eclectic Aristotelianism” those who attempted to compare and to reconcile or conciliate the thought of Plato and Aristotle.51 It seems more appropriate to call them simply “the Comparators,” since that term better captures the nature of their approach to Aristotle.52 Already in the

46. See Bruno Nardi, Saggi, 350–52, 365–68, 400–01, 405–07, 411–12; Mahoney, “Neoplatonism, the Greek Commentators,” 267–68, 271, 273–74. 47. See Thomas Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroem, in Opuscula, ed P. Sonci- nas (Milan, 1488). The publishers were Beninus and Johannes Antonius de Honate. It was also published at Venice by Hermannus Liechtenstein in 1490 and again at Venice by Oc- tavianus Scotus in 1498. 48. For Vernia’s lectures, see Bodleian Library, Oxford, Canonici Miscell. Latini Cod. 506, f. 234. On Nifo, see my “Neoplatonism, the Greek Commentators,” 172, 271–74, notes 17–18, 28, 34–35. 49. On Simplicius’s inﬂuence during the Renaissance see Nardi’s classic study in his Saggi, 365–442. See also Mahoney, “Neoplatonism, the Greek Commentators,” 170–73, 271–73. 50. Agostino Nifo, Aristotelis physicarum acroasum hoc est naturalium auscultationum liber interprete atque expositore Eutyco Augustino Nypho Phylotheo Suessano, Book VIII (Venice: Heirs of Octavianus Scotus, 1508), f. 218vab. Just previously Nifo stated that in the passage at issue Averroes had misinterpreted Themistius because he lacked knowledge of Greek. 51. See Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance, 89–102. 52. See Frederick Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni and His Comparison of Plato and Aristotle (Ph. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 11

ﬁrst century B.C. Antiochus of Ascalon, the head of the Academy, characterized both Aristotle and his followers and also Plato’s immediate successors as representing one single tradition.53 Cicero, who was Anti- ochus’s student, remarks that the Academicians and Aristotelians differed in words while agreeing in fact.54 Albinus attempted to reconcile Plato’s theory of the transcendent Forms with Aristotle’s notion of immanent forms. Ficino possessed translations of Albinus’s introduction to Plato. The Aristotelian Aristocles also attempted to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. Although Plotinus did not have much interest in reconciling Plato and Aristotle, both his teacher Ammonius Saccas, and also his student Porphyry, had such an interest. The former began a tradition of Neoplatonic commentators on the text of Aristotle.55 One of the most important representatives of this tradition was Sim- plicius of Cilicia, who stressed in his commentaries on Aristotle that Pla- to and Aristotle agree. He regularly repeated Antiochus’s remark that Plato and Aristotle “differ in words, but not in fact.” The remark would be repeated later during the Renaissance.56 Nonetheless, there was also opposition to the attempt to reconcile Plato and Aristotle.57 Far different was the activity of Boethius who wanted to translate and write commentaries on all the works of Plato and Aristotle. He declares himself open to bringing Plato and Aristotle to a single concord (concordia) and to demonstrating that they agree on most points in philosophy.58 Although the goal of reconciling Plato and Aristotle was not common in the high middle ages, there are instances of such an interest. Howev-

D. Dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1971), ch. 2: “The Comparatio Tradition,” 31–92. I am grateful to Professor Purnell for helpful advice and much information regarding the Comparators. 53. See Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni, 36–37; idem, “The Theme of Philosophic Concord and the Sources of Ficino’s Platonism,” in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, vol. II, Studi e documenti, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1986), 403–04. 54. See Cicero, Academica, I, 17–18; I, 22, p. 53–58. Cf. Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni, 37; idem, “The Theme,” 404. 55. Purnell, “The Theme,” 404–406; idem, Jacopo Mazzoni, 40–41. 56. Purnell, “The Theme,” 406; idem, Jacopo Mazzoni, 42–43. The commentary on the De anima credited to Simplicius was authored by someone else. Fundamental is Bruno Nardi’s study, “Il commento di Simplicio a De anima nelle controversie della fine del secolo XV e del secolo XVI,” in his Saggi, 365–442. On the impact of the Greek Commentators on Renaissance approaches to Aristotle, see Mahoney, “Neoplatonism, the Greek Com- mentators,” 169–77, 264–82. 57. Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni, 44–45. 58. See Boethius, In librum de interpretatione, editio secunda, liber secundus, in Patrologia Latina, vol. 64, col. 433d. Cf. Purnell, “The Theme,” 407; Jacopo Mazzoni, 43–45. See also H. Liebeschütz, “Western Christian Thought from Boethius to Anselm,” in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1967), 540; Luca Obertello, Severino Boezio (Genoa: Accademia Ligure di Scienze e Lettere, 1974), 420–21. 12 edward p. mahoney er, John of Salisbury (1115/20–80) testifies that Bernard of Chartres and his students worked to unite (componerent) Plato and Aristotle, but he then adds sharply that they arrived too late and labored in vain to reconcile (reconciliarunt) two dead men who always disagreed while they were alive.59 And although Albert the Great (c. 1200–1280) does not attempt to conciliate Plato and Aristotle, it is noteworthy that he states clearly: “You should know that a man is perfected in philosophy only from knowledge of the two philosophies of Plato and Aristotle.”60 The most important medieval representative of the comparatio tradition in the Latin West was Henry Bate of Malines (c. 1246–after 1310). He knew William of Moerbeke and appears to have been influenced by his translations. His major work, the Speculum divinorum et quorundam naturalium, contains references to Themistius’s paraphrases on the De anima and Simplicius’s commentaries on the Categories and the De caelo. In the prologue, Henry maintains that what Plato and Aristotle say differs only superficially and that their thought is in agreement.61 Henry Bate’s work was later studied in the Renaissance by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.62 The thought of the Byzantine scholar, Georgios Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1360–1452), represents an important chapter in the comparatio tradition.63 Since the Byzantines had a far greater knowledge of Plato and Aristotle than the Latins enjoyed, it is not surprising that Plethon considered Aristotle’s influence in the Latin West to be excessive.64 While he was at Florence in 1439 during the Council of Florence, Plethon gave a series of lectures that he later reshaped as the De differentiis (On the Differences of Aristotle from Plato).65 This work initiated a contro-

59. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, 98, ed. J. B. Hall (Turnholt: Brepols, 1991), ch. 17, p. 83, lines 80–84. Cf. Purnell, “The Theme,” 408; idem, Jacopo Mazzoni, 46. 60. Albert the Great, Metaphysica, I, tr. 5, ch. 15, Opera omnia, XVI, Part 1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1960), 89b. 61. Henry Bate, Speculum divinorum et quorundam naturalium, vol. I, ed. E. Van de Vyver (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1960), 47. For further discussion see Tullio Grego- ry, “Platone e Aristotele nello Speculum di Enrico Bate di Malines,” Studi medievali 3d ser., 2 (1961): 302–19. Also valuable are the remarks of Carlos Steel in his introduction and analysis in Henry Bate, Speculum divinorum et quorundam naturalium, Parts XI–XII, ed. Hel- mut Boese (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990), xvi–xx. 62. See Bruno Nardi, “Bate, Enrico,” in Enciclopedia filosofica, 2d edition, I (Florence: Sansoni, 1967), 761–62. 63. See now C. M. Woodhouse, Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1986). 64. For helpful remarks here see François Masai, Pléthon et le platonisme de Mistra (Paris: Belles Letres, 1956), 315–65; Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Platonismo Bizantino e Fiorentino e la controversia su Platone e Aristotele,” in Venezia e l’Oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimen- to, ed. A. Pertusi (Florence: Sansoni, 1966), 103–16, at 108–10. 65. For an English translation see Woodhouse, ibid., 191–214. His translation is based Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 13 versy among the Byzantines regarding the relative superiority of Plato and Aristotle. Plethon notes that contemporary Latins tend to favor Aristotle over Plato and indicates that he intends to set forth their differences so as to show the superiority of Plato.66 According to Plethon, God is for Plato the creator of all existing beings, including the intelligible realm, but for Aristotle God is merely a motive force, that is, a final cause as the end of movement. Aristotle thus puts God on the same level as the Intelligences.67 Moreover, he is inconsistent in that he regards the human mind as eternal and yet rejects recollection.68 Plethon pays particular attention to Aristotle’s arguments against the theory of the Forms found in Book I of the Metaphysics. Those arguments he considers to be fallacious. Some are misrepresenta- tions and others lack force. Aristotle is inconsistent, ignorant, sophistical, guilty of misrepresentation, and inclining toward atheism.69 Several Byzantine scholars attacked Plethon. When the controversy over Plato and Aristotle broke out in the 1450s it was limited to expatri- ate Greeks, the most persistent and hostile of whom was George Schol- arius, later known as Georgios Gennadius after he became a monk. He considered Plethon to be particularly dangerous since he suspected, quite correctly, that Plethon was actually a non-believer who wished to revive the ancient pagan gods. He considered Plethon’s treatise to be an attack on Orthodoxy and his own treatise defending Aristotle to be an attack on paganism.70 In his Defense of Aristotle, Scholarios denies Plethon’s claim that most Greeks preferred Plato; in fact they thought that any differences between Plato and Aristotle were merely verbal. But it is Aristotle and not Plato who is closer to Christianity. Without Aristotle there would never have been natural philosophy or ethics. And while Aristotle clearly distinguished the different intellectual disciplines, Plato only confused them. Against Plethon’s charge that Aristotle did not recognize God as creator and inclined toward atheism, Scholarius insists that Aristotle did hold that God caused the world, though he did not recognize that it was caused in time.71 Scholarios also takes Aristotle to maintain that the human mind is eternal and indestructible and that there is an after-life.72 Finally, when he comments on the respective approaches of Plato and Aristotle, Scholarios characterizes Plato as arguing in a confused man- on the Greek text established by Bernardette Lagarde, “Le ‘De differentiis de Pléthon’ d’après l’autographe de la Marcienne,” Byzantion 43 (1973): 321–43. 66. See Plethon, De differentiis, 192. 67. Ibid., 192–93. 68. Ibid., 198. 69. Ibid., 205–14. 70. Woodhouse, Gemistos Plethon, 218, 238. 71. Ibid., 240–47. 72. Ibid., 257. 14 edward p. mahoney ner that may reflect a commitment to rhetoric whereas Aristotle argues in a clear and precise manner.73 Another reply to Plethon was authored by George of Trebizond (1395–1484), who was also a Byzantine. A somewhat unbalanced character, George had even engaged in a street brawl in Rome while serving in the papal curia.74 He aggressively insisted on Aristotle’s superiority over Plato, who is preferred only by those who favor style over intellectual content. His own work, which claims to be a comparison of Plato and Aristotle, presents Aristotle as “hero” and Plato as “villain.”75 The work is structured.76 George characterizes Plato and the Platonists as having valued only style and eloquence.77 As to logic, George crisply observes that no one before Aristotle had ever explained demonstration or reasoning with certitude. Plato simply lacked the command of logic enjoyed by Aristo- tle.78 As to natural philosophy, Plato discusses causes, motion, the infinite, place, and vacuum in a confused manner. In contrast, when Aristo- tle explains sensible things it is as if nature were speaking about itself.79 And as regards the soul, Plato jumbled everything together. He should not be called a philosopher, since he taught nothing in an orderly fashion. Whatever he said was either false or stated obscurely. In contrast, Aristotle pursued all things in a correct manner moving from the more particular to the more general.80 According to George, the true philosopher is the one who is closer to the truth of the Christian religion. He therefore considers those Church Fathers who have preferred Plato to Aristotle to have erred. George even claims that Aristotle understood the Trinity and held both to creation ex nihilo and that all things here below are ruled by divine providence.81 God is the first efficient cause and the ultimate final end of all things.82 George considers Aristotle to have come very close to Catholic truth (veritas catholica) when he held that the world depends on the will of the First Principle.83 Nonetheless, he does admit that Aristotle consid-

73. Ibid., 262. 74. See the fundamental study of John Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and A Study of His Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 109–111. 75. Georgius Trapezuntius, Comparationes philosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis (Venice, 1523). See Monfasani, George of Trebizond, 156–57. 76. Book I compares Plato and Aristotle as scholars; Book II compares them to the truth of revelation; and Book III discusses their respective personal morality. 77. Ibid., Sig. A3v. 78. George of Trebizond, Comparationes, Sig. A6r–B1r. 79. Ibid., Sig. B1rv. 80. Ibid., Sig. B4rv. 81. Ibid., Sig. D2v–D4r. 82. Ibid., Sig. G6r–G7r. 83. Ibid., Sig. H4r. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 15 ered the world to be eternal and all creatures to be eternal, whether as individuals or as species.84 Plato was misled by poetic ﬁctions like transmigration.85 George attacks Plato’s views on the soul as a source of heresies. His belief in the transmigration of the soul into animals sets him at odds with Catholic truth. George observes that Plato attempted subtle arguments for immortality, but Aristotle actually demonstrated immortality.86 Aristotle’s doctrine on the origin of the soul agrees with Catholic truth. The intellective soul is produced from nothing and poured into the fe- tus from without (de foris ingredi).87 From this point onwards George engages in various forms of scorn and contempt for Plato and his teaching. The seed of schism from the Roman Catholic Church emerged from Platonism. George accuses members of the Eastern Church of turning the divine attributes into a plurality of deities, much like the polytheism of Plato himself. This remark is evidently directed against Gregory Palamas, whom George mentions by name.88 In contrast, George considers those Christians who especially follow Aristotle to have accomplished much in theology. They have written in an excellent way of the dogmas of the Church, the faith, and the Christian religion. The Greeks, having despised Aristotle, of whom they are wholly ignorant, do not know the Catholic faith.89 George’s attacks on Plato become even more personal in Book III. He takes Plato’s Republic and Phaedrus to lead people to turpitude. Plato is therefore unworthy of the name of philosopher.90 He ﬁnds particularly objectionable Plato’s proposal that young men and women should exercise in the nude. All the evil of Greece should thus be referred back to Plato and the Platonists.91 Cardinal Bessarion (ca. 1403–72), a student of Plethon, composed a high level reply to George of Trebizond that sought to correct the false- hoods that he, the “Calumniator of Plato,” had directed against Plato.92 He begins by recounting that a book recently fell into his hands that promised to be a comparison (comparatio) of Plato and Aristotle. He

84. Ibid., Sig. I2v. 85. Ibid., Sig. I4r. 86. Ibid., Sig., I5r–I6r. 87. See Ibid., Sig. K7v–K8r and Sig. L3v–L4r. 88. Ibid., Sig. M4r–4v. For discussion see John Meyendorff, Introduction à l’étude de Gré- goire Palamas (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1959). 89. Ibid., Sig. M5r. 90. Ibid., Sig. N4v–N5r. 91. Ibid., Sig. T3r. See also Sig. V3r. 92. Bessarion Nicaenus, In Calumniatorem Platonis libri IV, ed. Ludwig Mohler in idem, Kardinal Bessarion als Theologe, Humanist und Staatsmann: Funde und Forschungen, vol. II (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1927; reprint, 1967), Book III, ch. 11, p. 273, line 16: Pletho vir Platonicus. 16 edward p. mahoney hoped that he would find in it a comparison that would show how these two great men either agree or disagree. Some have endeavored to show that these two philosophers agree (convenire). Simplicius among the Greeks and Boethius among the Latins are examples. Bessarion’s own hope had been that the author of the Comparatio would either have con- ciliated (conciliasse) the views of Plato and Aristotle or preferred one of the two and given arguments for him and arguments against the other. On the contrary, he found only insults, invectives, and contentions. He objects to George pursuing Plato in this fashion and saying that Plato lacks knowledge of philosophy, of natural and divine things, of mathematics, and of the oratorical art.93 Bessarion first takes up the comparison of the teaching of the two philosophers. He insists that the holiest men of the Christian religion made much of Plato, whose thought was most similar to the faith. They used him against those who wanted to destroy the Christian religion with their vicious arguments.94 He is especially eager to make Plato and his teaching better known to contemporary Latins, who do not know Greek.95 He observes that even if we should praise and admire Aristotle we do not on that account take away anything from Plato’s glory.96 To combat George’s charge that Plato lacked knowledge of logic Bessarion first recounts the three types of syllogism that Aristotle distinguishes, namely the demonstrative, the dialectical, and the sophistical.97 After insisting that no one has explained the force of demonstration and its necessity better than Plato, he gives examples of supposed demonstrations from the dialogues. He then argues that Plato also knew dialectical and sophistical syllogisms.98 As to natural philosophy, Bessari- on maintains that in the Timaeus Plato has principles matching Aristo- tle’s principles of matter, form, and privation; namely matter, Idea (idea) and God (opifex deus).99 In Book II, Bessarion replies to George’s claim that Aristotle’s thought is closer to the Christian religion. However, he does not wish to show that Plato was a Christian; both Plato and Aristotle were distant from the faith.100 Nonetheless, he does emphasize that the Church Fa- thers diligently investigated the views of Plato and Aristotle.101 He is also

93. Ibid., Book I, ch. 1, p. 3, line 1 to p. 5, line 34. 94. Ibid., p. 7, lines 21–33. 95. Ibidem p. 9, lines 15–35. 96. Ibid., Book 1, ch. 3, p. 29, line 30 to p. 31, line 5. 97. See Aristotle, Topics I, ch. 1, 100a20–100b24. 98. Bessarion Nicaenus, In Calumniatorem Platonis libri IV, Book I, ch. 5, line 30 to p.63, line 33. 99. Ibid., Book I, ch. 6, p. 69, lines 3–36. See also II, ch. 5, p. 93, lines 33–36. 100. Ibid., Book II, ch. 1, p. 81, line 10–27. 101. See Ibid., II, ch. 2, p. 83, lines 7–27. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 17 careful to state clearly that neither Plato, Aristotle, nor any other gentile spoke of the Trinity in the way in which it is divinely revealed. He disputes George’s claim that Aristotle thought that the world was made from non-being by the divine will alone.102 On the one hand, Aristotle never mentions the will of God in his writings, whereas Plato everywhere proclaims the will and providence of God and says that God is the cause of things.103 Also erroneous is George’s claim that for Aristotle the First Mover is not appropriated to the First Mobile.104 Bessarion cites the authority of Saint Thomas Aquinas against George’s position.105 In Book III, Bessarion cites Saint Thomas’s judgment that it is impossible to arrive at knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason. He promises to show how much closer Plato is to knowledge of the Trinity than is Aristotle. After Original Sin no one could come to knowledge of the Trinity unless they had previously been illuminated by faith. Since Aris- totle lacked both faith and Scripture, he could not achieve such a knowledge.106 Bessarion accuses George of attempting to make Aristotle, a gentile and non-believer, into an apostle and thereby contradict saintly authors who think that the Trinity can only be known from faith.107 He disputes the arguments George had constructed to show that Aristotle held to creation from nothing, thereby attempting to make Aristotle a true Christian.108 As Bessarion points out, Aristotle took as a principle that from nothing comes nothing.109 Equally objectionable is George’s claim that for Aristotle God freely chose to create the world. Bessarion demands to know where Aristotle says such a thing.110 Bessarion gives some attention to Aristotle’s psychology. He rejects the interpretations set forth by Alexander of Aprodisias, Averroes, and Themistius.111 He likewise rejects George’s view that Aristotle demonstrated individual human souls to be immortal.112 Following out a state-

102. Ibid., Book II, ch. 6, p. 109, lines 35–39; ch. 7, p. 129, lines 36–37; p. 135, lines 4–8, 32–33, 39–41; p. 137, lines 25–27. 103. Ibid., Book II, ch. 7, p. 131, lines 1–4. 104. Ibid., Book III, ch. 11, p. 263, lines 16–20. 105. Ibid., Book III, ch. 11, p. 265, lines 26–39. 106. Ibid., Book III, ch. 17, p. 303, lines 24–27. 107. Ibid., Book III, ch. 19, p. 311, lines 23–26. Bessarion appears to have in mind Al- bert, Thomas and Henry of Ghent. See Book II, ch. 20, p. 333–37. 108. Ibid., Book III, ch. 20, p. 323, line 12. See also p. 343, lines 3–5. 109. Ibid., Book III, p. 325, lines 25–26. 110. Ibid., Book III, ch. 21, p. 349, lines 3–6, p. 351, lines 10–15. See also p. 357, lines 15–17. 111. Ibid., Book III, ch. 22, p. 371, lines 9–15, p. 377, lines 5–7; ch. 27, p. 407, line 5–11, p. 409, lines 18–19, line 39 to p. 411, line 4. 112. Ibid., Book III, ch. 22, p. 377, lines 8–10. See also III, ch. 27, p. 405, line 16 to p. 407, line 5. Quantiﬁed matter as the principle of individuation plays a central role in the discussions. See Book III, ch. 22, p. 387, lines 11–12; ch. 22, p. 389, lines 6–22; ch. 23, p. 393, line 22 to p. 397, line 5; ch. 24–25, p. 399, line to p. 403, line 30. 18 edward p. mahoney ment of Averroes that the possible intellect is immortal and one for all humans and always ﬁlled with forms (species) Bessarion considers Plato and Aristotle reconcilable as to preexistence and recollection.113 Bessari- on insists against George that Aristotle did not consider God to be prov- ident regarding the sub-lunar sphere.114 In the last book of the In Calumniatorem Platonis, Bessarion defends Plato’s moral character. He insists that Plato’s life was one of the greatest continence and that he proposed modesty, temperance, and continence in the Republic.115 He argues that while Plato demanded continence from soldiers as well as from the citizens and rulers Aristotle granted them license.116 As regards venereal matters Plato never disagreed with the laws and practices of the Christian religion.117 Also of note is Bessari- on’s care to show similarities between Aristotle’s political ideas and Pla- to’s views in the Republic and the Laws. He points out that Aristotle, like Plato, calls man a political and social animal (homo civile ac sociale animal).118 Both also show concern that the number of men in a political community be limited for the sake of unity and harmony.119 Bessarion ends his treatise by pointing out that in the past George had shown appreciation for Plato. The virtues of Plato that he now denies and censures he had previously proclaimed. This is evident from the Preface to his translation of Plato’s Laws, made for Pope Nicholas V. George there refers to a comparatio of the political teaching of Plato and Aristotle. He tells the pope that while the teaching of Aristotle is in accord with this present life of humans that of Plato is more in accord with the life that humans would have had if man had not fallen by sin. These outstanding men, Plato and Aristotle, setting out by different paths almost at the same time, were sent to humans by divine providence. All the se- crets of nature and whatever agrees with this present state seem to have been providentially poured into Aristotle. On the other hand, Provi- dence infused in the other the hope that the city (civitas) could be led back by his laws to a more sublime life than this present life.120 Bessarion

113. Ibid., Book III, ch. 28, p. 411, line 22 to p. 413, line 35. See Averroes, Commentar- ium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. F. Stuart Crawford (Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1953), III, comm. 5, p. 412. 114. Ibid., Book III, ch. 29, p. 413, line 38 to p. 417, line 1. 115. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 1, p. 423, line 27 to p. 425, line 38. 116. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 1, p. 429, lines 4–24. See Aristotle, Politics, II, ch. 9, 1269b 26–31. 117. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 1, p. 433, line 19. 118. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 3, p. 511, line 6. Both also show concern that the number of men in a political community be limited for the sake of unity and harmony. 119. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 7, p.543, line 35 to p. 545, line 34. 120. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 16, p. 623 to p. 625, line 27. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 19 then provides like examples of praise for Plato in the preface to George’s translation of the Parmenides sent to Nicholas of Cusa and his second preface to his translation of the Laws. He questions why George took on such a labor of translation simply in order to teach the young evil deeds, to pervert good morals, and to drive out virtue. Indeed the one whom he had proposed should be followed, imitated, and loved, that same one he now writes should be detested, expelled, and exiled. With some justification Bessarion ends his long work by denouncing George for his great inconstancy and perversity.121 Having examined the origins and development of the comparative tradition we are now in a position to survey the development of that tradition in the Latin West during the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.122 Given the important role of Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) in Renais- sance philosophy, it is significant that already in an early scholastic treatise he conciliates Plato and Aristotle on the soul.123 Ficino cites Themistius as a source who held that Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus maintained the same opinion (sententia) regarding the mind. It is that there is one mind that is common to all humans, namely the divine mind, which illumines human minds everywhere. Ficino praises Giovan- ni Pico della Mirandola for having marvelously shown that Plato and Aristotle agree on the soul.124 It is also worthy of note that Ficino’s disciple, Francesco da Diacceto (1466–1522), attempted to conciliate Plato and Aristotle on such topics as the faculties of the soul, animation of the heavens, gravity, the nature of space, and the world-soul. He standardly attempted to bring Aristotle into line with Plato and Neoplatonism.125 The outstanding Renaissance proponent of the conciliation of Plato and Aristotle was surely Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He announced

121. Ibid., Book IV, ch. 17, p.625, line 27 to p. 631, line 41. 122. For contributions of Muslim philosophers to the conciliating tradition see Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 125–47. 123. See Marsilio Ficino, Tractatus de anima, in Paul Oskar Kristeller, Studies in Renais- sance Thought and Letters (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1956), 67. Ficino cites Themistius as a source who held that Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus maintained the same opinion (sententia) regarding the mind. It is that there is one mind that is common to all humans, namely the divine mind, which illumines human minds everywhere. Ficino praises Giovanni Pico della Mirandola for having marvelously shown that Plato and Aristo- tle agree on the soul. For discussion see now John Monfasani, “Marsilio Ficino and the Pla- to-Aristotle Controversy,” in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valerie Rees (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 179–202. 124. See Marsilio Ficino, Opera omnia, vol. I (Basel, 1576; reprint, Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962), 896–97 and 1801. 125. See Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Francesco da Diacceto and Florentine Platonism in the Sixteeth Century,” in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, 307, 312, 316, 320. 20 edward p. mahoney that he intended to publish a work entitled The Concord of Plato and Aris- totle (Platonis Aristotelisque concordia), but it never appeared in print.126 It has been argued that his nephew Gianfrancesco suppressed the publication of the work but used some material from it in his own writing.127 On the other hand, Giovanni Pico does present a conciliation of Plato and Aristotle in his De ente et uno which Kristeller sees as achieved by reducing Plato to the role of an exponent of Aristotle’s position.128 Pico’s conciliating tendencies are most evident in his celebrated Con- clusiones. In the section of the work that Pico dedicates to conciliating thinkers who especially seem to disagree, he presents the following: “There is no natural or divine question in which Aristotle and Plato are not in agreement in thought and in reality although they might seem to disagree in words.”129 There is also a reference to conciliating Plato and Aristotle in the Heptaplus.130 Moreover, Gianfrancesco testiﬁes in his own work on immortality that his uncle reconciled Plato and Aristotle.131 There were also comparators outside Italy. Symphorien Champier (1472–1539), a Frenchman, published his Symphonia Platonis cum Aris- totele et Galeni cum Hippocrate at Paris in 1516.132 Sebastian Fox Morcillo (1526/28–60), a Spaniard, published his De naturae philosophia seu de Platonis et Aristotelis consensione libri V at Louvain in 1554 and a corrected edition at Paris in 1560. Another Frenchman who authored a comparison of Plato and Aristotle was Jacques Charpentier (1524–74). The title of his work was Platonis cum Aristotele in universa philosophia comparatio, quae hoc commentario in Alcinoi Institutiones ad eiusdem Platonis doctrinam explicatur. The work is thus a commentary on the Isagoge of Albinus. It was published at Paris in 1573. Charpentier shows a knowledge of other writers in this tradition, namely Boethius, Bessarion, George Trebizond, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Symphorien Champier, and Fox Morcil- lo, among others.133 But Italy remained the country that produced more comparators.134

126. See Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Proemium to his De ente et essentia, in Opera omnia (Basel, 1557; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1969), 241. 127. See Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486), The Evolu- tion of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval and Renais- sance Texts and Studies, 1998), 35–36, 148, 152–71. 128. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964), 64. 129. “Nullum est quaesitum naturale aut divinum in quo Aristoteles et Plato sensu et re conveniunt, quamvis verbis dissentire videantur.” See Giovanni Pico, Conclusiones (Rome, 1486), f. 14v. I have used a copy in the Vatican Library. See now Farmer’s edition, in idem, Syncretism in the West, 364. 130. See Giovanni Pico, Heptaplus, Book 5, ch. 4, in Opera, 37. 131. Gianfrancesco Pico, De animae immortalitate digressio (Bologna, 1523), f. 4v. 132. Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni, 64–65. 133. See Ibid., 71–73. 134. Ibid., 58. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 21

One was the important philosopher Francesco Vimercato (ca. 1512– 71), who spent some years outside Italy in France. He authored a treatise, still unpublished, entitled De placitis naturalibus Platonis et Aristotelis ac inter eos de illis consensione et dissensione liber primus. He also reveals his interest in comparing Plato and Aristotle, but not reconciling them, in his commentary on the Meteorologica. He announces that he attempts to determine and accept what is more probable, whether it is maintained either by Plato or by Aristotle.135 A major ﬁgure in the tradition of comparationes was Jacopo Mazzoni (1548–98), who authored a collection of some ﬁve thousand conclusiones that was published in 1576. In it he attempted to show the agreement of Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers.136 Mazzoni promises to resolve disagreements between Plato and Aristotle as well as among the Greeks, the Arabs and the Latins.137 He thereby out-did Giovanni Pico’s modest nine hundred conclusiones. Nonetheless this work was not Mazzoni’s last word. In 1597 he published his In universam Platonis et Aristotelis philosophiam praeludia, sive de comparatione Platonis et Aristotelis liber primus. He disowns to some extent his earlier work and now admits that Plato and Aristotle do indeed disagree. He compares Plato and Aristotle to two merchants running rival shops. He intends to buy the most suitable and useful goods. But if only useless and vain things are sold in both shops, he will buy nothing.138 ii. negative and hostile attitudes toward aristotle A. Medieval Precedents Medieval Christians, whether they were philosophers, theologians, or Church authorities, did not on the whole accept the thought of Aristotle uncritically.139 Most of his writings were known in Latin translation by 1200.140 By 1210 the Church authorities set forth bans on teaching Aris- totle’s natural philosophy.141 In 1228, Pope Gregory IX warned theologians to be wary of the wrong use of philosophy. In 1231 he decided that if the natural books were judged by an appointed commission to be

135. Ibid., 60–61. 136. The beginning of the title of the work is De triplici hominum vita, activa nempe, contemplativa et religiosa, methodi tres. It was published at Cesena in 1576. 137. Purnell, Jacopo Mazzoni, 65. 138. Ibid., 75, note 135. 139. This section of my study is a much abbreviated version of the original longer version. 140. See Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West: The Origins of Latin Aristotelian- ism, trans. Leonard Johnston (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1955), 62. 141. Ibid., 70. 22 edward p. mahoney capable of being corrected they could be taught.142 The Metaphysics and libri naturales appear not to have been taught before 1240; logic was the main interest.143 However, there was some interest in Aristotle’s Nico- machean Ethics.144 By 1240 the professors in the Arts Faculty were teaching Aristotle’s logic and ethics and perhaps even his physics and metaphysics.145 Albert the Great arrived at Paris around this time and made much use of Aristotle in his theological writings.146 Bonaventure’s attitude regarding Aristotle is open to debate, but it surely must be admitted by all that he held that Aristotle could never be a ﬁrst-rate metaphysician since he did not accept Exemplars, whether Plato’s Forms or the Divine Ideas.147 By 1255 the Arts Faculty accepted most of the works of Aristotle and made them part of the curriculum. Presumably teaching of those works had already been going on.148 Siger of Brabant (ca. 1240–84) was the leading ﬁgure in the Arts Faculty at Paris who studied and taught Aristo- tle’s writings. Some of his writings had an impact on Renaissance Aris- totelianism.149 By 1270 the teaching of Aristotle, along with Avicenna and Averroes, had reached such a point that Bishop Stephen Tempier and more conservative theologians were alarmed.150 The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 seem to be aimed in great part at Muslim philosophers, but there was surely also animus here against Aristotle himself.151 The Condemna- tion of 1277 was known to a good number of later philosophers, for example Tommaso Campanella, who knew about the condemnations and makes reference to them in his Defense of Galileo. He also attempts to provide a history of attitudes toward Aristotle found at Paris.152

142. Ibid., 85–86. 143. Ibid., 98, 100. 144. Ibid., 105, 108. 145. Ibid., 122. 146. Ibid., 123. 147. See Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Paterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1965), 88–91, 91, 128–29; John F. Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bon- aventure’s Philosophy (Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973), 620–22, 655. 148. Ibid., 164–65. 149. See Fernand van Steenberghen, Maître Siger de Brabant (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1977); Bruno Nardi, Sigieri di Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento Italiano (Rome: Edizioni Italiane, 1945). 150. See Roland Hissette, “Étienne Tempier et ses condemnations,” Recherches de Théologie ancienne et médiévale 47 (1980): 230–69. 151. Van Steenberghen, Maître Siger de Brabant, 164–65. For the texts of the two condemnations, see Roland Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 Mars 1277 (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1977). For an informative account of the historical scene and a clear analysis of the doctrinal issues see John F. Wippel, “The Condem- nations of 1270 and 1277,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977): 169–201. The subsequent scholarly discussion which involves Hissette, Wippel, and others cannot be handled in this study. 152. For references to the Condemnation of 1277 by later philosophers, see my study Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 23

One late thirteenth-century figure who used Aristotle but also criticized him is Peter John Olivi (1248–98). In a short opusculum he explains how to study the books of the philosophers without endangering one’s faith. He judges the philosophy found in these books to be stupid, false, and vain in its principles, reasonings, and conclusions. He questions what the philosophers could have learned about morals and political rule, since their notions of beatitude and the virtues are false. More- over, they know nothing of the truth regarding redemption and divine grace.153 Olivi shows himself wary regarding Aristotle, whose authority means nothing to him.154 Olivi sees Aristotle as a pagan idolator who sets forth heresies.155 To believe a statement of a non-believer like Aristotle that lacks proof seems to be an act of madness (dementia) that is a danger to Christian faith. Sacred Scriputre and the Catholic faith alone should be at the summit of authority for a Christian.156 He even feels free to characterize Aristotle’s philosophy as worthless and fallacious (inanis et fallax philosophia Aristotelis).157 The authority and influence that Aristotle enjoyed was a particular trial for Olivi. He returns several times to the problem of Aristotle’s authority, which he says displeases him greatly.158 At one point he cites Aristotle but immediately adds that he is not a God or an authority (deus vel auctoritas) for us such that we are bound to believe him.159 He is particularly wary of those engaged in theology who would cite Aristotle and be taken with his authority. He says that Aristo- tle is the God of his age.160 One should be stupefied that Christians who

“Reverberations of the Condemnation of 1277 in Later Medieval and Renaissance Philos- ophy,” in Nach der Verurteilung von 1277: Philosophie und Theologie an der Universität von Paris im letzen Viertel des 13. Jahrhunderts: Studien und Texte, ed. J. A. Aertsen, K. Emery Jr. and A. Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 28, Thomas-Institut of the University of Cologne (New York: de Gruyter, 2001), 902–30. For relevant discussion regarding Campanella, Aristotle and Saint Thomas see John M. Headley, Tommaso Campanella and the Transformation of the World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997); idem, “Tommaso Campanella and Jean de Launoy: The Controversy over Aristotle and His Reception in the West,” Re- naissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 529–50. 153. Ferdinand M. Delorme, “Fr. Petri Joannis Olivi tractatus ‘De perlegendis Philosophorum libris,’” Antonianum 16 (1941): 37–39, 42–44. For a highly informative study of Olivi’s critical attitude toward Aristotle, see David Burr, “Petrus Ioannis Olivi and the Philosophers,” Franciscan Studies 31 (1971): 46, 56–63, 67, 69–70. 154. Peter John Olivi, Quaestiones in secundum librum sententiarum, ed. Bernard Jansen, vol. I, q. 16. Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica, 4 (Ad Claras Aquas: Quaracchi, 1922), 337. See also Efrem Bettoni, Le dottrine filosofiche di Pier di Giovanni Olivi (Milan: Vita e Pen- siero, 1959), 55–66. 155. See Olivi, Quaestiones, vol. II, q. 51, q. 57 (Ad Claras Aquas: Quaracchi, 1924), 134, 341. 156. Ibid., vol. I, q. 16, 342. 157. Ibid., vol. I, q. 16, 355. 158. Ibid., vol. I, q. 31, 548. See also 551. 159. Ibid., vol. II, q. 54, 269. 160. See ibid., vol. II, q. 58, 482. 24 edward p. mahoney are theologians and even members of religious orders (religiosi) esteem and almost adore (quasi adorant) statements of Aristotle that regard theological, metaphysical, or supernatural matters.161 Perhaps the best known attack on Aristotle by any medieval philosopher was that launched by Nicholas of Autrecourt (ca. 1300–1350) in his Universal Treatise.162 He begins by announcing his intention to determine whether the thousand conclusions or quasi-conclusions supposedly demonstrated by Aristotle and Averroes were really such. Other opposed conclusions could in some cases be held as of equal probability. Those taken up with the study of Aristotle have deserted concern for the common good. They lack charity and pursue honors. If only it were recognized that there is very little certitude (certitudo) to be gained through the natural appearances of things those who are given to studying Aris- totle would be humbled, pursue the Christian Law, and live in charity. They would cease to waste their lives on logic and in seeking to clarify statements of Aristotle, or in quoting the words of Averroes. They would teach the Divine Law to the common people and be mirrors reflecting the goodness of God.163 Nicholas goes on to accuse teachers within the university of failing to study things and taking as principles conclusions and statements of Aristotle and his commentator Averroes.164 Three fourteenth-century Franciscans attacked Aristotle directly, namely Francis Meyronnes (d. after 1328), Antonius Andreas (d. 1320), and Joannes Canonicus. Francis Meyronnes criticized Aristotle for im- posing on Plato the view that there is a real separation of the Ideas from things and also the view that the Ideas are in place. Since Aristotle failed to understand how things are separate, he developed the “worst metaphysics” (pessima metaphysica) and should be called the “worst metaphysician” (pessimus metaphysicus). However, in other contexts he can rightly be called the “best natural philosopher” or “best physicist” (optimus physicus).165

161. Ibid., vol. I, q. 6, 131. 162. See Nicholas of Autrecourt, Tractatus universalis ad videndum an sermones peripateti- corum fuerint demonstrativi, in J. Reginald O’Donnell, “Nicholas of Autrecourt,” Mediaeval Studies 1 (1939):178–280, at 181–267. For a translation see Nicholas of Autrecourt, The Universal Treatise, trans. Leonard A. Kennedy, Richard E. Arnold, and Arthur E. Millward (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971), 31–32. Kennedy has authored a helpful, informative introduction (1–29). For more detailed presentations, see J. Reginald O’Don- nell, “The Philosophy of Nicholas of Autrecourt and His Appraisal of Aristotle,” Mediaeval Studies 4 (1942): 97–125; Julius R. Weinberg, Nicolaus of Autrecourt: A Study in 14th Century Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1948); Lambert Marie de Rijk, Nicholas of Autrecourt (Leiden: Brill, 1994). 163. Nicholas of Autrecourt, Tractatus, 181–82; Universal Treatise, 31–32. 164. Idem, Tractatus, 197; Universal Treatise, 57. 165. Francis Meyronnes, In primum sententiarum fecundissimum scriptum (Venice, 1505), I, d. 47, a. 3, q. 1, fols. 144rb–145rb. The background of Meyronnes’ remarks is provided Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 25

Both Antonius Andreas and Joannes Canonicus consider Aristotle to have taught natural science erroneously and insufficiently (insufficienter et erronee), since he had mistaken views on the subject of natural science and on the nature of the Intelligences.166 In a treatise published at Venice in 1480, Nicoletto Vernia expressed amazement that Andreas and Canonicus would say such things directed against the Prince of Philosophers, that is Aristotle, especially given that he has not found Al- bert, Thomas, and Scotus saying such things.167 Vernia’s student, Agosti- no Nifo (ca. 1470–1538), does not name Meyronnes, Andreas, or Canonicus in his commentary on Averroes’s Destructio destructionum but he does refer to “certain Franciscans” (quidam fratres minores) who call Aristotle “the worst metaphysician” and some of them call him “the worst natural philosopher” (pessimus naturalis). He asks why these Fran- ciscans do not say like things against Averroes, Albert, and Thomas.168 Other medievals also criticized or attacked Aristotle. One was Grego- ry of Rimini (c. 1300–1358), who indicates that Aristotle contradicted himself on some topics and erred in regard to others.169 Durandus of Saint-Pourçain considered Aristotle to be quite fallible. Taking up the question whether successive beings such as motion and time could have existed from all eternity, he states that Aristotle erred not only against the faith but also against natural reason. He considers some of the arguments that Aristotle uses to be barely probable.170 Other medievals also approached Aristotle quite critically. Pierre d’Ailly (1350–1420) insisted that in the philosophy of Aristotle there are no or few demonstrations. His teaching should therefore be called “opinion” and not “sci- by statements of Bonaventure regarding Aristotle. See my study, “Aristotle as ‘The Worst Natural Philosopher’ (pessimus naturalis) and ‘The Worst Metaphysician’ (pessimus metaphysicus): His Reputation among Some Franciscan Philosophers (Bonaventure, Francis of Meyronnes, Antonius Andreas, and Joannes Canonicus) and Later Reactions,” in Die Philosophie im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Olaf Pluta (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1988), 261–73, at 261–63. 166. See Antonius Andreas, Quaestiones de tribus principiis rerum naturalium (Padua, 1475), f. 1ra–2va and 3rb–4ra; Joannes Canonicus, Quaestiones super VIII libros physicorum Aristotelis perutiles (Venice, 1520), I, q. 1, f. 1rab. 167. See Nicoletto Vernia, Quaestio est an ens mobile sit totius naturalis philosophiae subiec- tum, in Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones super libris de generatione et corruptione Aristotelis (Venice: 1480), Sig. E5va. 168. Agostino Nifo, Destructiones destructionum Averroys cum Augustini de Suessa expositione (Venice, 1497), Disp. V, dub. 3, f. 69vb. It deserves noting that Andreas and Canonicus did not in fact call Aristotle the worst physicist, though they did speak of him as in error regarding natural philosophy. 169. Gregory of Rimini, Super primum et secundum Sententiarum (Venice, 1522; reprint, St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1955), I, d. 38, q. 1, art. 1, f. 147vb. 170. Durandus of Saint Pourçain, Petri Lombardi Sententias theologicas commentariorum libri IV, vol. I (Venice: Typographia Guerraea, 1571; reprint, Ridgewood, N.J.: Greg, 1964), II, d. 1, q. 3, f. 127vb–128rb. 26 edward p. mahoney ence.”171 He suggests that Aristotle spoke imperfectly about love of God and beatitude since he only dreamed about the latter in a shadow-like manner.172 Church Fathers like Tertullian and Bernard of Clairvaux also had attacked Aristotle. Gianfrancesco Pico and Campanella appeal to the Church Fathers in their attacks on Aristotle.173 B. Renaissance Critics of Aristotle: Gianfrancesco Pico and Tommaso Campanella 1. Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola The most severe attack on Aristotle launched during the Renaissance was surely that authored by Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469– 1533, the nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The key text is his Examination of the Vanity of the Teaching of the Gentiles and of the Truth of the Christian Discipline (Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium et veritatis Chris- tianae disciplinae).174 The work was probably begun before 1502 and not completed until 1514. It was first published at Mirandola only in 1520.175 That Giovanni Pico could have had a nephew who doubted the value of philosophy may seem odd. However, in the last years of his life Giovanni Pico himself came under the influence of Savonarola and turned to a life of prayer and asceticism.176 Gianfrancesco too knew Savonarola, who held that the religious notions of the philosophers were filled with error and that they could establish nothing stable and certain about religion.177 Sacred Scripture is greater than the philosophical disciplines and of far greater benefit to humans.178 Gianfrancesco too will stress the great value of Scripture in his Examen vanitatis.179 The Examen vanitatis contains six books. The first three, which are an attack on philosophers in general, make use of Sextus Empiricus. The

171. Pierre d’Ailly, Quaestiones super libros sententiarum (Strassburg, 1490, reprint, Frankfurt: Minerva, 1968), I, q. 3, sig. h4va. 172. Ibid., I, q. 2, sig. g1vb. For a listing of medieval critics of Aristotle, see O’Donnell, “The Philosophy of Nicholas of Autrecourt,” 100–101. 173. Church Fathers like Tertullian and Bernard of Clairvaux also had attacked Aristo- tle. Gianfrancesco Pico and Campanella would themselves appeal to the Church Fathers in their own attacks on Aristotle. See Ibid., 102–03. 174. I use the printing of the Examen found in volume II of the Basel 1577 edition of Giovanni Pico’s and Gianfrancesco Pico’s Opera omnia, reprinted at Hildesheim by Olms in 1969. 175. See Charles B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469–1533) and His Critique of Aristotle, Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, 23 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1967), 193. See also 44, 46, note 33. 176. Ibid., 32–36. 177. Savonarola, Trionfo della Croce, ed. Ettore De Giovanni (Milan: Sonzogno, 1939) cited by Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico, p. 36, note 13. 178. Ibid., 36, n. 14. 179. Ibid., 43. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 27 latter three are directed against Aristotle. Gianfrancesco rejects his uncle’s attempt to conciliate the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, considering it to be more useful to render uncertain the teachings of the philosophers as did the early Church Fathers.180 When Gianfrancesco turns to Aristotle himself in Book IV, he points out in the proem that Aristotle rejected the teachings of Plato that he heard for twenty years. In like fashion, he has himself studied Aristotle’s writings for twenty years, searching for the truth. After asking the par- don of those in the Church who love and praise Aristotle excessively, he openly states that Aristotle’s teaching lacks the weight that many think it possesses.181 Moreover, Gianfrancesco proclaims that he prefers truth to all else, insisting that he is even willing to write against his own views if he should find them to be in error. Aristotle’s doctrine is only probable (probablis) at best and partly false. Moreover, it is not supported by religion.182 Gianfrancesco indicates the tactics that he will follow to discredit Aristotle. He intends to reveal that Aristotle’s books are uncertain, since it is not known whether we have any work that was actually composed by him. And even if it can be established that the teaching in such books is genuinely Aristotle’s own, Gianfrancesco will pursue various routes to discredit it. These include noting the perpetual war among Aristotle’s commentators and appealing to the authority of renowned Christian theologians.183 Gianfrancesco takes seriously the problem of determining if there are any books attributed to Aristotle that are his genuine works. He cites a wide range of Aristotelian commentators to show the critical nature of the problem.184 Given the disagreement, the quarrel- ing and the fighting among Aristotle’s interpreters, it is questionable that his doctrine is to be thought certain. There has been warfare in Greece over the meanings of Aristotle for over a thousand years and the same has occurred in Paris for four hundred years.185 Moreover, Aristo- tle’s own mode of writing has caused his teaching to be uncertain. In- deed Eusebius, who was a second-century Platonist, compared Aristotle to a cuttle-fish that emits a black inky fluid when captured, thereby enabling it to escape the fishermen. Gianfrancesco adds that Aristotle also resembles a chamelon and its ever changing colored appearance.186

180. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, I, ch. 2, 738. 181. Ibid., III, proemium, 1011–12. 182. Ibid., IV, proemium, 1013–14. 183. Ibid., IV, ch. 1, 1021. 184. Ibid., IV, ch. 4, 1029–34. 185. Ibid., IV, ch. 8, 1045–46. 186. Ibid., IV, ch. 7, p. 1042–45. See Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico, 70–71; idem, “Aristo- tle as a Cuttleﬁsh, the Origin and Development of a Renaissance Image,” Studies in the Re- naissance 12 (1965): 60–72. 28 edward p. mahoney

In order to underscore Aristotle’s fundamental errors Gianfranceco cites Church Fathers who present Aristotle as maintaining that the rational soul is mortal. He promises to present more on the mortality of the soul later in Book VI of the Examen vanitatis.187 Here in Book IV he adds references to medieval Latin theologians whom he considers to have criticized and attacked Aristotle on some points. They include Al- bert the Great, Thomas Aquinas (concerning the eternity of the world and the infinite plurality of disembodied souls), Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, Gregory of Rimini, Durandus of Saint Pourçain, John Ba- conthorpe, Nicholas of Cusa, Pierre d’Ailly, John Gerson, Hervaeus Na- talis, and Robert Holcot. Two other medievals mentioned by Gian- francesco as being among the medieval critics of Aristotle are Joannes Canonicus and Francis Meyronnes, both of whom were mentioned earlier in this paper. Unfortunately the late Charles Schmitt in his model monograph on Gianfrancesco omits all mention of Canonicus and Mey- ronnes. Both are important medieval sources for Gianfrancesco and his relationship to them should be duly noted.188 Gianfrancesco applies to Aristotle the sceptical critique that he had developed earlier. He states that the senses are often deceptive and can both deceive and be deceived in more ways than Aristotle thought. There is no general rule regarding the truth of sense knowledge applicable to each human being. Aristotle does make the senses the foundation of demonstrations, which are composed of universal propositions gathered by induction from sensibles.189 He criticizes Aristotle and his followers for not justifying the confidence that they place in the senses.190 In Book V Gianfrancesco develops further his critique of Aristotle’s doctrine of demonstration. The senses, which are the starting-point for demonstration, are themselves uncertain, if not simply fallacious. In like fashion, it is difficult to be certain about definitions on which demonstrations rely.191 Humans are often undecided about their own senses and doubt whether they did in fact sense, that is, whether they really saw or heard what appeared to them and whether those things are things actually seen or heard. Moreover, Aristotle’s commentators do not agree as to whether there is only one internal sense or several and whether the

187. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, IV, ch. 9, 1049–51. 188. Ibid., IV, ch. 10, 1053–56. 189. Ibid., IV, ch. 12, 1058–59. 190. Ibid., IV, ch. 12, 1062. Schmitt (Gianfrancesco Pico, 75–76) faults Gianfrancesco for playing down the important role that nous plays in grasping universal principles. 191. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, V, ch. 1–2, 1069–72. See the helpful analysis of Schmitt (Gianfrancesco Pico, 86–87). Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 29 senses are self-reﬂective. A related difference of opinion regards the sensus agens.192 Gianfrancesco sets out physiological factors that indicate the basic relativity and unreliability of sense knowledge and the uncertainty of all human knowledge.193 He discusses the dispute between Henry of Ghent and John Duns Scotus whether divine illumination is needed if scepticism is to be overcome and certainty reached.194 The sixth and ﬁnal book of Gianfrancesco’s Examen vanitatis contains critiques of key doctrines of Aristotle, such as his views on motion, space, time, place, a vacuum, and the eternity of the world. Authorities cited include ancient philosophers, Jewish philosophers, and Christian thinkers both medieval and Renaissance.195 Gianfrancesco dedicates one long chapter to psychological topics, noting how both pagan philosophers and also Christian theologians have investigated the problem of what Aristotle took the soul to be, whether it is one, and whether it is mortal or immortal. Another topic evoking disagreement among Aristotle’s expositors is the nature of the agent intellect. Gianfrancesco refers the reader to his own commentary on Book III of the De anima.196 In his discussion regarding the agent intellect he cites Alexander, Themistius, Simplicius, Plutarch, Philoponus, and Marinus, as well as Averroes and Thomas Aquinas, most of whom are cited in earlier medieval discussions regarding the agent intellect.197

2. Tommaso Campanella In a note to the title of his very ﬁrst published work, the Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) indicates that the work is aimed at those who have willingly philosophized without taking as their leader nature as experienced or “sensed.” The errors of Aris- totle and his followers will be refuted both from their own statements and also from the principles of nature. The imaginative inventions that the Aristotelians create on behalf of Aristotle are to be rejected. Cam-

192. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, V, ch. 2, 1074–76. 193. For a detailed analysis, see Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico, 90–101. 194. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, V, ch. 4, 1091–97. For further discussion see Charles B. Schmitt, “Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus, and Gianfrancesco Pico on Illumination,” Me- diaeval Studies 25 (1963): 231–58. 195. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen, VI, ch. 2–13, 1183–1216. See Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico, 128–54. 196. See Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, De animae immortalitate digressio (Bologna, 1523). 197. Gianfrancesco Pico, Examen vanitatis, VI, ch. 13, p. 1224–26. See my study, “Themistius and the Agent Intellect in James of Viterbo and Other Thirteenth Century Philosophers (Saint Thomas, Siger of Brabant and Henry Bate),” Augustiniana 23 (1973): 453–57. 30 edward p. mahoney panella promises to defend Bernardino Telesio (1509–88), whom he considered to be the greatest of philosophers.198 In the Preface, Campanella is straightforwardly critical of Aristotle. He recounts that he has studied for five years the ancient philosophers, especially the Aristotelians, the Platonists, and others. What he read he found not to agree with his senses. Those who have not grasped the sciences by means of their own senses make themselves the followers of the ancients and embrace their opinions without examining the nature of things. They study commentators on the philosophers and not what the philosophers themselves have said. Aristotle has constructed a philosophy of nature from words. Those who follow him take his philosophy to be divine. What they desire is not the pursuit of truth but to explain Aris- totle to others and thereby to gain public honor. They dispute among themselves regarding his words. They pervert the truth by subtleties that are the products of their own imaginations. They doctor his worst statements with the empty language of logic. They flee from sciences about real things, preferring to waste time discussing Aristotle’s views on such topics as the subjects of the sciences, their nobility, the minimum and the maximum, consequences, the primum cognitum, univocity, categories, and syllogisms. Or they examine Aristotle’s words to determine whether he demonstrates, speaks hypothetically, univocally, a priori, quia or propter quid. Campanella insists that he has never seen a follower of Aristotle examine things themselves (res), that is, to travel into the fields, to the sea, and to the mountains just in order to look at things. He insists that they do not even do so in their own homes. On the contrary, they look only at the books of Aristotle and always remain with them.199 Campanella launches his own direct atttack. He claims that if someone reads all of Aristotle’s writings, leaving aside the inventions of his commentators, Aristotle will be seen not to agree with truth or even with himself nor to be someone who should be treated as a god. He will be seen rather to be impious and most ignorant, for he denies that God created the universe and is omnipotent. Moreover, Aristotle rejects God’s providence. Campanella adds too that Aristotle taught that God is a necessary and not a free agent. In a word, Aristotle postulates God as a causal agent that cannot produce ex nihilo and that is not a truly active cause but is rather a conserving agent.200

198. Tommaso Campanella, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, ed. Luigi de Franco (Naples: Vivarium, 1992), 1. On Telesio, who opposed his own natural philosophy to the physics of Aristotle, see Bernardino Telesio, De rerum natura iuxta propria princpia libri IX (Naples, 1586; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1971). For discussion see Giacomo Soleri, “Telesio contro Aristotele,” Rinascimento 3 (1952): 143–51. 199. Ibid., 3–5. 200. Ibid., 10. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 31

Campanella will not allow Aristotle to be excused for his errors on the grounds that these things could not be known by the natural light of reason. He points out that Plato and many others held views on God, the angels, and the heavens opposed to the views of Aristotle. Cam- panella considers in particular another doctrine regarding which Plato and Aristotle disagreed, namely the immortality of the soul. Aristotle posited both an individual mortal soul for each human being and also another soul that is incorporeal, one for all humans, immortal and that comes from without. This latter soul, which Aristotle calls the Agent In- tellect, is an immaterial actuality as both the Greeks and the Arabs explain. However, Aristotle’s commentators (expositores) disagree in various ways on this issue.201 There are of course other attacks on Aristotle to be found scattered throughout Campanella’s writings.202 Of some interest is Campanella’s attack on Aristotle’s political ideas.203 Campanella had in fact mentioned Aristotle only rarely in his utopian work, The City of the Sun.204 The citizens of the City of the Sun, the Solarians, go out into the countryside to learn farming and how to care for animals. They judge those to be nobles who have learned the largest number of skills and they laugh at those who would consider craftsmen ignoble and those who do no work and lack all skills of the craftsmen.205 In the third part of his Philosophia realis, which was published at Paris in 1637 and was entitled De politicis, he studies Aristotle’s Politics. Against Aristotle’s judgment that artisans, farmers, and merchants have a servitude that involves their serving those who are virtuous he replies that all men participate in reason and belong to Christ, the ﬁrst Reason. Simply by obeying the law of God they become virtuous. Only those who sin are slaves. While Aristotle may exclude the greatest part of humanity from felicity, God, who wishes to render all humans saved, would include them. Campanella thus complains that Aristotle never rises to the pure and the ideal as do the Stoics and Platonists but rather sets forth impure

201. Ibid., 11. There are of course other attacks on Aristotle to be found scattered throughout Campanella’s writings. 202. For an overview, see Michel-Pierre Lerner, “Campanella, juge d’Aristote,” in Pla- ton et Aristote à la Renaissance, ed. Centre d’Études Supérieures de la Renaissance (Paris: Vrin, 1976), 335–57. 203. See Luigi Firpo, “Campanella contro Aristotele in difesa della ‘Città del Sole,’” Il pensiero politico 15 (1982): 375–89; John M. Headley, “On Reconstructing the Citizenry: Campanella’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Politics,” Il pensiero politico 24 (1991): 28–41; Lerner, “Campanelle, juge d’Aristote.” 204. Tommaso Campanella, La Città del Sole: Testo Italiano e testo latino, ed. Norberto Bobbio (Turin: Einaudi, 1941), 62, 66, 100, 124, 127, 154. See now La città del Sole: Dialo- go poetico; The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue, trans. Daniel J. Donno (Berkeley: Universi- ty of California Press, 1981), 39, 45, 109. 205. Ibid., 43. 32 edward p. mahoney and unlearned precepts that result from a degenerate state of affairs.206 In the question on the most perfect form of the state, Campanella declares Aristotle’s refusal to recognize as citizens peasants (contadini), artisans, pastors, and merchants, since their life lacks nobility and is incompatible with virtue, as a contradiction with Aristotle himself, with God, with nature and with political science. Such a view is self-contradictory since Aristotle himself takes the peasants and the artisans actually to be a necessary and essential part of the state. But in Book I of the Politics Aris- totle says they were like animals lacking judgment. Campanella also throws up against Aristotle that the Patriarchs, the lawgiver Moses, and kings David and Saul all were shepherds while Noah was a farmer. And yet they made up the ancient state of the Jews that was instituted by God. Campanella also questions what is the condition of the soul in a state where peasants and artisans are not citizens and realize that they are considered to be on the level of animals and yet would be greater in number than the citizens. All this leads Campanella to charge that Aristotle’s state is against nature, in particular the lack of gratitude to those who are considered slaves, beasts, and enemies and yet who produce notable benefits. Moreover, Aristotle leaves out of consideration half of the citizenry, namely, the women. Since so much is done by slaves, Campanella questions what is left for the women to do. And as to the personal lives of the slaves, he asks whether they marry. If so, they will multiply in numbers and be more plentiful than Aristotle’s “citizens.” And if they do not marry, Campanella suggests that they will then turn to sodomy (sodomia).207 iii. conclusion We have surveyed some forty medieval, late medieval, and Renais- sance philosophers and theologians regarding their attitude toward Aristotle. The result of that survey has been to confirm at least four key approaches. They are (1) to continue a medieval tradition, for example Albertism, Thomism, Scotism, or Averroism, (2) to study and teach Aris- totle in the Greek text, (3) to study Aristotle with the help of the Greek Commentators, notably Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simpli- cius, and John Philoponus, (4) and to approach Aristotle assuming that he and Plato really hold the same thing and differ only in language. One striking development revealed the influence that Humanism had

206. Campanella, Quaestiones super tertia parte suae philosophiae realis, quae est De politicis, in his Disputationum in quatuor partes suae philosophiae realis libris quatuor (Paris, 1637), 87–90. Campanella throws up against Aristotle 1 Peter 2 and Roman 13. See also Headley, “On Reconstructing,” 30–31. 207. Campanella, De politicis, 95–99. Aristotle and Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophers 33 on Renaissance Aristotelianism, namely that professional academic philosophers learned Greek in order that they might more accurately establish the true mind of Aristotle. Besides the institutional status that Aristotle enjoyed in the Italian universities during the Renaissance, there was another important institution that conceded him a key role in its educational activities, namely the newly formed Society of Jesus. The activities of the Jesuits in their educational centers made the continuation of the study of Aristotle an obvious fact. Indeed the earliest Jesuits studied at Paris and left Paris with degrees in philosophy—Ignatius had a Master of Arts degree. What is of course noteworthy is that while they patterned the curriculum in their own schools on what they had experienced in Paris, they insisted that Aristotle be studied from the texts of his works and not on the basis of compendia.208 With the founding of the Roman College some entered the Society who had already been educated elsewhere and who had allegiances to Averroes and others. The rule was established that various views could be surveyed ﬁrst and then the professor was to indicate the particular view that he considered the most probable. Ignatius indicated in the Constitutions of the Society that the safest doctrine should be taught, and Jerome Nadal counseled that that would be the common opinion. The Constitutions set down the text of Aristotle as the basis for teaching philosophy. Aristotle’s doctrine had to be followed for logic, natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and metaphysics. The Jesuit professor had of necessity to determine the mind of Aristotle, since he was considered by so many to be the lumen naturae. The following doctrines were not only to be treated as true but also in accord with the mind of Aristotle: Divine Providence, the unicity of the soul in each human being, and the immortality of the soul. Albert and Thomas were to be recommended to the students, while the Greek Commentators and Averroes were not to be recommended. In like fashion, the Scholastics were not to be criticized.209 One thing is thus certain, namely that Aristotle did not cease to be read after the diffusion of the ideas of Galileo and Descartes.210

208. John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 245. 209. Charles H. Lohr, “Jesuit Aristotelianism and Sixteenth-Century Metaphysics,” in Paradosis: Studies in Memory of Edwin A. Quain (New York: Fordham University Press, 1976), 203–20. 210. For an informative overview see Roger Ariew, “Aristotelianism in the 17th Centu- ry,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1998), 386–93. On Aristotle and French philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries see L. W. B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural Histo- ry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 337–44, 372–79. 34 edward p. mahoney

Because of limits placed on this study one important Renaissance critic of Aristotle has been omitted, namely Francesco Patrizi. He is interesting and important both for his critique of Aristotle and also for his own philosophy.211 I hope to study him more fully on another occasion. Nonetheless it does seem appropriate to conclude by pointing out the inﬂuence of one Renaissance philosopher on one early modern philosopher. The philosophers in question are respectively Gianfrancesco Pico and Pierre Gassendi. Indeed Gassendi even refers to Gianfrancesco by name.212 Consequently, there was at least one link between Renais- sance and early modern attitudes toward Aristotle just as there were links between medieval and Renaissance attitudes.

211. See Cesare Vasoli, Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (Rome: Bulzoni, 1989); idem, “La critica di Francesco Patrizi ai principi aristotelici,” Rivista di storia della ﬁlosoﬁa 51 (1996): 713–87. 212. See Pierre Gassendi, Opera omnia, vol. 3 (Lyons: Anisson & Devenet, 1658), 99. For relevant discussion see Tullio Gregory, Scetticismo ed empirismo: Studio su Gassendi (Bari: Laterza, 1961); Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico, 7, 144, 157, 175–79. 2 Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science ANTONINO POPPI

I had some difficulties in laying out this paper. I was not sure whether I should have presented a synthetic exposition of Iacopo Zabarella’s (1533–89) most specific and relevant issues or a more narrow and focused examination of a particular problem, such as the one concerning the dianoetic dispositions from the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Zabarella, I would like to point out from the start, was a very influential philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, one who was considered a leading authority in the field of Aristotelian logic and of scientific method even in German Lutheran universities. With the intention of making a connection with the general theme of the lecture series designed by Ric- cardo Pozzo, after some hesitation, I opted for a compromise. In the first part of this paper I offer some traits of Zabarella’s interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of “contemplative,” i.e., theoretical science. In the second part I elaborate on the hints scattered by Zabarella in his treatises and commentaries with regard to the difference between logic and the five hexeis dianoetikai dealt with by Aristotle in the aforementioned book of the Ethics. i. paduan aristotelianism In the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, Padua had taken over from Paris the leading position in European research in science and medicine, i.e., in the various branches of philosophia naturalis, logic, and the epistemology of the practical sciences, arts, and techniques. The nineteenth-century historian of philosophy, Ernest Renan, characterized the Paduan philosophical school as massively and submissively Averroistic. Renan also considered the Paduan philosophers as forerun- ners of libertinism, of the philosophes, and of eighteenth-century empirical positivism.

35 36 antonino poppi

But Renan’s interpretation was refuted by several studies that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, especially by the pupils of John Hermann Randall Jr. and of Paul Oskar Kristeller, who passed away the first days of June, 1999. Permit me to remember first of all the name of my dear and brotherly friend Charles Bennet Schmitt, who was taken from us suddenly at Padua in 1986. Against Renan, it has been proven that the Aristotle known at Padua did not come from the Arab world, but rather from the first direct translations from the Greek. At the end of the thirteenth century, a whole century in advance of Tuscan humanism, Petrus of Abano read and corrected the versions of the Me- chanica from the Greek codices and went to Byzantium to acquire the ancient patrimony of Greek-Hellenistic medicine and science. After the fall of Constantinople, the emigration of the Byzantine scholars took place, passing through Venice, Padua, and Florence. And in the second half of the fifteenth century the Venetians Ermolao Barbaro and Giro- lamo Donato were already able to translate into elegant Latin the Aris- totelian commentaries of Themistius and Alexander of Aphrodisias. They thus provided the professors of the Faculty of Arts at Padua with the instruments for a renewed understanding of both the text and doctrine of the entire corpus aristotelicum.1 The influence of the humanists determined at Padua, then, but in a way that is more widespread and incisive than elsewhere, a fertile turn in the understanding of Aristotle. In fact, beyond the Latin translations from the Arab and the Medieval commentaries by Averroes and Latin scholastic theologians, wider horizons were opened by the access to the original text and to the most authoritative interpretations of the ancient Greek-speaking commentators. So began the season known as “Neoaris- totelianism,” which for the Paduans did not mean abandoning the Arab- Latin tradition, but rather meant its critical reorganization. This did not require, however, a revolution of Padua’s at that time already centuries- old ratio studiorum into a new hierarchic order of the disciplines. Logic and natural philosophy conserved their didactic primacy, as they are ordered toward medicine and the professions of the arts, while metaphysics and theology remained set aside among the “complementary” courses entrusted to the clergy, as well as among the chairs of moral philosophy, rhetoric, Greek and Latin literature; mathematics, on the other hand, continued to lie at the margins of the more fundamental scientific paideia of nature and was treated with more interest and intensity in

1. For a brief information on the Paduan philosophical school from its origins to the threshold of the modern age, permit me to refer to my Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano (Padua: Antenore, 1991) and to the essential bibliography reviewed there. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 37 the various local academies and intellectual circles than within the university’s boundaries.2 The encounter of the new philological sensibility of humanism with the robust logical-scientific tradition of the Paduan professors had its most significant fruit in a splendid edition of Aristotle’s Opera omnia with the commentaries of Averroes. This edition was published by the Giunti in Venice from 1550–52 and was enriched by new Averroistic texts translated from Arab and Hebrew as well as by humanistic translations of Aristotle’s major works.3 It is in this cultural environment that the young Zabarella shaped his intellectual personality. A gentleman descending from one of the most ancient and noble Paduan families, he had worthy teachers such as his uncle Marcantonio de’ Passeri (called “il Genova”), Bernardino Tomi- tano, Vincenzo Maggi, Francesco Robortello, Giovanni Fasolo. He received the doctorate in artibus when he was twenty. In 1564 he succeed- ed Tomitano on the chair of logic. In 1568 he was transferred to the extraordinary chair of natural philosophy and to the ordinary chair in 1585, though secundo loco, that is, in competition with the first chair- holder Francesco Piccolomini. Venice’s university policy was in fact sus- picious of its subjects from the terraferma, whom it dominated in an almost colonial way, and preferred to hire foreign professors for the prominent academic positions.4 Zabarella’s academic career was not unusual, due to the discriminat- ing praxis of the Venetian riformatori of the Paduan studium. It does not imply anything, however, on the quality of the didactic and scientific value Zabarella had as a teacher, or on the width and depth of his influence on the students, or on the fecundity of his literary production. This can be verified in the case of Zabarella, for whom I have two important doc-

2. Interesting cues on the influence of humanism at Padua can be found in Edward P. Mahoney’s paper, “Philosophy and Science in Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo,” in Scienza e filosofia all’università di Padova nel Quattrocento, ed. Antonino Poppi (Trieste: Lint, 1983), 135–202, in the proceedings of the Copernican meeting on December 10, 1993 at Padua celebrating the 450th anniversary of the publication of De revolutionibus which appeared with the title Copernico a Padova, (Padua: CLEUP, 1995). See also Antonino Poppi, L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele (Naples: La Città del Sole, 1997). 3. On the relevance of this edition see Charles B. Schmitt, “Renaissance Averroism studied through the Venetian Editions of Aristotle-Averroes,” in L’averroismo in Italia (Rome: Accademia dei Lincei, 1979), 121–42; idem, Problemi dell’aristotelismo rinascimentale (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985). 4. To date, there are three monographs on Iacopo Zabarella’s thought and personality that complement each other with regards to his biography, theoresis, and background. See William F. Edwards, “The Logic of Iacopo Zabarella (1533–1589),” Ph. diss., Colum- bia University, New York, 1960; Antonino Poppi, La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarel- la (Padua: Antenore, 1972); Heikki Mikkeli, An Aristotelian Response to Renaissance Human- ism: Jacopo Zabarella on the Nature of Arts and Sciences (Helsinki: Academia Fenica, 1992). 38 antonino poppi uments such as the two orationes programmaticae he gave in 1568 and in 1585 at the solemn opening of his tenure in the natural philosophy chairs. Mario Dal Pra published the oratio of 1585. The oratio of 1568, on its part, has been recently transcribed by a young Zabarella scholar.5 ii. the ‘ratio philosophandi’ in the two ‘orationes programmaticae’ The two orations are revealing of Zabarella’s approach with regard to the following issues: 1) his task as a philosopher; 2) the method to be used in his interpretation of Aristotle’s works; and 3) the responsibility and dedication felt toward the students of his courses. Both in institutional and common understanding, philosophy meant at that time essentially the presentation of Aristotle’s thought, considered as the summit of human reason, a true wonder of nature. This is why in the first oratio (1568) the Paduan logician offers to clarify his ratio interpretandi and interpretis officia. His definition of interpretation requires the elimination of all subjective intervention in order to uniquely serve the communication of the doctrine of superior and venerable masters such as Aristotle on behalf of the students’ understanding. “In- terpretation,” he says, “is the teaching of another science as it comes from him on behalf of another, provided by somebody who is capable of it and whose excellence is admired.”6 All interpretation, in fact, necessarily entails a relation of dependence and serfdom to the source of the interpretation. The interpreter considers his source to be superior to himself and is ready to submit himself to the other’s doctrine. The task of the interpreter is simply that of transmitting somebody else’s doctrine. Therefore he cannot be a doctor, but only a servus et minister quidam auctoris. One should not see, however, anything humiliating in this spiritual activity, because if one sets oneself to the school of such famous masters, one acquires knowledge’s maximum bonum, its highest good, something by means of which we approach divine life. From this image of the philosopher as a servant of somebody else’s

5. See Mario Dal Pra, “Una oratio programmatica di Giacomo Zabarella,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 21 (1966): 286–90; Dominique Bouillon, “Un discours inédit de Ia- copo Zabarella préliminaire à l’exposition de la Physique d’Aristote (Padoue 1568),” Atti e memorie dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova 111 (1998/99): 119–27. The manuscript of the second oratio programmatica is found in Milan, Biblioteca Am- brosiana, D. 360, inf. (XVI), f. 1r–4v. 6. See the text edited in Bonillou, “Un discours inédit de Iacopo Zabarella,” 123: “In- terpretatio est doctrina scientiae alienae ut alienae, aliorum utilitatis gratia, ab eo qui eam sit adeptus et ut egregium admiretur.” Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 39 thought are derived the duties of the interpreter. They are enucleated by Zabarella into the threefold task of being faithful, obedient, and dili- gent. The good interpreter should first of all expound and defend the thought of his author without dissenting or setting himself against his doctrines, because in this case he would also become a doctor, thus abandoning his former position of a simple interpreter. This holds also in front of an irremediable contrast with the reasons of the interpreter’s own faith. Such contrast took place, e.g., in Zabarella’s course on the eighth book of the Physics, which Zabarella consequently interpreted in terms of a theory of the eternity of the world and of a negation of bibli- cal creationism. The interpreter should faithfully abide by the Aris- totelian positions, just like all true interpreters, etiam christianissimi viri, also if they are very Christian men. This is Zabarella’s own intention, because “as long as I am an interpreter of Aristotle, I can neither follow nor defend any other opinion than that of Aristotle, although I may feel differently about the true issue.”7 The adolescents, however, who hear the doctrines of the pagan philosopher, should not think they must accept them as absolute truths, and should rather welcome them as an expression of what the innate weakness of human reason (luminis naturalis infirmitas) has achieved in discovering and penetrating the universe with its sole forces. The interpreter’s obedience, therefore, manifests itself by following all the commands and the example offered by the chosen author in his writings. To philosophize well one should follow Aristotle’s genuine ordo doctrinae that follows our cognitive dispositions and goes from the more simple and universal to the more complex and individual. Besides, one should observe in every step the demonstrative method (via doctrinae), incomparably analyzed by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics. According to this method, one can achieve a scientific cognition of something only if one starts with its nature and its proper principle and not, like the di- alectics and the sophists do, with principles that are just common and extraneous. Following the example of Aristotle, the Paduan professor intends to apply the whole doctrine of the Posterior Analytics to the Aris- totelian corpus with the aim of highlighting the demonstrative perfection achieved there. Lastly, the interpreter’s diligence manifests itself in the solicitude by means of which he tries to grasp the whole of the interpreted thought, illuminating one text with the other, and comparing his interpretation with that of other interpreters. He will also try hard to render the inter-

7. Ibid., 124: “dum Aristotelis interpres sum, non possum aliam sententiam sequi ac tueri quam eam quae Aristotelis fuit, quamvis re vera aliter sentiam.” 40 antonino poppi preted thought wholly understandable and accessible to the students either in public lessons or in private conversation at his residence, where he will be entirely at the students’ disposal. I have particularly focused on Zabarella’s first discourse because it conveys Zabarella’s rigorous conception of philosophizing. However, it also stresses the limits of a servile interpretation of somebody else’s thought, because of the depersonalization of the problem and the experience of the thinking subject, even of the most intimate requirements of one’s religious conscience. More than at truth, it seemed that at that time philosophy should have aimed at the faithful exposition of an author’s thought. Philosophy was not supposed to extend its domain of research beyond the issues dealt with by the interpreted author; it was supposed to ignore or put into brackets the problems of one’s own existence and of human history. From this, we understand the necessity and fecundity of the turn inaugurated by modern thought when scholars started to interrogate directly the whole of human experience, nature, the heavens, and God himself beyond the filters of a commentary to what Aristotle said about them or his several, often contradictory, expositors. line space, MS p. 41 The second oration (1585) delves into the same issues with even greater decision and factuality. First of all, Zabarella aims at explaining his ratio philosophandi, which consists of the method applied by Aristotle in his works and the method applied by Zabarella himself in order to be able to call himself a worthy follower and imitator of the Philosopher per anthonomasian, “to be said that we philosophize correctly and in an Aris- totelian way in Aristotle.”8 Philosophy is the scientific cognition of the universe on the basis of proper and evident principles. If the principles are from Divine Revela- tion, then one achieves a sure and perfect truth, like in the case of Christian theology. However, if the principles are acquired by means of pure human reason, one has then a more uncertain and imperfect kind of cognition, like in the case of the diverse philosophies. Among the diverse philosophies, Aristotelian philosophy is nonetheless universally recognized as the most excellent because of its doctrinal content and its method. The Aristotelian doctrines are in fact wholly compatible with the claims of the senses and of reason. His position is in a perfect bal-

8. See the text edition in Dal Pra, “Una oratio programmatical di Giacomo Zabarella,” 281: “ut in Aristotele dicamur rite et aristotelice philosophari.” This complete subjection to Aristotle’s thought should not surprise too much. After all, this is what nowadays many professors in philosophical chairs do when they simply limit themselves to comment on some writings by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, or Heidegger. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 41 ance between the naïve empiricism of those who entrust only the sensible data and despise reason and fantastic spiritualism and those who, by contrast, do not even look at material realities. As regards his method, Aristotle is recognized as the inventor of scientific method because of his refined analysis of logical implications contained in demonstrative discourse, which goes well beyond natural logic and does not owe anything to the ones who philosophized before him.9 This is the philosophy and the authority that Zabarella intends to follow by trying first of all to clarify the artificium, i.e., the logical construction of the Philosopher’s writings, relying especially on the Posterior Analytics, in which “he splendidly explained all the methods and constructions for correctly philosophizing.”10 This is exactly what Zabarella had tried to illuminate during the five years of his tenure in the logic chair. The interpreter should also try to achieve a perfect understanding of the meaning of the individual Greek terms present in the Aris- totelian text by referring to the ancient codices, thus correcting any misleading Latin translations. He should finally discuss with great diligence the obscure passages of Aristotle’s thought with the aid of other interpreters, thus becoming not just an expositor, but also an imitator of other scholars who, when interpreting Aristotle, were never content with principles that are common and extraneous to the nature of things or with mere probable arguments. In fact, nonessential and probable arguments are unable to stop the restlessness of doubt. In order to attain a more rigorous knowledge of the universe one should rather “never appear to have pronounced anything without reason.”11 In the two orations I have just summarized one sees Zabarella’s program and his speculative stance neatly drawn. One should always and only follow reason, whose most accomplished expression is to be found in Aristotle’s thought, especially on the basis of the rigorous scientific method theorized in the Analytics. Zabarella’s only choice was consequently to follow in everything this insuperable magisterium as a philosopher and an interpreter. His aim was to retrieve in the original Greek source, i.e., beyond the millenary sedimentation of successive interpretations, the original and genuine Aristotelian concept of philosophy as a rigorous science of the facts of nature and of human praxis. Already in the first oratio he had declared that he wanted nothing else than to apply the doctrine of the Analytics to the whole work of Aristotle, “I have in mind to adapt the whole of Aristotle’s doctrine of the Analytics and I

9. Ibid., 287–88. 10. Ibid., 289: “omnem rite philosophandi methodum et artificium mirabiliter expli- cavit.” 11. Ibid., 289–90: “nihil unquam sine ratione pronuntiasse videtur.” 42 antonino poppi hope that I will fulfill my pledge.”12 Seventeen years later, in the second oratio, he repeated these intentions with more or less identical words and specified what he had accomplished in the meantime in his courses and published works. iii. the division of knowledge To check the results of Zabarella’s intentions, I should now turn to Zabarella’s major logical writings and to his very ample commentary on the Posterior Analytics. This is a task, however, that I have already fulfilled almost thirty years ago in a monograph dedicated precisely to Zabarel- la’s “doctrine of science.”13 For this reason, I will limit myself to recall the three fundamental themes of (1) Zabarella’s return to the purity of the Aristotelian sources regarding the nature of logic, (2) his doctrine of method, and (3) his doctrine of scientific demonstration. The analysis of these three themes will confirm the superiority of speculative (theoretical) sciences over the practical-productive disciplines, of the compositional (synthetic) over the resolutive (analytic) method, and of a priori demonstration (propter quid), over a posteriori demonstration (quia), which becomes a perfect (potissima) demonstration in the unity of analysis and synthesis, known also as “regressus,” that some historians of philosophy of the twentieth century have incautiously considered a forerunner of Galileo’s method of modern science.14 The first battle of the Paduan professor was the defense of logic’s purely instrumental nature in accordance with Aristotle’s authentic thought, and the confutation of its definition in terms of a science or an art proposed by some Latin interpreters. Zabarella recalls Aristotle’s division between theoretical and practical sciences. The former are directed to the knowledge of things for the sole sake of knowing them and have as their objects necessary and immutable truths, such as the eternal beings and the laws of nature. The latter deal instead with contingent things that depend on our free will, and their object is action or production.15 As explained in the Nicomachean Ethics (1139a 3–15), to

12. See Bouillon, “Un discours inédit de Iacopo Zabarella,” 126: “totam enim Analyti- corum librorum doctrinam ubique Aristotelis libris aptare in animo habeo, et spero mei voti compotem futurum.” 13. Poppi, La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarella, passim. 14. This is the thesis proposed at the beginning of the twentieth century by Ernst Cas- sirer and later affirmed by Randall and some of his pupils. See the attempt by William A. Wallace, in several recents publications, of documenting its dependence on the Jesuits of the Collegium Romanum. On this see my booklet quoted in footnote 1, Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano. 15. Iacopo Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.2, in Opera logica (Cologne 1597; reprint, ed. by Wilhelm Risse, Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), 2–3. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 43 these two kinds of entities correspond two different parts of the rational soul: the scientific (epistemonikon) and the calculative (logistikon), from which all theoretical and practical sciences originate. Taking into account what Aristotle says in the Posterior Analytics (I.2, 71b 17–23), Zabarella makes clear that only theoretical sciences deserve the name of science in its specific sense. This holds, then, for metaphysics, mathematics, and natural philosophy. The practical disciplines, instead, “if we wish to speak properly, should not be called sciences,” because they neither aim at pure cognition, nor, what is more important, do they deal with necessary and immutable beings. Science, in fact “is a firm and certain cognition of absolutely necessary and eternal things.” Besides, science requires two indispensable conditions: first, the absolute certainty of a thing that cannot be different from what it is, and, second, the absolute certainty in the mind of the knowing subject that the thing cannot be different from what it is. If one or another of these certainties is missing, there is no real science.16 It is therefore impossible to maintain with Duns Scotus and other commentators that logic is a science, because its object is uniquely constituted by our concepts of reflection, our secundae intentiones, and therefore by a wholly contingent matter. In addition, one cannot technically define logic as an art, because it does not produce any exterior reality and confines itself to an operation that is immanent to the subject. In Aristotle’s original understanding, logic can be consequently defined as an instrumental habit, functional to the acquisition of all other disciplines in its theoretical part (logica docens), that vanishes, or is rather identified with the individual sciences once it is applied to the various kinds of knowledge.17 At the beginning of his investigation, our author also distinguishes logic from the other intellectual habits dealt with by Aristotle in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, but I will have occasion to discuss this issue with more details in the second part of this paper. Right now, I should remark that Zabarella’s stipulations on the definition of science are in themselves an explanation for his scant interest concerning (1) practical sciences such as ethics and politics, (2) the arts connected with the narrative and persuasive functions of language, and (3) the productive techniques, which he stamps as sordidae—with the consequence that it would be unworthy to force rhetoric and poetics to serve them.18

16. Ibid., 3–4: “si proprie loqui velimus, scientiae appellandae non sunt .l.l. est ﬁrma ac certa cognitio rerum simpliciter necessariarum et sempiternarum.” 17. Ibid., I.3–8, 5–18. 18. Ibid., II.14, 79: “Ad effectionem autem certum est has duas facultates non con- ferre [rhetoric and poetics], sic enim servae ac ministrae essent artium effectivarum et 44 antonino poppi

Zabarella’s lack of interest in these matters was not simply motivated by the fact that he was expected to teach logic and natural philosophy. It was rather his conviction that the above mentioned disciplines deserve a lower scientific dignity, because, owing to their object, they can never attain a radical and adequate comprehension of things. iv. physics and metaphysics Enrico Berti was correct in noticing that Zabarella improperly assigns to physics the same kind of strong and total rigor that is proper to metaphysics and mathematics, which engage themselves in the search for the principles and the properties of both immaterial and eternal beings. In fact, according to Aristotle, natural philosophy cannot partake of such necessity in its conclusions. Given that it deals with the matter and the movement of natural bodies, it must be contented with what takes place “for the most part” (hos epi to poly). Such a hermeneutic hiatus in an interpreter of the stature of Zabarella, who had sworn unshakable faith to the Aristotelian text, may be perhaps explained by pointing out that Zabarella was inspired one-sidedly by the model of rationality of the An- alytics. According to recent studies, Aristotle presents in the Analytics a model of rationality based on geometric cognition. At the same time he neglects and ignores other forms of rationality that are less analytical and less deductive, but still structured by the dialectical force of confutation, such as the ones he applied outside of the Analytics in ethics, physics, human nature, and metaphysics.19 To understand the one-sidedness of Zabarella’s concept of science, it is useful to follow him in his analysis of the naturalis philosophiae structura et artificium, which, according to him, has been projected and realized by Aristotle in the writings of the corpus naturalium. On the basis of the general principles concerning the proper object, the division, and the goal of natural science, the Paduan professor sees the succession of Aris- totle’s treatises in terms of a cascade of necessary deductions from one kind of matter to the other. He sees a cascade from the incorruptible heavens to the last of the elements, air and earth, a cascade structured with the same formal rigor and perfection as the succession of the books of the Elements by Euclid. According to Zabarella, then, the Aris- sordidarum, quod dicere non debemus, quando quidem hae omnes artes ignobiles et homine ingenuo indignae ab omnibus esse censentur.” 19. See Enrico Berti, “Galileo di fronte alla tradizione aristotelica,” in Galileo a Padova (1592–1610): Atti delle celebrazioni galileiane (1592–1992), ed. University of Padua, 5 vols. (Trieste: Lint, 1995), vol. 4, 131–47; idem, Le ragioni di Aristotele (Rome: Laterza, 1989), ch. 2, “Il metodo della fisica,” 43–73. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 45 totelian science of nature is structured by a formally unexceptionable perfection. This is to be seen in a descent from the simple bodies to the perfectly mixed bodies, from the unanimated to the animated bodies, etc. From this, the deductive necessity of the compositional order follows, in which it is ultimately not difficult to insert into their proper place in the chain of natural beings other bodies that have not been explicitly dealt with by Aristotle or that are contained in some of his lost books. In this way, one can also add material to the physics, thus adding at the same time to its quantitative perfection. Zabarella’s conclusion about the structure of natural science is found as the opening treatise of his second great work, which appeared only a few months before his death, the De rebus naturalibus libri triginta. Here Zabarella compares the Elements of Euclid with Aristotle’s artificiosa eius scientiae fabrica, built in order to reveal the most hidden arcana naturae. Says Zabarella, “it seems thus to me that one should say of Aristotle’s books on natural things the same that I used to say about Euclides’ geometry and arithmetic.l.l.l. The same holds for what has been transmitted of Aristotle’s natural philosophy.”20 Such praise separates in the extreme the ancient physics from the new science of nature that was about to mature in its pioneers. Charmed by this mythical physics ordine geometrico deducta, Zabarella has little attention for metaphysics. He certainly exalts the superiority of metaphysics over all other forms of cognition in so far as it attains the supreme causes. However, he denounces the lesser rigor of metaphysics in so far as it does not proceed apodictically by means of deductions from its proper principles, but rather avails itself of common principles that have been induced from the immediate experience of reality. If one starts with principles representing a causality that is quite remote from the demonstrandum, one cannot attain any certain and definite conclusion about a given effect. Metaphysics, although it communicates with all other sciences with respect to its first principles of being, cannot subordinate the other sciences to itself. In fact, the latter only possess their proper principles functioning as means to obtain necessary conclusions concerning the properties of the objects they are to know.21

20. Iacopo Zabarella, “De naturalis scientiae constitutione,” in De rebus naturalibus libri triginta (Frankfurt, 1607; reprint Frankfurt: Minerva, 1966), 42, 132: “Quamobrem id mihi de naturalibus Aristotelis libris dicendum videtur, quod ego dicere solitus sum de Geometricis at Arithmeticis ab Euclide scriptis.l.l.l. Hoc idem de naturali philosophia ab Aristotele tradita dicendum esse videtur.” 21. Iacopo Zabarella, “Liber de tribus praecognitis,” 14, in Opera logica, 527–30; idem, In duos Aristotelis libros posteriores analyticos commentarii, I., ad 70, 84–85, in: Opera logica, 779–82, 808–13. On this problem see the very critical paper written against Zabarella by Enrico Berti, “Metaﬁsica e dialettica nel Commento di Giacomo Zabarella agli Analitici 46 antonino poppi

According to Zabarella, Aristotle maintains that no science can demonstrate its own object but instead receives it from a different science. This holds also for metaphysics, which cannot demonstrate the existence of the ﬁrst eternal mover by just basing itself on the notions of being or movement induced by other movers. This is why the attempts pursued by Avicenna and the Latin theologians fail. Instead, the interpretation by Averroes is correct when he maintains, in Aristotelian fashion, that only the philosophus naturalis can prove out of proper principles the existence of the eternal mover, while the metaphysicus intervenes later to explain its essential properties. This is the relationship connecting the eighth book of the Physics with the twelfth of the Metaphysics.22 Un- fortunately, the Paduan exegete does not seem to have understood the radical difference between the mechanical physicism of the mover of the universe in its limited capacity of moving the physis, and the pure act of thought in its perfect plenitude. In his philosophy, then, the understanding of the supreme unity of being is crippled and elusive, which does not seem very Aristotelian at all! v. ‘ordo’ and ‘methodus’ The second front on which Zabarella strongly engaged himself is the problem of method. In the second half of the sixteenth century, especially among the philosophers of the Paduan school, one notices a pas- sionate increase of discussions on method with the goal of clarifying the epistemological status of the diverse disciplines, and of better identifying their principles and procedures as well as the validity of their respective conclusions. Heikki Mikkeli and Nicholas Jardine have recently ob-

Posteriori,” Giornale di Metafisica, N. S. 14 (1992): 225–44. It seems to me, however, that when Zabarella affirms that metaphysics proves in itself the principles of all other sciences as well as its own object that does not imply that the aim of metaphysics is that of incorpo- rating all sciences within its own domain. In fact, Zabarella explains clearly in his “Liber de tribus praecognitis” (12, 523) that the subalternation of the sciences takes place only in mathematics and that those who try to extend the subalternation to all other sciences under metaphysics “decipiuntur.” This proof (of metaphysics) is repeated by him in two passages of the commentary on the Analytics considered by Berti. In it, Zabarella underlines the fact that any object of the sciences, in so far as it participates in being, somehow depends from the supreme science of being, namely metaphysics. For this reason, the principles proper to the individual sciences also cannot exclude themselves from the first of all principles (the principles of the identity of being and of non-contradiction), which, as Zabarella repeats many times, being common, cannot lead to conclusions proper to the other sciences. 22. Iacopo Zabarella, “Liber de inventione aeterni motoris,” 2–3, in De rebus naturalibus libri triginta, 2–3, 254–58. See also what we wrote in our monograph on La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarella, 326–47. There the author gives a disputable interpretation of Posterior Analytics I.9, 76a 16–25. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 47 served that this was not merely a theoretical debate, because the dignity and the hierarchy of the diverse subjects within the faculty of the arts were at stake. Of course, if at the basis of medicine one were to set anatomy and Galen’s De partibus animalium (as it was suggested by some Galenists), it would no longer be necessary, for the education of physicians, to have them taught in philosophia naturalis, with the consequence that natural philosophy would lose its hegemony within the ratio studiorum of the art masters.23 The four Zabarellan books De methodis constitute the clearest and most focused intervention on the issue. They polemicize against some humanistic tendencies and especially against the very confounding proposals of those physicians, who, ignorant of logic, limited themselves to studying Galen’s introduction to the Ars parva. Basing himself on the doctrine of the Analytics, our logician distinguishes neatly between the expositive order of the various parts of a discipline, which marks a preparatory stage working on already acquired cognition and system- atizing them according to the best comprehending capacity of our mind, and the method properly defined. The method is the logical instrument par excellence. By means of it, our mind passes from known statements to the necessary inference of new ones on the basis of the essential tie binding them to those principles and increases our knowledge. Zabarella specifies, “method is thus distinguished from order in so far as it is necessary for it to have a deductive force by means of which we can connect something out of something else on the basis of a necessary relation.”24 Understood in this sense, method eventually coincides with syllogism. Zabarella focuses on the necessity of binding a conclusion to its proper causal premises, with the difference, though, that while the term “syllogism” covers even kinds of dialectical or sophistical arguments, method designates uniquely the scientific, apodictic demonstration exemplified in the Analytics. Besides, method can be arranged only for two terms. It can either start with the effects to go up to their cause, as in the demonstratio quia (hoti), or proceed from the cause to explain the effects, as in the demonstratio propter quid (to dioti). Assured by this doctrine of the

23. See Nicholas Jardine, “Keeping Order in the School of Padua: Jacopo Zabarella and Francesco Piccolomini on the Office of Philosophy,” in Method and Order in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature, ed. D. A. Di Liscia, Eckhart Kessler, Charlotte Methuen (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997), 183–209; Heikki Mikkeli, “The Foundation of an Autonomous Natur- al Philosophy: Zabarella and the Classification of the Arts and Sciences,” ibid., 211–28. 24. Iacopo Zabarella, “De methodis libri quatuor” III.2, in Opera logica 225: “methodus, igitur, ut ab ordine distinguatur, vim illativam habere necesse est, qua aliquid ex aliquibus per necessariam consequutionem colligatur.” 48 antonino poppi

Philosopher, Zabarella refutes decisively the attempts of several scholars and educated people to confer methodological dignity on rhetoric and dialectical arguments, which are weaker. He also refutes the attempts of the Platonists and of the Galenists, who confounded the ordo doctrinae with the methodus because they wanted to include the methods of division and definition with analysis and synthesis as appropriate means for better scientific results. Comparing the two demonstrative movements quia and propter quid (depending on whether one is looking for the cause or the effect), the Paduan logician declares the neat superiority of the compositional method, which starts with the cause, over the resolutive, which starts with the effects. In so far as it aims at a mere approximate discovery of the principles, the latter marks only an intermediate stage. The real goal of science is accomplished, instead, by moving from the principles of which one is able to give an explication that is certain to the problematic experience one had started with, “the last end and goal of all who work in speculative sciences is to lead by means of the demonstrative method from the cognition of the principles to the perfect science of the effects deriving from those principles.”25 In his famous little treatise, De regressu, Zabarella makes clear that the most perfect kind of cognition takes place in the union of both demonstrative procedures. The regressus is by no means circular. In the first stage, the movement of the demonstratio quia leads toward a still uncertain and confused cognition of a hypothetical cause of the effect to be explained. In the second stage, which is a sort of reflexive pause at the cause just identified, a mentale ipsius causae examen, as Zabarella defines it, one makes sure that the cause found is really the one that is true and necessarily bound with the given effect. By adding the third stage, the movement of the demonstratio propter quid, the incontrovertible explication of the thing is reached.26 Neal W. Gilbert and Enrico Berti have remarked that Zabarella assimilates the resolutive procedure to the analytic procedure of the mathematicians, in which there is a full convertibility between the postulates and the consequences. They also pointed out that in this way it becomes impossible to apply fully the regressus to the phenomena of physics, whose principles are very obscure and complex. This is surely true. One can however observe that, although Galileo makes use of the same termini when elaborating the method of natural science, for the Paduan Aristotelian, method represents first of all a question of an essentially

25. Ibid., III.18, 266: “Ultimus eius finis et scopus omnium qui in scientiis speculativis versantur est per methodum demonstrativam duci a principiorum cognitione ad scientiam perfectam effectuum qui ab illis principiis prodeunt.” See also, IV.10, 267, 295–99. 26. Iacopo Zabarella, “Liber de regressu” 5, in Opera logica, 486. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 49 logical nature that only secondarily bears on experience. For Galileo, instead, one needs to verify that the cause materially indicated as the first hypothesis of the effect is at the same time the true and unique cause in a formal sense. This verification takes place, however, not only by means of a mental reflection, but also by means of the mathematical quantifi- cation of its affectiones and the experimental checking of them.27 I have said that Zabarella reduces the ordo doctrinae to a mere didactic device to facilitate the learning of a science by the students according to the gradual subjective development of the mind. This ignited a well- known bitter polemic against his colleague Francesco Piccolomini, who, on the contrary, attributed to the ordo an ontological dignity, a relation to the objective nature of things. Zabarella replied in 1584 with an apology for his position, to which Piccolomini replied in the Comes politicus (which saw the light after Zabarella’s death), in which Piccolomini charged Zabarella with plagiarism and classified him more as a philologist than a true philosopher. The quarrel continued and became even more poisoned in the sequel to the debate fought by their disciples, which displayed the different philosophical perspectives. Zabarella (following Aristotle) was more attentive to logic and psychology; and Pic- colomini (following Plato) to metaphysical foundations, while also being open to issues of ethics and civil life.28 vi. the force of scientific demonstration With the exception of the treatise on the nature of logic and the four books on method, all the writings collected in the voluminous Opera logica of 1578, the commentary on the Posterior Analytics included, are dedicated to the theory of demonstration. By defining its nature, division, and essential conditions of validity, in these treatises Zabarella achieves the peak of his philological-hermeneutic expertise of the sources and of the millenial tradition of Aristotelianism. He also reveals his very demanding precision in his analysis of the structure of rigorous scientific discourse. I shall give just a few hints on the most salient issues. For every demonstration Zabarella requires three elements: (1) a

27. See Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); Enrico Berti, “Differenza tra il metodo risolutivo degli aristotelici e la resolutio dei matematici,” in Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. Luigi Olivieri (Padua: An- tenore, 1983), 435–57; idem, “La teoria aristotelica della dimostrazione nella Tractatio omonima di Galilei,” in Filosofia e cultura: Per Eugenio Garin, ed. Michele Ciliberto and Ce- sare Vasoli (Rome: Laterza, 1991), 327–50. 28. See Jardine, “Keeping Order,” 191–96. See also Francesco Paolo Raimondi, “La filosofia naturale di Giacomo Zabarella e la scienza moderna: connessioni e divergenze,” Physis 31 (1994): 371–91. 50 antonino poppi subject marking out the domain of discourse, (2) some properties belonging to the subject as its essential characteristics, and (3) some principles for attributing those properties to that subject. To realize this, it is necessary that the subjects and the predicates of the propositions be fully convertible. In a word: one needs propositions in which the per se, de omni, and universalis predication of the properties pertaining to the subject can take place. Therefore, the principles that permit such predication must be proper to that subject. They must be derived from its specific nature, not from accidental and contingent aspects or from generic aspects that are common to other beings. Aristotle has clearly shown that every science must proceed from principles that are exclusively proper to them and that no science can demonstrate the principles of other sciences, with the exception, of course, of subaltern sciences. Only by means of proper principles is it possible to establish the essential connection between the subject and its properties. For this reason, it is illusory to try to unify all sciences by means of the generic principles of metaphysics. Metaphysics can at most illuminate the common aspect of being of the various subjects, but it cannot grasp their specific differences.29 A demonstration is truly perfect when it gives the proximate cause of a determined effect. And this can be achieved, as we read in the Analyt- ics, only if its premises are true, immediate, more known, and prior to the conclusion. If this is the case, then the middle term of the protasis is the cause of the major extreme that comes back in the conclusion as a necessarily predicated affectio of the subject. The demonstrative movement produces a perfect cognition of the phenomenon to be explicated in so far as it states not only its factual existence, but also the proximate cause why it is. We have a demonstration propter quid together with one quia. This kind of demonstration is the mother of all sciences, and not, as erroneously maintained by some logicians, the mere definition of a thing. In fact, in so far as a definition states just the quid est of a determinate being, it represents only the goal, or the static term of the more fruitful and necessary demonstrative movement leading to it.30 According to Zabarella, only the unity of analysis and synthesis, the regressus, or demonstratio potissima, the perfect demonstration, guarantees

29. Zabarella, “Liber de tribus praecognitis” IV and following, 504–530. 30. Iacopo Zabarella, “De medio demonstrationis libri duo” I.12–14, in Opera logica 550–55; idem, “De methodis” IV.17, 314. Perhaps Zabarella, besides Petrus Ramus and Mario Nizolio, alluded here to Francesco Patrizi, who in his polemical Discussiones peripateticae (Basel, 1581), criticized harshly the infatuation of the Aristotelians with the apodictic demonstration as an illusion. He invited them rather to use the Platonic method of definition (see ibid., III.4, and what I wrote in L’etica del Rinascimento, 259–61 on Patrizzi, and 289–90 on Nizolio). Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 51 an episteme akribestate, that is a rigorous cognition, a cognition of beings that is precise and exhaustive. The perfection of cognition cannot be measured by looking at subjective certainty, which is mostly psychological, but only by looking at the incontrovertibility of its conclusions. In the same way, the greater or smaller nobility of a discipline should not be deduced from the superior dignity of its object, but rather from the rigor of its demonstrations. I quote a famous passage from Zabarella’s commentary on the Analytics, where Aristotle makes clear a science is akribestera if and only if it proves not only the quod est but also the propter quid why a thing is: one should remark that the Greek term akribestera is translated into Latin with “more certain,” while it rather means “more exact.” One of the senses is seen by some as to be the same, it is not always however the same, because what we know through the senses is known as very certain, but not always as very exact, because the science that we have through the senses is imperfect since the sense does not penetrate the causes and the natures of things. But when we say “exact and exquisite science” we mean not only the certainty of science, but also its perfection. For this reason, certainty is necessarily connected with another condition, which is prior according to nature, because what is more exact is also prior according to nature.31 In this passage, Luigi Olivieri has seen the reasons for the incommen- surability between the concept of science of the Paduan professor and the one Galileo was considering in those same years. The latter based the certainty of cognition on the attestation of the senses and on experimental verification, which he wanted to give priority of place to in every abstract discourse. The former was diffident about sensible certainty. He accused the senses of being unable to give the true and a priori cause of the facts, i.e., the intimate essence of the facts. For this reason, besides the assuredness provided by the senses, Zabarella requested first of all the priority of causal explanation, which alone can give a perfect and full understanding of reality.32 This is why I regard with suspicion the various attempts to establish a relationship between the two famous

31. Zabarella, “In duos Aristotelis libros analyticos commentarii” I. ad 178, 981: “Ad- vertendum autem, quod dictio graeca akribestera in latino codice legitur certior, quae tamen proprie loquendo est vertenda exactior. Sensus quidem videtur quibusdam idem esse, atta- men non est omnino idem, nam illud quod sensu cognoscitur, certissime cognoscitur, at non fortasse exactissime, quia scientia quae per sensum habetur, imperfecta est, quum sensus causas et naturam rerum non penetret. Exactam autem et exquisitam scientiam di- centes, non solam scientiae certitudinem significamus, sed etiam perfectionem; ideo cum tali certitudine necessario coniuncta est alia scientiae conditio, quod sit prior secundum naturam: quae namque est exactior, prior quoque secundum naturam est.” See also idem, In tres libros De anima commentarii (Venice, 1605), f. 2r–2v. 32. See Luigi Olivieri, Certezza e gerarchia del sapere: Crisi dell’idea di scientificità nell’aristotelismo del secolo XVI (Padua: Antenore, 1983), especially ch. 1, 29–65. 52 antonino poppi scholars of natural science, whose perspectives are indeed divergent. In- stead, it seems more appropriate and wise to see Zabarella and Galileo in their autonomous dignity, taking from each of them the teaching and the inheritance each left to us. vii. from the contemplative to the practical sciences What I have said so far, I hope, has made clear the backbone of Zabarella’s philosophizing, which is enlivened by his conception of a rigorous science, exacta et exquisita, the result of a perfect demonstration revealing the essential nature and the cause of a state of affairs. To the other forms of cognition, to the subordinate and auxiliary ones, Zaba- rella dedicates less attention. The practical sciences and especially the arts or technai are included among these. His fundamental worry about science notwithstanding, Zabarella could not neglect to consider the analysis of the five habitual intellectual dispositions or states given by Aristotle in the sixth book of the Nico- machean Ethics, whose list begins precisely with science. As a matter of fact, in his writings Zabarella goes back often to those chapters of the Ethics, although his frequent return is guided by a motivation that is rather exterior, quite distant from the sensibility and the theoretical- epistemological issues in the context of which we read them today. His greatest preoccupation seems to be to correctly situate logic as a mere instrument for the acquisition of the other intellectual habits. For this reason, Aristotle does not even bother to include logic among the intellectual habits. Zabarella aims at highlighting the structural specificity of episteme, which is demonstrative and syllogistical, with regard to nous, the understanding, which is intuitive and inductive of the principles, and especially with regard to techne, art, which does not contemplate nature, but is rather generative of new products. Zabarella gives some implicit praise for phronesis, prudence, and sophia, wisdom, but he essentially passes over them, and this is a pity, because we would have rather heard his opinion on the two dispositions to which Aristotle alone gives the prestigious attribute of arete, excellence or virtue (VI.13, 1144a 1–3). line space, MS p. 56 Let us now consider some passages regarding the hierarchy of knowledge. I begin with the last sections of De natura logicae in which Zabarella demonstrates that if rhetoric and poetics aim at participating in any scientific dignity as instruments of practical philosophy, they should put themselves at the disposal of contemplative, i.e. theoretical, philosophy. In fact, it is wholly beyond doubt, as confirmed by Plato and Aristotle, Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 53 that the last goal of human existence is not in praxis, but in contemplative happiness, which is obtained by means of the previous purification from vices and passions. It is practical philosophy that brings about this purification, “Thus, if all active philosophy is directed to contemplative philosophy as to its end, it follows that also the instruments of active philosophy are somehow directed to the instruments of contemplative philosophy, because the usage of the former is in favor of the usage of the latter.”33 Now, given that the most excellent instrument for attaining contemplative science is the art of demonstration, it follows that rhetoric and poetics must also put themselves at the disposal of demonstration as their mistress. In fact, their task consists in freeing the mind from the passions as obstacles that impede access to contemplative life. It is interesting that Zabarella remarks, in De natura logicae, that the end of logic is only to discern truth from falsehood, and not good from the evil, as some philosophers have added, thinking of the operative sciences. This addition, observes Zabarella, is useless and flawed. The logical instrument tends exclusively to the knowledge of what is true and what is false in all disciplines, both contemplative and operative. One can read about this in the sixth book of the Ethics, where Aristotle deals with the habits by means of which the soul that affirms and denies is involved in the truth. The difference lies in the fact that while in the contemplative sciences truth is sought for its own sake, in the operative disciplines it is sought for the sake of a productive or practical operation. In every discipline, one can distinguish a pars docens and a pars operans. The former contains the cognitive principles that can be true or false and that ultimately make the action or operation that may result to be good, evil, or badly achieved, according to the possibilities inherent in the matter to which the principles are applied. For these reasons, it is not always possible to have perfect demonstrations. Time and again one needs to be content with mere general and approximate conclusions, as is often the case in ethics, whose argumentative method is dialectical confutation of alleged opinions instead of apodictic deduction from the principles.34 In the De methodis then, in a vigorous polemic against his colleagues who thought that the sciences ought to follow an objective ontological order, Zabarella replies that only the theoretical sciences put such com-

33. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.21, 97: “Itaque, si tota activa philosophia ad contemplativam tanquam doctrinam et tanquam finem dirigitur, sequitur instrumenta quoque activae philosophiae modo quodam dirigi ad instrumenta contemplativae, quoni- am eorum usus est propter usum istorum.” 34. Ibid., I.13, 29–33. See also what we wrote in an essay on Zabarella’s moral philosophy in L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele, 231–46. 54 antonino poppi positional order into practice. They proceed from what is simpler and more universal toward what is more complex and particular. In all practical disciplines, on the contrary, one has to follow the resolutive order, starting from what constitutes their goal and from this going up toward the principles and the means to realize it. This appears quite clearly in the procedure applied by Aristotle while constructing the Ethics. He first posits the pursuit of happiness as the goal of every man’s life and then looks for the means to realize happiness by using the analysis and the phenomenology of virtue, the will, deliberation, etc.35 It is really strange, remarks our logician, how many uncertainties and errors scholars have gotten into because they do not understand that natural philosophy is given only according to the compositional, not to the resolutive, order. The phenomena of nature are understandable only in light of their principles, as is evident in the whole corpus aristotelicum. In practical philosophy, on the contrary, and in all the arts, one has to start with a given goal and move toward the search for principles that are still unknown in their realization. One thus uses the resolutive order, distinguishing thereby an art or technique in so far as it is docens or operans, because in the latter case one obviously needs to know beforehand the means for realizing the proposed aim.36 Just as there are only two dispositive orders of the sciences, so there are only two methods with identical denomination. It is resolutive if one goes from the effects toward the nature or substance, which is its cause, and compositional if one deduces the affectiones from the identification of the substance or the proper principles. The first is at the service of the demonstration effected by the second, in so far as it is instrumental in letting still unknown principles be known. One should not just stop at this stage, though, because the utility of the principles lies in their ability to provide us with the possibility of a rigorous cognition of the effects. The resolutive method, then, represents just the impulse to discovery, while the true goal of perfect science is achieved only by means of the compositional, demonstrative method. For this reason, in physics both procedures are necessary; yet in mathematics the resolutive procedure has no place at all, because the postulates of geometry, arithmetic, and the sciences connected with them are already given and evident.37 As regards medicine, Zabarella is peremptory. He cuts from the start every attempt of his colleagues to have medicine raised to the dignity of a science. Medicine is nothing

35. Zabarella, De methodis, I.4–9, 139–92. 36. Ibid., 6, 142–44, II.9, 190–92. 37. Ibid., III.18, 266–68. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 55 more than a mere techne, that needs to be expounded by means of the resolutive method, starting with its proper goal, namely health, and then looking for the means and the instruments suited to its achievement. His colleagues should at most be content with a declaration of medicine’s superiority, in so far as the health of our body is a good sought for its own sake, that is internal to the agent, and that does not end in a product external to the agent as is the case in the other arts. Like all operative disciplines, however, medicine, just like ethics, will never achieve a full cognition of the object upon which it operates (the human body), because the body belongs to the competence of natural philosophy up to its ultimate constitutive principles, matter and form. A specialist in medicine needs just a certain description and superficial knowledge of the body’s parts and properties in order to reinstate health. With regard to the rest, he depends on the superior and perfect understanding provided by the natural philosopher.38 viii. logic and the intellectual states of the soul I have already remarked that Zabarella was never tenured for moral philosophy and therefore read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics only with the eyes of a logician. He is particularly attentive, though, in De natura logicae to the intellectual states discussed in the sixth book of the Ethics. Why, he asks himself, did Aristotle never mention logic, which is nonetheless an important intellectual state, among the five intellectual virtues illustrated in the Ethics? The answer is twofold. In De natura logicae he explains that, being an instrumental habit, the whole utility of logic is exhausted by serving the perfect acquisition and operation of the other five habits, which have their goals in themselves and not in something else. Logic, instead, is not sought after for its own sake and does not possess the dignity and autonomy of the other five. For this reason, Aristotle did not need to mention its name. However, one could suggest that logic is at least in a secondary and implicit way included in the list. Having defined science as a demonstrative habit (hexis apodeiktike, Nicomachean Ethics VI.3, 1139b 31–32), Aristotle may have implied logic as well, because demonstration is the logical instrument par excellence.39

38. Ibid., II.11, 193–98; idem, De natura logicae, II.4, 60–62. On the epistemological conﬂicts concerning the relation between natural philosophy and medicine see the well- informed chapter of Mikkeli on “The Medical Tradition at the University of Padua,” in An Aristotelian Response, 131–77. 39. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.11, 24–27. 56 antonino poppi

Commenting on text 202 of the ﬁrst book of the Posterior Analytics, Zabarella indicates a deeper reason why the Stagirite, after having elaborated at great length on the difference between science and opinion, did not point out what distinguishes them from the other intellectual habits discussed in the Ethics. The reason is that their consideration is not the competence of the logician, but rather of the ethicist and of the natural philosopher. The ethicist deals with them, quatenus sunt habitus animae a nobis per liberum arbitrium operantibus acquisiti. The natural philosopher also deals with them, not because they are habitus, “but rather in so far as they are faculties, that is in so far as the soul has the faculty of comparing them, and in so far as by means of them the natural operations of the soul can be better achieved.”40 In this way, the natural philosopher can better know the nature and the faculties of the speculative and the practical parts of the soul, as explained by Aristotle in the third book of De anima. The Paduan logician goes on to declare false the thesis maintained by some that wisdom is the competence of the metaphysician, in so far as the metaphysician investigates the habit of that name and the faculty to which it belongs. It is true that metaphysics teaches wisdom, remarks Zabarella. However, it does not discuss wisdom (sapientia), and it is irrel- evant that Aristotle delves into it in the preamble of the ﬁrst book of the Metaphysics, because the preambles are not part of the discipline and may even be skipped. On the other hand, neither does the logician have any competence about the differences of the habits among themselves; the logician is not even competent about the nature of science, because his interest in science is limited to the fact that science is the goal of demonstration. Given that Aristotle deemed it unnecessary for the logician to gain a deeper understanding of the habits, this restrains Zabarella, who concludes by saying, nobis recensere non convenit. He limits himself to a brief hint at the difference among science and prudence, art, wisdom, understanding (of which he will say more at the end of the commentary), dianoia (translated as discursus), and opinion. As a matter or fact, Aristotle excluded opinion from the list of the sixth book of the Ethics in so far as opinion is no virtue of the mind, given that it is capable of falsehood and does not partake of the necessity of science. Finally, Zabarella hints also at the difference between science and anchinoia (translated as soler- tia, i.e., quickness of mind), which, just like dianoia, is rather a faculty of

40. Iacopo Zabarella, In duos libros posteriores analyticos commentarii, I., ad 202, 1029: “sed potius quatenus sunt facultates, hoc est quatenus anima habet naturalem facultatem eos comparandi, et quatenus etiam per eos redditur apta ad melius edendas suas naturales operationes.” Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 57 the soul, as Aristotle makes clear at the end of the sixth book of the Ethics (VI.13, 1144b 1–17). I have already said, finally, that Zabarella does not distinguish hexis from virtue (arete), which is why he assimilates wisdom into the other intellectual dispositions.41 ix. ‘episteme’ and ‘nous’ Zabarella reserves an ample exposition, instead, to intellectus (nous), when commenting on the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics; which he considers an addition, given that the discussion of scientific demonstration, i.e., the primary subject of the work, was already concluded in the preceding chapter. The nature of demonstration is a process going from the principles to the conclusion. In the last chapter of the Posterior Ana- lytics, however, Aristotle expounds another method for the acquisition of the principles that is different from science and implies another kind of cognition. Three questions are to be asked. How do we acquire principles? by means of what method? and what is the habit possessing such principles?42 It is certain that science requires a previous knowledge of first principles, that is exquisitior et certior if compared to the cognition of the conclusions deduced from them. However, where does the cognition of them come from? Are the first principles perhaps innate and hidden to the mind, or are they acquired and derived from previous cognition? They certainly cannot be innate and at the same time be unknown to the mind, because it would be contradictory to have a cognition that is more certain than its conclusion and at the same time not to know it. On the other hand, neither can the first principles be the result of an acquisition, because in this case there would be no antecedent cognition from which to derive them without starting an infinite process.

41. Ibid., 1029–32. It would be interesting to compare the few lines in which Zabarella deals with the intellectual virtues with the analytical and erudite exposition given by Pic- colomini in his volume on ethics which appeared just a few years after Zabarella’s Opera logica. See Francesco Piccolomini, Universa philosophia de moribus (Venice, 1583), especially “gradus quintus,” 237–327. Piccolomini’s exposition was faithfully referred to in Antonio Riccoboni’s edition of the Greek-Latin text of the Nicomachean Ethics (Frankfurt, 1596), whose commentary time and again, e.g., 231–60 and 636–75, is an explicit polemic with Zabarella. For an updated interpretation of the semantic value of the technical terms used by Aristotle in the sixth book of the Ethics I refer to the recent Italian translation and notes of Aristotle, Etica Nicomachea, ed. by Carlo Natali (Rome: Laterza, 1999), especially 222–55 and 502–13. See also Carlo Natali, La saggezza di Aristotele (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1989), especially ch. 2, “Virtú o scienza?” 59–102. Interesting also the volume by Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), especially ch. 2, 47–131. 42. Zabarella, In duos libros posteriores analyticos commentarii, II.15, ad 101, 1272 (the whole commentary embraces twenty-two half-pages). 58 antonino poppi

If the first principles are neither innate nor acquired, and given that every cognition necessarily derives from another one, how do we know the principles? What is the method, what is the habit of the principles? We should then admit in us a cognitive faculty that is lower and less noble than the faculty of the principles and is like a handmaid ministering to their acquisition. Zabarella explains, “but this is a sensible faculty whose cognition is prior to the acquisition of the habits of the first principles, so that we acquire the habits of the first principles by means of a preceding sensible cognition, and induction is the method to acquire it, as Aristotle is going to say, and thus the difficulty is superseded.”43 Induction is, in fact, the method by means of which, starting with the cognition of the particulars that we perceive through the senses, we grasp the universal through the mind, i.e., we grasp the principles from which we derive scientific conclusions. What the senses perceive in the particular is not different from what the understanding identifies in its nature or universal essence, which is common to everything. The nature of the senses is to tend toward the universal, which is like a coarctatum within the limiting individual characteristics. A few sense-operations regarding a particular being are sufficient for the mind to illuminate its quietly resting universality by way of abstraction, which makes possible the unification of the dispersed and confused flight of the particulars. It is the understanding, then, that produces the universal. But it does this by relying on the ministry of senses that start with the particulars. The first principles are thus originated in us by way of induction, just like other axioms that seem permanently innate, given the ease with which we have acquired them, without even being aware of it, since childhood.44 Zabarella has already pointed out in a passage concerning the first book of the Posterior Analytics, and he repeats now, that for Aristotle the cognition of the first principles is nobler (honorabilior) and more certain than the cognition provided by the senses. In fact, the understanding attains the cause of a being, while the sense can only testify to its being a mere state of affairs. Against the objection that the certainty of the senses overcomes that of the mind because no sense can be deceived about its proper object, the Paduan logician replies by referring to the meaning of the term akribeia, which designates not only certainty, but also completeness and perfection. Akribeia is possible only if one goes back

43. Ibid., 1266: “haec autem est facultas sensibilis, cuius cognitio est praevia ipsi acqui- sitioni habituum primorum principiorum, et ita habitus principiorum acquiruntur in nobis ex praecedente sensuum cognitione, et methodus qua acquiruntur est inductio, ut Aristoteles infra dicturus est; sic enim tollitur difficultas.” 44. Ibid., 1267–77. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 59 to the causal comprehension of reality, the highest level of metaphysics. Although an especially accurate sensible cognition can guarantee some certainty, it nevertheless yields always only relative certainty, much weaker in comparison to the certainty deriving from the principles: Which doubt can be resolved by considering the Greek term akribeia, that does not mean only certainty, but also perfection. In fact a certain cognition is called akribes if it is certain and exquisite.l.l.l. Talking absolutely, we say that a cognition derived from the senses cannot be called exquisite, because it is a confused cognition. To a lesser extent can we call such a cognition exquisite, if the term “exquisite” is related to the knowledge of the same thing that is a causal knowledge.45 line space, MS p. 56 Having ascertained the heuristic nature of the understanding in its role as method of grasping inductively the first principles, Zabarella goes on to describe its nature and its name as a habitus while commenting on the last section of the Analytics, number 107. Here, according to Zabarella, Aristotle lays out two arguments. The first can be seen, a suffi- cienti habituum enumeratione, which we can read at the beginning of the third chapter in the sixth book of the Ethics (1139b 15–17). He remarks further, however, that one should immediately drop art and prudence from the chart of strict intellectual virtues, in so far as they are intellectual dispositions regarding contingent actions and matters. The same holds for wisdom, in so far as it is the synthesis of understanding and science. A real comparison therefore can take place only between understanding and science. One should notice that in this passage, the Philosopher recalls also opinion (doxa) and reasoning (logismos). From the point of view of semantics, logismos designates the ability of reason to go from the known to the unknown, which is equivalent to the dianoia that concluded the first book of the Analytics. Given, however, that both opinion and reasoning are intellectual habits capable of truth and falsehood, they must not be confused with the habit of the first principles which are immutable, true, and necessary.46 In a beautiful page, our author shows that only “understanding” designates the habit of principles, because its cognition of these is certior et exquisitior than the cognition achieved by science by means of reasoning, i.e., by means of the demonstrative syllogism, while principiorum cognitio

45. Ibid., 1266–67: “Quod dubium solvitur considerando graecam vocem akribeiam, quae non solam certitudinem significat, sed cum perfectione; cognitio namque illa vo- catur akribes quae certa et exquisita sit.l.l.l. Dicimus igitur cognitionem quae per sensum habetur, absolute loquendo non posse vocari exquisitam, quum sit cognitio confusa, mul- to minus si ad eiusdem rei scientiam, quae per causam habetur, referatur.” 46. Ibid., 1278–80. 60 antonino poppi non est cum ratione, as Aristotle says. Intellectual intuition has in fact only the appearance of a syllogism. But, in truth it is not discursive, i.e., it is not dianoetic, where inferences need the mediation of other notions. It rather proceeds, ab eodem ad idem, thus revealing the first principles through themselves.47 This holds for both the proper principles and the common ones, the axioms. Some have held the opinion that the common principles are innate and that they would immediately illuminate the mind when it becomes aware of their names. According to this opinion, the first principles would not need to be inductively derived from any previous sensible cognition, as if this induction were instantaneous and almost unperceived. Zabarella makes clear that this opinion is false and contrary to the thought of Aristotle. Our mind is born void of all cognition. Everything within it is derived from either the senses or from a preceding cognition which has also been derived from sensible cognition. This holds for the common principles as well, because the common principles are also the result of induction. As I have explained, induction does not imply a reasoning by means of which one can prove something starting with something else that is better known. It is, rather a notificatio rei per se ipsam, a passage from something known through the senses into the understanding. In a demonstrative induction, the understanding sees the essential connection between the predicate and the subject. This connection in some cases appears so immediate and evident that the mere observation of a single individual is enough to trigger in the mind the predication of that property to all instances. It is by no means necessary, then, to pass through a complete enumeration of all cases. It is in fact possible to ex- tract the universal from one or a few similar cases. And because one can do this in such a swift, effortless way, the false impression arises that no inductive passage at all has taken place and that the understanding already possesses the first principles within itself without having received them through the senses.48 The second argument by means of which Aristotle proves that the understanding is a cognitive habit of the first principles starts from the premise that one cannot have a demonstration of a demonstration nor the science of a science. In fact, one starts either with first principles that are immediate and thus non-demonstrable, or with a demonstra-

47. Ibid., 1280–81. 48. Ibid., 1281–82. See also Berti, Le ragioni di Aristotele, in the section dedicated to this issue in the Analytics, “La scienza non apodittica, ovvero l’intelligenza,” 11–18, where Berti defines the nature and the function of the nous within the Aristotelian doctrine. Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 61 tion that requires a preceding one. But this leads to an infinite regress and eliminates science itself by making it impossible. One needs, then, to reach a first form of knowledge that does not derive from any other. This must not be a conclusion received from another deductive argument, but rather the principle itself of such an argument, i.e., the habit of understanding, whose content is most excellent and certain and lies at the origin of its conclusions: “The principle of a science cannot be said to be a science, but rather a more sublime and valuable habit. But it was said that no habit is more certain or more powerful than science, not even the understanding. The latter is therefore the habit of the principles of demonstration, by means of which science clearly reaches its conclusion.”49 Science is consequently the habit of conclusions, while the understanding is the habit of principles. Already Eustratius has remarked that the first argument defining the habit of the principles is dialectical in nature, because it eliminates the habits that are incompatible with understanding, while the second argument is based on the nature and the essential conditions of demonstration itself.50 x. conclusion From this survey of Zabarella’s most relevant doctrinal points I hope to have made it clear that his way of philosophizing fulfills the intention of providing a faithful interpretation of Aristotle that he expressed in the two orations I have briefly sketched. In the millennial tradition of Aristotelianism, in fact, theoresis almost always converted itself into the hermeneutics of an author or of a text. Struck by the lesson of the Ana- lytics, the Paduan professor set as the ideal goal of his mission the re- trieval of the genuine Aristotelian concept of science and of scientific method, which he understood as the apodictic demonstration of the nature and constitutive principles of natural beings. While defending this one-sided model of rationality drawn from the analytical procedure in mathematics, Zabarella engaged himself in several strenuous and very demanding polemics against the interpretations proposed by the Hu- manists, the Platonists, and the Galenic physicians, which he considered philologically incorrect and theoretically unsound. According to him, science is not just a question of psychological certainty or the non-deni-

49. Ibid., 1282–83: “Scientiae igitur principium non potest esse scientia, sed habitus al- ius sublimior atque praestantior. At dictum est nullum dari habitum certiorem ac po- tiorem scientia, nisi intellectum; hic igitur est habitus principiorum demonstrationis, per quem manifestum est scientiam conclusionis acquiri.” 50. Ibid., 1282. 62 antonino poppi ability of empirical data; it is rather a question of the incontrovertibility of a rational explanation that attains to the first causes of a thing. Such a strict conception of knowledge is possible only by means of the cognition of immutable and eternal beings and the deduction of their essence from first and immediate premises. This led the Paduan logician to exclude from the sphere of his interest and of the dignity of science the whole range of practical, technical, and historical-existential disciplines that he considered as still confused, subjective intermediate steps at the service of the unique rigorous science. As you can see, because of his neat separation between pure theoretical sciences and defi- cient practical sciences, Zabarella places himself at the watershed of modernity. His extreme defense of the dignity of reason and of scientific cognition, which is the highest merit and the imperishable dignity of Aristotelian philosophy, ends up in an irreconcilable breach with the liveliest claims of modern thought. During the sixteenth century, the reconstruction of knowledge aimed at achieving the regnum hominis that was being carried out with full attention and care by a rationality that was open also to the causes of human life and history, that is, a rationality that was open to precisely the practical and poietical sciences that had been so thoroughly neglected by the Paduan logician. What makes Zabarella still relevant although his doctrine appears to us today as so distant and his heritage so sterile? I think that his sterility may be imputed to his one-sided and narrow interpretation of Aristo- tle’s thought. He made Aristotle’s logical-apodictic rationality look more strict than ever. In fact, he elevated and confused physics by placing it on the same level with mathematics; he neglected dialectic and rhetoric; and he eventually eluded the highest metaphysical question concerning the being of the first principle itself, which he deems an insufficient and unaccountable answer in terms of the eternal mover of physics. Such an exclusive attribution of the dignity of science to the unique instrument of apodictic demonstration is not only a manifest infidelity to the doctrine of Aristotle, which is much more flexible and open to many forms of authentic knowledge beyond the scheme of mathematical disciplines. It also leads our philosopher to eliminate from his reflection the largest part of human experience and life, in so far as these do not conform with the rigid setting of the Analytics and can be opened up only by less rigorous, but nonetheless important, kinds of rationality. As a matter of fact, Zabarella’s view of science ends up completely inappli- cable to any theory of praxis. The truth is that Zabarella’s view is much closer to the artistic skills, with all their unpredictability and inventive- ness, than to the scientific ideal he dreamt of. The primacy attributed to dianoia over nous implies the denial that a Zabarella, or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science 63 dialectical movement may achieve necessary conclusions such as the ones derived from first and immediate premises. This made it impossible for him to grasp the value and the sense of practical knowledge and most difficult to access any cognition of the first principle resulting from confutation, not from deduction, where one may see the highest expression of human rationality. Zabarella’s exasperated intellectualism ultimately denies the unity of reason that naturally operates in the search of both theoretical and practical truths. Besides, it breaks the unity of the human person, thus starting that negative process that will lead modern and contemporary thought to take away from ethics the formulation of alethic principles and reduce them to mere subjective impulses. Perhaps exactly within these limits someone may see Zabarella as a forerunner of some contemporary tendencies in philosophy. Had he been born in the twentieth century, the Paduan Aristotelian would indeed today make an excellent philosopher of language, a fine episte- mologist, and a smart philosopher of mind. He would have nourished a strong diffidence against metaphysics and would have cultivated a natural philosophy situated at the midpoint between empirical evidence and universal laws that are not to be seen as falsifiable hypotheses, but rather as pseudo-metaphysical, or at least ontic-ontological propositions. Permit me to say as clearly as possible, however, that, for me, some of these are secondary and perishable aspects of Zabarella’s thought. I consider his undeniable merit to be rather his retrieving and transmitting Aristotle’s classical and perennial lesson regarding the critical value of reason: the nature and the conditions of a rigorous cognition of truth. He wrote in fact that Aristotle, nihil unquam sine ratione pronuntiasse videtur, at the same time warning his antagonist Piccolomini that veri philosophi munus semper est parere rationi. The latter task is applicable to every rational human being. However, it holds with special intensity and urgency for those who are teachers of philosophy in so far as it bases itself on objective and universal principles, and even practical cognition, in so far as it goes beyond the mere technical-instrumental cognition that will never completely fulfill the most intimate claims of our reason. 3 The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic and Its Use in His Science WILLIAM A. WALLACE

In a lecture series devoted to “The Impact of Aristotelianism on Mod- ern Philosophy” it may seem odd for a speaker to include Galileo Galilei among the modern philosophers being discussed. After all, Galileo is generally regarded as the David who slew the Goliath of the intellectual world, who dethroned Aristotle and the Aristotelian system of the world with his telescope and laws of falling bodies. What is more, Galileo’s frontal assault on Aristotle bore immediate fruit in the Scientific Revolu- tion of the seventeenth century. The intellectual historian Herbert But- terfield saw that revolution as having influenced the course of Western civilization even more than Christianity.1 So what impact could Aris- totelianism have possibly made on this founder of modern science in light of the distinctly anti-Aristotelian views he bequeathed to later gen- erations? My task is indeed a difficult one, and it is made doubly so by the fact that I am delivering the lecture here at Catholic University. It was here that I did the basic research that led to the story I am about to tell. As some of you are undoubtedly aware, I have already told that story in ten books, some sixty articles and reviews, and countless lectures—many of them from this very lectern.2 I do not know what benefit might accrue from my retelling it once again. Surely I am at risk of boring many of

1. Herbert Butterﬁeld, The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800 (New York: Free Press, 1965), 7. 2. Of these, the principal books are Galileo’s Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions: A Translation from the Latin, with Historical and Paleographical Commentary (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977); Prelude to Galileo: Essays on Medieval and Sixteenth- Century Sources of Galileo’s Thought (Boston: Reidel, 1981); Galileo and His Sources: The Her- itage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984); and Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof: The Background, Content, and Use of His Ap- propriated Treatises on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Boston: Kluwer, 1992). In view of its frequent citation, the last title is abbreviated to Galileo’s Logic in what follows.

64 The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 65 you. Yet the tale is far from simple. It is an account of historical detail and historical contingency, an account that for me and others unfolded only gradually, and one whose understanding and profound implications have yet to be assimilated within the intellectual community. For this paper, I shall focus on a subject in which Galileo professed little interest in his published writings. I refer to Galileo’s logic, and this in the twofold sense of a logica docens and a logica utens. His logica docens or “logic teaching” was the system of logic that governed his thought, as I shall show, throughout his life. His logica utens or “logic using” was the way he used that logic in developing his science. In both senses I shall argue that Galileo was deeply indebted to Aristotle, and this unequivo- cally in ways that can be textually documented. i. galileo’s ‘logica docens’ I shall begin by describing the state of Galileo studies prior to the 1960’s. The dominant figures then were the French philosopher Alexandre Koyré and a few philosopher-historians who were much under the influence of logical positivism. Koyré was himself a Platonist, and it was he more than anyone else who pictured Galileo as a neo-Pla- tonist and neo-Pythagorean. For Koyré Galileo was not an experimental- ist, for in his view none of the experiments Galileo described in his writings could actually be verified. At best these were thought experiments that allowed him to impose mathematical structures on the material he was investigating.3 At the other extreme were empiricists such as Ernst Mach who saw Galileo in a totally different light. For him Galileo was the founder of experimental science, one who based his work entirely on the facts of experience. His strength lay in the hypotheses he employed, so he was a pioneer of HD or hypothetico-deductive reasoning, through which method he was the first to formulate the laws of falling bodies.4 Both sides drew their history from the monumental National Edition of Galileo’s works, edited in twenty folio volumes by Antonio Favaro between 1890 and 1901, at the dawn of the twentieth century.5 Yet none, neither the Platonist nor the empiricist, was a systematic histo-

3. Koyré’s more important studies relating to Galileo are his Metaphysics and Measure- ment: Essays in the Scientific Revolution, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968) and his Galileo Studies, trans. John Mepham (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1978). 4. See Mach’s The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development, trans. Thomas J. McCormack (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1960). 5. Le opere di Galileo Galilei, ed. Antonio Favaro, 20 vols., in vol. 3, 21 (Florence: Bar- bèra, 1890–1909). 66 william a. wallace rian. They already knew the logic Galileo had to employ, and to the extent that they used history, it was merely to find an example or two that would illuminate their own insights into the development of his thought. That picture began to change in the 1970’s, when historians decided to go beyond the restraints imposed by Favaro’s National Edition and look into Galileo’s manuscripts. These are in the Galileiana Collection of some hundred codices still preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale on the banks of the Arno in Florence. Favaro had used that collection with great skill—and all of us recognize that—but perforce there were manuscripts that did not fit into his edition, which he gave either cursory reading or none at all. In what follows I shall focus on four of these manuscripts, numbers 27, 46, 71, and 72.6 All of them pertain to Galileo’s “early period,” the period from his birth at Pisa to his publication of The Starry Messenger in 1610. That work presented his telescopic discoveries to the world and made him instantly famous throughout Europe. Knowledge of these particular manuscripts requires us to rewrite the history of Galileo’s early life. I now propose to do that for you, and in the telling I shall describe the manuscripts and their contents, and how they affect our understanding of his logic during his early period and his later periods as well. Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa of a Florentine family on 15 February 1564. Eight years later the family returned to Florence, but the young Galileo was left temporarily in Pisa with a relative of his mother by mar- riage, Muzio Tedaldi, a customs official in that city. Within two years Galileo rejoined his family at Florence and was tutored there by Jacopo Borghini. Then he was sent to the Camaldolese monastery at nearby Val- lombrosa to begin his classical education. While at the monastery Galileo was attracted to the life of the monks and actually joined the order as a novice. His father Vincenzio was displeased with that development, so he removed his son from Vallombrosa and brought him back to Florence. There he completed his studies at a school run by the Camaldolese monks, but no longer as a candidate for their order. The family’s plan for Galileo was to become a physician, so they arranged for him to live again with Tedaldi in Pisa and had him enrolled at the university there as a medical student in the fall of 1581.7 The next four years of his life Galileo spent at the University of Pisa

6. For descriptions of these four manuscripts, see the Introduction to my Galileo’s Logi- cal Treatises: A Translation, With Notes and Commentary, of His Appropriated Latin Questions on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Boston: Kluwer, 1992). 7. The best survey of the details of Galileo’s life is Stillman Drake, Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); see 1–17. The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 67 studying mainly philosophy, where his professors were Francesco Buon- amici and Girolamo Borro, and mathematics (including astronomy) under a Camaldolese monk, Father Filippo Fantoni. However, during the 1582–83 academic year Galileo met Ostilio Ricci, a competent geometer who is said to have studied under Niccolò Tartaglia, while Ricci was at Pisa. Galileo apparently sat in on lectures the mathematician was giving there on Euclid. The following summer, when Galileo was back in Florence, he invited Ricci to his home to meet his father. Vincenzio was impressed with Ricci and the two became friends. Ricci told Vincenzio that his son was little interested in medicine, that he wanted to become a mathematician, and sought permission to instruct him in that discipline. Vincenzio begrudgingly consented, so with Ricci’s help Galileo devoted himself more and more to the study of Euclid and Archimedes. By 1585 Galileo dropped out of the University of Pisa and began to teach mathematics privately at Florence and at Siena, where he had a public appointment in 1585–86, and then at Vallombrosa in the summer of 1588. In 1587 Galileo traveled to Rome to visit Christopher Clav- ius, the famous Jesuit mathematician at the Collegio Romano, and discuss with him an essay he was writing on centers of gravity of solids. Galileo was then invited to the Florentine Academy in 1588 to give lectures on the location and dimensions of hell in Dante’s Inferno. In 1589 Fantoni relinquished the chair in mathematics at Pisa and Galileo was selected to replace him, partly because of the favorable impression he had made with his lectures on Dante, partly on the recommendation of Clavius and other mathematicians who had become acquainted with his work. Galileo began lecturing at Pisa in November 1589 along with Ja- copo Mazzoni, a philosopher who taught both Plato and Aristotle and was also an expert on Dante, and the two quickly became friends. Maz- zoni is of special interest because of his knowledge of the works of another mathematician, Giovanni Battista Benedetti, and because he is given special mention by Galileo in a letter from Pisa addressed to his father in Florence and dated 15 November 1590. While at Pisa Galileo wrote three notebooks in Latin, one on logic explaining the Aristotelian concept of demonstration and proof (MS 27), another exposing Aristotle’s teachings on the heavens and the elements (MS 46), and a third containing his own early treatises on motion (MS 71). The last treats gravity and levity, flotation, and bodies in motion, both in free fall and along inclined planes. MSS 27 and 46 are basically theoretical expositions, but MS 71 also mentions experiments (pericula) Galileo performed in attempts to formulate laws of motion.8

8. For fuller details, see my “The Dating and Signiﬁcance of Galileo’s Pisan Manu- 68 william a. wallace

Galileo taught at Pisa until 1592. The death of his father in 1591 put heavy financial burdens on him as eldest son, and he had to obtain a better salary than the sixty florins he was then being paid. He thus sought and received an appointment with a salary of 180 florins at the University of Padua, where he delivered his inaugural lecture on 7 De- cember 1592. Galileo spent the next eighteen years of his life in the Re- public of Venice, which he later avowed were the happiest years of his life. In this period he wrote treatises on mechanics around 1600 and on the Sphere of Sacrobosco around 1602, which he used for teaching Ptole- maic astronomy. Between 1602 and 1609 he also made extensive manuscript notes and sketches of experiments he performed with pendu- lums, inclined planes, and bodies in natural and projectile motion (MS 72). Finally, in 1609, having heard of the invention of the telescope in Holland, Galileo perfected that instrument for the study of heavenly bodies. He made startling discoveries, among which were those of numerous new stars in the heavens, mountains on the moon, and the satellites of Jupiter. In March 1610 he published these results at Venice in his Starry Messenger.9 Then he returned to the Florentine court in 1610 as mathematician and philosopher to Cosimo II de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, thus bringing to an end what historians call his “early period.” This chronology is based on recent research and is not that contained in Favaro’s National Edition. Favaro knew of MS 27 but he thought it was an exercise Galileo copied from a monk at Vallombrosa, dated it around 1579, and did not include it in the National Edition. He did transcribe and publish MSS 46 and 71, but misdated the first and failed to order the components of the second correctly. The materials in MS 72 were apparently intractable for him, for he left them out completely. All four manuscripts, as I said, are still conserved in the Galileiana Collection in Florence. The Pisan manuscripts are indispensable for understanding Galileo’s early period. MS 27, containing the logical questions, was transcribed, edited, and published by Bill Edwards and myself four hundred years after it was written, in 1988.10 The treatises it contains were appropriated scripts,” in Nature, Experiment, and the Sciences: Essays on Galileo and the History of Science in Honour of Stillman Drake, ed. Trevor Levere and William R. Shea (Boston: Kluwer, 1990), 3–50, and my “Galileo’s Pisan Studies in Science and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Com- panion to Galileo, ed. Peter Machamer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 27–52. 9. See his edition of Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius or The Sidereal Messenger, ed. and trans. Al- bert Van Helden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 10. Galileo Galilei, Tractatio de praecognitionibus et praecognitis and Tractatio de demonstratione, ed. William F. Edwards and William A. Wallace (Padua: Antenore, 1988). The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 69 from the year-long logic course of the Jesuit Paulus Vallius at the Colle- gio Romano ending in August 1588. They contain exhaustive analyses of Aristotle’s teachings on the foreknowledge required for demonstration and on demonstration itself, concluding with an explanation of the demonstrative regress, about which more later.11 MS 46, containing the physical questions, was composed of treatises on the heavens and the elements, plus a series of memoranda on motion that are related to the materials in MS 71. I translated the two treatises, with notes and commentary, in my Galileo’s Early Notebooks of 1977.12 The manuscript is written on paper with Pisan watermarks, presumes knowledge of the logic in MS 27, and like it is based on courses taught by Jesuits at the Collegio Romano. Its composition is best located at Pisa around 1590, shortly after the questions on logic. The story with respect to MS 71 is more complex. Its five different components, all of which were originals of Galileo, were written on folios with a variety of watermarks. His Latinity continued to improve with each composition. Begun in 1588 and completed around 1592, they were written in Florence and Pisa at different times. Their main teachings are contained in an English translation by I. E. Drabkin, entitled On Motion, published in 1960.13 Complete details are given in an essay I wrote for The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, published in 1998.14 The final manuscript, MS 72, provides abundant evidence of the experimental program carried out by Galileo at Padua, as already mentioned, between 1602 and 1609. This terminated in his discovery of the principles on which his “new science” of motion would later be based. Starting around 1970, Stilman Drake developed a technique for dating the manuscript’s folios on the basis of watermarks.15 From diagrams and calculations present on them, he and other investigators have been able to reconstruct and duplicate experiments Galileo actually performed at Padua but never reported in his published writings. The import of this new manuscript evidence can best be seen by joining these experiments to the discoveries Galileo would soon make with his telescope and considering both in light of the logical treatises in MS 27. It then becomes clear that while at Padua, Galileo was able to secure strict demonstrations in the Aristotelian sense of the basic phenomena of the heavens and of falling motion. By the end of 1610 he had discovered the phases

11. See my Galileo’s Logical Treatises (note 6 above). 12. Cited above in note 2. 13. Galileo Galilei, On Motion and On Mechanics, ed. and trans. I. E. Drabkin and Still- man Drake (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960). 14. Cited above in note 8. 15. See his Galileo at Work, 50–133. 70 william a. wallace of Venus and showed that it rotates around the sun, not the earth, which complemented the proofs offered in The Starry Messenger. The demonstrations in mechanics he would report only partially, and not until many years later, in the Two New Sciences of 1638. But it is now clear that Galileo’s concept of science was that of Aristotle’s episte¯me¯ from beginning to end, that he thought it would yield certain and unrevisable knowledge, and that according to its canons he had made all of his major scientific contributions already by 1610. Before proceeding to Galileo’s use of Aristotelian logic in his scientific work I must elaborate a bit on the content of the logical questions contained in MS 27. The key teaching of that manuscript is found in its last question, that on the demonstrative regress.16 The regressus demon- strativus is a type of reasoning that employs two demonstrations, one “of the fact” or quia and the other “of the reasoned fact” or propter quid. In his exposition Galileo refers to these demonstrations as “progressions” and notes that they are separated by an intermediate stage. The first progression argues from effect to cause and the second goes in the reverse direction, thus regressing from cause to effect. For the process to work, the demonstration of the fact must come first, and the effect must initially be more known than the cause, though in the end the two must be seen as convertible. The intermediate stage effects the transition to the second demonstration. As explained in Galileo’s time the intermediate stage involved what Jacopo Zabarella called “a mental examination of the cause proposed” (mentale ipsius causae examen). The Latin examen is significant because it corresponds to the Greek peira, a term that is the root for the Latin periculum, meaning test, the equivalent of experimentum. Thus the main task of the intermediate stage is one of testing, of investigating and eliminating other possibilities, and so seeing the cause as required wherever the effect is present.17 Galileo’s innovation in the regressus was his consistent use of the periculum in the intermediate stage to determine the vera causa of the phenomenon under study. In the case of motion that phenomenon was the speed of a body’s fall in various media. Here Galileo’s main debt to

16. For fuller details, see my Galileo’s Logical Treatises, Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof; “Randall Redivivus: Galileo and the Paduan Aristotelians,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 133–49. Also of interest in this connection are my “Circularity and the Demonstrative Regressus: From Pietro d’Abano to Galileo Galilei,” Vivarium 33 (1995): 76–97, and my “Galileo’s Regressive Methodology: Its Prelude and Its Sequel,” in Method and Order in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature: The Aristotle Commentary Tradition, ed. D. A. Di Liscia, Eckhard Keßler, and Charlotte Methuen (Brookﬁeld, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 1997), 229–52. 17. See my “Randall Redivivus” article cited in the previous note. The Inﬂuence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 71

Archimedes was his replacement of Aristotle’s concept of absolute weight by that of specific weight, that is, the weight of the body as affected by the medium in which it is immersed, and so corrected for the buoyancy effect of the medium. This was the earlier innovation of Bene- detti and not originally Galileo’s. What was original was Galileo’s use of the inclined plane to slow the descent of bodies under the influence of gravity. The basic insight behind this experiment is found in MS 71 and may be stated as follows: if the effective weight of a body can be de- creased by positioning it on an incline, then its velocity down the incline will be slowed proportionately. The demonstration Galileo offers is geometric and consists in showing that the forces involved with weights on an inclined plane actually obey the law of the balance. It also invokes several suppositions and on this account may be seen as a demonstration ex suppositione, that is, based on one or more suppositions. If the suppositions are granted, the conclusion follows directly: the ratio of speeds down the incline will be as the length of the incline to its vertical height, because the weight of the body varies precisely in that proportion. Galileo uses the term periculum for test or experiment five times in the motion treatises of MS 71.18 (One occurrence is in connection with the basic supposition behind his reasoning, the Aristotelian principle that speed of fall is directly proportional to the falling body’s weight, now amended to be its weight in the medium as opposed to its absolute weight.) Galileo says that if one performs the periculum the proposed proportionality will not actually be observed, and he attributes the discrepancy to accidental causes. Moreover, for the inclined-plane reasoning to apply one must suppose that there is no accidental resistance oc- casioned by the roughness of the moving body or of the plane, or by the shape of the body; that the plane is, so to speak, incorporeal, or at least that it is very carefully smoothed and perfectly hard; and that the moving body is perfectly smooth and of a perfectly spherical shape. Under such conditions one may suppose that any given body can be moved on a plane parallel to the horizon by a force smaller than any given force. Here Galileo states that one should not be surprised if a periculum does not verify this, for two reasons: external impediments prevent it (which elicits the first supposition), and a plane surface cannot be parallel to the horizon because the earth’s surface is spherical. A more interesting periculum to which Galileo makes reference occurs

18. See my “Galileo’s Pisan Manuscript,” (note 8 above), 45–46. A summary account of all these experiments is given in my The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philoso- phy of Nature in Synthesis (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 341–50. 72 william a. wallace in the passage where he speaks of dropping objects from a high tower, probably the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for Pisa is where the passage was written. Here he contests the results of an experimentum performed by his professor Girolamo Borro which purported to show that, when two equal bodies of lead and wood are thrown simultaneously from a win- dow, the lighter body invariably reaches the ground before the heavier one. Galileo’s tests, which he says were often repeated, show the opposite: although the lighter body moves more swiftly at the beginning of its motion, the heavier one quickly overtakes it and reaches the ground far ahead. The reason Galileo offers is that the lighter body cannot con- serve its upward impetus as well as the heavier body, and thus it falls quickly at first, but the heavier body then overcomes its upward impetus and so catches up with, and then passes, the lighter body. This solution actually depends on Galileo’s argument in MS 71, directed against Aris- totle, to explain why bodies increase their speed, or accelerate, during fall. There Galileo bases his explanation on an upwardly directed impetus or levity impressed on the body that is self-expending with time. As opposed to Aristotle’s cause, Galileo sees the vera causa of the velocity increase to lie in the decrease of effective weight throughout the body’s fall. All of these suppositional demonstrations pertain to Galileo’s Pisan period. They all can be put in the form of the demonstrative regressus as this is set out in MS 27, analyses of which are given in my Galileo’s Logic.19 Galileo wanted to print the treatise on motion, but he clearly had doubts about the “true causes” he had proposed in it because of his failure to obtain experimental confirmation of his results. He kept the manuscript in his possession, nonetheless, and when he finally did discover the correct law of falling bodies, he inserted a draft of his discovery among the folios of MS 71, thus signaling its role in the discovery process. This is known as the De motu accelerato fragment, which Favaro correctly judged was composed in 1609, at the end of Galileo’s early period, and so published it with the earlier materials in the National Edi- tion.20 ii. galileo’s ‘logica utens’ Moving now to Galileo’s logica utens, precisely how the regress works in astronomy may be seen from a study of Galileo’s treatise on the sphere, composed at Padua around 1602 and clearly based on Sacro-

19. Ibid., 241–63. 20. Opere, vol. 2, 226. The Inﬂuence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 73 bosco’s Sphaera, the textbook then used for teaching astronomy. The context is Galileo’s explanation in his Sfera of the aspects and phases of the moon and the ways these vary with the moon’s various periods. These phenomena depend only on relative positions within the earth- moon and earth-sun systems and do not require commitment to either Ptolemaic or Copernican astronomy, being equally well explained in either. Basic to the explanation is Galileo’s insight that these aspects and phases are effects (effetti) for which it is possible to assign the cause (la causa). Among the causes Galileo enumerates are that the moon is spherical in shape, that it is not luminous by nature but receives its light from the sun, and that the orientations of the two with respect to earth are what cause the moon’s phases and the places and times of their appearances. The argument follows closely the paradigm provided by Aris- totle in Posterior Analytics I.13 to show that the moon is a sphere. It involves only one supposition, that light travels in straight lines, and this is what governs the intermediate stage. This allows one to use projective geometry to establish the convertibility condition, namely, that only external illumination falling on a shape that is spherical will cause the moon to exhibit the phases it does at precise positions and times observable from the earth.21 When Galileo made his discoveries with the telescope in 1609–10 this same paradigm was ready at hand for further exploitation. Others before him had constructed telescopes, and some had even looked at the heavens with them, but none would formulate the “necessary demonstrations” Galileo would propose on the basis of his observations. We know that between 30 November and 18 December of 1609 Galileo studied the moon with his new instrument and made no fewer than eight drawings of the appearances he observed. On 7 January 1610 he wrote to Antonio de’ Medici in Florence that, from the data he had obtained, “sane reasoning cannot conclude otherwise” than that the moon’s surface contains mountains and valleys similar to, but larger than, those spread over the surface of the earth. Thus, within about a month, by his own account, Galileo had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that there are mountains on the moon.22 On the very evening in which Galileo wrote to Antonio de’ Medici that he had demonstrated mountains being on the moon, he further noted a strange phenomenon, namely, that the planet Jupiter was “accompanied by three ﬁxed stars.” The next night, on 8 January 1610, Galileo turned his telescope on the heavens again, hoping to see that

21. Galileo’s Logic, 194–97. 22. Ibid., 198–201. 74 william a. wallace

Jupiter had moved to the west of these stars, as Ptolemaic computations then predicted. To his surprise this time he found the planet to be east of them. His attempt to resolve that anomaly led him to a program of observing Jupiter and its strange companions whenever he could over a two-month period. By 11 January he had concluded that they were not fixed stars that could be used to determine the motion of Jupiter, but rather that they were small bodies, never observed before, that were moving along with Jupiter and indeed were actually circling it. “I therefore arrived at the conclusion, entirely beyond doubt (omnique procul du- bio),” he wrote, “that in the heavens there are three stars wandering about Jupiter like Venus and Mercury around the sun.” On 13 January he saw a fourth object for the first time, and by 15 January he had convinced himself that it was doing the same. So within a week after his cu- riosity was aroused by the anomaly he had completed the demonstrative regress and had convinced himself that Jupiter has four satellites revolv- ing about it, as it made its own majestic revolution around the center of the universe.23 Completely analogous reasoning is found in the process by which Galileo, in December of 1610, having by then observed the phases of Venus, demonstrated that Venus is in orbit around the sun. The geometry in this case is considerably more complex than that required to complete the intermediate stages outlined in the previous examples of the regress. But when one understands the geometry involved, it is a simple matter to understand why, when seen from the earth, Venus exhibits the phases it does and its changes in size and appearance. One can also see why there is no possibility that Venus could be rotating around the earth, but must be orbiting the sun.24 It is this demonstration, along with the previous ones, that Galileo clearly had in mind when, in 1615, in his famous Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, he wrote so glowingly about his “necessary demonstrations based on sensible experience.” It is significant that Galileo uses this expression or its equivalent over forty times in the Letter to Christina.25 How each of his proofs fits into the paradigm of the demonstrative regress I explain in detail in my Galileo’s Logic.26 These astronomical discoveries are truly wonderful demonstrations, and one can readily understand why, as their significance was grasped, they brought Galileo immediate fame throughout Europe. And yet in

23. Ibid., 201–203. 24. Ibid., 203–207. 25. Details are given in Jean Dietz Moss, “The Rhetoric of Proof in Galileo’s Writings on the Copernican System,” in Reinterpreting Galileo, ed. William A. Wallace (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 179–204. 26. Ibid., 181–88, 194–97. The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 75 the final analysis they are not as important as the series of experiments on motion and falling bodies he performed at Padua immediately before the telescopic discoveries. Around 1602, while in correspondence with Guidobaldo del Monte, Galileo experimented with the pendulum as an alternative to the inclined plane, because, although the bob of the pendulum moves along the arc of a circle rather than a chord, it eliminates the surface friction always present on the plane. By that time Galileo had rejected the Aristotelian dynamic law, that speed of fall is uniform and simply proportional to weight. In 1604 he wrote to Paolo Sarpi stating that speed increases with distance of fall, and from this principle he was trying to deduce various properties of falling motion. Shortly after that he initiated experiments with an inclined plane situated on the top of a table with its base at or near the table’s edge, thus allowing a ball to roll down the incline and then drop freely to the floor. In these experiments, known as the “table-top” experiments, by 1609 Galileo had used the inclined plane in this way to establish by actual measurements: (1) the correct speed law, that velocity is proportional not to the distance of fall, as he earlier thought, but to the square root of distance; (2) the correct distance law, that distance of fall is proportional to the square of the time of fall; and (3) that the path a body follows when projected horizontally at uniform velocity and then allowed to fall under the influence of gravity is a semi-parabola. These experiments were totally unknown until about 1972, when Stilman Drake uncovered folios in MS 72 that gave evidence of them. Since then they have been analyzed in detail and duplicated by Drake,27 Ronald Nay- lor,28 David Hill,29 and others. Collectively their results show that Galileo was engaged in a serious research program in the first decade of the seventeenth century, achieving an experimental accuracy within about three percent when testing his calculated results. So much for Koyré and his dismissal of Galileo’s experiments. The key result that emerges from these experiments is that the speed of bodies in free fall, instantiated by balls that are no longer on the incline but have left it and are falling naturally, varies directly as their time of fall. From this principle, explicitly stated at the beginning of the

27. “Galileo’s Experimental Conﬁrmation of Horizontal Inertia,” Isis 64 (1973): 291–305. 28. “The Search for the Parabolic Trajectory,” Annals of Science 33 (1976): 153–72; “Galileo’s Theory of Projectile Motion,” Isis 71 (1980): 550–70; and “Galileo’s Method of Analysis and Synthesis,” Isis 81 (1990): 695–707. 29. “A Note on a Galilean Worksheet,” Isis 70 (1979): 269–71; “Galileo’s Work on 116v: A New Analysis,” Isis 77 (1986): 283–91; and “Dissecting Trajectories: Galileo’s Ear- ly Experiments on Projectile Motion and the Law of Fall,” Isis 79 (1988): 646–68. 76 william a. wallace

Third Day of the discourses in the Two New Sciences of 1638, Galileo derives most of the propositions he presents in the Third and Fourth Days of that work. His reasoning in establishing that principle is demonstrative and may be cast in the form of the regress, just as the previous astronomical demonstrations. The true cause here is, for Galileo, the definition of naturally accelerated motion. The first progression is a posteriori, from effect to cause, and the second a priori, from cause to effect. The intermediate stage, the work of the intellect, carries the burden of proof, as heretofore. Actually its wording follows closely Galileo’s Latin text in his draft of this passage, the De motu accelerato fragment now bound in MS 71, where Galileo inserted it after writing it out. It also appears in the Two New Sciences with almost identical wording. This demonstration, like the earlier ones, is made ex suppositione, that is, on the supposition that all impediments to the falling motion, such as friction, resistance of the medium, and accidental factors have been removed. The proof is based partly on the elimination of the simplest alternative, that speed of fall is based on distance of fall, as Galileo himself had first thought. But the direct proof is experimental as seen in his reference to “physical experiments,” pointedly in the plural. The reference is not to the simple inclined-plane experiment described in the Two New Sciences, as it was commonly understood by positivists, but to the whole gamut of experiments, “table-top” included, performed at Padua before the discoveries with the telescope. In these Galileo no longer identified the weight of the falling body as the cause of its fall, as in his early formulations. Now he was interested solely in the kinematic factors that bear on the quantitative aspects of naturally accelerated motion. As for the ultimate physical cause of the fall, he identified this simply as “nature,” the ultimate explanatory principle in Aristotelian physics. So he himself was working unambiguously in the tradition of mathematical physics, a “mixed” or “middle” science. What he proposed to do for dynamics is what Archimedes had done for statics, that is, provide a hither- to unknown science of local motion based on mathematics and not on physical principles alone.30 On the strength of his astronomical discoveries, in 1610 Galileo obtained the patronage of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II de’ Medici. He gave up his teaching duties at Padua and moved to Florence to serve as “mathematician and philosopher” to the Grand Duke. In the Spring of 1611 Galileo traveled to Rome, where he met with Clavius and was feted at the Collegio Romano by astronomers there who had veri-

30. Galileo’s Logic, 285–95. The proof is given in summary form in my The Modeling of Nature, 348–50. The Inﬂuence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 77

fied his telescopic discoveries. He also talked with Cardinal Robert Bel- larmine, himself a Jesuit, about the implications of his discoveries for resolving the differences between Ptolemy and Copernicus on the system of the world. It should perhaps be pointed out that Galileo’s scientific writings up to 1611 were not essentially polemical. His early work on motion at Pisa did develop out of disputations at the university in which Galileo upheld a progressive view, and undoubtedly he was concerned that his arguments would be rejected by his teachers, namely Borro and Buonamici. Still, his ideas mirrored in some ways those being advanced elsewhere by Benedetti and others. The important point is that they were never published, and this alone would explain why they did not spark any controversies. His discoveries with the telescope, of course, touched on a very controversial subject, the nature of the heavens, and yet his manner of reporting them in The Starry Messenger gave his adversaries little ground for rejecting them. The main problem they posed was their factual status, since those not having access to a telescope with sufficient magnification and resolving power would be tempted to dismiss the phenomena he reported as optical illusions. Albert Van Helden has shown that astronomers who might have been expected to reject them on philosophical grounds, such as the Jesuit professors at the Collegio Romano, actually verified Galileo’s findings as soon as they had constructed a good telescope themselves.31 This situation seems quite representative, for despite some early opposition from irresponsible authors such as Martin Horky and Francesco Sizzi, Galileo’s findings were soon accepted without argument by astronomers throughout Europe. A similar situation obtains with regard to the “table-top” experiments. Like the materials present in MSS 27, 46, and 71, none of the findings recorded in MS 72 were known in Galileo’s day. They stimulate controversy in our day over how they are to be interpreted, but that is properly a problem for historians and not for scientists. Shortly after 1611, however, Galileo did become deeply involved in controversy, and unfortunately this state continued more or less uninterruptedly until the end of his life. Many of these controversies were more theological than they were scientific, being concerned with how the Scriptures were to be interpreted and what latitude should be allowed to those who departed from the traditional teachings of the Church. As to the scientific problems with which he had then to deal, most of these were not solvable with the information available to Galileo or anyone else, and so were not amenable to the use of the demonstrative regress. Much of Galileo’s

31. See Galileo, Sidereus nuncius (note 9 above), 109–113. 78 william a. wallace part in them, however, can be understood in terms of various adaptations he seems to have made when applying regressive methods to situations where certitude could not be attained and one had to resort to probable reasoning. Three cases that illustrate these adaptations turn out to be representative of Galileo’s later work. All three took place in the second decade of the seventeenth century, shortly after his remarkable success with the “table-top” experiments and his discoveries with the telescope. The first two involved actual controversies: these were Galileo’s dispute with Lu- dovico delle Colombe at Florence in 1612 over the true cause of flotation, and his prolonged debate with the Jesuit Christopher Scheiner in 1618 over the nature of sunspots. The third case occurred between these two and was not itself a controversy, although it was to give rise to one a decade and a half later. This was his proposal to Cardinal Orsini in 1616 sketching his argument from the tides to prove the earth’s motion, which was to have disastrous consequences for Galileo when he refor- mulated it in the Dialogue of 1632.32 Galileo’s preferred technique in controversy was to set up two mutually exclusive or dichotomous explanations for a particular phenomenon and then devise various observational or experimental tests that would eliminate the one and so leave the other. When coupled with geometrical methods of proof, this technique lends itself to a reductio ad impossibile for one of the alternatives and thus supplies indirect proof for the other. The dichotomy itself functions as a suppositio in the proof, and is particularly effective if it is proposed by, or is acceptable to, the other party to the controversy. In the dispute with Colombe the supposition was that a body’s motion downward in a medium was caused either by the shape of the body (Colombe’s alternative) or by the weight of the body in the medium in which it is placed (Galileo’s alternative). The argument Galileo proposed in support of his side was based on hydrostatic principles, properly applied through geometrical analysis, to make clear the proper cause of flotation. The conclusion to which it came is that the true, intrinsic, and proper cause of flotation and submergence, excluding mediate and accidental causes, is the weight of a body relative to that of the medium. That is to say, it is not the body’s absolute weight or gravitas that determines whether the body will float or not, but rather its propria gravitas, its weight in the medium in which it is immersed, considering that the body is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it is able to displace. For Galileo, this alone explains why one body will float in a

32. Galileo’s Logic, 211–16. The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 79 medium and others will not, how much will protrude above the surface when it does, and how a medium can support a weight heavier than itself.33 To meet Colombe’s counter-arguments Galileo admits that a body’s shape may affect the speed of its motion through a medium, but shape is not the proper cause of its motion. This can be demonstrated by ex- perimenting with a mass of wax molded into various shapes; its position in the medium is determined by its weight and not by any particular shape it is made to assume. The special case of a thin plate of ebony floating on water can then be explained by an accidental cause. Here Galileo formulates the ingenious proposal that the volume of air en- closed by ridges and below the water’s surface, when joined to the un- wetted top surface of the plate, adds to the plate’s buoyancy and so causes it to float. Thus he sidesteps the problem of surface tension, about which neither he nor Colombe knew anything, and focuses instead on an equilibrium situation in which the causes that might produce motion cancel out. In this case a volumetric solution can be provided using simple geometrical principles. The dispute with Scheiner over sunspots lent itself to the same technique.34 According to Scheiner the observed appearances of the spots may be explained in one of two ways: either as spots moving on or near the sun’s surface or as spots rotating in a celestial sphere outside the sun, presumably “stars” or planets. Anxious to preserve the sun’s unal- terability and incorruptibility as a heavenly body, Scheiner opted for the second alternative, leaving Galileo the opportunity to exploit the first. This he did by subscribing to Scheiner’s dichotomy and then attacking the latter’s position, again through the use of geometrical analysis—this time using the principles of optics rather than those of hydrostatics. Geometrical optics, Galileo argues, provide necessary demonstrations that the spots are not outside the sun but are contiguous with its surface. In particular, the spots appear thinner when near the edge of the sun than when close to its center; the distances they travel increase as they approach the center and decrease as they recede toward the edge; and they separate more and more as they approach the center—for one who knows optics, “a clear argument (manifesto argomento) that the sun is a globe and that the spots are close to the sun’s surface.” Furthermore, close observation shows that the appearances of the spots are not those of stars (stelle); they more resemble clouds (nugole) that form and dis- solve and so change size and shape. Thus, Galileo observes, it is not cer-

33. Ibid., 276–78. 34. Ibid., 207–211. 80 william a. wallace tain that the same spots return after a complete revolution, nor is it certain that the sun itself rotates on its axis, although it appears to do so. It is interesting to note that, although Galileo claims to incorporate “necessary demonstrations” (dimostrazioni necessarie) in his overall sun- spot argument, and so is successful in negating Scheiner’s position, he himself advances only probable opinion as to what the spots ultimately might be. Thus his conclusions may be summarized as follows: the spots are definitely not stars or planets rotating in their own celestial orbits around the sun somewhere between it and earth; it is probable that they are clouds in a medium surrounding the sun’s surface; and it is more probable that the sun itself rotates and carries this medium and its clouds along with it than that these have an independent circular motion around the sun. The third type of argument introduced by Galileo did not invoke a dichotomy as did the first two. Instead it employed causal reasoning to assign degrees of probability to various possible explanations for a given phenomenon, along the same lines already seen in the dispute with Scheiner. In this and similar cases Galileo’s various causal maxims assume importance, namely, that there is only one true and primary cause for any one effect; that effects similar in kind must be reducible to a single true and primary cause; that there is a fixed and constant connection between cause and effect, so that any alteration in the one will be accompanied by a fixed and constant alteration in the other; and so on. In this case the effect to be explained is the ebb and flow of the tides in the various oceans and seas on the earth’s surface, which Galileo sus- pects might be connected with the motion of the earth. In his Letter to Christina of 1615 Galileo had made reference to “physical effects whose causes perhaps cannot be determined in any other way” without indicat- ing precisely what he had in mind. Apparently he discussed one way with a young friend, Alessandro Orsini, who had just been made a cardinal and who asked Galileo to write out his argument. Galileo did so on 8 January 1616, in a letter now entitled Discourse on the Tides.35 Galileo begins by noting that sensory appearances show that the tides involve a true local motion in the sea, and thus to find their cause one must investigate the various ways motion can be imparted to seawater. He further notes the complexity of tidal phenomena, and on this account seeks to find if any of the possible movers can reasonably be assigned as the primary cause. To this he then proposes to add secondary or concomitant causes to account for the diversity of the tides’ move-

35. Ibid., 211–16. The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 81 ments. Since the motion of the container can often explain the motion of the fluid it contains, Galileo speculates that “the cause of the tides could reside in some motion of the basins containing the seawater,” thus focusing on the motion of the terrestrial globe as “more probable” than any other cause previously assigned. On this basis Galileo takes the motion of the earth hypothetically (ex hypothesi), and from its two motions, one of annual revolution around the sun, the other of diurnal rotation on its axis, explains how it might function as a primary cause of the back and forth motion of the water on its surface. This cause will obviously not be enough to account for the particular details of tidal phenomena, and so to it he adds addition- al causes just mentioned. Among these are the gravity of seawater, the length and depth of the basin in which it is contained, the frequency of its oscillations, and the ways these might be coordinated with the movement of various parts of the earth. Galileo concludes on the note that with this explanation he is able to harmonize the earth’s motion and the tides, “taking the former as the cause of the latter, and the latter as a sign of and an argument for the former.” His expression here clearly signals the use of the regress, now adapted for use in a probable argument as opposed to a demonstration. I refer to this as a dialectical regress, and explain the paradigm for it in my Galileo’s Logic.36 Note that there was no air of controversy in this initial presentation of the tidal argument. It was written shortly after Galileo’s Letter to Christi- na. It was written also after Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter to Foscarini and Galileo in which he warned against using the earth’s motion, without of- fering demonstrative proof, to question the Church’s traditional interpretation of Scripture. And it was written before the Church’s decree against teaching or defending Copernicanism, which was dated 5 March 1616. Thus it reflects Galileo’s thought on the tidal proof at a relatively tranquil period in his life—well before he got embroiled in the bitter controversies over Scriptural interpretation that would lead ultimately to his trial and condemnation by the Church in 1633. Let me conclude my lecture with a brief look at that trial and what it was all about.37 In 1623 a Florentine cardinal named Maffeo Barberini, who had been a friend of Galileo, became pope as Urban VIII. When Galileo came to Rome shortly after the election, Urban VIII granted the scientist the favor of six audiences. Although the previous pope, Paul V, had prohibited Galileo from writing on the Copernican system, most

36. Ibid., 214–15. 37. For a fuller exposition, see my “Galileo’s Science and Trial of 1633,” The Wilson Quarterly 7 (1983): 154–64. 82 william a. wallace scholars agree that during the audiences Galileo was able to obtain permission from Urban to resume work on that delicate subject. Galileo started to work right away and by 1630 had finished what he personally regarded as his masterwork. The title he proposed for it was a Dialogue on the Tides, but it is now known as the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican. In it Galileo evaluated all the evidence and arguments for and against the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems, came down heavily on the side of the Copernicans and made the Ptolemaists and Aristotelians look foolish in the process. Galileo car- icatured their positions through a fictional character, the inept Simpli- cio, who found his philosophy in the text of Aristotle rather than in the book of nature. Galileo had difficulty obtaining permission to have the Dialogue published. The Dominican Niccolò Riccardi, charged with censoring the work, was mindful of the decree against Copernicanism handed down in 1616. So he had Galileo add a new preface and a note at the end dis- claiming proof of the Copernican system and labeling the tidal argument as a pure hypothesis instead. Riccardi then gave his approval to the doctored manuscript and the book was printed at Florence in 1632. In Renaissance style the Dialogue reports a discussion that takes place over four days among the fictional characters Salviati, Sagredo, and Sim- plicio, with a different series of arguments being developed in the course of each day. On the first day Salviati, Galileo’s mouthpiece, argues that there is no clear dichotomy between the celestial and terrestrial regions, a central tenet of Aristotle’s cosmology. He maintains that the world is one, probably constructed of the same kind of material (for example, mountains on the moon just like those on earth) and probably undergoing the same kinds of motion.38 The main topic on the second day is the daily rotation of the earth on its axis. Here Galileo rebuts most of the proofs that the earth is at rest, such as the fact that a stone dropped from a tower always falls at its foot. He shows that, if one knows the principles of mechanics (which he had demonstrated at Padua but had yet to publish), the proofs offered yield the same results whether the earth is still or actually turning. These results, he admits, do not prove that the earth is turning. They simply destroy the proofs of his adversaries that it must be at rest. The earth’s diurnal rotation is thus left an open question.39 The third day is devoted to a more difficult problem: whether the earth is immobile in the center of the universe or actually travels in a

38. Galileo’s Logic, 218–22. 39. Ibid., 222–25. The Influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic 83 large annual orbit around the sun. Here Galileo argues by analogy: since he has demonstrated that the other planets revolve about the sun, and that Jupiter carries its four moons along with it, the earth and its moon likely do the same. Further, earthly revolution might explain changes he has observed in the motion of sunspots.40 Finally, on the fourth day Galileo reinforces the previous two days’ conclusions by showing how they provide a simple explanation of a universally observed phenomenon, the motion of the tides. His argument is essentially the same as he had sketched to Cardinal Orsini in 1616, already known to Urban VIII, who had discouraged Galileo from using it. The proposal is that the combination of the earth’s daily rotation on its axis with its annual revolution around the sun results in unequal forces being exerted on the waters on the earth’s surface.41 These unequal forces give rise to the tides. The “proof” is one Galileo had worked on for years without being able to make convincing. Whatever effect the earth’s movement might have on the tides was completely undetectable by measurements made in Galileo’s day. His was still only a probable argument, as he had presented it to Cardinal Orsini sixteen years before. In the preface to the Dialogue he now called it a fantasia ingegnosa, an “ingenious fantasy.” But still he tried to pass it off as a serious proof. All we can say is that his logic failed him in the end, and he paid an awful price. Only sixteen months before his death and while still under house ar- rest, on 14 September 1640 Galileo wrote a letter to Fortunio Liceti explaining what it meant to be a true follower of Aristotle and stating that, in matters of logic, he had been an Aristotelian all his life.42 That simple statement, of course, has given rise to much controversy. When the letter is read in the light of the information available in Favaro’s National Edition, the background required for its understanding is missing. But then the true puzzle posed by the letter to Liceti becomes clear. It is not that Galileo identifies himself as an Aristotelian that is controversial, but rather how he could possess sufficient knowledge of Aristotelian logic to employ it in the way he claims. The problem is insoluble without knowledge of Galileo’s early Latin manuscripts, and particularly MS 27, the one containing his logical questions. Only when one of his last letters is read in relation to this, one of his first manuscripts, do we have the key to this puzzle and, with it, evidence of a very real influence of Aristotle on Galileo’s thought.

40. Ibid., 225–26. 41. Ibid., 226–33. 42. Ibid., xv, 295. 4 Wrestling with a Wraith André Semery, S.J. (1630–1717) on Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable JOHN P. DOYLE

I. Philosophers have traditionally been concerned with thinking and its boundaries in relation to things. Of course, any such concern immediately provokes a further query about what is a thing? The prima facie answer might be that a thing is whatever is or can be, which is to say, whatever is actual or possible. In this way, the notion of “thing” seems convertible with that of “being.” By medieval philosophers, thing was thus counted as one of the so-called “transcendentals” and both thing and being were further thought to be convertible with “true,” which was being as related to intellect,1 or, said another way, it was the intelligible, the knowable, or the thinkable. So, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) tells us that something is knowable precisely insofar as it is being.2 In contrast, whatever lacks being is to that extent unknowable.3 And that seems to end the matter. Or does it?4

1. See, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. I, a. 1, ed. R. Spiazzi, O.P., 8th ed. (Turin: Marietti, 1949), 1–4. 2. See, e.g., In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis expositio, I, 1, ed. M. Maggiolo, O.P. (Turin: Marietti, 1954), n. 7, p. 4: “unumquodque cognoscibile est, inquantum est ens;” and Sum- ma contra gentiles I, c. 71, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Opera omnia, tom. 13 (Rome: Gar- roni, 1918), 207: “nam unumquodque, quantum habet de esse, tantum habet de cognoscibilitate.” 3. See Summa theologiae q. I, a. 89, 7, ad 3, in Opera omnia, vol. 5 (Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1889), 382: “sicut deﬁcit aliquid ab entitate, ita deﬁcit a cognoscibilitate.” 4. At this point, let me note that two directions seem optional. One is “up”—toward God, who for thinkers in the traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity would be at once Supreme Being and yet in Himself unknowable and ineffable for us. Many philosophers have explored in this direction, which is not of concern for this essay. Rather, our present concern looks in a second direction—“down,” to the lower boundary of what is knowable.

84 On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 85

II. Parmenides of Elea (fl. ca. 485 b.c.) had already stated the issue in starkest terms. For anyone who would speak or think in a true or meaningful way there are apparently two roads open—“is or is not” (e[stin h[ oujk e[stin).5 On the road of “is” there is congruence between being and knowing, such that it is the same to be and to be known or knowable.6 Contrasted with this, the road of “is not” is one which is absolutely impassible.7 What is not is in no sense knowable. A century later, Plato (428/7–348/7 b.c.) was not entirely satisfied with this. So, in the Theatetus, in a discussion of false statements, in the person of Socrates, he raises the question, can any man think what is not, either about something which is, or absolutely? 8 A few lines after, he seems to answer that such thinking is impossible.9 In the Sophist, again discussing the object of false statements, he reflects upon “what is not” and notes the difficulty involved in knowing or speaking of it.10 Later in the same dialogue he passes to a general consideration of how we can speak or think of non-being as the Form of the Other.11 Aristotle (384/3–322/1 b.c.) accepts the congruence of truth and being.12 Yet he tells us that in some way we can speak (and think) about non-being. We do in fact say with truth that non-being is non-being.13 Furthermore, we can speak, and presumably (in as much as our words express our concepts)14 think, about objects which do not and probably cannot exist outside the mind—objects such as “the goat-stag” (oJ tragevlafo"). Actually, the goat-stag was not introduced into philosophy by Aristo-

5. See Parmenides, Fr. 2, as cited by G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Preso- cratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), §291, 245. 6. See “q.” Fr. 3, in The Presocratic Philosophers, §292, 246, #2. 7. See “q, q, q (q) q.” Fr. 2, ll. 6–8, in The Presocratic Philosophers, §291, 245. 8. Theaetetus 188d: “q, q.” 9. Ibid., 189b: “q,q.” 10. Sophist 238c–: “q, q.” 11. See Sophist 257b–263b. On Plato’s doctrine here, cf. F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 114–20, 212–14, 289–320. Also See L. M. de Rijk, “On Ancient and Mediaeval Semantics and Metaphysics (4, 5, and 6),” Vivari- um, 19 (1981): 1–46 and 81–125; 20 (1982): 97–127; idem, Plato’s Sophist: A Philosophical Commentary (Oxford: North Holland, 1986), 82–92, 164–85, and 302–305. For a recent treatment of Plato dealing generally in the Sophist with both being and non-being, cf. Michael Frede, “Die Frage nach dem Seienden: Sophistes,” in Platon: Seine Dialoge in der Sicht neuer Forschungen, ed. Theo Kobusch and Burkhard Mojsisch (Darmstadt: Wis- senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 181–99. 12. Metaphysics II.1, 993b 30–31: “q.” 13. Metaphysics IV.2, 1003b 10: “q.” 14. See Perihermeneias I.16a 4–5. 86 john p. doyle tle. Plato earlier mentioned it in the Republic, Book VI (488a) as an imaginary animal that the art of a painter might produce. However, it was Aristotle (and his commentators after) who spoke of it in ways that are relevant to this essay—in different places linking it to issues of being, essences, things, truth, and intelligibility. Thus, in the Physics Aristo- tle speaks of a goat-stag and a sphinx as non-existing things and rhetori- cally asks where would they be?15 In the Prior Analytics, he has stated that the goat-stag is knowable in the sense that it can be known not to exist.16 Again, in the Perihermeneias he has given a goat-stag as an example of something that has meaning but no truth or falsity “unless being or non- being be added.”17 This is at least in part to say that even though the composition of a goat and a stag may be significative,18 it falls short of the synthesis in the second operation of the intellect which is the locus of being as true (to; o]n w" ajlhqev").19 In the Posterior Analytics he speaks of it as non-being and says that even though the formula or the name may be significative, the goat-stag itself cannot possibly be known, apparently for the reason that it has no “what” (Scholastics will later say “quiddity” [quidditas]) or essence.20 From all of this, it appears that the goat-stag would be an example of what in another place he has called “a false thing” (pra`gma yeu`do").21 Among Aristotle’s commentators there was question as to how something like a goat-stag should be classified. On this the two arguably most influential commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias (ca. 200 a.d.) and Averroes (1126–98), differ. For Alexander a goat-stag would be an “accidental being” (Aristotle’s to; o[n kata; sumbebhkov"22) in as much as it would be reducible to a (mental) combination of two or more possible objects.23 Averroes, on the other hand, after dividing being as either in or outside the intellect,24 and equating being in the intellect with Aristo-

15. Physics IV.1, 208a 30–31: “q;” 16. Prior Analytics I.38, 49a 24: “q [q].” For this interpretation, cf. W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 410. 17. Perihermeneias I.16a 16: “q, q.” 18. In this “goat-stag” will be distinguished by later writers from non-signiﬁcative nonsense words like “blityri” or “skindapsos”; see Sten Ebbesen, “The Chimera’s Diary,” in The Logic of Being: Historical Studies, ed. Simo Knuuttila and Jaakko Hintikka (Boston: Reidel, 1986), 118. 19. See Metaphysics VI.2, 1026a 33–1026b 2. 20. See Posterior Analytics II.7, 92b 5–8, esp.: “q.”4.” See also Topica IV.1, 121a 2l–25. 21. See Metaphysics V.29, 1024b 17–18. 22. See, e.g., Metaphysics V.7, 1017a 7; VI.2, 1026a 34–1027a 28; XI.8, 1065a 22. 23. See Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica commentaria, VI. 2, ed. Michael Hayduck, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. 1 (Berlin: Reimer, 1891), 448, ll. 37–39: “q, q.” For earlier Stoic highlighting of the juxtaposition involved in such objects, cf. Theo Kobusch, Sein und Sprache: Historische Grundlegung einer Ontologie der Sprache (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 29–32, 45–46. 24. In Metaphysics VI, c. 1, t. 8 (f. 152r): “et intendebat per hunc sermonem declarare On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 87 tle’s being as true,25 evidently regards objects which involve “opposites existing simultaneously in the intellect” (opposita simul in intellectu), as the very model of Aristotelian being as true.26 Not surprisingly, Averroes has then treated the goat-stag (which as we shall see involves simultaneous opposites of a goat and a nongoat in the intellect) as something that, while it may not exist in reality outside the mind, does have status as a “thing” (if not a being) within the mind. In this, it is like false propositions,27 which for Aristotle somehow existed in the mind as non-being.28 One point here is that whichever understanding one has of it, a goat- stag must be excluded from the subject genus of Aristotelian metaphysics. For Aristotle has made it plain that both being per accidens and being as true are outside the subject genus of “being in so far as it is being” (to; o[n h|/ o[n), which is restricted to actual being in the categories.29 At the end of the sixteenth century, Francisco Suárez, S.J. (1548–1617), Scholasticism’s Doctor eximius, in the Disputationes Metaphysicae, his watershed synthesis of what was basically an Aristotelian metaphysics,30 retained these two exclusions.31 For Suárez the subject of metaphysics be- diversitatem duorum entium, scilicet entis, quod est in intellectu, et entis, quod est extra intellectum.” 25. Averroes, Epitome in Librum Metaphysicae Aristotelis, tr. 1 (Venice, 1562), (f. 357v K): “et ideo nomen entis revertitur ad haec duo tantum, scilicet, ad verum et ad id quod est extra intellectum.” 26. For this, cf. In Metaphys. VI, c. 1, t. 8, in Aristotelis Metaphysicorum libri XIIII. cum Aver- rois Cordubensis in eosdem commentariis (Venice, 1562), vol. 8, f. 152r–v. For some of the dimensions of the difference here between Averroes and Alexander as it works out in later Scholastic debate, cf. my article: “Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags, and Man-Lions: A Seventeenth-Century Debate about Impossible Objects,” Review of Metaphysics 48 (1995): 771–808. 27. Epitome, tr. I, f. 359vI–K: “Haec dictio res, arabice alfciai, dicitur de omni eo, quod dicitur dictio entis. Et quandoque dicitur de communiori, scilicet, de omni re concepta in anima, sive ita se habeat extra animam, sive non, ut hircocervus, chimera. Et ideo dicimus dicere haec res vel est, vel non est. et ideo nomen rei transumitur ad falsas propositiones: quod tamen non facit nomen entis.” 28. See Metaphysics VI.2, 1027b 17–31. 29. See Metaphysics VI.2, 1026a 33–1026b 2; ibid. VI.4, 1027b 34–1028a 3; and ibid. XI.8, 1065a 22–24. On this, cf. Theo Kobusch, Sein und Sprache, 25. In n. 10, 503. Kobusch has also cited Bernhard Bolzano’s Wissenschaftslehre, ed. Wolfgang Schultz, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Meiner, 1929; reprint, Aalen: Scientia, 1981), vol. 1, 558, 118: “Ueberhaupt scheint Aristoteles nur an die Sphäre der existirenden Dinge, nicht aber an jene des bloss Möglichen oder auch gar nicht Möglichen gedacht zu haben.” 30. This is supported by the facts: (1) that Suárez prefaced his Disputationes with an In- dex locupletissimus which amounted to a commentary per modum quaestionis on the Meta- physics of Aristotle and which contains exhaustive cross references between Aristotle’s work and his own, and (2) that in the course of the Disputationes, he has cited Aristotle 1735 times! For this last, cf. J. Iturrioz, S.J., “Fuentes de la metafísica de Suárez,” Pensamiento, número extraordinario (1948), 40. 31. For this, cf. F. Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (hereafter: DM), 1.1, nn. 5–6, in Opera omnia, vol. 25 (Paris: Vivès, 1856–66), 3–4. 88 john p. doyle came “being insofar as it is real being” (ens inquantum ens reale).32 With the addition of the word “real,” he not only included possible as well as actual being but also highlighted Aristotle’s division of being into categorial being and “being as true,” as well as his exclusion of the latter from the subject of metaphysics. At the same time, Suárez himself devoted the last Disputation of his work to a landmark explication of “beings of reason.”33 In the course of this, he followed Averroes by describing these beings as having existence only in the intellect34 and equating them with Aristotle’s being as true.35 But even more, he also saw their model instance in radically self-contradictory impossible beings (like the goat-stag), which perfectly ﬁt the Averroistic description of having existence only in the intellect.36

III. Within seventeenth-century Jesuit philosophy, there was constant debate about what was possible or impossible.37 I have written previously on the matter of self-contradictory, and thus totally impossible, objects and their treatment by seventeenth-century Jesuits after Suárez.38 Brieﬂy, some Jesuit thinkers (e.g. Thomas Compton Carleton [1591– 1666], Sylvester Mauro [1619–87], Maximilien Wietrowski [1660– 1737], as well as André Semery) admit the existence of such objects while others (e.g. Richard Lynch [1610–76] and John Morawski [1633– 1700]) do not. These latter, like Alexander before, simply reduce them to an aggregate of possible parts which taken together cannot be real-

32. DM 1, s. 1, n. 26; in Opera Omnia, vol. 25, 11. 33. For an English version, cf.: Francisco Suárez, On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Ratio- nis), Metaphysical Disputation LIV, ed. John P. Doyle (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995). 34. DM 54, s. 1, n. 4 (vol. 26, 1016), trans. Doyle, 62: “Et ideo recte deﬁniri solet, ens rationis, esse illud, quod habet esse objective tantum in intellectu, seu esse id, quod a ratione cogitatur ut ens, cum tamen in se entitatem non habeat. Unde recte dixit Com- ment., 6 Metaphys., comment. 3 [sic], ens rationis solum posse habere esse in objective in intellectu.” The correct text of Averroes, In Metaph. VI, comm. 8; (Venice, 1562), VIII, f. 152r, D.1: “loquamur de ente veridicanti, secundum quod est veridicans, et hoc est illud, quod est in anima. haec enim entia facta sunt ab intellectu .l.l. et est universaliter istud ens tantum in afﬁrmatione aut negatione.” 35. See DM 54, 1, 4 (vol. 26, 1016); trans. Doyle, 61. 36. On this see my article, “Suarez on Beings of Reason and Truth (1),” Vivarium 25 (1987): 47–75, esp. 69–75. 37. See Antonio Bernaldo de Quiros, S.J. (1613–68), Opus philosophicum, Tract. VII, Metaphysica, disp. 107, s. 3, n. 23 (Leiden, 1666), 743, speaking of “all the disputations about possibility or impossibility which are taken up everywhere in the Schools” (disputationes omnes circa possibilitatem, vel impossibilitatem, quae passim in scholis instituuntur).” 38. See John P. Doyle, “Another God, Chimerae, Goat-Stags,” as cited in note 26, above. On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 89 ized outside the mind and which precisely as taken together are unthinkable. Oppositewise, the former regard impossible objects as things which cannot be realized outside the mind but which are quite realiz- able within the mind as in themselves knowable or thinkable.

IV. André Semery was born at Rheims on February 8, 1630. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rome on March 10, 1652.39 Here he would have come under the direction of Sylvester Mauro who was in that year re- gent of studies at the Jesuit Collegium Romanum.40 Almost certainly, Se- mery would also have been one of Mauro’s students during the years in which Mauro taught philosophy (1653–58) and then theology (1658/ 9–84) at the Collegium.41 Afterwards, Semery himself ﬁrst taught humanities and then philosophy in the Jesuit College at Fermo42 and later at the Collegium Romanum. At the Collegium he twice between 1668 and 1674 taught a three-year course, Triennium, in logic, physics, and metaphysics.43 His lectures were explicitly based upon the Analytics, the Physics, the De Anima, the De Coelo, and the De Generatione et corruptione of Aristotle. Dictated by Semery himself and ﬁrst published in two volumes in 1674, the Triennium went through four more editions, at Rome in 1682, Cologne in 1688, Venice in 1708, and Venice again, in three volumes, in 1723.44 Meriting mention is the fact that, even though he was listed as the professor of metaphysics at the Collegium in 1670–71 and 1673–74,45 Se- mery excluded systematic treatment of metaphysics from his Triennium,

39. On Semery’s biography and works, cf. A. de Backer and C. Sommervogel, Biblio- thèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, vol. 7 (Bruxelles: Schepens, 1890–1900), 7115. See also, Georgius Fatouros, “Semery, André, S.J.,” in Biographisch-bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, ed. F. W. Bautz and T. Bautz, vol. 9 (Herzberg: 1975–), 1380–81; and Biographie universelle (Michaud): Ancienne et moderne, vol. 39 (Paris: Desplaces, n. d.), 31. 40. On the Collegium, cf. Riccardo G. Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano dal suo inizio (1551) alla soppressione della Compagnia di Gesù (1773) (Rome: Universitas Gregoriana, 1954). For Mauro at the Collegium, cf. ibid., esp. 235–36. 41. For a listing of Mauro’s activity at the Collegium, cf. Ignazio Iparraguirre, S.J., “Elen- co dei rettori e professori del Collegio Romano (1551–1773),” in Villoslada, Storia del Col- legio, 321–36, esp. 322–25, 327, 330, 332, and 334. 42. For some later publications at Fermo in the Roman province, cf. Backer and Som- mervogel, Bibliothèque, vol. 3, 640–42; also ibid., vol. 11, 1106, where mention is made of a letter of Pope Paul V in 1609 which founded the College at Fermo. 43. For exact dates, cf. Iparraguirre, “Elenco dei Rettori,” in Villoslada, Storia, esp. 326, 328, 330, and 332. 44. For the edition I have used, cf. Triennium philosophicum quod P. Andreas Semery Remus e Societate Jesu in Collegio Romano philosophiae iterum professor dictabat Jo. Baptista Passerus eiusdem discipulus edidit, 3 vols. (Rome, 1674). 45. See Iparraguirre, “Elenco,” 328. 90 john p. doyle for the reason, which he gives in the Introduction to his third year course on the De Generatione (or as he prefers: the De Ortu et interitu), that the subject matter of metaphysics had been already treated in his logic and other places.46 His disciple and editor, Giovanni Battista Passero, tells us that it was common practice at the Collegium to treat metaphysical matters in physics and both metaphysics and physics in logic.47 After teaching philosophy, Semery spent twenty-nine years (1679– 1708) at the Collegium as a professor of moral theology.48 In addition to having a reputation for knowledge, he was distinguished by his “rare tal- ent” for public speaking.49 He was known as a defender of the Catholic religion against the Calvinists.50 At eighty years of age, he published at Brescia a quarto volume, entitled Difesa della vera religione contro il grosso volume dei pretesi reformatori e reformati, directed against the Calvinist minister, Giacomo Picenino (1654–1714). Picenino in turn replied at Gene- va in 1712 with a volume entitled, Il trionfo della vera religione.51 After his retirement, Semery became Censor of Books for the Jesuit Assistancy of France and a theologian for the fourteenth General of the Jesuits, Michelangelo Tamburini (1648–1731). Ten days before his eighty- seventh birthday, Semery died on January 28, 1717.

V. By both the Constitutions and the Ratio Studiorum of his Order, Semery was obliged to follow Aristotle in philosophy.52 And just a glance at his

46. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 3, 1–2: “Metaphysicam autem, cuius nomen hic annus habet, non ita in hunc annum reservavimus, ut non illam magna ex parte in alias huiusce operis partes distribuerimus. Quam multa enim in Logica, et Physica, quae Metaphysicae propria sunt, tractata invenies? hic tamen cum de Deo, ut pote prima rerum omnium causa, agendum sit; habebis praecipua.” 47. Ibid., Ad lectorem, a J. B. Passero: “Triennalem Philosophiae cursum quem a Magistro meo diligenter excepi, habes hic amice lector, suos ita distributum in annos; ut nulla ex tribus Scientiis quae toti cursui nomen imponunt, sine aliarum consortio prodeat; sed Metaphysica physicis, utrisque Logica, ex more jam in hac Universitate recepto, promis- cua videantur. We may note that Suárez had earlier noted and decried such shifting of metaphysical items into logic; cf. DM 1, s. 4, n. 13, 25:29; ibid., n. 29, 35; also cf. DM 39, prooem, nn. 1–2; vol. 26, 504–05. 48. See Iparraguirre, “Elenco,” 325. 49. See Biographie universelle, vol. 39, 31. 50. See Villoslada, Storia, 235. 51. Biographie universelle, vol. 39, 31. 52. Sancti Ignatii de Loyola, Constitutiones Societatis Jesu, P. IV, c. 14, n. 3, in Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu (Rome: Borgo S. Spirito, 1938), 151; and Ratio Studiorum (1599), Regulae Professoris Philosophiae, n. 2, in “Ratio Studiorum et institutiones scholasticae Soci- etatis Jesu, per Germaniam olim vigentes collectae concinnatae dilucidatae a G. M. Pachtler, S.J.,” in Monumenta Germaniae Paedagogica, vol. 5 (Berlin: Hofmann, 1887), 328. On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 91

Triennium will conﬁrm that he did that.53 With particular regard to the goat-stag and knowing the unknowable, he was working within the context of Aristotle’s Categories, to which in volume one (461–625) he devoted a Disputation,54 which was in turn divided into eight Questions: 1) on univocal, equivocal, and analogous (as relating to being and the categories) (461–71); 2) on the univocity of being with respect to substance and accident (472–93); 3) whether the differences of being pre- scind from being (493–504); 4) whether being is a genus with respect to substance and accident, God, and creatures (505–15); 5) about the possible (515–30); 6) about the impossible (531–61); 7) about substance (562–72); and 8) about relation (573–626). Predictably, the goat-stag and knowing the unknowable are treated within the compass of Ques- tion VI, which is further divided into four articles. In the ﬁrst of these (531–35), Semery inquires “What is the Impossible?” Article II (535– 39) asks whether there is any “metaphysical” being of reason. In Article III (539–55) he answers objections to his position in the preceding Arti- cle. Finally, in Article IV (555–61) he addresses a common question of the day, much agitated among the Jesuits from the time of Gabriel Vázquez (1549–1604)55 and Suárez,56 “Does God produce beings of reason?” While this last question is important and interesting in its own right, it lies outside the concern of the present essay.

VI. Article I of Question VI contrasts the possible and the impossible. The possible for Semery here is what the Scholastics generally referred to as a logical possible,57 that is to say, something whose composing notes do not contradict one another. Opposite this, an impossible is something whose notes are incompatible inasmuch as they are mutually contradictory.58 The impossibility at issue, therefore, is understood to re-

53. For the Triennium itself, P. Geny, S.J. (Brevis conspectus historiae philosophiae ad usum seminariorum, 4th ed. [Rome: Universitas Gregoriana, 1947], 328) has little regard, calling its doctrine “neither pure nor profound.” While Wilhelm Risse (Die Logik der Neuzeit, 2 vols. [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann-Holzboog, 1964–70], vol. 2, 327) mentions it only in passing as an example of a simple Jesuit textbook which (following Suárez; e.g., cf. DM 54, prooem, vol. 26, 1015; trans. Doyle, 57–58) conceives logic to be a practical science dealing with mental operations, he does regard it as clear in a way that is worth noticing. 54. Disputatio IV: In Aristotelis Praedicamenta. 55. For Vázquez’s opinion on this, cf. esp. Commentariorum ac disputationum in primam partem Summae Theologiae Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, 2 vols. (Venice, 1608), q. 28, a. 2, disp. 118, vol. 2, 52–56. 56. See DM 54, s. 2, n. 19–24 (vol. 26, 1024–36); trans. Doyle, 79–84. 57. See, e.g., Suárez, DM, 43, s. 4, n. 2 (vol. 26, 645); ibid., 42, s. 3, n. 9, 613. 58. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 531: “Possibili opponitur impossibile, adeoque per 92 john p. doyle sult from an object’s own clashing notes rather than from any extrinsic supposed incapacity on the part of God.59 Semery refers to it as “intrinsic” and “passive” rather than extrinsic and active impossibility.60 By the very fact of its “being” what it is, that is, through its own “quiddity,” it excludes itself from the actual world, since what it is precludes its actual (Semery says “physical”) existence.61 But this still leaves the matter of “intentional” existence that he will treat in Article II.62

VII. The question in Article II is by itself instructive. Semery asks: “Whether there are any Metaphysical Beings of Reason?”63 Conceding that what is impossible cannot exist outside the mind, the new question is whether it can exist at least in an intentional way—whether it can, that is, be conceived. In terms used by other Scholastics of the time,64 Se- mery is asking whether there are any “metaphysical” beings of reason. This is to ask whether there are any objects terminating our knowledge that involve mutually destructive notes or properties.65 Here the reader should note the term “metaphysical.” While Aristotle himself never used the term, it was from ancient times used to designate definitionem possibilis facile devenitur in cognitionem impossibilis. Quemadmodum enim possibile est id, cuius praedicata non se mutuo destruunt, seu quod non involvit repugnantiam in praedicatis ipsum constituentibus: sic etiam impossibile recte dicetur id, cuius praedicata se invicem destruunt, seu quod in praedicatis ipsum constitutentibus repugnantiam involvit.” 59. Ibid., vol. 1, 533: “impossibilitas objecti intelligitur ex praedicatis objecti, ex quibus patet divinam virtutem ad ipsum terminari non posse.” 60. Ibid., vol. 1, 532: “dicimus praeter impossibilitatem activam; nimirum praeter repugnantiam, quae in Deo est ad ponendum id, quod dicitur impossible, seu ad ponendum, et non ponendum idem, admittendam insuper impossibilitatem passivam intrinse- cam rei impossibili, ipsam scilicet repugnantiam inter praedicata constituentia objectum, quod dicitur impossibile.” 61. Ibid, vol. 1, 534–35: “Habes ex dictis impossibile per suummet conceptum quiddi- tativum esse rationem sui ipsius exclusivam e rerum natura; quod enim per se ipsum est id quod non potest existere; habet de seipso excludere a se omnem existentiam physicam.” 62. Ibid., vol. 1, 535: “An vero cum exclusione essentiali omnis existentiae physicae, possit habere aliquam existentiam intentionalem, quaerendum est sequenti articulo.” 63. Ibid., art. 2: “An detur Ens rationis metaphysicum.” 64. See, e.g., Sylvester Mauro, S.J., Quaestiones philosophicae, ed. M. Liberatore, 3 vols. (Rome, 1658; reprint, Paris: Bloud et Barral, 1875–76), q. 6, ad 4; vol. 1, 162; and ibid., q. 48; 482. 65. Ibid.: “Impossibile adeo nequit existere, ut per hanc ipsam existendi impotentiam recte definiatur. Dum autem quaeritur, an saltem existere possit intentionaliter, hoc est, an saltem concipi possit? quaeritur, quod alii aliis terminis proponunt: an detur ens rationis metaphysicum: hoc est, an intellectui nostro ita repraesentari possit aliquid impossibile, ut objectum terminans nostram cognitionem sit aliquid involvens praedicata sese mutuo destruentia.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 93 the science which he called variously, “first philosophy,” “theology,” or “wisdom.” As already mentioned, for Aristotle the subject genus of that science was actual being in the categories. What is happening now—indeed, by Semery’s time it was commonplace for the Scholastics—is that “metaphysical” is being employed not for what exists in extramental reality but for what exists only in the mind. That is, metaphysical indicates not actual being in the categories (which will be called “physical” being) but rather being as true! 66

VIII. On the question of whether or not there are any metaphysical beings of reason, Semery tells us, two different opinions exist. Many more re- cent67 authors (possibly Lynch and Morawski as mentioned above) deny that any objects terminating acts of the intellect are composed of mutually contradictory notes.68 Instead, they say, an object like a goat-stag is called impossible in the wake of an essentially disordered tending of our intellect toward two possible objects, a goat and a stag. The intellect tends in such way as to unite, in the course of its tending (exercite), these two things which are essentially non-unitable—thus resulting in a con- trived object which is (extrinsically) denominated69 as impossible.70 The second opinion holds that when something impossible is conceived there is indeed an object composed from incompatible notes that terminates the act of the intellect. This is a so-called metaphysical being of reason, which, says Semery, is commonly deﬁned as “that which

66. For some of this, cf. Sven K. Knebel, Wille, Würfel und Wahrscheinlichkeit: Das System der moralischen Notwendigkeit in der Jesuitenscholastik 1550–1700 (Hamburg: Meiner, 2000), 489–91, esp. nn. 8, 9, and 11. 67. This seems to be a seventeenth-century Scholastic (or at least Jesuit) equivalent of the medieval “quidam,” used to refer to contemporaries without naming them. 68. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 535: “In hac controversia multi ex recentioribus negant dari ens rationis metaphysicum: seu ullum objectum involvens contradictoria terminare ullum actum nostri intellectus.” 69. On extrinsic denomination in Semery’s background here, cf. John P. Doyle, “Prole- gomena to a Study of Extrinsic Denomination in the Work of Francis Suarez, S.J.,” Vivarium 22 (1984): 121–60. 70. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 535–36: “Aiunt autem hoc et illud objectum de- nominari impossibile per tendentiam nostri intellectus essentialiter indebitam in plura objecta possibilia; puta quando concipis Hyrcocervum nullum objectum praeter Hyrcum et Cervum, terminat hanc tuam cognitionem: tam autem Hyrcus, quam Cervus sunt quid possibile. Quia tamen tali modo tendendi versaris circa Hyrcum, et Cervum, ut exercite unias in identitatem quandam Hyrcum et Cervum, hoc est objecta essentialiter inunibilia; propterea hoc objectum denominatur impossibile.” This position in its own way presages the semantic (as opposed to ontological) explanation of non-existent objects which is found in contemporary discussions; on this, cf. e.g. F. Nef, L’objet quelconque: Recherches sur l’ontologie de l’objet (Paris: Vrin, 1998), esp. 187–244. 94 john p. doyle has being only objectively in the intellect”71—in such a way that it excludes both actual and possible existence outside the mind.72 Thus, of course, it is outside the ambit of “real” being which, as we saw above, was the subject of Suarezian metaphysics. This second opinion Semery adopts as his own73 and proves it ﬁrst with an argument that goes back at least to Suárez74 (and which one of his opponents has mockingly referred to as “the Achilles” of those who would espouse truly impossible objects.)75 So he says: those who deny that the impossible is conceived, in their very denial themselves conceive it.76 If they do not, then when they conceive a goat-stag they cannot say that it is impossible, since they are conceiving nothing more than what is possible.77 Couple this with the fact that in the tending itself of the intellect there is also only what is possible, since in fact such a tending is given.78 The upshot is that in the whole complexus of a goat, a stag, and the intellect’s tending there is nothing impossible—and yet the other side will, like Semery himself, say that many things are impossible!79

IX. In Article III, which is by far the most intricate and difﬁcult of the four articles, Semery further explains his own opinion and its difference from that of his opponents by raising and answering a number of objec-

71. Note that this is the precise description of a being of reason which Suárez gives and attributes to Averroes; cf. n. 34, above. 72. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 536: “Alii asserunt vere, et proprie concipi ipsummet impossibile: ita ut ex parte objecti respondeat actui nostri intellectus aliquid involvens praedicata repugnantia: sive ita ut objectum ad quod terminatur nostra cognitio, sit id cui repugnat existere physice, adeoque aiunt dari ens rationis metaphysicum; quod communiter definitur: Id quod habet esse tantum objective in Intellectu Ly Tantum excludente non solum actum, sed etiam potentiam existendi realiter, et physice.” 73. Ibid.: “Haec secunda sententia tenenda est.” 74. See DM 54, s. 1, n. 7; vol. 26, 1017. 75. For this, cf. Joannes Morawski, S.J., Totius philosophiae principia per quaestiones de Ente in communi ex praelectionibus, disp. 1, q. 2, n. 4 (Leiden, 1688), 16. 76. Ibid.: “Probatur autem primo, quia illi ipsi qui negant concipi impossibile, concipiunt impossibile; ergo impossibile concipitur, et fit ens rationis.” 77. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 537: “Si id quod concipiunt, quando concipiunt Hyrcocervum nihil est distinctum a possibili, nihil concipiunt, de quo dicere possint: est impossibile.” 78. Ibid.: “nec in objecto quod attingunt, nec in modo quo attingunt quicquam repe- riatur, quod non sit possibile. In objecto nihil esse impossibile, ipsi fatentur. In modo nihil esse impossibile est evidens, quandoquidem de facto datur talis modus tenendi.” 79. Ibid.: “et consequenter complexum ex tali objecto, et tali modo tendendi non est quid impossibile: et tamen certum est etiam adversarios de multis dicere quod sint impossibilia.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 95 tions, which we will follow in detail.80 First, the opponents will argue (in good Aristotelian fashion)81 that there is nothing in the intellect that is not first in the senses. But what is impossible cannot be sensed. There- fore, it cannot exist in the intellect.82 In reply, Semery distinguishes: If this means in the senses either through its own or “alien” species, he concedes the major premises;83 But if it means (only) through its own species, he denies that premiss and ultimately denies the conclusion drawn from it.84 It is true that an impossible object does not emit species, since it neither does nor can actually exist. But aren’t there many things which we understand by just borrowing species from other things?85 For seventeenth-century Jesuit philosophers, standard examples (which Semery did not have to cite) of knowing through alien species would be thinking of God as light or of an angel as a youth.86

X. The second objection from the opponents of impossible objects is that a chimera, which here for practical purposes equates with a goat- stag,87 is “outside the adequate object of the intellect,” and therefore it cannot be conceived. For just as the sense of sight can only attain what is within the range of its adequate object, namely, what is colored, or hearing perceives only what has sound, so the intellect can only attain what is

80. Our reasons for this are twofold. First, as will be manifest to the reader, the twists and turns of Semery’s reasoning defy almost anything less than a literal translation. Sec- ond, Semery’s Latin text is very rare and English translations are non-existent; therefore, presenting his views in something close to a translation seems not just necessary but also valuable in its own right. 81. See De Anima II.8, 432a 3–14. 82. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 539: “Nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu: sed impossibile nequit esse in sensu; ergo nec in intellectu.” 83. Ibid.: “Resp. dist. mai. nihil est, etc. quod prius non fuerit in sensu; vel per species proprias, vel per alienas: conc. mai.” 84. Ibid., vol. 1, 539–40: “quod non fuerit in sensu per species proprias: nego ma. et eodem modo distincta minori: nego cons.” 85. Ibid., vol. 1, 540: “Certum est objectum impossibile non emittere species, cum neque sit, neque esse posit; sed quam multa intelligimus sine propriis speciebus, mutu- antes ab alienis objectis species, quibus haec et illa objecta nostris mentibus objiciamus?” 86. See, e.g., Thomas Compton Carleton, S.J., Philosophia universa, Logica, disp. 13, sec. 5, n. 3 (Anverse, 1649), 69: “ergo vere in mente quis habet inconceptibilia et impossibilia, sicut cum Deum quis instar lucis, Angelum instar juvenis cognoscit, vere lucem, et colores illos ac ﬁguram apprehendit.” 87. On this, cf. S. Ebbesen, “The Chimera’s Diary,” 115: “The chimera takes remarks about, e.g., the goat-stag as remarks aimed at itself. As a matter of fact, Aristotle and the Greek Aristotelian commentators prefer the goat-stag tragevlafo" and the centaur iJppokevntauro". In the Hellenistic period, the centaur, the scylla and the chimera are the standard examples. In Latin medieval texts the chimera (inherited from Manlius Boethius) is vastly more popular than any of the other composite animals.” 96 john p. doyle being. But, of course, a chimera is not being.88 To this, Semery summar- ily responds that the adequate object of the intellect is being over a whole range which includes both possible and impossible things.89

XI. Objection three is that even if the impossible were to be, by that very fact it would not be. But that, which if it were to be and by that very fact would not be, cannot be an actual object of the intellect.90 The antecedent is proven because what is impossible includes properties which would mutually cancel one another.91 Take, for example, a goat-stag, which is thus a goat-nongoat. By the very fact that it is a goat-nongoat it is not a goat-nongoat.92 This last is proven because, by the very fact that it is neither a goat nor a nongoat, it is not a goat-nongoat; for a goat- nongoat is something made of parts which would be a goat and a nongoat (that is, a goat and the negation of a goat).93 Accordingly, if either part is absent the whole which is composed of both is likewise absent.94 To this Semery replies with a re-statement of the “Achilles” argument: in this objection what is explicitly (signate) denied is in fact implicitly (exercite) afﬁrmed. For when the opponent thinks about a goat-nongoat and an identity between two things as they are mutually destructive of

88. Triennium philosophicum, vol. 1, 540: “Chimera est extra objectum adaequatum nostri intellectus: id quod est extra objectum adaequatum intellectus, nequit concipi; ergo Chimera nequit concipi. Minor est evidens; nulla enim potentia ultra suum objectum suos actus extendit. Potentia visiva ultra coloratum nihil percipit; potentia auditiva nihil ultra sonorum. Maior probatur: quia objectum adaequatum intellectus est ens: Chimera non est ens; ergo est extra objectum adaequatum nostri intellectus.” 89. Ibid.: “dic objectum adaequatum intellectus esse ens, secundum illam latitudinem acceptum, secundum quam non solum possibilia, sed etiam impossibilia compraehendit.” We may note here that Suárez (Tractatus de Anima, l. IV, c. 1, n. 4, in Opera omnia, vol. 3, 714) allowed a secondary intelligibility to pure beings of reason as falling under the adequate object of the intellect; but Semery is going farther to directly include impossible objects under that object. For Mauro earlier taking a similar position, cf. John P. Doyle, “Sil- vester Mauro, S.J. (1619–87) on Four Degrees of Abstraction,” International Philosophical Quarterly 36 (1996): 461–74, especially 470 and 474. 90. Triennium, disp. 4, q. 6, a. 3, vol. 1, 540: “Impossibile est id quod si esset, eo ipso non esset: id quod si esset eo ipso non esset, nequit esse actu objectum intellectus; ergo impossibile nequit esse actu objectum intellectus.” 91. Ibid.: “quia impossibile est id quod involvit contradictoria.” 92. Ibid., vol. 1, 540–41: “Accipe Hyrcocervum sive hyrcum non hyrcum; eo ipso quod est hyrcus non hyrcus, non est hyrcus non hyrcus.” 93. Ibid., vol. 1, 541: “Probatur; quia eo ipso quod non est neque hyrcus neque non hyrcus, non est hyrcus non hyrcus: hyrcus enim non hyrcus est aliquid constans ex hyrco et non hyrco tanquam ex partibus constituentibus.” 94. Ibid.: “deficientibus autem partibus deficit totum; et consequenter deficiente vel hyrco, vel non hyrco deficit totum ex hyrco et non hyrco compositum.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 97 one another, he is in fact doing what he says cannot be done.95 But letting that pass, even if an impossible is something which by the very fact that it is excludes itself from being, it is not for that reason incapable of terminating the tending of our intellect as it is affirming that very thing about it.96 Even more: it is just as easy for our intellect to conceive a goatstag-nongoatstag, that is to say: a goat-nongoat which is not a goat or a nongoat or a goat-nongoat, as to conceive only a goat-nongoat. That is, it is not more difficult for our intellect to grasp identity between a chimera and a non-chimera, than between two contradictories. Indeed, both identities are chimerical; for it is just as contradictory that a chimera is not a chimera or is a non-chimera as it is that a goat, for example, is not a goat or that it is a nongoat.97 Semery, however, is not prepared to grant that if what is impossible were to be that which it would be, by that very fact it would not be that which it would be. For, he (in a decidedly non-Aristotelian way) says, a goat-nongoat (i.e. a goat-stag) is essentially (quidditative) a goat-nongoat!98 Moreover, he says, the fact that the two extremes from which one fashions a goat-stag mutually destroy one another is not the reason his adversary has difficulty accepting this.99 For this is the very thing which an impossible is said to be, namely, that which is made up of mutually destructive properties.100 The idea seems to be that by now the opponent, inasmuch as he is talking about an impossible object, is already thinking of it as made up of mutually destructive properties.

95. Ibid.: “Resp. hac objectione probari exercite quod impugnantur signate: dum enim hyrcum non hyrcum mente revolvit Adervsarius, et identitatem inter duo sese mutuo destruentia: facit id quod negat fieri posse.” 96. Ibid.: “Etiamsi enim impossibile sit id quod eo ipso quod est, se ipsum excludit ab esse, non propterea non potest terminare tendentiam nostri intellectus hoc ipsum affir- mantis de ipso.” 97. Ibid., vol. 1, 541–42: “Imo non est difficilius nostro intellectui concipere hyrcocervum non hyrcocervum, seu hyrcum non hyrcum qui neque sit hyrcus neque non hyrcus, neque hyrcus non hyrcus, quam concipere solum hyrcum non hyrcum, hoc est; non est difficilius intellectui nostro attingere identitatem inter chimeram et non chimaeram, quam inter duo contradictoria: utraque autem identitas est chimerica: tam enim implicat chimeram non esse chimeram, seu esse non chimeram, quam hyrcum v.g. non esse hyrcum, aut esse non hyrcum.” 98. Ibid., vol. 1, 542: “Nego tamen quod si esset id quod esset, eo ipso non esset id quod esset: Nam hyrcus non hyrcus est quidditative hyrcus non hyrcus.” 99. Ibid.: “Quod autem duo extrema ex quibus constituis hyrcocervum se mutuo de- struant, non est cur laboret in hoc probando adversarius.” 100. Ibid.: “hoc enim ipsum ponis pro impossibili: videlicet quod praedicatis constet se mutuo destruentibus.” 98 john p. doyle

XII. Continuing his objection, an opponent of metaphysical beings of reason may say that from an incompatibility in the properties of an object there follows an incompatibility (or an impossibility) in knowledge of that object.101 In the case of a goat-stag: by the very fact that an object is not either a goat or a nongoat the knowledge which is terminated at it is not a representation of either a goat or of a nongoat.102 But from another angle, it is the representation of a goat-nongoat and, hence, of a goat and a nongoat.103 Thus, it is at once the representation of both, and the representation of neither,104 which is evidently senseless. Semery replies with a distinction. If you say that to be the representation of a goat and of a nongoat and not to be the representation of either a goat alone or of a nongoat alone are contradictory, he denies it.105 If you say that to be the representation of a goat and of a nongoat and not to be the representation of either a goat or a nongoat together are contradictory, he concedes it.106 He then proceeds to deny the inference107 that the supposedly impossible knowledge would be at once the representation of both a goat and a nongoat together and of neither a goat nor a nongoat alone. At this point, Semery bids us keep in mind that when one conceives a goat-stag he is not conceiving a goat alone nor a nongoat alone but both together with an identity between.108 But in this object the fact that the inclusion of a goat is the exclusion of a stag (or a nongoat) proves nothing except that an object of this kind cannot exist outside the mind.109 However, it does not prove that it lacks the being of an object.110 Thus, it

101. Ibid.: “Ex hac repugnantia in praedicatis objecti arguitur repugnantia in cognitione; ergo cognitio terminata ad huiusmodi objectum est impossibilis.” 102. Ibid., vol. 1, 543: “eo ipso quod est hyrcus non hyrcus, non est neque hyrcus neque non hyrcus; ergo eo ipso cognitio terminata ad ipsum non est repraesentatio neque hyrci neque nonhyrci.” 103. Ibid.: “ex alio capite est repraesentatio hyrci non hyrci, adeoque hyrci et non hyrci.” 104. Ibid.: “ergo est simul representatio utriusque et simul neutrius.” 105. Ibid.: “esse repraesentationem hyrci et non hyrci et non esse repraesentationem neque hyrci solius neque solius non hyrci; sunt praedicata contradictoria: nego.” 106. Ibid.: “et non esse repraesentationem neque hyrci neque non hyrci simul: concedo. 107. Ibid.: “nego consequentiam.” 108. Ibid., vol. 1, 544: “id unum tene quod neque hyrcum solum, neque solum non hyrcum concipis, dum concipis hyrcum non hyrcum, sed utrumque extremum, et identitatem inter utrumque extremum.” 109. Ibid.: “quod autem inclusio unius extremi sit objectiva exclusio alterius nihil pro- bat, nisi huiusmodi objectum esse impossibile: ex hoc autem quod sit impossibile recte probatur non habere esse rei.” 110. Ibid.: “non autem non habere esse objecti.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 99 is false to say that the intentional being of a goat is the intentional non- being of a nongoat—since through one and the same knowledge a goat- nongoat exists objectively in the intellect.111 What is true is that through a concept of this kind what exists objectively in the intellect is not either a goat alone nor simply the negation of a goat, but rather something which is indivisibly as one object a goat-nongoat, which is to say the identity of a goat and a nongoat.112

XIII. A fourth objection from the opponents of metaphysical beings of reason is that if an impossible (object) can be conceived, then contradictory predicates are simultaneously verified.113 This is so because of such an object it would be simultaneously true to say that it would be, from the supposition that it is present as an object, and that it would not be, because that supposition is per impossibile,114 that is, based upon something which cannot be realized. Moreover, it is not just an impossible object itself as a whole that cannot be realized but also every part of that object. For if an object, for example a man-nonman, were impossible then every part of it would be (from the supposition of the object) and not be because that object would contradict both its parts.115 In answer to this fourth objection, Semery denies that absolute, i.e., non-conditional, contradictory predicates are verified of such an object.116 As regards conditional predicates he then distinguishes: that contradictory predicates would be verified in the wake of a possible condition, he denies; that such predicates would be verified in the wake of an impossible condition, he lets pass.117 “Would be and would not be” is a con-

111. Ibid.: “Adeoque falsum est intentionalem existentiam hyrci esse intentionalem non existentiam non hyrci, cum per unam eandemque cognitionem existat hyrcus non hyrcus objective in intellectu.” 112. Ibid.: “Verum quidem est quod per huiusmodi conceptum non existit objective in intellectu neque hyrcus simpliciter, neque negatio hyrci simpliciter, sed aliquid quod est indivisibiliter et per modum unius objecti hyrcus non hyrcus; seu identitas inter hyrcum et negationem hyrci.” 113. Ibid., vol. 1, 545: “Si potest concipi impossibile verificantur nunc praedicata contradictoria.” 114. Ibid.: “de objecto talis cognitionis verum est nunc: esset et non esset: sed esset et non esset, sunt contradictoria; ergo verificarentur nunc contradictoria. Maior probatur; quia quodlibet impossibile, ex transmissis si esset, esset et non esset, esset ex suppositione: non esset; quia ipsa suppositio est per impossibile.” 115. Ibid.: “Praeterea non solum ipsummet objectum impossibile per modum totius concipitur, sed etiam quodlibet constitutivum ipsius: si autem esset impossibile, puta homo non homo, eo ipso quaelibet pars esset et non esset, quia cuiuslibet partis contradictorium esset.” 116. Ibid.: “verificantur praedicata contradictoria absoluta: nego.” 117. Ibid.: “conditionata: subdistinguo: per conditionem de possibili, nego; per conditionem de impossibili: omitto.” 100 john p. doyle ditioned contradiction which would follow upon an impossible condition. The inference is, “if an impossible were to be, then it would be and would not be.”118 But a logical inference of this kind is always true,119 apart from any factual instantiation.

XIV. Still on verification, the opponent continues. A man through his own quiddity verifies this absolute proposition, “A man is a rational animal.” Therefore, a man-nonman through its quiddity120 verifies this proposition, “A man-nonman is and is not a man,” which is a copulative proposition composed of contradictories.121 For just as the quiddity of a man is to be a rational animal, so too the quiddity of a man-nonman is to be and to not be a man.122 Again, a man inasmuch as he is a rational animal verifies both “it is a rational animal” and also simply, “it is an animal.”123 Correspondingly, a man-nonman, inasmuch as it is a man-nonman, verifies both “it is a man-nonman” and also simply, “it is a man,” which is to say that it verifies the copulative proposition, “it is and it is not a man.”124 From this there follows the absurd conclusion that about such an object one person could say “it is a man” while another is saying “it is not a man” and both would be speaking the truth.125 To this Semery replies first that it is not surprising that in the quiddity of a chimera, two contradictories be joined.126 To assent to such contradictories in the case of something possible would be absurd, but what problem does it raise in the case of an impossible?127 Beyond this, he notes the evident disparity between the two propositions mentioned.

118. Ibid.: “Esset et non esset: est hypothetica sub conditione impossibili. Conditio est: Si impossibile esset: conditionatum: esset et non esset.” 119. Ibid.: “Propositiones autem huiusmodi sunt aeternae veritatis.” 120. Once again, assuming something very un-Aristotelian. 121. Ibid.: “Homo per suam quidditatem verificat hanc absolutam: Homo est animal rationale; ergo homo non homo per suam quidditatem verificat hanc aliam: Homo non homo est, et non est homo, quae est copulativa ex contradictoriis.” 122. Ibid., vol. 1, 545–46: “quia sicut quidditas hominis est esse animal rationale; ita quidditas hominis non hominis est esse et non esse hominem.” 123. Ibid., vol. 1, 546: “Homo, quia est animal rationale, non solum verificat: est animal rationale; sed etiam simpliciter et absolute: est animal.” 124. Ibid.: “Ergo homo non homo, quia est homo non homo, non solum verificat: est homo non homo; sed etiam simpliciter et absolute: est homo: sed simul verificat: non est homo; ergo verificat copulativam: est, et non est homo.” 125. Ibid.: “Hinc sequitur quod si de objecto huiusmodi unus dicat: est homo; et alter: non est homo; ambo dicunt verum.” 126. Ibid.: “Quid novi, quod in quidditate chimerae duo contradictoria copulentur .l.l.l?” 127. Ibid.: “assentiri contradictoriis in possibili absurdum est, impossibili, qui [sic] ab- surdi?” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 101

“Rational” does not negate “animal,” and therefore, about a rational animal it is without any qualification true to say, “it is an animal.”128 Howev- er, “nonman” does negate “man,” and therefore, about a nonman it is simply false to say, “it is a man.”129 Accordingly, “it is man” does not verify the truth of the copulative proposition in question, since for the truth of a copulative proposition it is necessary that both parts be separately true.130 In a similar vein, Semery denies the first inference, that a man-nonman through its own quiddity verifies the proposition, “a man-nonman is and is not a man.” This is so because the first member of the contradiction, viz., “is a man,” cannot be verified by a man-nonman.131 Accord- ingly, he denies the antecedent of the first supporting argument and says that the quiddity of a man-nonman is not simply to be a man and not to be a man but rather it is to be a man-nonman.132

XV. But the opponent will not bow that easily. Instead, he will reply that while a man, who is not simply a man identiﬁed with a nonman, is not a chimera,133 a man-nonman, as it is taken here, is a chimera.134 Thus, as it is taken here (within man-nonman, which is at once a man and not a man), a man simply as man is identiﬁed with a nonman.135 But a man simply as man does verify the proposition: “it is a man.”136 Therefore, a

128. Ibid.: “Disparitas est; quia rationale non destruit animal; adeoque de animali rationali verum est absolute et simpliciter: est animal.” 129. Ibid.: “At non homo destruit hominem; adeoque de homine non homine non est verum simpliciter et absolute: est homo.” 130. Ibid.: “quia ad veritatem copulativae requiritur ut utraque pars seorsim sit vera, ex dictis in Sum., 37. haec autem pars est homo, est falsa.” For the reference here, cf. A. Se- mery, Organum Aristotelis sive in philosophiam peripateticam brevis introductio, disp. 2, cap. III, a. I, in Triennium philosophicum, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Rome, 1682), vol. 1, 37. Also See the earlier standard Jesuit text in Logic: Pedro da Fonseca, S.J. [1528–99], Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo, L. III, c. 16, in Instituições dialécticas, Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo, ed. Joaquim Ferreira Gomes, 2 vols. (Coimbra, 1575; reprint, Universidade de Coimbra, 1964), vol. 1, 200–02. 131. Triennium philosophicum, disp. 4, q. 6, a. 3, vol. 1, 547: “Resp. igitur 2. negando primam consequentiam. Haec copulativa: est, et non est homo, nequit verificari per hominem non hominem quia nequit verificari prima pars: est homo.” 132. Ibid.: “Ad 1. prob. nego antec. quidditas hominis non hominis non est esse hominem simpliciter, et non esse hominem; sed esse hominem non hominem.” 133. Ibid.: “Homo qui non sit homo simpliciter, identificans sibi non hominem non est chimera.” 134. Ibid.: “Homo non homo, ut sumitur hic, est chimera.” 135. Ibid.: “Ergo, ut sumitur hic, homo simpliciter homo identificat sibi non hominem.” 136. Ibid.: “Sed homo simpliciter homo verificat propositionem est homo.” 102 john p. doyle man-nonman verifies (the same proposition): “it is a man.”137 To illustrate the first point: a man in a painting inasmuch as he is not simply a man is identified with a nonman. For it is true that a man in a painting is not a man or that a man in a painting is a nonman. And yet a man in a painting is not a chimera.138 To this Semery answers again with a distinction. He denies that a man who is not a man simply, that is, one who is identified with a nonman more than objectively in the intellect, is not a chimera. But he concedes that a man who is not simply a man, in the sense of one identified with a nonman only objectively in the intellect, is a chimera.139 He goes on to distinguish the opponent’s conclusion. He denies that a man simply as a man verifies the proposition “a nonman is a man” more than objectively in the intellect; but he concedes that it verifies that proposition only objectively in the intellect.140 Here he adds two points. First, when we speak of “man” simply and without any qualification it is understood not so much as a man existing only objectively in the intellect but as a man who is physically able to exist.141 Second, we can indeed conceive a “real” man-nonman, that is, a really existing, really reasoning, (really sensing), man-nonman. But in that case the “real” and the “really” will exist only objectively in the intellect, inasmuch as the intellect has the power to force any number of however incompatible properties into the unity of an object.142 In fact, even this chimera itself, “a chimera which really exists outside the mind,” can be fashioned by the intellect.143

137. Ibid.: “Ergo homo non homo verificat: est homo.” 138. Ibid., vol. 1, 547: “homo pictus, quia non est homo simpliciter, identificat sibi non hominem: est enim verum: homo pictus non est homo: seu: est non homo. Et tamen homo pictus non est chimera.” 139. Ibid.: “Resp. dist. mai. Homo qui non sit homo simpliciter plusquam objective in intellectu identificans etc. non est chimera; nego mai. Qui non sit homo simpliciter tantum objective in intellectu etc. conc.” 140. Ibid.: “et conc. mi. dist. conseq. est homo simpliciter, plusquam objective in intellectu; nego: tantum objective in intellectu: conc.” 141. Ibid., vol. 1, 547–48: “Quando autem praedicatur homo simpliciter et sine ullo ad- dito, intelligitur de homine simpliciter plusquam objective in intellectu, videlicet de homine reali hoc est potente existere physice.” 142. Ibid, vol. 1, 548: “Adverte autem posse etiam concipi hominem realem non hominem, hominem realiter existentem realiter ratiocinantem non hominem etc. sed tunc et li realis, et li realiter etc. erunt tantum objective in intellectu; cum hic possit quasli- bet et quantumlibet repugnantes rationes cogere in unitatem objecti.” 143. Ibid.: “Haec ipsa chimera: chimera existens a parte rei fieri potest ab intellectu.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 103

XVI. A quick further objection here (number five, I count) is that even a man who without qualification exists only objectively in the intellect verifies the proposition, “man is an animal.”144 The point appears to be that the man in man-nonman, which can exist only objectively in the intellect, will at that level verify the proposition in question. Semery’s reply helps clarify what is at issue. He simply denies the opponent’s assertion and says that in this context “only objectively” signifies not just what does not exist but also what cannot exist in reality outside the mind.145 Said another way, the focus continues to be on so-called metaphysical beings of reason that Semery admits and his opponents deny.

XVII. A last objection, which broaches the matter of knowing the unknowable, runs as follows: if the impossible (in the sense of a metaphysical being of reason) can be known, then the unknowable can be known. But that is self-contradictory, because by that very fact what is unknowable would not be unknowable. Therefore the impossible cannot be known.146 To this Semery replies that it is amazing how many persons have been deceived by this hobgoblin, scarecrow, or wraith (larva), “the unknowable.”147 But immediately, some confusion must be removed. “Unknow- able” here is not used in the way in which we use “ineffable” when we speak of God. For when we so speak our intention is to say that God sur- passes any terms we might employ to comprehend Him.148 However, “the unknowable” in this manner would not be completely unknowable, since only one kind of knowability would be excluded, namely, that by which one might grasp the properties of what is called unknowable.149

144. Ibid.: “Etiam homo simpliciter tantum objective in intellectu veriﬁcat: homo est animal; ergo etc.” 145. Ibid.: “Resp. neg. antec. li tantum objective signiﬁcat non solum quod non est, sed quod nec esse potest a parte rei.” 146. Ibid.: “Objic. ult. Si potest cognosci impossibile, potest cognosci incognoscibile; conseq. repugnat; ergo et antec. min. prob. quia si potest cognosci eo ipso non est incognoscibile.” 147. Ibid.: “Mirum est quam multos deceperit haec larva: Incognoscibile.” 148. Ibid., vol. 1, 548–49: “Aliqui dicunt objectum incognoscibile eo modo dici incognoscibile quo Deus dicitur ineffabilis. Dicitur autem Deus ineffabilis, non quod omnino Deum effari non possis, sed quod Deum nequeas his nominibus compellare quibus compellari meretur.” 149. Ibid.: “Eodem modo, inquiunt, id quod incognoscibile dicitur, non ideo dicitur incognoscibile quod nullam omnino erga ipsum cognitionem exercere possis, sed quod talem non possis qua ipsius praedicata attingas.” 104 john p. doyle

Moreover, the unknowable taken in this way does not invalidate the con- clusion150 of the opponent’s argument, namely, that it is inadmissible that an impossible be known. For what the opponent is arguing is that what (his opponent in turn, i.e. Semery, is saying) is in every way unknowable is knowable with some kind of knowability, that is, the completely unknowable is knowable, which is a contradiction.151 Semery’s ﬁrst rejoinder is to say that the act by which we (mentally) say “completely unknowable” is itself an act of knowledge. But every act of knowledge has an object. Therefore, this act by which we represent “completely unknowable” has some object. But since to be an object of knowledge and to be known are the same thing, if the (completely) unknowable is the object of such knowledge it is known.152

XVIII. At this point, Semery recalls something else, which at ﬁrst glance seems quite close to his opponent’s position, but which in fact is different. Our intellect, he says, has the ability to represent the same object in different ways.153 Thus, these two (contradictory) propositions, “man is an animal” and “man is not an animal” have the same object toward which they tend in quite different ways.154 Similarly, our will can tend in contradictorily different ways toward the same object. For instance, take the two acts of the will that are expressed propositionally as, “I want the book” and “I do not want the book.” In both we are speaking about the same material object terminating each act.155 Apply this all proportionately to two conceptions turned in different ways toward the same thing. For example, take the two conceptions “all things” and “nothing.” They do not differ in their object. For he who represents “nothing” conceives

150. Ibid.: “Sed incognoscibile hoc modo acceptum non potest esse ullius roboris contra conclusionem positam.” 151. Ibid.: “hoc est nullo modo cognoscibile est aliquo modo cognoscibile, quae sunt contradictoria.” 152. Ibid., vol. 1, 549–50: “Non est dubium quin actus ipse quo dicimus: omnino incognoscibile sit aliqua cognitio: sed omnis cognitio est alicuius objecti; ergo actus quo dicimus: omnino incognoscibile habet aliquod objectum: esse autem objectum cognitionis ac esse cognitum sunt unum et idem, ergo si incognoscibile est objectum talis cognitionis, est cognitum.” 153. Ibid., vol. 1, 550: “Revocandum est huc id quod saepe diximus diversos scilicet modos tendendi nostri intellectus non dicere ex parte objecti diversitatem necessario: sed circa idem omnino objectum diversas nostri intellectus cognitiones versari.” 154. Ibid.: “Ita diximus has duas propositiones: homo est animal: et homo non est animal non differre ex objecto, sed solum ex modo tendendi in idem objectum.” 155. Ibid.: “Idem etiam apparet in actibus voluntatis quae circa idem tam volendo quam nolendo versatur; isti enim duo actus: volo librum: et; nolo librum non differunt objecto: sermo est de objecto materiali, ad quod uterque actus terminatur.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 105 all things just as much as does he who (directly and explicitly) represents “all things.” However, even though both represent the same object, they obviously do not conceive it in the same way. For the one who directly represents “all things” attains all things as it were by embracing them while the one who directly represents “nothing” attains all things as it were by ﬂying from them.156 Further applying this here, Semery says that he who represents the unknowable can have the same object as does he who represents the knowable. For both attain knowability with respect to an object—the one attaining it as a form which is in that object and the other as a form which he removes from the same object.157

XIX. But then, he says, consider something more remarkable. (By a sort of “Achilles” reasoning, the opponent may say that) it is impossible to remove the form of knowability from an object without in the process positing knowability in that same object.158 Therefore, (the opponent might aver) it is futile to say that by the act which expresses the unknowable we are tending to an object in a way that removes knowability from it.159 The point is that by the very act by which one would remove knowability from that object he would posit knowability in the same object,160 which evidently involves contradiction. Semery’s reply gets us to the heart of his doctrine. It is not surprising, he says, that someone implicitly (exercite) afﬁrms what he is explicitly (signate) denying, that one in fact contradict himself.161 This is what someone does when, for example, he says, “I’m not talking.”162 And someone who

156. Ibid.: “Quod dicimus de afﬁrmatione et negatione, de volitione et nolitione, dic proportionaliter de duabus appraehensionibus quarum una uno, alia alio modo versetur circa idem: ita diximus duas hasce appraehensiones: omnia et nihil non differre objecto: et tam omnia concipere qui dicit: nihil, quam qui dicit: omnia: quamvis autem uterque idem concipiat, non tamen concipit eodem modo: qui dicit omnia, omnia attingit quasi prose- quendo: qui dicit nihil, omnia attingit quasi fugiendo.” 157. Ibid.: “His positis poterit qui dicit incognoscibile habere idem objectum ac qui dicit cognoscibile: uterque attingit circa objectum cognoscibilitatem, alter ut formam in objecto, alter ut formam quam removet ab objecto.” 158. Ibid., vol. 1, 550–51: “Sed ecce aliquid mirabilius. Impossibile est ut formam cognoscibilitatis removeat ab objecto quin ponat cognoscibilitatem in objecto.” 159. Ibid, vol. 1, 551: “ergo vanum est dicere quod per hunc actum: incognoscibile ten- dimus in objectum, removendo ab ipso formam cognoscibilitatis, seu cognoscibilitatem.” 160. Ibid.: “Ergo per actum per quem removes ab ipso cognoscibilitatem, ponis in ipso cognoscibilitatem.” 161. Ibid.: “Ad hoc respondeo non esse novum quod quis exercite adstruat, id quod signate destruit. Hoc est quod quis exercite sibi contradicat.” 162. Ibid.: “Hoc facit quicumque dicit: non loquor.” For the same example earlier used by Suárez, cf. De Eucharistia, disp. 58, s. 5, n. 6, in Opera omnia, vol. 20, 327. On the modern distinction between merely self-refuting and authentically paradoxical self-reference, cf. A. 106 john p. doyle

(mentally) says “the unknowable” does likewise.163 For obviously the very act by which he expresses the unknowable is an act of knowledge.164 Ac- cordingly, one can say that both he who concedes and he who denies that the unknowable is known, by that very act know the unknowable.165 But if in reply to this you say that then the unknowable is not the unknowable, a distinction is once more in order. That the explicitly (signate) unknowable is not the explicitly unknowable, Semery denies. That the explicitly unknowable is not the implicitly (exercite) unknowable, he concedes.166

XX. Returning to a point made earlier (in section XVII, above), Semery now envisions his opponents arguing as follows. Both as explicit and implicit the completely unknowable in every genus of unknowability is something impossible.167 But an unknowable of this kind is in no way knowable. Therefore, something impossible is in no way knowable.168 In reply, Semery concedes that something which is unknowable in every genus of unknowability is something impossible, but he denies that an unknowable of this kind is in no way knowable.169 For, he says, both implicitly and explicitly one knows that same object in which he is representing to himself that complete unknowability.170 That is to say, he knows that object in which he apprehends an incompatibility while he is exercising those acts of knowing which de facto he is exercising in its regard.171

N. Prior, “On a Family of Paradoxes,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 2 (1961): 16–32. Discussion of the types and properties of self-refutation may be found in J. L. Mackie, “Self- Refutation—A Formal Analysis,” The Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1964): 193–203. For some early history of the notion of self-refutation, cf. M. F. Burnyeat, “Protagoras and Self-Refu- tation in Later Greek Philosophy,” The Philosophical Review 85 (1976): 44–69. 163. Triennium philosophicum, disp. 4, q. 6, a. 3, vol. 1, 551: “Hoc etiam facit quicumque dicit: incognoscibile.” 164. Ibid.: “Nam evidens est hunc ipsum actum quo dicit: incognoscibile esse aliquam cognitionem.” 165. Ibid.: “Dic igitur quod et qui concedit, et qui negat cognosci incognoscibile, eo ipso cognoscit incognoscibile.” 166. Ibid.: “Quod si dicas: ergo incognoscibile non est incognoscibile. Dist. ergo signate incognoscibile non est signate incognoscibile nego, signate incognoscibile non est incognoscibile exercite; concedo.” 167. Ibid.: “incognoscibile tam signate quam exercite omni genere incognoscibilitatis est aliquod impossibile.” 168. Ibid.: “incognoscibile huiusmodi non est ullo modo cognoscibile; ergo aliquod impossibile non est ullo modo cognoscibile.” 169. Ibid.: “Resp. con. mai. neg. mi.” 170. Ibid.: “cognoscis enim illud idem objectum in quo tibi repraesentas omnimodam illam incognoscibilitatem tam exercite quam signate.” 171. Ibid., vol. 1, 552: “Hoc est, illud objectum in quo appraehendis repugnantiam ut circa ipsum actus exerceas quos de facto exerces.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 107

This will prompt a further objection from the opponent. If de facto such a complete unknowable in every genus of unknowability is known, then this tautologous proposition, “something unknowable, both explicitly and implicitly, in every kind of unknowability is something unknowable, both explicitly and implicitly, in every kind of unknowability,” is false!172 To this Semery responds once more with a distinction. He denies that what is both explicitly and implicitly unknowable in every genus of unknowability is not both explicitly and implicitly unknowable in every genus of unknowability.173 But he concedes that what is both explicitly and implicitly unknowable in every genus of unknowability is not implicitly unknowable both explicitly and implicitly in every genus of unknowability.174 In direct reply then to the argument of the opponent: he denies that what is both explicitly and implicitly unknowable in every genus of unknowability is not explicitly, both as explicitly and implicitly, unknowable;175 but he concedes that what is both explicitly and implicitly unknowable in every genus of unknowability is not implicitly, both as explicitly and implicitly, unknowable.176 Here he bids us note a kind of regression to inﬁnity in this argument. For as often as his opponent in debate ﬁxes upon Semery’s word, “implicitly” (exercite), just so often will that opponent be taking it not in a purely implicit way, but rather explicitly (signate).177 Were he thus one hundred times to take Semery’s “implicitly” and attach it to his own “unknowable,” then one hundred times he would be taking it explicitly and objectively as “implicitly unknowable.”178 However, as many times as Se- mery himself will implicitly know this “implicitly unknowable” that many times will he say “implicitly unknowable,”179 no matter, that is, how many times the opponent will then make it explicit.

172. Ibid.: “Instabis ulterius.l.l.l. Ergo haec propositio identica: incognoscibile tam signate quam exercite omni genere incognoscibilitatis est incognoscibile tam signate quam exercite omni genere incognoscibilitatis: est falsa.” 173. Ibid.: “incognoscibile tam signate quam exercite omni genere incognoscibilitatis, non est signate incognoscibile tam exercite quam signate omni genere incognoscibilitatis; nego.” 174. Ibid.: “non est exercite incognoscibile tam signate quam exercite omni genere incognoscibilitatis conc.” 175. Ibid.: “non est signate tam signate quam exercite incognoscibile; nego.” 176. Ibid.: “non est exercite tam signate quam exercite incognoscibile; conc.” 177. Ibid.: “adverte quod quoties meum illud exercite resumis ut reponas in argumento, toties veniet non pure exercite sed signate.” 178. Ibid.: “adeoque si centies resumas meum exercite et ponas cum tuo incognoscibili, centies signate veniet et objective exercite incognoscibile.” 179. Ibid.: “Hoc autem exercite incognoscibile, toties exercite cognoscam, quoties dicam: exercite incognoscibile.” 108 john p. doyle

XXI. Semery’s conclusion at this juncture is that, in an object which he is knowing, he can conceive an incompatibility with its being known, which is thus an incapacity for terminating the very act which it is in fact terminating.180 In this way, a “knowable-unknowable” is not more chimerical than a “man-nonman,” a “known-nonknown,” a “knowledge-nonknowl- edge,” (or, of course, a goat-nongoat, which is to say, a goat-stag).181 Moreover, even though one may actually know that which is called “unknowable,” this does not preclude his representing in that very object itself which is being known an essential incompatibility for being known.182 In- deed, in whatever genus I know that object I can represent an incompatibility in it for being known in this way.183 The bottom line, therefore, is that the unknowable is not extrinsically denominated from the intellect’s way of tending and it is not denominated in a purely implicit way.184 Rather the unknowable is explicitly and objectively unknowable, because that unknowability is represented in an object.185 However, through the intellect’s tending it is (extrinsically) denominated “known.”186 Further clarifying this, Semery says that his opponent is mistaken inasmuch as he thinks that (Semery’s position) is asserting some property of “unknowable” to be physically present in an object, which property, because it contradicts (implicat) knowledge of that object, precludes that same object’s being knowable, with the result that the unknowable cannot be known.187 This is as if Semery would be saying that there is something which in actual fact (outside the mind) both terminates and does not terminate the act of the intellect.188 However, what Semery is saying is

180. Ibid., vol. 1, 553: “Possum igitur in objecto quod cognosco appraehendere repugnantiam ad cognosci, adeoque incapacitatem terminandi hunc ipsum actum quem termi- na.” 181. Ibid.: “nam cognoscibile incognoscibile non est maior chimera quam: homo non homo; cognitum non cognitum; cognitio non cognitio.” 182. Ibid.: “et quamvis actu cognoscam id quod dico incognoscibile, non propterea mea cognitione non ﬁngo in ipsomet objecto quod cognosco essentialem repugnantiam ad cognosci.” 183. Ibid.: “et quocunque genere cognitionis illud cognoscam, possum in eo ﬁngere repugnantiam ad hoc modo cognosci.” 184. Ibid.: “Non igitur denominatur incognoscibile ex modo tendendi, et pure exercite.” 185. Ibid.: “sed est signate et objective incognoscibile; cum ipsa incognoscibilitas repraesentetur in objecto.” 186. Ibid.: “Per modum autem tendendi denominatur cognitum.” 187. Ibid.: “Decipitur arguens in hoc quod putet poni in aliquo objecto realiter et physice praedicatum incognoscibilis, et quia cum hoc praedicato implicat esse cognitionem eiusdem; propterea dicit non posse cognosci incognoscibile.” 188. Ibid.: “Quasi vero nos diceremus, quod re ipsa terminet, et non terminet actum intellectus.” On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 109 that the same object which terminates the act of the intellect can be conceived by us not only as not terminating, but also as simultaneously both terminating and not terminating the act of the intellect—which is nothing more than to conceive in that object two contradictory notes whose in- compossibility that same act by which they are conceived displays.189 Given therefore that two contradictories can be conceived in an object, Semery thinks that there are no properties, howevermuch they are contradictory to one another, which cannot be objectively combined and fall under the (adequate) object of the intellect.190 For example: “simultaneously possible and impossible,” “a medium between possible and impossible,” and any other items of this kind can be objectively in the intellect.191 And it is easy to show that he who argues against this is in fact arguing from the impossibility of such things existing outside the mind to their impossibility in objective being—neither of which impossibili- ties is greater in these than in any other chimera.192

XXII. Picking up one last objection from what was said above, the opponent might argue as follows. If someone who says “nothing” is conceiving the same thing as someone who says “all things,” then it may be said that someone who says “impossible” is conceiving the same thing as someone who says “possible.”193 For just as by the word, “nothing,” he removes the character of being which is presented by the words “all things,” so by the word “impossible,” he removes the possibility which is presented by the word “possible.”194 To this Semery replies by conceding that someone who says “nothing” is conceiving the same thing as someone who says “all things,” but

189. Ibid., vol. 1, 553–54: “Dicimus quod illud idem objectum quod terminat actum intellectus potest concipi a nobis non solum ut non terminans, sed ut terminans simul et non terminans actum intellectus, quod nihil est aliud quam concipere in illo objecto duo contradictoria, quorum incompossibilitatem ostendit ille idem actus, quo attinguntur.” 190. Ibid., vol. 1, 554: “Posito igitur quod possint in objecto concipi duo repugnantia: putamus nullas esse rationes quantumlibet repugnantes, quae non possint objective com- binari, et evadere in objectum intellectus.” 191. Ibid.: “Puta: possibile simul et impossibile. Medium inter possibile et impossibile et quaelibet alia huiusmodi possunt esse objective in intellectu.” 192. Ibid.: “et qui contra arguit facile est, ut ab impossibilitate talium in esse rei, arguat impossibilitatem in esse objecti, quarum neutra maior est in illis, quam in quibuslibet aliis chimeris.” 193. Ibid.: “Dices ultimo. Dictum est quod qui dicit nihil: idem concipit ac qui dicit: omnia: ergo dici poterit quod qui dicit impossibile idem concipit, ac qui dicit: possibile.” 194. Ibid.: “quia sicut per li: nihil: removet illam rationem entis quae affertur per li omnia; ita per li impossibile: removet illam possibilitatem quae affertur per li: possibile.” 110 john p. doyle he denies that someone who says “impossible” is conceiving the same thing as someone who says “possible.”195 To explain: someone who says, “nothing,” is removing the character of being but not from something about which he is saying, “nothing.”196 For example, when someone says, “I have nothing,” he is not conceiving that he has some object which is a nothing.197 Instead, he is conceiving true and real beings which he is removing from himself when he says, “I have nothing.”198 But quite differently, someone who says “impossible” is removing possibility from something which he is calling “impossible.”199 From this there is a great diversity between these two concepts, “impossible” and “no possible.” The ﬁrst is a (metaphysical) being of reason, but not the second.200 However, it does seem that “no possible” is the same as “nothing,” and then if someone who says “nothing” conceives some object from which he removes every trace of being by that very fact he will produce a being of reason, inasmuch as an object which lacks every trace of being is something impossible.201

XXIII. In all of this, Semery has deliberately restricted the question. In his own idiom, he is speaking just of “transcendental unknowability.” He explicitly stops short of “supertranscendental unknowability.”202 The dif-

195. Ibid.: “Resp. conc. ant. neg. cons.” 196. Ibid.: “qui dicit: nihil; ita removet rationem entis, ut non illam removeat ab aliquo de quo dicat: nihil.” 197. Ibid.: “puta dum dicis: nihil habeo, non concipis aliquod objectum de quo dicas quod sit illud nihil quod habes.” For an adumbration of this, cf. St. Augustine’s discussion of “having a hunger” (habere egestatem) in De vita beata, c. 4, n. 29, ed. Victorino Capagna, O.R.S.A, in Obras de San Augustin, vol. 1 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1957), vol. 1, 658. 198. Triennium philosophicum, disp. 4, q. 6, a. 3, vol. 1, 554: “Sed concipis vera et realia entia quae a te removes dum dicis: nihil habeo.” 199. Ibid.: “Qui autem dicit: impossibile, removet possibilitatem ab aliquo de quo dicit impossibile.” 200. Ibid.: “unde est magna diversitas inter duos hosce conceptus impossibile et nullum possibile: per primum ﬁt ens rationis, secus per secundum.” 201. Ibid., vol. 1, 554–55: “Videtur autem: nullum possibile esse idem ac: nihil: caeterum si dicens nihil: aliquod objectum attingat a quo removeat omnem rationem entis, facit eo ipso ens rationis: nam objectum carens omni ratione entis est impossibile.” 202. Ibid., vol. 1, 555: “accipimus enim hic ens nominaliter secundum transcendenti- am ad omnia existentia quam possibilia, hoc est secundum rationem entis realis; non autem secundum illam supertranscendentiam de qua dictum est supra.” “Nominaliter” here is an adverbial expression of “as a noun.” For “being as a noun” contrasted with “being as a participle,” see Suárez, DM 2, s. 4, n. 3 (Opera omnia, vol. 25, 88); also See Étienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2d ed. (Toronto: PIMS, 1952), 97, and A. Marc, S.J., “L’idée de l’être chez saint Thomas et dans la scolastique postèrieure,” Archives de Philoso- phie, vol. 10 (1933), 25–26. On Aristotle’s Goat-Stag and Knowing the Unknowable 111 ference would fall between an unknowability co-terminous with the plane of impossible objects and an unknowability which would allow such objects to be knowable in as much as they are somehow within the compass of the mind, but which then would go farther for some sort of imagined congruence between itself and an absolute nothing beyond the actual, the possible, and even the impossible. Presumably, an unknowability at that level would be totally opaque to understanding. Said another way, “transcendental unknowability” in this context would be the inner or the cisalpine side of the boundary between the knowable and the unknowable while “supertranscendental unknowability” would be its outer or transalpine side. Impossible objects or metaphysical beings of reason are for Semery the last and least of all that is knowable and at the same time unknowable. Beyond them there is only a void— about which I have written elsewhere.203

XXIV. Here let me say again that an exploration of the boundaries of what we can think and say is interesting for philosophy in general. However, it has special value for the seventeenth-century. This is because that century marks, even among self-proclaimed followers of Aristotle, a turn away from the metaphysics whose subject matter is being in the categories to a metaphysics which still claims an Aristotelian ancestry but which now incorporates Aristotle’s being as true into its subject. More remarkably still, not content with allowing for the knowability of the unknowable goat-stag this new metaphysics would shortly give beings of reason like Aristotle’s outcast goat-stag a throne in what might be called “the king- dom of thingdom.”204 In this and more, Semery and other Jesuits were

203. For this, cf. John P. Doyle, “Supertranscendental Nothing: A Philosophical Finis- terre,” Medioevo 24 (1998): 1–30. 204. On this, cf. Miguel Viñas, S.J. (1642–1718), Philosophia Scholastica, 3 vols. (Genoa, 1709), Laur. III, Pars. I, Lib. IV, Cont. III. (De Figmentis), Exam. I (De existentia Figmenti, sive Entis fictitii), Punct. I (Illius ostenditur existentia), vol. 3, 409: “Tantum entis rationis fama di- vagatur, protenditurque imperium, ut vix sit ulla scholastica facultas, ubi non fixerit, su- umque dilataverit domicilium: Verum illius propria Sedes, Thronus, ac Solium Metaphysi- ca est, ubi de ente reali illius opposito pro dignitate tractatur: Unde Dialecticorum morem tractationem de Ente rationis sibi arrogantium, erroris Dialectici damnat Eximius Doctor initio disputationis 54. Metaph. Ad Metaphysicam ergo illius disputatio praecipua saltem spectat.l.l.l. Verum ut clarius procedamus, adverto, quod hic non est sermo de ente rationis sumpto pro actu intellectus, seu secundis intentionibus (de quibus in Logica) sed de ente, quod praeter hoc, quod est cognosci, nullum esse habet, nec habere potest in se ipso physice, aut a parte rei, aut intrinsece per potentiam passivam, aut extrinsece, et de- nominative a causa potente illud producere; quod ideo dicitur communiter existere tantum obiective in intellectu, ut homo identificatus cum leone.” 112 john p. doyle turning from things themselves toward thinking about such things and thinking about thinking itself and were in various ways not only fore- shadowing Kant’s “Copernican revolution”205 but also anticipating modern debates among people like Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Russell, and Quine. One final observation: Semery’s lectures, which furnished the core for this essay, were delivered within his first year course in logic. What extraordinary students must have been listening!

205. For some of this, cf. my article: “Between Transcendental and Transcendental: The Missing Link?” Review of Metaphysics 50 (1997): 783–815. 5 Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge CHRISTIA MERCER

When Leibniz began his university education in Leipzig in 1661, moral philosophy in Germany was on the verge of a revolution. German thinkers like Samuel Pufendorf (who also studied in Leipzig) were beginning to transform moral, legal, and political philosophy on the conti- nent. Whereas early seventeenth-century discussions of ethics invariably centered around Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, by the end of the century they did not. Whereas early seventeenth-century debates about politics were concerned with prudence and virtue, by the middle of the next century they were not. Although scholars have begun to identify some of the main elements in this transformation, much more scholarly work needs to be done. At present, we have only a rough sketch of ethics and politics in Germany in the early modern period.1 Nor should the transformation effected by the work of Pufendorf, Christian Thomasius, and others be our only object of study.2 However

1. An enormous amount of work remains to be done on the history of early modern ethics and politics. That a revolution occurred is clear and that Samuel Pufendorf played a major part in it is well known. However, neither the steps that led to that revolution nor the context out of which it came has been fully documented. Jerome B. Schneewind’s groundbreaking work in the ﬁeld remains the classic. For a translation of the most important primary texts and for a critical introduction to this part of the history of moral philosophy, see his Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant: An Anthology, 2 vols. (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1990). For important new work and for citations to other literature, see Early Modern Natural Law Theories: Contexts and Strategies in the Early Enlighten- ment, ed. Timothy J. Hochstrasser and Peter Schröder (Boston: Kluwer, in press); and Merio Scattola, Scientia architectonica: Fondazione e trasformazione della disciplina politica n’età moderna (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2002). In the latter, Scattola documents and explains the radical shift in the teaching of politics in the early modern period. Scattola argues that whereas in the early seventeenth century, politics was still a matter of civil prudence and was thereby considered one of the ﬁve intellectual virtues, by the mid-eighteenth century it had been severed of its overtly ethical roots and had become the science of the principles of power. 2. Scholarly research on Pufendorf and this part of the history of philosophy is being made much easier by new critical editions of his works. See Samuel Pufendorf, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, ed. Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002). The most recent of Pufendorf’s writings published in this series is the Eris scandica, und andere

113 114 christia mercer important this transformation is, there is much more of interest in the field of ethics in the period. In seventeenth-century Protestant Ger- many, there were a number of problems posed concerning both the proper teaching of ethics and the proper way to live a moral life. Some of these discussions contributed to the revolution underway, but most of them did not. As a group they constitute a fascinating—though unexplored—part of German philosophy.3 The great Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is himself an innovative thinker whose work in ethics does not contribute to the radical changes underway. Scholars have long noted that Leibniz’s moral, legal, and political philosophy is relatively conservative and that it forms no part of the unfolding revolution in seventeenth-century Europe.4 It is true that Leib- niz’s ethical proposals—especially when compared to the “modern” proposals of Pufendorf and others—are hardly radical. But there is more to the story than that. When we compare Leibniz’s ethics to other German thinkers, we are able to discern much that is interesting, and even innovative.5 Indeed, once we place Leibniz’s ethics polemische Schriften über das Naturrecht, edited by Fiammetta Palladini. Originally published in 1686, the Eris scandica, qua adversus libros de jure naturali et gentium objecta diluuntur was a defense of Pufendorf’s views against charges of heresy. As Michael Seidler has pointed out to me, the Eris Scandica is especially important to our understanding of the period since it directly concerns the battle over the nature of ethics in Germany during the second half of the seventeenth century, especially its (non)relation to theology. 3. Until very recently, the history of seventeenth-century ethics in German-speaking Europe has been virtually unexplored. The recent works of Timothy J. Hochstrasser, Ian Hunter, Merio Scattola, and Michael Seidler will help enormously in laying the ground- work for future study. See Timothy J. Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlight- enment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Ian Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Merio Scattola, Scientia architectonica, passim; and Michael J. Seidler, “The Politics of Self-Preservation: Toleration and Identity in Pufendorf and Locke,” in Early Modern Natural Law Theories: Contexts and Strategies in the Early Enlightenment (Boston: Kluw- er, in print). Also see David A. Lines’ “Il Metodo dell’etica nella Scuola Padovana e la sua ricezione nei poaesi d’Oltralpe: M. Piccart e B. Keckermann,” in La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padua: Antenore, 2002), 311–38, which has a section on Bartholomaeus Keckermann, also an important figure in the history of German moral philosophy. 4. See, e.g., C. J. Friedrich, “Philosophical Reflections of Leibniz on Laws, Politics, and the State,” in Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Harry G. Frankfurt (New York: Dou- bleday, 1972), 47–68. Scholars continue to agree with Friedrich who wrote in 1972 that Leibniz had “no basically novel insight” as a legal and political philosopher (p. 48). The most thorough-going study of Leibniz’s legal and political thought to date is Patrick Riley’s Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996). Also see Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories, ch. 3. For a somewhat playful and programmatic treatment of Leibniz as an early Enlightenment figure, see Wil- helm Schmidt-Biggemann, “Emanzipation durch Unterwanderung: Institutionen und Personen der deutschen Frühaufklärung,” in Aufklärung in Deutschland, ed. Paul Raabe and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Bonn: Hohwacht, 1979) 45–61. 5. A few historians have noted that Leibniz’s moral and political philosophy has innovative aspects. As Riley claims, “Platonism .l.l. runs like a red thread through his whole Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 115 in the wider context of seventeenth-century German philosophy, it seems innovative in at least two ways. First, Leibniz flatly rejects the standard use of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. For our purposes, it is particularly interesting that he has little or no concern for intellectual virtues. Second, instead of Aristotle, he gives prominence to the ethical reflections of Plato. That is, in a way that has not been properly understood, Leibniz’s ethics is rooted in a Platonist epistemology, which itself forms an integral part of his famously innovative philosophy. While it remains true that Leibniz’s ethical proposals do not directly contribute to the revolution propagated by Pufendorf and others, they nonetheless constitute an important development in the history of early modern ethics, especially in Germany.6 As it turns out, the history of moral philosophy in Protestant Germany is more complex than it has generally been taken to be, and the place of Leibniz in that story more interesting. i. ethics, luther, and early modern germany Despite the anti-Aristotelianism of Luther and the early reformers, Aristotelianism continued to be the pedagogical mainstay of German Protestant universities. This was particularly true of Aristotelian moral philosophy, which had never come under serious attack.7 But the popu- larity of Aristotle’s ethical proposals stood on insecure foundations. For

moral and political philosophy, early and late” Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence, 25. Gregory A. Brown’s paper on “Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, ed. Nicholas Jolley (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 411–41, has been especially helpful in recognizing the underlying profundity of Leibniz’s ethical project. As he explains, Leibniz “developed a profound and inventive philosophical underpinning for the conventional legal wisdom” (411). But, as far as I know, no one has discerned either the elaborate details of the epistemology or the related account of universal harmony that Leibniz took to ground his moral and political proposals. 6. Some recent scholars have noted Platonist elements in his thought, but they have neither recognized that Leibniz learned his Platonism as a student in Leipzig nor have they identiﬁed the underlying Platonist epistemology that he developed as a young man. See especially Patrick Riley, Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence, and also Allison Coudert, Leib- niz and the Kabbalah (Boston: Kluwer, 1995). For more on the role that Platonism played in the development of Leibniz’s philosophy, see my Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and De- velopment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 7. It is surprising how little scholarly work has been done on early modern ethics in general and especially on the teaching of ethics. For an excellent survey and for citations to other work on early modern ethics, see Jill Kraye, “Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles Schmitt et al. (New York: Cambridge Universi- ty Press, 1988), 303–86, and ead. “Conceptions of Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, ed. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1279–1316. For material on the Ethics in the early modern period, see L’éthique à Nicomaque, ed. R. A. Gauthier and J. Y. Jolif, 2 vols. (Lou- vain: Publications universitaires, 1970). For important recent works and for references to 116 christia mercer

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, one of the main questions to be addressed is what combination of intellectual virtues would allow humans to “attain the truth,” where the underlying assumption is that human beings, insofar as they are rational, are capable of acquiring virtue and living a good life.8 In contradistinction to this, Luther proclaimed that the proper way to live a life was to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Like Augustine and many other Christian thinkers, Luther insisted that humans can not attain any important truth without the help of God. Given Luther’s proclamations about the dangers of Aristotelianism, it is slightly puzzling that the ethical proposals of the pagan Aristotle himself would be so thoroughly tolerated.9 Although in post-reformation Germany there were discussions about the propriety of its use, the Nicomachean Ethics maintained its privileged position in German university teaching through the early decades of the seventeenth century.10 Several factors contributed to the continued importance of the Ethics. Like their scholastic and Renaissance predecessors, many German Protestants were happy to accept a Christianized version of Aristotle’s ideas. And once the ancient ideas had been made properly orthodox, the tension between the moral philosophy of the Ethics and the teachings of the reformers seemed much less severe.11 Like their Renaissance predecessors, many German intellectuals accepted the historiography of the prisca theologia or ancient wisdom, according to which the philosophy of Aristotle was just one expression of the underlying (Christian) truth that was originally taught by Moses and then “flowed” through all philosophies.12 However, surely the most im- other work, see David A. Lines, Aristotle’s Ethics in the Italian Renaissance (ca.1300–1650): The Universities and the Problem of Moral Education (Leiden: Brill, 2002). 8. Nicomachean Ethics, VI. In the history of philosophy, Aristotle’s views have been interpreted in a variety of ways. For a much more thorough account of these issues, see Kraye, “Moral Philosophy,” 339–48. 9. Although Luther lectured on the Ethics in Wittenburg in 1508/09, he would later claim that the text was a pernicious work. For example, in his De captivitate babylonica eccle- siae praeludium (Wittenburg, 1520), he castigated the whole of the Aristotelian philosophy. It was Philipp Melanchthon who convinced him that Aristotle’s philosophy in general and the Ethics in particular had significant pedagogic benefits. For a recent introduction to Melanchthon, see Günter Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons (1497– 1560) (Leipzig: Benno, 1995). 10. See Kraye, “Conceptions of Moral Philosophy,” 1280–84; Scattola, Scientia architectonica, passim. 11. Of course, for centuries, scholastic philosophers had worked to make the Aris- totelian philosophy conform to Christian teaching. See Kraye, “Moral Philosophy,” 342– 48, and “Conceptions of Moral Philosophy,” 1281–82. For English translations of some important Renaissance and early modern examples, see Cambridge Translations of Renais- sance Philosophical Texts, vol. 1: Moral Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye (New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1997), especially the selections from Philipp Melanchthon and Francesco Piccolomini. 12. The standard text on the ancient theology remains Daniel Pickering Walker’s The Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 117 portant factor contributing to the persistent dominance of the Ethics was its genuine pedagogical usefulness. When Luther’s erudite follower and spokesperson, Philipp Melanchthon, began to devise his program of educational reforms, he could find no better text than the Nicomachean Ethics for the teaching of moral philosophy. For anyone effecting educational reform, the idea of finding another pedagogically sound means of teaching moral philosophy would have seemed daunting. For Melanchthon, the teachings of the Ethics were philosophically rich and, once the presentation of Aristotle’s ideas was cleansed of its former scholastic obscurity, the text had genuine didactic benefits. Melanch- thon convinced Luther that, for a sound education, the ideas of Aristo- tle were far superior to those of other philosophers.13 By the middle of the seventeenth century, the political and intellectual landscape had shifted in ways that made the Nicomachean Ethics somewhat less attractive to German thinkers. For some philosophers, the arguments offered by Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614) against the historiography of prisca theologia demanded a reevaluation of the history of philosophy.14 For others, the new “modern” philosophy contained an abundance of tempting alternatives to Aristotelian ethics. And for a striking number of German intellectuals, the devastation of the Thirty Years War demanded a reconsideration of ethical, legal, and political matters. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, philosophers were inclined to rethink some of the concerns that had motivated previous moral and political discussions. Many Protestant thinkers, both Luther- an and Calvinist, made four assumptions that constitute a part of the

Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cornell University Press, 1972). Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Re- naissance Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) also neatly summarize the tradition and cite more recent studies (especially 146–48). As they note, the theory that Pla- to was heir to an esoteric theology existed before the Renaissance, but it became “a major element in Western historiography only in the later fifteenth century” when Marsilio Fici- no and Pico made it famous (136). 13. Melanchthon considered the dialogues of Plato to have much less didactic value, and other ancient ethics (e.g., Stoicism) were too obviously unorthodox. For Melanch- thon’s complicated relation to Platonism, see Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons, especially 25–29, 126–28. Also see L’éthique à Nicomaque, ed. Gauthier and Jolif, vol. 1, 165–69. For Melanchthon’s treatment of the Ethics, see Ethicae doctrinae elementorum libri duo (1550) in his Opera omnia, vol. 16, ed. Carl Gottlob Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil (Halle, 1850) 165–275. A part of this text has been translated by John Mon- fasani. See Kraye, Cambridge Translations, vol. 1, 109–19. 14. An important part of the argument for the genealogy were the texts entitled the Hermetica. Many thinkers took the fact that such pre-Christian texts contained important Christian truths as confirmation of the ancient theology. Therefore, when Isaac Casaubon argued persuasively that these texts were post-Christian, the defenders of the ancient theology lost ground that was never regained. See Walker, The Ancient Theology, 17–19. It is noteworthy that Leibniz’s mentor, Jakob Thomasius, took Casaubon’s argument to undermine the theory. See his Schediasma historicum (Leipzig, 1665), 34–83. 118 christia mercer background against which their discussion of ethics must be seen: 1) the revolution begun by Luther had made the divine truth available in a way previously impossible; 2) this truth, once properly presented, would encourage peace; 3) it was appropriate to turn to ancient philosophy to aid in the pursuit and presentation of this truth; and 4) it was important to present this truth in a way that would effect the desired result. Leibniz was one of the German Protestant thinkers who accepted these four assumptions. By the end of the 1660’s, he had developed an account of the truth and the means to it from which he would never waver and which was (among other things) supposed to settle moral questions. But despite the fact that Leibniz’s ethical concerns were like many of his contemporaries, his underlying epistemology was not. His epistemological proposals stand out for three reasons. First, although he was trained by the great Jakob Thomasius, who was himself a keen supporter of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, the young man staunchly refused to engage with Aristotle’s views on ethics. Second, while Leibniz’s metaphysics is thoroughly rooted in Aristotelian thought,15 his epistemology is Platonist. And finally, despite the fact that many of the young man’s German contemporaries saw the need to rethink ethics as a means to intellectual peace, Leibniz was content just to present his epistemology (accompanied by his metaphysics) as sufficient to effect personal, religious, and political peace. In order to put into clear focus just how striking Leibniz’s position is in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, it will be helpful to offer a sketch of some of the attitudes toward Aristo- tle’s Nicomachean Ethics during the period. ii. the ‘nicomachean ethics’ in seventeenth-century germany There has been no systematic study of moral philosophy in early modern Germany, and my own research to date has been cursory.16 However, it is clear that German discussions of the Ethics need to be seen within the contexts of three historical forces: the often bitter complaints about scholasticism made by Renaissance humanists, the tension (noted above) between Luther’s demands for a Christian ethics and the

15. For a summary of Leibniz’s use of Aristotelianism, see my “The Aristotelianism at the Core of Leibniz’s Philosophy,” in The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from An- tiquity to the Seventeenth Century, ed. Cees Leijenhorst, Christoph Lüthy and Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 413–40. 16. My own work on this part of German philosophy grew out of the research for my book, Leibniz’s Metaphysics. See especially ch. 1 and ch. 5, sect. 8. For recent and forthcom- ing work on the history of ethics in Germany, see notes 1–3. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 119 pagan proposals of Aristotle, and (for authors writing in the second half of the century) the intellectual and social disorder brought by the Thir- ty Years War, fought mostly on German soil. In this section, I offer a brief summary of three ethical texts. As a group, these texts are interesting because they offer rather different responses to the somewhat problematic status of moral philosophy in seventeenth-century Germany. Each of these texts represents a different reaction to the need for reconsideration of moral philosophy as an area of philosophy to be studied and taught; and each bears a different relation to the Nicomachean Ethics. Consider, for example, a commentary by Obertus Giphanius (Hubert van Giffen) published in 1608. In this work, entitled Commentarii in De- cem Libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum, post sat bene longam suppres- sionem, boni publici gratia, iam primus in lucem editi (Frankfurt), Giphanius announces the pleasure in returning to the insights of Aristotle. In the Epistola dedicatoria to the book, signed by Lazarus Zetznerus, the Nico- machean Ethics is presented as the best of a long line of philosophical reflections on ethical matters. Although the Scholastics (especially Scotus) had cast the ethical proposals of Aristotle into “the shadows,” these ancient reflections on moral philosophy should be granted the same textual care as recent humanist studies gave to the moral philosophy of Seneca and Cicero. Giphanius’s commentary has the basic structure of a scholastic commentary in the sense that the author analyzes syllogisms and poses questions which he goes on to discuss, but the discussions themselves are scattered with references to Homer, Cicero, Plotinus, Seneca, Boethius, and other figures scattered throughout the history of western thought. When Giphanius explains his translation and interpretation of key Greek words, he makes constant use of Plato with references to the Republic, Phaedo, Meno, and Gorgias. In his Prolegomena, Giphanius explains that, according to Aristotle, “every doctrine” can be reduced to a principle or what follows from a principle, and moreover that “the principles of Politics follow from those of Ethics.” As Gipha- nius intreprets him, it is Aristotle’s view that the “matter” of ethics is “human action,” while its end is “beatitude, that is, action consistent [con- gruentem] with virtue.” It is important, insists Giphanius, that as Plato “confirms in many places,” such ethical truths are able to be understood by reason. With the help of commentaries like this one, German philosophers comfortably accommodated the Nicomachean Ethics in the early years of the century. But the Thirty Years War and the introduction of the moral and political ideas of so-called “new” philosophers like Hobbes forced further reevaluation of ethical and political matters. Encouraged by the devastation of the war, authors commonly demand an end to philosoph- 120 christia mercer ical and religious squabbling; and they frequently complain that there are as many philosophies as philosophers.17 A motif that runs throughout philosophical texts written subsequent to the Thirty Years War is that philosophy should seek intellectual and social harmony. It seemed obvious to many thinkers that moral and political philosophy ought to play a role in the production of peace and that the teaching of moral philosophy was in need of revision. Consider now an extraordinary little work by Jakob Thomasius (1622–84), who was Professor of Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy in Leipzig and whose contemporaries considered him an “erudite” historian of philosophy and important conciliatory philosopher.18 Leibniz, for example, describes him as “the most celebrated German Peripatetic”19 and often refers to him as “our most famous Thomasius.”20 Thomasius, who was the mentor of the young Leibniz and the father of Christian Thomasius, produced numerous textbooks and commentaries over the course of his life. The work that interests us here, however, is Breviarium ethicorum Aristotelis ad Nicomachum: Oratio pro Aristotele, adversus eos, qui negant eum recte juvenes ab ethicis acroasibus removisse: itemque de versionibus latinis Nicomacheorum: Commonefactio brevis (Leipzig, 1674). As the subtitle suggests, Thomasius intends to help students understand Aristotle’s work, which he considers of great philosophical value. Although Thomasius acknowledges the usefulness of Giphanius’s commentary, he intends to go beyond the work of Giphanius and others to make the truth in Aristotle as perspicuous as possible. In his letter to the reader, Thomasius explains that his intention is to make the basic “ratio” of the book clear.21 Against humanist complaints about the stylistic weaknesses of Aristotle and his scholastic followers, Thomasius insists that the Ethics does not “lack beauty;” and he suggests that the brilliance of Aristotle’s Ethics has remained “in the shadows” because it has not been treated with the right degree of seriousness. By presenting only the core claims of Aristotle’s text, Thomasius intends “to bring to the light” in the most

17. See, e.g., Johann Christoph Sturm, Philosophia eclectica (Altdorf [Nuremberg], 1686), 40–44; 184–86; Johann Adam Scherzer, Vade mecum sive manuale philosophicum quadripartitum (Leipzig: Kirchner, 1675, reprint ed. Stephan Meier-Oeser, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996), dedication (iv). For more on Sturm, Scherzer, and this emphasis on reconciliation, see my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, ch. 1. 18. Johann Christoph Sturm, Philosophia Eclectica, 72f. 19. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. Akademie der Wis- senschaften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1923– [hereafter, Academy]), Series VI, vol. 2, 426. 20. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 186; see also Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 300. 21. As Kraye points out, “after Aristotle’s fortunes had waned in the learned world,” there had become a “market for simplified, but elegant versions of the Ethics.” Thoma- sius’s text exemplifies this trend. See Kraye, “Conceptions of Moral Philosophy,” 1282. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 121 elegant way the profundity of Aristotle’s reflections on moral philosophy. The most striking thing about Thomasius’s treatment of the Ethics, however, is how much is not there: he neither translates nor interprets nor comments on the vast majority of Aristotle’s text. Rather, for each section of each of the ten books of the Nicomachean Ethics, he offers his own neat summary. Sometimes the summaries are one or two sentences in length, and no account is more than three or four sentences. For example, Thomasius summarizes the entirety of Book I, section I, with a question and two sentences. In response to the marginal heading An sit Summum Bonum? he writes: “Ante omnia quaeri potest: An sit aliquis hu- mano generi propositus finis summus? Nam quicquid sane suscipiunt homines, id boni alicuius seu finis gratia eos suscipere manifestum est. Unde consequitur, pro varietate actionum multos esse fines.” After summarizing the book, Thomasius announces in an “Oratio” both why the Nicomachean Ethics is so important and why this importance has not been fully appreciated. Concerning the latter point, he explains that it was because of the bad translations and interpretations of Aver- roës and other “Arab” sources that the ancient text could remain hidden so long behind scholastic misinterpretations. Thomasius suggests that in the same way that Aristotle himself had to find his way through the moral misunderstandings of Socrates and Plato, so has Thomasius had to find his way through these bad translations and unfortunate commentaries.22 Now, however, with an accurate presentation of Aristo- tle’s views, his reader can glimpse “the seeds of virtue.” According to Thomasius, the Nicomachean Ethics can purify one’s soul and give hope to those who seek it. Because Aristotle desired “the ultimate perfection of man,” Thomasius implies that his summary can help his contemporaries lay the foundation for a virtuous life both in the family and in the community. Lest we think that the Ethics had come to dominate moral philosophy in the decades after the Thirty Years War, consider another textbook that was supposed to constitute the basis for proper moral education and thereby lead to personal and political virtue. Written by Vincent Placcius of Hamburg, this is a commentary on some of Francis Bacon’s reflections on ethics. The full title of Placcius’s book is worth giving: De morali scientia augenda commentarium in Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Veru- lamio, Vice Comitis Sancti Albani, Summi quondam Angliae Cancellarii, & magni Sigilli Custodis. De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, librum septimum.

22. Thomasius is often quite sympathetic toward Plato. E.g., in a dissertation of April 1653 there is a thorough account of the views of Plato, especially in the Phaedo. See Disser- tationes LXIIII, ed. Christian Thomasius (Halle, 1693), 124–47. 122 christia mercer

Ethicae doctrinae originem, incrementa, decrementa, fortunamque per varias gentes variam ab orbe condito huius que summatim exhibens: indeque caussas imperfectae, media perfisciendae, perfectaeque ideam repraesentans (Hamburg, 1677). As the title makes clear, this is a commentary on the seventh book of De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, libri IX which was published in 1623. Placcius explains in his Dedicatio that he is motivated to write his commentary because his contemporaries have ignored moral philosophy for too long. Because of this “neglect of Moral science [scientia]” in the schools, people do not know how to live a proper private and public life. Placcius claims that “among all the parts of Philosophy” it is “the Moral part that has been so much neglected.” With the help of Bacon, who explains how philosophy got off course, Placcius intends to compare the views of Bacon to other figures in the history of philosophy so that the best views can be “brought to light.” One of the most surprising things about this “commentary” on Ba- con’s text is that it is not really a commentary at all. Instead of discussing the major themes in Book VII of De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum, Placcius barely follows the general flow of Bacon’s argument. He neither organizes his comments around the chapters of Bacon’s text, nor does he treat the main topics of the chapters. Thus, despite the title, Ba- con is only one among several figures whose views are discussed. Plac- cius spreads his attention over the whole history of philosophy, and seems to use Bacon’s historical reflections as an excuse for giving his own elaborate history of philosophy. He is keen to discuss the views of Plato and Aristotle, the latter of whom he frequently refers to as “the Philosopher.” With frequent citations to Augustine, Cicero, Virgil, Socrates, Galen, Horace, and others, Placcius points out the paucity of recent ethical proposals. He complains that recent philosophers like Gassendi and Descartes are not concerned with ethical matters. In the end, Placcius seems to admire Bacon because he offers a story about what went wrong in the history of ethics, and because he is a “new” philosopher who is interested in ethics. With the help of Bacon and prominent historical figures, Placcius intends to direct his contemporaries back to “the proper” study of ethical topics. Although Placcius ap- plauds his contemporaries for their abilities with ancient languages and for their study of mathematics and natural philosophy, he warns that they do not attend enough “to their souls.” Placcius’s intention is that his contemporaries take both ethics and its history more seriously and begin to see ethical matters in “a new light.” From the textbooks on moral philosophy of Giphanius, Thomasius, and Placcius, we can draw some tentative conclusions about the state of ethics in the third quarter of the seventeenth century in Protestant Ger- Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 123 many. As Leibniz was developing his philosophy in the 1660’s, there was no standard approach to ethical problems. Although Aristotle’s Nico- machean Ethics continued to be the text around which discussions centered, its prominence was surely less secure than it had been earlier in the century. And while there were authors—Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and Augustine—whose importance was obvious to anyone working on moral philosophy, there was no standard way of using them. This environment was ripe for new ideas and for innovative combinations of old ones. iii. platonist background to leibniz’s epistemology Given the underlying importance of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in seventeenth-century Germany and given the robust commitment to the text by Leibniz’s mentor, Thomasius, it is striking that Leibniz himself was entirely unimpressed by Aristotle’s ethical proposals. Between 1661 and 1690, among the hundreds of pages of philosophical notes, essays, and texts, Leibniz refers to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics roughly thirty times.23 In the vast majority of these, Leibniz either makes brief reference to Aristotle’s text or includes his name among important figures in the history of philosophy who engaged in ethical topics. For example, Aristotle appears in a list composed in 1678, along with six other authors (including Spinoza, Hobbes, and Campanella) who wrote on ethics.24 In those few cases when Leibniz refers to the Ethics over several pages, he is discussing the views of someone else.25 In none of these cases, for example, does Leibniz take seriously Aristotle’s discussion of the five intellectual virtues. The young man’s disinclination to take the Ethics seriously is even more surprising when one realizes the central role that Aristotle’s metaphysics played in the development of Leibniz’s theory of substance. As recent scholars have made clear, Leibniz took Aristotle’s notion of substance and transformed it into something that would solve the metaphysical problems that most concerned him.26 Although in the end,

23. At the present time, the Academy edition of Leibniz’s philosophical papers ends in 1690. There are many more papers (and more volumes of the edition) yet to come. For citations to the Ethics, see the indices in Academy, Series VI, vols. 2, 3, and 4. For a helpful article that includes some information on Leibniz’s early relation to the Ethics, see Francesco Piro, “Leibniz and Ethics: The Years 1669–72,” in The Young Leibniz and his Phi- losophy: 1646–76, ed. S. Brown (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 1990), 147–67, especially 159–61. 24. Academy, Series VI, vol. 4, 110. 25. See, e.g., the notes that he took on Jakob Thomasius’s Philosophica Practica (Leipzig, 1661): Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 44, 47–51. 26. See my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, ch. 1–4, and see Daniel Garber, “Leibniz and the Foun- 124 christia mercer

Leibniz’s theory of substance is importantly different from that of Aris- totle himself, Leibniz was keen to point out that he had “renovated” Aristotle’s notion of substance. But when it came to other areas in philosophy, Leibniz was much more impressed with Plato and the Platon- ists. In particular, the young Leibniz turned to the Platonists for the fundamentals of his views about God and knowledge. Before we turn to his epistemology, it will be helpful to consider some of the sources for Leib- niz’s views. That Leibniz’s original epistemology owes a great deal to Platonism will come as a surprise to some. The Platonism extant in seventeenth- century Germany has not generally been recognized, and the Platonism of the professors in Leipzig has not been noted. Many recent scholars have identified Platonist and kabbalistic elements in Leibniz’s mature writings and have speculated about their source. Most have assumed that the recognizably Platonic flavor of some of Leibniz’s mature writings was due to his increasing familiarity in the 1680’s with the views of the Cambridge Platonists, while some have speculated about its scholastic, Renaissance, and ancient sources.27 These scholars have been correct in their recognition of Platonic elements in Leibniz’s later thought, but they have looked too far afield for its source. Leibniz drank from the Platonist fountain as a young student in Leipzig. In his typical fashion, Leibniz took these raw materials and made them distinctly his own, but there is no doubt that he acquired a thorough familiarity with them as a university student and that they are the primary source of his epistemology.28 According to my account of the development of Leibniz’s metaphysics, Leibniz learned his Platonism from Jakob Thomasius, Johann Adam Scherzer, and other German philosophers, and moreover the basic features of his Platonism were in place in 1671–72, several years before he acquired a thorough familiarity with the thought of Henry dations of Physics: The Middle Years,” in The Natural Philosophy of Leibniz, ed. Kathleen Okruhlik and James Robert Brown (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), 27–130. 27. For example, Allison Coudert correctly identifies a number of Platonic features in Leibniz’s mature thought and then assumes that the source of these ideas must be the Cambridge Platonists in general and Francis Mercury van Helmont in particular. See her Leibniz and the Kabbalah. Some studies have taken seriously the relation between Leibniz and ancient Platonists like Plotinus, but they have focused on Leibniz’s later thought and have not acknowledged the role Platonism played in his philosophical development. The best of these studies remains Joseph Politella’s “Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Cabalism in the Philosophy of Leibniz,” (Diss. phil., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1938); and Rudolf Meyer’s “Leibniz und Plotin,” Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 5 (1971): 31–54. 28. The claim that Platonism is the primary source of Leibniz’s conception of the relation between God and creatures is consistent with the fact that Leibniz often turned to the scholastics for inspiration about theological matters. For a much more detailed account of Leibniz’s Platonism and other matters concerning his metaphysics, see my Leibniz’s Meta- physics, ch. 2, 3, 5, and 6. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 125

More, Anne Conway, Francis Mercury van Helmont, or any other Cam- bridge Platonist.29 A question arises at this point: if Leibniz made active use of Platonist ideas early in his career, then why does he not call attention to it in the same way that he does to his use of Aristotelian thought? He proudly proclaims his rehabilitation of the philosophy of Aristotle in letters written in the period; and indeed his first major publication on a contemporary metaphysical topic contains account of the debt he owes to Aristo- tle.30 Why did he not call similar attention to the benefits of the philosophy of Plato? Leibniz was not motivated to justify his Platonism because that philosophy had not become an object of ridicule. On the contrary, the vast majority of Leibniz’s contemporaries were themselves inclined to turn to the Platonist tradition, both pagan and Christian, for inspiration concerning divine topics. In other words, Leibniz stands in a long line of Christian philosophers who found Platonism much more amenable than the thought of other ancient authors to Christian assumptions about divinity. As Augustine proclaims in the Confessiones, it was the pagan Platonists who put him on the path to knowledge of the Christian God. He explains that it was after procuring the books of the Platonists that he learned about “the light that shines;” it was “from the Gentiles that I came to You.”31 However much Leibniz’s Platonism might come as a surprise to us, it did not surprise his contemporaries. Most of them would have understood exactly what he meant when he wrote in Discours de métaphysique 14 that “Now, first of all it is very evident that created substances depend upon God, who preserves them and who even produces them continually by a kind of emanation, just as we produce our thoughts;” or when he claims in Monadologie 47 that “God alone is the primitive unity or the original simple substance; all created or derivative monads are products, and are generated so to speak by continual fulgurations of the divinity .l.l. limited by the receptivity of the creature,

29. Most scholars have agreed that the source of Leibniz’s Platonist tendencies was some member of the so-called Cambridge Platonists, but they have disagreed about which member of More’s wide circle most influenced Leibniz and when the influence occurred. To cite three examples, Coudert maintains that the relationship between van Helmont and Leibniz became important in the late 1680’s and that the former was the major source of Leibniz’s Platonism; Carolyn Merchant thinks that it was Anne Conway who had the most significant influence and that it took place in the 1690’s; while Catherine Wilson argues that Ralph Cudworth was the Platonist who most influenced Leibniz and that it began in 1689. See Merchant’s “The Vitalism of Anne Conway: Its Impact on Leibniz’s concept of the Monad,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (1979): 255–69; Wilson’s Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 160. For the Platonism of Leibniz’s teachers and contemporaries, see my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, especially chapts. 5–6. 30. See Academy, Series VI, vol. 2, 433–50. 31. Confessiones, VII. 9 (15). 126 christia mercer to which it is essential to be limited.” In the intellectual community in which Leibniz was raised, there was no need to justify the use of the Pla- tonist philosophy in the way there was with the Aristotelian one. As Leib- niz explains in the Specimen dynamicum of 1695, “[j]ust as our age has already saved from scorn .l.l. Plato’s ideas,” he will now “make intelligible the teachings of the Peripatetics concerning forms or entelechies.”32 In brief, I am making two claims: one about the intellectual context in which Leibniz’s epistemology developed, the other about its content. The first claim is that the philosophy of Plotinus, Proclus, Augustine, Fi- cino, Pico della Mirandola, and of course Plato himself was widely known and highly regarded throughout the seventeenth century and formed a major part of the intellectual context in which Leibniz was raised. The second is that Leibniz adopted this Platonist epistemology. In the present discussion I will give little support for the first claim except in so far as I argue for the second.33 Before presenting Leibniz’s original epistemology, it will be helpful to remind the reader of some of the epistemological views of Plato and other Platonists. Plato famously distinguished between being and becoming where the eternal and immutable Ideas (say, Justice) constitute the former while the temporary and mutable sensible objects constitute the latter. It can be said that, for Plato, the realm of being and the realm of the intelligible is the same so that the only objects of genuine knowledge are the Ideas. The implication is that we cannot grasp the Ideas in sense perception. Many Platonists placed the Ideas, as objects of knowledge, within us. According to Plotinus, for example, the Ideas reside in us and are constantly present to us, although we are unaware of them because our surface consciousness is only one level of awareness. Although Platonists differed about the precise role played by the senses in the acquisition of knowledge, most agreed that the process of coming to know the Ideas was one of removing oneself from the mutable world of the senses and

32. Die mathematische Schriften, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Asher, 1848–63; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1962); vol. 6, 234–35. In the New System of Nature, which is the first published presentation of his philosophy, Leibniz spends nearly a fifth of the essay justifying his “rehabilitation” of Aristotelian substantial forms. Also see Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin: Weidemann Buch- handlung, 1875–90; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), vol. 4, 477–87. 33. It is not surprising that twentieth-century scholars have not looked for the roots of Leibniz’s Platonism in the intellectual culture of Leipzig: the standard histories of the philosophy in central Europe in the seventeenth century say nothing about this Platonism, nor do the major biographies of Leibniz notice the Platonism of the professors in Leipzig. In fact, as far as I know, Leroy E. Loemker is the only scholar to acknowledge the importance of humanist Platonism as a significant part of the background to Leibniz’s thought, though he does not identify the philosophers in Leipzig as its source and his discussion of Leibniz’s Platonism is rather programmatic. See his Struggle for Synthesis: The 17th–Century Background of Leibniz’s Synthesis of Order and Freedom (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), passim. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 127 discovering the immutable Ideas within. The acquisition of knowledge was considered an arduous, internal journey that required rigorous intellectual and moral discipline. The point of philosophy therefore was to raise oneself above the petty concerns of this world, to concentrate on the eternal truths, and eventually to acquire knowledge of the supreme being.34 For most theists, the acquisition of knowledge of the Ideas was a necessary step toward knowledge of God. In his essay, De migratione Abrahami, the first-century Jewish theologian, Philo of Alexandria, vividly describes this epistemological journey. He asserts that wisdom which is the proper goal of humanity “will never happen to you if you remain here dwelling among the objects of the external senses, and wasting your time among the distinctive qualities of the body.”35 He distinguishes neatly between that “which is perceptible by the outward senses and [that which is] intelligible by the intellect” (273), and insists that only when we “quit the abode of the outward senses” and “set up the abode of the soul” can we “dwell in mind and intellect .l.l. among the objects of contemplation” (274). According to Philo, in the world of the sense, “the mind is .l.l. a fugitive” that has “left its own appropriate objects which are comprehensible to the understanding” (273–74). He warns: do not .l.l. employ yourselves in the investigation of the earth .l.l. but rather seek to become acquainted with yourselves and your own nature, and do not prefer to dwell anywhere else, rather than in yourselves. For by contemplating the things which are to be seen in your own dwelling .l.l. you will .l.l. arrive at a correct knowledge of God and of his works. For you will perceive that there is a mind in you and in the universe. (271) In short, one must “rise up and leave the objects of the outward senses, and .l.l. go over to those of the intellect” (254). For our purposes, it is noteworthy that Philo takes there to be (at least) two necessary steps in the acquisition of wisdom: first, we must consider “this invisible chain of harmony and unity, which connects all those parts” of the world (274); and then God must “cause the light of truth to shine” (260) so that our intellect can contemplate some of the Ideas. Following Plato’s distinction in Book VI of the Republic, Philo and others insisted that it was the faculty of intellect or understanding (intellectus) and not that of reason that could contemplate and grasp the truths.36

34. See, e.g., Enneads, V.3.3.27–29, 42–43; IV.3.30.11–16. Translations based on Ploti- nus, Enneads, ed. Arthur Hilary Armstrong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). 35. Philo, De migratione Abrahami, V.28. For a translation of Philo’s texts, see The Works of Philo, ed. Charles Duke Yonge, 3d edition (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995) 255. 36. Republic, VI, 509d–511e. Of course, scholars debate the exact signiﬁcance of the line analogy in Book VI and the terminology concerning the faculty that grasps “the 128 christia mercer

Christian Platonists endorsed the steps in this epistemological journey. For Augustine, the objects of knowledge are to be found within one’s self.37 In the Confessiones, he writes to God: These books [of the Platonists] served to remind me to return to my own self. Under Your guidance I entered into the depths of my soul.l.l.l. I entered, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw the Light that never changes casting its rays over the same eye of my soul, over my mind.l.l.l. What I saw was something quite, quite different from any light we know on earth.l.l.l. It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it. All who know the truth know this Light, and all who know this Light know eternity.38 It is important that Platonists like Augustine thought of the mind as both the subject and object of knowledge, as what knows and what is known. In De trinitate, Augustine writes that only “the mind can place itself into its own field of vision”39 and “be understood through its own thinking [cogitatio].”40 The mind, as thinking subject, can turn itself upon itself and attempt to contemplate the Ideas within itself. As subject, the mind is mutable and temptable; as object, it is immutable and pure in that it contains the Ideas. The “changeable” mind can only reach the “unchangeable” Ideas, as Augustine writes, “through the help of God.” The possibility of knowledge is grounded in God’s intimate presence in the human mind. Augustine explains: “God is wholly everywhere” and “the mind lives and moves and has its being in him.” The mind acquires knowledge “by turning towards the Lord, as to the light which in some fashion had reached it even while it had been turned away from him.”41 But even with divine help, as he explains in the Con- fessiones, “the power of my soul .l.l. belongs to my nature” and “I cannot grasp all that I am. The mind is not large enough to contain itself.”42 The goal of life therefore is to remove oneself as much as possible from the ties to the material world and to contemplate the eternal and immutable Ideas within. Because the mind is mutable and finite, it can never grasp the whole of its contents; with the help of God however it can grasp some part of it. For the sake of simplicity, let’s summarize the basic points here as follows. The Epistemological Assumption claims 1) that the mind is the object of knowledge in the sense that it contains the eternal truths or Ideas, 2) that the mind, which is mutable and finite, will become aware of those intelligibles” was not entirely set among Greek writers. Latin authors, however, were more in agreement in that the Latin “intellectus” standardly designated the faculty that grasp the Ideas and eternal truths. 37. Augustine, Confessiones, VII.20 (26). 38. Ibid. VII.10 (16). 39. De Trinitate, XIV.6 (8). 40. Ibid. XIV.11 (14). 41. Ibid. XIV.15 (21). 42. Confessions, X.8 (15). Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 129 objects only if it both turns away from the material world and is aided by the divine light, and 3) that it is the intellect or understanding that is capable of grasping those truths. Before turning to Leibniz’s own commitment to the Epistemological As- sumption, it will be helpful to review another aspect of Platonist views about knowledge acquisition. Because Leibniz’s epistemology assumes his views about harmony, it will be important to say something about his views about reflective harmony, which itself depends on the notion of emanative harmony. There are several related points to make about emanative harmony. For many Platonists, there is a hierarchy of self-suffi- ciency and being such that each of the lower strata in the hierarchy is supposed to depend on and be caused by the higher. In Plato’s Republic the sensible things depend on the Ideas which themselves depend on the Good. Both Christian and non-Christian Platonists assumed that creatures were the result of the continual emanation of the supreme being. The third-century philosopher Plotinus explains that the “unbounded” perfection of the One is such that it “overflows” with being. According to Plotinus, as soon as something is produced or created, there is multiplicity in that the being and perfection of the One is manifested in diverse ways. Moreover, for many Platonists, there will be as much being and as many kinds of being as possible. Plato had suggested in the Timaeus that the sensible world would be incomplete if it did not contain all possible creatures.43 Plotinus retains this idea and suggests that diversity of being is a good thing. He writes, “it is not possible for anything else to come into being; all things have come into being and there is nothing left.”44 Platonists differed about the details of their creation stories, but they were in general agreement about the result: everything in the created world was understood to be a manifestation of the divinity.45 For theists like Philo and Augustine, God had Ideas or attributes that were manifested in every created thing. The basic idea was that the diversity in the world was the essence of the supreme being variously manifested.46 With this said about emanative harmony, we can turn our attention to the interrelations among the parts of the world. There are two no-

43. Timaeus, 29e–31b, 39e. 44. Enneads, V.5.12.46–47 (Armstrong). 45. The same idea appears in the thought of many Jewish kabbalists where the divine attributes are supposed to emanate to all levels of creation so that every being participates in all of them. Johann Reuchlin was a Christian kabbalist who was widely known in Ger- many in the seventeenth century. For a brief introduction to Reuchlin, see Moshe Idel, “Introduction to the Bison Book Edition” and G. Lloyd Jones, “Introduction,” both in Jo- hann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah, trans. Martin Goodman and Sarah Goodman (Lincoln, Nebr.: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). 46. This is not pantheism. Although the divinity is expressed in the creatures, the 130 christia mercer tions that are extant in Platonism and that are relevant to Leibniz’s epistemology. The first concerns the unity that was believed to exist among all the parts of the created world. It was supposed to follow from emanative harmony that the unity of God is immanent not just in every individual product of the supreme being, but also in the whole of creation. Some Platonists expanded on this idea and talked about the parts of the world as related in such a way that every part was in communication with every one. In other words, the result of this unity among the parts of the world is a cosmic sympathy such that an occurrence in one part of the world “must produce a sympathic reaction in every other part.”47 In his discussion of the relation between individual souls and Nous or what is sometimes called the World Soul, Plotinus makes it clear that the interconnection among the parts of the world is based ultimately in their having the same source. He writes: How, then, is there one substance in many souls? Either the one is present as a whole in them all, or the many come from the whole and one while it abides [unchanged]. That soul, then, is one, but the many [go back] to it as one which gives itself to multiplicity and does not give itself; for it is adequate to supply itself to all and to remain one; for it has power extending to all things, and is not at all cut off from each individual thing; it is the same, therefore, in all.48 For someone who believes that every creature is a manifestation of the divine essence, it would naturally follow that there exists an order connecting each instantiation to every other. As Philo explains: “And being superior to, and being also external to the world that he has made, he nevertheless fills the whole world with himself; for, having by his own power extended it to its utmost limits, he has connected every portion with another portion according to the principles of harmony.”49 This harmony among the “portions” of the divine is such that each responds to the activity and states of all the others. This relation of sympathy, which can be more or less, claims that each created being corresponds to the activity and states of all the beings. The second relation that exists among the parts of the world is that of reflection. Whereas sympathy appears to hold true of all beings, reflection applies only to minds or mind-like beings. In his account of the realm of Ideas, Plotinus rejects the statuesque immobility of Plato’s former remains perfect while its expressions or manifestations are significantly inferior to their source. For a discussion of this, see Mercer, Leibniz’s Metaphysics, ch. 5, sect. 4. 47. Richard T. Wallis, Neo-Platonism (London: Duckworth, 1972), 70. Interestingly, Wallis insists here that for Plotinus “there is a pre-established harmony linking the des- tinies of all souls” and notes that this is “echoed in the later philosophy of Leibniz.” 48. Enneads, IV.9.5.1–7 (Armstrong). 49. Philo, De posteritate Caini, V.14 (Yonge). Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 131 world and adds the striking notion that this world is “teeming with life” and that the Ideas themselves are mind-like. By attributing mental capacities to the Ideas, Plotinus offers a fascinating way of conceiving the interrelations among the multiple Ideas. For Plotinus, the Ideas are themselves capable of reflecting and in a sense containing each other. Plotinus offers a marvelously vivid description of the interrelations among the Ideas: Everything is clear .l.l. to everything, for light is transparent to light. Each, there, has everything in itself and sees all things in every other, for all are everywhere and each and every one is all, and the glory is unbounded; for each of them is great, because even the small is great: the sun there is all the stars, and each star is the sun and all the others.50 It is important for our purposes that this reflective interconnection is not limited to the realm of Ideas. Individual souls are similarly related in that each is wholly present to all the others, although they are not fully conscious of the others, and the unity among souls is not as great as that among the Ideas. These last two points are interestingly related: individual souls may remain unconscious of the goodness and interconnections among things, stray from the path of virtue, and thereby isolate themselves from the others. Each soul nonetheless contains all the others and thereby constitutes a unity with them.51 This relation of reflective harmony entails that each mind thinks and reflects all the others. Now that we have presented the Epistemological Assumption, and summarized the Platonist notions of emanative harmony, sympathy, and reflective harmony, we can turn to the role they play in Leibniz’s epistemology. iv. leibniz’s epistemology During the period 1668–71 Leibniz developed the key elements of his metaphysics and epistemology. Although he would tinker with the details of his metaphysics for some time and develop important ideas in other areas of his thought (e.g., physics and mathematics), he never wa- vered from the epistemological views developed during those years. In the late 1660’s Leibniz was working on a number of interrelated projects that required that he articulate for the first time his conception of the relation between God and the world. For a model of that relation, the young man turned to the Platonism of his teachers.52 Leibniz’s origi-

50. Enneads, V.8.4.5–10 (Armstrong). 51. Enneads, III.4.3.22, IV.7.10.32–37, II.3.7, IV.4.32–34 (Armstrong). 52. We have seen evidence of Thomasius’s commitment to Aristotle’s Ethics. But 132 christia mercer nal conception of harmony develops from that tradition and makes interesting use of emanative harmony, sympathy, and reflective harmony. And Leibniz’s conception of harmony is crucial to his epistemology. In this section, I will discuss Leibniz’s views about harmony and its relevance to his epistemology, and I will show that he accepts each of the three parts of the Epistemological Assumption. Between 1668 and 1672, Leibniz worked on several large projects. Two of the most important of these display his developing epistemology. The Demonstrationes catholicae is a series of essays on theological topics, while the Elementa juris naturalis is a group of notes that investigates a number of related topics: human virtue and goodness, divine and human justice, knowledge, wisdom, and universal harmony. We find abundant evidence in the Demonstrationes catholicae and especially in the Elementa juris naturalis that the young Leibniz endorsed emanative harmony, sympathy, and reflective harmony. In the early notes of the Ele- menta juris naturalis, Leibniz describes the dominant feature of God’s world for the first time as universal harmony, which he defines both as “diversity compensated by identity”53 and as “identity compensated by diversity” (477). He also makes some provocative claims about how he envisages the interrelation between these notions. The basic intuition is that there is a single thing that underlies all the diversity, to which all things are ultimately reducible, and which is discernible. Leibniz writes: “There is great harmony when there is great diversity, which nonetheless is reduced to identity. (For there cannot be grades in identity, but in variety)” (479). It is clear that, for Leibniz in 1669–70, there is a single, unified, and perfect supreme being who chooses to emanate its being and perfection into creatures and who nonetheless remains transcendent while all its creatures contain an imperfect instantiation of its essence. Because the supreme being emanates or diffuses its essence into all its products, both as individuals and as a group, it is the unity in the world. Leibniz asserts that the ratio of things will be “[i]n Mind, that is, in the one in the many. Therefore, [it will be] in Harmony, that is, in the unity of many things, or [seu] diversity compensated by identity. Moreover God is the one that is all things.”54

Thomasius also was thoroughly educated in the history of Platonism, and wrote extensively on that rich philosophical tradition. See especially his Exercitatio de stoica mundi exustione (Leipzig, 1676). 53. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 484. 54. Academy, Series VI, vol. 2, 283. Part of the Latin is worth quoting: “Necesse est in cogitabilibus ipsis rationem esse cur sentiantur, id est cur existant, ea non est in singu- loruom cogitatione, erit ergo in pluribus. Ergo omnibus. Ergo in Mente, id est uno in multis. Ergo in Harmonia id est unitate plurimorum, seu diversitate identitate compensata. Deus autem est unus omnia.” Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 133

It is significant that Leibniz is keen to emphasize the fact that the unity within the variety be evident to those who know where to look. He explains in the Elementa juris naturalis: “Variety delights but only when it is reduced to a unity,” where the latter is “ordered and connected.”55 About variety, Leibniz proposes that “identical propositions” are not pleasing “because .l.l. they conform too much” to one another, as do rhythmic verses which return “to the same ending.” The right sort of variety consists in the juxtaposition of the same elements in different ways. For example, to make a pleasing song “it is sufficient for the last part of the song’s ending to return to the original melody” to be played “a bit differently” (485). The aesthetic criterion at work here is one where the beauty of an object is a function of how much the elements of the same thing can be made to vary in subtle ways while the unity or singleness of the thing remains evident. In the Conspectus, which is an outline of Leibniz’s Demonstrationes catholicae, Leibniz turns to the possibility of the beatific vision. He writes: “the beatific vision or [seu] the intuition of God, face to face, is the contemplation of the universal Harmony of things because GOD or [seu] the Mind of the Universe is nothing other than the harmony of things, or [seu] the principle of beauty in them” (499). We need to proceed carefully. Since the whole point of the Demonstrationes catholicae is to avoid heresy and promote religious concord, we should not read this passage as a heretical harangue. Leibniz is here discussing the topic of beatific vision and how it is that human beings might come “face to face” with God. According to Leibniz, the goal of human life is the recognition of harmony where that is the same thing as the intuition of God: when we “contemplate the universal Harmony of things,” we are face to face with the Divine. According to Plotinus, the beatific vision is something like an intuition of how all things are one. In the Conspectus, Leibniz agrees with his Platonist predecessors. The beatific vision will occur when we are able to discern the unity within the multiplicity of the world: “the harmony of things, or the principle of beauty in them” is just God in so far as the supreme being is the unity and multiplicity in the world. We will have glimpsed God once we recognize that the divine unity, beauty, and perfection are immanent in everything. The aesthetic criterion of the Elementa juris naturalis applies nicely to the account of the beatific vision in the Conspectus: the harmony of the world is a function of the variety of ways in which the essence of God is diffused in the world while remaining recognizably the same thing. God is like an infinite melody played in infinitely complex ways. As Philo had made the

55. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 484. 134 christia mercer point centuries earlier, God has constructed things so that “our whole system, like a melodious chorus of many men, may sing in concert one well-harmonized melody composed of different sounds well combined.”56 That this melody is recognizably the same, despite the diversity, is crucial to Leibniz’s original epistemology and ethics. He agrees with some of his Platonist predecessors that the perfection of God is diffused in the world and therefore that harmony plays an important moral function. According to Leibniz in the Elementa juris naturalis, the process of becoming a good person is that of stripping away the chaos and “constant confusion of human affairs” and coming to grasp “the infinity” of God. For the good person, “the dissonance” of things will be compensated “through consonance.” From the contemplation of harmony, we will be “led away from all desire and sadness, and all other affections” until we eventually “increase our admiration” of God.57 Leibniz’s general point in the Elementa juris naturalis is clear enough: the goal of life is to recognize that everything is an emanation of God and hence that everything is a proper object of love. In a letter to Arnauld of 1671, Leibniz summarizes his position: I am planning to treat the Elementa juris naturalis in a short book.l.l.l. I define a good person .l.l. as one who loves all people; .l.l. harmony as diversity compensated by identity. For variety always delights us, once it is reduced to a unity.l.l.l. I show that it is the same thing to love others and to love God, the seat of universal harmony.58 God is the seat of universal harmony in the sense that the supreme being is the transcendent emanative source of the unity and diversity in the created world. Because every created thing is an instantiation of the divine essence, to love creatures and to love God is the same thing. Leibniz’s early views about harmony are important to his epistemology. But before we go into more details, it will be helpful to discuss his version of the Epistemological Assumption. In the Demonstrationes catholicae and the Elementa juris naturalis, we find ample evidence that Leibniz accepts each of the three parts of that assumption. Let’s consider each claim in turn. Ideas as Objects of Knowledge For the young Leibniz there are two aspects of the created world: the sensory or phenomenal world of becoming and the eternal and im-

56. Philo, De migratione Abrahami, XVIII.104 (Yonge 263). 57. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 485; see also 478, 481. 58. Academy, Series II, vol. 1, 173–74. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 135 mutable world of being. The acquisition of knowledge depends crucial- ly on the fact that a human mind can turn itself upon itself and be both subject and object of knowledge. The mind as subject is capable of understanding all essences;59 the mind as object contains them in its nature.60 Let’s consider some texts. In notes written during the summer of 1669, Leibniz repudiates those who claim that “there is nothing in the intellect that is not ﬁrst in the sense.” According to Leibniz, this is true only “in a limited way” for “there is nothing in the intellect which was not ﬁrst in sense, except the intellect itself.”61 For many philosophers scattered throughout the history of philosophy (e.g., Averroës), it was important to distinguish the active and passive intellect. This distinction goes back to Aristotle’s On the soul, but it was conceived in a variety of ways among philosophers scattered throughout the history of western philosophy. Roughly speaking the intellectus was taken to be the faculty of understanding that could know the forms or natures of things; its knowledge was the result of the preparation on the part of the active (or agent) intellect of the raw epistemological materials so that, once processed, those materials could be known by the passive (or material) intellect. Philosophers sometimes compared the passive intellect to prime matter, because it could take on any form (i.e., any object of knowledge) and had no forms in its own nature; they compared the active intellect to form because it actualized the potency in the passive intellect. Glossing over some complications, when I know the form of Justice, my passive intellect has received the processed material that my active intellect gives it. In the history of western philosophy there has been a good deal of disagreement about the details of the interrelations between the passive and active intellects and, for example, whether they are mortal or immortal. Some philosophers (e.g., Alexan- der of Aphrodisias) equated the active intellect with God and maintained that it was immortal, while the passive intellect was mortal. Avi- cenna agreed that the active intellect was divine and added a further Platonic twist by saying that it contained within it the Forms and in that sense was a storehouse of knowledge. This sketch of the active intellect conforms to the accounts offered in some of the prominent seventeenth-century philosophical lexicons. In his Lexicon philosophicum of 1613, Goclenius says that the intellectus is

59. Ibid., 113. 60. It is well known that in the late 1660’s and throughout his life Leibniz was thoroughly interested in the examination of the physical world. How does his genuine enthusiasm for natural science conform to his Platonic epistemology? For answer to this question, see my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, ch. 8, sect. 3. 61. Academy, Series VI, vol. 2, 393. My emphasis. 136 christia mercer most basically “the principle of understanding” but warns that it is “an obscure notion.”62 He goes on to distinguish between active and passive understanding by noting that the passive understanding is “the reception of an object,” while the active understanding “perfects” the object and thereby prepares it for understanding. In this sense, according to Goclenius, the passive intellect counts as the matter and the active intellect the form.63 In his Lexicon philosophicum of 1653, Micraelius claims that the active intellect takes the material represented in the passive intellect and “operates on it” so as to produce knowledge,64 while Chasteg- nier in his Celebriorum distinctionum philosophicarum of 1653 says that the passive intellect (what he calls the “possible intellect”) “universally receives all forms” and that the active intellect “is what makes the possible intellect to be in act to all things which are in it potentially.”65 The important point for our purposes is that, in all these accounts, the passive intellect receives and “takes on” any material it is given (whatever exactly that material is), while the active intellect is an active processor. For some philosophers (e.g., Averroës) the intellect contains all the Ideas. Our coming to know the Ideas is a matter of our active intellect processing them in the right sort of way. In his notes of 1669, Leibniz asserts that the intellect comes replete with the Ideas which are the true objects of knowledge. Therefore, when he writes that “there is nothing in the intellect that is not ﬁrst in the sense, except the intellect itself,” he is claiming that the intellect is able to have two sorts of objects: those Ideas which are contained in its nature and those sensory materials which are not. We ﬁnd further evidence to this effect in the Conspectus. In the third section of this outline for the Demonstrationes catholicae, entitled “The Demonstration of the Possibility of the Mysteries of the Chris- tian Faith,” Leibniz makes some revealing comments about the relation between divine and human mind. His plan is to discuss “the eternal” modes of God which are omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and multipresence; to analyze the omnipresence and multipresence of God in human mind; and to include “an exposition of the Ideas,” in so far as they are in divine as well as human mind.66 As noted in section III,

62. Rudolf Goclenius, Lexicon philosophicum (Frankfurt: Musculus, 1613; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1980), 247. 63. Ibid., 249. 64. Johann Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum terminorum philosophis usitatorum (Jena: Freyschmidt, 1653) 550–51. 65. Henry-Louis Chastegnier de La Rocheposay, Celebriorum distinctionum philosophicarum .l.l. synopsis, 2d edition (Leiden, 1645), 98. 66. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 495. The Conspectus was written during the period when Leibniz believed that the mind in non-human substances was the “concurrent mind” or God. Therefore, the minds under discussion are human. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 137 it was common for Platonists to think that the divinity was present in the human mind and that the acquisition of knowledge required divine help. In Augustine’s words: “God is everywhere” and knowledge is attainable only “through the help of God.”67 In the Conspectus, Leibniz agrees that God is present in mind and endorses the claim that both human and divine mind contain the Ideas. Moreover, in the second part of the Conspectus, entitled “Demonstration of the Immortality of the Soul, and of Incorporality,” Leibniz proposes to demonstrate immortality on the basis of “the thinking of incorporeals.”68 In the Phaedo, Plato had argued for the immortality of the soul based on its resemblance, as an incorporeal thing, to the incorporeal Ideas. Roughly, one of Plato’s points was that only something that itself could escape the corporeal world of becoming would be capable of thinking or grasping the incorporeal world of the Ideas.69 Following Plato, Leibniz seems to assume that the capacity of the soul to think the eternal and immutable Ideas entails its immortality. The Intellect and the Material World In the notes for the Elementa juris naturalis and in other texts of 1670–71, Leibniz proudly proclaims that his theory of knowledge is Pla- tonic. He insists that the acquisition of knowledge ultimately demands that we turn away from the material world so that our intellect can grasp the truths. He distinguishes clearly between the senses and the intellect and between the sciences based on them. According to Leibniz, there are two sorts of sciences: those “which depend on experience .l.l. and sense” and “those sciences which depend on deﬁnitions .l.l. and demonstrations.”70 Although he encourages work in the former (e.g., medicine) and admits that such disciplines have made progress in control- ling nature, he insists that these sciences do not beneﬁt our souls. For Leibniz, despite the genuine usefulness of the mechanical sciences based on the phenomena, they do not lead us to the real underlying truths: “Therefore until now we have been ignorant of, that is we have not consumed, nor have we imbibed the true fountains of the equal and the good.”71 He writes: “Now that we are conquerors of the world, there

67. Confessiones, IV.14 (21). 68. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 495. The Latin is “ex cognitione incorporalium.” 69. Phaedo, 78b–84b. 70. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 460. 71. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 460. In Plato’s Phaedo, the discussion of the Ideas and the possession of knowledge of them begins with a set of questions about the Equal (see especially 74a–75d). In the Republic, where the discussion is focused primarily on Justice, Plato suggests that the Good is the ultimate Idea (see especially 508b–511). See the quo- tation below in which Leibniz mentions these three Ideas. 138 christia mercer assuredly remains an enemy within us: everything is clear to man but man, the body to the mind, and the mind to itself ” (459). Our souls will be benefited only when we turn away from the senses and discover the real truths that lie beyond them. According to Leibniz, unlike those sciences which are based on the sensory phenomena, “the principles of the [other] sciences possess eternal truth” and are based on the understanding. These principles are like “what Plato called an Idea” (460). In sum, the true objects of knowledge are the Platonic Ideas, which the understanding grasps and which cannot be reached through the senses. In the introductory paragraph of the Theoria motus abstracti published in 1671, Leibniz makes the same sort of pronouncements about the relation between physics and true knowledge. He explains that his physical proposals are ultimately based on “the innermost nature of Thinking, the perpetuity [perennitas] of Mind, and the First Cause.l.l.l. [F]rom these fountains, both clear and limpid, flow forth profound truths .l.l. about the Good and the Equal, and the Just.”72 In his conclusion, he returns to this theme and insists that the goal of his work in physics is “to offer solid demonstrations about God and Mind” and to affirm “the mysteries of the faith.” He proclaims that his physical proposals are founded on “a certain singular harmony of things detectable to those minds accustomed to such Music.”73 Soon after writing the Theoria motus abstracti, Leibniz began to work on the details of how minds could become so accustomed. In a fascinating note of 1671, entitled Trinitas. mens, we see him tinkering with the details of his views. The abundant additions and deletions made to the manuscript offer a ringside seat on a struggle among formulations. Leibniz’s first attempt to articulate a basic tenet of his epistemology, “Mind is what perceives eternal [truths],” became “Mind is what is concerned with eternal truths,” which he also crossed out.74 He tried again, and wrote and then crossed out both of the following: “The Intellect is what concerns itself with the eternal truths;” “The Intellect is what concerns itself with the perception of things which are in act.” These rejected formulations reveal that, in one of his original attempts to display how the mind acquires knowledge, Leibniz turned to the model of the agent intellect. As noted previously, for some philosophers, this faculty is both the subject and the object of knowledge: as subject, it is the faculty that receives the objects of knowledge; as object, it is a storehouse of

72. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 459f.; my emphasis. 73. Academy, Series VI, vol. 2, 262. 74. Ibid., 287. Leibniz did not finish writing the first before he turned to the second formation. He wrote Mens and then quae percipit aetern (sic) which he crossed out before writing refertur ad aeternas veritates. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 139 the eternal truths. According to Leibniz, the eternal truths are in the mind as possible objects of knowledge. He writes in Trinitas. mens: “For if God did not think [cogitaret] himself to be in act, then .l.l. he would neither perceive [perciperet] nor have happiness.” That is, because God is the only thing that, as an object of thought, could make himself happy, it follows that if he were not able to be his own object of thought, then he would have no happiness. The supreme being must therefore be its own object of thought. Leibniz continues: “So, it is not able to be otherwise than that God thinks himself to be in act, and that mind thinks itself to be in act. Mind and God do not differ except that one is finite and the other infinite.”75 In other words, finite conscious mind is like God in that it is able to have itself as an object of thought. Accord- ing to Leibniz, when mind reflects upon itself, it contemplates the same objects God does, namely, the eternal truths. These objects are non-sensory and follow from the nature of the human mind in much the same way that they follow from the nature of the divine mind. For Leibniz in 1668–71, each mind is an Intellect with its own storehouse of eternal truths or Ideas which are natural to it and which are non-sensory. Divine Light and Reflective Harmony But if the Ideas are in our mind and non-sensory, then how do we attain access to them? It is now time to analyze how Leibniz’s notion of emanative harmony, sympathy, and reflective harmony help him to explain the precise help that the divine light offers in the acquisition of knowledge. Given the nature of the epistemological goal, namely, the understanding of one’s own storehouse of Ideas, it would be reasonable to predict that the journey to it would be an individual and internal one, aided only by God. In fact, the journey importantly depends on the vast interconnections among divinely harmonized creatures and in that sense is importantly aided from without. For Leibniz as for his Platonist predecessors, there is a sympathy and reflective harmony among created objects that results from the fact that each creature is an emanation of God. As we have noted, the fundamental assumption was that the unity of the supreme being would be immanent in the whole of creation. In Philo’s words: “And being superior to, and being also external to the world that he has made, he nevertheless fills the whole world with himself; for, having by his own power extended it to its utmost limits, he has connected every portion with another portion according to the principles of harmony.”76 This harmony

75. Ibid., 288. 76. Philo, De posteritate Caini, V.14 (Yonge 133). 140 christia mercer among the “portions” of the divine is such that each responds to the activity and states of all the others. The image of the mind as a mirror is a permanent fixture of Leibniz’s mature thought. He first develops this idea between late 1669 and 1671 in the Elementa juris naturalis. It is not surprising that we should also find there Leibniz’s original comments about sympathy and reflective harmony. Leibniz’s main concern in these essays is with the moral development of human beings. It is in this context that he presents his first thoughts about the interrelations among creatures. According to Leib- niz, the journey to knowledge and wisdom requires a unity of minds. The image of the mind as a mirror was developed in this context. Its original use occurs in the second note for the Elementa juris naturalis that was written between the autumn of 1669 and the summer of 1670. Leib- niz argues: If God did not have rational Creatures in the world, he would have the same harmony, but barely and devoid of Echo, the same beauty, but barely and devoid of reflection and refraction or multiplication. On this account, the wisdom of God required [exigebat] rational Creatures, in which things might multiply themselves. In this way one mind might be a kind of world in a mirror, or a diopter, or some kind of point collecting visual rays.77 There is much to be said about this provocative passage. We find here an underlying assumption of Leibniz, namely, that there is a universal harmony among the creatures of the world and that this harmony consists in emanative and reflective harmony. The harmony to which Leib- niz refers in the first sentence is emanative harmony, namely, that the essence of God is variously manifested in a unified fashion. The second kind of harmony is reflective harmony, which develops out of the former and exists in embryonic form in this passage. It finds its feet in the assumption that the world is made better by the close interrelations among minds. The visual images here are stunning: by acting as a mirror, each mind reflects, refracts, and multiplies the beauty inherent in emanative harmony. The assumption is that the reflection of things in the world is a good thing because each individual creature, as an emanation of the essence of God, is fundamentally good. We find here also the fascinating idea that the perceptions of minds will add significantly to the multiplicity and variety in the world. That is, the goodness of the world will be increased through the existence of perceiving or reflecting minds. In short, the goodness inherent in emanative harmony entails the goodness of reflection.

77. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 438. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 141

In fact, for Leibniz, reflective harmony has enormous ethical and epistemological benefits. In another note from the Elementa juris naturalis, Leibniz makes clear the ethical significance of the reflective nature of mind: But as a double reflection can occur in vision, once in the lens of the eye and once in the lens of a tube, the latter magnifying the former, so there is a double reflection in thinking: for since every mind is like a mirror, there will be one mirror in our mind, another in other minds. Thus, if there are many mirrors, that is, many minds recognizing our goods, there will be a greater light, the mirrors blending the light not only in the [individual] eye but also among each other. The gathered splendor produces glory. This is part of the reason for the deformity in mind: otherwise there would be nothing in the shadow to be magnified through the reflection of the mirrors.78 Through a fascinating blend of modern scientific images (of lenses and magnification) and ancient ones (of shadows and light), Leibniz implies that moral development depends on the intimate relation among minds. For Leibniz, there is an interrelation among minds that consists in the fact that each mind thinks or reflects all the others in such a way that a change in one is reflected by a change in another. Reflective harmony will increase goodness in the world: due to the close interconnection among minds, an increase in the goodness of one will be reflected in all the others.79 Moreover, it is worth noting that mirrors in the seventeenth century were both darker and more obscure than their modern versions and must have differed widely in quality. In the ethical context of the Elementa juris naturalis, the poignancy of the mirror image would have been clear to Leibniz’s contemporaries. In the quoted passage, Leibniz talks about “the deformity of mind.”80 It seems likely that he was motivated to develop this analogy of the mind as a mirror in order to display the important role of reflective harmony in the acquisition of knowledge by finite, mutable minds. Over the months that Leibniz composed the various notes of the Ele- menta juris naturalis, his views about ethical matters evolve in interesting ways. But underlying these changes is the assumption that all creatures, despite their “deformity,” contain goodness, and that rational creatures can (at least in theory) come to see both the goodness in each thing and the goodness in everything. To oversimplify somewhat, by the autumn of 1671, Leibniz concludes that human beings will become good just in

78. Ibid., 464. Unfortunately, the date of this text is not clear; it was written sometime in 1670–71. 79. Reflective harmony can only increase goodness; it cannot decrease it. See Mercer, Leibniz’s Metaphysics, 192–96; 217–19. 80. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 464. 142 christia mercer case they recognize the divinity in things and love them accordingly. Ac- cording to Leibniz, “the Good” has been attained “when harmony is understood thoroughly.”81 Moreover, “a Good Man is one who loves everyone.”82 For Leibniz, then, in order to become good, one must acquire knowledge of the good; to acquire knowledge of the good is just to recognize the unity within the multiplicity or (what amounts to the same thing) to perceive the divinity and goodness in everything and hence to love everything.83 In brief, to know the good is to understand emanative harmony: “It is obvious that everything loves everything .l.l. once we elevate our eyes to universal harmony.”84 So far, so good. But how exactly does one come to understand emanative harmony? Leibniz’s answer to this question places him in a long line of Platonists. About the interrelations among the mind-like Ideas, Plotinus writes in a passage quoted above: “Everything is clear .l.l. to everything, for light is transparent to light. Each, there, has everything in itself and sees all things in every other, for all are everywhere and each and every one is all, and the glory is unbounded.”85 As suggested above, there exists a similar reflective interrelation among individual souls, although they are not fully conscious of it. For Plotinus and many other Platonists, a necessary step to knowledge of the God is the recognition of the unity or oneness among individual souls. That is, for each individual soul, its first step toward an understanding of the unity and divinity in all things is the recognition of the unity and sympathy among souls. Or, to make the point another way, the journey to knowledge for the individual soul will begin with a recognition of its connection to all other souls. In the Republic, Plato compares the Good to the sun which sheds its light on every other being.86 For Plotinus and others, the metaphor of the sun as a source of goodness and being was put to a variety of uses. With his image of a mind as a mirror, Leibniz cleverly picks up and extends the standard Platonic metaphor of God as a sun emitting rays. He combines the ancient image with elements from contemporary science to produce a vivid picture of the divine light within nature. Leibniz’s first use of the metaphor suggests that the reflection and refraction of light adds to the beauty and goodness of things. According to Leibniz, a mind is like a “point collecting visual rays.” But there is more going on

81. Ibid., 478. 82. Academy, Series VI, vol. 2, 485. 83. For an excellent discussion of Leibniz’s views about love and related matters, see Riley, Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence, passim. 84. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 481. 85. Enneads, V.8.4.5–10; my emphasis. 86. Republic, 508b–509b; 518c. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 143 than just that. For Leibniz’s contemporaries, the role that mirrors played in microscopes and telescopes was well known. Since both of these instruments used mirrors to extend the human capacity to see, Leibniz surely intends for his analogy to suggest that the reflective harmony among minds increases the capacity of each moral being to see the good. That is, due to the reflective harmony among minds, each mind will be more enlightened and the good will be more visible. Or consider again a passage we have seen from the Elementa juris naturalis: [s]ince every mind is like a mirror, there will be one mirror in our mind, another in other minds. Thus, if there are many mirrors, that is, many minds recognizing our goods, there will be a greater light, the mirrors blending the light not only in the [individual] eye but also among each other. The gathered splendor produces glory.87 In this passage, which resembles the quote from Plotinus (p. 131), each mind reflects the goodness of the others and thereby increases the capacity of each to see the good. The image of the mind as a mirror is perfectly suited to the point: in the same way that the reflection of mirrors increase light, so does the reflection of minds increase goodness. For Leibniz, the divine light inherent in the world aids in the journey of the individual soul to the truth. Because of the unity among minds, humans can escape the material world of becoming and grasp the unity within the world and within themselves. In Philo’s words, “there is a mind in you and in the universe.”88 As Leibniz suggests in a letter to Thomasius, “God has arranged things from the beginning” so that individual souls might recognize “the greatest harmony of all things.”89 For Leibniz, God offers help to each human mind by placing each mind in reflective harmony with all the others. Since each being is an emanation of God and since all human beings reflect all the others, God has constructed the world so as to aid each mind in the epistemological journey to the Ideas. In the end, for Leibniz real knowledge is knowledge of God which one can acquire only with God’s help. In the sixth note from the Elemen- ta juris naturalis, he is prepared to make his radical epistemology clear. He writes: “The Good is what is sought by one who has real knowledge. .l.l. To have real knowledge is to know which things are able to act or to suffer.” Since for Leibniz in 1671 substances are those things which act and

87. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 464. My emphasis. Notice the same image in the quota- tion from Plotinus just above. Unfortunately, the date of this text in not clear; it was written sometime in 1670–71. 88. Philo, De migratione Abrahami, XXXIII.185–86 (Yonge 271). 89. Academy, Series II, vol. 1, 73–74. 144 christia mercer suffer, this last statement implies that to have real knowledge is to know substances. Leibniz continues: “no one is able to have real knowledge of a single thing, unless he is most wise, that is [seu], has real universal knowledge. What it is to have real knowledge, what is called in Latin in- tellegere, is to read the inner natures.”90 Before one can have any genuine knowledge, it is necessary to have universal knowledge, that is, it is necessary to understand the inner nature of things. But what exactly is the relation between the knowledge of an individual thing and universal knowledge? Against the background of Leibniz’s views about harmony, the underlying point is clear: since each creature is a manifestation of God, it follows that to understand the nature of creatures is to grasp some part of the essence of God. In this case, the nature of things and the objects of knowledge are the same: they are the Ideas or the attributes of God. Or, to put it another way, because the supreme being is immanent in all of its products in such a way that they ultimately contain the same thing, to know one thing just is to know everything. Thus, to seek the inner natures of things is to be led to the essence of God in creatures and hence to God. Nor does Leibniz waver from this fundamental Platonist epistemology. Although there is abundant evidence of his Platonism scattered throughout the mature writings, he is rarely as explicit as he is in Von der wahren theologia mystica. In this text, written in German (probably) in the final years of the seventeenth century, Leibniz explains: “Every perfection flows immediately from God, as essence, power, existence, spirit, knowledge, will.l.l.l. The divine perfections are concealed in all things, though very few know how to discover them there.”91 According to Leib- niz: “Within our substance [Selbststand] there lies an infinity, a foot- print or reflection of the omniscience and omnipresence of God.l.l.l. Every single substance, such as I or you, is a unified, indivisible, indestructible thing.l.l.l. God belongs to me more intimately than does my body.”92 Thus, in order to acquire knowledge, the mind must turn away from “the shadows” and seek God. In order to find real knowledge, we must turn from the “shadow way,” and seek God who is both “the easiest and the hardest being to know.” Leibniz writes: Only the inner light that God himself kindles in us has the power to give us the right knowledge of God.l.l.l. Hence there are many who are learned without be-

90. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 485. The Latin here is: “Bonum est quicquid appetetur a pernoscente.l.l.l. Pernoscere est nosse quid res agere aut pati possit.l.l.l. [N]eminem posse unius rei esse pernoscentem, nisi idem sit sapientissimus, seu pernoscens universalis. Quod pernoscere, id latinius dicetur intelligere id est intima legere.” 91. Philosophische Schriften, vol. 1, 410 92. Ibid., 411–12. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 145 ing illumined.l.l.l. This light does not come from without, although external teaching can, and sometimes must, give us an opportunity to get a glimpse of it. Among the external teachers there are two which best awaken the inner light: the Holy Scriptures and the experience of nature. But neither of these helps us if the inner light does not work with them. (The knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom, and the divine attributes are the primary truths for the right order of knowledge). The essential light is the eternal Word of God, in which is all wisdom, all light, indeed the origin of all beings and the origin of all truth.93 v. conclusion In section I, I said that after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Ger- man philosophy began to rebuild itself and that, due to the devastation of the war, philosophers were inclined to rethink the status of moral and political philosophy. I also claimed that Leibniz was one of many Ger- man Protestant thinkers who made four assumptions: 1) the revolution begun by Luther had made the divine truth available in a way it had not been previously; 2) this truth, once properly presented, would encourage peace; 3) it was appropriate to turn to ancient philosophy to aid in the pursuit and presentation of this truth; and 4) it was important to present this truth in a way that would effect the desired (peaceful) result. In section II, I presented three books published in the seventeenth century by German Protestant philosophers on moral philosophy, and drew the general conclusion that although the Nicomachean Ethics did not dominate the philosophical scene in seventeenth-century Germany, it was the text in ethics that could not be ignored. I also noted there that Leibniz’s mentor, Jakob Thomasius, was a keen supporter of the importance of Aristotle’s Ethics and that Leibniz himself made important use of the Aristotelian philosophy in other areas of his thought. All of these facts make it particularly surprising that Leibniz’s own epistemology is so thoroughly Platonist and that he so readily ignores the ethical proposals of Aristotle.94 I would like to offer a partial explanation of Leibniz’s behavior. Let’s turn to an early text for some help. In a published work of 1664, entitled Specimen quaestionum philosophicarum ex jure collectarum, he is quite explicit about the fact that the truths of ethics and jurisprudence rest on

93. Ibid. 94. There are other important examples of philosophers who endorsed modernism in one area of their philosophy and remained conservative in ethics. For example, the Dutch philosopher, Adriaan Heereboord, accepted parts of the Cartesian philosophy but remained wedded to the ethics of Aristotle. See Kraye, “Conceptions of Moral Philosophy,” 1285–86. This tendency among philosophers in the seventeenth century to combine the old with the new deserves more thorough study. 146 christia mercer the ultimate truths of nature and therefore that the student of jurisprudence, for example, must understand metaphysics. Leibniz asserts, for example, that “the greatest mysteries” must be considered by the student of jurisprudence because, unless such things are known before hand, one cannot judge properly about “the just and unjust.” Leibniz is explicit about the underlying signiﬁcance of metaphysics in his preface, where he proclaims that it is philosophy after all that sits “on the throne of wisdom.”95 Like many of his contemporary Lutherans, Leibniz was keen to emphasize the role of grace and divine help in the acquisition of wisdom by the individual believer. For Leibniz, with the help of God, the dutiful truth-seeker could glimpse the truth and then, by slow but steady steps, come to know God or at least some part of the divine nature. Moreover, according to the young Leibniz, such knowledge entailed that the knower would both love the good and seek it. Nowhere in this elegant system is there need for the intellectual virtues of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. Nor is there place for mod- ernist ideas in ethics.96 Rather, in the intellectual confusion subsequent to the Thirty Years War, Leibniz found solace in the simplicity of the Pla- tonist account of the good. As Leibniz interpreted it, the Platonist position was that knowledge of the good entailed good behavior. For Leib- niz, glimpsing God was the means to personal and political peace. Because Leibniz considered his metaphysics an account of the wonderful harmony and goodness of the supreme being, he considered it sufﬁ- cient as a means to truth and universal peace. In short, Leibniz offers his metaphysics as a means to personal, religious, and political peace. He naively believed that once his contemporaries would come to grasp his grand metaphysics, many would come to love God and behave well. As he neatly makes the point in the Elementa juris naturalis, “It is obvious that everything loves everything .l.l. once we elevate our eyes to universal harmony.”97 It follows therefore that “the Good is when harmony is understood thoroughly.”98 Because Leibniz was convinced that he himself had approached the good through universal harmony, he did not need the Nicomachean Ethics to bring others to it. In conclusion, once we consider Leibniz’s relation to the Nicomachean Ethics in the intellectual context within which he was trained, his ethics and the Platonist epistemology on which it rests suddenly seem more interesting. By combining a Platonist epistemology with an Aristotelian

95. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 73. 96. However, as some scholars have noted, Leibniz blends Hobbesian ideas into his own ethical concoction. See, e.g., Brown, “Leibniz’s Moral Philosophy.” 97. Academy, Series VI, vol. 1, 481. 98. Ibid., 478. Leibniz, Aristotle, and Ethical Knowledge 147 conception of nature, Leibniz constructed a radical and innovative system. As it turns out, Leibniz’s moral epistemology (and the ethics based on it) is part of an elaborate metaphysics, whose elements were intended to solve all the great philosophy problems and whose beauty was supposed to effect philosophical and religious peace.99

99. Since I gave a paper on roughly this topic at Catholic University in 1999, I have beneﬁted enormously from the comments and patience of Riccardo Pozzo. I would also like to thank Michael Seidler and David Lines for helpful advice, and the wonderful Her- zog August Bibliothek and its Fellowship Program in Wolfenbüttel, Germany. 6 Speech, Imagination, Origins Rousseau and the Political Animal RICHARD L. VELKLEY

I. In our time Jean-Jacques Rousseau is usually cited as a classic of early modern political philosophy.1 He is more than that: a central figure in the history of modern philosophy and perhaps the pivotal figure in the history of modern culture as a whole. He proposed a fundamental change in the way the human essence is conceived. The idea that human nature has at some deep level a fixed character was shaken when Rousseau argued that humanity has undergone a radical change from prerational and presocial beginnings. Since Rousseau, the analysis of human experience in the humanities and social sciences has been mostly in terms of culture and history, not nature. The philosophies of Ger- man Idealism, Romanticism, and everything indebted to these movements arose in the wake of Rousseau. But it must be said that this extraordinary influence, due in good measure to Rousseau’s great rhetorical powers, has worked to obscure his true intent as philosopher,

* This essay has appeared with the same title in Richard Velkley’s volume Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), 31–48. 1. All references in the text are to J.-J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Men, in Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). “P” refers to Preface and the Roman numerals refer to Parts One and Two. Arabic numbers designate paragraphs. Following the references to translations I cite the corresponding pages from volume III of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Maurice Raymond, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95; hereafter OC when other volumes are cited). I am especially indebted to conversation with Victor Gourevitch for improvements in the first version of this essay; I have also benefited from talking with Seth Benardete, Michael Davis, Charles Fairbanks, Richard Hassing, Holly Haynes, Harvey Mansfield, Su- san Shell, Abram Shulsky, and Kevin White on aspects of the essay. A generous grant from the Earhart Foundation supported the final stages of composition.

148 Speech, Imagination, Origins 149 such that his thought has never been adequately interpreted. Yet it must also be said that he sought to be hard to understand.2 Rousseau presents his central arguments as a critique of his modern predecessors. The modern authors opposed Aristotle on the necessity of looking to man’s rational end for the ordering principle of political and moral life. Rousseau takes the antiteleological doctrines of early modern natural right, with their postulate of the harsh presocial state of nature, and turns their principle against themselves. The principle that reason is not directed toward its own perfection, but is only instrumental, provides the key to this tour de force. By proposing that original man is so little directed toward reason he cannot yet have passions, since their existence depends on reflection, Rousseau argues that the natural state is one of prereflective wholeness and contentment. Accordingly it is the acquisition and development of reflection that brings about passion and with it all human evils.3 Law, social relations, and government do not “correct” a defective state of nature, as for Hobbes and Locke. The source of all our ills is reason and society, and man is naturally good. It seems to follow that man as free has the power to overcome the evils that arise from history, not from nature. Society may undo what society has incurred, and return the human species to its pristine origin. Freedom itself becomes the ground of wholeness, insofar as humanity as free can unmake its self-inflicted bondage. It was as the advocate of re- demptive freedom that Rousseau was so inspiring to Kant, Fichte, Hölderlin, and others.4 On their reading Rousseau provided the ground

2. See note 16 below. For discussions of Rousseau’s calculated indirection as writer, see Michael Davis, The Autobiography of Philosophy: Rousseau’s “The Reveries of the Solitary Walker” (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); The Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Clifford Orwin and N. Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Victor Gourevitch, “Rousseau on Lying: A Provisional Reading of the Fourth Rêverie,” Berkshire Review 15 (1980): 93–107; Christopher Kelly, “Taking Readers as They Are: Rousseau’s Turn from Discourses to Nov- els,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33 (1999): 85–101; Terence E. Marshall, “Poetry and Praxis in Rousseau’s Emile: Human Rights and the Sentiment of Humanity,” in Modern Enlighten- ment and the Rule of Reason, ed. John C. McCarthy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 187–212; Heinrich Meier, “Einführender Essay,” in J.-J. Rousseau, Diskurs über die Ungleichheit (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 1984), xxi–lxxvii; Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Clif- ford Orwin, “Rousseau’s Socratism,” The Journal of Politics 60 (1998): 174–87; Leo Strauss, “On the Intention of Rousseau,” Social Research 14 (1947): 455–87. 3. The expansion of reason enlarges our desires, whose satisfaction exceeds our powers as individuals. We become needy and dependent on other humans, and begin to seek ways to control those on whom we depend. The simple beginning is lost, the complexity of social life grows without limit. 4. In this interpretation, Rousseau opened up the true horizon of history and time. Through disclosing the connection between reason and history or time, he showed the way to the solution of his own problem: how to reconcile our civilized life with natural 150 richard l. velkley for the metaphysics of freedom and therewith a new “rational faith” to address the waning of confidence in the modern scientific and Enlight- enment projects.5 For some he was even a prophet announcing the ar- rival of new gods. Thus is he celebrated by Hölderlin in the 1799 poem Rousseau.6 Yet we must not hastily ascribe all these opinions to Rousseau. Indis- pensable for understanding Rousseau’s theoretical revolution is his profoundly sympathetic study of ancient thought. Through his reading of Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and the ancient historians and poets, he reflected on the contrast between antiquity and modernity. His novel account of nature is meant to provide a foundation for experiences of human elevation and completion rejected or endangered by modern philosophy: love and family, the patriotism of the citizen, awe at great wholeness. Kant in his essays on history took this approach to Rousseau’s significance; see the author’s book cited in note 5, and Susan Shell, “Rousseau, Kant and the Beginning of History,”in The Legacy of Rousseau (cited in note 2 above). Over time, freedom achieves the necessary reconciliation with its “other,” merely given nature, for rational freedom discovers in itself the power of creating a new nature, or otherwise put, of disclosing that the givenness of nature is a false appearance, for (in post-Kantian idealist formulations) all nature is merely reason’s own product or “externalization.” Out of rational freedom arises the true final “system” of reason reconciling all contradictions. Reason’s eros for wholeness is satisfied through itself as autonomy—as the rational law-giving that orders the humanly accessible whole, or as the unfolding of the logic of the self-differentiating concept that comprehends the whole. For Rousseau’s import to many major German thinkers, see the essays collected in Rousseau in Deutschland: Neue Beiträge zur Erforschung seiner Rezeption, ed. Herbert Jaumann (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1995). 5. The first of the Germans to embrace philosophical Rousseauism was Kant, for whom Rousseau is not just a theorist of the social contract, but a philosopher of the human condition who combined “a rare acuity of intellect, a noble flight of genius, and a sensitive soul of so high an order as is probably not to be encountered in any author, of whatever age or nation.” In one place Kant pairs Rousseau with Plato, as two “enthusiastic geniuses” from whom one has much to learn, although he also offers cautionary words about the excesses of their enthusiasm. Kant in fact credits Rousseau with rediscovering for the modern world the Platonic sense of “idea;” Rousseau like Plato is a philosopher-poet who both discovers the truth and shows how to educate and perfect human beings in the light of that truth. Rousseau, Kant writes, “discovered for the first time, beneath the acquired multiplicity of human forms, the deeply concealed nature of man and the hidden law whose observation justifies Providence.” Kant asserts in unpublished notes of the 1760’s that Rousseau persuaded him that it is not speculative knowledge that is the true end of the philosophical life, but rather the promotion of the rights of mankind. The practical has primacy over the speculative. See the author’s Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant’s Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). 6. Here are the final stanzas of the poem: You heard them, understood the language of the strangers, interpreted their soul! For him who yearns a hint was enough, and hints have always been the language of the gods./ And wonderful, as though from its beginning, the human spirit sensed its becoming and its deeds, its proper way of living .l.l. / He in the first sign reads the ultimate completion, and the bold spirit, like the eagle before thunderstorms, flies prophetically ahead of the approaching gods. Speech, Imagination, Origins 151 examples of human virtue, wonder at nature’s sublimity, and the delights of contemplation. At the same time—this point is more rarely noted—Rousseau returns to the premodern thought that a life subservient to mere passion is a kind of enslavement, that such a life is promoted by nearly all forms of society and politics, and thus that political and social life is a “cave” of false opinion, from which philosophy should release us. Rousseau therefore presents, in the terms of modern nonteleologi- cal science, an account of the highest life as not political. His solitary contemplator of nature is an echo of the ancient philosophic life. Rousseau charges that the modern Enlightenment knows no horizon beyond politics, and the passions of its philosophe advocates—who are far from being true philosophers—are wholly engaged in reforming the world rather than in knowing it and themselves (note X.9, 213).7 He exposes this stance as a deepening of the bondage to the cave, not a liberation from it: an extinguishing of the sun rather than a conversion from the shadows. All the same, Rousseau is not simply a follower of Plato and Aristotle. Human bondage is not forged solely by false opinions, but by all uses of reason and hence all of social life as employing reason. Furthermore this bondage appears to be a contingent historical fact not based in nature. If man had remained in the original state of nature, there would be no need for philosophic liberation. The philosophic life is needed only by corrupted humanity; theoretical inquiry serves to reverse the harmful work of reason, and it seems that its reward is only reverie, not noetic apprehension. Rousseau’s thought seems, what is more, to suggest the possibility of a universal revolution overcoming alienation wrought by reason and society. But for the ancient philosophers, entertaining such hopes is wholly contrary to experience and insight into the natural order. Aristotle claims in the Metaphysics that “indeed the nature of the human is in many ways enslaved (pollache gar he physis doule ton an- thropon estin).” The word physis means nature as it was, is, and must always be.8

7. See also Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Third Walk, and Emile or On Education, trans. Al- lan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 112, note: in the science and philosophy of our age “one no longer studies, one no longer observes, one dreams.” Rousseau adds, “it will be told that I, too, dream. I agree: but I give my dreams as dreams, which others are not careful to do, leaving it to the reader to ﬁnd out whether they contain something useful for people who are awake” (OC, vol. 4, 350–51). 8. Metaphysics, 932b 30. Modern philosophy denies, at least after Rousseau, that experience and knowledge of nature can support such a view. For Kant such opinions about human nature are related to the errors of the “dogmatism” of earlier thought, according to which the completion of reason is found in intellectual apprehension of an independent natural order. The theoretical critique of reason’s powers would place Rousseau’s program, as Kant understands it, on a sure foundation. The true end of reason is not solely 152 richard l. velkley

But although he is surely a revolutionary of sorts, Rousseau does not take all the steps into the radical transformationism of later thought. He is far less hopeful than his German admirers about the power of reason to overcome human enslavement; the proposals of his writings on various ways to come closer to natural freedom are full of qualiﬁcations about their own realizability. In reality Rousseau is closer to Plato and Aristotle than to Kant and Hegel with respect to hopes of general human progress. A close reading of Rousseau’s principal philosophical work, the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men (Second Discourse) of 1755, shows that the initial contrast with Aristo- tle and antiquity must be more subtly formulated. The idea of the best life derives from our original nature, but we discover that our original nature must contain at least the seeds, or the earliest forms, of rationality. The earliest man is inconceivable without some reﬂection, and therewith, some “bondage” to reason. Rousseau’s various plans for reform of politics, education, the family, and the philosophic life are ways of making the most of that bondage, and nothing more. Rousseau is one of the most dialectical of writers. To uncover the dialectic of his thought we must acquire the skill to follow Rousseau’s complex rhetoric.9 It may be helpful to begin with a remark on Aristotle, with strong warrant from Rousseau’s text.

II. The central inquiry of Rousseau’s Discourse is closely related to that of Aristotle’s Politics. Both works investigate the ways in which human na- theoretical but practical or practical-theoretical. See Kant’s remark in the Critique of Pure Reason that “nothing can be more injurious, or more unworthy of a philosopher, than the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse experience.l.l.l. For the issue depends on freedom; and it is in the power of freedom to pass beyond any and every specified limit” (A316–17/ B373–74). Rousseau claims that human art can never fundamentally change human nature in the essay “Que l’état de guerre nait de l’état social,” OC, vol. 3, 606–608. For discussion see Marc Plattner, Rousseau’s State of Nature: An Interpretation of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1979), 119. 9. To anticipate the argument that follows: the idea of the completely free, unreflective natural origin is beneficial doxa, something that the potential philosopher must first believe, and then reject. The idea of pure nature is an alluring artifice or myth, necessary for philosophical liberation, which Rousseau’s dialectic leads one to embrace, and then to abandon. The promise of original prereflective nature is only a moment of a dialectical as- cent toward insight into the inevitability of reflection, an inevitability with which the philosopher must come to terms. In this essay I must leave undiscussed the important consideration that for the reform of familial and political life Rousseau’s thought is directed more to the “happy age” of early human sociality than to the earliest prereflective human condition. See the essays of Gourevitch cited in note 14. Speech, Imagination, Origins 153 ture is political: whether and how human beings need political life to attain their ends. This is to inquire about the character and extent of the naturalness of political life. Rousseau points to his concern with Aristo- tle’s reflections by placing a sentence in Latin translation from Politics I.2 on the title page of the Discourse: “What is natural has to be investigated not in beings that are depraved, but in those that are according to nature.”10 “Non in depravatis, sed in his quae bene secundum naturam se habent, considerandum est quid sit naturale.” This line occurs in the midst of Aristotle’s discussion of slavery, a theme that is central to Rousseau’s Discourse. It is evident that Rousseau considered deeply the problem raised by this passage, which problem he thought modern philosophy failed to address. Aristotle treats slavery as part of the art of acquiring property, which is itself an aspect of managing the household, the first natural association (in the genetic order). Even in the simplest human partnership art must supplement nature, for the sake of life simply, not to mention the good life. The institution of slavery has a natural basis, although most human enslavement, the possession of human “tools” to fill the role of unavailable “self-commanding tools,” involves some injustice, since the vast majority of humans are not by nature slaves. The distinction between household functions reflects the composite nature of the human, and points to the possibility of original disproportion in that nature. Every composite natural being is a whole constituted of ruling and ruled elements. The soul rules the body as a master does a slave, so that the nonrational soul is naturally provided with its own slave, a tool sufficient for life. The human soul in addition has a second kind of rule: the intellect (nous) as ruling appetite (horexis) in a political and kingly, or non-despotic, way. This is to say that certain appetites must be given some freedom, like equal citizens, to partake in the ruling of human life. The human is doubly composite. The activity of the theoretical intellect, fulfilling the highest appetite, requires leisure, and therewith release from the demands of the body, such as can have no meaning for another animal. But to attain this freedom entails acquiring more properties, or instruments of the body. Nature provides no intrinsic tool, or slave, in this case. Our nature requires us to go beyond nature, but this creates new dependencies on the body. Since human nature is not simple, the free life of the intellect cannot be sustained by contemplation alone. In order for some to pursue without distraction the life of free activity, a life of hard labor, as in agriculture, must be the lot of many. At issue in Aris-

10. “Non in depravatis, sed in his quae bene secundum naturam se habent, considerandum est quid sit naturale” (Aristotle, Politics, 1254a 36–38). 154 richard l. velkley totle’s account is not just slavery as an institution, but the natural bondage of the human as human, paradoxically related to its capacity to pursue its highest, most liberal end. A human being cannot pursue just one good, unless he becomes either a beast or a god. Therefore man is the political animal by nature, since the use of discourse, not just for necessities, but for the good life, cannot be actualized outside the polis—the association that is most complete, and so first in the order of ends. Political life seems to define the distinctively human; the human composite is at home there.11 Yet the comprehensiveness of the polis is questionable, since the highest human activity of theoretical knowing is transpolitical and even transhuman, akin to divine simplicity. Strangely, the highest in the human is not distinctively human. The human telos is rarely actualized, for its pure attainment really belongs to another species, the divine. Putting all of this together, we must ask: What sort of nature is this, the human, for which the most fulfilling end is hardly attainable? What does this say about nature as a whole? It might be said that starting with Socrates the primary theme of philosophy—the eros for wisdom as contrasted with wisdom—is the question of the human composite: how is it a whole, and why as a problematic whole does it seldom attain its natural end? In this regard it is significant that theoria concerning the human composite receives no mention in the account of the intellectual virtues in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, in keeping with that book’s failure to mention philosophy as such.12

11. The duality of man is reflected in the two beginnings of philosophy: the pleasure in mere perceiving or knowing and wonder which instigates the search for causes; the possibility of philosophy lies in man’s being both of and outside of the “cave;” see Seth Be- nardete, “On Wisdom and Philosophy: The First Two Chapters of Aristotle’s Metaphysics A,” Review of Metaphysics 32 (1978): 205–215. In the background to Rousseau is Machiavel- li’s transformation of the Classical-Christian duality of man as expressed in the image of Chiron the Centaur (part beast, part human); see Harvey Mansfield, Machiavelli’s Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 37–38. Rousseau refers to the Aristotelian alternative (beast or god) in the central paragraph (6) of note X (OC, vol. 3, 211): “Our travelers do not hesitate to make beasts by the name of Pongos, Mandrills, and Orang- Outangs of the same beings which the ancients made Divinities by the name of Satyrs, Fauns, and Sylvans. Perhaps after more accurate investigations it will be found that they are neither beasts nor gods, but men.” Man’s puzzling duality makes it hard for him to see himself as he is; thus most readers of the Discourse will suppose that the natural man is either contemptibly subhuman or nobly godlike. 12. Aristotle in this passage diverts attention away from the primary theme of practical philosophy. Instead the account offers itself as an example of what it does not discuss. Aris- totle contrasts practical wisdom or prudence, which deliberates on the changing, contingent means for attaining the human good, with theoretical virtues: intellect which apprehends the unchanging, necessary first principles of transhuman being, and wisdom which grasps those principles and makes demonstration from them. But nothing is said about the intellectual power and virtue which apprehends these powers and virtues, and which reflects on their belonging together in one soul, the human. That virtue and power is of course being exercized by Aristotle as he lectures on ethics, or practical science, but it Speech, Imagination, Origins 155

Early modern philosophers looked at these signs of imperfect benevolence in nature, and drew different conclusions from Aristotle’s: philosophers should undertake inquiries that do not rely on nature’s questionable benevolence, for that reliance results only in a restricted and precarious role for the intellect in human life. Philosophy must discover approaches to reason that insure the universal effectiveness of reason.13 Thereby reason becomes inseparably tied to transformative projects, as it remains to this day. The result, on Rousseau’s account, is the enduring estrangement of humanity from original wholeness. Every writing of Rousseau shows resistance to viewing reason as universally transformative, and in this respect he is anti-modern. This seems paradoxical, since his account of reason is historical and malleable. Or does he after all think that there are certain incorrigible features of human nature? To sum up matters thus far: Rousseau has been historically regarded as the creator of a revolutionary doctrine in which human freedom is able to overcome its self-inﬂicted bondage. But much in Rousseau’s writing suggests something quite different. It may even be necessary to question the thesis of the completeness and wholeness of the state of nature.14 Perhaps behind the artiﬁce of his state of nature there lies a less “optimistic” view: the inescapable bondage of human nature.15

goes without a name: it is neither prudence nor theoretical wisdom. It is philosophy, the love of wisdom, which one might say, is both distinctively human and aporetic. 13. This effectiveness does not rest on reason’s self-directive power, but is the result of reason’s dependency on passion. See Richard Kennington, “Descartes and Mastery of Na- ture,” in Organism, Medicine and Metaphysics, ed. S. F. Spicker (Boston: Reidel, 1978), 201–223. 14. For a penetrating account of the earliest natural state as conjectural, see Victor Gourevitch, “Rousseau’s Pure State of Nature,” Interpretation 16 (1988): 23–59. Gourevitch argues persuasively that the natural man is the result of a regressive analysis from facts known about civilized and savage men. “The aim of the analysis is in any event not to establish fact. It is to extrapolate to the limits and conditions of humanity” (37). I propose that one take this line of thinking further: the limit represents an impossibility. Indirectly Gourevitch criticizes the interpretation of the Second Discourse by Leo Strauss, wherein the natural man is subhuman and an historical fact (Natural Right and History, Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1953). Gourevitch has also argued that Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages shows that the beginning of practical concern to Rousseau is not the “pure” prereflective state, but a later early social condition in which self-regarding passion is not yet rampant; see his “‘The First Times’ in Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Lan- guages,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 11 (1986): 123–46 (“The disjunction nature/ culture is not, and cannot be, a disjunction between one state or matter of fact and another, but is and can only be a disjunction in and for thought,” 140); also his “The Political Argument of Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages,” in Pursuits of Reason, ed. T. Co- hen, P. Guyer, H. Putnam (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1993), 21–35. One has to supplement these important observations with an inquiry into why, all the same, Rousseau presents the impossible “artifice” of the pure natural state. 15. The artifice of the state of nature has a salutary function: if it is correctly under- 156 richard l. velkley

III. Between the Preface and Part One of the Discourse Rousseau supplies a remark (avertissement) that alerts the reader to the importance of the notes placed at the end of the essay. He tells us that they “sometimes stray so wide of the subject that they are not good to read together with the text.” He asserts “in the text I tried to follow the straightest road (le plus droit chemin).” But perhaps its dominant line of thought fails to address necessary qualifications. Rousseau declares it will take “courage” for some readers to “start over and amuse themselves” with perusing the notes. Such readers are characterized by a spirit combining seriousness and playfulness. Those lacking that spirit will experience “little harm” in not reading the notes. Such readers clearly lack the capacity to be benefited by the notes, otherwise failure to read the notes would be harmful to them. They are the nonphilosophic majority of readers.16 What follows is an attempt to provide some outlines of a philosophic reading of the Preface and Part One. For this it is necessary to reflect on how the notes in relation to the text indicate a road that deviates from the “straightest” one of the text.17 The argument of the Preface to the Discourse18 is structured around stood, it makes possible an attainment of equilibrium within ourselves, between desire and thought, which is the core of the philosophic life as Rousseau understands it. See note XI, which suggests that this is the true meaning of the original natural state, and The Reveries of the Solitary Walker as a whole. 16. In “Preface of a Second Letter to Charles Bordes,” Rousseau comments on his indirect mode of communication. “I did not want to say everything in order to make sure that everything got a hearing. I developed my ideas successively and always but to a small number of Readers. I spared not myself, but the truth, in order to have it get through more readily and to make it more useful. Often I went to great trouble to try and condense into a single Sentence, a single line, a single word tossed off as if by chance, the result of a long chain of reflections. The majority of readers must often have found my discourses poorly structured and almost entirely disjointed, for want of perceiving the trunk of which I showed only the branches. But that was enough for those capable of understanding, and I never wanted to speak to the others” (The Discourses, ed. Gourevitch, 110; OC, vol. 3, 106). See also “Idea of the Method in the Composition of a Book,” translated in the same volume (OC, vol. 2, 1242–47). For a starkly different approach to philosophic communication see Kant’s remarks in the Critique of Pure Reason: “For what can be more prejudicial to the interests of knowledge than to communicate even our very thoughts in falsified form, to conceal doubts which we feel in regard to our own assertions, or to give an appearance of conclusiveness to grounds of proof which we ourselves recognize to be insufficient” A748–750/B776–778). 17. More precisely, the notes offer support and grounding for positions in the text, apparent false turns in the argument, that are in tension with the dominant and superficial thesis of the text: natural man is subhuman, lacking all reflection that complicates his life by pointing it beyond the immediate present. 18. Let us recall that the Discourse responds to a question proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by the natural Law? Speech, Imagination, Origins 157

five pairs of contrasts: 1) self-knowledge and knowledge of original man; 2) image and original in the statue of Glaucus analogy; 3) the immediate voice of nature and knowing obedience to natural law; 4) the primary natural principles of compassion and self-preservation; 5) the apparent disorder of social life and the foundations that uncover the hidden order. The first paragraph speaks of two problems that turn out to be one problem. These are the problem of knowing ourselves and of knowing man as nature formed him. Rousseau says that the inscription of the Temple at Delphi contained a precept more important and more difficult than “all the big Books of the Moralists.” Due to the difficulty of the precept (“Know Thyself”) the most important area of knowledge, that of man, is the least advanced. But Rousseau also underscores that in so far as we recover natural man, we do not recover a self-knowing being. Then to what extent are we knowing ourselves by knowing this being? The effort to know the natural man actually makes us more unlike him. This is stated in paragraph two: “In a sense it is by dint of studying man that we have made it impossible for us to know him.”19 The difficulty is deepened by the image Rousseau uses in the first paragraph to characterize the recovery of the original form of man. The alteration of the human constitution wrought by time and circumstances is compared to the statue of Glaucus, “which time, sea and storms had so disfigured that it less resembled a God than a ferocious Beast.” Thus has the human soul been altered in the course of becoming rational and social. The image has puzzling features. The purely natural is represented by an artifact, a sculpted image of a god, and the god himself is a peculiar one. He is mentioned in Republic Book X (611b–d), Rousseau’s probable source. Glaucus was a fisherman who dove into the sea and became a god, and would visit humans wearing sea-monsters. Is Rousseau’s natural man also only something of common human origin which has been deified, and perfected, by a poetic fiction? In any event, this monster-bearing god is an unlikely image of “majestic and celestial simplicity,” the alleged qualities of natural man. The god as covered by

19. Rousseau in a note to the first sentence quotes the naturalist Buffon, who writes that we have lost the habit of using an internal sense by which we know and judge ourselves. We know better everything that is not ourselves, since our organs, designed by nature for self-preservation, are oriented externally. The senses and the passions lead us to “exist outside ourselves” and enlarge “the external scope of our being.” But when could human beings ever have had the habit of self-knowing, if the bodily organs themselves cause self-forgetting? Self-knowing is not a natural habit for living beings; but if it was an acquired habit, when and how was it lost? It could not have been lost through acquiring senses and passions, for these exist from life’s beginning. To call for self-knowledge is not the same as to call for a return to some earlier condition of the species, as Buffon seems to imply. See Michael Davis’s observations on this note and on the Glaucus-image in The Au- tobiography of Philosophy, 106–108. 158 richard l. velkley sea-creatures already resembles a ferocious beast. What is more, the sea- bred accretions on the artifact are more natural than the artifact itself. We are enjoined to remove the natural sea-bred accretion to have a better view of a mere artifact representing a god who originally was human, and whose divine shape was grotesquely distorted by an apparel of mythical sea-monsters. It is hard to sort out the relations between image and original, artificial and natural.20 The Glaucus image reflects the two problems and their relation. The effort to know the original does not lead to such knowledge since it is an act of a reflective being. The image of the origin, it turns out, is the image of ourselves as indelibly reflective. The prereflective origin is nowhere to be found. This does not mean that the Discourse presents mere arbitrary fiction. Rousseau seems to follow some aspects of the Pla- tonic account of knowing: knowing must proceed through images. It begins with unreflective assent to the image followed by seeing the image as mere image. The image is then seen as both like and different from an original, which is both present and absent. Accordingly self-knowledge proceeds through grasping ourselves as both like and unlike an other; it involves the discovery that we are not whole, and that our present state points beyond itself to something more whole. Rousseau denies the possibility of immediate self-knowledge, although he shows we begin with the naive belief in that possibility.21

20. For Plato, too, it is an odd choice of god, since Plato is using it as an image for how the pure soul becomes deformed by association with the body. He has Socrates say that we must try to discern the pure, original state of the soul in order to judge how the soul is inherently fit for immortality. The original form of Glaucus is worn down by waves and over- grown with shells, seaweeds, and rocks, just as the soul has lost its original shape through contact with the body. Plato also uses a statue, not the original god, as the image for the original soul. The comic feature is that the statue prior to acquiring sea-bred accretions represented a god already bearing strange accretions (the monsters). Rousseau’s interest in Platonic thinking on the nature of poetic and artistic imitation is evident from his paraphrasing of Platonic texts on the subject, principally Republic, 595a–608b, De l’imitation théâtrale (OC, vol. 5, 1195–1211). For a discussion of the significance of Rousseau’s use of literary imitation for educational and philosophic ends, see the essay by Christopher Kelly cited in note 2 above, and his “Rousseau and the Case against (and for) the Arts,” in The Legacy of Rousseau, 20–42. In the same volume (65–86) see the author’s essay, “The Tension in the Beautiful: On Culture and Civilization in Rousseau and German Philosophy,” for discussion of the relation between Rousseau’s approaches to the poetic and later philosophic thought on “aesthetic culture.” 21. Rousseau writes about our failure to note the projection of ourselves in our perception of others in the Essay on the Origin of Languages, XI.2: “When we put ourselves in the place of others we always put ourselves in their place as circumstances have modified us, not as they must have modified them, and when we think that we are judging them in the light of reason, we are only comparing their prejudices with ours” (in The Discourses, ed. Gourevitch, 281; OC, vol. 5, 409). The same tendency pervades language itself, whose original form is tropic and figurative, produced by the transposing of our passions onto things (Essay, III.1–3). Speech, Imagination, Origins 159

Therefore the two problems are the same problem. The belief in immediate self-knowledge is the same as belief in the existence of a pure and complete natural man, a belief that is followed by discovery that what we have taken to be original is mere image. We overcome our bondage to the image, when we see it as image, although we no longer can hope to find the first form of the original. The image is of ourselves as seeking the god or, equivalently, it is the image of the prereflective origin receding as we seek to get nearer to it. The Glaucus analogy is a prime example of Rousseau’s mastery of the Platonic art of educating through images, which he employs in every writing as part of his philosophical rhetoric. Rousseau has “hazarded some conjectures” concerning the original state, and how inequality was introduced into it (P 4, 123–24).22 He says that he hopes not to resolve the question but to elucidate it. To know a state of nature which no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, and probably never will exist, needs the talents and labors of great experimental scientists, “the Aristotles and Plinys of our century,” supported by powerful sovereigns. What experiments could be performed to dis- close the nature of the original man, if no such man exists today? Who would be the subjects of such experiments? But without the knowledge of original man, we cannot know the foundation of human society, and the genuine definition of natural right, for the idea of natural right is relative to the nature of man (P 5, 124). Another difficulty: how will a notion of right derived from original man be binding on the man of the present, if such a vast gulf divides the two? Earlier authors on natural right did not see the difficulties, Rousseau claims (P 6, 124–25). The Roman jurists thought of natural law as what nature imposes on all ani- mate beings without their submitting knowingly to it. The modern writers on natural law understand by the law a rule that only a rational being can grasp and follow. But in their accounts the law is so “metaphysical” that only an enlightened being capable of complex reasoning could grasp it. The natural law must meet two requirements that may be

22. It is surely the case, as many commentators have noted, that Rousseau intends with such claims about the conjectural character of his account to ward off theological objections. But Rousseau has more than one sort of opinion (or orthodoxy) in view, as he devis- es his rhetoric. It is one of Rousseau’s principal concerns to confront the new “sect” based on modern philosophy. The Preface of the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences declares that men subjugated by the opinions of their century—the century of Enlightenment—are not those for whom Rousseau writes. Thus Rousseau only appears to satisfy their passion for subverting theological authority. In so far as they are satisfied that they have understood him by their unveiling of the anti-theological (historical) reading of the human beginning, they have not reached the deepest level of his argument. Thus Rousseau’s language of conjecture contains a double irony. 160 richard l. velkley impossible to combine: “the will of him whom it obligates must be able to submit to it knowingly,” and “it must speak immediately with the voice of Nature” (P 8, 125). The difficulty of defining a natural law that meets these requirements is parallel to the difficulty of combining self-knowledge with the recovery of the prereflective origins. Rousseau then makes a startling turn away from his claim that understanding natural man requires experiments and deep scientific inquiries. “Disregarding all scientific books” and “meditating on the first and simplest operations of the human soul,” Rousseau believes he perceives two principles prior to reason (P 9, 125–26). A single act of intro- spection sweeps away all difficulties. One of the principles interests us intensely in our own well-being; the other inspires repugnance at the sight of the suffering of any sentient being. From the combination of these, without assuming sociability, “all rules of natural right seem to flow.” This duality connects natural man with ourselves, and thus it can illuminate what we are as reflective beings. But we cannot make this connection until we notice an element of discord. The two principles do not harmonize perfectly: natural man identifies with the suffering being until his own preservation comes into competition with that identification. Each impulse by itself can be followed unreflectively: when they compete, man for the first time becomes aware of himself. The individual sees the suffering other as both like and unlike himself.23 The combination of attachment and detachment is what happens when we see an image as an image; human reason is possible only on the basis of an original contradiction in our nature. Yet is it not a delusion to suppose that we can grasp immediately original human nature through this in- trospective act? It is only if we think about the two principles separately and do not think about what results from their conflict. The first “harmonious” thought is the naive identification with the statue of Glaucus; the realization of conflict is the self-awareness that separates us from that image. Once again, naïve identification with something taken as a true origin is followed by the reflection that we have mistaken a mere image for the true origin. A question can now arise: if conflict is implicit in the original nature of man, is original nature still to be regarded as benevolent? The question cannot be answered until we know whether the reflection that emerges from the conflict is always a source of misery, or has the possi-

23. See the discussion of pity in Essay on the Origin of Languages, IX.2–3; OC, vol. 5, 395–96: “How do we let ourselves be moved to pity? By transporting ourselves outside ourselves (En nous transportant hors de nous-mêmes); by identifying with the suffering being.” But a powerful conflicting concern with self-preservation will cancel that identification. Speech, Imagination, Origins 161 bility of bringing contentment with existence. An indication of an answer is offered by the contrast in the final paragraph (P12, 126) of the Preface. The contrast is between the initial appearance that society presents (of violence, harshness, and disorder) and the true foundations that emerge if we remove “the dust and sand that surround the edifice.” The metaphor of foundation and edifice, although referring to the natural basis of society, again comes from the realm of art. The same metaphor is used by Descartes to criticize the ancient moral foundations of “sand and mud,” and to describe a new foundation for all sciences based on mathematical principles.24 Foundations must be laid by an act of will and do not occur simply by nature; indeed they are discovered by means of a universal or near-universal doubt. The doubt centrally tar- gets the trust in the appearance that nature is ordered teleologically. For Rousseau this means: we must doubt that humans as they appear to us now, as rational and social, are what they were naturally and originally. The course of doubt unfolds in the following way: the questioning of the basis of the social order leads to the discovery that original nature, while not rational or ordered toward reason, is all the same good. Nev- ertheless, the uncovered origin is in a sense a construction, an artifact. Nature is benevolent insofar as it makes this construction possible. Briefly I will comment on the introductory passage in Part One.25 Rousseau now directly turns to the theme of inequality. By reaching the true state of nature that others have not reached, Rousseau is able to investigate an historical moment: that moment in the progress of things in which man’s natural solitude and equality gave way to claims of legitimate authority. Before that moment natural inequalities (of strength, beauty, and intelligence) had no importance in human relations. Once passions arose making humans dependent on each other, that is, when desires outstripped the powers of the individual to satisfy those desires, all differences became significant, and humans sought to establish relations of authority and obedience (conventional inequality). The inequality within the individual of power and desire is the origin of inequalities of rule between individuals. The parallel to Aristotle’s account of the connection between our composite nature and slavery is striking. But so is the difference: the human for Rousseau is originally simple, and becomes split, so that ruling relations are not natural. Thus we are led to think at this point in the argument. The Preface should already make us wonder a bit.

24. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, Parts I and II. 25. This has been given the heading “Exordium” in some editions. 162 richard l. velkley

IV. The Discourse has two parts. In the first Rousseau sets forth the state of nature as the principle for his account of human history. In the second he provides a conjectural history of the development from the natural state to the social. The texts of the two parts, without notes, are of nearly equal length: fifty-three and fifty-eight paragraphs, respectively. The first has more theoretical weight, and when the notes are added (it has thirteen out of the total nineteen) it is much longer than the second. The first nineteen paragraphs of Part One discuss the condition of natural man before the invention of arts; the next thirteen are centrally about the origin of language and the beginning of arts; the following nineteen paragraphs treat the first forms of human sociality, and the passions of love and pity. Two final paragraphs make the transition to Part Two. The argument is symmetrically structured, with the central paragraph of the central section of thirteen (I.26) raising the most difficult problem for any account of human origins: the relation between speech and thought. My discussion will offer a short account of this problem and so will end with paragraph thirty-two of Part One. The first thirteen paragraphs consider natural man solely as a physical being; they are followed by natural man’s moral and metaphysical characteristics, which take up the rest of Part One. Rousseau says that he will not speculate about the evolution of the present human physical structure from an earlier form (I.1, 134). He refers to certain conjectures attributed to Aristotle, who is thereby placed on the side of evolu- tionary thinking. But he says that our knowledge is too limited for more than “vague and imaginary conjectures”; he implies that such knowledge is needed. Yet for his own account he “will assume him (man) conformed as I see him today,” with erect posture and use of the hands, and “directing his gaze over the whole of nature, with his eyes surveying the vast expanse of Heaven.” The latter characteristic is striking in light of the text’s later claims that natural man’s thoughts are limited to his immediate need and sensations. It seems that from the start his perceptual powers, even intellectual powers, exceed such needs. “The whole of nature” is a concept, not a visible object. Rousseau’s assumption that intellectual and psychological evolution can be considered apart from physical evolution serves well the end of presenting the former as malleable or “perfectible” during ages when man’s physical form remained mostly constant. It permits Rousseau to suggest that further transformations are possible by deliberate human action. This can be called the “straightest road” of his thought. On the other hand, his statements on the need for progress in comparative anatomy and that physical changes “must have Speech, Imagination, Origins 163 occurred” indicate that this road involves an abstraction from physical causes. The human is mysteriously related to the extra- or prehuman. Rousseau will not delve into that mystery. Therefore it would be a mistake to take any apparent assertion that natural man was merely an animal with only instinct and sensation at face value. Rousseau will not turn his gaze toward the prehuman, except for the purpose of positing natural man as apart from it, not as identical with it or even derived from it. The focus on the moment at which man had his present physical form, but reason only latently or in nuce, is an imaginative construction. This fact is emphasized by the repeated use of the verb to see in the second paragraph (134–35): “I see (Je vois) an animal less strong than some. I see him (Je le vois) sating his hunger beneath an oak.” This use of the imagination, as we saw in the case of Glaucus, points to the relation of the form of the Discourse to its content, a relation that tends to be invisible. The power of theoretical vision or imagination is hidden behind what it makes visible. Yet the remark on natural man surveying the natural whole and the vast heaven implies that the earliest human possessed this power. Just as the modern reader easily overlooks Rousseau’s use of this power, yet can discover his use of it, the earliest human “invisibly” had it and so was in principle capable of thinking about it. The natural man is physically different from civilized man in being stronger, healthier, and having all his powers of self-preservation within himself, undivided, and not shared with anyone else (I.3–5, 135–36). Solitary, with no need of association, he is pacific and content to satisfy his simple needs. “Perhaps having no instinct that belongs to him,” man raises himself to the level of animal instinct through imitation. Here sounds a quiet warning to the reader. This lack in the human means that the human is forced at the start to live more by observation of others, to be more “outside himself” than any other animal. He must engage frequently, for survival alone, in imaginary identification with other beings, and in comparing himself with them. It will be said in Part Two (II.6, 165–66) that man’s sense of superiority over other animals is the “first movement of pride.” Furthermore, the centrality for human life of imitation, or imaginary identification, must mean that the occasions for pity are more frequent in man than in other beings.26 And

26. If imitativeness is an immediate and necessary consequence of self-preservation for man (and only for him), then expansive identification is not originally confined to pity; thus amour de soi-même, the natural inclination of all animals toward self-preservation, has a more complex character in the human animal. The human imagination narrows the gap between amour de soi-même and amour propre, since the latter is born in comparison (note XV), and comparison is involved in self-preserving imitation, albeit not at first as comparison with one’s own kind (I.6). 164 richard l. velkley again: if natural man is always looking around him to see what the rest of nature is doing, has he not begun to see—that is, imagine—nature as a whole? He cannot fail to note that the other animals are regular in their ways, and he alone is always changing his strategies. The idea of the whole emerges from human lack. In the other beings man discovers his own non-being; he makes this discovery before having any interest in his fellow species-members. Matters are made worse for the natural state by note V to I.3 (198– 99) on diet: human relative lack of instinct permits human flexibility in diet, which in turn means that humans can be carnivores, and carnivores unlike frugivores fight with their kind over prey. The natural condition of peace is necessarily shorter than it would be if man had kept the frugivorous diet for which his physical structure (blunt teeth) is best suited. Nature’s failure to complete the human physical form with the appropriate instinct is fatal to natural peace and contentment. Nature does not providentially prevent error. The text has a different emphasis. Man loses in health and vigor as he grows more reflective, since the latter results in the excesses of work and leisure, pleasure and passion. This seems to be only the fault of man, not of nature: the miseries of civilized life “are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making” (yet not “all our ills”). Then Rousseau says that “I almost (presque) dare assert” a proposition, which he then apparently, but perhaps only apparently, asserts (I.9, 138): “If nature destined us to be healthy, the state of reflection is a state against Nature, and the man who meditates is a depraved animal.” (This statement should be compared with the epigraph from the Politics.) The reservation expressed by “almost” can have more than one referent. There is an unstated premise, “the state of reflection is unhealthy.” The reservation is not about this, for the text defends it at length. Rousseau is hesitating to assert either the protasis (“If nature destined us to be healthy”) or the apodosis (“the state of reflection is against nature”). But given the affirmation of the unstated premise, the apodosis cannot be in doubt unless the protasis is in doubt. We conclude that Rousseau’s reservation means that he wishes, but dares not, assert the negation of the protasis: “nature did not destine us to be healthy.” In fact he has already asserted this, since note V on diet shows that the teleological claim of the protasis must be rejected. Na- ture, far from establishing a healthy destiny for humans, permits them to fall into an unhappy mismatch between their powers and their desires. The first thirteen paragraphs have many comparisons of l’homme sauvage and l’homme civilisé with respect to strength, vigor, and tranquili- ty of mind. The primitive peoples representing natural man’s good Speech, Imagination, Origins 165 health are present inhabitants of the earth. Plainly they are reflective and social beings; what is more, they are not strangers to vice. This is especially evident in note VI (199–201), which offers a review of “reports of travelers of the examples of strength and vigor of men from the bar- barous and savage nations.” These describe situations involving use of speech to do such complex social activities as deceiving, lying, following orders, making promises, and commercial exchange. The implication is clear: What is known about contemporary primitives establishes that absolute lack of reflection is not a necessary condition for the natural man’s physical well-being. This is to say nothing about the traveler’s reports implying warlike traits in some of the healthy savage peoples, and thus showing the compatibility of war and health (see I.13, 140–41).27

V. The questions about what is contained and not contained in the natural condition assume critical proportions as we turn to the metaphysical and moral side of man in paragraphs fourteen through nineteen, which dwell on the relations between instinct, freedom, and perfectibility. The gap between the claims of the text and those of the notes grow wider, indeed cavernous. In paragraph fifteen (141) Rousseau states that an animal is an ingenious, self-moving machine: man is also a machine, but one that has the power to choose freely. Neither natural instinct nor human freedom is without flaw. Animals are unable to depart from instinct when it would be to their benefit to do so. The pigeon that is fed only the choicest meats will starve. On the other hand, man departs from instinct to his detriment. Only the insufficiency of instinct can explain the emergence in nature of a being without it; otherwise that emergence is unintelligible. But human flexibility and perfectibility are also problematic.28 The human advance over animals is not the result solely of ideas, a term Rousseau uses in the typically modern way, as covering all sensation and representation (I.16, 141–42). The specific

27. Paragraph eleven has the first discussion of freedom and bondage in the state of nature. Here Rousseau compares the domestication of animals with the socialization of man. Both make their subjects weaker and timorous. Note VI contains an anecdote of a savage man mastering or domesticating a bull. If savage man already domesticates animals, could he not at least think about domesticating other humans? The examples show savages with the arts and skills of fishers and hunters. Nature has compelled humans, as lacking instinct, to acquire such arts and skills. The natural state, as Rousseau imagines it, lacks the sociability, and the scarcity of resources, that drive humans to enslave one another, but it already contains the root cause for the mastery of nature. 28. This suggests the idea of a perfect or divine being: one that reflects on possibility, yet acts only on what is necessary, without passion. See Reveries, Fifth Walk. 166 richard l. velkley difference of man is freedom, rather than understanding; freedom is described as a spiritual power to acquiesce or resist, and as not explica- ble in mechanical terms. Yet Rousseau immediately draws back with the claim that the question is surrounded by difficulties. The human does not incontestably have such a spiritual power, but is indisputably equipped with perfectibility, “the faculty which, with the aid of circumstances, successively develops all the others” (I.17, 142). Rousseau’s withdrawal from freedom points back to his indications at the start of Part One that the abstraction from anatomical evolution entails an incompleteness in the present account. Perfectibility might be “metaphys- ically neutral” to the distinction of spiritual and mechanical. Does that mean that this faculty is consciously manipulable? Rousseau says this power, by which man increases in an “almost un- limited” way the scope of his thought, is not simply a blessing. “It would be sad for us to be forced to agree” that this distinctively human power “is the source of all man’s miseries.” It would, it seems, be desirable to gain mastery of this faculty. If perfectibility is the source of all ills, then to be free of it should be good. But when through old age or accident a human loses it, he becomes an imbecile, and falls lower than the animals; the human has no instinct to fall back on. The original state of the human cannot be what it at first seems to be: a state in which perfectibility is purely latent. Universal imbecility would mean death to the species. Perfectibility cannot be escaped. Rousseau now states that even the savages have an inkling of the sadness of the human plight. “It would be frightful to be obliged to praise as a beneficent being him who first suggested to the inhabitants of the Banks of the Orinoco the use of the Slats he ties to his Children’s temples, and which insure at least a measure of their imbecility and of their original happiness” (I.17, 142). Even the healthy savage has a sense of the illness brought on by reflection. Perfectibility is active from the start of human life qua human (in the childhood of savages) and inescapable. This means there is no original happiness, and that attempts to gain it can be misguided, leading to something worse than animal existence. Man cannot be content with his own nature; he is the unnatural animal from the start. As the Orinocan anecdote also reveals: pity for human suffering is not always good. It can be dangerous to your health. Paragraph eighteen, together with its note (X, the central note, 208–14), brings to the fore, in the starkest way, the contrast between the dream of the prereflective natural state and the truth of its impossibility. The text fascinates us by its inconsequence; after all that has been said, it claims that savage man “will begin with purely animal functions: to perceive and to sense will be his first state, which he will have in com- Speech, Imagination, Origins 167 mon with all animals.” Let us call this the “pure animal” thesis. Rousseau even says for a blink of an eye that the original man is “left by Nature to instinct alone,” and then withdraws the apparent blunder.29 It is a quick reminder that it is impossible for man to do what is nevertheless asserted here as possible for man: to live by “purely animal functions.” If we are still in doubt about this, the remarkable note X removes the doubt. If we have paid no attention to what has been occurring up to this point, we might expect some support in this note for the “pure animal” thesis. The attentive reader is not disappointed to find instead that Rousseau, quite to the contrary, engages in a speculation that makes no sense on the basis of the “pure animal” thesis. Rousseau examines reports of travelers who in his judgment have hastily concluded that certain anthropoid creatures are not human, and are mere animals, on the spurious grounds that their outward form differs from the human, and that they do not speak. Rousseau thinks that such beings might be genuine savage men, with only virtual faculties, still living in the primitive state of nature.30 As to speech, Rousseau casu- ally observes that the travelers ought to know that “although the organ of speech is natural to man, speech itself is nevertheless not natural to him,” for the latter depends on further conditions that do not exist for these creatures.31 From other passages we learn that human perfectibility will activate speech only where there is need for communication, that is, where humans have become sociable (see note VI). But Rousseau’s

29. The correction occurs in two remarks: (1) the mention of nature’s compensation of man for his lack of instinct, and (2) the addition of vouloir ou ne pas vouloir to appercevoir et sentir as the original human functions. The second pair of functions is common to all animals, but the first pair was called in I.16 actes purement spirituels and distinctively human. Although the spirituality of willing, or the metaphysical dualism of spiritual and mechanical, is questionable, there is nothing in Rousseau’s analysis to put in doubt the connection between the power of willing and the human relative freedom from (i.e., lack of) instinct. 30. In response to the first ground, Rousseau remarks that the human physiognomy is much influenced by climate, diet, and other habits. This is further admission that one cannot maintain abstraction from anatomy in accounting for the emergence of the human. 31. Rousseau by the term “organ” (l’organe) does not refer to vocal chords or the physical ability to gesture, but a faculty peculiar to man. This point is discussed more fully in Es- say on the Origin of Languages, I.13–14; OC, vol. 5, 379: other animals have a more than sufficient structure (organisation) for speech, but do not possess speech in the human sense; their “natural languages” cannot change and progress as do the human. Only man has conventional languages, wherewith he “makes progress in good and evil.” The human power of speech and perfectibility are the same power, or at least are inseparable. The power of speech—the power to make conventional languages—is what distinguishes man from other animals (La parole distingue l’homme entre les animaux; OC, vol. 5, 375). These passages contradict those commentators who wish to ascribe to natural man perfectibility but not the faculty for speech. For a comparison of the accounts of the origin of language in the Discourse and the Essay, see Mira Morgenstern, Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity: Self, Culture and Society (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 9–27. 168 richard l. velkley remark means that natural man has the power of speech, and hence already has a reflective power. We might suppose that the reflective power is wholly inactive, purely virtual, in keeping with the “pure animal” thesis. If this were so, the discussion would have to come to an abrupt end with an admission that there is no outward sign distinguishing these alleged humans from animals. Rousseau is certain that there are no signs of the faculty of perfectibility in the case of one animal, the monkey, but he sees possible signs of it in another species, the Pongo. This is striking, because the Pongo seems to be unable to do something that Rousseau says the monkey, solely by imitating humans, is able to do, namely, to push embers in a fire to keep it going.32 Rousseau, however, is inclined to understand this failure in Pongos as an effect of their will (volonté) rather than mere stupidity, as the travelers claim: Rousseau says Pongos get bored (s’ennuyent) with the fire and have no interest in rekindling it. His ascription of will or intention to Pongos is connected with three other observations in the reports: Pongos kill humans who look at them, they bury their dead, and they make roofs out of branches. Hence they possess self-awareness, awareness of death, and art. Together these point to the distinctively human awareness that is the ground of perfectibility: the awareness of time. With this a being is capable of comparing the present to a possible future, and of finding the present wanting: it can become bored. A kind of imagination that is not merely reproductive takes place: the imagination of possible future states. Therewith arises the capacity for willing and choosing, that is, of selecting among the possible options that the mind entertains simultaneously. Human actions are not just the outcome of serial responses to the present, under the pressure of instinct. This is how the human mind expands its powers: it does more than entertain “ideas” of what is sensibly present. It in- vents ideas of the possible, which in turn awaken desires or aversions for what is thus conceived.33 The mental faculties are stimulated in turn to deliberate on the means to pursue or avoid these imagined goods or evils, with the resulting invention of arts. Above all one previsioned evil

32. Rousseau in note X mentions that this imitative ability once misled him into ascribing “intention” (l’intention) to the monkey, which here and elsewhere Rousseau connects to perfectibility (note X. 5). The monkey’s lack in I.30 is the absence of a general idea or “archetype” of “nut” with which to compare particular nuts. Human imitation, unlike that of the monkey, is even in the presocial condition connected with the searching for types (the ways of cats, bears, etc.). One could say that the earliest human experiences a need for general ideas, or the need to articulate what is not present but yet real: powers or beings that are hidden by darkness or interfering bodies, but present to the imagination (I.27). Human thought is unconcealment of the hidden. 33. Compare with Hobbes, Leviathan I.3: common to man and beast is the seeking of causes for a given effect; peculiar to man is the seeking of all the possible effects that can be produced by a given cause. Speech, Imagination, Origins 169 awakens the deliberative and inventive powers: death. In the text (I.19, 143) Rousseau says “the knowledge of death and its terrors is one of man’s ﬁrst acquisitions in moving away from the animal condition.”34 But the text denies, in contradiction to note X, that natural man has that knowledge, and it identiﬁes him with a mere animal.

VI. I am near the conclusion and must discuss in a compressed way the most critical phase of Part One’s inquiry, namely, the account of speech. Rousseau does not try to account for the power of speech itself, which he assumes natural to man. Rather he discusses the problematic origin of the articulated speech of particular or conventional languages, what he calls “the art of speech” (l’art de la parole; I.26, 147).35 Its decisive feature is the distinction between subject and predicate, which requires the capacity for abstraction, the grasping of general ideas or universals (I.28–30, 149–50). The difﬁculty here is that the general idea is the thought of something not sensibly present; to designate such ideas by means of sounds or other signs involves establishing agreement among human beings who, as lacking articulated speech, have only crude ges- tures ﬁt for pointing to what is sensibly present. Without the help of articulated speech, the establishing of the conventions of articulated speech seems unthinkable (I.26, I.30, 147–50). Rousseau does not argue that before articulated speech humans had only sensation and reproductive imagination of the immediately present. Indeed, humans face a linguistic problem at the start which is a sign of their perfectibility: having the ability to “expand their ideas,” they have thoughts about what is not present, of what cannot be pointed out by mere physical ges-

34. See Emile, trans. Bloom, 63–66; OC, vol. 4, 282–89: due to natural weakness the human child is predisposed to fear what it does not know, prior to any socialization. Also related to its weakness are other natural tendencies: toward anger, toward attributing will to things, toward a sense of injustice. Nature thus prepares for the passion of amour propre. The surface of the Second Discourse abstracts not only from the dependent state of human childhood, but also from the natural complementarity of the sexes—another major theme of Emile disclosing the artificiality of the idea of original wholeness. For a fine treatment see Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chica- go Press, 1984). Rousseau’s analytic of human existence should recall that of another thinker for whom the experiences of temporality, mortality and boredom are at the core of being human. 35. The distinction between speech (the natural faculty for language) and the art of speech (conventional language) mitigates the seemingly inescapable paradox: if men needed speech in order to learn how to think, they needed even more to know how to think in order to find the art of speech (I.26). Indeed the power of speech, and thus of thought, can be ascribed to human nature, and so preceded the art of speech. 170 richard l. velkley ture. In fact, they think propositionally, Rousseau says, before they have words for propositions (I.27–28, 148–49).36 Rousseau wants to establish a separation between sociability and the original capacity for rather complicated reflection. The natural man lives in a strange region between the mere animal and sociable man. What kind of thinking is the presociable thinking of natural man? We have an indication of this from note X: the Pongos’ awareness of death and their boredom, or their capacity to conceive the not-present. The awareness of time, the crucial presupposition of the power of speech, is possessed by humans qua human. It makes possible, indeed necessary, a sort of unspoken speech. Without instinct, natural man finds that his courses of action are not predetermined but unrealized possibilities. He is aware of himself as needing through his deliberate action to attempt to secure himself against certain possibilities, above all death. The natural man thinks about the natural world as a whole, as both like and unlike himself: he notes his lack, and his power to overcome his lack, of the animal’s natural skill. As a solitary being with only tenuous links to his kind,37 he is confronted with a world not articulated into kinds and species, but made up of individual things with enduring identities. What is other to himself has a certain boundlessness, especially death. His burial of the dead does not mean that natural man is sociable, but that he tries to gain power over this boundlessness. The bounding of the boundless, or the making present of the not-present, is also the problem of articulated speech. Rousseau observes that when conventional signs are instituted, they are at first either too narrow (proper names) or too

36. Rousseau counts on most readers not noticing the import of his claim that in the first articulated speech each word was assigned the meaning of an entire proposition. The same paragraph (I.28) also says that when subjects and predicates were first distinguished (my emphasis), all substantives were just proper names. These statements completely un- dercut the assertions of I.30 that early man lacked all discursive or intellectual power, having only an imaginative grasp of particulars, whence the restriction of the first words for substantives to proper names. This passage deceptively obscures the difference between the scope of thought and the scope of articulation, presented in I.26–28. By seeming to argue seriously in I.30 that human reason (general ideas) depends on the existence of a fully articulated language (the ability to state definitions), Rousseau seems again to describe the earliest human as simply subhuman, and makes the transition from the subhuman to the human seem near-miraculous. 37. One cannot simply say “no link;” the Pongos move about in groups (as do many other animals) and they bury their own dead. Furthermore, in mating all animals instinc- tually choose their own kind. These links do not reflect any sense of the special merit of one’s own species; the presocial human is “the only being in the universe to take any interest in him” and “the only judge of his own merit” (note XV). He does not discern the will in a fellow species-member, and so giving and receiving praise and blame can have no meaning. Hence “the art of speech” is unknown, or has barely begun. But the Pongos are fascinating because they are just beginning to recognize in themselves and other anthro- poids certain human qualities. Speech, Imagination, Origins 171 wide (large genera) to classify things helpfully (I.31, 150–51). Burying the dead is like giving the first proper names (noms propres) to things (I.28–29, 149): it is attempting to make property of what cannot be appropriated. The experience of disproportion between desire and power is natural and inevitable. Natural man already knows a kind of bondage. In the course of time humans made the conventions more adequate to communicating their propositional thought. But first they had to experience some need for one another, or become sociable; an external cause had to compel them to associate (I.25, 146–47). But it is not difficult to conjecture on how this could have happened: Rousseau cites overpopulation (I.22, 144–45). Yet there is a further difficulty: learning to recognize another human as a member of the same species, that is, as having will and intention (I.23, I.25, I.27, 145–49). Only then can human signs be taken as other than animal signals, which recognition is a condition for consent about meaning. Rousseau presents this transition as the greatest of difficulties. The problem is that it requires a certain power that Rousseau, in order to maintain his artifice of the natural state, does not want openly to ascribe to original human nature: the ability to imagine another being as having a will. This crucial kind of imagination is absent from the account of speech (I.30, 149–50) although necessary for completing it. With its exercise the passion of amour propre comes into being, and the miseries of social existence (I.35, I.39, I.42–43, note XV, 153–55, 157–58, 219–20). Yet Rousseau does not contest a traveler’s observation that the Pongos do no harm to humans unless they “insist on looking at them” (note X.3–5, 209–10) and, as we saw, Rousseau regards Pongos as possible savage men still in the state of nature.38 Following the winding path of the notes, which links up with apparent false turns in the text, we are taken far from “the straightest road” to the natural man. It is impossible, in light of the reflective powers natural man must have, for it to be true that “his soul, which nothing stirs, yields itself to the sole sentiment of his present existence, with no idea of the future, however near it may be” (I.21, 144). Instead the account shows a being with a sense of time as the grasp of the not-present, and as the condition of knowledge. Already the natural man has some imagination of the vast world and its boundless, often alarming, possibilities. Far

38. Essay on the Origin of Languages I.2: the desire or need to communicate sentiments and thoughts arose as soon as one human being recognized another as sentient and thinking, and similar to himself. This states explicitly that such recognition is a precondition for articulated speech (or “art of speech,” not the faculty of speech itself). But it also implies that the capacity for mutual recognition must be a very early acquisition, if not primordial like the faculty of speech. 172 richard l. velkley from being mere animal, he is the only being whose openness to being exposes it to the non-being of death. Rousseau’s move toward the transcendental subjectivity of later Idealism does not mean, however, that he embraces the emancipatory expectations of that tradition. Rather more like Aristotle, but without his naturally social and political animal, Rousseau sees human openness as inseparable from bondage, and the philosophic life as the sustained reﬂection on this perplexity. 7 Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues RICCARDO POZZO

The thesis of this paper can be outlined thus: Kant was not only acquainted with the exposition of the intellectual virtues presented by Aris- totle in Nicomachean Ethics VI and in Eudemian Ethics V, he also used it to establish the true nature and foundation of logic. Given that Aristotle’s theory of the intellectual virtues is at the basis of all introductions to logic, this paper is primarily concerned with Kant’s manuscripts, lecture- transcripts, and printed works in order to reconstruct the history of the problem of how to introduce logic.1 Traditionally, to introduce logic means to answer questions about its nature, subject, goal, and division, a series of issues that had been thoroughly investigated by many Renais- sance and Enlightenment thinkers. Kant’s thoughts on them date back to his earliest reflections and lecture-transcripts; they are taken up in the Critique of Pure Reason; and they find definitive systematization in the published version of his logic, which appeared in 1800. Following a few preliminary methodological considerations, the second part of the essay deals with the occurrences of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues in Kant’s writings. The third part is dedicated to the impact of Iacopo Zabarella’s “pure Aristotelianism” on early modern German philosophy and the way it was transmitted to Kant. The fourth and the fifth parts consider the solutions offered by Zabarella and Kant concerning the nature of logic with respect to the intellectual virtues. Finally, the sixth part concludes with some general remarks about Kant’s debt to Aristotelianism. i. methodological premise The connection between “general” and “transcendental” logic, on the one hand, and “analytic” and “dialectic,” on the other, implies the media-

1. All works by Kant quoted in the paper refer to the edition of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, Kant’s gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902– [= KGS])

173 174 riccardo pozzo tion of a third pair of concepts, that of “canon” and “organon.” (In order not to disappoint legitimate expectations, let me say right away that, for reasons of space, I will not delve into Kant’s use of “analytic” and “dialectic,” which is obviously Aristotelian. I will show how Kant became acquainted with them, but I will limit myself to the issue of the intellectual virtues.) Kant defines logic as “canon” in so far as it “contains the absolutely necessary rules of thought without which there can be no employment whatsoever of the understanding. It therefore treats of understanding without any regard to the difference in the objects to which the employment may be directed.”2 Defined as such, “logic has to do .l.l. only with principles a priori, and is a canon of understanding and of reason, but only with respect to what is formal in their employment, be the content what it may, empirical or transcendental.”3 Kant calls logic an “organon” in so far as it “contains the rules of correct thinking as regards a certain kind of objects.”4 As organon, logic is used according to the “special employment of the understanding” (besonderer Verstandesgebrauch), which takes place when we apply methodical rules to the cases we are working on in any given discipline. One may infer, then, that transcendental logic ought to be considered as the very first of all “special logics” because of the generality of its object. Kant explains this point by means of the following syllogism. (a) The first premise: “transcendental logic” differs only slightly from “general logic,” but in its core, because the former has no object at all, the latter has an object, a very general one, but always an object, since it deals with “the mode of our knowledge of objects in so far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori”;5 (b) the second premise: there could be “a logic in which we do not abstract from the entire content of knowledge”;6 (c) the conclusion: this special logic, which contains “solely the rules of the pure thought of an object” and also treats “of the origin of the modes in which we know objects, in so far as that origin cannot be attributed to the objects,” is transcendental logic.7

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A52/B76, KGS, vol. 3, 75: “die schlechthin nothwendigen Regeln des Denkens, ohne welche gar kein Gebrauch des Verstandes statt- ﬁndet, und geht also auf diesen unangesehen der Verschiedenheit der Gegenstände, auf welche er gerichtet sein mag.” 3. Ibid., A53/B77, KGS, vol. 3, 76: “Logik hat es also mit lauter Prinzipien a priori zu thun und ist ein Kanon des Verstandes und der Vernunft, aber nur in Ansehung des For- malen ihres Gebrauchs, der Inhalt mag sein, welcher er wolle [empirisch oder transzen- dental].” 4. Ibid., A52/B76, KGS, vol. 3, 75: “über eine gewisse Art von Gegenständen richtig zu denken.” 5. Ibid., B25, KGS, vol. 3, 43: “mit unserer Erkenntnißart von Gegenständen, so fern diese a priori möglich sein soll, überhaupt beschäftigt.” 6. Ibid., A55/B80, KGS, vol. 3, 77: “eine Logik, in der man nicht von allem Inhalt der Erkenntniß abstrahirte.” 7. Ibid.: “welche bloß die Regeln des reinen Denkens eines Gegenstandes enthielte .l.l. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 175

In a paper published in 1975, Giorgio Tonelli raised the question of the relation between conditions in Königsberg and the making of Kant’s philosophy. He proposed then the hypothesis of a long survival of Aris- totelianism at the Alma Albertina in Königsberg due to the prestige of a local tradition of Aristotelian studies that would explain, “Kant’s familiarity with Aristotelian terminology at a time when it was almost completely obsolete, and for its partial revival in the Critique of Pure Reason.”8 I am convinced that nowadays, thanks to the terrific results achieved by the electronic processing of texts and of library catalogues, it is possible to open up new fields of research by leaving aside for a moment the usual image we have of Kant as a reader of other philosophers, with whom he feels connected by spiritual ties, such as Newton, Locke, Rousseau, and Hume, and rather concentrate our attention on the less usual images of Kant as a student attending courses and studying textbooks, particularly textbooks originated within the Aristotelian tradition, and of Kant as a teacher eager to find his place within longstand- ing philosophical traditions. Every epoch poses its own problems, and every author finds a particular statement of problems as given. The history of the problems (Prob- lemgeschichte) is a discipline concerned with the tradition of a given problem and with the particular ways it has been transmitted to a certain author of philosophical writings.9 For instance, it is well known that in sie würde auch auf den Ursprung unserer Erkenntnisse von Gegentsänden gehen, so fern er nicht den Gegenständen zugeschrieben werden kann.” See Riccardo Pozzo, Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung in die Logik: Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstrucktion der historischen Hinter- gründe von Kants Logik-Kolleg (Frankfurt: Lang, 1989), 179, 184–85. I do not need to enter, here, into the famous discussion between Kemp Smith and Paton on the reciprocal pre- eminence of general and transcendental logic, because my question is different. 8. Giorgio Tonelli, “Conditions in Königsberg and the Making of Kant’s Philosophy,” in bewußt sein: Gerhard Funke zu eigen, ed. Alexius J. Bucher et al. (Bonn: Bouvier, 1975), 126–44, especially 128. See also Giorgio Tonelli, “Der historische Ursprung der kantischen Termini ‘Analytik’ und ‘Dialektik’,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 7 (1962): 120–39; idem, “Das Wiederaufleben der deutsch-aristotelischen Terminologie bei Kant während der Entstehung der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 9 (1964): 120–39; idem, “Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modern Logic,” in Akten des 4. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses: Mainz 1974, ed. Gerhard Funke, 3 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974), vol. 3, 186–91; idem, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modern Logic: A Commentary on its History, ed. David Chandler (Hildesheim: Olms, 1994). 9. Given that this paper deals with the reception of the Nicomachean Ethics in Early Modern Philosophy, one should first see Peter Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philoso- phie im protestantischen Deutschland (Leipzig: Meiner 1921; reprint, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964), 166–86; Charles B. Schmitt, “Aristotle’s Ethik in the Six- teenth Century: Some Preliminary Considerations,” in idem, The Aristotelian Tradition and Renaissance Universities (London: Variorum, 1984), 87–112; Jill Kraye, “Moral Philosophy,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Keßler, and Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 303–386. 176 riccardo pozzo the first chapter of the introductory part of his course on Plato’s Sophist at Marburg in Winter 1924/25 Heidegger considers the problem of the completeness and systematic order of the intellectual virtues by bestow- ing upon them the systematic presuppositions of his own existential analytic. In fact, we know that Nicomachean Ethics VI.3, 1139b 16–17 reads more or less as follows, “Let it be assumed that there are five habits through which the mind achieves truth in affirmation or denial, namely Art, Science, Prudence, Wisdom, and Understanding.” e[stw dh; oi|~ ajlhqeuvi hJ yuch; tw`/ katafavnai h] ajpofavnai, pe;nte to;n ajriqmovn: tau`ta dV ejsti; tevcnh, ejpisthvmh, frovnuhsi~, sofiva, nou`~: But Heidegger translates it thus (and the difference is easy to see also in the English translation of Heidegger’s German translation of Aristotle): “Hence there are five ways human Dasein discloses beings in affirmation and denial. And these are: know-how (in taking care, manipulating, producing), science, cir- cumspection (insight), understanding, and perceptual discernment.”10 This is about Heidegger. The fact is that just like Heidegger, Iacopo Zabarella appropriated Aristotle’s philosophy by developing his own interpretation of the intellectual virtues, and the same, I will argue, did Kant.11 Zabarella provides us with the missing link between Aristotle and Kant. Zabarella’s impact in Germany began in 1586, less than a decade after the first edition of Zabarella’s logical writings in 1578 and a good decade before the first German edition in 1597. That this impact was a conspicuous phenomenon up to the middle of the eighteenth century is well known to the scholars of Renaissance Aristotelianism, but is still hardly known to Kant scholars. One remembers only a paper published by Giorgio Tonelli in 1956 on Zabarella, who inspired Alexander G. Baumgarten as regards the relationship between esthetics and logic.12 As a matter of fact, the problem of finding Aristotle’s or Zabarella’s traces in Kant’s logic will be always open, and it will ever be, because one cannot speak of “sources,” but rather of “traces.” As a matter of fact, con-

10. Martin Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes: Marburger Vorlesung vom Wintersemester 1924/25, ed. Ingeborg Schüssler, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 19 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992) (Plato’s Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer [Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univer- sity Press, 1997], 15) § 4, 21: “Es seien also der Weisen, in denen das menschliche Dasein als Zu- und Absprechen das Seiende erschließt, fünf. Und das sind: Sich-Auskennen—im Besorgen, Hantieren, Herstellen—, Wissenschaft, Umsicht—Einsicht—, Verstehen, vernehmendes Vermeinen.” 11. The text on the theory of the intellectual virtues considered in this paper is Jacopo Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” in idem, Opera logica, 3d ed. (Cologne 1597; reprint, ed. Wilhelm Risse, Hildesheim: Olms, 1966). See also Andrea Duodo, De habitibus intellectus libri sex (Venice, 1577). 12. Giorgio Tonelli, “Zabarella inspirateur de Baumgarten ou l’origine de la connex- ion entre esthétique et logique,” Revue d’Esthétique 9 (1956): 182–92. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 177 trarily to Rousseau and Hegel, about whose familiarity with Aristotle one can read the papers by Richard Velkley and Alfredo Ferrarin in this volume,13 Kant apparently never engaged himself in direct reading of any Aristotelian texts. His Greek was very poor. He actually never seems to have read anything by Zabarella either. Having read his Latin writings, however, we know that his Latin was not poor. So, why did he not read the Latin Aristotle or Zabarella? Apparently he was repelled by the idea of opening large volumes. In Reflexion 3476 (dated by Adickes to the phases u-y, i.e., anytime from 1776 to 1798) Kant pinpoints his feelings about books quite Socratically by means of a Greek aphorism, “a great book is a great evil” (mega biblivon mega kakovn), which he immediately follows with another, also Socratic, in German, “Great bone-house: library” (Großes Beinhaus: Bibliothek).14 Statements of this tenor induce us to give up the thought of Kant as a “reader” of Aristotle. However, there is still the possibility of looking for “traces.” The procedure I have in mind consists in interpreting a significant problematic context in Kant while hammering it down with questions that had been proposed and resolved by Zabarella. ii. kant on the five intellectual virtues generally As stated above, this paper advances the hypothesis that Kant was acquainted with the Aristotelian definitions, and that he used Aristotle to establish the true nature and foundation of logic. Indeed, Kant mentions with awe Aristotle’s logic in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. “That logic has already, from the earliest times, proceeded upon this sure path is evidenced by the fact that since Aristotle it has not required us to retrace a single step, unless, indeed, we care to count as improvements the removal of certain needless subtleties or the clearer exposition of its recognized teaching, features which concern the elegance rather than the certainty of the science.”15 To prove what I have just said about Kant’s familiarity with Aristotelian concepts, one should begin by reviewing the definitions given by Aristo-

13. Richard Velkley, “Speech, Imagination, Origins: Rousseau on the Political Animal,” in this book, 148–72; Alfredo Ferrarin, “Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intel- lect,” ibid., 193–209. 14. Immanuel Kant, Reflexion 3476, KGS, vol. 16, 861. 15. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Bvii, KGS, vol. 3, 7: “Daß die Logik diesen sicheren Gang schon von den ältesten Zeiten her gegangen sei, läßt sich daraus ersehen, daß sie seit dem Aristoteles keinen Schritt rückwärts hat thun dürfen, wenn man ihr nicht etwa die Wegschaffung einiger entbehrlichen Subtilitäten oder deutlichere Bestimmung des Vor- getragenen als Verbesserung anrechnen will, welches aber mehr zur Eleganz, als zur Sicherheit der Wissenschaft gehört.” 178 riccardo pozzo tle together with Zabarella’s Latin renderings and the German terms Kant was familiar with. tevcnh, ars, Kunst, art, technical skill, know-how, “a productive habit conformed to true reason” e{xi" meta; lovgou ajlhqou" poihtikh; (Nicomachean Ethics VI.4, 1140a 10), habitus cum recta ratione ef- fectivus; frovnhsi", prudentia, Klugheit, prudence: “a practical habit conformed to true reason” ei\nai e{xin ajlhqh' meta; lovgou praktikh;n (Nico- machean Ethics VI.5, 1140b 5), habitus recta cum ratione activus; ejpisthvmh, scientia, Wissenschaft, scientific knowledge, “a demonstrative habit” e{xi" ajpodeiktikhv (Nicomachean Ethics VI.3, 1139b 32–33), habitus demonstra- tivus; sofiva, sapientia, Weisheit, wisdom: “both science and understanding about the highest being in nature” kai; ejpisthvmh kai; nou" tw`n timiwtavtwn th`/ fuvsei (Nicomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141b 3), habitus praestantissimus, scientiam cum intellectu coniungens; nou`", intellectus, Verstand, understanding, intuitive knowledge, “what is concerned with the principles” tw`n ajrcw`n (Nicomachean Ethics VI.6, 1141a 7–8), quidem principiorum cognitio. Looking at the occurrences of the Greek, Latin, and German terms in Kant’s published writings it is easy to verify that Kant understood them in accordance with Aristotle. Tevcnh appears in the Critique of Pure Reason as “art of systems” (Kunst der Systeme).16 Frovnhsi" appears in the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals in the shape of the “counsels of prudence” (Rathschläge der Klugheit), or of the “imperatives of prudence” (Imperative der Klugheit).17 Nobody will dispute that the 742 occurrences of “science” or “sciences” (Wissenschaft, Wissenschaften) in vols. 1–9 of the Akademie-Ausgabe do not correspond to Aristotle’s understanding of ejpisthvmh as e{xi" ajpodeiktikhv.18 Sofiva is evidently transmitted to the young Kant first by the Leibnizian school and therefore perhaps more in the Platonic than in the Aristotelian sense.19 We find this concept quite often in Kant’s pre-critical writings in the discussions about physi- co-theology as part of the expression, “God’s Wisdom” (Weisheit Gottes). In the Critique of Practical Reason, however, Kant tends rather to the Sto- ics and refers Weisheit to the ideals of wisdom of the Hellenistic schools.20 In section 43 of the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View his position is close to Aristotle’s when he defines wisdom as “the idea of a legal- ly perfect practical usage of reason” (die Idee vom gesetzmäßig-vollkommenen

16. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A832/B860, KGS , vol. 3, 538. 17. KGS, vol. 4, 416, 419. 18. See Konkordanz zu den Werken Immanuel Kants, ed. Andreas Roser et al., 10 vols. (New York: Olms-Weidmann, 1992–95), vol. 8, 333. 19. Christia Mercer, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development (New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 2001), 214–15. 20. KGS, vol. 5, 11. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 179 praktischen Gebrauch der Vernunft).21 Finally, there are the very numerous (955) occurrences of “understanding” (Verstand) and the still more numerous (3589) occurrences of “reason” (Vernunft), by means of which Kant addresses what Plato and Aristotle would have called, respectively, diavnoia and nou'". But this is a much larger problem. I would like to indicate that Albert Görland’s Habilitationsschrift, which appeared in 1909, was entirely dedicated to it and that everybody who read it ended up expressing profound dissatisfaction.22 Nobody has tried it again. Let me first turn to Kant’s anthropology. Reinhard Brandt and Wern- er Stark, the editors of the most recent volume of the Akademie-Ausgabe, the one containing the lectures on anthropology, have failed to see that Kant’s thoughts on the meaning of “pragmatics” in connection with the Aristotelian theory of the intellectual virtues is not simply cosmetic.23 What Kant tries to give is a rather precise answer to the question about the epistemological status of anthropology. In Reflexion 1482 (dated by Adickes to the phase s or possibly to r, i.e., to 1775–77 or 1773–75), Kant uses the predicate “pragmatic” when referring to prudence, i.e., to frovnhsi". Later on he analyzes history from the perspective of the intellectual virtues and says that the study of history involves the use of tevcnh, frovnhsi", and sofiva. “Of history and biography. Three kinds of doctrines (1) that make capable, (2) prudent, (3) wise: scholastic, pragmatic, and moral cognition.”24 Reflexion 457 (dated by Adickes to phase w, i.e., to the 1790’s), is also interesting in this regard. Brandt and Stark consider it “the basis for the title of the 1798 book,”25 the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Its text is the following: “If somebody speaks about a book (not about a farrago, which still needs editing) as an opus, he can have a goal according to a threefold point of view: 1) by means of which the human being becomes more clever, 2) more prudent and 3) wiser, i.e., in a pragmatic, technical-practical, and moral perspective—The pragmatic perspective is the one that forms the basis for the others.”26 In their commentary, Brandt and Stark limit them-

21. KGS, vol. 7, 200. 22. Albert Görland, Aristoteles und Kant bezüglich der Idee der theoretischen Erkenntnis (Gießen: Töpelmann, 1909). 23. Reinhard Brandt and Werner Stark, “Einleitung,” in KGS, vol. 25, xvi. 24. KGS, vol. 15, 659: “Der Geschichte und biographien. 3erley Lehren. 1. Die Geschickt. 2. die klug. 3. die weise machen: scholastische, pragmatische und moralische Kentnis .” 25. KGS, vol. 25, xvi. 26. KGS, vol. 15, 189: “(Wenn von einem Buch [nicht einer Farrago, welche noch Redaction erfordert] als einem opus die Rede ist, so kann es in dreyfacher Hinsicht einen Zwek haben: 1. Wodurch der Mensch gescheuter, 2. Klüger [] und 3. Weiser wird, d.i. in pragmatischer, technisch-practischer und moralischer Hinsicht.—Die pragmatische Hinsicht ist die, [worauf] welche die Basis der übrigen ausmacht.” 180 riccardo pozzo selves to noticing the change of the role played by “pragmatics” in the two passages just mentioned. While in Reflexion 1482 pragmatics occupies the second position, in Reflexion 457 it occupies the first position, and this, according to Brandt and Stark, is due to Kant’s express declaration that pragmatics must take the lead on behalf of its being fundamental.27 Brandt and Stark do not acknowledge, however, that at this point the reader faces a considerable confusion due to the discrepancies among Kant’s dictates about the nature of pragmatics, and of anthropology in particular. The truth is that these discrepancies can be explained by pointing to the persistent influence of Aristotle on Kant. It was Tonelli who opened up the question of the influence of the Aristotelian concept of “prudence” in Kant’s anthropology.28 In the quotes reported above we have seen Kant talking about art (technique), prudence, science, and wisdom. These are four out of the five intellectual virtues. (Only understanding is missing; but Kant deals with it extensively in sections 40–42 of the Anthropology.)29 There is here more than a simple terminological appropriation. There is a consistent reference to the distinction made by Aristotle between art and prudence as intellectual virtues dealing with “what can be otherwise” (ta; ejndecovmena), and science and wisdom (and understanding), which deal instead with “what cannot be otherwise” (ta; mh; ejndecovmena) (Nicomachean Ethics VI.3, 1139b 21–22). If anthropology is connected to art, because of human capabilities, or to prudence, because of human choices, it deals in either case with contingency, with what can be otherwise, as Aristotle put it. The same point had been raised also in the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, where he compared “rules of skill,” (Regeln der Geschicklichkeit) “counsels of prudence,” (Rathschläge der Klugheit) and “commands of morality” (Gebote [Gesetze] der Sittlichkeit),30 thereby assigning the first to art, the second to prudence, and the third to wisdom, i.e., to the union of understanding and science (Nicomachean Ethics VI.7, 1141a 19–20). When Norbert Hinske, in his pioneering paper for the Max Müller- Festschrift, reviewed “the oscillations in Kant’s idea of anthropology,” he proposed a fourfold alternative: 1) a science of experience, 2) general knowledge, 3) no science at all, 4) an analytical science.31 In my opin-

27. KGS, vol. 25, xvi. 28. Giorgio Tonelli, “La question de bornes de l’entendement humain au XVIIIe siè- cle et la genèse du criticisme kantien, particuliérement par rapport au problème de l’inﬁ- ni,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 65 (1959), 396–427. On this topic See also Mareta Linden, Untersuchungen zum Anthropologiebegriff des 18. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Lang, 1976), 17–18. 29. KGS, vol. 7, 196–99. 30. KGS, vol. 4, 416. 31. Norbert Hinske, “Kants Idee der Anthropologie,” in Die Frage nach dem Menschen: Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 181 ion, by its very nature Kant’s anthropology corresponds to Hinske’s position (3). Anthropology is not a science, at least not in the Aristotelian sense. Kant knew exactly the meaning of science according to Aristotle. Instead of a science, anthropology is rather a discipline dealing with skills and choice, with art and prudence. For this reason, Kant denies anthropology the status of a philosophical discipline—remember the eighteenth-century understanding of “philosophical” in the sense of “scientiﬁc.” Anthropology is nothing more and nothing less, to quote the 1798 book, than a “knowledge of the world [which] must follow the school. So long as it contains a wide knowledge of the things in the world, i.e., animals, plants, and minerals in various lands and climates it is not properly called pragmatic, but when it incorporates knowledge of the human being as citizen of the world.”32 Such an approach is actually not too far from what an American university today would carry as a program for “Adult and Continuing Education.” iii. the impact of aristotle in early german philosophy Especially in the last twenty years, beginning, one would say, with Alasdair McIntyre’s After Virtue,33 there has been a consistent amount of literature on Aristotle and Kant as regards ethics. One thinks of the works by Dieter Henrich, Martha Nussbaum, Nancy Sherman, and, most recently Felicitas Munzel.34 To date, however, there is only one monograph that carries Aristotle and Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the title. It is Görland’s already mentioned Habilitationsschrift. But Görland was interested principally in a comparison of the thought of the two philosophers and did not try to identify any channel of Aristotle’s impact on Kant.35 Of course, it is the primary goal of this paper to compare

Aufriß einer philosophischen Anthropologie: Festschrift für Max Müller zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Heinrich Rombach (Freiburg: Alber, 1966), 410–27, especially 414–21. 32. KGS, vol. 7, 120: “Weltkenntniß, welche auf die Schule folgen muß, betrachtet, wird eigentlich alsdann noch nicht pragmatisch genannt, wenn sie ein ausgebreitetes Erkennt- niß der Sachen in der Welt, z. B. der Thiere, Pflanzen und Mineralien in verschiedenen Ländern und Klimaten, sondern wenn sie Erkentnniß des Menschen als Weltbürgers ent- hält.” 33. Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (South Bend, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1981). 34. See G. Felicitas Munzel, Kant’s Conception of Moral Character: The “Critical” Link of Morality, Anthropology, and Reflective Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 161–63. 35. As a matter of fact, Görland missed the speculative relevance of Nicomachean Ethics. VI.3 for Kant. He quotes it only once, at the end of his book, for a short comparison of Aristotle’s q with Kant’s Verstand, see ibid., 512. 182 riccardo pozzo the theories of the two philosophers. But I think that something useful can be said also about the channels of Aristotle’s impact. In the papers they contributed to this volume, Edward P. Mahoney and Antonino Pop- pi have stressed the importance of Zabarella,36 and it is no surprise that Zabarella plays the leading role for the impact of Aristotle on Kant. For starters, allow me a few words on “pure Aristotelianism.” In the sixteenth century, says Wilhelm Risse, a “programmatically pure logic” develops itself in open disagreement with Late-Scholastic and Humanis- tic Logic. It was Risse who first called it “pure Aristotelianism,”37 thereby introducing a new category to the history of philosophy, and I follow him in that. Pure Aristotelianism was an interesting current of thought for several reasons. First, it was developed at Padua and from there it was spread into almost all Catholic as well as Protestant universities. Second, it established a “Scholastic philosophy” of its own, which was committed neither to the heritage of Late-Medieval Scholastic philosophy nor to the doctrinal needs of the Catholic church in the age of the Counter- Reformation. Third, it produced a notable amount of logical and metaphysical works that were published from the late sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century. Fourth, the logic and the metaphysics Kant set upon criticizing (Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Meier) were nothing else but the late products of pure Aristotelianism. Fifth, eventually, it is this tradition of Aristotelianism that brought forth in the nineteenth century interpreters such as Hegel and editors such as Becker and Bonitz. The first goal of pure Aristotelianism was to overcome the increasing- ly tired polemics among the different schools and turn to the direct analysis of the Organon.38 Let me recall just a few names. Against the late Scholastics, Antonio de’ Bernardi della Mirandola declared, “Paulus Venetus and Petrus Hispanus .l.l. very much deviate .l.l. from seeing the way of knowing of Aristotle .l.l. and they also teach many things that are absolutely abhorrent to Peripatetic method and doctrine.”39 Agostino Nifo criticized the revival of Ciceronian dialectic carried out by the humanists,40 and Jakob Schegk opposed the universal topic method of

36. Edward P. Mahoney, “Aristotle and Renaissance Philosophy,” in this book; Antoni- no Poppi, “Zabarella or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science,” in this book. 37. Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 12. 38. Ibid., vol. 1, 201. See also Alfonso Maierú, University Training in Medieval Europe, trans. D. N. Pryds (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 17–137. 39. Antonio de’ Bernardi della Mirandola, In logicam universam institutio, 2d ed. (Rome, 1562), 3–4.: “Paulus Venetus et Petrus Hispanus .l.l. tantum enim absunt .l.l. a sternenda Aristotelis cognitionem via .l.l. pleraqaue etiam tradunt, quae a peripatetica ratione doctrinaque penitus abhorrent.” Quoted in Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 201. 40. See Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 239. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 183

Petrus Ramus.41 It should also be kept in mind that Renaissance Aris- totelianism was very much dependent on the polemics originated by the interpretations of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius of Aristotle’s theory of the nou'". Consequently, even the “pure Aristotelians” were divided along the lines of the two directions initiated by the commentators. On the one side we see the camp of the Alexandrists, on the other that of the Simplicians, most of whom were linked, since the thirteenth century, to the Averroists.42 However, given that these disputes more concern metaphysics and physics than logic, the two camps agreed on almost all issues regarding logic. Their major differences were merely about method. The Alexandrists Agostino Nifo and Jakob Schegk divided logic into analytic, dialectic, and sophistic, while the Simplicians Mar- cantonio Zimara and Gerolamo Balduino (who were, by the way, the teachers of Zabarella) concentrated their attention on Categories, Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics.43 Both camps had everything they needed to renovate Aristotelian logic. One thinks of the exquisite philological expertise of the Alexandrists and of the powerful systematic instruments introduced by the Simplicians, such as the theory of regressus. Finally, both camps found representative expressions in the editions of Aristotle they promoted: the Alexandrists with the Greek Aldine edition of 1495/98, and the Simplicians with the Latin editions (with Averroes’ commentaries) of 1483 and 1550/52.44 The two souls of pure Aristotelianism, the philology of the Alexan- drists and the systematic of the Simplicians, were reunited in the work of Iacopo Zabarella, “the most important of the Italian [Renaissance] logicians .l.l. one of the sharpest and clearest logicians of all times.”45 On the early impact of Zabarella in Germany, the testimony by Georg Gutke in 1625 is striking, “Zabarella is minor only to Aristotle and Averroes” (solo Aristotele et Averroe minor Jacopus Zabarella).46 In fact, by the early seventeenth century a number of systematic works printed in Germany refer to Zabarella.47 At Helmstedt, Owen Gunther was the ﬁrst German

41. See Guido Oldrini, “La funzione storica della metodologia ramista,” Rivista di storia della ﬁlosoﬁa 49 (1994): 469–94. 42. See Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 201–202. 43. Ibid., vol. 1, 239, 256–57, 243–44, 264–65. 44. Ibid., vol. 1, 203–204. See Aristotle, Opera, ed. Aldo Manuzio (Venice, 1495–98); idem, Opera, ed. Andrea Torretano and Bartolomeo de Blavis (Venice, 1493); idem, Opera, ed. Giunti (Venice, 1550–52). 45. See Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 278. 46. Georg Gutke, Habitus primorum principiorum (Berlin, 1625), f. R2r. Quoted in Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 278. See also Bartholomaeus Keckermann, “Praecognitorum logi- corum tractatus tres,” in idem, Opera omnia (Geneva, 1614), 77–160; Johann Hermann von Elswich, De varia Aristotelis in scholis protestantium fortuna schediasma (Hanover, 1720), 58–60. 47. See Sachiko Kusukawa, “Vinculum Concordiae: Lutheran Method by Philip 184 riccardo pozzo

Aristotelian to quote Zabarella, and he did so as early as 1586.48 At Alt- dorf, in Nuremberg, the Alexandrist Philipp Scherb used Zabarella in his polemics against the Ramists.49 At Rostock, Matthias Flaccius Illyricus Jr. was able to keep his loyalty to Melanchthon, freeing himself from the temptations of Petrus Ramus and renovating his system of logic on the basis of Zabarella.50 At Strasbourg, Johann Ludwig Hawenreuther edited the first German edition of Zabarella’s Opera logica.51 The Italian emigré Giulio Pace taught Zabarella at Calvinist schools in Geneva, Basel, Hei- delberg, Montpellier, and Valencia.52 At Helmstedt, finally, Cornelius Martini offered a very successful combination of Suárezian metaphysics and Zabarellian logic that was destined to influence every German philosopher until Kant.53 Martini’s accomplishments ought to be linked with the question of method, which was prompted by the development of a new concept of science (as has been extensively shown by William Wallace).54 This was clearly perceived by Martini’s teacher, Johannes Caselius, during the years he spent in Italy from 1560 to 1563 and from 1565 to 1568. As a direct disciple of Melanchthon, it is to be supposed that Caselius made Melanchthon known in Italy. But he also became acquainted with the work of Zabarella. Eventually, Caselius came to the conclusion that it was time to abandon the topical approach in logic favored by Cicero,

Melanchthon,” in Method and Order in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature: The Aristotle Commen- tary Tradition, ed. Daniel A. Di Liscia, Eckhard Keßler, and Charlotte Methuen (Brook- ﬁeld, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997), 337–54, especially 353. On the reception of Zabarella in Ger- man speaking countries see: Peter Petersen, Geschichte der Aristotelischen Philosophie im Protestantischen Deutschland, 196–99; Charles B. Schmitt, “Philosophy and Science in Six- teenth Century Universities: Some Preliminary Comments,” in The Cultural Context of Me- dieval Learning, ed. John Emery Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla (Boston: Reidel, 1975), 485–530, especially 511, 530; Irena Backus, “The Teaching of Logic at the End of the Six- teenth Century: The Reception of Zabarella at Strasbourg and Geneva,” Archiv für Refor- mationsgeschichte 80 (1988): 240–51. 48. See Owen Gunther, Methodorum tractatus duo (Helmstedt, 1586). 49. See Philipp Scherb, Dissertatio pro philosophia peripatetica adversus Ramistas (Altdorf [Nuremberg], 1590). 50. See Matthias Flaccius Illyricus Jr., Opus logicum in Organum Aristotelis summi Philosophi (Frankfurt, 1593). 51. See Iacopo Zabarella, Opera logica, and Johann Ludwig Hawenreuther, Syzetesis de natura logicae (Strasbourg, 1599). 52. See Cesare Vasoli, “Giulio Pace e la diffusione europea di alcuni temi aristotelici padovani,” in Aristotelismo veneto e scienza moderna, ed. Luigi Olivieri (Padua: Antenore, 1983), 1009–1034. See also Giulio Pace, In Porphyrii Isagogen et Aristotelis Organon commentarius analyticus (Frankfurt, 1597; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1966). 53. See Riccardo Pozzo, “Melanchthon and the Paduan Aristotelians: The Shift from the Topics to the Analytics,” in Melanchthon and South-West Europe, ed. Günter Frank and Kees Meerhoff (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbeke, 2002), 53–65. 54. See William A. Wallace, “The Inﬂuence of Aristotle on Galileo’s Logic and Its Use in His Science,” in this volume, 64–83. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 185

Agricola, and Melanchthon himself, in favor of a return to the Aristotle of the Analytics.55 He brought these new ideas back to Rostock and, after 1589, to Helmstedt. He urged his disciple Cornelius Martini to refer to Zabarella, and Martini not only won a momentous polemic against the German Ramists in 1594–96, he also secured the success of “pure Aris- totelianism” in Germany.56 From Martini to Kant one must go another leg and consider the contribution to logic of the Regiomontani, the logicians at Königsberg, who established a flourishing school-tradition.57 During the seventeenth century, significant research was done at Königsberg in the field of the so- called gnostologia, which, as the name says, is a discipline dedicated to the theory of cognition.58 There was also original research on argumentation theory, as in the famous Dialectica Regiomontana of 1680 and in Melchior Zeidler’s extensive commentaries on the Analytics.59 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Aristotelian philosophy was still at the center of teaching at Königsberg and its most famous follower was Paul Rabe, the author not only of an impressive Cursus Philosophicus and of a thoroughly anti-Cartesian treatise on methodology, but also of the logic textbook commissioned by Frederick William I, the King of Prus- sia, for the Nova Schola Regia at Königsberg, better known to Kant scholars under the name of Fridericianum, which was the gymnasium where Kant studied from Easter of 1732 to Michaelmas of 1740.60 Against the results of modern philosophy and science, the Königsberg Aristotelians

55. Johannes Caselius, De bono Academiae oratio (Helmstedt, 1599). On Caselius, see Emilio Bonfatti, La “Civil conversazione” in Germania: Letteratura del comportamento da Stefano Guazzo a Adolph Knigge 1574–1788 (Udine: Del Bianco, 1979), 86–90; Gino Roncaglia, Palaestra rationis: Discussioni sulla natura della copula e modalità nella filosofia “scolastica” tedesca del XVII secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1996), 49. 56. Cornelius Martini, Disputationum logicarum adversus Ramistas prima de subiecto et fine logicae (Helmstedt, 1594); idem, Disputationum logicarum adversus Ramistas secunda de constitutione logicae et natura locorum in genere (Helmstedt, 1596). 57. Besides Petersen’s and Risse’s books see Max Wundt, Die deutsche Schulmetaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, Mohr, 1939); idem, Die Schulphilosophie im Zeitalter der Aufk- lärung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1945; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1964); Lewis White Beck, Ear- ly German Philosophy: kant and his Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1969); Siegfried Wollgast, Philosophie in Deutschland: 1550–1650, 2d ed. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993). 58. See especially Christian Dreier, Sapientia seu philosophia prima (Königsberg, 1644). 59. See Dialectica regiomontana, hoc est compendium topicorum Aristotelis, ed. Johann E. Bus- mann (Helmstedt, 1680); Melchior Zeidler, Analytica, sive de variis sciendi generibus et mediis eo perveniendi libri tres (Königsberg, 1676); idem, Prodromus introductionis in lectionem Aris- totelis (Königsberg, 1680). 60. See Paul Rabe, Dialectica et analytica, scientiarum biga utilissima, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1703); idem, Cursus philosophicum, sive compendium praecipuarum scientiarum philosophicarum (Königsberg, 1703); idem, Methodologia nova atque scientifica, sive tractatus de ordine genuino (Königsberg, 1708). 186 riccardo pozzo stood by the tradition of pure Aristotelianism and opposed modern science, with indeed some scientific rigor, but sometimes with results that awaken the memory of Don Quixote. For instance, we see that Heinrich Lysius, a professor of theology and philosophy, was disciplined by his colleagues as late as 1709 with the charges of being a follower of Coper- nicus and Descartes.61 The recent rediscovery of Königsberg course an- nouncements in the eighteenth century62 has made clear that the Aris- totelian distinction between dialectic and analytic was respected at Königsberg well into the eighteenth century. In fact, we see that up to 1730 Johann David Kypke, the ordinary professor who taught logic and metaphysics when Kant was a freshman, announced his logic courses using the double denomination of collegium dialectico-analyticum.63 The problem of how to introduce logic was solved at Königsberg by introducing first the Topics and second the Analytics. Zabarella continued to be followed literally; the unique difference was due to the specificity of the Königsberg tradition of looking attentively at both parts of the Organon. In Paul Rabe’s logic textbook, Dialectica et Analytica, a book Kant beyond doubt read and studied at the Fridericianum, one finds the Aristotelian definitions first of all in a “Proemium logices, sive dialec- tices: De natura ejusdem, ut et ipsius scientiae logicae vel dialecticae,” and then in an “Analytices proemium logicae.” About dialectic, Kant read it as an ars, i.e., a e{xi" meta; lovgou ajlhqou'" poihtikh;, whose direct goal (finis cuius) are dovxa and e[ndoxa and whose indirect goal (finis cui) the auditor lovgon devomeno".64 About analytic, he read it as a scientia, i.e., a e{xi" ajpodeiktikhv, whose direct goal (finis cuius) is ajlhvqeia and whose indirect goal (finis cui) is the auditor pepaideumevno".65 This, as I stated before, is the source of Kant’s understanding of “dialectic” and “analytic” as he expounded it in the Critique of Pure Reason.66 iv. zabarella on logic and the intellectual virtues Let me now go back to the systematic question I have started with. An introduction to logic must satisfy two different claims. First, the intro-

61. See Heiner Klemme, “Immanuel Kant und seine Schule,” in Die Schule Immanuel Kants: Mit dem Text von Christian Schiffert über das Königsberger Collegium Fridericianum, ed. Heiner Klemme (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), 1–60, especially18. 62. Vorlesungsverzeichnisse der Universität Königsberg 1720–1804, ed. Michael Oberhausen and Riccardo Pozzo (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999). 63. See Michael Oberhausen and Riccardo Pozzo, “Einleitung der Herausgeber,” in Vorlesungsverzeichnisse der Universität Königsberg, xx. 64. Rabe, Dialectica et Analytica, vol. 1, 1–7. 65. Ibid., vol. 2, 1–9. 66. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A57/B82–A64/B88, KGS, vol. 3, 79–82. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 187 duction is the place where the author tries to present the issues that most aptly clarify, from a theoretical point of view, the nature, the subject, and the foundation of the discipline. Second, however, the introduction is also the place where the author hints at the practical advan- tages that the discipline has for life: what it is useful for, what are its tasks, etc. Throughout the whole history of logic the theoretical and the practical endeavors have been more or less connected.67 Zabarella must be given the merit of having provided in his short treatise, “De natura logicae,” the most authoritative and consistent answers to the questions de genere, de subiecto, de fine, and de divisione in regard to logic. Why, Zabarella asks himself, did Aristotle never mention logic, which is nonetheless an important intellectual virtue, among the five illustrated in the Nicomachean Ethics? As Antonino Poppi has explained, the answer is twofold. Zabarella makes clear that, being an instrument, the whole utility of logic is exhausted by serving the perfect acquisition and operation of the five virtues, which have their goals in themselves and not in something else. Logic, instead, is not sought after for its own sake and does not possess the dignity and autonomy of the five intellectual virtues. For this reason, Aristotle did not need to mention it. However, one may suggest that logic is at least in a secondary and implicit way included in the list. Having defined science as a demonstrative habit (e{xi" ajpodeiktikhv), Aristotle could have implied logic as well, because demonstration is the logical instrument par excellence.68 In sum, logic cannot be identified with any of the intellectual virtues listed by Aristotle because it asks neither about the theoretical structures nor about the practical consequences of its subject, but rather only about the methodical proceedings of the argumentation.69 In this way, logic also finds its distinction from metaphysics, given that metaphysics deals with the things in themselves in so far as they have an ontological grounding (entia realia), while logic deals only with concepts and their relations (entia rationis). Having specified this, Zabarella proposes to express the true nature of logic by suggesting that logic, grammar, and rhetoric constitute a further set of habitus intellectuales instrumentales, which were never mentioned as such by Aristotle. It follows that logic cannot be called a science, because its object is not only non-universal and non-necessary, it is not real. It cannot be called an art either, because logic cannot modify its object.70 Nor does it fall into the realms of

67. See Pozzo, Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung, 6–19. 68. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.11, in Opera logica, 24–27. See Antonino Poppi, “Zabarella or Aristotelianism as a Rigorous Science,” in this volume, 42–44. 69. See Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 278. 70. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.5, in Opera logica, 8, 5–6, 16–17. 188 riccardo pozzo wisdom and understanding because understanding, and therefore also wisdom, deal with principles, and logic deals with arguments, not with principles. Finally, logic cannot be identified with prudence, because prudence deals with actions.71 Eventually, logic is closer to an art than to a science, because it fulfills the task, as suggested by Risse, of a “rational art aimed at the foundation and the exposition of knowledge.”72 In fact, the goal of logic is to be useful as an “instrument of philosophy, invented by the philosophers to discern in philosophy the true from the false and the good from evil” (instrumentum philosophiae, a Philosophis inventum ad discernendum in philosophia verum a falso, et bonum a malo).73 Its subject matter are the no- tiones secundae.74 Its division is twofold. On the one side, it is “some natural instinct” (quidam naturalis instinctus), a logica naturalis, just like there is a natural grammar and a natural rhetoric.75 On the other side, logic is a collection of rules put together by the philosophers “when they applied philosophical reason and method” (philosophandi rationem ac metho- duc expendentes), the logica artificiosa.76 Moreover, Zabarella distinguishes the logica docens, which is “detached from things” (seiuncta[m] a rebus), a purely formal technique with no content whatsoever, from the logica utens, which is instead “posited in use” (in usu posita) and fulfills the task of a propaedeutic.77 With regard to the last question, the one about the division of logic, Zabarella holds to Averroes’ partition of the Organon in logica formalis generalis, i.e., Categories, De Interpretationes, Prior Analytics, and Posterior Analytics, and logica materialis specialis, i.e., Topics and Sophis- tical Refutations.78 v. kant on logic and the intellectual virtues Let me now turn to the way Kant has solved the question of introducing logic, and to his understanding of logic as a “canon” (Kanon) and an “organon” (Organon). A paper on the Begriffsgeschichte of “canon” and “organon” and their impact on Kant by Sonia Carboncini and Reinhart

71. Ibid., I.7, 16. 72. Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 278. 73. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.13, in Opera logica, 29–30. 74. Ibid., I.19, 47. 75. Ibid., I.12, 27. This comparison with grammar, as Risse points out in Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 1, 278–79, reveals the fundamental psychologism of Zabarella’s deﬁnition of logic and grammar as instrumental habits. 76. Ibid., I.12, 27. 77. Ibid., I.5, 10. 78. Ibid., II.52–102. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 189

Finster was published in 1928 in the Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte.79 Surpris- ingly, however, Carboncini and Finster completely ignored Zabarella in their survey, and this is no trifle. For, first, Zabarella gave the systematic coordinates of the problem, and, second, because one must really be col- or-blind not to see that the Zabarellian adjectival term instrumentalis can and was indeed substituted, as Gunther did when commenting on Zabarella, for the corresponding Grecism, e{xi" organikh;, habitus organicus.80 Different is the case with Kanon, a term coming from the Epicure- an tradition used in the seventeenth century by Pierre Gassendi, which Kant picked up most probably from Martin Knutzen’s logic textbook, El- ementa philosophiae rationalis.81 One should not be misled by the non-Aris- totelian origin, however, because Kant, as a matter of fact, understands under Kanon nothing more and nothing less than the analytic of formal logic. We read in Reflexion 1602 (phase k, i.e., 1773–75): “General logic considered as canon is analytic (of the common understanding); considered as organon it is dialectic” (Die allgemeine Logik als Canon betrachtet ist Analytik [des gemeinen Verstandes], als organon ist dialectic).82 When explaining the difference between analytic and dialectic, which was a fundamental issue, as we have seen, within the Königsberg Aristotelian school, Kant is evidently referring to Zabarella. We read in the Logic Pölitz (based on an archetype to be dated circa 1780–82) that, “Logic as a canon is a science, but logic as an organon is an art.”83 One would say that this answer to the question of the nature of logic is hardly satisfying. In fact it is a neither-nor if compared to the straightforward answer given by Zabarella. Things appear in another light, though, if one considers closely the set of reflections (Reflexionen 1562, 1569, 1570, 1571, 1572) dedicated to commenting on the introduction of the textbook adopted by Kant for his logic courses of forty years, from 1755 to 1795, namely Georg Friedrich Meier’s Auszug aus der Vernunft- lehre. The text commented by Kant reads as follows, “The doctrine of reason or the art of reason (logica, philosophia instrumentalis, philosophia

79. Sonia Carboncini and Reinhart Finster, “Das Begriffspaar Kanon-Organon: Seine Bedeutung für die Entstehung der Philosophie Kants,” Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 26 (1982): 25–59. 80. See Gunther, Methodorum tractatus, fol. B5r: “Porro hic disserendi habitus cum non sit scientia, sed commune scientiarum instrumentium .l.l. sed organicus Animi habitus.” 81. On “canon” in Epicurus, see Carl Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, 4 vols. (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1855–70; reprint, New York: Olms, 1955), vol. 2, 30, and in Gassendi see Risse, Logik der Neuzeit, vol. 2, 15. See Martin Knutzen, Elementa philosophiae rationalis (Königsberg, 1747; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1991), “Praec. Log.,” § 7, 39. 82. Immanuel Kant, Reflexionen über die Logik, KGS, vol. 16, 32. 83. Immanuel Kant, Logic Pölitz, KGS, vol. 24, 505: “Die Logik als Canon ist eine Wis- senschaft, die Logik aber als Organon ist eine Kunst.” See also Pozzo, Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung, 51. 190 riccardo pozzo rationalis) is a science dealing with the rules of philosophical cognition and of philosophical discourse.”84 Kant’s own elaboration is evidently based on the tradition of Aristotle’s five intellectual virtues. He makes it clear that logic is not scientia, as Christian Wolff maintained,85 nor ars, as stated by Johann Heinrich Lambert,86 but rather an organon. Here I need to insert a specification. Formal logic is two-sided. One deals with what ought not to be, the other with what ought to be. What formal logic ought not to be is a dialectical organon, apt to produce fallacies, or, at the best, opinions. What it ought to be is a canon, i.e., I propose, an analytic organon, apt to produce demonstrations and nothing more than that. In fact, as Kant states in a famous passage of the Critique of Pure Rea- son, “further than this logic cannot go. It has no touchstone for the discovery of such error as concerns not the form but the content.”87 Here the need for a set of special logics becomes clear, and particularly for the most general among them, which is transcendental logic. It is evident in this context that what Kant calls canon should be identified with what Königsberg Aristotelians, on the track of Zabarella, called an analytic organon, which is nothing else than a science, a e{xi" ajpodeiktikhv. vi. kant’s debt to aristotle The Aristotelian theory of the intellectual virtues appears to be, in conclusion, the best piece of evidence that connects Kant with Aristotle. “That the intellectual habits are five, is manifest” (Quum igitur habitus intellectuales quinque sunt, manifestum est), says Zabarella.88 Zabarella elabo- rates on this theory without departing from the text of Nicomachean Ethics VI.3–7. He begins with ejpisthvmh and ends with sofiva. Zabarella distinguishes among speculative and practical habits. The first are grounded on ejpisthvmh as the general concept for all disciplines “dealing with necessary things” (quae in rebus necessariis versantur).89 They are scientiae contemplativae such as metaphysics, mathematics, and natural philosophy. The two disciplines that “deal with those things that can equally happen or not happen according to human will” (in rebus illis

84. Meier, Auszug aus der Vernunftlehre (Halle, 1752; reprint, in KGS 16), § 1, 1: “Die Vernunftlehre oder die Vernunftkunst (logica, philosophia instrumentalis, philosophia rationalis) ist eine Wissenschaft, welche die Regeln der gelehrten Erkenntnis und des gelehrten Vortrages abhandelt.” 85. See Pozzo, Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung, 57. 86. Ibid., 51. 87. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A59/B83, KGS, vol. 3, 80: “Weiter aber kann die Logik nicht gehen; und den Irrtum, der nicht der Form, sondern den Inhalt trifft, kann durch die Logik durch keinen Probierstein entdecken.” 88. Zabarella, “De natura logicae” I.2, 5. 89. Ibid., 3. Kant on the Five Intellectual Virtues 191 versantes, quae quod ab humana voluntate aeque fieri, ac non fieri possunt),90 are frovnhsi" and tevcnh. The former deals with virtues and vices (quae ad virtutem et vitium), the latter with material works (quae ad materialia opera). In fact, “what is done by us, is either accomplished or made” (quae a nobis fiunt, alia agi, alia effici). Above the epistemic habits of science, prudence, and art, Zabarella maintains that Aristotle posited two metaphysical habits, nou'" and sofiva. The nou'" grounds and expresses “that cognition of principles from which we apprehend the science of conclusions; for its certainty and necessity are greater than science” (principiorum cognitio, ex qua scientiam conclusionum adipiscimur: quare maiorem habet certitudinem et necessitatem, quam scientia). Eventually, the sofiva takes over the task of closing the system. It is “the most worthy habit, the conjunction of science and understanding sort of science with a head” (habitus praestantissimus, scientiam cum intellectu coniungens: et velu- ti scientia caput habens).91 This theory of Aristotle, through the mediation of Zabarella, had an impressive flowering in the seventeenth century, especially thanks to the work of Clemens Timpler, who introduced an unheard of philosophical science, the hexilogia, the doctrine of the habits.92 Christian Wolff elaborated on the five intellectual virtues,93 and so did many Scholastic philosophers of the German Enlightenment, first of all Friedrich Chris- tian Baumeister, the author of the textbook adopted by Johann David Kypke when he taught during Kant’s freshman year.94 In fact, Baumeis- ter was quite keen on keeping apart “habitual philosophy” (philosophia habitualis) and “disciplinary philosophy” (philosophia disciplinaris).95 It is therefore no surprise to read in a passage from one of Kant’s logic lectures of the early 1770’s, the Logic Philippi (dated by Hinske as 1772–73) that “(1) Habitual philosophy is a disposition to be able to philosophize, and (2) disciplinary philosophy is a connection (a system) of propositions.”96 This proposition is to be referred to Zabarella’s distinction be-

90. Ibid., 3: “satis est in praesentia, si dicamus tres esse ad summum scientias contem- plativas; divinam, quae Metaphysicam dicitur, mathematicam, et naturalem.” 91. Ibid., 4. 92. See Clemens Timpler, “Technologia,” in idem, Metaphysicae systema methodicum, 2d ed. (Frankfurt, 1607), part IV, probl. 1, 30–31. On Timpler and seventeenh-century hexilogia see Gerhard Funke, Gewohnheit (Bonn: Bouvier, 1961), 235–53. 93. See Christian Wolff, Philosopha moralis sive ethica, part II (Halle, 1751; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1971), § 428–33, 339–42. 94. On Kypke adopting Baumeister’s Institutiones in Summer 1741 see Oberhausen and Pozzo, Vorlesungsverzeichnisse der Universität Königsberg, 130. 95. Friedrich Christian Baumeister, Institutiones philosophiae rationalis methodo Wolfii con- scritpae (Wittenberg, 1735; reprint, Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), § 21–22, 12–13. 96. Immanuel Kant, Logic Philippi, KGS, vol. 24, 321: “1. Philosophia habitualis, eine Fer- tigkeit philosophiren zu können. 2. Philosophia disciplinaris, ein Zusammenhang [System] der Sätze.” See also Pozzo, Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung, 174–76. 192 riccardo pozzo tween logica naturalis as “a certain natural instinct” (quidam naturalis instinctus) and logica artificiosa as a system of “rules” (regulae).97 But it pre- figures or rather embodies Kant’s more famous distinction between “to learn to philosophize” (Philosophieren lernen) and to “learn philosophy” (Philosophie lernen).98 This perspective may seem old-fashioned. The fact is that, firstly, Kant was guided by Aristotle when he sketched it, and, secondly, post-Kantian logic (one thinks of Sir William B. Hamilton and Antonio Rosmini Serbati) was to be entirely centered on exactly these distinctions.99

97. Zabarella, “De natura logicae,” I.12, in Opera logica, 27. 98. KGS, vol. 2, 306. 99. See Sir William B. Hamilton, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, ed. H. L. Mansel and John Veitch, 4 vols (Edinburgh, 1861–66; reprint, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann- Holzboog, 1969); Antonio Rosmini Serbati, Logica (Milan, 1864; reprint, Rome: Città Nuova, 1984). 8 Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect ALFREDO FERRARIN

Hegel’s enthusiasm for the Aristotelian theory of nous is unqualiﬁed. In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy nothing receives as high a praise as Aristotle’s consideration of nous. Hegel’s Encyclopaedia closes with the quote of the famous passage from Metaphysics Lambda on the divine nous. The quote is in Greek, and is not accompanied by a word of comment, let alone a translation. Hegel’s seeming endorsement is quite extraordinary, and also very rare by his standards. However, Hegel’s interpretation has been chastized as arbitrary, misconstrued, even based on an incompetent translation, in sum, denounced as a superimposition of Hegel’s own philosophy onto Aristotle’s, by a host of scholars and philosophers from Schelling down to Heidegger and Gadamer, among others. Sometimes it is true that Hegel’s reconstruction is arbitrary; but one should try to keep separate any mistakes or intentional tendentious

* I wish to thank Riccardo Pozzo for kindly inviting me to participate in the series on Aristotle and modern philosophy at Catholic University. It is also a great pleasure to acknowledge my gratitude to the faculty and students at Catholic University for their very stimulating and challenging questions on the occasion of my lecture in Washington, D.C. (September 24, 1999). This essay reproduces various passages, most notably from ch. 8, § 7, of my book Hegel and Aristotle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). References are to Hegel’s Werke in zwanzig Bänden, ed. E. Moldenhauer und K. M. Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969–71). Abbreviations: Enz C is Encyclopaedia of Philosoph- ical Sciences (1830), vols.8–10 of Werke; VGPh is Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie vol. 2 (vol. 19 of Werke). References to Aristotle are to the Bekker pagination. For the ancient commentaries on Aristotle see Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima liber cum mantissa, ed. I. Bruns, Supplemen- tum Aristotelicum, vol. 2 (Berlin: Reimer, 1887); Themistius, Paraphrasis in libros Aristotelis de anima, ed. R. Heinze, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca, vol. 5 (Berlin: Reimer, 1899); John Philoponus, In Aristotelis de anima libros commentaria, ed. M. Hayduck, Commentaria in Aris- totelem Graeca, vol. 15 (Berlin: Reimer, 1897) as well as the English translation of William of Moerbke’s Latin version on the De intellectu/On Aristotle on the Intellect (de anima 3, 4–8), ed. W. Charlton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991); Proclus, In primum Euclidis elementorum librum commentarii, ed. G. Friedlein (Leipzig, Teubner, 1873).

193 194 alfredo ferrarin moves from Hegel’s attempts at to make sense of a theory which is intrinsically incomplete, controversial, and tremendously obscure, if not contradictory. I don’t think Hegel “solves” the problem of the status of the nous; but I don’t think that the questions besetting Aristole’s theory can be settled, let alone have received a lucid and definitive reconstruction by some other interpreter. In other words, there is not one comprehensive version of all aspects of nous that we can use as a yardstick against which to measure and evaluate Hegel’s version. Thus, before presuming we can discard Hegel’s interpretation as misguided, I believe we should analyze it philosophically, that is, problematically. My task here is that of understanding rationales, presuppositions, meaning, and purpose in Hegel’s appropriation of the Aristotelian theory of the intellect within his own philosophy. I will first talk about Hegel’s theory of objective thinking; then I will move on to his interpretation of the nous, especially of De anima III. 4–5, and show where and why he significantly departs from Aristotle. Finally, I will briefly mention some illustrious antecedents to Hegel’s interpretation.

I. For Hegel thought is the pure structure of reality; it stands to reality as does the soul to the body it animates. Concepts and categories, what Hegel calls pure thought-determinations, are not the constructions of a subject; they are irreducible to the thinker, because they are operative everywhere in reality, as the inner essence of all that is no less than of the life of particular finite subjects. We must not assume anything prior to thinking, not even laws of thought, or a plurality of categories, or a pure I, for otherwise the relation between thinking and such entities, presupposes as fixed and given independently of thinking, would remain unexplained. Method, laws, form, and content of a theory of thought are all moments of thought thinking itself, for thinking cannot rely on external criteria but gives itself its object. Thoughts are to be understood as determinations of thinking. The particular thought-determinations are all internal to thinking as differences would inhere in an underlying unity; thought produces its own determinations. The progress or dialectical movement of the categories is a development within the same; to borrow Aristotle’s phrase that Hegel regarded as an expression of Aristotle’s speculative philosophy, it is an epidosis eis tên entelecheian, a progress to its own entelechy, a self-articulation and self-concretization. Logic deals with pure thought-determinations, with what Hegel calls das Logische, the logical element permeating all of reality as its rational Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 195 soul or as the life pulse of all that is, to use other Hegelian metaphors. This does not amount to ascribing consciousness to things; it points to the necessity of essences for speaking and understanding anything in the world. Thinking is thus objective, not subjective. Objective thinking means that thought has reality, that reason rules the world, and that logic is the essence of reality and the science of things grasped in thoughts. For Hegel the “nous of the ancients,” from Anaxagoras to Plato and Aristo- tle, had precisely this meaning, which has been lost sight of by modern philosophies of reflection: reason is not opposed to reality, but rather governs and sustains it. In this sense Hegelian logic replaces what used to be called metaphysics, as the logic of the concept in itself (as being and essence) and for itself (thinking proper). Hegel’s understanding of thought is the same as much of our philosophical tradition; thinking means to liberate ourselves from our particularity and rise to the level of the one intelligence. But unlike the traditional conception, there is no given identity that we must discover. Thought produces its determinations, its content; thus Hegel can say that the infinite finitizes itself, that an unconditioned activity which cannot be determined from without particularizes itself. Strictly speaking, there are no concepts in the plural for Hegel; all concepts are moments and modifications of the Concept, which is thus the substance and abiding activity of differentiating itself into a plurality of thoughts. To clarify this argument, Hegel adopts the Aristotelian distinction between first in itself and first for us. For us, historically speaking, first you need care for truth and trust in reason (religion is one of the para- mount cases of such a trust to be made true and validated by philosophy); then through experience you become familiar with the logical element as you find the determinate universals thanks to observational reason and empirical sciences; then you comprehend determinate universals and concepts as particular moments of thought; and finally you comprehend the universal as one particular form, among others, of thought thinking itself. Absolutely or truly speaking, instead, first is the Concept, then its particularizations and manifestations, and finally the particular philosophizing subjects who reflect and appropriate the Con- cept. The most important result is that thereby objective thought and my thought turn out to be the same identical content, apart from the fact that I have to rise to the first in itself through a series of finite steps and transformations of forms, which is what philosophy educates us to do for Hegel. In other words, the concepts that logic isolates in themselves, in their purity, are the same which I experience as animating all I suffer, 196 alfredo ferrarin think, and do. Hence, there is no gap between logic and what he calls psychology; the Psychology, or, more properly, the Philosophy of Spirit is nothing other than the discovery on the part of spirit of its rationality, which permeates all its lower forms and moments. This discovery is spirit’s progressive liberation of itself from finitude. Spirit turns its initial passivity into activity; the nature in which it is at first immersed is gradually appropriated and mastered, so that what spirit starts by finding as a given eventually turns out to be spirit’s own second nature, an ideal possession. Spirit’s essence is neither simply natural nor simply divine; it is the elevation from nature to absolute self-knowledge. The various forms of knowledge and acting treated in the philosophy of spirit must be comprehended and ascribed to an abiding subject, infinite reason or an absolute self-consciousness. Hegel understands this relation as equivalent to that obtaining between Aristotle’s divine nous and human intellect: this is the concretization of the universal, the active presence of the infinite in the finite. Hegel’s interpretation of the nous must be viewed in the context of his general interpretation of Aristotle. Let me say a few words about that. The Philosophy of Theoretical Spirit concludes with intelligence which “knows that what is thought is, and that what is is only in that it is thought” (Enz C § 465). By knowing reality, spirit has come to know itself. For Hegel, the divine noêsis noêseôs, actus purus, the speculative peak of Aristotle’s philosophy, basically expresses the same thought. The only qualification is that in the Metaphysics thought thinking itself and natural substances in the sublunar world are two independent principles. It is the De anima which represents for Hegel the Archimedean point allowing for the unification of what he calls natural subjectivity and spirit, from its finite to its absolute forms. For Hegel, the De anima is “the best or even the sole work of speculative interest” ever written on the philosophy of spirit (Enz C § 378). For him, in the De anima the subject of experience is understood as a hexis, an active potency engaged in an Aufhebung or negation of externality. The soul is understood as life, and therefore as an activity of self-development in and through its relation to otherness. Aristotle’s sensation as the identity of perceived and perceiver is nothing other than an activity within receptivity. For Hegel, Aristotle’s notion of sensation as an actualization of the senses shows that he perfectly understood that nothing comes into existence for spirit unless spirit actively assimilates it and thereby shapes its own receptivity in a determinate direction. Hegel argues that in the De anima the different forms of life, knowing and acting, are unitarily conceived as gradual moments in the actualization of the same process, the entelechy of living spirit. Each finite form Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 197 becomes matter for the superior form that considers reality; this runs from sensation up to the theory of nous which thematizes the inferior forms of knowing, and in so doing comes to know itself, and finally to the unity of will and reason. There is obviously a lot to be questioned about this interpretation and appropriation of the Metaphysics and the De anima. What is important to note here is that Hegel takes Aristotle to have made nature, change, and all becoming intelligible in and of themselves. We must not oppose substance as a passive substrate to movement, nor form or essence to becoming. In fact, for him Aristotle’s progress over Plato lies solely in the concept of immanent form and energeia, in which Hegel finds the principle of subjectivity that was missing in Plato. Immanent form is for Hegel an archê or cause that is not definable in abstraction and isolation; the cause does not also happen to be subject to change, in addition to and independent of its essence. Its very being consists in the process of its own actualization. This is what energeia is; and Hegel understands it as subjectivity, the concept as a cause of its being and movement, or self-actualizing form. Thus the concept exists realiter in nature, it is not our imposition; and yet it is present in it only in a hidden form, in potentiality with respect to its existence as an object of actual thinking. If the universal is the essence of a natural being, of physical laws, and if it constitutes the objectivity of the living, it cannot at the same time be found as such in nature. With a very arbitrary interpretive move Hegel identifies the existing universal, the objective intelligibility of all that is, with the Aristotelian passive nous; only to oppose to objectified thought-determinations the active nous, self-consciousness, and the Concept as absolute reason. Absolute reason, the highest instance of the identity of thinking and thought, is obviously the prime mover; and this is taken as pure activity. But for Hegel activity cannot be separated from potentiality and movement; God is not a separate, isolated, and inert being, but the initiator of all movement. If God moves the first heaven, for Hegel this shows that God communicates His essence to finitude, and that thought is what gives life and movement to nature, as well as to all that is finite. In particular, human nous is the finite mode of the infinite divine self- thinking.

II. In order to examine the plausibility of Hegel’s interpretation of the nous, let us recall some of the central tenets of De anima III.4–5. 198 alfredo ferrarin

For Aristotle the soul is somehow all things (hê psuchê ta onta pôs esti panta, De anima III.8, 431b 21). If the intellect is potentially all things but none in actuality before thinking them, “once the intellect has become each of its objects .l.l. then it can think itself” (III.4, 429b 6 and 9–10, my translation). If it does not want to be an obstacle to the reception of the intelligible form, the nous cannot have a form of its own. It must be a potentiality to become the things it thinks, just as sense is potentially all sensibles. But unlike sense, the intellect cannot have an organ or be in contact with anything material.1 If the intellect is potentially all intelligibles, it needs a cause to make it actual. In all of nature there is an efﬁcient cause and a potentiality, likewise there must be an intellect that can become all things (tôi panta ginesthai) and an intellect that produces them all (tôi panta poiein), just as light makes potential colors actual. This second intellect, being by its essence actual, is separate, incomposite and impassible (chôristos kai amighês kai apathês, III.5, 430a 17–18); it cannot but always think and is thus immortal and eternal (III.5, 430a 23–24). When it thinks it is identical with the object of thought. “In the case of things without matter, that which thinks and that which is thought are the same; for speculative knowledge (epistêmê hê theôrêtikê) is the same as its object” (III.4, 430a 3–5, trans. Hett; the same in III.5, 430a 20 and Metaphysics XII.9, 1075a 1–3). In theoretical science, or speculative knowledge, we do not think things through the mediation of images, nor do we think them as referring to the material composite; rather, for the thinking individual, who must ﬁrst acquire the forms it then thinks, the mediation of corporeality is necessary, thus the intellect is corporeal and passive (pathêtikos, 430a 24). In his interpretation of the nous in the Lectures, Hegel takes the potentiality or passivity (which for him amount to the same) as only a “possibility before actuality” (VGPh 214). The principle of the identity in actuality of nous and noêta, the truth of “the self-conscious intellect,” is that of being activity.2

1. In this brief reconstruction all I aim at is a summary, hopefully in neutral and general enough terms, of the most controversial point of Aristotle’s philosophy. I will focus on what is relevant for the Hegelian exegesis without taking a stand on the endless disputes about the nature of the intellect. Whether the active intellect is identical with the prime mover, as it was for Alexander; whether, on the contrary, it is a separate substance but inferior to God, as it was for Averroes; whether the intellect, in other words, is a transcendent principle thinking in us or immanent to our soul, as Aristotle writes at III.5, 430a 13–14, and as ﬁrst Themistius and later Aquinas insist contra Alexander; why, furthermore, the intellect makes us think if it is unmixed with our body; and what, ﬁnally, it means that the intellect always thinks, and what its relation is to the divine nous of Metaphysics XII.7–9—all these questions will always remain open. 2. Hegel seems to echo Themistius’s words, according to which the potential intellect Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 199

Hegel reads the intellect as the self-referential and self-conscious foundational activity that makes possible and mediates any reference to givenness. The intelligible is the reified or particular existence of thinking; but in speculative science the distinction is effaced and thinking knows itself as the overarching truth of that distinction itself and the only subject-matter at hand. Now, it is not incorrect to say that in pure science, in that which has no matter (“in spirit,” as Hegel puts it), the intellect is the thing itself; while in that which is material, thinking is only potential and in-itself (VGPh 215). In Aristotle this had meant that the identity of thinking and intelligible is only possible when the forms are thought without reference to matter, so that the intellect then moves about in its own element, as it were. Nor is it wrong to say that the nous somehow informs stages of human learning that come before thinking proper: after all, the intellect defines the human soul, and without it we would not draw conclusions from experience; epagôgê itself would be impossible without a cooperation between the intellect and the senses. But Hegel’s conclusion from all this is strikingly unAristotelian: the relation between active and potential intellect is posited by thinking, which “makes itself into passive intellect, into the objective, the object for itself” (VGPh 213). It seems clear to Hegel that, if the active intellect is nothing but activity, and if its essence is efficient causality (Wirk- samkeit), as III.5 argues, then it must be taken as the eternal activity of finitizing itself in the sensible as a whole. In the sensible as a whole and not in the Aristotelian potential intellect, which is a personal and individual intellect, for the latter notion has been meanwhile stretched and generalized into a bizarre construction overlapping with the former. Passive nous is now the finite in its in- itself rationality, or reality in so far as it is thinkable: objective intelligibility. “That the world, the universe in itself, is rational, this is the nous pathêtikos” reads the note of an auditor in Hegel’s 1820 class.3 In the words of the Lectures, “passive nous is nature, and also what senses and represents in the soul is the nous in itself” (VGPh 216). The rationality of nature and the soul becomes explicit in thinking, which is the identity of concept and objectivity or thinking and thought (Denken—Gedachte). This can be rephrased as follows: the intellect splits itself into an active and a thinkable intellect. This is why Hegel writes that the soul is “spirit’s sleep;” he calls the is the “prelude” to the productive intellect “like dawn is to light, like seed to fruit” (In De anima 105, 26–32). 3. See W. Kern, “Die Aristotelesdeutung Hegels,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 78 (1971): 252–54. 200 alfredo ferrarin soul “the passive nous of Aristotle, which is all things according to possibility” (Enz C § 389). The leading thread of his argument is this: the totality of intelligibles, the Idea in itself, is mediated in and through spirit’s idealization. Like everything finite, the soul with all its contents is merely the dunamis for thinking. In so far as it is noêton, the object of active thinking, the soul is, even in its lowest forms, nous pathêtikos. All thought-determinations are virtually present in the soul; they are apprehended as the progressive stages of spirit’s assimilation of reality. Aristotle’s passive nous is taken in the same sense as Anaxagoras’s principle of the cosmos—this is the intelligibility of the world, objective thinking as I have characterized it in my opening remarks. Passive nous can comprehend both nature as the Idea outside itself and finite spirit, because the two are the finite existence that the absolute Idea gives itself to actualize itself and to regain itself as free subjectivity in a syllogism. If for man the world is found and not produced, and is at first a presupposition—and this is all that “finitude” means—then in itself or in truth it is rather the absolute that finitizes itself in externality. This is what Hegel makes of the logical and ontological priority of the active intellect over the potential intellect in the De anima. If spirit is everything according to possibility, the object for thinking as reason, only reason is complete entelechy and an end to itself. Hegel interprets the self-conscious intellect as “the absolute prius” of nature (Enz C § 381). He therefore concludes that for Aristotle the same relation holds between finite spirit (the De anima) and absolute spirit (Meta- physics XII.7–9). (With the obvious crucial reservation that Aristotle’s limitation is to consider the absolute as exemplary for the finite, not as Sichselbstentfaltung or self-actualization in the finite, i.e., in history and objectivity: VGPh 148–49 and 413–14.) In the Lectures the treatment of the active intellect of De anima III.5 is invariably followed by reference to, and discussion of, the divine intellect from Metaphysics XII. The divine intellect thinks what is best, thus its own activity; it is absolute, and an end to itself. It communicates itself to finite thinking, which is not pure activity but activity within passivity, and “produces what appears as the object to be taken up” or assimilated (Aufgenommenwerdendes, VGPh 218). Even though it appears that it can think itself by taking up the intelligible, the intellect is still the activity of taking the intelligible up, hence the thematization and production of it. What is this over- or misinterpretation rooted in? In Hegel’s very conviction about the speculative essence of Aristotle’s philosophy—in the seemingly harmless, yet substantially misguided transformation of Aris- totle’s principle that “the nous is potentially all its objects” into the quite different “the totality of intelligibles is the passive nous.” While Aristo- Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 201 tle’s “all” refers to the identity in actuality of the intellect with each of its objects in turn, and is thus a distributive generic term, Hegel’s “totality” is already a wholistic shift from discrete identities to one underlying and fundamental in-itself identity. Unfortunately for Hegel, Aristotle’s principle cannot be conceived in terms of what Hegel calls a speculative sentence, where subject and predicate can be dialectically exchanged. That this relation between passive and productive intellect is hardly reconcilable with Aristotle is not apparent to Hegel. For him intelligence liberates itself from externality to know itself as the realization of the absolute in the finite. To do so it must purify thought-determinations from their representational and substantial substrates, and thus thematize them in themselves. For Aristotle, on the contrary, the form is not produced by thought, but is the specific difference that is postulated as also existing somehow (pôs) in the soul. Besides, literally speaking, for Aristotle infinite thinking is absurd, for logoi are like straight lines (De anima I.3). To be sure, it is in the more general idea that spirit is self-referential actuosity, or the actualization of its potency, that Hegel wants to retrieve Aristotle. But what he misses is that this “finitude of thought” is not a regrettable extrinsic limitation of Aristotle’s philosophy, a negligible one- sidedness stemming from the disregard of the mutual compenetration of God and world and from lack of systematicity. The intellection of indivisibles and the knowledge of principles are at best the finite and discrete identity between nous and each of its objects in turn, as we will see in greater detail in the next part.

III. If the one-sidedness of this interpretation can be shown on the basis of Hegel’s explicit statements on Aristotle, it is no less important and interesting to try to understand what led him to such conclusions. For example, in response to the perplexity raised by Aristotle, as to why it is that the human intellect does not always think, one is justified in presuming that Hegel would answer that the absolute is always in actuality, that it is in fact itself activity, and that the finite intellect, in that it has presuppositions and must first learn before it knows, is a finite aspect of the same. Man dies as a material composite, but by thinking he elevates himself to the infinity of the absolute reason that is reflected in him. If I may be allowed to speculate on Hegel’s behalf and elaborate on his interpretation for a moment, I would say the following. For Hegel, if the intellect is everything potentially, thus nothing before it thinks, then 202 alfredo ferrarin when it does think, its object is thought itself. The fundamental suggestion he is putting forth is that the separate intellect, the existential status of which created so many problems, is nothing but the activity of thinking, which, taken in itself, does not need images, is free, activates itself at will, is immortal, and never-ending. By contrast, the acquisition of concepts and the beginning of thought from things makes the very same activity finite and initially passive. But the passivity does not entail any passivity for thinking in itself. There is something ingenious in this interpretation. We must not think of the separate and immortal nous as a substance about which we proceed to ask where it resides, thus making it again something finite and spatio-temporal. Just as the soul must be defined as a function, just as the capacity to chop defines the axe (De anima II.1, 412b 28–413a 1), and sensing is an activity defined by actualization, so thinking, which unlike sense has no organs, must be an activity which can start itself. It is then otiose to look for the productive nous somewhere, e.g., to locate it in God. The productive nous is nowhere other than in thinking because it is nothing other than thinking; and thinking, irreducible to the thinker or to the psychological conditions for thought, can be said to be separate from them. Whereas before it was a noun standing for a thing, nous is now turned into a verb denoting an activity which may occur anywhere and at any time, and which consequently is independent of time. Just as science is irreducible to scientists’ thoughts, thinking in itself is irreducible to thinking for particular subjects of thought. Subjects of thought can actually be understood as the modes or concrete existence of thinking in itself. Thinking pluralizes itself into several thoughts; thoughts or concepts are the determinate or partial self-differentiation of the Concept as a concrete universal. Put differently, no thinking is possible except as a mode and negation of this thinking in itself. Unfortunately, the trouble is that this cannot explain why Aristotle asks how this intellect always thinks (430a 23)—to say that thinking thinks would be a petitio principii, or at best a meaningless and non-informative statement for this interpretation. And thinking’s eternity would remain a mystery, just like the meaning of the expression “we do not remember” at 430a 24. Besides, this is an attempt at explaining what Aristotle left unexplained. Aristotle never clarified the relation between human and divine intellects. He says that they are both essentially activity (Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b 26–27 and De anima III.5, 430a 18). The intellect is the divine in man (Ethics X.8, 1177b 30–31), and the life of the intellect is our mode of immortality (athanatizein, 1177b 34). Since the human intellect is what is most similar in kind (suggenestatôi, X.9, 1178a 26–27 and Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 203

Metaphysics XII.7, 1072b 15–25) to the divine, the highest human happiness is thinking, which is a homoiôma of, similar to, divine life (Ethics X.8, 1178b 27). That means that the human intellect is in so far as it thinks the noêta, the intelligible essences or forms—i.e., in so far as it is not itself but the thing in its essence. However, it is a likening to God made possible by the separate intellect. What is the relation between the two intellects? What do the two intellects think? What does the nous tôi panta poiein make? In what sense is it productive? And of what? Aristotle compares it to light, and says it is a kind of state (hexis). Light does not make its objects; it makes them visible. Now while for Aristotle light is what makes visible, for Alexander it is what is most visible itself (hence the intellect is what is the most intelligible, to malista noêton, De anima 89). This remark helps me to rephrase the question: “What do the two intellects think?” in these terms: “Could human and divine thinking share this directedness to the same object, the activity of thinking itself?” As in all similes, this metaphor of light leaves unexplained more than it accounts for. Is light a first or second actuality—i.e., does the productive intellect produce the disposition or the exercize of thinking, the vis- ibility of forms or the seeing of them?4 A related question is: how can light illuminate itself? As Hegel wrote in the Logic with regard to Being and Nothing, unqualified or absolute light is indistinguishable from complete darkness. And obviously a source of light, just by making things visible, will always disappear from sight, itself becoming a blind spot. Yet Aristotle says of the intellect that in theoretical science, i.e., in things without matter where thinking and thought are the same (Meta- physics XII.9, 1074b 35–1075a 4), it thinks itself. The same words return in De anima III.4, 430a 2–5. In this chapter Aristotle had written that the intellect cannot have a form but is itself the place of forms (429a 27–29); it knows when it thinks the essence or form and becomes each of its objects (429b 6–7). Once it has apprehended forms, once it has become a hexis or formed disposition with regard to them, like the learned man with regard to the objects of his knowledge, it has become a first actuality, what John Philoponus called dispositional intellect (In De anima 21, 2–3). Aristotle thinks he has thus established two conclusions: this first actuality is a potentiality for its exercise, and can activate itself at will and at any time. In addition, it makes the intellect capable of thinking itself (429b 7–10).

4. See A. Kosman, “What does the Maker Mind Make?” in Essays on Aristotle’s De anima, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and Amelie O. Rorty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 346–48. 204 alfredo ferrarin

While the first conclusion explains the spontaneity and independ- ence of thinking, the second is not very clear about exactly what the intellect thinks when it thinks itself. A science is always a science of a certain subject: that in science there is no difference between the things and the concepts of them sedimented in our soul does not alter the fact that thought’s self-consciousness is indirect and mediated by knowledge of its objects. This is explicitly stated by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (XII 9, 1074b 35–36): “It appears that knowledge and sensation and opinion and thought are always of other objects, and only incidentally of themselves.” Apostle translates en parergôi as “incidentally.” Unlike in sensation, which is aware of itself but which is actualized by sensible things, thinking possesses the forms habitually and can think them at will; in Owens’s words, this “makes possible the intellect’s knowledge of itself.”5 But what this leaves unexplained is the content of the nous’s thinking of itself. What does it know by thinking itself? For one thing, this self- consciousness is completely immersed in its consciousness of objects. Differently stated, there is no further reflection on the self-identical I abiding over time in contradistinction to whatever diverse contents it may have. Hence no primacy of nous’s self-consciousness is inferred. Un- like a Cartesian mind, nous’s self-consciousness is dependent on its cognition of things. Secondly, Aristotle asks how the intellect can be an object of thought (De anima III.4, 429b 26). He writes that the intellect thinks itself the way it thinks intelligibles, as the first actuality of intelligibles. It seems to me that if for Aristotle to know is to think a form, then either: 1) the nous thinks itself qua thinking a form, thus has in view the form, i.e., its actual identity with each of its intelligibles in turn, as well as itself, but so surreptitiously that one is led to wonder what content this thinking has other than the relation of the intelligible to the thinker; or 2) the nous thinks itself, in non-Aristotelian language, as the in-itself or potentiality of its identity and difference with its object, as the place of forms or dispositional intellect. In the second case, however, it does not think itself as a form, hence it knows itself as little as it did in the first case. In other words, when thought thinks itself, two different consequences may follow, both presenting difficulties for the consistency of Aristotle’s theory. The first is that the unicity and indivisibility of the intellection of each essence is already thought together with the multiplicity of dianoetic cognitions following from it in science. Thereby, howev-

5. Joseph Owens, “A Note,” in Aristotle. The Collected Papers of Joseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan, (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), 106. Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 205 er, the distinction in the Posterior Analytics between principles and demonstration is blurred; in this case, we must take Aristotle to mean by nous not the discontinuous intellection of indivisibles and principles, but what he calls sophia in the Ethics (VI.7, 1141a 19: “wisdom is intellect and science together”), i.e., something closer to Hegel’s infinite reason. The alternative consequence is this: since the intellect does not think of a form, then its object is not its object the way intelligibles are, contrary to Aristotle’s statement at 430a 2–3. In this reflexivity of thinking, Aristotle seems to assume a distinction between thinking and knowing which does not hold in the case of the knowledge of things. Even so, this is a description of the reflexivity of thinking, not an explanation of self-consciousness, let alone of self- knowledge. Now Hegel seems content to read the divine nous as essentially the activity of thinking itself in order to find in Aristotle the same relation of identity and difference between human and absolute thinking as in his system. But given the simplicity of the pure actuality and the fact that for God to think anything other than Himself would be a debasement, we cannot consider Aristotle’s God to be absolute reason that contains in itself the totality of thought-determinations. And we cannot conclude that for Aristotle the divine nous of Metaphysics XII.7–9 is the absolute presupposition and “truth” of the human intellect of De anima III.4–5. If so, then we must admit that Hegel has hastily inferred from the speculative nature of Aristotle’s philosophy the ideality of the finite in his philosophy. Hegel does not comment on his translation of Aristotle’s sentence at 430a 24, “the nous is itself intelligible” (VGPh 215). But the context indicates that to him the meaning is clear: the intellect is immaterial, hence in it subject and object are the same, hence by thinking itself it thinks the nous pathêtikos or the logical Idea existing in itself in finitude. This is also behind his interpretation of the simile of the tablet. This has been misunderstood, says Hegel, as though Aristotle had meant to set up an analogy between a tablet and the intellect. According to Hegel—and he is deeply right on this, even when he pokes fun at Ten- nemann’s Lockean interpretation that “thinking comes from without,” from corporeal impressions (VGPh 216)—what Aristotle means is that thinking is not a material paschein but an actualization of an inner potentiality to be written upon (De anima III.4, 429b 30–31). The nous is potential and receptive with regard to intelligibles, like the tablet with regard to writing; the potential nous is not thereby a tablet, but rather its “unwrittenness.” For Hegel, active thinking is the writer. The soul has no actual contents but those actively thought. Only actuality accounts for potentiality, not vice-versa. 206 alfredo ferrarin

But if this is right, interpreting the finitude of thought as self-sublat- ing in absolute thinking is not. Let me try to spell out this point. In Hegel, we must distinguish three levels: the level at which I know the object as an opposite; the further, rational level at which the object shows itself to intelligence as its concept; and finally the speculative level at which knowing is no longer knowing of a form or determination, but is instead reason’s knowing itself as the infinite and absolute truth of the object and of subjective thinking. It seems to me that Hegel should have seen that Aristotle’s theory of thinking can only ground the possibility of, but stops before, the third level—that at which thinking and knowing are the same, as the knowledge of the logical activity within and animating all the concrete relations in our world. To phrase this another way, all Hegel finds in the intellect’s self-thinking is the fact that the nous becomes intelligible to itself; the thing is its concept. What Hegel does not see is that in this activity the nous finds rest in the discontinuous intellection of indivisibles, i.e., it apprehends given and discrete essences. Its function, in other words, is finite and point-like, in that it is defined by each of its objects. (It is very strange indeed that, to the best of my knowledge, Hegel never draws any implication from his comparatively uninformative comments on the infallible intellection of indivisibles of De anima III.6 at VGPh 220, nor discusses the nous’s relation to dianoia, discursive thinking.) The intellect is not the principle of a dialectic of concepts, a speculative and comprehensive logic of the relations among essences; it is first and foremost an act of vision or understanding of essences, the end of a process through which experience has led us. Even when the Aristotelian intellect thinks itself and finds the other in itself (the forms in its first actuality), it falls short of Hegelian self-conscious reason producing itself in the other (in Hegel’s passive nous as the totality of intelligibles or thought-determinations).

IV. What guides Hegel’s interpretation is the principle that in intellection there is no more distinction between subject and object. While we apprehend sensible forms from without, intelligible forms come from within. This “internality” is exactly the point made in the Neoplatonic commentaries on the De anima. Simplicius, for example, argues that if the intellect knows its own forms, then the intellect does know itself directly, not incidentally, as Aristotle had seemed to argue, in that it knows itself as possessing them (In de anima 230, 26–27). In Neoplatonism this is possible because forms have been trans- Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 207 formed by Plotinus into Platonic Ideas immanent in an intellect that is, as in Aristotle, identical with its object, the kosmos noêtos. While the intellect always thinks, the soul which has descended into the body only thinks on occasion, something it does not realize because it is clouded by sensibility (Enneads IV.3, 30, 14–15). Our task is that of taking leave of our sensible garments and of becoming separate intellect (V.3, 4, 10), where we would be pure from our earthly nature and exist “not as human” (ouch hôs anthrôpon, ibid.). The task is that of rejoining our true essence and of participating in the nous’s self-consciousness, i.e., in order to be self-knowledge not only incidentally but essentially. What must be postulated here is that the intellect of Metaphysics XII and that of De anima III.4–5 only differ by degree: the superior hypostases communicate themselves to the lower. Thus the nous in us “is and is not ours” (V.3, 3, 27). In Enneads V.3, 4, 1–14, Plotinus compares the nous to a writer, the dianoia or discursive knowledge to its tablet. It is intelligence that generates its discursive image (eikôn nou, V.3, 4, 21). Thus what we need to explain is not so much how human beings think but rather how the divine intellect descends into us. We are in part passive. We have within ourselves a hierarchy of hypostases, and each is the matter or the image of higher forms. Thus even the lowest and most sensible forms of souls and of cognition are saved as a shadow or image of the superior rationality. This is what makes it possible to place imagination itself, the power of presentation of the supersensible in the sensible and vice-versa, as an intermediate form between nature and thinking (Enneads IV.4, 13). One could also mention in this context Proclus’s identification of phantasia and nous pathêtikos (in his commentary on Euclid’s Elements, 50–58). By the time of Philoponus, this identification is current and taken for granted: the passive intellect is sharply distinguished from the potential, which Aristotle states is impassible like the productive, and identified with the corruptible intellect. Phantasia (the intellect’s vehicle in mathematics, in De anima 61) is nous because it has the object of cognition in itself, and is pathêtikos because it receives impressions (In de anima 13 and 61–63). In sum, Hegel seems to share many features of the Neoplatonic De anima interpretation, from the continuity between absolute and finite thinking, to the transformation of the passive intellect into a wider notion comprehensive of sensibility and the soul at large, to the internality of thinking. Let me conclude by saying what is definitely not Neoplaton- ic in Hegel’s interpretation. Hegel takes passivity and all appearance and particularity much more 208 alfredo ferrarin seriously than Neoplatonism. First, while the Neoplatonic commentators dissociated the De anima from the Parva naturalia, judging the former to be directed to noetics and the identification with the highest hypostasis, they spurned the latter and grouped it with the other zoological and biological treatises which played virtually no role for them. Aristotle’s alleged hylemorphism is an equivocation in the first place, finally resolving itself in the instrumental use of the body by the soul and in the separateness and priority of the intellect (Simplicius, In de anima 51, 29–52, 10). Hegel, instead, like Aristotle, had a genuine and much greater interest in the psycho-physiological aspects of the soul. Even if his interest is directed to the demonstration of the rationality of organic and anthropological nature, his concern with nature per se is unmistakable. This can also be seen in the interpretation of sensation. Plotinus had denied that sensation was an imprint or seal-impression on the soul (En- neads IV.6, 1–3); sensation is rather an activity and a force that weakens with age (IV.6, 3, 55). Likewise Simplicius, rather than stressing that for Aristotle the soul is active in sensing only because it had passively received the sensible form, emphasizes that in actualizing our potentiality in sensation we are not thereby affected in any way, we are “awakened to activity” (In de anima 264, 12–14). The soul is not passive, and sensation is caused by the soul from within (In de anima 119, 3–10). The difference between the passivity of sensation and of the intellect emphasized by Aristotle is virtually effaced, for sensation is understood as active in its own right. Against empiricism, it is not thinking that is reduced to sensation, but sensation that is read as if it were a dim thought (as it is called by Plotinus at Enneads VI.7, 7, 30). Compared to this, Hegel, by understanding the passivity of spirit as its finitude, makes it a necessary and essential moment of spirit, not a regrettable loss and dispersion from which we must try to purify ourselves. In itself the nous is not passive at all for Neoplatonism. It becomes ob- fuscated and passive by its mixture with the body. For Hegel, the passivity of nous is the intelligibility of the world in itself: not a defect representing a lapse from an original union, but the objective Idea in itself, and thereby the very structure of the fruitful lowlands of experience, to use Kant’s expression. This reference to experience is important precisely because Neoplatonism ignores the particularity and subjectivity of thinking. It is as particular subjects waking from spirit’s sleep and pursuing our particular purposes that we contribute to absolute spirit, not by annulling ourselves and our finitude in the intuition of the One. If this has to do with the particularity and subjectivity of thinking, one could very well add that the negativity of thinking as the culmination of Hegel’s Appropriation of the Aristotelian Intellect 209 philosophy also separates Hegel from Plotinus—even though, in this case, it is not clear that Hegel would have known and appreciated the gap. Like for Hegel, for Plotinus differences are internal to thinking. Thinking and being are two sides of the same hypostasis (“intellect insofar as it thinks, being insofar as it is thought,” Enneads V.1, 4, 32–33); when the intellect thinks it duplicates itself, “it is two in that it thinks, it is one in that it thinks itself” (V.6, 1, 21–24). But precisely this duality is a multiplicity and an otherness absent from the simplicity of the One, making the intellect a mere second hypostasis. And this is part of Ploti- nus’s criticism of Aristotle (V.1, 9, 7–9). Hegel does not pick this up; he misinterprets Plotinus in that he holds that the Plotinian One negates itself and produces the Intellect and the world.6 In sum, Hegel’s motivation for understanding the soul as the in-itself totality, rather than a Neoplatonic interpretation, is more broadly his own argument to the effect that the soul is the unconscious pit and the virtuality of all determinations, the matter for thinking, which by turning its gaze to its inferior forms thematizes itself and turns its passivity into activity. The final reason why Hegel is not a Neoplatonic intepreter of Aristo- tle is that the relation between finite spirit and absolute spirit is not the simple one of participation or commonality, but the active constitution of the one through the other—in history and objectivity. Another way to say this is that spirit must will its freedom in reality, a theme definitely absent from nous’s self-thinking in the Enneads and in Neoplatonism at large.

6. See VGPh 443–44, 451, and 487–88 on Proclus. See Werner Beierwaltes, Platonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972), 177–82. 9 Tragedy in the Philosophic Age of the Greeks Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche MICHAEL DAVIS

Of Aristotle’s writings none has had more staying power than the Po- etics. It has been commented on by scholars too numerous to name and even more impressively by the likes of Averrroes and Avicenna (even though they seem to have had at best a very unclear idea of what a tragedy was),1 Racine and Corneille, Lessing and Goethe, Milton and Samuel Johnson.2 All this interest is rather odd given the subject matter of the book. The Poetics is about tragedy.3 But Greek tragedy is very unlike our drama. To mention only a few of its exotic characteristics, it is performed by at most three actors playing multiple roles, wearing masks, accompanied by a chorus that is both a character in the play and a spectator of it, alternating between song and dialogue, before audi-

* Of the following argument, much of the part concerned with Aristotle has appeared since I gave this lecture at Catholic University in my Introduction to Aristotle on Poetics and has been reproduced here with the permission of St. Augustine’s Press. 1. Although they do not seem to have possessed any tragedies, their commentaries are ﬁlled with interesting remarks. Still, Aristotle’s account alone was not enough for Avicen- na to recognize that tragedy was more than “the praise meant for a living or dead person.” 2. See Averroes, Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics, trans. C. Butterworth (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000); I. M. Dahiyat, Avicenna’s Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle: A Critical Study with and Annotated Translation (Leyden: Brill, 1974); Pierre Corneille, “Discours de la Tragédie” in Théatre complet, vol. 1, (Paris: Garnier, 1971), 33–56; Jean Racine, “Préface,” to Phèdre (Paris: Larousse, 1965); Gotthold Ephraim Less- ing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Nrs. 73–83, in Werke, vols. 6–7, (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1911); Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Nachlese zur Aristotelischen Poetik,” in Goethe the Critic, ed. G. F. Semnos, Rev. C. V. Bock (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1960), 60–63; John Milton, “Preface” to Samson Agonistes, in idem, Poetical Works (New York: American News Company, n.d.); and James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). 3. The general, but not universal, view is that there were originally two books to the Po- etics, one on tragedy and a second on comedy. In our text, recovered about 1500, there is no account of comedy.

210 Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 211 ences of up to 30,000 people. The chorus sings using one dialect and speaks in another. The very complicated poetic meter is based not on stress but on the length of syllables. Since the language was accented tonally, one would think singing in Greek would be particularly difficult to understand. How were the tones of the individual words combined with the tones of the tunes? So by our standards it was strange. But did it not endure for a long time? Not really—the great age of Greek tragedy lasts for less than one hundred years. In this it seems much less impressive than the novel. Greek tragedy pretty much spans the life of one man—Sophocles (and also, by the way, the life of Athenian democracy). But was it not at least very widespread? Again, not really. It was imitated of course, but tragedy is predominantly an Athenian phenomenon, restricted in large measure to the area of Greece called Attica—hence At- tic tragedy. All of the Greek plays we now possess were originally performed in one theater—the theater of Dionysus on the slope of the Acropolis. Why then should we be concerned with a book written 2400 years ago about a literary form practiced for only a hundred years in a single theater in a city more or less the size of Peoria? Friedrich Nietzsche. He is, of course, not the only modern thinker to have paid special attention to tragedy—one need only think of his immediate predecessors, of Hegel and Schopenhauer. Still, Nietzsche devoted a whole book to tragedy and obviously thought it terribly important. And since it was first published in 1872, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music has had an enduring effect on how we understand considerably more than a literary genre. It is, for example, not at all surprising that its key terms, the Apollinian and the Dionysian, should have been appropriated by a recent ethnography on Samoan culture.4 For Nietzsche, the two are present not only in all art but virtually constitute human nature—one pointing to our striving to individuate ourselves, the other to our will to self-annihilation. We long at once to establish our apartness from the whole and to close the gap between ourselves and the whole. These two drives look to be altogether at odds, yet the fully human life requires their simultaneous satisfaction. Nietzsche’s formula for tragedy—Apollinian form, Dionysian content—fulfills this demand; in tragedy, we affirm ourselves in our symbolic negation of ourselves. In the first edition of The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche calls the satisfaction we derive from tragedy “metaphysical solace.” By 1886 he no longer likes the term and speaks instead of a “pessimism of strength.” But regardless of its issue, the tragic clearly cannot be understood as a

4. See Bradd Shore, Sala’Iliua: A Samoan Mystery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 212 michael davis solely theatrical phenomenon, for Nietzsche surely does not mean that when our Apollinian and Dionysian drives are out of balance: we should attend a play—a dose of tragedy as a sort of miracle drug for our Ur-ail- ment. Tragedy applies finally not to the stage but to a whole culture; accordingly, Nietzsche once characterized the period of pre-Socratic philosophy as “the tragic age of the Greeks.” Tragedy thus characterizes a golden age from which we in the West have declined. The cause of this decline—Nietzsche first places the blame on Euripides and then on Socrates—is the optimism characteristic of rational questioning. For Nietzsche, Socrates’s identification of virtue with knowledge points to a deep error; the view that for every question there must be an answer leaves unquestioned the intelligibility of the whole. With the failure to raise this question, human beings fail to confront the truth of their situation in the world. Nietzsche’s Socrates might be said to pave the way for the view that Oedipus should have sought counseling and that, with the proper legal help, Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon might have arranged an amicable separation. On the surface, at least, Nietzsche’s great praise of tragedy is therefore inseparable from an attack on rationality. In thus making tragedy the alternative to philosophy Nietzsche seems to agree with Plato about the existence of an “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” (Republic 607 b–c) while disagreeing about which side one ought to take. With Aristo- tle, on the other hand, the disagreement seems complete, for in telling us that “poetry is more philosophic and more serious than history” (Po- etics 1451b 5–6) and in giving tragedy the salutary moral function of the katharsis of pity and fear in its audience, Aristotle appears to call into question the “ancient quarrel” itself. For Nietzsche, this is simply a deca- dent optimism, no longer even aware that there is an alternative; thus tamed, tragedy ceases to be terrible, which is to say that it ceases to be tragedy. Nietzsche’s charge, then, seems to be that in misunderstanding the relation between tragedy and reason, Aristotle deeply misunder- stands the very structure of human life.5 We shall see. The first words, and traditional title, of the Poetics are peri poiêtikês— concerning the art of whatever it is that the verb poiein means. Ordinari- ly poiein would mean “to do,” especially in the sense of “to make.” It is faire or machen. Then it gets a narrower meaning as well—to make poet-

5. See Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, section 212 where Nietzsche praised Plato for having understood the unsettling character of tragedy while criticizing Aristotle for having thought it effects a calming effect through a purgation of pity and fear. In a later section (264) Nietzsche criticizes Aristotle as ingenious and clever, but unable to differentiate between cleverness and boredom. For Nietzsche’s criticism of Aristotle on catharsis see Götzen-Dämmerung, “Was Ich den Alten verdanke,” section 5; the criticism is quoted in the section on the Birth of Tragedy in Ecce Homo. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 213 ry. So peri poiêtikês means “concerning the art of poetry.” Aristotle will argue that tragedy is paradigmatic for poetry, and so the book about poetry can be primarily about its most perfect manifestation. Yet there is considerably more at stake. At the very end of Chapter III, in his discussion of the history of comedy and tragedy, Aristotle remarks that the Do- rians lay claim to having originated both, citing their names as signs. And they [claim to call] poiein by the name dran, but they claim the Athenians call it by the name prattein. (1448b 1–2)6 From dran, to do, comes drama, meaning first something done and then our drama. Now, while this seems scarcely more than a footnote, by using poiein as the middle term to connect the other two, in the context of the Poetics Aristotle invites us to consider poiein and prattein synonyms. Should we accept his invitation we would have to retranslate the title of Aristotle’s most frequently read little book. Peri Poiêtikês would mean Concerning the Art of Action. The sort of acting actors do would share something fundamental with all action; poetry would somehow be at the center of human life. There is circumstantial evidence to support such a view of the Poetics. If all human action seems to aim at some good, and if the existence of instrumental goods points toward a good for the sake of which we choose all the others, and if there is a science of this highest good, and if as Aristotle says this is political science (I’ve simply summarized the first paragraph of the Nicomachean Ethics), then one would expect poetry and politics to be very closely linked. They are. Aristotle’s Politics ends with an account of music, and especially poetry, as both the means for educating human beings to be good citizens and the goal for which they are educated. There is also more elaborate evidence. In Book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, courage or manliness (andreia) is said to be the proper mean with regard to the passions fear and confidence. However since fear can be understood as an anticipation of bad things generally, lest courage be thought somehow equivalent to all of virtue, the particular fear with which it deals must be specified. As the most terrible fear is of death, this must be what concerns courage—but not all death. Courage comes into play where it is possible for us to exercise choice. It is therefore most of all concerned with facing death in war. To make this point Aristotle compares drowning at sea with fighting a battle. The comparison recalls Iliad XXI where Achilles fights with a riv-

6. All translations of the Poetics are my own and are from the Greek text of D. W. Lucas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). 214 michael davis er—called Xanthus by the gods and by us, and Scamander by Achilles and the Trojans. Achilles laments the possibility that he might die in this ignominious way (toughing it out with a river). To us who are aware that he is fighting with a god, his fate does not look so disgraceful. Aristotle knows, of course, that it is possible to be courageous in a hurricane, but thinks such courage is understood metaphorically. The paradigm is always fighting in battle. The account of the specific moral virtues, therefore, begins with courage because courage is a model for how to deal with all fear understood as anticipation of the bad, and so for how to deal with the bad generally. Aristotle focuses on a situation in which we have a choice so as to provide a model for behaving as though we always had a choice. Accordingly, Achilles is not simply the most courageous but the model for virtue altogether. The hardest problem for Aristotle’s account of courage is that, while the moral virtues are supposed to make us happy, courage is frequently rather unpleasant and can easily make us dead. Why, then, do the brave risk their lives? Aristotle says it is for the sake of the kalon—the noble or beautiful. But this kalon end is clearly not present in the activity itself. Neither killing nor being killed is by itself beautiful. We must look elsewhere than the dead bodies fouling the Scamander to see Achilles’s devotion to the kalon. The brave, presenting an image to themselves of their actions as completed, look at their deeds as others will look at them, and so reap the benefits of honor even before honor has been granted. The present action becomes kalon in sofar as it is made complete through reflection or imagination. The brave, therefore, do what they do, not because it is good, but because they can say “it is good.” This is what the kalon means.7 Atypically, Aristotle goes out of his way in the Ethics to discuss the spurious forms of courage as well as the genuine. The highest of these is political courage; its goal is honor. For examples Aristotle quotes Hektor and Diomedes worrying about what will be said of them if they do not fight. But just what is it that differentiates this from acting “for the sake of the kalon?” If courage always means courage in war, then it will always manifest itself in a political context. Cities make war; individuals do not. But if courage is a virtue, it ought to be something that transcends any particular polis. This is just the problem of Achilles. Apart from the polis he cannot show his virtue, but once he returns to the fighting, his motives are necessarily obscure. Does he do it for Patroklos, for the Greeks,

7. Compare this to the first book of the Politics where our natures as political animals are traced to our natures as the animals with logos—speech or reason. We are not political simply because we seek good things; we are political because we seek what we understand to be good. This is the difference between a polis and a beehive. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 215 for honor, for immortality? Courage is in principle invisible, for one cannot see it apart from a political context, which is to say apart from the ulterior motives for action attributed to the political man. The most startling thing about the account of courage in the Nico- machean Ethics is that Aristotle uses almost exclusively fictional examples—Achilles, Hektor, Diomedes, etc. Without poetry there is virtually no possibility to see the element that makes courage what it is. The brave do not risk their lives out of a greater fear, or shame, or confidence owing to superior experience. And yet from the act itself it is impossible to tell the difference between these spurious forms of courage and the real thing. We need the whole story, and only poetry gives it to us. Poetry lets us see inside human beings so that we can celebrate their devotion to the kalon. This points us back to the earlier account of the metaphorical character of courage in a storm at sea. In a way, all courage is metaphorical. Even Achilles is playing a rôle; he knows his fate, and is therefore the paradigm of the courageous man. Like all brave men, he wants “to die like Achilles.” Poetry makes it possible to experience our action as whole before it is whole. This wholeness then becomes a part of the experience itself. Or rather, since the conjunction does not really occur temporally, poetry constitutes the experience. In the case of courage what would be essentially painful is transformed into something “pleasant.”8 And in so far as courage represents all moral virtue here, poetry would be the necessary condition for moral virtue generally. One can go one step further. Aristotle begins the Poetics by addressing two apparently different issues—the eidê or species of the art poetry and their powers and how to put a poem together out of its parts. Concerning both poiêtikê [the art of poetry, making, doing] itself and the forms [eidê] of it, what power each has, and how one should put plots together if the poiêsis [poem, thing made, thing done] is to hold beautifully, and further from how many and from what sort of parts it is, and similarly also concerning everything else belonging to the same inquiry, let us speak, beginning according to nature first from the first things. Now epic poetry [epopoiia] and the making [poiêsis] of tragedy, and further comedy and the art of making dithyrambs [dithurambopoiêtikê], and most of the art of the flute and of the kithara all happen to be in general [to sunolon] imitations. Aristotle is conducting a class at once in fiction writing and in literary criticism. An account of the art of making involves an analysis—a taking apart—of the ways things are put together (of course the pieces out of which something is put together are not necessarily the same as the

8. This is not unlike what occurs in tragedy. See Poetics, 1448b 10–20. 216 michael davis pieces of our understanding of how it is put together). Directly after the methodological remark in which he announces his intention to begin from the first things, Aristotle lists various forms of imitation. Presum- ably imitations are the first things from which Aristotle will make his beginning. But as always derivative from what they imitate, they are odd beginning points. For poetry the first things apparently are second things; the evidence is the immediate sequel. But they differ from one another in three ways—either by imitating in different things, different things, or differently and not the same way. There is an ambiguity in the Greek. To mimeisthai hetera certainly means to imitate different things and to mimeisthai heterôs to imitate differently, but the accusative neuter plural of an adjective can also be adverbial.9 If we were to take hetera here as the equivalent of heterôs, beneath the admittedly more obvious, conventional, and sensible reading, Aristotle would be suggesting that what is imitated is somehow the same as how it is imitated. That how something is imitated is always the real object of imitation seems crazy until one recognizes that imitating the act of imitation itself would mean depicting the peculiarly human element of action. In so far as all human action is always already an imitation of action, it is in its very nature poetic. This places the beginning of Aristotle’s famous definition of tragedy—that tragedy is an imitation of action—in a new light.10 The Poetics is about two things: poiêsis understood as poetry, or imitation of action, and poiêsis understood as action, which is also imitation of action. It is the distinctive feature of human action, that whenever we choose what to do, we imagine an action for ourselves as though we were inspecting it from the outside.11 Intentions are nothing more than imagined actions, internalizings of the external. All action, as poetic, is therefore imitation of action. But what does this perplexing formulation mean? The issue is really the same as arises, say, for Freudian psychology. Why are we inclined to try to understand ourselves in terms of what happened to us when we were very young? The events of our youth seem to be formative because they have a sort of purity—they are so remote and even get thought of

9. Aristotle goes out of his way to indicate the adverbial use of the accusative in the last words of the sentence—kai mê ton auton tropon. 10. See Poetics, ch. 6. 11. It therefore looks like a product or something made—a poem. As Aristotle’s account of imitation in chapter 4 indicates, mimêsis has a peculiar doubleness to it. It means both the action of imitating—the mimicking we do from childhood—and the product of imitating—the poem or painting which results from representing. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 217 sometimes as prenatal. These events are meant on the one hand to be experiences and so real, but at the same time are meant to be perfect types or forms and so formative. The power of Freudian psychology for us has to do with its attempt to understand experience in terms of a more purified experience—that is, with its attempt to understand experience poetically. But, of course, if all experience is of this kind, how could there ever have been a primal experience? One’s current behavior might be understood as Oedipal, but the initial “Oedipal” reaction cannot be understood as Oedipal. That is the reason why it is characterized by way of a poetic reference—i.e. by reference to the behavior of an adult. A grown man is understood in terms of a primordial event experienced as a child which is, in turn, only intelligible in terms of a myth about a grown man. In what sense, then, can we ever discuss first reactions? On the one hand, we cannot understand our experience by way of some primal experience because what determines our experience cannot be one of our experiences. On the other hand, we do not seem to be able to understand our experience in any other way. However plausible this connection between poetry and action, it does seem funny for tragedy to serve as the model for all human action. Just to state the obvious, all human action is not sad. The full account of what we are to make of the turn to tragedy would be an odyssey requiring an interpretation of the whole of the Poetics. Fortunately, however, there is a shortcut that hints at what is at stake. The two meanings of poiêsis—doing and poetry—are related much as talking and singing, walking and dancing, acting and acting. Human doing is double—it has a self-conscious part and an unself-conscious part. We are rational animals. Poetry, connected to the self-conscious character of action (it is through imitation, Aristotle says, that we say “this is that”), at the same time manifests the doubleness of human action within itself. Aristotle turns to drama because, more than narrative poetry, it reflects the distinction between doing and looking at doing—between acting and reflecting. On the one hand drama must attempt to convince its audience of the reality of its action; on the other hand it must always remain acting—actors always imply spectators. Or, as George Burns once said, “The most important thing about acting is honesty; if you can fake that you’ve got it made.” Tragedy is the highest form of poetry because it most embodies this doubleness. Now “plot is the first principle and like the soul of tragedy” (1450a 38–39); the two principles governing plot— the likely and the necessary—point back to the distinction between the perspective of the actor and that of the spectator. A character makes choices in order to make certain consequences likely; he assumes his freedom. What actually happens in the play seems so perfectly intelligi- 218 michael davis ble to the spectator as to seem to have been necessary. By virtue of its structure, tragic plot accentuates the tension between spectator and actor. The best tragedies involve what Aristotle calls reversal (peripateia) and recognition (anagnôrisis). They are so to speak the soul of plot. Now, if poetry is paradigmatic for action, and drama for poetry—and if tragedy is the most complete form of drama, plot the soul of tragedy, and reversal and recognition the core of plot—then by looking at Aris- totle’s treatment of recognition and reversal, we ought to be able to learn something about why tragedy is singled out as the model for human action and thought. Reversal is defined in Chapter XI of the Poetics. And reversal is the change of the things acted/done to the opposite, as was said, and this, just as we say, according to the likely or necessary. (1452a 22–24) Aristotle’s example is from Oedipus Tyrannus. A messenger has just come from Corinth with the “good news” that the king, Polybus, whom Oedipus believes to be his father, has died. Oedipus expresses some doubts about returning since he had originally fled Corinth because of an oracle that had also concerned his future intercourse with his mother, and Merope, Polybus’ wife, is still alive. This messenger, never given a name or even a pronoun by Aristotle, coming so as to cheer Oedipus and to release him from his fear regarding his mother, making clear who he was, he did [epoiêsen] the opposite. (1452a 25–26) The “he” is ambiguous here. Does it refer to Oedipus or to the messenger? Still, as disclosing Oedipus’s identity proves to require disclosing the messenger’s identity, the ambiguity seems to make no difference. In either case the good news proves bad. Intending to free Oedipus from the fear of parricide and incest, the messenger reveals that it was he who had originally brought the baby Oedipus to Polybus and Merope. The result is “a change to the opposite.” Now, it is clear that reversal involves some violation of expectation. But whose? Since, as Aristotle indicates, the reversal need not coincide with any recognition within the play, the expectations cannot be those of characters in the play. The Oedipus would not be affected dramatically were the messenger to leave before he discovered that his good news backfired. At the same time, since the turn of events involves not so much a change as a reinterpretation of what has already occurred, some recognition seems necessary. Reversal must, therefore, be our recognition as an audience that what we thought to be is not what we thought it to be. The account of recognition begins with a reference to its etymology: Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 219

And recognition (anagnôrisis), just as the name signifies, is a change from ignorance (agnoia) to knowledge (gnôsis), either to friendship or to enmity of those being defined with regard to good fortune or ill fortune. (1152a 29–32) Recognition is an-agnorisis, a privation of ignorance. But we might also understand its etymology as ana-gnorisis—knowing back or re-cog- nizing. Since the very same syllables give us two quite different etymolo- gies, it is not so obvious what “the name signifies.” Now, when the sort of ambiguity exemplified in Aristotle’s language here arises within a play, the conditions are present for recognition.12 A prior confusion is discovered in a way that alters the action of the play. Recognition is thus the awareness within the play, i.e. a character’s awareness, that parallels the audience’s awareness of a reversal. Aristotle says that recognition is most beautiful when it coincides with reversal—when the discovery within the play comes to be at the same time as the discovery outside the play, or when the act of understanding and the action itself are somehow one.13 He describes the recognition which “especially belongs to plot and especially to action” as the “one having been said” (1452a 36–38). Now, presumably this means the most beautiful kind, i.e. where recognition and reversal coincide. At the same time, certain recognitions occur when a character comes to understand the significance of things that he has previously said. Oedipus does this sort of thing all the time. He promises to pursue the murderer of Laius as though Laius were his father (264–66). And he begins Oedipus Tyran- nus by addressing those assembled around him as tekna Kadmou—children of Kadmus. Oedipus treats them as though they were his children; because he does not know that he is by birth a Theban, he does not realize that he too is a child of Kadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes, that those under his care as king may be like children, but they are also his brothers and sisters, his fellow citizens. For Oedipus, really recognizing who he is would involve discovering the significance of “what has been said.” The beauty of Aristotle’s claim that the best recognition is “the aforesaid” or, more literally, “the one having been said” is that it is an example of itself. A plot in which events simply followed one another predictably, i.e. in which the likely turned out to be the necessary, in which, for example, an army of superior strength attacked an enemy and won, would con-

12. Consider Herakles’ reinterpretation of the meaning Zeus’ promise that he would not die at the hands of anything living (Trachiniae 1157–78)—he first takes it to mean he will not die, but later understands it to mean he will be killed by the poison from the blood of the dead centaur Nessus. 13. It is worth noting that Aristotle does not say that the discovery is the same discovery. 220 michael davis tain pathos but not reversal or recognition. Reversal makes an audience reflect on the necessity of action that at first seems unlikely, for example, that in Sophocles’s Trachiniae Deianira’s attempt to make Herakles love her should end by killing him. Recognition introduces inference into the play so that reflection on the likelihood and necessity of the action becomes a part of the action and so has further consequences within the play itself. The turning point in Oedipus Tyrannus is Oedipus’s discovery of who he is.14 This sort of action—in which coming to knowledge is decisive—is, not surprisingly, especially revealing of human beings, the rational animals. If plot means a change of fortune, and the best change involves the coincidence of reversal and recognition, in which direction ought the change to occur? It would be, says Aristotle, miaron—polluted or disgust- ing—were a man who is epieikês (decent, meet, equitable) to move from good to bad fortune. Now, in Nicomachean Ethics V Aristotle gives an account of epieikeia as a virtue more just than justice itself because it cor- rects the necessary imprecision of law as general. Justice involves general rules and so inevitably makes errors (hamartêmata) because it never perfectly fits particular circumstances. Equity always shows up as the correction of the sort of error rooted not in obvious weakness or vice but in pursuing goodness too rigidly. Epieikeia is therefore morality that is at the same time critical of moral idealism.15 To show someone with such moderate expectations moving from good to ill fortune would, according to Aristotle, be shocking. On the other hand, to show the wicked moving from bad to good fortune would arouse neither pity nor fear but righteous indignation. Tragedy is apparently not meant to cause ut- ter despair of goodness in the world. It is also not especially tragic to show the fortunes of the villainous change from good to bad. Such a plot might encourage philanthropeia—a sense of solidarity with humanity (insofar as justice prevails), but it would result neither in pity (the villain gets what he deserves) nor in fear (the one who suffers is not like us). Tragedy, then, does not simply support morality and subverts moral naivete.16 That tragedy is no simple morality play is signaled by the change in Aristotle’s language. The “good” man—previously spoudaios

14. It is surely no accident that the “moment” at which Oedipus learns “who he is” should be so fuzzy. Directly after the messenger tells him he is not the son of Polybus Oedi- pus seems as concerned that Jocasta will think him ill born as he is that he is in fact the son of Laius (Oedipus Tyrannus 1062–63). 15. See Ronna Burger’s “Ethical Reﬂection and Righteous Indignation: Nemesis in the Nicomachean Ethics,” in Aristotle’s Ethics: Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, vol. 4, ed. John An- ton and Antony Preus (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), 127–39. 16. Accordingly, Aristotle is silent about the plot in which the good man’s fortune alters from ill to good. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 221 or earnest (1448a 2)—now becomes the epieikês—the man aware of the impossibility of perfect justice. What remains then is what lies between the epieikês and the bad man. Such a one is he distinguished neither in virtue and justice nor changing to ill fortune on account of badness and wickedness, but because of some error of one of those being in great repute [with a great opinion] and good fortune such as Oedipus, Thyestes, and renowned men of such families. (1453a 7–12) The subjects of tragedy are those who are thought to be great. Are they also those who have great opinions? Their error (hamartia) seems to have to do with being too little aware of the fuzziness of moral principles—too little epieikês. In one way such men are not virtuous; in another they are too virtuous.17 According to Chapter XIII the change in plot must move from good to ill fortune. Curiously Aristotle seems to reverse himself in the following chapter. As actions may be done with or without knowledge, there are four possibilities for the action in tragedy. A character may intend to do something knowing what he is doing, but because of some accident not do it—this is not really drama. A character may intend to do something knowing what he is doing and do it—this is the case of Medea. A character may do something without intending to have done it and then discover what he has done—this is the case of Oedipus. Finally, a character may intend to do something, discover that he did not really know what he was doing and not do it—this is the case of Iphigeneia. Aristotle calls the last the best (1454a 4). But how can it be best for Iphigeneia not to kill her brother, that is, for the play to have a happy ending, when tragedy requires a change from good to ill fortune? Aristotle’s language here is revealing. What the ancients did (poiein) as well as what Euripides did (poiein) in the Medea was to make the doing (prattein) come to be with knowledge. Sophocles makes Oedipus do (prattein) terrible things in ignorance and then discover it. The “best” form is characterized as intending to do (poiein) and then, discovering, not to do (poiein) it. Now, up to this point Aristotle had been using poiein to refer to the activity of the poet and prattein to apply to the activity of the character. Leaving this distinction in tact, what he calls best here would not be an action within the play, but rather the action of the poet.

17. This is born out by Aristotle’s examples—Alkmeon and Orestes killed their moth- ers, but to avenge their fathers; Oedipus seeks to become master of his own fate, but to avoid the necessity to kill his father and marry his mother; Meleager is killed by his mother after accidentally killing his uncles; Thyestes, brother of Atreus, seduced Atreus’ wife, and, to punish him, Atreus feeds him his children; Telephon is punished for accidentally killing his uncles. These cases seem to point to conﬂicting moral issues that do not admit of straightforward solution. 222 michael davis

Let us see if we can put some of these issues together. Reversal is an event in a play that leads the spectator to reflect on the events of the play. Recognition introduces this sort of reflection into the play as a piece of the action. By introducing the epieikês Aristotle pointed to a kind of virtue, the highest kind, which is only possible as a reflection on the imperfection of virtue. But why is this highest man not the subject of the highest form of poetic imitation? Poetry could never present the highest virtue if the highest, like epieikeia, necessarily takes the form of a reflection on the imperfection of the “best.” No action could ever reveal the virtue that always takes the form of a reflection on action. Insofar as a poet wished to “present” the best he would have to present an action that causes reflection (i.e. reversal) rather than presenting the reflection itself (recognition). And insofar as human action approaches its best, the actor would have to present to himself an action that causes reflection. The activity of the epieikês is something like literary criticism; it consists in seeing where others have gone wrong. Still, Aristotle certainly says that the best plot, and so the best tragedy, combines reversal and recognition—it makes reflection an action. Tragedy thus distinguishes itself from other forms of poetry by making the poetic character of human action thematic. However, to present in action a successful reflection on action (epieikeia) would not arouse wonder and so not lead to reflection; it would be too pat, and so essentially invisible. The goal of tragedy is the stimulation of pity and fear because reflection is stimulated only by failure—“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” There is no wonder without some appearance of discrepancy. Therefore, the options for combining reversal and recognition seem to be these. The poet can either show the failure of genuine epieikeia which does not seem possible since epieikeia consists in the ability to foresee the ways in which one cannot expect virtue to be manifest in the world. Or, he can show the failure of spurious reflection. This is in fact what occurs when reversal becomes recognition. Tragic recognition will always in some sense be false recognition. It must be subject to a higher order reversal in order to stimulate wonder. Oedipus thinks that he knows who he is, but when he takes the pin of Jocasta’s brooch, stabs himself in his eyesockets (arthra) and orders himself set out on Mt. Kithairon, he is simply reproducing what his father did to him as a baby, pinning his joints (arthra) and ordering that he be abandoned on Mt. Kithairon.18 If he really knew “who

18. See Seth Benardete, “Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus,” in Ancients and Moderns: Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Cropsey (New York: Basic Books, 1964), 1–15. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 223 he was” Oedipus would not once again be attempting to take his fate into his own hands, to become his own father. Blinding himself was not an altogether humble thing to do. He still has not learned that he too is one of the tekna of Kadmus. However, had he learned who he was, we would have been unable to learn who he was. Character, perhaps the true object of imitation in tragedy, is invisible except through plot.19 For this reason, in his ranking of the various forms of recognition in Chap- ter XVI, Aristotle finds particular fault with that sort which is willed by the poet. When a character simply reveals who he is, the meaning of the recognition is altogether hidden from view.20 The epieikês can express his knowledge even to himself only by articulating what would happen to him were he not to know. Oedipus could only have expressed wisdom by writing his own tragedy. To be a rational animal does not mean what it seems to mean. It does not mean that there is a battle within us sometimes won by our good part and sometimes won by our bad part. This would make us monsters. The mixture within us is more intimate. As the tragic formula indicates, we learn through suffering or undergoing (pathei mathos); there is something irrational about our rationality. Accordingly, Aristotle’s examples of the best forms of recognition all involve inferences (sullogismoi) that turn out to be paralogisms. Tragedy has as its goal making visible the most important thing about human beings, which as essentially invisible cannot be shown as it really is. The action that poetizes the world cannot be shown in poetry. Imitation can only be imitated by showing what it is an imitation of; it must always hide behind its object. It is indeed the first thing, but it must always appear as a second thing. It is the plot alone which differentiates one tragedy from another, and what constitutes plot is desis (complication, involvement, binding, raveling) and lusis (denouement, resolution, loosening, unraveling). De- sis includes the action from the beginning or archê (which frequently includes events prior to the beginning of the play) up to the extreme point (eschaton) where the weaving together of the events of the plot stops and things begin to unravel. The lusis is all the rest from the archê of the change until the end (telos) of the play. Now there is no question that Aristotle means us first to take this account linearly or temporally. There is a part of any tragedy in which things are put together and a part in which they are taken apart. At the same time, the key terms of the account all allow for another interpretation. Suppose archê means

19. Notice how the long awaited discussion of character in ch. 15 quickly gets derailed and turns into a discussion of plot. This movement perfectly mirrors the dependence of character on plot, of the inside on the outside. 20. On the importance of seeing for tragedy see ch. 17. 224 michael davis not temporal beginning but first principle, telos not temporal end but purpose, eschaton not temporal or spatial extreme but utmost, and, most important, lusis not denouement but resolution understood as something like ana-lysis. For this last there is evidence internal to the Poetics where Aristotle uses lusis to mean solution or resolution (1460b 6, 1461b 24) and luein to mean to solve or resolve (1460b 22).21 Now, if lusis meant analysis or interpretation here, Aristotle would be saying that tragedies ought to supply their own analyses. This would explain the emphasis in the sequel on the fact that poets are often quite good at desis (that’s what it means to be a poet—to make up stories or put together plots) but less frequently good at lusis. This is Aristotle’s version of what Socrates says of the poets (Apology 22c), that “they say many beautiful things but know nothing of what they say.” Po- ets, ordinarily good at the part of poiêtikê which involves putting together the parts of a poem, are not as a rule so good at the other part—analysis of poems according to their eidê. Tragedy is a crucial exception to this rule, for in tragedy part of the plot is lusis, an analysis of its action. Tragedy is distinct in being simultaneously synthetic or genetic—desis— and analytic or eidetic—lusis. On one level, then, the movement from desis to lusis is simply linear—there is a point in the play where things begin to unwind. On another level desis and lusis are the same. Once Oedi- pus utters his first words, O tekna kadmou, the meaning of his incest has already been revealed; he is the father who does not know himself to be a brother. Tragedy is something like a metaphorical analysis of metaphor in which events function simultaneously as parts of a play and principles of its analysis. Things which look at first accidental, in retrospect become absolutely necessary. Lusis in its deepest sense is not a part of the plot but a second sailing—a rereading that makes visible what was implicit from the outset but could never have been seen without first having been missed. Tragedy is especially revealing of human action because it not only tells a story that is significant or meaningful, but also makes the fact that the story can be a meaningful part of the story it tells. Pathei mathos, the lesson of tragedy, is at the same time the structure both of human action and of human thought. Human action is imitation of action because thinking is always rethinking. Aristotle can define human beings as at once rational animals, political animals, and imitative animals because in the end the three are the same. In human action as in tragedy, every-

21. Lusis appears, before having been defined, in ch. 15 (1454a 37) where Aristotle indicates that it ought to come out of the plot itself and not be generated “from the machine.” Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 225 thing depends upon the intention of the actor. But that intention cannot be shown directly—it has to be revealed through action. When a poet tries to introduce intention directly it looks arbitrary and so is indistinguishable from chance. The true deus ex machina, the god in the machine, is therefore the human soul; it disappears as soon as one makes it visible. Ironically, the significance of our actions becomes visible only by reversing what we thought their significance to be. But that of course requires the initial assumption that one can see significance without reversal. You have to assume that you can see someone’s character in order to see his action. This is what allows you to have your impression of the action reversed as the tragic plot turns on itself so that you can “see” the character in question. We must assume Oedipus inno- cent in order to understand his true guilt. Blundering would seem to be the fundamental character of human action and thought. If thought, and so human action, is essentially poetic in its need to put in place and time what cannot appear in place and time, does that mean it is essentially tragic? That is, if the recognition of tragedy is always spurious recognition, doesn’t that mean we are essentially incapable of getting hold of ourselves? It does and it doesn’t. Tragedy depicts tragic action, but it is not itself tragic, for if we recognize ourselves in the spurious character of Oedipus’s recognition we are not simply in the position of Oedipus. That Aristotle understands this to be true of tragedy is clear from the great compliment he pays it by imitating it. The Poetics is a very playful book. In the middle of his discussion of tragic error, Aristotle muses about whether those who criticize Euripides “err” (1453a 8–23).22 And in a remarkable tour de finesse digresses abruptly in Chapter XII to discuss the chorus; the digression proves to be an example of how the chorus works in tragedy. Having introduced reversal and recognition, Aris- totle moves without explanation to a short chapter on the parts of tragedy. So out of place does Chapter XII seem that many editors have suggested moving it (beginning with Heinsius in the seventeenth century), and many others (e.g. Butcher and Else) do not accept it as genuine. The chapter is certainly odd; at first glance, its list of parts— prologue, episode, exode, parodos, stasimon and commos—seems connected to nothing else in the Poetics. Upon reflection, however, one notices that each part is defined in terms of its relation to the chorus. Now

22. In fact these men who err (hamartanousin) make the error that occurs within tragedy. They demand that justice prevail in the world. And if Euripides appears to be the “most tragic” of the poets, perhaps it is because he does what he ought to do even when the end does not follow from his plot. That is, Euripides action in writing as he writes, his uniform adherence to a rule, has the makings of tragedy. 226 michael davis the chorus has a funny function in tragedy. It is a character in so far as what it says grows out of the plot—to understand the famous chorus in Antigone about man as the being most deinos of all (simultaneously most canny and uncanny), one must understand what they make this claim in response to. At the same time the chorus reflects on the action of the plot, and so talks directly to the audience. The role of the chorus therefore allows it to participate on the levels of both reversal and recognition. The chorus is then in a way the defining feature of tragedy—Nietz- sche notwithstanding, the spectator within the drama. It is especially meet that Aristotle should discuss it in a “digression.” Chapter XII of the Poetics functions just like a stasimon; because it seems only marginally connected to what surrounds it, a choral ode looks like a reflection on what comes before and after. It is both still within the dramatic time of the play and at the same time atemporal. This chorus has as its content the centrality of the chorus for tragedy and so sheds light on what is at stake in the discussion of recognition and reversal that surrounds it. In this and countless other ways the Poetics is a clever imitation of tragedy. Aristotle announced in his very first sentence that poiêtikê would involve putting together synthetic and analytic accounts. It is not surprising then that his book should admit of being read on two levels. It is about tragedy, but it is also about human action. The first is its desis, the latter its lusis. (One might say the Poetics is two books—a palimpsest, and Umberto Eco erred; the famous “second book” of the Poetics did not perish in a fire in an unknown abbey in the fall of 1327.) On the one hand, then, Nietzsche did not err. For Aristotle, the “ancient difference between philosophy and poetry” must finally give way to a deeper kinship; “the lover of myth is somehow also a philosopher.”23 The animal by nature mimetic is the same as the animal by nature rational.24 Yet Nietzsche does seem to have erred in underestimating Aris- totle’s grasp of the intimacy of the relation between the rational and the irrational, for Aristotle did not so much rationalize poetry as see how the poetic was a necessary moment of reason. Much to our surprise, in this the sober Aristotle is not so far from the somewhat less sober Nietz- sche. Despite its Dionysian content, The Birth of Tragedy is a work of markedly Apollinian form.25 Nietzsche several times makes clear that the book was intended not simply as a paean, whether to music, poetry, or Richard Wagner, but rather as itself a new kind of philosophy.

23. Metaphysics, 982b 18–19 24. See Poetics, 1448b 5–6, Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a, and Politics, 1253a. 25. See Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974), 49, 59–60. Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 227

In this sense I have the right to understand myself as the first tragic philosopher— that means the most extreme opposite and antipode of a pessimistic philosopher. Before me, this transformation of the Dionysian into a philosophical pathos did not exist: there was a lack of tragic wisdom.26 What might the general character of this tragic philosophy be? Six- teen years after its initial publication, The Birth of Tragedy was repub- lished with a revised title—The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pes- simism—and a new introduction called “An Attempt at Self-Criticism” (apparently Nietzsche was unsure of the success of his criticism). Wern- er Dannhauser has pointed out a curious feature of the new introduction. Fewer than ten pages long, it nevertheless contains more than seventy question marks—thirty-one in the first of its seven sections.27 This is not accidental; in the first sentence Nietzsche calls The Birth of Tragedy a fragwürdiges, or questionable, book that deals with a question of the first rank. He goes on to speak of questions and question marks at least fourteen times—thrice in this first sentence alone. Nietzsche, for whom inquiry, science, and reason seem such questionable enterprises, thus begins an inquiry into the meaning of his own book. A question is a kind of longing—an expression of a need. This is connected to the other strand of the argument at the outset of the “Attempt at Self-Criticism”—an account of the birth of The Birth of Tragedy. Nietz- sche tells us that he started work on the book when he was a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War. At the time of the Peace Treaty of Ver- sailles, he completed the final version “while at peace with himself” but convalescing from a disease contracted during the war. In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche calls attention to the disparity between the conditions under which the book was begun, the battle of Wörth, its subject matter, the Dionysian, and the strange neutrality and detachment that makes it seem so untimely.28 Nietzsche is in the middle of a war “troubled and yet untroubled.”29 He is governed by necessity and yet reflective—but not about his immediate situation. What is the question that preoccupies this musing soldier? If art always originates out of some need, and if the Greeks were the healthy people, why should they have had art at all? Moreover, why that form of art, tragedy, that seems to concentrate on the ugly? Nietzsche seems to have been able to begin to answer this

26. Ecce Homo, “Die Geburt der Tragödie,” section 3. All translations of Nietzsche are my own and follow the German text of Karl Schlecta, Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in Drei Bänden (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1966). 27. Werner Dannhauser, Nietzsche’s View of Socrates, 77. 28. See Ecce Homo, “Die Geburt der Tragödie,” section 1. 29. “Attempt at Self-Criticism,” section 1—hereafter SC, with the section number following. 228 michael davis question because of the ambiguity of his own situation. He is needy (he is ill and at war) and yet not (he is curiously detached). Now, this all has something to do with that state of mind in which it is possible to ask any question. To question is not simply to respond mechanically to a perceived need, for to ask for the answer to a puzzle that is not of immediate concern requires a certain confidence and overabundance. Could Nietzsche mean for the act of questioning to serve as a model for what he will call the “pessimism of strength” that characterizes tragedy? If art grows out of some need and is always meant to combat some doubt about the value of life—a pessimism—then mustn’t the Greeks too have been unhealthy? Nietzsche suggests an alternative. Perhaps the suffering to which Greek art was a response was one of overfullness. Such art would not be a compensating optimism that projects a better life but a celebration of suffering—ultimately tragedy—as the condition of the deepest life. But, if the model for tragedy is the question, isn’t the more obvious offshoot of questioning the optimism that anticipates an answer? And isn’t this the science that undermines the very possibility of tragedy—it tells us that the answer to the problem is counseling? Such questioning would be a flight from pessimism—its result, that cheerfulness that is for Nietzsche a sign of decay. It is striking that science should make its first appearance in The Birth of Tragedy as an obstacle to truth. One might say, then, that the act of questioning involves a certain pessimism, or neediness, as well as a certain strength, for asking a question means acknowledging that an answer is not immediately available. The consequence is a longing to know that ironically, or perhaps tragically, tempts us to replace uncertainty of the question with the certitude of the answer. This is the importance of the famous phrase in which Niet- zsche characterizes the goal of The Birth of Tragedy: “to see science from the point of view of the artist but art from the point of view of life” (SC.2). While itself derived from the fundamental act of questioning, science nevertheless no longer questions fundamentally, for it takes the act of questioning itself for granted. The problem is that a verb, wissen, gets itself transformed into a noun, Wissenschaft. When The Birth of Tragedy was first published, it was controversial— certainly not Wissenschaft. Nietzsche tells us that in the time between the first edition and his self-criticism the book became “proven” and “has satisfied (genuggetan hat) ‘the best men of the time’” (SC.2). But in this it resembles “the Socratism of morality, the dialectic, satisfaction (Genüg- samkeit), and cheerfulness of the theoretical man” that killed tragedy (SC.1). Now, Nietzsche says, he finds the book disagreeable—a set piece. Yet in finding it disagreeable, he recognizes the strangeness of the question it asked and in a way renews this question. The goal of the book is Aristotle’s Reply to Nietzsche 229

“to see science from the point of view of the artist but art from the point of view of life.” Science cannot ground the question of science because, as directed toward answers, it is not sufficiently in awe of its own activity. The question of science, then, can only be asked from the point of view of the Kunstler—the artist or producer. To see what is involved in the posing of a question, one must look at the questioner, not the question; otherwise one will not see the need out of which the question was born. As an artifact—something made—even science requires a motive. See- ing science in this way will lead us to attempt to find a general answer to the question of why it is that artists make art. In so doing, we will attempt to understand life as such. Nietzsche’s question amounts to asking what in general lies underneath our attempt to get at the truth in general. “To see science from the point of view of the artist but art from the point of view of life” is a project that suggests that art is what mediates between living, on the one hand, and thinking, on the other. Art involves making an alternative world and so makes it possible to judge this world. It thus makes science possible. But why this judging? This question leads us to life. Art is the distinctive feature of human life both in terms of doing and in terms of thinking. The mimetic animal is the rational animal. Nietzsche’s criticism of his own book at first seems simple: “It should have sung this ‘new soul’—and not spoken” (SC.3). He should have spoken as a poet or at least as a philologist. The problem was that there was a problem. That is, The Birth of Tragedy was born of need and not full- ness. Accordingly, it was not Greek; what it said was at odds with how it said it. Yet, that its form is thus at odds with its content makes it look sus- piciously like what it is describing—Greek tragedy. It is an account of the tragic death of tragedy—tragic because it grew out of the very nature of tragedy itself. Once accepted, however, this tragedy ceases to be tragic. Accordingly, Nietzsche criticizes The Birth of Tragedy for being too rational, and so for being not rational enough—lacking in “logical cleanness” (SC.3). Just as science is too rational, hence too unquestion- ing, hence too little rational, The Birth of Tragedy was too rational, hence too complacent, hence insufficiently rational. Nietzsche criticizes himself for appearing to be a misologist; he ought to have appeared to be a philologist—reveling in what logos makes possible rather than bewailing what it makes impossible. The issue of the book is the Dionysian, but there is something of the act of questioning as opposed to its results that is connected to the god, Dionysus. In asking “What is Dionysian?” (SC.4), Nietzsche asked after the essence of the chaotic; he turned a name, Dionysus, into a noun, 230 michael davis

“the dionysian.” One “who knows” gave an answer and therewith threatened to undermine what gives rise to questions. What Nietzsche did thus threatens to undermine what gave rise to questioning and inspired speech; he ought instead to have given an account of questioning that did not undermine questioning. This was why he was preoccupied with tragedy. Tragedy is a form of answer that as pessimism preserves the question. Yet, that Nietzsche acknowledges his failure shows how difficult this task is. Sixteen years after publishing The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche returns to his answer and expresses dissatisfaction. By now undermining the answer he once gave, he rejuvenates his original question and therewith gives new life to his previous answer. He thus attempts to restore to The Birth of Tragedy its tragic status. His is an attempt at self-criticism that he hopes will fail in so far as it succeeds, for only by keeping the question alive in the answer it generates can the answer remain an answer. The Birth of Tragedy both describes and itself exemplifies a pessimism of strength that provides metaphysical comfort in the face of the flux of being. This is why we can only learn through suffering; pathei mathos is for Nietzsche no less than for Aristotle the formula for human thought. In apparently thinking he had surpassed Aristotle, Nietzsche seems in his idiosyncratic way rather to have reconstructed from the decayed tradition of Platonic and Aristotelian “rationalism” Aristotle’s understanding of the dependence of philosophy on poetry. Their serious differences notwithstanding, for both Aristotle and Nietzsche human reason is a funny thing, in so far as its misuse seems to be the necessary condition for its use. Acknowledging this oddity of human nature may in one way or another be the mark of every genuine philosopher. 10 The Presence of Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy RICHARD COBB-STEVENS

In his Introduction to Phenomenology, Robert Sokolowski develops the thesis that phenomenology not only restores an essentially Aristotelian understanding of human intelligence and its access to truth but also interprets specifically modern contributions to philosophy in ways that get beyond a sterile confrontation between ancients and moderns. Phe- nomenology addresses positively issues that have arisen within modernity such as the role of subjectivity, the perspectival character of perception, the importance of historical circumstances, and the significance of the new sciences. As a result, Sokolowski contends, phenomenology often succeeds in integrating what is best in modern thought within a revitalized appreciation of the ancient understanding of reason.1 In the same spirit, I propose to focus on one example of Husserl’s modern reappropriation of an ancient theme: the notion of “form” and “the formal.” I shall first briefly summarize Aristotle’s description of how the intellect (nous) grasps forms and thematizes the formal dimension. I will next recount the story of how the discovery of algebra at the beginning of the modern era contributed to a radically new understanding of the formal dimension. Then I will describe in some detail Husserl’s “Aris- totelian” interpretation of the genealogy and the implications of the modern sense of the formal. Finally, I will conclude with some remarks on the broader import of Husserl’s synthesis of these ancient and modern themes. i. aristotle on form and the formal Ever since Frege’s decision to construe predicates as expressions of functions and subjects as expressions of “arguments” (i.e., as candidate-

1. Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 203.

231 232 richard cobb-stevens objects to be evaluated by a scan of the entire value-range governed by the notion “any object whatsoever”) logicians have become accustomed to think of particulars in a manner governed by the standard notation for the existential quantifier of the first-order predicate calculus (“there is an entity x, such that .l.l.”). On this interpretation, particulars tend first to be considered as mere “somethings” shorn of the specific features that make them what they are and only subsequently as “falling under” the concept-functions expressed by the predicates. It would never have occurred to Aristotle or to the ancients generally to regard particulars in this manner. For Aristotle, to be is not to be the value of a variable; to be is first and necessarily to share in some specific nature. Indeed, whenever he considers the individual as such, he always refers to the unity of the particular and its nature in the intuited whole. The nature or form of a thing is revealed to us by its specific “look” (eidos). The species-look is “what” (ti esti) we know when we know some particular thing (tode ti).2 Knowledge of a particular and its form always occurs as a unity and this prior unity is the condition for the subsequent distinction between the particular and what it is.3 Moreover, as David Lachterman points out, in Greek philosophy there seems to be no distinctively existential use of the verb “to be” having the sense conveyed in contemporary logic by an expression such as “x exists.” Aristotle does, of course, distinguish between ti estin questions (what is .l.l.l?) and ei estin questions (whether .l.l. is?), but the focus of the latter questions is always on identifying something as having the nature referred to by the predicate rather than on the existence of that something tout court.4 According to Aristotle, our speech acts give syntactical articulation to the mode of “belonging to” that obtains between things and their species-looks (eide).5 Species-looks are therefore not arbitrary conceptu- al constructs but natural kinds that are encountered in the everyday world. This does not mean, of course, that scientific knowledge is limited to the classification of things according to their characteristic physical shapes. Fully scientific definitions of physical things must also spell out the intelligible principles that account for their motion or growth.6 Moreover, since any particular may exhibit several different properties,

2. Metaphysics, 1028a 10–15; Categories, 1b 11–18. See J. A. Smith, “TODE TI in Aristo- tle,” Classical Review 35 (1921): 19. 3. Metaphysics, 1041a7–27. See Stanley Rosen, The Limits of Analysis (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 5–58. See also Deborah K. W. Modrak, Aristotle: The Power of Perception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 168. 4. David Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry: a Genealogy of Modernity (London: Rout- ledge, 1989), 93–98. See also Charles Kahn, “Why Existence Does Not Emerge as a Dis- tinct Concept in Greek Philosophy,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 58 (1972): 323–34. 5. On Interpretation, 16b 25–26. See Rosen, The Limits of Analysis, 59–62. 6. Physics, 184a 10–184b 14. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 233 we must sort out which properties belong to the object qua member of a species, and which others derive from some non-essential attribute (which might itself be taken as essential from another point of view).7 Discernment of essences is therefore the product of a work of discrimination that begins from the initial “looks” of things but then also requires an ordered scrutiny that brings into play sorting procedures, investigation of variants, and imaginative consideration of limit-cases. In addition to the species-looks of physical objects, there are also the species-looks of practical, ethical, and political situations. Aristotle stresses that ethics and politics deal with “ultimate particulars,” i.e., irre- ducibly unique human actions. Nevertheless, he describes the intelligence requisite in these domains as the power to discern what is essential in the matters under investigation. Practical wisdom requires not only the ability to make particular decisions based on a sense of the mean between extremes but also the kind of insight into what is essential in human affairs that comes from long experience in the practice of virtue. This is why Aristotle counsels the reader to attend to the sayings of prudent older persons because their experience has given them an “eye” for patterns in particular situations.8 Of course, concrete situations are never reducible to being mere instances of a rigidly fixed pattern. Yet there is usually enough of a pattern to suggest to persons of practical wisdom what is to be done.9 We may conclude that, for Aristo- tle, to be is always to exhibit a specific form, even though it may be difficult to discern that form with accuracy in the dense and complex domain of human actions. Jacob Klein contends that this ontological context profoundly influenced the Greek understanding of the status of mathematical entities. For Greek philosophers and mathematicians, the understanding of number (arithmos) always remained closely linked to the fundamental experience of counting off particular things of the same species or genus. Even when the items counted were pure or ideal units accessible only to thought (e.g., ideal line-segments), every number was regarded as a definite multiplicity of definite objects. Questions about the general applicability of numbers or geometrical theorems were resolved by consideration of the “generality” of the mathematical objects themselves, i.e., by an ontology of mathematical objects.10 Plato, for example, distinguished between three kinds of numbers:

7. Posterior Analytics, I.5, 74a 32 ff. 8. Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b 24–27; 1142a 23–1143b 16. 9. See Robert Sokolowski, Moral Action (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 158. 10. Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trans. Eva Brann (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968), 46–47, 122–23. 234 richard cobb-stevens sensible numbers (where the units are the sensible things themselves), mathematical numbers (where the units are “pure monads”), and eidetic numbers (where the units are eide). He argued that reflection on the experience of counting sensible things and performing basic calculations leads the soul to discover that its ability to carry out these operations requires the logically prior grasp of mathematical numbers and eidetic numbers. Plato seems to have regarded the realm of mathematical numbers as a field of indivisible, non-sensible instances (“many alike”), which our thinking (dianoia) really intends when it engages in mathematical operations on numbers. For example, mathematical numbers are what we are talking about when we relate numbers to other numbers by making assertions such as “2 + 2 = 4.” Although these pure mathematical monads are differentiated from sensible objects by being outside of change and time, they are similar to sensible objects in that they are definite instances of specific kinds. For example, in the assertion “2 + 2 = 4” we have two instances (or quasi-instances) of duality.11 Eidet- ic numbers account for the unity and specificity of numerical assem- blages (e.g., how it is that six things can be conceived of as a whole having the specific character of being six). Klein concludes that Plato’s account of number requires that each number must have a twofold de- terminateness. The determination of numbers as having definite objects is provided by the sensible things numbered or by the field of pure mathematical numbers, and the determination of numbers as definite numbers is provided by the eidetic numbers that unify and delimit numbers as such.12 Aristotle called into question the independent ontological status that Plato seems to have ascribed to eidetic numbers. According to Aristotle, the counting of sensible objects necessarily deploys a logically prior knowledge of pure numbers, but the “pure units” required are the product of an abstraction performed in thought which disregards the specific content of the things counted and takes them as mere items, as neutral monads. Moreover, the basic units are arbitrary rather than fixed in some unchangeable eidetic status. If we are counting weight, speed, distance, area, or length of line-segments, their being “so many” is governed by the respective conventional units of measurement which are constituted as indivisible only by being chosen as the measure of the count: “For number is a multitude measured by a unit.”13 Although Aristotle thus freed mathematics from the notion that units

11. Metaphysics, 987b 15–17. See J. N. Findlay, Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines (New York: Humanities Press, 1974), 55–57. 12. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 56–60. 13. Metaphysics, 1057a 3. See also Metaphysics, 1061a 29–1061b 18. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 235 of measurement are somehow absolute and ontologically dependent on an eidetic order, he nevertheless remained committed to the view that numbers are determinate multiplicities of determinate objects. This is why mathematicians of antiquity would only accept natural numbers as solutions in arithmetic. Moreover, as Stephen Gaukroger puts it, “it was only if a determinate number or figure could be computed or constructed that one could be said to have solved a problem.”14 In the case of geometry, Lachterman points out, the fixing of proportions was permitted only between objects belonging to the same genus or the same dimension, and it was only with great hesitancy that ratios themselves came to be thought of as magnitudes or quantities in their own right.15 For example, even though Aristotle observes that incommensurables may be said to be relative in some sense to number, he maintains firmly that number itself is always commensurate and that number cannot be predicated of something that is indefinite.16 Moreover, there is no sense in Aristotle that general mathematical propositions might express indeterminate magnitudes which are thought of as applicable to as yet indeterminate objects. Indeed, he insists that there can be no such a thing as a mathematical object that is “neither a number, nor points, nor a mag- nitude, nor a time.”17 Aristotle nevertheless hints at an intuitive process that culminates in the discernment of what he calls “higher universals” which apply to heterogeneous objects. He cites as an example the law governing the alternation of proportionals (If a:b::c:d, then a:c::b:d). We might be tempted, he observes, to suppose that this law applies to numbers qua numbers, or similarly to lines, solids, or temporal durations. However, Eudoxus has demonstrated that it applies to these diverse objects not by reason of their identifying properties but rather because they manifest a property for which there is no name, because no single name could denote that by reason of which numbers, lengths, durations, and solids are identical. Whereas Euclid claims that a ratio is “a sort of relation in respect of size between two magnitudes of the same kind,” Aristotle thus suggests that items that enter into proportional relationships need not belong to the same species or genus, or even to the same dimension.18

14. Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 173. 15. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 25–49. 16. Metaphysics, 1021a 4–10. 17. Metaphysics, 1077a 12–14. 18. Posterior Analytics, 74a 4–25; Euclid, Elements, ed. T. L. Heath (New York: Dover, 1926), Book V, deﬁnition 3. Lachterman suggests that Euclid’s adherence to the requirement of homogeneity testiﬁes to a mathematical “prudence” which subordinates the technical virtuosity of mathematical praxis to ends that are worthy of pursuit, whereas modern 236 richard cobb-stevens

Note, however, that heterogeneous items may be so related only because of a shared, though nameless, common property. The traditional interpretation of eidos still determines his understanding of these “higher universals.” The role played by constructions in Greek geometry gives further evidence of the commitment of the ancients to the logically prior status of geometrical eide and of the constraints that these stable geometrical shapes place upon the operations permitted to the geometer. David Lachterman calls attention to the fact that, with few exceptions, Euclid uses verbs in the perfect passive imperative when giving instructions for geometric constructions. Bisecting a line-segment at a point is expressed as “let it have been cut in two;” describing a square on a line is “let it have been described on AB.” This usage suggests that the relevant operation has always already been anonymously executed prior to the present moment of dialogue between teacher and student.19 Lachter- man also points out that the primary emphasis in the Elements is always on “finding or discovering” (heurein), even in those propositions that exhibit various relations (including incommensurable relations) among line-segments. When the term “producing” (poiein) is used, it signifies the action of a line or figure in producing an area falling into a previously determined class.20 We may conclude with Klein and Lachterman that Greek mathematicians worked within a context in which the relationship between forms (eide) and their instances governs the understanding of the nature of mathematical objects and sets limits to the operations permitted to the mathematician. Even the most general propositions (e.g., axioms, common notions, theorems concerning proportions) refer not to indeterminate objects but rather to a range of determinate types of objects that share common features. For the Greeks, to be is always to exhibit a determinate nature.21 ii. algebra: the key to the modern understanding of form The modern understanding of number is determined more by reflection on the generality of mathematical method than by reflection either on the experience of counting items of the same kind or on the onto- mathematicians tend to determine ends in function of the accessibility of means, see idem, The Ethics of Geometry, 32. 19. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 65–67. 20. Ibid., 59. 21. Ibid., 93–97. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 237 logical status of numbers. As Klein puts it, modern mathematics understands its objects “by reflecting on the way in which these objects become accessible through a general method.”22 The key to this method is a symbolic procedure (i.e., algebra), which uses signs not as substitutes for determinate objects or as illustrations of determinate objects, but as symbols which express indeterminate magnitudes and define the conditions for the possibility of their subsequent determinacy. Klein summarizes the philosophical situation introduced by this radical transformation of the ancient concept of arithmos in this evocative phrase: “From now on the fundamental ontological science of the ancients is replaced by a symbolic discipline whose ontological presuppositions are left unclarified.”23 Klein contends, moreover, that the reinterpretation of the nature of number brought about by Vieta and Descartes is the key to understanding the principal differences not only between ancient and modern mathematics but also between ancient and modern philosophy. Vieta initiated this radical transformation of the ancient concept of number by reinterpreting what Diophantus of Alexandria had called a procedure for solutions “in the indeterminate form,” i.e., solutions that leave their objects indeterminate. Diophantus described this procedure as follows: “The procedure [of finding the resolution] in the indeterminate solution is such that, of however many monads someone might wish the unknown to be, when he sets the indeterminate number in the [constructed] hypothetical expression, the problem is [at once] completed.”24 Diophantus makes it clear, however, that the introduction (by its sign) of an unknown into the solution and the subsequent manipula- tion of the unknown by mathematical operations are merely provisional steps. The whole point of his method is eventually to specify a determinate number of monads and thus complete the solution of the problem. Vieta’s stroke of genius, according to Klein, was to give priority to the process of calculation ending “in the indeterminate” rather than to the last step of finding a determinate solution. He thus takes the indeterminate solution as a matrix that permits a multitude of determinate solutions “on the basis of numbers assumed at will.”25 This move is what made Vieta the inventor of the algebraic mode of thinking.

22. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 123. 23. Ibid., 184. 24. Diophantus, Arithmetica, ed. Claude Bachet de Mézeriac (Paris, 1621), 278, 10–12. See also 232, 6–8. “For to seek the solution of a problem indeterminately means that a hypothetical expression must be constructed such that, of whatever size someone wishes the unknown to be, when he [chooses the unkown indeterminate number] and sets it in the hypothetical expression, the conditions of the problem [as formulated in the expression] are preserved.” The translations are taken from Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 134. 25. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 163. 238 richard cobb-stevens

This mode of thinking introduced a radically new understanding of the eide of numbers. Diophantus still took for granted the traditional interpretation of such eide as the defining properties of numbers. Assum- ing that the “general method” governing Diophantine analysis must be applicable both to arithmetic and geometric procedures, Vieta developed a procedure for reckoning that deploys not numbers (logistice nu- merosa) but species (logistice speciosa). He refers to species (the Latin expression for eide), perhaps ironically, as the “forms of things” (formae rerum), and then interprets them as “general magnitudes” which are indifferently applicable to numbers and geometrical line-segments within a general theory of proportions.26 In the new logistice speciosa, every species is designated by a letter (vowels being assigned to the unknown magnitudes and consonants to the known magnitudes). This makes possible the conversion of proportions into equations. For Vieta, “a proportion can be called the composition of an equation; an equation, the resolution of a proportion.”27 The conversion of a proportion into an equation permits its resolution by setting forth its component terms in such a way that the unknown term may be made equivalent to the known terms. Vieta describes this procedure as the “zetetic” (seeking) art, or the science of “right finding” (bene inveniendi).28 Vieta’s letter-signs directly designate general magnitudes and only indirectly or mediately designate determinate magnitudes or units. Klein remarks that the concept of species thus “undergoes a universalizing extension while preserving its tie to the realm of numbers.”29 He also observes that Vieta treats proportions, which may include both known and unknown magnitudes, as quantities in their own right thus making them subject to arithmetical operations such as multiplication and division. He in effect transforms eidetic species into objects.30 Borrowing the language of the Schools, Klein concludes that Vieta’s letter-sign designates the intentional correlate of a “second intention” (i.e., the eidos or species “number-in-general”) and transforms it into the object of a “first intention.” In short, he treats what would have been traditionally regarded as a concept grasped in actu exercito as though it were a thing directly apprehended.31 Klein observes that the general theory of proportions which Proclus

26. François Viète, “Introduction to the Analytic Art,” in Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 328. 27. Ibid., 324. 28. Ibid., 321. See also 166, 232. 29. Ibid., 166. 30. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 162–63. 31. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 175. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 239 had already described as the highest mathematical discipline becomes under the influence of Vieta’s algebraic interpretation: “the fundamental discipline not only of mathematics but of the system of human knowledge in general.”32 Barocius’s translation of the works of Proclus into Latin (1560) rendered “the highest mathematical discipline” as “mathesis universalis” and in one instance referred to it enigmatically in the margin as “scientia divina.” Descartes and subsequent thinkers generally used the term “mathesis universalis” to refer to a universal science based on the algebraic method.33 To have discovered the method of this science, they thought, was to have discovered how to discover anything. The zetetic art is a finding of correct finding. The very first problems dealt with in Descartes’ Geometry show clearly the presence of this radically new mode of thought. The constructions and operations of ancient geometry had been generally subject to the limits of our ability to imagine relationships within three-dimensional space. Consider, for example, the case of the multiplication of line-segments. Multiplication of two lines was represented as a rectangle and multiplication of three lines as a solid figure. Multiplication thus involved a dimensional change but the limits of multiplication were determined by the number of imaginable dimensions. By contrast, Descartes maintains from the outset that the basic operations of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, taking a root, raising to a power) may indeed be given geometrical representation, but he also demonstrates that neither arithmetic nor geometry are subject to limita- tions set by our ability to imagine spatial dimensions. After first selecting some arbitrary line segment as the unit to which all other line segments are referred, he interprets the multiplication of two straight lines as giving rise to a third straight line rather than a rectangle. He also represents the root, the square, the cube, the biquadratic, etc. as lines all belonging to the same dimension.34 Moreover, the sides of triangles may represent relationships between indeterminate magnitudes whose determinate applications might relate to objects belonging to entirely different categories. In the Regulae, Descartes makes a decisive break with the classical interpretation of dimensionality, noting that by “dimension” he understands any respect in which something is measurable. For example, weight, velocity, and time are just as truly dimensions as are length, breadth, and depth. He adds that “the same figures may serve to

32. Jacob Klein, “Phenomenology and Science,” in Philosophical Essays in Memory of Ed- mund Husserl, ed. Marvin Farber (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 159. 33. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 181–82. 34. Descartes, The Geometry, trans. D. Smith and M. Latham (New York: Dover, 1954), 2–120. See Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography, 173–74. 240 richard cobb-stevens represent sometimes continuous magnitudes, and sometime multiplicities or numbers.”35 Let us reflect for a moment on the interplay between intellect and imagination required by Descartes’ new interpretation of geometrical constructions. Aristotle had pointed out that the geometer distinguishes between the determinate figures and magnitudes of particular mathematical diagrams and the eidetic figures and relationships that they are intended to illustrate. The intellect (nous) uses a drawn or imagined determinate triangle to serve as a representative of an indeterminate number of variations in which triangularity or some essential property of triangularity may be instantiated.36 Descartes’ constructions are intended as indeterminate in a very different sense, for they no longer directly refer to geometrical figures at all. Descartes invites the reader to reinter- pret traditional geometrical figures by taking them no longer as standing for idealized observable spatial configurations but rather for relations between any magnitudes whatsoever. He observes that intima- tions of this more comprehensive mathematics may be found in the methods discreetly employed by Pappus and Diophantus and in the works of “gifted contemporaries” who have tried to revive these methods under the rubric of “algebra.” However, he lays claim to having more decisively set aside the principles of dimensionality and homogeneity which prevented the ancients from formulating a general mathematical science whose propositions would apply indifferently to any magnitudes whatsoever: “I came to see that the exclusive concern of mathematics is with questions of order and measure and that it is irrele- vant whether the measure in question involves numbers, shapes, stars, sounds, or any object whatsoever.”37 In short, we may express formally the ratios between things without taking into account their specific natures. The “principal secret” of his method, Descartes adds, is that it reveals that all things can be arranged serially in groups “not in so far as they belong to a common ontological genus but in so far as some things can be known on the basis of other things.”38 It seems clear that Descartes’ goal was not only to provide a more effective method for solving problems but also to supplant the entire ontological framework within which ancient mathematics flourished. But

35. René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of Mind, in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1984), 62–65. 36. De Memoria et Reminiscentia, 450a 1–9. 37. Descartes, Rules for the Direction of Mind, in Works, vol. 1, 19. See Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 167–74. 38. Descartes, Rules for the Direction of Mind, in Works, vol. 1, 21. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 241 what precisely are the ontological implications of the algebraic mode of thinking? We may recall that Klein says that only “the fundamental ontological science of the ancients is replaced by a symbolic discipline whose ontological presuppositions are left unclarified.”39 Jean-Luc Marion also refers to the tacit ontology (“une ontologie grise”) of Descartes’ geometry noting that Aristotle is the unnamed interlocutor to whom each of the Regulae is addressed.40 Lachterman suggests that the key to Descartes’ implicit ontology is interpretation of a mathematical essence (e.g., his general equation for any conic section) as a formula for the production of forms rather than a form in the Euclidean or Aristotelian senses. He adds that Descartes clearly thought that freedom from servitude to intuited forms would give to the geometer greater potential for mastery over nature.41 But each of these commentators seem to take it for granted that there is no possibility of a philosophical rapprochement between ancient ontology and the ontology implied by the algebraic mode of thinking. In what follows, I propose to present some suggestions of how Husserl’s clarification of the ontological implications of algebraic thinking might contribute to such a rapprochement. iii. husserl’s “aristotelian” interpretation of formalization Husserl’s description of the relationship between perceptual discriminations and categorial articulations is remarkably similar to Aristotle’s description of the relationship between particulars and their species- looks.42 Moreover, Husserl’s description of how we discern essences is also remarkably close to Aristotle’s account of how we isolate invariant traits of objects or situations. Like Aristotle, he holds that discernment of essences requires an ordered series of imaginative variations in which we bracket this or that feature of an object or situation until finally we grasp those invariant features without which the object or situation in question would cease to be what it is.43 Like Aristotle, he also insists that essences should be regarded as incomplete modes of being even after they are rendered thematic and named as subjects of predication. An

39. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought, 184. 40. Jean-Luc Marion, Sur l’ontologie grise de Descartes, 2d ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1993), 185–90. 41. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 197–200. 42. Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), vi, #40. See Richard Cobb-Stevens, “Being and Categorial Intuition,” Review of Metaphysics 44 (1990): 50–55. 43. Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Amer- icks (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), #82. 242 richard cobb-stevens essence is not a whole unto itself or a separable part of a thing or situation; an essence always remains a “moment” within the whole compris- ing a “this” and its “what.”44 But when Husserl describes the manner in which the categories corresponding to the algebraic mode of thinking (“indeterminate magnitudes” or “any object whatsoever”) are derived from ordinary experience, he introduces a distinction not found in Aristotle: the distinction between generalization and formalization. Generalization progresses in an ordered series from some specific content, to a broader generic content, and then to an even more comprehensive generic content (e.g., from human being, to animal, to living being). Formalization is a one- step procedure, which from the outset brackets all determinate content and thus yields a strictly formal structure, which can apply to any content whatsoever. However detached such formal structures may be from any specific contents, they nevertheless always remain incomplete without the complement of some content. Hence, they too are dependent moments rather than independent pieces.45 Husserl cites as an example of formalization the transformation of arithmetic and geometry introduced by the invention of algebra. He observes that: “the genuine discovery of the formal was first made, at the beginning of the modern age, by way of Vieta’s establishment of algebra.l.l.l.”46 J. Philip Miller offers the following helpful example of the difference between the formalism that occurs in a generalized arithmetic and the more radical sense of the formal first introduced by Vi- eta’s algebraic logistic. It is true, Miller notes, that when we use letters to denote numbers-in-general, we express more general truths than what we express in propositions about specific numbers. For example, instead of asserting that “7 + 5 = 5 + 7,” we might make the more general assertion: “a + b = b + a.” However, this use of algebraic symbols to stand for “any numbers whatsoever” brings about only a generalization of specifically numerical propositions. Vieta’s interpretation of the role of letter-signs in his general theory of proportions, as referring indifferently to numbers or line-segments, introduces a quite different sort of for- mality. Vieta in effect liberated the logical form common to arithmetic and geometry from their limited domains. He then retained the propositions already established within those domains while ceasing to intend

44. Husserl, Logical Investigations, ii, #36–39. 45. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Book I, trans. Frederick Kersten (The Hague: Nijhoff, l982), #13; Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1969), appendix I, #3 and 7. 46. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #26. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 243 the domains to which the propositions originally referred.47 Husserl concludes that Vieta’s algebraic technique liberated arithmetical thinking from the concept of number, in such a way that “numbers and magnitudes no longer count as basic concepts but merely as chance objects of application.”48 It follows that algebra is formal in a more radical sense than the general mathematical science evoked by Aristotle’s comment that the law of alternation of proportionals might be extended to heterogeneous objects by reason of a nameless property in which they share. Vieta no longer appealed to any such property common to classes of objects. Miller points out that this is because the formalization achieved by the algebraic mode of thinking focuses on what is common to mathematical theories rather than the objects of these theories.49 This distinction between theories and objects is closely linked with two important distinctions made by Husserl in Formal and Transcendental Logic: the distinction between apophantic and ontological domains, and a corresponding distinction between formal apophantics and formal ontology. Concepts and judgments belong to the apophantic domain; objects and facts belong to the ontological domain. Traditional formal logic and pure mathematics (branches of formal apophantics) are sciences that consider the formal structures of the apophantic domain. Formal ontology considers the formal structures that govern relationships between any objects whatsoever.50 The apophantic and ontological domains are not completely separable and independent wholes. They are differentiated by a shift in intentionality. To turn away from the ontological realm towards the apophantic realm, we must adopt a reﬂec- tive stance that considers articulated facts as propositions, i.e., as mere suppositions. This shift in focus occurs quite naturally, whenever we explicitly frame a statement as a hypothesis, or whenever some claim that we have made about the world is challenged by an interlocutor. Proposi- tions are simply facts taken as supposed.51 The shift to the apophantic realm in every day life and in science is motivated by a critical interest, a concern for truth. We shift back and forth between propositions and

47. J. Philip Miller, Numbers in Presence and Absence: A Study of Husserl’s Philosophy of Math- ematics (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982), 111–13. 48. Husserl, Logical Investigations, Prolegomena, #54. See also Formal and Transcendental Logic, #26a. 49. Miller, Numbers in Presence and Absence, 112–13. 50. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #24–25, 27b. 51. Husserl, Logical Investigations, prolegomena, #67; Formal and Transcendental Logic, #41–45. Sokolowski observes that a fact is therefore an identity within the manifold com- prised of three states. The selfsame fact may be intended in its absence, registered in its presence, and considered as a supposition (i.e., as a proposition). Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations: How Words Present Things (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 52. 244 richard cobb-stevens facts in order to get at the facts, to verify the truth of every day claims and scientific hypotheses. The formal structures and apophantic and ontological realms are similarly correlative. For example, the apophantic sciences of formal logic and geometry were traditionally developed with an eye to their correlative formal structures within the ontological domain. Pure mathematics, however, gradually withdrew its interest in the ontological domain. Modern mathematical analysis culminated, according to Husserl, in the development of an exclusively apophantic science devoted to the “theory of the possible forms of theory” and their correlative “manifolds” (Mannigfaltigkeiten). Husserl defines a theory as an ordered deductive series of propositions. Formalization of such a series yields what he calls a theory form. Manifolds are groups of objects whose status is determined exclusively by the fact of their being governed by such theory forms. The apophantic focus of pure mathematics brackets all concern about the ontological status of such manifolds. This is why mathematicians may legitimately talk about manifolds without raising ontological questions about their actuality or even their possibility: “the mathematician as such .l.l. does not need to presuppose possible multiplicities, in the sense of multiplicities that might exist concretely .l.l. he can frame his concepts in such a manner that their extension does not at all involve the assumption of such possibilities.”52 Husserl concludes that it is inappropriate to describe the object regions of non-Euclidean geometries as spaces, for Riemann and his successors were not talking about actual or possible ontological regions, but rather about manifolds defined exclusively as the correlates of theory forms. Husserl adds that even Euclidean geometry may be reduced by formalization to a theory form. It would then cease to be a theory of intuited world space, for its object region would be determined uniquely by the formalized Euclid- ean deductive discipline.53 Husserl also points out that the ease with which we may shift back and forth between the apophantic focus and the ontological focus has provoked considerable confusion particularly among logicians and philosophers unaccustomed to paying attention to the intentional shifts requisite for the appearance of various fields in inquiry. For example, modern mathematical logicians constantly blur the differences between pure mathematics, formal logic, and formal ontology. Moreover the very elegance and facility of the algebraic mode of thinking that pre- dominate in modern logic have contributed to a forgetfulness of the

52. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #51. 53. Ibid., #40. See Miller, Numbers in Presence and Absence, 113–20. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 245 original thinking that make possible its accomplishments. Algebra rap- idly becomes a technique that may be employed efficaciously without any understanding of its meaning. This is why the work of modern logicians leads so often to fundamentally obscure paradoxes and inconsis- tencies.54 There is no way, for example, to make the transition from the purely apophantic notion of a value-range governed by a function (a notion that is exclusively defined by the theory form of Frege’s logic) to the ontological notion of a family of things that share the same property, without giving an account of how this theory form is made possible by a series of formalizations requiring complex intentional shifts.55 From all of this, we may infer that Husserl thought that both Vieta and Descartes failed to grasp the importance of the intentional shifts requisite for moving from the apophantic focus proper to pure mathematics to the ontological focus proper to physical applications of that mathematics. Descartes’ allusions to the potential for mastery of nature provided by his new geometrical method clearly suggest such a confusion concerning the relationship between apophantic and ontological realms. He seems to hesitate between two interpretations that Miller aptly refers to as “geometry as manifold theory” and “geometry as ontology.”56 On the one hand, his remarks in the Regulae and his practice in the Geometry suggest that his intention was to free his technique from all dependence on intuited actuality. The key to his method is the move from generalization to formalization, which occurs at each step in his proofs. As Lachterman points out, Descartes no longer really takes line- segments literally as linear magnitudes, for he implicitly considers them as symbols for terms “in a sequence of ratios among any magnitudes whatever.”57 He thus constantly takes each component of a construction as a symbolic representation of a structure of intelligibility for which, as Aristotle put it, there can be no name. All of this suggests that Descartes’ general formulae might best be regarded philosophically as examples of what Husserl meant by a theory form that governs a manifold. On the other hand, Descartes never completely brackets the ontological status of the lines, angles, and figures talked about in his proofs. For example, he never clearly defines the mode of “existence” proper to the determinate conic sections produced by evaluation of the bound variables in his general equation for conic sections.58 He thus seems to want to have it

54. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #23b. 55. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #11, #23b; #52–54. See Sokolowski, Husserlian Meditations, 271–89. 56. See Miller, Numbers in Presence and Absence, 133. n. 43. 57. Lachterman, The Ethics of Geometry, 168. 58. Ibid., 199–200. 246 richard cobb-stevens both ways. He implicitly rejects the traditional ontological interpretation of geometry, but he also suggests that his method yields ontological results. Husserl’s distinction between apophantic manifolds and ontological objects highlights the inconsistency of these two claims. Although a manifold theory may sometimes have genuine applications within the ontological domain, as was the case for Riemann’s geometry, the transition from apophantic to ontological domains does not occur by fiat. The evidence requisite in manifold theory differs in kind from the evidence needed for ontological claims. Like carefully framed judgments, theorems in manifold theory must be coherently articulated and their proofs must be carried out with comprehension in each step. However, the evidence for the theorems is based not upon intuitions into the natures of their supposed objects, but upon a distinct grasp of the meanings of the governing axioms.59 Ontological claims, on the other hand, are always founded on the kind of evidence yielded by intuitions of things and their intelligible structures. When apparently pure mathematical models pay off in eventual physical applications, this, not because of our mathematical virtuosity, gives us mastery over nature. It is because apophantic structures, however formalized, are intimately correlated with and ultimately derived from the domain of objects and facts. As William James once put it, if we trace “the trunk line of meaning” back far enough, it always leads us to the pre-scientific world of perceptual discriminations.60 Husserl’s distinctions may seem at first to be bewildering in their complexity but they are in fact both precise and elegant. Like Aristotle’s distinctions, they make it possible for things to manifest themselves more clearly. In general they complement rather than merely repeat Aristotelian themes. This is because they are for the most part the product of critical dialogue with the distinctly modern sense of subjectivity. In response to the problems and pseudo-problems introduced by modern metaphor for mind as subjective enclosure, phenomenology has become particularly attuned to attitudinal shifts in our intentional life that had remained blurred or unnoticed in ancient philosophy—for example, the importance of empty intentionality, the difference between apophantic and ontological attitudes, and the difference between propositional and philosophical reflection. Phenomenology has taught us to pay close attention to the often complex shifts in intentional focus that

59. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, #16–22. See Miller, Numbers in Presence and Absence, 118. 60. William James, The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green, 1901), 140. Aristotelian Nous in Husserl’s Philosophy 247 are correlated with the emergence of many new fields of scientific inquiry that were made possible by the scientific revolution at the beginning of the modern era. Phenomenology is not motivated by nostalgia for ancient certainties; it is motivated by the same optimistic conviction that guided the emergence of the philosophic spirit in Greece, the conviction that our minds are oriented toward progress in truth. This guid- ing conviction is what Husserl called “the idea of an infinite task.”61

61. Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), appendix I, 286. 11 Phronesis or Ontology Aristotle and Heidegger STANLEY ROSEN

The inﬂuence of Aristotle’s practical philosophy on Heidegger’s existential ontology has been much discussed by specialists, among whom I mention Franco Volpi, Jacques Taminiaux, Theodore Kisiel, and primus inter pares, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Many years before these works were published, those who, like my own teacher Leo Strauss, had attended Heidegger’s lectures in Marburg, spoke of a seminar on Aristotle’s Rhetoric that contained an ontology of the human passions.1 So far as I am aware, this seminar was never published. But we now possess, in addition to the master text, Sein und Zeit, Heidegger’s remarkable lectures of 1924/25 on Plato’s Sophist.2 The ﬁrst 225 pages of the published text are devoted to Aristotle, and in particular to the treatment of the intellectual faculties in Nicomachean Ethics Book VI as well as in related texts from other works. The focus of this section of Heidegger’s lectures is on practical intelligence, and the main topic is phronesis. The entire analysis culminates in Heidegger’s account of why sophia or theoria is higher for Aristotle than phronesis or praxis. There seems to be widespread agreement that Heidegger appropri- ates Aristotle’s practical philosophy as part of an attempt to overcome Husserl’s exclusive emphasis on theory.3 Kisiel goes so far as to say that in the1924/25 lectures, Heidegger “will time and again look for ways, both in and out of the Aristotelian opus, in which phronetic insight as-

* This essay has appeared with the title “Kant and Heidegger: Transcendental Alterna- tives to Aristotle,” in Stanley Rosen’s volume The Elusiveness of the Ordinary: Studies in the Possibility of Philosophy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 94–134. 1. See Franco Volpi, Heidegger e Aristotele (Padua: Daphne Editrice, 1984), 26. 2. Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1997). 3. Volpi, Heidegger e Aristotele, 91–94; Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fun- damental Ontology, ed. and trans. Michael Gendre (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), xx.

248 Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 249 serts its potential superiority over contemplative wisdom.”4 In what follows, I take my bearings by Heidegger’s continuous attempt in the Sophist lectures to transform phronesis into a crucial element in the ontology of human existence. For my part, I regard this attempt as a mistake. It leads to a distortion in Heidegger’s often penetrating account of the Aristotelian doctrine. But even more important, the consequences for ethics of the ontological temptation are disastrous. Here as elsewhere, Aristotle saw things more clearly than Heidegger. For introductory purposes, we can say that the task of phronesis in Aristotle is to calculate the means to the fulfillment of the ends of practice. Prudence does not calculate about the ends; these are given by nous or intellectual intuition. The aforementioned calculations culminate in the restatement of an end in the form of a particular command, a command that accommodates the end to the particular circumstances under deliberation. The calculations will not be good unless the calcula- tor is good; thus prudence is not like theoretical calculation, say, in mathematics, nor is it like the pure contemplation of the eternal beings, which is neither good nor evil since it has no practical consequences. In short, prudence is connected to ethics and politics, and it is dependent upon the perception of ends as well as the calculative capacity to engage in sound deliberations that culminate in the right choice. This little sketch of prudence is based upon Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, and in particular Chapter 6, 1144 a–b. To it I add a crucial point that runs throughout the entire work. Prudence, which is instrumental to virtuous activity, is a means to the achievement of the highest human good: happiness. As Book X makes explicit, but as was already indicated in Book I, the happiness derived from ethical virtue or praxis is not the most perfect that is available to humankind. This rank is reserved for the happiness or blessedness (eudaimonia) of the life of theoretical contemplation. I pause for an interpretive comment. Aristotle separates practice from both theory and production, thereby introducing a radical modifi- cation into the Platonic classification of the arts and sciences. I note in passing that it would be possible to argue that for Plato, “demotic” virtue (the artifact of philosophical demiurgy, as it is called in the Republic VI 504d 4–9) is intrinsically unsatisfactory, not simply for philosophers but for all citizens, and that happiness or blessedness is available, if at all, only to the philosopher by way of a pure intellectual vision of the hyper- uranian beings or Ideas. This view, which is implicit in the Socratic the-

4. Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley, Calif.: Univer- sity of California Press, 1993), 303. 250 stanley rosen sis that virtue is knowledge, is modified as follows by Aristotle. Strictly speaking, the thesis is not wrong (see for example Nicomachean Ethics VII.3, 1147b 12–19). But there are two kinds of knowledge. Theoretical knowledge provides us with the highest form of happiness, but theoretical activity as such has nothing to do with ethical virtue. Its excellence is quite distinct from the human good as embodied in noble and just deeds. The second form of knowledge is neither “scientific” nor “theoretical” in the strict sense of the terms. But it is knowledge of how to adapt the ends into a correct command of the calculative reason concerning the correct act to perform under the relevant circumstances of the situation about which we deliberate now. This type of knowledge is closely connected to sense perception, both as a perception of the particular and as concerned with pleasure and pain. Let me make a clarifying remark about this second kind of knowledge. I am not confusing the act of judgment itself with an epistemic process. But the act of judgment, in which is expressed the characteristic skill of phronesis, is itself dependent upon practical knowledge of human affairs. As Aristotle says over and over again, phronesis is assisted by and is in accord with orthos logos. The significance of this point can be expressed as follows. Aristotle’s distinction of practice from both theory and production, together with his contention that man is by nature the political animal, connects nature with rationality in a way that is separate from philosophy and episteme in the purest sense of the term. The correctness of the logos of praxis is not dependent upon the theoretical vision of the philosopher. Plato of course refers to human nature and to the nature of the city, but he never says that man is by nature a political animal. That is, he never attributes to the non-philosopher the possibility of achieving a practical perfection. This is possible, if at all, only through the philosopher-king. The situation in Aristotle is complex but nevertheless distinguishable from that in Plato. There are for Aristotle two kinds of happiness, theoretical and practical. In principle, happiness through ethical virtue is accessible to a large number of persons, as theoretical happiness is not. “It would seem to be common to many [polukoinon]. For it is capable of belonging by some kind of learning and care to all those who have not been incapacitated with respect to [ethical] virtue” (Nicomachean Ethics I.9, 1099b 18–20). One might support this statement by noting that eudaimonia is by nature the highest human good; if it were extremely rare or unusually difficult to attain, this would suggest that nature had worked in vain. Unfortunately, Aristotle emphasizes regularly the rareness and difficulty of attaining prudence and so to the status of the spoudaios or perfectly virtuous gentleman (e.g. II.9, 1109a 28). This is Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 251 also evident from the nature of phronesis or practical intelligence, which never makes a mistake and is a requirement for being virtuous. It is perhaps even more evident from the virtue of megalopsuchia or greatness of soul, which Aristotle describes as the ornament (kosmos) of the ethical virtues; “it makes them greater and cannot be achieved without them. It is therefore hard to be truly great-souled” (IV.3, 1124a 1 ff.). To this I add that since one cannot be spoudaios or a perfect kalos kagathos unless one possesses all the virtues, such a person is extremely rare. Everything therefore depends upon the degree to which one can approximate to the paradigm and still be virtuous in Aristotle’s sense. Suffice it to say that the extent of the possibility of practical happiness seems to be threatened. But Aristotle’s general approach remains dedicated to the distinction between theory and practice, and his analysis of practice remains wedded to a grasp of everyday or pre-theoretical life. In sum: happiness is accessible, to one degree or another, to human beings through ethical virtue, and so in effect apart from all theoretical reflection. Heidegger is more like Plato than Aristotle to the extent that he transforms practice into ontology. At least in the period culminating in Sein und Zeit,5 Heidegger is of course unlike the actual Plato, and in fact very much like the Plato he criticizes, in advocating a quasi-theory that is practico-productive. I mean by this expression that in SZ, the acts of illumination and uncovering are also acts by which Dasein produces from within its own concern (Sorge) for itself (Jemeinigkeit) the structure of the world. The transformation of phronesis into fundamental ontology is based upon the transformation of Aristotelian ethical virtue into authenticity and happiness into anxiety in the face of death. On the basis of this simple summary, we are now ready to cite Hei- degger’s famous, indeed notorious, definition of phronesis in the 1924/25 lectures. The general context is a discussion of phronesis as a- letheuin, that is, a mode of uncovering something that is hidden by pleasure or pain. This type of uncovering is not experimental, like techne, nor can it be forgotten, like doksa and mathesis, because it is always new (i.e. appropriate to the circumstances, not a universal rule). Heidegger says that phronesis is no more nor less than “den Ernst der bestimmten Entscheidung,” “the seriousness of determinate decision” (54). I call your attention to the word Ernst, which could of course be justified as a translation of spoudaios, “serious” or “good,” a term that Aristotle uses with great frequency. Entscheidung reminds us of Entschlossenheit. These two terms will take on greater importance for us in a moment. In the continuation of the passage just quoted, Heidegger is inter-

5. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 7th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993), hereafter SZ. 252 stanley rosen preting Aristotle’s statement that whereas we can forget a piece of knowledge, phronesis is a capacity to arrive each time at something new, namely, the correct logos for the current situation. Whereas knowledge can be forgotten, phronesis cannot. Aristotle does not mean by this simply that we cannot forget our intellectual faculties, for this point would apply to all forms of cognitive activity. Heidegger is right to concentrate upon the impossibility of forgetting the content of the exercise of phronesis. Heidegger says: The ability to forget is a specific possibility of aletheuein which has the character of theorein. For the heksis meta logou is a habit of aletheuein, into which Dasein expressly brings itself. The situation with phronesis is different. This shows itself in the fact that I can experience, observe, learn what is already experienced, observed, learned, whereas phronesis is each time new. This interpretation is misleading because it gives the impression that theoretical truth is associated with logos as phronesis is not. Equally important, Heidegger over-interprets Aristotle’s very succinct remark about the novelty of phronesis. What is new is the decision with respect to the immediately desirable course of action. But this decision is itself dependent upon the general knowledge of human nature, and so of human affairs. This is surely why Aristotle regularly says that phronesis acts in accord with the “correct logos” (VI.1, 1138b 24; VI.5, 1140b 4–6; VI.6, 1144b 21–23 et passim). After all, phronesis is the virtue of the logistical, that is, the calculative or deliberative part of the soul. It is not like the logistical skills of the mathematician, who uses them to arrive at the correct answer to a technical problem. Prudential deliberation must establish the good in each case, and the ability to do this is not purely formal or empty of knowledge about life. Phronesis is no more logos than virtues are principles in the Socratic sense of forms of knowledge. But phronesis is based upon logos, just as the virtues or principles are both meta logou, that is, function with the aid of logos, and kata ton orthon logon, in accord with correct reason (Nicomachean Ethics VII.1, 1145a 18–30). Heidegger, on the other hand, tries to weaken the significance of logos in these passages by identifying it with “discussion [Durchsprechen], not reason.” He is right to interpret orthos here as orthotes boules (correctness of counsel), but neither this nor the correct discussion of a practical issue requiring a judgment can exist apart from reason. To continue with the translation from Heidegger, “There is thus with respect to phronesis no lethe.l.l.l. In phronesis, there is no Verfallens- möglichkeit des Vergessens.” I interrupt for a comment. In SZ, Verfallen refers to the “fallenness” or “dissipation” by which Dasein turns away from itself and is marked by “the three dynamical characters of temptation, tranquilization, and self-alienation [Versuchung, Beruhung, and Ent- Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 253 fremdung],” as Kisiel glosses SZ (177–78).6 In other words, we see in 1924–25 the tendency to elevate phronesis from a moral status to the ontological level of authenticity. This also separates it from the mode of uncovering typical of theoretical reason. “Indeed, the explanation that Aristotle gives here [i.e. the fact that phronesis does not forget because it is always new] is very concise. But it is nevertheless evident from the context that one does not go too far in the interpretation if one says that Aristotle has here bumped into das Phänomen des Gewissens [the phenomenon of conscience]. Phronesis is nothing other than conscience thrust into movement, which makes activity transparent. One cannot forget the conscience. One can, however, allow what conscience uncovers to be blocked and rendered ineffective through pleasure and pain, through passions. Conscience announces itself always anew” and so forth (56). Stated concisely: Heidegger interprets phronesis as the silent call of conscience, hence as something aneu logou rather than in accord with ho orthos logos, through which Dasein calls to itself to return from fallenness to an authentic resolution (Entschlossenheit) in the face of Angst vor dem Tode. This Angst opens up all possibilities for it, and in that way it delin- eates the whole Dasein (SZ 264). This corresponds, incidentally, to Aris- totle’s statement that phronesis is not about this or that aspect of human activity, but about the whole of life. Phronesis functions in accord with the correct logos as well as the intellectual intuition of the end in order to arrive at the recommendation that will contribute in this particular case to the agent’s goodness, and hence to his happiness. Heidegger’s conscience, on the other hand, “reveals itself as the call of care: the caller is Dasein, anxious within thrownness [already-being-in] with respect to its possibilities for being” (SZ 277). And again: “the fact of Gewissensangst is a phenomenal verification for the fact that Dasein is itself brought, in the understanding of the call, before uneasiness [Un- heimlichkeit]. Das Gewissenhabenwollen becomes readiness for anxiety” (296). As is so often the case in Heidegger’s interpretations of Plato, Aristo- tle, Kant, and Nietzsche (to restrict ourselves to these), it is often unclear whether he is refuting his predecessors or assimilating them into his own doctrines. In the particular case, this means something considerably more than that, as Kisiel puts it, Heidegger is always looking for ways to raise phronesis above sophia in the theoretical sense. More important is the fact that Heidegger radically revises the flexibility or “new- ness” of phronesis by detaching it from its specifically ethical and political

6. Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, 257. 254 stanley rosen context. In shifting phronesis to ontology, more specifically, to Gewissen, Heidegger empties it of all specific content. In Aristotle, phronesis is “new” but not empty. For example, Heidegger in my opinion over- emphasizes the importance of the future in prudential deliberation. It is of course true that we do not deliberate about the past. But we do deliberate about the present: “the present emergency” or “the present situation.” And we do this only on the basis of our knowledge of the past, that is to say, of the regularity of nature, of the stability of human motivation, of practical likelihoods, and so on, all of which define the practical present as the locus of prudential calculation. In sum: we do not forget our cognitive intellectual faculties (although we may lose them) but rather something that has been discovered or uncovered by them. We forget something that we already possessed, and thus something that was true in the past and that would apply to the present situation or an anticipation of the future. We forget what applies generally. Heidegger emphasizes the fact that what phronesis uncovers is unique to the present moment, or more precisely, to the future moment as presently anticipated. But what is unique to this moment will not be applicable to the next moment. A new judgment is required at each moment. This is part of what Heidegger means by “das in Bewegung gesetzte Gewissen, das eine Handlung durchsichtig macht,” (“conscience situated within movement, that makes an action transparent”) (56). This, I think, is to say something more than that phronesis has a temporal structure, a point that Heidegger could legitimately make. But the content of the temporal structure is not ontological; it is practical or “political” in the broad sense of the term. And above all, phronesis aims toward human happiness, not Angst vor dem Tode. Heidegger might wish to say in his own voice that anxiety is ontological whereas happiness is ontic, but I do not find this very persuasive. It might even be true, but the consequence would not be to identify phronesis as Gewissen. On the contrary, it would serve to distinguish sharply between the ontological and the ontic, that is to say, between the theoretical and the practical, in Aristotelian language. Heidegger derives Gewissen from the ontological structure of human existence and assigns to it an ontological function; but Aristotelian phronesis is not derived from a theoretical or scientific analysis of the soul, and its function is not ontological but ontic. A point that is mentioned in passing by Heidegger but not developed by him at all is that for Aristotle, the first principles of ethics are sup- plied by the endoksa of sensible or serious persons. To be somewhat more precise, the principles in the sense of the ends are furnished by intellectual intuition, but these are not derived from the ontological struc- Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 255 ture of the cosmos. As Heidegger of course knows, the principles are of changing things and they themselves change; even natural justice is changeable, as Aristotle states explicitly in Nicomachean Ethics V.7. The endoxa are not the ends or principles in this sense, which do not derive from doksa but nous. They can only be the general maxims concerning what constitutes prudent behavior under circumstances of such and such a sort (Nicomachean Ethics VII.1, 1145b 5–7). And it is up to phronesis in its deliberative capacity further to specify these common opinions into a recommendation or command (Aristotle refers to the epitactic character of phronesis at VI.10, 1143a 8) for the immediate situation. One is tempted to say that from a Heideggerian standpoint, the principles of ethics are derived from the inauthentic speeches of das Man. Aristotle regularly introduces a point with the verb dokei or a variant, “it seems,” “it appears,” or even “people say.” If the first principles and ends of practice were actually categories or “existentials” in either the Aris- totelian or Heideggerian sense, they would be useless for serving as the basis for a derivation by practical logistics of a prudential recommendation. We should not forget that Heidegger, speaking in SZ as an ontolo- gist, explicitly distinguishes his doctrine of the conscience from the ethical concern with good and bad conscience. The good conscience would have to announce the “goodness” [Gutsein] of Da- sein, and correspondingly, the bad conscience an “evil” one [ein Bösesein]. One sees easily that thereby, conscience, previously the “emanation of divine power,” now becomes the servant of Pharisaism. A man ought therefore to be allowed to say “I am good.” Who can say that, and who would want to affirm this less than the genuinely good person? (SZ 291). Heidegger here distinguishes ontology from the Bible, not Aristotle. But in this context, the difference extends to both. The main point of SZ is precisely not to furnish prudential recommendations for this or that practical situation, but to prepare us, through the acquisition of an understanding of the ontological structure of Dasein, to ask the question “what is Being?” One could add to this that the existential analysis describes the machinery thanks to which someone might make a “prudential” calculation, but it is not itself concerned with doing so (SZ 295). One could not say the same of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. But this has the following surprising consequence. For Aristotle, practice is of course necessary for all persons, but it is inferior as a way of life to theory. For Heidegger, practice, and in a very abstract sense, phronesis, does not participate in the factic choice of an authentic existence; instead, it exhibits, i.e. explains, the underlying ontological structure of the epitactic dimension of human existence. In that sense, it is ultimately theoretical rather than practical. Let me make this more precise. Heidegger does 256 stanley rosen not say that practice is higher than theory. If anything, he says that practice is theory, that is, the genuine theory of fundamental ontology; or at least, that it is the first stage in the pursuit of a genuine theory. Heideg- ger’s ontology is practico-productive; as to theory, that is rejected along with the associated doctrine of Being as presence. Practice is the first stage of theory, where by “theory,” I mean the answer to the question “what is Being?” or if not the answer, then the correct articulation of the question. In Aristotle, practice, and so of course phronesis has nothing to do with the answer to the question “what is Being?” or for that matter with the question itself. It thus turns out that Heidegger’s desire to avoid Pharisaism is an essential ingredient in a way of thinking that transforms all of philosophy into Pharisaism, because sophia is assimilated into phronesis. The question of Being is thus transformed into the quest for Being, or a kind of ro- mantic mixture of fragments of Aristotle, Christian anthropology, and the Gothic Sturm und Drang of Nietzsche. The self-righteousness of the feeling or habit of authenticity, or an empty and silent voice, replaces both greatness of soul and the calculative articulateness of phronesis. Thus the resolute Dasein cannot give reasons but, to adapt a famous expression from American politics, “in his heart, he knows that he is right.” Heidegger’s analysis of phronesis is filled with interesting observations, but the most valuable aspect of that analysis is his attempt to show how the Aristotelian doctrine emerges from the ordinary reasoning processes of everyday life. For the most part, Heidegger is faithful to the great peculiarity of Aristotle’s procedure; there is no deduction of the first principles of practice or grounding of them in a presumably deeper or more comprehensive ontological structure. But Heidegger deviates from this procedure toward the end of his analysis. He very reasonably observes that for Aristotle, the superiority of sophia to phronesis is grounded in the mode of being of the existents to which sophia gives access, namely, the aei onta, that which is always (170–71). “Human Dasein is then authentic [eigentlich], when it is always in the manner in which it can be in the highest sense.” He then makes the following general statement about the difference between Greek and modern ethics: “For the Greeks, reflection on human existence is purely oriented toward the meaning of Being itself, i.e. to this, to the extent to which human existence has the possibility of being always” (178). In other words, Heideg- ger assumes that the grounding of the superiority of theory to practice in the superiority of eternal to transient beings is the same as the ontological grounding of ethics. But this is false. Ethics is grounded in the endoksa, if it is grounded in anything; and that is to say that the ground of ethics is common sense, not the meaning of Being. Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 257

Another serious obstacle in the path of Heidegger’s interpretation of phronesis is his use of the term “conscience,” which, however he modifies it, is unmistakably derived from Christian anthropology. This is closely connected to the fact that neither piety nor shame is a virtue for Aristo- tle. Thus guilt, a crucial element in Heidegger’s existential ontology, is entirely missing from the sphere of Aristotelian phronesis. The virtuous man cannot feel guilty because he is not tempted by vice and has nothing of which to be ashamed. I have one more comment in this series of remarks. So far as I can see, Heidegger makes no reference to an apparent similarity between what he calls Jemeinigkeit (what is genuinely mine or me) and Aristotle’s emphasis upon the fact that happiness or blessedness is the highest good, and that it is my happiness that I strive for. Of course, the centrality of Jemeinigkeit or the orientation in terms of one’s own existence, cannot be easily perceived in Aristotle’s account of practice, because perfect ethical virtue, that is, general justice, is not simply for oneself but for the sake of others (Nicomachean Ethics V.1, 1129b 31–33; V.2, 1130b 18–20). One seems to find it, however, in the account of the theoretical life as higher than the human and indeed, divine: a life that is lived through the highest element in human beings, namely, pure intellect. “It would seem that this is the highest element in each person, since it is the dominant and better part. It would then be odd if one were not to choose one’s own life but the life of someone else” (X.7, 1178a 2–4). The life of someone else, in the highest case, is the life of justice, that is, the life for another. One’s own life is the life of pure theory, “the only activity that is loved for itself. For nothing comes into being from it apart from theorizing; whereas from practical activities we pro- cure something, more or less, beyond the act” (X.7, 1177b 1). Whereas the self-love of the good man could perhaps be confused with Pharisaism, the same cannot be said of the autarchy and consequent bliss of the theoretical life. Furthermore, the happiness of pure theory is in Aristotle connected with completeness or perfection, but this in turn is very close to the notion of the priority of the unchanging to the changing and of the aei onta to the transient. The anxious man is placed before the totality of his existence as a sign of incompleteness, that is, as a warning that it is time now to act resolutely in an authentic manner. Angst vor dem Tode is a stimulus to action, which is itself a sign of recognition of incompleteness. Happiness, on the other hand, is a sign of completeness or perfection of one’s natural capacity. It is an invitation to leisure. To say this in another way, Heidegger’s ontology seems to me to un- dergo an internal tension. On the one hand, it is dynamic and activist; on the other hand, despite its ontological assimilation of phronesis, it 258 stanley rosen leaves practical activity very much to the determination by historical destiny of what I must do in the given circumstance. This looks superficially like Aristotelian phronesis, but it is more like historical determinism, and not less so when the activist element plays its role. Freedom is then identified with the assumption of responsibility for a determinate interpretation of historical destiny. In addition, there is a shift after the fiasco of the Nazi commitment from activism to passivity (not the same as paci- fism) or Gelassenheit. At the risk of being branded a Pharisee, I must add that nowhere in Heidegger’s ontological writings, whether before, during, or after SZ, do I find any conception of ethical virtue or in still simpler language, the autonomy of decency from ontology. At this point, let me pause in my remarks and simply state, as clearly as possible, my central thesis. Heidegger makes the enormous mistake of attempting to overcome the split between theory and practice. He does this by transforming both into poetry. But without an independent theory, poetry becomes first ideology and then doggerel. And without an independent practice, ethics degenerates at first into existential ontology and then into action theory, not to mention neurophysiology. To this I add a second, in my view enormous, mistake. Heidegger regularly proceeds as though moods, feelings, passions, desires, and other “attunements” of the soul were ontologically prior to discursive reasoning. There is something here of the Platonic doctrine of eros, which remains visible in Heidegger’s conception of Sorge. But eros is itself defined by the rank-ordering of the objects of desire. The fact that we are “attuned” to the external world in a certain manner before we begin to reason about it in no way demonstrates that these attunements more truly or primordially “uncover” the truth of Being than does the discursive intelligence. Neither is it true that the initial or primordial feeling or attunement is intrinsically superior to or more illuminating than subsequent attunements. Heidegger tacitly accepts Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to philosophy, an approach that is of course older than Nietz- sche but no less dubious for that. Neither should one blur the distinction between such moods as guilt, anxiety, and resolution on the one hand, and the intellectual perception of principles, whether universal or particular, on the other. It is these mistakes, or let us say acts, of hermeneutical Entschlossenheit, that permeate Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotelian phronesis. I want next to make some remarks about the difference between the Aristotelian and the Heideggerian conception of the “wholeness” of life. In a passage that incidentally also illustrates the connection between phronesis and the endoksa, Aristotle says: “It seems” or “it is believed [dokei] that the prudent man [phronimos] is able to deliberate nobly [ka- Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 259 los] concerning what is good and beneficial for himself, not in a particular sense, such as matters that concern health or strength, but with respect to living well entirely” (holos: 1140a 25–28). Aristotle means by this that phronesis does not aim at some one aspect of practical life nor at the arithmetical sum of individual aspects; instead, it aims to produce a habit of the soul that is expressed in every action in which human beings are called on to pass judgment on the noble and the good. There are two ways in which to speak of good acts as a whole. When the emphasis is upon the agent, we speak of nobility; when the act is directed primarily toward political and social relations, we refer to justice. These terms are intended as complementary, but there is a slight tension between them, to which I shall return shortly. In the present context, we may take them as co-ordinate predicates by which to designate the twin perfections of practical life. Phronesis addresses itself to the continuous expression in activity of a soul that is “whole,” not because it has completed all of the actions that its lifespan allows, but because it is completely good, that is, perfect or teleios. A person of this sort we call “good,” and we say that things are good if they appear to be so to the good man. Barring madness or some incapacitating misfortune, and granting the accomplishment of a reasonable stretch of life, the good man is whole while he lives, and something similar can be said of happiness. In short, “goodness” is not the property of an individual act but of the soul that initiates good acts; and this is the nobility of the soul that Aristotle associates with phronesis. In his discussion of this passage, Heidegger correctly says that “the deliberation of phronesis affects the Being of Dasein itself, the eu zen, i.e. that Dasein should be a righteous being” (ein Rechtes: 49). The telos of phronesis is thus not, as in techne, something beyond the deliberation. The object of this deliberation is life itself. This is excessively con- densed, but basically sound. Let us now ask ourselves how Heidegger understands the wholeness of existence in his own terms. Consider the following assertion in paragraph 39 of SZ, “The question of the original totality [Ganzheit] of the total structure of Dasein.” On page 182, Hei- degger says: “Anxiety furnishes as a possibility of Being of Dasein, in uni- son with the openness of Dasein itself in anxiety, the phenomenal ground for the explicit grasp of the original totality of Being of Dasein. This Being reveals itself as Sorge.” In smoother English, anxiety is the capacity of Dasein to open or display itself as a whole. It is the self-activa- tion of Dasein’s certain knowledge of its death, thanks to anxiety, that is the prerequisite for the totalizing function to come into play (264). Hei- degger says: “Conscience manifests itself as the call of Sorge; the caller is Dasein, anxious [or ‘rendering itself anxious’] in the thrownness .l.l. 260 stanley rosen concerning its most intimate capacity to be” (277). In sum: totality depends upon Sorge (231), which in turn is Schuldigsein, “being guilty” (286). This engenders the resolve (Entschlossenheit) to project my anxiety-ridden self upon my guilt (285). And “the fundamental truth of existence requires an equally fundamental Gewisssein [certitude of conscience] as oneself remaining in that which resolve makes manifest” (307). Totality or wholeness is connected with anxiety before death on the one hand, and resoluteness on the other. These limit-points are moods that express the Jemeinigkeit of Dasein. I mean by this that the world is a project of the inner activity of the various modalities of Dasein’s care. At this fundamental ontological level, it is fair to speak of the solipsism of Dasein. Dasein cares for itself; its wholeness lies in the wholly self-centered character of Sorge. “All being next to the object of care and all being together with others breaks down, when it is a matter of one’s own- most capacity to be. Dasein can only then be authentically itself when it makes that possible from within its own self” (263). Next, we note that for Heidegger, it is not Gewissen that actually discloses the practical judgment (and of course, “practical” in Heidegger refers to ontological practico-production). Heidegger scarcely mentions the procedures by which Dasein engages in the discursive consideration of the details of the existential choice. One might almost assume, when reading this section of SZ, that no discursive thinking or “calculating,” and so no logos, transpires at all. The silence of care, the silence of guilt, the silence of conscience, are all gathered together in the silence of resoluteness. Everything functions through the instrumentality of moods or passions that are themselves activated by fear of death, or in its ontological version, Angst vor dem Tode. This selection of passages will have to suffice as evidence for my conclusion. The big difference between Aristotle and Heidegger on this point is as follows. “Whole” for Heidegger means finite and finished, with no further possibility to take us beyond the boundary. Further- more, the condition for the structural totality of Dasein is not the quality of its acts but the terror of its obliteration. I express my wholeness by responding to anxiety with a resolute decision to act in an authentic manner. But conscience does not tell me what to do or, in other words, how to perform the analogue to the actual vision and articulation of the particular judgment. Instead, it is the silent signal of my guilt. In Aristotle, there is no conscience, but rather a good heksis or character, which, together with intuition and prudence, is an expression of perfection or completeness. This accounts for the central role of anxiety in Heideg- ger, as contrasted with that of happiness in Aristotle. There is for Hei- Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 261 degger always something more, even new, to be done; hence the anxiety or restlessness that characterizes even the resolution to live authentically. Heidegger celebrates work, whereas Aristotelian activity is more like leisure. To say this in another way, Heidegger’s conception of wholeness is inseparable from his interpretation of human existence as temporal. I do not mean by this to suggest that Aristotle treats the individual person as immortal. But for Heidegger, all meaning or significance of human existence is derived from within the free and resolute choice of one’s own radical finitude. Dasein cannot appeal to separate entities, and above all it cannot appeal to eternal entities as the source for the authenticity of its own existence. Furthermore, since death is imminent, or literally intrinsic to the temporality of my own existence, resoluteness is not enough to liberate me from anxiety. It can serve only to allow me to take personal responsibility for the decisions with which I fill up the temporary openness of my life. For Aristotle, on the other hand, it is not necessary to be eternally in the presence of the eternal entities in order to achieve perfection. Theoretical contemplation is intrinsically pleasant and loved for its own sake, but not for any possible decision that will lead me to act in one way or another. In sum, it is precisely the freedom of theory from practical activity that makes possible the perfect happiness of a finite human life. By transforming theory into a kind of practice, Heidegger builds anxiety into existence. Leo Strauss once described John Locke’s view of life as “the joyless quest for joy.” I am inclined to think of Heideg- ger’s account as the irresolute quest for resoluteness. There is, however, a problem in Aristotle with respect to happiness. The “standard” position is to be found in Book VI of the Ethics in the assertion that “the end of production is separate from the act of making itself, whereas this is not true of practice. For doing well [eupraksia] is itself the end” (VI.5, 1140b 6–7). If this is true, then happiness is itself an element of doing well. Sometimes Aristotle seems to be saying just this, but at other times, as for example in Book I, he says clearly that happiness is the highest end, or that toward which all practice aims (I.6, 1097a 22–23 et passim). But that at which something aims cannot be a part of what it is in itself. And as we saw previously, he says in Book X that moral virtue is always sought for something in addition to itself, whereas theoretical contemplation is the only thing that is sought and loved for itself alone. The question is not merely one of the subordina- tion of practical to theoretical happiness. It is rather that of the accessibility of happiness to practice apart from theory. I leave this as an aporia to be investigated on another occasion and turn to the related difficulty of the changeability of practical truth. 262 stanley rosen

Once more, prudence is defined as a practical habit that acquires “truth in accord with logos concerning what is good and evil for human beings” (VI.5, 1140b 4–6). As in the case of art or production, the truth is changeable in the following sense. What is good under one set of circumstances will not be good under other circumstances. But the judgment of the prudent man is true under these circumstances. In other words, there is a practical truth under each set of circumstances that bears upon acts leading toward or away from the good life altogether. Aristotle is not a relativist in this sense. And the truth is not accessible to formal intuition, the induction of principles, logical deduction, or any other method or technical procedure. It is accessible only to the judgment of the prudent man who judges qua prudent (and not as temporarily deranged). Once again, there is a superficial resemblance to Heidegger. Just as Aristotle provides us with the definition of virtue as a mean between two extremes, but does not tell us what is virtuous under this or that circumstance, so too he leaves us to identify the good man by our assessment of the goodness of his judgments (see X.5, 1176a 15–17 for a hypothetical statement of the principle). Similarly, Heidegger provides us with the existential structure of authentic choice, but not with a definition of what it entails in particular instances. Both philosophers are entirely reasonable in their behavior, in view of their common recognition of the endless variability of particular circumstances. But the German on- tologist gives us no basis for apprehending, deciphering, and evaluating the silent call of the silent voice of conscience, which is his surrogate for the calculations of prudence in accord with the correct logos. In keeping with his ontological approach, Heidegger gives no historical examples of prudent individuals. But he does make it clear that conscience and resoluteness, the two ontological agents of authentic choice, are incarnated in the individual as individual. Those who act otherwise are sunk into the inauthentic existence of das Man. Aristotle’s position is quite different. He gives Pericles as an example of people whom we call prudent, because they are able to envision (as I translate theorein here) good things for themselves and for mankind. We regard people like Pericles as gifted in household management and political affairs (VI.5, 1140b 7–11). In other words, prudence addresses itself to the two wholes of human life, the family and the city, and it does this by distinguishing good from evil and the beneficial from the harmful. In so doing, it must of course address individual acts, since it is persons who act, not households or cities. And it is Pericles who decides, not the Athenian assembly (except in the secondary sense that they are persuaded by him). But the decision of Pericles is itself a function of the Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 263 collective wisdom of the Greeks, and by extension of the civilized world. This is precisely the significance of the endoksa. The crucial point is that the phronimos decides on the basis of his own judgment, but that judgment is an expression of what he judges to be good for others as well as for himself, and for himself precisely because and to the extent that it is good for others. This brings me to a final difficulty for Aristotle that is overlooked by Heidegger. At the beginning of Chapter 8, Aristotle says that “politics and phronesis are the same habit, although their being [einai] is not the same” (VI.8, 1141b 23–24). Politics and phronesis are the same because both are concerned with what is good and beneficial to human beings, and in order to determine this, one must possess excellence in practical calculation. This in turn entails acquisition of the habits of the ethical virtues. But there is a difference between phronesis and politics in that the statesman must adapt his calculations to the good and benefit of the city, and these are not identical in actual cities. Politics is divided into two parts, of which law-giving refers to the city as a whole. The part that deals with individual acts is called “politics” (politike), although the name actually belongs to the two parts equally. So too, the name “prudence” (phronesis) is given to calculation with respect to oneself, whereas it actually belongs to all parts of politics. There is thus a certain confusion in the divisions and names of the parts of politics, an ambiguity that is already visible in the two parts, ethics and politics, that presumably constitute one subject, namely, that of practice. So far as I can see, Heidegger is entirely silent on this point. That is, he over-simplifies Aristotle’s treatment of phronesis because he abstracts from the ethical and political per se, which he replaces by an ontology of action. But this has the odd consequence of making phronesis less useful, and perhaps useless, for human action. Aristotle, I believe, is much closer to the facts when he reflects a confusion that arises from the fundamental ambiguity of the relation between the individual person and the community or political association. In one sense, the interests of the person and the community are the same, but in another, they are divergent. They are the same, because ethical acts on the part of the person depend upon the education and laws, written and unwritten, of the city to which the person belongs, as well as to one’s family, friends, and the character of one’s fellow citizens. They diverge, because the interest of the city is not identical with the interest of the person. The highest end of the individual human being is happiness, but the highest end of the city differs, depending upon the circumstances. Cities cannot be happy, but they can survive. Without their survival, virtuous acts are impossible; in order for them to survive, 264 stanley rosen acts that are not virtuous may be required. It is pointless to pretend that the need for the survival of the city transforms a vicious deed into a virtuous one. In fact, it is worse than pointless, because it sets the prece- dent for excusing vicious deeds within the city as required for individual survival. For if the person does not survive, he or she cannot perform virtuous deeds. Aristotle cannot suppress these tensions, but he attempts to camou- flage them. Or let us say that he does not call explicit attention to these difficulties. We have to discern them in the twists and turns of his analysis and terminology. As to the reason for Aristotle’s reticence, it is obvious. Full disclosure means disruption of the delicate balance between the individual person and the political association. In my opinion, Hei- degger commits a different error; he assimilates ethics and politics into history, and thereby tends to denature or trivialize the good and the just as the successful. The closest Heidegger comes to Aristotle’s nobility is authenticity or genuineness, and this is not close enough, as Heidegger himself insists that his term is ontological and has no “value” connota- tions whatsoever. But if this is so, then neither does human existence. I restrict myself to one final textual observation. Aristotle emphasizes throughout that phronesis is not the same as quickness. On the contrary, it takes time to arrive at a correct practical judgment. Furthermore, to understand a situation is not the same as to arrive at a judgment about what to do. So phronesis is the same as judging nobly or well (krinein kalos). As such, it is epitactic, that is, it commands rather than merely explains (VI.8, 1143a 8, 14–16). In other words, a judgment is not a statement of fact or the expression of an opinion, but the command of practical reason to do something in particular. This helps us to see that Heidegger is wrong to draw an analogy between phronesis and Gewissen. If any analogy of this sort were permissible, it would be that between phronesis and Entschlossenheit. Whereas Gewissen is the anxious self-thrownness upon one’s own guilt, the authentic consequence of conscience is resolution. “But upon what does Dasein resolve itself within Entschlossenheit? To what end [Wozu] ought it to resolve itself? Only resolve itself can give this answer.l.l.l. That is, each factic possibility of Dasein is indeterminate; resolution is certain only of itself as resolution” (SZ 298). Heidegger replaces the Aristotelian variability of practical affairs with their uncertainty, and he replaces the correctness of the judgment, that is, its accord with orthos logos, with resoluteness. One is tempted to say that stubbornness replaces reasonableness. But stated more moderately, for Aristotle, the calculation of the phronimos is not uncertain; it is always correct. For Heidegger, certitude has nothing to do with calculation; it is more like the determination to endorse a de- Phronesis or Ontology: Aristotle and Heidegger 265 cision that, in itself, may or may not be confirmed by future events. Oth- erwise put, the decision is certified by my resolution, not by the “objective” facts of human affairs. At bottom, there is still no parallel to the Aristotelian phronesis. It thus turns out that Heidegger’s authentic individual is far more self-centered than the Aristotelian theoretical man. If Heidegger is right to say that Greek ethics is determined by the predominance it ascribes to what is forever, this may well be the basis for a more noble conception of ethics than one that is rooted in historical destiny masked as the free choice of authenticity. I conclude that phronesis is superior to ontology on its own grounds, namely, that of everyday life, and that Heidegger’s existential ontology, however brilliant, and perhaps because of its very brilliance, can bring nothing to human affairs but blindness. 12 Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues DANIEL O. DAHLSTROM

In an essay entitled “Wittgenstein: Whose Philosopher?” Elizabeth Anscombe has argued that Wittgenstein, like Plato, is a philosopher’s philosopher, while Aristotle is an ordinary man’s philosopher. The following paper can be construed as challenging Anscombe’s thesis in some respects, but it is not difficult to appreciate her reasons. She is ad- verting to the fact that non-philosophers generally do not find the problems and solutions proposed in the Platonic dialogues either interesting or credible. Analogously, she contends, Wittgenstein makes problems out of phenomena that non-philosophers find singularly unproblemat- ic, for example, the phenomenon of reading that he discusses to elucidate his account of understanding.1 There are other reasons, not mentioned by Anscombe, for finding in Wittgenstein greater affinities with Plato than with Aristotle. Like Plato, Wittgenstein prefers dialogical inquiry to didactic prose. Aristotle may make the observation that lovers of myths are philosophers in a sense (Metaphysics I.2, 982b 20), but Pla- to and Wittgenstein—and not Aristotle—provide us with a feast of myths, filled with the very wonders that initiate philosophy. To be sure, Wittgenstein does not place his interlocutors in anything like the dramatic setting of a dinner party or a jail cell, Diotima does not come in a dream to speak to them, and there is nothing like the myth of the cave or the myth of Er to be found in his writings. Nevertheless, his investigations are a series of imaginings, imaginings of games played one way and then another, each calculated to make us wonder and think. Indeed, one of the attractive features of Wittgenstein’s writings is its infectiously

* The following paper is dedicated to the memory of Hans Furth, a longtime colleague and friend at The Catholic University of America. I would also like to express my grateful- ness to Kurt Pritzl, O.P. and Riccardo Pozzo for their invitation to deliver this paper and to Juliet Floyd, Alfredo Ferrarin, Colin Heydt, and Matt Ostrow for their perceptive comments on early drafts. 1. G. E. M. Anscombe, “Wittgenstein: Whose Philosopher?” in Wittgenstein: Centenary Essays, ed. A. Phillips Grifﬁths (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1–10.

266 Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 267 reflexive style; one cannot read his work without being forced to reflect upon the way we use words and why. Wittgenstein is also hardly averse to introducing metaphors (e.g., “family resemblances,” “language going on a holiday,” “an engine idling”), thus freely employing indirection, no less than Plato himself does, where a more literal or at least more prosa- ic language apparently cannot get the job done.2 Anscombe’s position is thus neither unreasonable nor uncommon. When students of Wittgenstein hearken back to the history of philosophy, connections are typically made to Plato, but rarely to Aristotle. Not surprisingly, evidence of direct or even indirect historical influence of Aristotelian thought on Wittgenstein is difficult to come by. In a recent book Barry Smith put forth Rudolf Haller’s controversial thesis that the Vienna circle can be linked, via Brentano, to Catholic scholasticism and Aristotelian empiricism.3 Yet even if one were to ignore the enormous difficulties with this thesis as well as Wittgenstein’s differences with the Viennese positivists, there is no particularly hard evidence for the claim that Wittgenstein’s philosophy draws upon a typically Austrian—non- German—philosophical legacy with Aristotelian roots. (I am not denying the existence of some intriguing similarities between Wittgenstein and Brentano in particular; I am merely saying that I know of no evidence of the influence of an Aristotelian tradition in the form of the Brentanian school on Wittgenstein.) After all, as far as his early education is concerned, he only attended a Realschule in Linz before traveling to Berlin and Manchester, and ending up in Cambridge. Wittgenstein does occasionally refer to Aristotelian logic but the references are dismissive. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, for example, he observes: “‘Mathematical logic’ has completely deformed the thinking of mathematicians and philosophers, by setting up a superficial interpretation of the forms of our everyday language as an analysis of the structure of facts. Of course, in this respect it has merely continued to build on the Aristotelian logic.”4 In an early book review there is a similarly dismissive remark that merely apes Russell’s views. However, apart from these passing gibes not at Aristotle but at Aristotelian logic, there is no

2. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophische Untersuchungen, in Werkausgabe, vol. 1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), §§ 38, 67, 132; English translation: Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1968) (hereafter, PI, followed by a section number, e.g., PI § 38). 3. Barry Smith, Austrian Philosophy: The Legacy of Franz Brentano (Chicago and LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1994), 18; Rudolf Haller, “Zur Historiographie der österreichischen Philosophie,” in Austrian Philosophy: Studies and Text (Munich: Philosophia, 1981), 41–53. 4. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, ed. G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, and G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3d and rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 156 (hereafter, RFM). 268 daniel o. dahlstrom reason to suppose that Wittgenstein studied or gave much thought to the ideas of Aristotle or an Aristotelian tradition.5 One biographer even suggests that Wittgenstein proudly claimed never to have read a word of Aristotle. In any case he did write that “as little philosophy as I have read, I have certainly not read too little, rather too much. I see that whenever I read a philosophical book: it doesn’t improve my thoughts at all, it makes them worse.”6 Determining whether or not Wittgenstein actually read Aristotle, whether or not he imbibed some Aristotelian spirits in his Grüner Veltiner does not by any means settle the issue of whether Aristotelian concepts or perspectives had a significant impact on his thinking. More particularly, the editor of the present volume has asked me to consider whether what Aristotle dubs “intellectual virtues” or “virtues of thought” play a role in Wittgenstein’s thinking. This intriguing question can be taken in more than one way, of course. It might be taken as asking whether Wittgenstein addresses one or more of the intellectual virtues and does so in a way that converges with Aristotle’s treatment. But there is a far more pertinent sense in which the question might be understood, namely, as a question about Wittgenstein’s virtue. The following paper accordingly asks, not merely whether Wittgenstein discusses the intellectual virtues, but whether he has any of them. More precisely, does his practice and understanding of philosophy exhibit anything like an intellectual virtue, as described by Aristotle? I am not confident that I am able to answer this question satisfactorily, and certainly not in the space of the following paper. Yet even if the answer proposed in the following paper proves inadequate, there is much to be gained—for understanding both thinkers—from the exercise of probing, in Aristotelian terms, the intellectual virtuousness of Wittgenstein’s thinking. That, at least, is the aim of the following paper.7 But let me begin by putting my cards on the table. I will be arguing for a general and a specific thesis. My general thesis is that the same realistic spirit evidenced in certain defining moves of Aristotle’s thought pervades Wittgenstein’s philosophical investigations. As a means of supporting this general claim, I exploit what I take to be some remarkable affinities between Aristotle’s account of

5. Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Cape, 1990), 74 and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bemerkungen über die Philosophie der Psychologie, in Werkausgabe, vol. 7 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), 418–19. 6. Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein, 496. 7. It bears noting that this undertaking holds Wittgenstein to a higher standard than Aristotle—even if the standard is loosely drawn from Aristotle’s texts. Whereas Aristotle’s discussion of the intellectual virtues is not readily identiﬁable as an indication of any of them, Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as analysis of language games bears a striking resemblance to one sort of intellectual excellence. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 269 one intellectual excellence and Wittgenstein’s description and practice of philosophy.

I. Aristotle discusses five intellectual virtues: episteme, techne, phronesis, nous, and sophia, for which I will use some fairly traditional translations: science, art, prudence, understanding, and wisdom.8 Science is the perfected habit of sound inference (Nicomachean Ethics 1139b 14–36); art a repeated excellence at rational production; prudence the virtue of someone who routinely and accurately discerns the goodness and badness of human actions; understanding the perfected habit of grasping principles; and wisdom the habit of a philosopher, someone who excels in combining understanding and sound inference in regard to the most honorable and extraordinary matters. Intellectual virtues are ways of understanding some subject matter in the sense of thinking correctly about it, recognizing what is true of it.9 But more than just ways of understanding, they are habits of understanding a subject matter as excellently as possible. To characterize Aris- totle’s intellectual virtues in this way is not to define them. It is by no means obvious that a term like “understanding” can be used univocally to speak of each of the intellectual virtues mentioned by Aristotle. The connection between them is more a matter of analogy or even family resemblance. True, they are said to have a common genus; like the ethical virtues, they are habits (hexeis) of excellence (arete), but it is far from clear that this means the same thing in each case or that the specific difference—dianoia—can be said univocally of them. Unlike ethical virtues, they all fall squarely under the part of the soul having logos (einai mere tes psyches, to te logos echon: Nicomachean Ethics VI.1, 1139a 4–5; 1103a 2)—though this feature itself is disputable on certain readings of specific intellectual virtues. So, too, each of them has truth as its work or end (Amphoteron de ton noetikon aletheia to ergon: Ibid., 1139b 12–13) and each is in some sense similar and appropriate to its respective object

8. In French: la science, l’art, la sagesse, l’intelligence, and la philosophie; in German: wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis, praktisches Können, sittliche Einsicht, intuitiver Verstand, and philosophische Weisheit. See L’éthique a Nicomaque, trans. René Gauthier, O.P. and Jean Jolif, O.P., 2d ed., 2 vols. (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1970) and Nikomachische Ethik, trans. Franz Dirlmeier (Berlin: Akademie, 1956). 9. No special signiﬁcance is attached to the term “understanding” at this introductory point. This deliberately vague use of the term is meant to preserve the ambiguity or breadth of Aristotle’s own use of dianoia to characterize this group of virtues (1139a 1). What complicates any translation of this passage is the fact that Aristotle employs the cognate term nous to designate a speciﬁc virtue of this group. 270 daniel o. dahlstrom

(kath homoioteta tina kai hoikeioteta: Ibid., 1139a 8–11). Yet this commonly objective orientation, so basic to Aristotle’s understanding of the powers of the soul, also raises the question as to what precisely it is that ren- ders them all “intellectual virtues.” For their objects are different and Aristotle lines them up in two groups that correspond, respectively, to two different parts or capacities of the part having logos (to men epistemonikon to de logistikon: Ibid., 1139a 12–13; 1143b 16–17; 1144a 1). This division raises the old debate about whether Aristotle thinks that there are, strictly speaking, only two intellectual virtues.10 I have no intention of taking a stand on that debate. Yet even if scientific inference, art, and understanding, thanks to their respective incompleteness, are not to be considered full-fledged virtues, the intelligibility of characterizing prudence and wisdom alike as “intellectual virtues” or “virtues of thought” remains far from obvious. In this connection, the other ways in which Aristotle subdivides the intellectual virtues should not be overlooked. For example, virtues of making and acting, namely, art and prudence, are concerned with something that is in some relevant respect indeterminate or, in other words, does not always or necessarily present itself in the same way. The other intellectual virtues are, by contrast, perfected habits of understanding what cannot be otherwise. Yet Aristotle also appears to distinguish art, thanks to its fallibility, from prudence (as well as from the other intellectual virtues).11 In addition to contingency and necessity, fallibility and infallibility, another possible criterion of demarcation is the role played by logos. But here matters become particularly murky for at least two reasons. In the first place, there is the question of what “logos” is supposed to mean in this context. For example, is it best understood as reason, a use of reason, a kind of reasoning, a principle, and/or a form of discourse? In the sec-

10. See Gauthier and Jolif, L’éthique a Nicomaque, vol. 2, pt. 2, 450, and following. 11. This issue of the alethic character of prudence and art is, it bears noting, highly complicated, not least because of the ambiguities in the text itself. At one point Aristotle maintains that art involves logos and deals in the truth, while lack of art (atechnia) is the parallel habit dealing in falsehood (1139b 21–23). Yet he also maintains that voluntary and involuntary error are possible both in techne and phronesis, though voluntary error is not so bad as involuntary in art but is worse in prudence (1140b 23). This last text obviously implies that prudence in some sense can err as well, though Aristotle also depicts prudence precisely as the practical habit involving logos and dealing in the truth (1140b 7, 21). Complicating matters is the fact that Aristotle’s listing of the intellectual virtues incapable of falsehood excludes art alone (1141a 3–5). One might try to resolve this conun- drum by distinguishing general and specific senses of art and prudence. The general sense would refer to the unperfected habit, thus capable of error, while the specific sense would refer to the perfected habit, incapable of error. This interpretive ploy has merit but leaves unexplained why art is left out of the list of intellectual virtues, including prudence, that are incapable of error. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 271 ond place, whether “logos” stands for any one of these or a combination of them (and this list is by no means meant to be exhaustive), is it meant to be something constituted by language? In the Politics, for example, Aristotle explains why a human being is more of a political animal than others by noting that humans alone have “logos” for the sake of presenting what is and is not expedient as well as just (Politics I, 1253a 7–18). This setting forth may be important for an ethical public policy, but is it necessary for art or prudence? If not in this sense, what are the senses of “logos” that are implicated in art and prudence? Looking ahead to our discussion of Wittgenstein, these questions have a special pertinence since Wittgenstein presents us with reasons to be leery of assurances based upon appeals to strictly private, i.e., nonpublicly communicable or accessible mental states. “Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all. For that is the expression which confuses you” (PI § 154). In addition to difficulties concerning the variety of uses of “logos” in this connection, there is a second reason why Aristotle’s division of the intellectual virtues in terms of the role played by logos presents his readers with a quandary. On the one hand, he introduces the discussion of intellectual virtues directly after stipulating the necessity of defining the notion of “correct logos,” sometimes translated “correct reason” (ho logos ho orthos). Indeed, he locates intellectual virtues, along with ethical virtues, in the part of the soul that possesses logos. On the other hand, one intellectual virtue appears to contrast with all the others by the conspicuous absence of logos in its case. Aristotle is, in any case, explicit that art, prudence, science, and, hence, wisdom are all habits “with logos” (meta logou) (cf. Nicomachean Ethics VI.4, 1140a 8–10, 21–22; VI.5, 1140b 7–8, 21, 33). But he also tells us that “for the first and the last things [literally, limits or definitions: oron] there is understanding (nous) and not logos (ou logos)” (VI.10, 1143a 35–1143b 1). This difficulty of coordinating understanding as an intellectual virtue with the others is also suggested by the Greek terms. Whereas the term for understanding is nous from the verb noein, the intellectual virtues are introduced as virtues of “thought,” i.e., dianoia, stemming from the verb dianoeomai, meaning “to think over” or “to think through.” The etymo- logical connections might suggest that thoughts work through logos, whether understood as reasoning and/or discourse, while nous does not. If logos can be construed as “discourse,” then understanding is nondiscursive, in contrast to art, prudence, science, and wisdom. Complicating matters in this respect is Aristotle’s wide use of nous.12

12. Horst Seidl, Der Begriff des Intellekts (nous) bei Aristoteles (Meisenheim am Glan: Hain, 1971). 272 daniel o. dahlstrom

In addition to a human nous, he speaks in the Metaphysics of a divine nous as well as a nous of the besouled entities joined with the heavenly spheres. In a famous passage from the same work, nous is said to concern itself with what is best and nous in the highest sense is even identified with that which is in the highest sense. As he also puts it, nous understands itself in its object, indeed, so much so that it and its object are one (1072b 17–22). On the basis of these remarks in the Metaphysics, it is necessary to distinguish different levels of nous or understanding, the pre-eminent of which is a self-understanding, divinely exemplified. While nous is thus humanity’s link to divinity, it is also what distinguishes humans from animals (De anima III, 429a 10), thus coincid- ing—at least for human beings—with having logos, according to the passage from the Politics already cited. Despite instructive similarities with the capacity for perception (Ibid., 429a 10–12), understanding is something different from that capacity (Ibid., 429a 22–23; 99b–100b). Aristotle also speaks of a theoretical and a practical side to the human nous (Ibid., 432b 2–4, 433a 14–15). As a habit of entertaining universals in themselves or in application to particulars, nous arises out of experience of sensible particulars and a capacity for memory and imagination, but then also alters experience, memory, and imagination. Thus, as Aristotle puts it in De Anima, we do not simply perceive something white, i.e., what is specific to a particular sense, but its “being the son of Di- ares” (418a 20–24). In a gloss of this passage, Charles Kahn writes: “‘The son of Diares’ is already a noeton [an object of nous], a complex conception involving the notions of human being and fatherhood, as well as the notion of an individual substance corresponding to the use here of a proper name and an individuating description.”13 This use of nous, it bears emphasizing, would clearly seem to imply discursiveness or at least an involvement of logos in some sense. There seems to be a similar implication of discursiveness in nous as it is treated in the Posterior Analytics, from the opening remark that “all learning via thought” (pasa mathesis dianoetike) presupposes pre-existent knowledge—i.e., knowledge of either a fact or what is said (legomenon) or both (71a 1–14)—to the concluding discussion of a distinctively theoretical sense of nous. According to the Posterior Analytics, nous is the capacity to grasp “the what it was to be” (to ti en einai) as a definition that an apodictic science can present in the form of a premise (77a 4, 85a 1, 88b 36, 89b 6–9). After noting that the “first things” are known to us by induction (epagogei) and not science, Aristotle concludes that the objects

13. Charles Kahn, “Aristotle on Thinking,” in Essays on Aristotle’s De Anima, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Amelie Rorty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 368. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 273 of nous are the principles (archai). Nous is not only the habit of grasping principles, but also the principle of science (88b 36, 100b 6–15). None of these distinctively theoretical uses of nous, it scarcely needs noting, would seem prima facie possible without discourse or logos. But let’s turn to our primary text, the Nicomachean Ethics. There, too, Aristotle uses the term in at least three distinguishable senses. (a) There is the sense of nous expressly as an intellectual virtue, belonging to the subgroup of intellectual virtues, namely, those concerned with theory instead of practice or making, and yet specifically distinguished by the fact that it alone can be directed at archai (1140b 31–1141a 8) or oron (1142a 26–27; unchanging and first definitions: 1143b 2–3). (b) Aristo- tle also uses nous to designate a power in matters of practice or conduct, a power likened to perception (aisthesis), with respect to the final or last things and with respect to things individually (dynameis autai ton eskaton eisi kai ton kath ekaston: 1143a 28–29; 1143a 35–b 6). Thus, Aristotle observes that natural aptitudes or habits possessed by children can be harmful without nous and that if someone acquires nous, in which he brings his actions to perfection, then his habit rightly becomes virtue (1144b 12–14). Nous, in this sense, is barely distinguishable from excellence in thinking and deliberation and, in the latter sense, is even continuous with prudence (phronesis). This sense of nous that cuts across the ethical and intellectual divide is apparently echoed in Aristotle’s references to it in Book X. There he speaks of nous as something divine when compared with the human (1177b 31, 1179a 27) and a life according to nous as the highest human life and the happiest (1178a 7–8, 1180a 18–22). (c) Finally, Aristotle uses nous in a very general way to designate a capacity of the soul, the capacity that, along with sensation and desire, has some say over our ability to act and attain some truths (1139a 18–20). This last use of nous and an apparent metonym, dianoia, would seem to range over all the intellectual virtues. As noted earlier, Aristotle introduces the intellectual virtues as the virtues of dianoia, (i.e., excellences of thought, presumably through nous or understanding in some sense) in contrast to the virtues of ethos (1139a 1). Among the many issues that these different uses of nous in the Nico- machean Ethics bring to the surface, two deserve particular mention. First, the equivocation raises the spectre of the traditional dilemma of the relation between theory and practice in Aristotle’s thinking. How, for example, can his claim that politics is the end of ethics be reconciled with his conclusion that contemplation crowns the happiest life? Partic- ularly among scholars who wonder how Aristotle could have so misunderstood Plato, this complaint is frequently heard. Even a sympathetic scholar such as Jonathan Lear recognizes the need to resolve the issue. 274 daniel o. dahlstrom

As he puts it: “The problem for Arisotle’s man is not the impossibility of a harmonious life, but the possibility of a certain type of disharmonious life so valuable that it is worth leaving considerations of harmony behind.”14 Another issue concerns the cognitive model at work in Aristo- tle’s characterization of nous on any of the three levels. At times he seems clearly to construe it in a way analogous to sensory perception (aisthesis), while other times or even in other respects nous appears to be conceived in close relationship to thought (dianoia) with all its apparent discursivity. Not unlike the problem, just mentioned, of the relation between theory and practice, the issue here is that of the relation between perception and language. Talk of equivocation in Aristotle’s use of nous is, it must be admitted, too harsh. Equivocation, like punning, depends upon a term being used in utterly different ways within the same context. Leaving aside for the moment the problem of the nondiscursive or alogical character of the intellectual virtue, there are some common threads to Aristotle’s understanding of understanding that deserve to be highlighted. First, nous, in narrow as well as broad, theoretical as well as practical senses, is a prereflective activity that neither is nor need be distinguished in that activity itself. As Wolfgang Wieland puts the matter, from the participation of nous, no inference can be drawn, as far as the content of what is known is concerned.15 Recognition of the role of nous requires a reflection but, since it does not enter into the prereflective content as such, Aristotle can proceed without regard for it. Following Plato, thinking is a conversation with oneself about something, but not about that conversation itself. Second, as understanding is prereflective, so, too, it is presubjec- tive; that is to say, nous cannot be identified as some sort of subjective activity, separable from the things themselves as they prereflectively present themselves. Nous is those things in a certain way, as Aristotle puts it in more than one context (De anima III, 431b 21; Metaphysics XII, 1072b 210), and any differentiation of subject from object presupposes understanding. Third, nous is unerring; that is to say, the opposite of nous is not falsehood, but simply a lack of understanding (De anima II, 430a 26–27, III, 430b 17–18; Metaphysics IX, 1051b-1052a4; Posterior An- alytics II, 100b 8–9). Of course, Aristotle only attributes this feature explicitly to the intellectual virtue, i.e., the narrowest sense of nous, and yet this feature or something closely akin to it is arguably present analogously in some of the wider uses. (For example, the lack of the nous that

14. Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 312; 293–320. 15. Wolfgang Wieland, Die aristotelische Physik, 2d ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 193 f. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 275 children require for their habits to become excellent is presumably not so much falsehood as nonsense.) Just as a discrimination of subject and object presupposes understanding, so does their correlation in the form of bivalent propositions. This last sense of nous is in fact captured by certain contemporary uses of “understanding.” When I am confronted with certain complex observations, e.g., the sorts of statements made by a quantum physicist or a Joyce scholar, I can’t say whether they are true or false because I do not understand what they are talking about. In other words, we have to understand before we can judge.

II. “The philosopher,” Wittgenstein tells us, “is the man who has to cure himself of many sicknesses of the understanding before he can arrive at the notion of sound human understanding. If in the midst of life we are surrounded by death, so also in the healthiness of understanding we are surrounded by madness” (RFM 157). In pursuit of sound understanding, Wittgenstein “talks the talk and walks the walk,” i.e., he preaches and practices a manner of philosophizing that centers on the analysis of what he calls “language-games.” A central component of his struggle with what he labels the “dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy,” language-games are for him “objects of comparison,” intended to help us “look and see” similarities and dissimilarities in various uses of language. The aim of the exercise of considering language- games is to call our attention to the way our language works and, in the process, combat “an urge to misunderstand it,” an urge that results in philosophical problems (PI § 109). Wittgenstein accordingly stresses that, while these problems are not empirical problems, resolution of them turns on close observation and accurate description of our linguistic practices.16 In keeping with this aim, a language-game is a kind of model but as a means of measurement, “not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond” (PI §§ 130–31). “In order to see more clearly, here as in countless similar cases, we must focus on the details of what goes on; must look at them from close up” (PI § 51). These language-

16. PI § 109; OC § 189. What does Wittgenstein mean by “empirical problems”? Since he contrasts them with “philosophical problems,” i.e., the problems that are solved by close inspection of the way that language works and by rearrangement of what we already know, “empirical problems” are presumably those that are solved by discoveries (i.e., going beyond what we already know), typically involving experimentation. Wittgenstein’s appeal to description is, if not rhetorical, clearly not neutral. In other words, he has a definite agenda (e.g., the elimination of semantics and set theory) and not just any description will do. I am grateful to Jaakko Hintikka for clarification in this regard; see his On Wittgenstein (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2000), 9, 17, 33, 38–39, 51, 58. 276 daniel o. dahlstrom games are composed of, among other things, rules governing the usage of terms, that is to say, a grammar that by no means excludes innovative usages and degrees of “mastery” of the technique involved in playing those games (PI § 150). “To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language is to be master of a technique” (PI §199). This talk of mastery of a technique together with the open-ended character of playing the game might suggest superficial similarities with the intellectual virtue of art, elaborated by Aristotle (as if “mastery” were the translation for hexis and “technique” for techne). However, there is an important sense in which, unlike art, the analysis of language-games is self-contained; that is to say, it does not have an end beyond it, at least of the sort that is a distinguishing feature of art for Aristotle. In addition, Aristotle’s techne, the thinking that goes into production, can be true or false. In this respect a dilemma surfaces, at least prima facie, in as much as Aristotle maintains both that true reasoning in regard to production is indicative of art, false reasoning of its absence (1140a 21–24) and that error in art is possible (1140b 23). This dilemma is resolvable, I think, but, however it is resolved, it indicates that falsehood is an option in some respect for art. In other words, the intellectual virtue of art presupposes but does not itself provide the basis for senses of “true” or “false.” By contrast, there is an important respect in which the senses of these terms, like any others, can only emerge from within the language- game and be dutifully noted by its analysis.17 Wittgenstein advises that the expression “language-game” is supposed to convey that speaking the language is “a form of life” (PI § 23); he also characterizes philosophy or the analysis of language-games as “therapy,” “showing the fly the way out of the bottle,” and “a means of gathering a set of reminders”—none of which, he adds, is to be confused with science or mathematics (PI §§ 109, 127, 254–55, 309). Given these characterizations of philosophy, there is also a superficial similarity between analysis of language-games and prudence, the sort of habitual thinking that necessarily or directly contributes to human perfection. I do not mean to imply that ethical motives and dimensions are absent from Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy, indeed, from the very heart of it. But that ethical component does not readily match up with Aristotle’s account of prudence. For while prudence, in contrast to art in some respect, cannot be false, that which is contrary to the truth that can be grasped by prudence is falsehood. But there is reason to think

17. PI § 136; OC §§ 204–25; Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, ed. Brian McGuin- ness, trans. Joachim Schulte (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979), 63. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 277 that the same does not hold for the practice of a language-game. In addition, while science can itself be understood through analysis of language-games, it is in the business of discovery and explanation, both of which are foreign to philosophy, Wittgenstein insists that “We must do away with all explanation, and description must take its place” PI § 109). Finally, the role of science in the intellectual virtue of wisdom rules out any attempt to construe analysis of language-games as a matter of wisdom in the Aristotelian sense. If the foregoing contrasts stand up, then the analysis of language- games cannot be conceived as art, prudence, science, or wisdom. The one remaining intellectual virtue is understanding. Yet analysis of “understanding” in the context of a language-game would also seem to fail to qualify as an example of nous. Indeed, given the nondiscursive or alogical character of nous, nothing might seem more counterintuitive than linking up Wittgenstein’s analysis of language-games with a virtue that is distinguished for being aneu logou, “without logos.” The term, moreover, is traditionally translated by German translators as “intuitive understanding,” hearkening back to a concept of Verstand concerning which Kant had severe misgivings and Hegel considerable enthusiasm. French and English translations of it as “intuition” (PI § 213: “An unnecessary shuffle”) or “intelligence” also invest it with a potentially subjective significance that invites traditional issues of idealism and realism, scepticism and solipsism. If nous is construed in line with these traditional translations, then there would seem to be nothing further from Wittgenstein’s description, analysis, and understanding of language- games than nous. Wittgenstein devotes a great deal of argument to showing that we are not making sense and are not solving any problems when we appeal to subjectivity, to mental states, as a means of establishing the principles of some language-game. To debunk these appeals is to reject an entire paradigm of philosophy, centered on issues of idealism and realism. But it is precisely in contrast with certain cognitive models that similarities between Aristotelian nous and Wittgensteinian understanding begin to emerge. For there is good reason to resist any assimilation of Aristotle’s conception of nous to certain conceptions of the mind or the mind’s activity that engender the gnoseological problems leading to epistemological realism or idealism, empiricism and scepticism (where “empiricism” and “skepticism” are themselves idealist variations). For Aristotle no less than for Wittgenstein, the notion that the force of certain terms or statements derives from another world or from the world of the mind rather than their actual use is indulgent fantasy. The intellectual vice behind these positions is a failure to “look and see” how we 278 daniel o. dahlstrom actually use words, a failure abetted by a conviction of how things must be. This common attitude betrays, following Cora Diamond and in a more colloquial vein, “a realistic spirit.” In my remaining remarks, I will try to elaborate the “realistic spirit” shared by Aristotle’s and Wittgen- stein’s philosophical understanding by contrasting it first with epistemological realism and then with empiricism. Aristotle’s “realistic spirit” is on display when he takes exception to the Platonic idea of the Good by arguing that the Good is not some one thing that corresponds across the board to a single idea (Nicomachean Ethics I, 1096b 26). Forms, including mathematical forms, are not separate from the material that they form, though we can think of them as separate (De anima III, 431b 12–16). Aristotle also urges his students not to expect the same sort of exactness across disciplines (Nicomachean Ethics I, 1098a 26–35); the degree of clarity should fit the subject matter (Nicomachean Ethics I, 1094b 13–26). Combining these observations, we see that Aristotle thinks it possible, even necessary to understand the Good analogously. So, too, he argues famously that Being is used analogously, by reference to something common (pros hen ti kai koinon) and, hence, that philosophy can study things with respect to their being (Metaphysics XI, 1061a 10–12, 1061b 10–17). In a quite similar spirit Wittgenstein devotes considerable philosophical energies to criticizing the mystification, the subliming of logic, that he saw as the mistaken philosophical legacy of Frege’s and Russell’s mathematical logic.18 In the Tractatus, contesting Russell’s view that logical forms make up a separate class of objects of acquaintance, Wittgen- stein observes “that there are no such things as ‘logical objects’ or ‘logical constants’ (in the sense of Frege and Russell).”19 Instead, in a move deeply reminiscent of Aristotle, Wittgenstein appears to conceive logical forms as inseparable from the simple objects in the Tractarian picture.20 As a monotone picture of names and objects in the Tractatus gives way to a dynamic polyphony of linguistic customs in the Philosophical Investiga- tions, he lobbies against appealing to something behind language instead of attending to the use of language itself. “Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called >games<’—but look and see whether there is anything common to all. —For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think,

18. See n. 4 above. 19. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, in Werkausgabe, vol. 1, 53 (§ 5.4). 20. Hintikka, On Wittgenstein, 21; D. F. Pears, “The Relation between Wittgenstein’s Pic- ture Theory of Propositions and Russell’s Theory of Judgments,” Philosophical Review 86 (1977): 177–96. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 279 but look!” (PI § 66; see also § 340). So, too, he combats Frege’s insis- tence on the exactness of genuine concepts by pointing out that a concept’s vagueness is frequently no impediment to the suitable use of it (PI § 34). As Wittgenstein puts it in The Blue Book: “When we talk of language as a symbolism used in an exact calculus, that which is in our mind can be found in the sciences and in mathematics. Our ordinary use of language conforms to this standard of exactness only in rare cases. Why then do we in philosophizing constantly compare our use of words with one following exact rules?”21 Wittgenstein’s fullest answer to this last question, in the Philosophical Investigations, is that “a picture held us captive” (PI §115). That captivat- ing picture is a Platonic picture of the logos or logic as “the essence of language” and “at the bottom of all sciences,” presenting “the a priori order of the world,” yet not as something open to view “but something that lies beneath the surface” (PI §§ 89, 92, 97). As he puts it: “We want to say that there can’t be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal must be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this ‘must.’ We think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there” (PI § 101). Frege’s and Russell’s project of deriving mathematics from logic is, Wittgenstein argues, a fundamentally ﬂawed attempt to straightjacket diverse mathematical techniques into a single logical procedure, to the detriment of both mathematics and a philosophical understanding of logic.22 Mathematics cannot be reduced to formal derivations or formalizations of derivations any more than language can be reduced to formalizations of it (PI §§ 124–25, 221). The “crystal purity” of logic is not something that presents itself to us; it is simply a “demand” (PI § 107). Wittgenstein’s own consideration of language-games is, he adds, not a preparation for “a future regularization of language” (PI § 130). If Wittgenstein rejects interpretations of logic based upon the allegedly independent reality of logical form, he also rejects skepticism (Kripke’s interpretation notwithstanding) and empiricism. This rejec- tion is also anticipated by Aristotle. For Aristotle, knowledge begins with sensory perception, but perception is by no means conﬁned to proper and common sensibles. Actual knowledge is, he declares, knowledge of an instantiated universal (417a 26–30; 429b 10–14; 1087a 15–20). As he puts it in De Anima, “the noetic objects [i.e., the objects of understanding] are in the forms perceived” (432a 4–5), and in the Posterior

21. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, ed. Rush Rhees (New York: Harper, 1958), 25. 22. Juliet Floyd, “Wittgenstein, Mathematics, and Philosophy,” in The New Wittgenstein, ed. A. Crary and R. Read (New York: Routledge, 2000), 232–61. 280 daniel o. dahlstrom

Analytics: “although it is the particular that we perceive, the perception involves the universal” (100a 16–100 b 1). So, too, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle declares that there is a perception “whereby we perceive that the particular figure before us is a triangle” (1042a 26–27). As noted earlier in connection with the doctrine of incidental perception, such a notion of perception unmistakenly involves a noetic character. At the same time, putting further distance between himself and empiricists, he clearly distinguishes the objects of understanding (noeta) from mental images (phantasmata) (432a 12–14). Universals and essential structures are objects of understanding, not products, indeed, figments of the imagination. In sum, Aristotle’s account of the noetic character of perception and the objects of understanding is incompatible with an empiricist model of the mind as, on the one hand, a recipient of discrete sensory data and, on the other, the source of all putatively objective identities. Wittgenstein’s account of the understanding is similarly at odds with empiricism. As he puts it in his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics: “Not empiricism and yet realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing” (RFM 325). Cora Diamond has noted the curiousness of the term “yet” in this last sentence, curious because it would seem that empiricism and realism are so obviously opposed to one another.23 She suggests that the answer lies in certain non-philosophical uses of “realism,” namely, to indicate an attentiveness to detail and the way things actually work, a readiness to accept facts over theoretical suppositions to the contrary, and a vigilance against mystification. These features of not epistemological realism but a “realistic” spirit pervade Wittgenstein’s philosophical efforts. Wittgenstein contests the empiricist’s appeals to things she thinks she knows, a mental picture, ostension, or state, as though that could secure the correct application of a term or phrase, when in reality no such appeal can guarantee the correct application. “What is essential to see is that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not” (PI § 140). If he wants to show or teach others the correct application, he can only show them examples that might cause them to behave in the way he does. Yet there is no better answer, Wittgenstein maintains, than to exemplify the behavior; the empiricist confusion—not unlike epistemological realist confusions—is to think otherwise. The empiricist confusion is exemplified by F. P. Ramsey, to whom

23. Cora Diamond, The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind (Cam- bridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1996), 39–40. Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 281

Wittgenstein directs his remark about “not empiricism and yet realism.” Ramsey thought it possible to explain certain sentences such as the variable hypothetical “all men are mortal”—in contrast to mere conjunc- tions like “everyone in this room had lunch”—by considering relations among three factors: things we experience, making such statements, and the habit of making judgments about further items in our experience. He presumes, from an empiricist point of view, that there must be some unknown causal law according to which certain singular facts lead us, by virtue of known psychological laws (namely, those “expressing our methods of inductive reasoning”), to make a generalization that in turn induces us to make a habit of judging in cognate fashion about a respective set of particulars in the future. These variable hypotheticals, he argues, do not stand, as Platonic realists might think, for real connections among universals or for some inﬁnite collection. They are simply combinations of generalizations and habits. The fact that we think that we should come to a certain conclusion on the basis of the description of a certain situation indicates to Ramsey that we are relying upon a causal generalization about our inductive reasoning. The problem is that the unknown causal law must be of the sort that does not lead to a haphazard generalization but leads instead to the appropriate generalization and habit “in virtue of a known psychological law.”24 As Cora Diamond points out, however, the only sanction for a distinction between rule- governed causal reasoning and haphazard generalizations is the psychological law that he allegedly knows applies to his behavior. Yet how does he know it? Or does he? Or, better, what precisely does it mean for him to say that he knows the psychological law of his own reasoning, that he knows why he reasons appropriately? Just as he can only give examples of such reasoning to others, so he can give himself no further assurance that he allegedly knows the rule than following the rule. Wittgenstein accordingly follows up his remark about “not empiricism and yet realism” with the observation: “You do not yourself understand any more of the rule than you can explain” (RFM 325). The only truly realistic explanation that we can give to someone of what we are doing, of what sort of reasoning is appropriate, is to give examples of what we would like him to do, e.g., list 3 after 2 in the series of integrals. But it is also the best explanation that we can give ourselves (RFM 320–21). Wittgenstein is making a similar point in the Philosophical In- vestigations when he challenges the view that all understanding is just a matter of interpretation or, equivalently, that every course of action can

24. F. P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, ed. D. H. Mellor (New York: Cambridge Universi- ty Press, 1990), 153. 282 daniel o. dahlstrom be made out to be in accord with some rule. To be sure, understanding an expression requires mastery of a technique for which there are rules. There is, however, as he puts it, “a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call ‘obeying the rule’”— to which he adds, in yet another jab at the empiricist’s hapless appeals to mental processes, the caveat that thinking that one is obeying a rule is not the same as obeying the rule (PI § 202). These remarks hopefully suffice to suggest how Wittgenstein’s attempt to understand language-games and, in particular, the language- games involving the term “understanding” exemplifies an intellectual virtue very much in the realistic spirit of Aristotle’s own elastic uses and elaboration of nous. By way of summary, three points of convergence emerge from the preceding ruminations. First, “Physician, heal thyself!” For Wittgenstein as for Aristotle, philosophy is inherently reflexive. Precisely in understanding the understanding, the philosopher understands herself. Yet this self-understanding, modeled on the alleged immediacy of the awareness of sensation, is intuitive and/or ineffable, neither capable of nor in need of further rationale. Second, both philosophers acknowledge the prereflectiveness (and worldliness) of understanding and the consequent fantasy of inverting reflective with prereflective understanding. The positions taken by Pla- tonic realists and empiricists alike all fail because, committed to an idea of what understanding must be like, they do not “look and see” what transpires in the actual process of understanding. Third, grappling with the difficulty of beginning at the beginning, each philosopher turns to a conception of understanding that is not grounded on some further logos, i.e., discourse, rules of language, interpretation, or the like. In Wittgenstein’s image, we reach bedrock and our spades are turned back (PI § 217; OC § 192). “It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back” (OC § 471). Aristotle’s comment that nous is devoid of logos (aneu logou) must be understood in just this sense—or at least so I have argued in the present paper. In a certain sense, both Aristotle and Wittgenstein are verificationists, albeit non- positivist verificationists. That is to say, for both of them there is a level of understanding at which meaning and truth coincide such that the contrary is not falsehood but nonsense. These three points of convergence, in keeping with the theme of the present volume, insinuate an Aristotelian legacy in Wittgenstein’s thinking. Still, talk of convergence between them appears far-fetched for at least two reasons that deserve consideration. By way of conclusion, I Wittgenstein’s Intellectual Virtues 283 would like to indicate these reasons and ways that they might be coun- tered, albeit only by taking considerable liberties in the interpretation of Wittgenstein’s observations. Nous in Aristotle’s scheme, when construed on the basis of the account in the Posterior Analytics together with that in Book VI of the Nico- machean Ethics, is directly tied to science. Nous delivers the premises of scientific demonstration. By contrast, Wittgenstein hardly conceives his analysis of language-games as a prelude to science, let alone a source of its presuppositions. The analysis is not a propadeutic to science or anything else beyond philosophical therapy. Yet, despite Wittgenstein’s intentions, it is possible to find in the analysis of language-games a potential affinity with the scientific character of Aristotelian nous. For, while the analysis of language-games aims to remove confusions that take the shape of philosophical quandaries, these sorts of problems are hardly foreign to or neatly distinguishable from those encountered by scientific investigation (consider, for example, the perplexities attached to the use of “time,” perplexities that Wittgenstein explicitly addresses). More- over, as Wittgenstein puts it: “Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions” (PI § 126). Yet, to be clear in advance about what is possible is certainly a useful, perhaps even necessary Vorspiel to science, particularly scientific discovery. Aristotle relates the intellectual excellence of nous to his conception, not only of science, but of wisdom. Particularly in the context of a theory of intellectual virtues in which philosophy as wisdom occupies a prominent place, involving scientific demonstration and directed at the most honorable and exceptional subject matter, the notion that philosophy can only analyze language-games seems quite out of place. I am not sure how to respond to this objection, but allow me to suggest that part of a response lies in a common appreciation for philosophy as an epitomization of life. The epitomization takes different forms in each philosopher, to be sure; in some obvious respects, Aristotelian contemplation and Wittgensteinian therapy are worlds apart. Nevertheless, it is possible to exploit ambiguities in Wittgenstein’s famous metaphors for philosophy (much as I have exploited the ambiguities of nous) in a way that suggests affinities with Aristotle’s comments on the leisureliness of contemplation. (As with rebuttal of the objection discussed in the last paragraph, this suggestion is based upon an extravagant reading of Wittgenstein’s comments that is most likely at cross-purposes with the intentions underlying them.) For example, philosophy is an engine 284 daniel o. dahlstrom idling, but in preparation, warming up; it is language gone on a holiday but a holiday in which we gather together reminders and collect ourselves; it is the Sabbath. As the analysis of language-games, philosophy is the most self-conscious and realistic activity and, hence, too, the activity most likely to serve moral and political purposes to the degree that it preserves a realistic spirit of contemplation.25

25. Of course, the connection may run even deeper. Wittgenstein tells us that he chose the term “language-game” “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of a language is part of an activity, or a form of life” (PI § 23). But “life,” Aristotle tells us,” belongs to God. For the actuality of nous is life, and God is that actuality and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal” (1072b 27–29). 13 The Reception of Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer and the Hermeneutic Philosophy ENRICO BERTI

i. the bipartition of the rational soul Among twentieth-century philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer is surely one of those who has reappraised in the strongest way the Aristotelian intellectual virtues, in particular the virtue of phronesis, or practical wisdom. He has occupied himself with this subject since his earliest writings. Allow me to recall the article on Aristotle’s Protrepticus of 1928, and the contribution on Praktisches Wissen of 1930, which was published only in 1985.1 In addition, he has devoted to the Aristotelian intellectual virtues a celebrated chapter of his major work, Wahrheit und Methode of 1960; and many other minor works, now collected in his Gesammelte Werke, are concerned with the same theme.2 His edition with a new translation and a commentary of Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics,

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Der aristotelische Protreptikos und die entwicklungs- geschichtliche Betrachtung der aristotelischen Ethik,” Hermes 63 (1928), 138–64; reprint, in Gadamer, Gesammelte Werke (hereafter GW), vol. 5 (Tübingen: Mohr 1985), 164–86; Gadamer, “Praktisches Wissen,” contribution to a not published Festschrift for Paul Friedländer for his ﬁftieth birthday, ﬁrst published in GW, vol. 5, 230–48. 2. Gadamer, “Die hermeneutische Aktualität des Aristoteles,” in Wahrheit und Methode (Tübingen: Mohr, 1960); reprint, in GW, vol. 1, (Tübingen: Mohr 1986), 317–29; Gadamer, “Le problème herméneutique et l’éthique d’Aristote,” in Gadamer, Le problème de la conscience historique (Paris: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1963), 49–63; Gadamer, “Über die Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik,” (1963); reprint, in GW, vol. 4, 175–88; Gadamer, “Hermeneutik als praktische Philosophie,” in Rehabilitierung der praktischen Philosophie, ed. Manfred Riedel, 2 vols. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber, 1972), vol. 1, 325–34; Gadamer, “Die Idee der praktischen Philosophie,” in Gadamer, Die Idee des Guten zwischen Platon und Aristoteles (Heidelberg: Winter, 1978); reprint, in GW, vol. 7, 217–27; Gadamer, “Vom Ideal der praktischen Philosophie,” Universitas 35 (1980): 623–30; Gadamer, “Die Idee der praktischen Philosophie,” (1983), in GW, vol. 10, 238–46; Gadamer, “Aristoteles und die imperativistische Ethik,” (1989), in GW, vol. 7, 381–95; Gadamer, “Die sokratische Frage und Aristoteles,” (1990), in GW, vol. 7, 373–80.

285 286 enrico berti which appeared in 1998, will presumably be his last contribution to the subject. It concludes in the worthiest way not only seventy years of studies by Gadamer himself, but also the story of the reception of the Aris- totelian intellectual virtues in the twentieth century.3 On preceding occasions I have considered nearly all of Gadamer’s other writings on this subject.4 Today I would like to concentrate myself on this most recent publication, but not without having first recalled the general lines of his interpretation of Aristotle’s practical philosophy and my criticisms of it. As everybody knows, in Wahrheit und Methode Gadamer proposed Aristotle’s practical philosophy as the model for his own hermeneutics. He did so, first, because of its character as a knowledge concerning the human being himself, his behavior, his life; and second, because such knowledge, unlike theoretical knowledge, is involved with its object. Certainly, Gadamer is well aware of the difference between practical philosophy, which belongs to the division of philosophical sciences in theoretical, practical, and productive sciences, as set out by Aristotle in Metaphysics VI.1 (and whose method is described by him at the beginning of Nicomachean Ethics I.3); and phronesis, which is one of the intellectual virtues described in Nicomachean Ethics VI. Never- theless Gadamer tends to identify the two, conceiving practical philosophy in the same terms that Aristotle attributes to phronesis, i.e., (1) its not being an episteme (or scientific knowledge); (2) the impossibility of learning it and consequently of forgetting it; (3) its capacity of combining the knowledge of ends with the knowledge of means; and (4) its pre- supposing a certain kind of experience. Furthermore, Gadamer tends to conceive phronesis not only as the virtue, i.e., the excellence, of practical reason, i.e., of reason in so far as it governs praxis, as does Aristotle, but also as the virtue of reason, even of the human being in general, i.e., as the highest human excellence. In this way Gadamer undervalues the primacy of sophia, i.e., theoretical wisdom, affirmed by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VI. He also strongly downplays the value of the ideal of happiness in the sense of theoretical life, exposed by Aristotle in the final book of the Ethics. In general, final-

3. Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik VI, herausgegeben und übersetzt von Hans-Georg Gadamer (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1998). Gadamer passed away on March 13, 2002. 4. See Enrico Berti, “Aristotele e l’odierna rinascita della filosofia pratica,” Ragioni critiche 3 (1988): 17–22; Berti, “Saggezza e filosofia pratica,” in Berti et al. (among them Gadamer), Imperativo e saggezza: Contributi al XLII Convegno del Centro di Studi filosofici di Gal- larate (Aprile 1987) (Genoa: Marietti, 1990), 35–47; Berti, “La philosophie pratique d’Aris- tote et sa ‘réhabilitation’ récente,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 95 (1990): 249–66; Berti, Aristotele nel Novecento (Rome: Laterza, 1992), 202–13; Berti, “‘Phronesis’ et science politique,” in Aristote politique: Études sur la Politique d’Aristote, ed. Pierre Aubenque and Alonso de Tordesillas (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 435–60. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 287 ly, he neglects almost completely the importance attributed by Aristotle to theoretical philosophy, in particular to metaphysics, in the whole of his philosophical system. In his latest work on this subject, his edition of Nicomachean Ethics VI, Gadamer substantially restates his earlier interpretation of Aristotelian phronesis, but confirms it in a way that, as we will see, seems to be conceived in order to reply to the criticisms which were addressed to his interpretation, even if he does not mention any one of his critics expressly. Besides, he adds a series of details concerning each one of the Aris- totelian intellectual habits, as they are described in Nicomachean Ethics VI, which makes of this work the most complete document as regards his understanding of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues. For this reason I will try to resume what can be drawn from the translation and the remarks offered in the introduction and the Nachwort to his recent edition of Nicomachean Ethics VI. Notice that Gadamer’s introduction is divided into paragraphs that correspond to Arisotle’s chapters. In Nicomachean Ethics VI.1 Aristotle speaks about the necessity of determining what is the “right reason” (orthos logos), which indicates the “intermediate” in which moral virtues consist.5 Gadamer immediately interprets this “right reason,” translated by him as “right way of thinking” (die rechte Denkweise), as a “practical knowledge” (praktisches Wissen) opposed on the one hand to “theoretical knowledge” and on the other to “technical knowledge;” he also identifies it explicitly with phronesis.6 In this way he shows already a tendency to identify the classification of the sciences exposed by Aristotle in Metaphysics VI.1 with the illustration of the intellectual habits offered in Nicomachean Ethics VI. In the second chapter of the same book Aristotle divides the virtues, or excellences (this is the meaning of the Greek word arete), of the soul into moral virtues, or virtues of character (ethos), and intellectual virtues, or virtues of reason (dianoia), on the basis of the division of the human soul in two parts, the first furnished with reason (logos) and the other lacking of it. To determine the intellectual virtues, Aristotle proposes a further distinction of the rational part of the soul into two parts: the first, which considers things whose principles cannot be otherwise; and the second, which considers variable things. The former is called by him “scientific” (epistemonikon) and the latter “calculative” (logistikon), because what concerns the variable must be deliberated, and “to deliber-

5. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.1, 1138b 20. I follow the “Revised Oxford Translation” (ROT) of The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Universi- ty Press, 1984), modifying it in some cases. 6. Nikomachische Ethik VI.3. 288 enrico berti ate” (bouleuesthai) is the same thing as “to calculate” (logizesthai). Each one of these two parts has a proper virtue or excellence.7 Gadamer interprets the epistemonikon as the part “concerning knowledge” (auf Wissen beruhend) and the logistikon as the part “concerning reflection” (auf Überlegung beruhend), thus eliminating every reference to actual calculation. Besides, he interprets bouleuesthai as a “self counseling” (Sich-Beraten), reducing this act—which for Aristotle, as we will see, is rather complex and can have also a public dimension (we use “to deliberate” in the sense of discussing in public assemblies or councils)— only to a form of interior reflection. Moreover, Gadamer interprets Aris- totle’s division of reason as a division between two aspects of the “rationality in knowledge” (Vernünftigkeit im Wissen), namely “theoretical knowledge” (theoretisches Wissen) and “practical knowledge” (praktisches Wissen). Gadamer identifies the latter with phronesis, or “practical rationality” (praktische Vernünftigkeit). He affirms that “such a knowledge is not only the discovery and the disclosure of a thing, how it is, but is rather the accordance of this disclosure and knowledge with the impetus and being oriented towards the right, i.e., towards the ‘good.’”8 ii. the five intellectual habits In the third chapter of Book VI, Aristotle establishes that the “habits” (hexeis), or states, “by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial are five in number, i.e., art (techne), knowledge (episteme), practical wisdom (phronesis), philosophic wisdom (sophia), intellect (nous).”9 Instead of “habits,” Gadamer reads for hexeis “paths” (Wege), a term that suggests an activity rather than a state. This is important because, as we shall see, his choice of terms leads us to interpret the intellect as an act, while Aristotle here speaks of it as a state, i.e., a possession, a permanent condition. Furthermore, Aristotle makes clear that the intellect too possesses truth by way of an affirmation or a denial, therefore by means of a proposition, a discourse, and not only by the simple apprehension of a concept, as many commentators suppose. On the other side, however, Gadamer correctly interprets the five intellectual habits as the forms of true knowledge, or as modes of conducting oneself as being true,10 recognizing thereby that not only the in-

7. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.2, 1138b 35–1139a 17. 8. Nikomachische Ethik, VI. 4: “Solches Wissen ist also nicht bloß die Aufdeckung und Entbergung einer Sache, wie sie ist, sondern Übereinstimmung solchen Entbergens und Wissens mit dem Drang und dem Gewilltsein zum Rechten, d. h. dem ‘Guten’.” 9. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.3, 1139b 15–17. The ROT translates nous by means of “comprehension.” 10. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 4–5: “Formen wahren Wissen.l.l.l. Verhaltensweisen des Wahrseins.” Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 289 tellect is always true, i.e., infallible, but also that the other habits have this character, a fact not always recognized by commentators. He explains that, while Plato, e.g., in the Cratylus, considered all these habits as equivalent, Aristotle distinguishes them, separating practical and theoretical knowledge and interpreting the word episteme in a rigorous way. Gadamer is correct also in explaining that scientific knowledge cannot be a virtue, i.e., an excellence (die Bestheit) of the theoretical part of reason, because it depends on the knowledge of principles, i.e., it is not completely independent and sufficient to itself. As regards episteme, Aristotle first observes that it concerns things that cannot be otherwise, and is therefore a habit of the theoretical part of reason. Later on, he recalls the doctrine he set out in Posterior Analytics, according to which the process leading to principles is induction while the process starting from principles is deduction, or demonstration. He defines episteme as “a state of capacity to demonstrate (hexis apodeiktike),” adding the other limiting characteristics specified in the Analytics.11 Gadamer refers this concept essentially to the mathematical sciences, which is correct, because mathematics for Aristotle is surely the model of scientific knowledge. But Aristotle does not restrict the concept of episteme only to mathematics: he admits, even in the Analytics, that there is demonstration, and therefore scientific knowledge, not only of what happens always, i.e., necessarily, but also of what happens for the most part (hos epi to polu).12 A science of this kind is physics, as Aristotle meant by the word in the homonymous work.13 At the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics he admits that because also “politics” can be demonstrative, not in the same way as mathematics, but in a way that holds “for the most part,” it follows that also politics can be an episteme.14 The concept of episteme, for Aristotle, applies as well to the theoretical sciences as to the practical and even to the productive sciences,15 therefore it includes also practical knowledge, just so long as it not be identified with phronesis, as Gadamer believes. Concerning episteme, in conclusion, we can see a particularly evident tendency of Gadamer’s to identify all practical knowledge with phronesis, excluding in this way the possibility of a practical science (episteme praktike), which, in so far as it is a science, is a habit of the theoretical part of the reason, even if it has a practical aim, i.e., the acting well (eupraxia).16

11. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.3, 1139b 31–33. 12. Posterior Analytics, I.30, 87b 19–22. 13. See Physics, II.8, 198b 35–36. See also Metaphysics, VI.1, 1025b 26–28. 14. Nicomachean Ethics, I.3, 1094b 20–22. The term episteme as regards politics occurs in 1094b 4–5. 15. See Topics, VI.6, 145a 16. 16. Nicomachean Ethics, I.3, 1095a 6. See also Metaphysics, II.1, 993b 21. 290 enrico berti

In chapter four of Book VI, Aristotle defines art (techne) as the reasoned state of capacity to make (hexis meta logou poietike), which is different from the reasoned state of capacity to act (hexis meta logou praktike), in which phronesis consists, because of the difference between production (poiesis), having its aim in the product, and action (praxis), having its aim in itself.17 Gadamer interprets art as a “skillfulness in doing things” (Sachkundigkeit) and explains that art, while being a habit of the practical part of reason, cannot be a virtue, i.e., an excellence of this part of the soul because it is limited by the possibility of material errors, due to its dealing with contingent matter.18 Phronesis, or practical wisdom, is treated by Aristotle in chapter five of Book VI, before nous and sophia, and is defined as the capacity of deliberating well (bouleuesthai) about what is good and expedient for its own sake, i.e., not in some particular respect but rather about what sorts of things are conducive to the good life in general.19 This implies a capacity of calculating well (logizesthai) in view of a good aim, i.e., of finding the right means to obtain an end that is already known. It differs from scientific knowledge because it concerns actions, i.e., things that can be otherwise, and it differs also from art, because action is different from production. Finally, while art admits of an excellence, practical wisdom does not admit of any excellence. Aristotle concludes that practical wisdom is itself an excellence, the excellence of the practical part of reason. It is interesting that Gadamer, in his translation, carefully avoids speaking of deliberation and calculation, reading bouleuesthai in terms of Überlegen, i.e., of “reflecting,” and logizesthai in terms of einen guten Zweck zu erreichen, i.e., of “obtaining a good aim,” which ignores Aristo- tle’s reference to calculation. Similarly, when Aristotle affirms that phronesis is the virtue of that part of reason dealing with variable things, just like opinion (doxa), and therefore calls this part doxastikon, i.e., capable of forming opinions,20 Gadamer translates this term with “rationality in the realms of opinions” (Vernünftigkeit in den Bereichen der Meinun- gen), which has quite a different meaning, because it alludes to a capacity of moving himself among opinions, not to a capacity of forming opinions, which evidently seemed to him too inadequate. To illustrate practical wisdom, Aristotle introduces the example of Pericles and affirms that we consider as having practical wisdom those who are good at managing households (oikonomikoi) or states (politikoi).21 To this, Gadamer adds an interesting distinction between economic and

17. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.4, 1140a 1–5. 18. Nikomachische Ethik, VI.7. 19. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.5, 1040a 35–28. 20. Ibid., 1140b 26–27. 21. Ibid., 1140b 7–11. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 291 political philosophy, on the one hand, and “practical sense” (praktischer “Sinn”) for economy and public affairs, on the other. It is evident that Pericles was an example of the latter, while for instance Socrates and Plato could be good examples of the former. In the light of this distinction Gadamer asks himself: Does this not hold also for Aristotle, that his practical philosophy is not phronesis, but some doctrine (Lehre)? He replies that in other contexts, precisely at the beginning and at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses the same words “economics” and “politics” to indicate forms of knowledge in a philosophical- theoretical sense, i.e., in the sense of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft). But, says Gadamer, this is another, separate subject (ein Sonderthema). His conclusion is that, in any case, in Nicomachean Ethics VI “economics” and “politics” mean forms of practical wisdom, and therefore the only kind of practical knowledge Aristotle is concerned with in this book is phronesis.22 This is completely correct and is in accordance with what I have tried to demonstrate in my writings in order to dissipate the impression that in Nicomachean Ethics VI Aristotle identifies practical philosophy with phronesis. But it is evident that for Gadamer practical philosophy, in as much as it differs from phronesis, is deprived of any interest and does not function as a model for his hermeneutics. In chapter six of Book VI, Aristotle treats of the intellect (nous) and defines it as the habit of principles, the habit that is presupposed by demonstration, i.e., by scientific knowledge.23 The whole treatment is a bit disappointing, because Aristotle does not explain what these principles are, how they are grasped and in what their habit consists. It seems: 1) that the principles in question can be the first premises of the sciences, i.e., the definitions and the assumptions of the existence of their object, because of the way they are defined in Posterior Analytics; 2) that the principles are grasped by induction, because this is what Aristotle says in chapter three of this same book;24 3) that the intellect is a habit, i.e., a state, a possession of a knowledge; and 4) that this knowledge can be expressed by affirmations or denials that are always true. But the interpreters do not agree about the nature of nous. They tend to conceive it as a faculty, or even as an act, an immediate act of grasping the principles, an intuition, which cannot be false and cannot be possibly expressed by a sentence. This tendency is typical of philosophers such as Heidegger25 and is also present in Gadamer, because—in spite

22. Nikomachische Ethik, VI.9. 23. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.6, 1141a 7–8. 24. Ibid., VI.3, 1139b 27–31. 25. See Enrico Berti, “Heidegger e il concetto aristotelico di verità,” in Herméneutique et ontologie: Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Aubenque, ed. Rémi Brague and Jean-François Cour- tine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 97–120; Berti, “Heideggers Auseinan- 292 enrico berti of his translation of nous by means of Vernunft, the term used by Kant and by Hegel, who did not admit of any intellectual intuition—he interprets it as an “immediate being into” (unmittelbares Innesein), i.e., as an intuition, notwithstanding his admission that it is always connected “with the knowledge whether and why we have to say yes or no” (mit dem Wissen, ob und warum Ja oder Nein zu sagen ist), and notwithstanding his recognition of its nature as habit, saying that nous echein means “to be in comprehension” (bei Verstande sein).26 Finally in chapter seven of Book VI, Aristotle illustrates sophia, i.e., wisdom, affirming that it is the knowledge of first principles and of what follows from them, and is therefore a combination of intellect (nous) and science (episteme). Aristotle does not say what these principles are, but he speaks of the things that are highest by nature (ta timiotata) as the objects of wisdom, and introduces as an example of them the bodies of which the heavens are framed. For this reason, wisdom is not only the virtue, i.e., the excellence, of the theoretical part of the soul. It is also superior to the art of politics and thus to practical wisdom (phronesis), because the latter concerns the good of man, and because there are other things much more divine in their nature even than man, which are the object of wisdom. As examples of wise men Aristotle mentions Thales and Anaxagoras, i.e., the philosophers who preceded him in the research about the whole.27 There is no doubt that wisdom coincides with what elsewhere Aristotle calls first philosophy, i.e., metaphysics, and that it is the highest form of knowledge, the excellence of the whole soul. Gadamer recognizes that wisdom corresponds for Aristotle to “the in- dubitable ideal of theoretical knowledge,” but adds that for Aristotle himself there is also another “fulfillment of knowledge” (eine andere Vol- lendung des Wissens), which concerns only the human being, i.e., his practical wisdom.28 In this way he gives the impression of considering the two intellectual virtues admitted by Aristotle to be on the same level and of ignoring, or at least of minimizing, the primacy of wisdom that, however, was clearly affirmed by Aristotle. iii. practical wisdom and its articulations The eighth to the twelfth chapters of Book VI contain a series of considerations concerning phronesis, its object, its internal articulations, and dersetzung mit dem platonisch-aristotelischen Wahrheitsbegriff,” in Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, ed. Ewald Richter (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1997), 89–106. 26. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 10–11. 27. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.7, 1141a 16–b 5. 28. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 11. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 293 its relations with other intellectual habits. This confirms that the subject of the whole sixth book is practical wisdom insofar as it provides the “right reason” for determining the intermediate between excess and defect. In chapter eight Aristotle affirms that phronesis considers not only universals but also particulars, because praxis is concerned with particulars. In order to explain this double concern, Aristotle brings up the following example: “if a man knew that light meats are digestible and wholesome, but did not know which sorts of meat are light, he would not produce health, but the man who knows that chicken is wholesome is more likely to produce health.”29 In this example everybody recognizes what the tradition has called a “practical syllogism,” i.e., a syllogism with a universal major, a particular minor and a conclusion that consists in an action. Although phronesis regards chiefly the minor, it also concerns the major and for this reason it is a form of inference or of argumentation. Of the argumentative character of practical wisdom there is no trace in Gadamer’s commentary, neither here nor, as we will see, in the successive passages concerning the practical syllogism. This omission, joined to the elimination in his translation of every reference to calculation and deliberation, gives the impression that Gadamer tends to deny phronesis a discursive character, conceiving it essentially as an act of intuition. Aristotle then continues, in the same chapter, by comparing phronesis with a kind of “politics” (politike), which could be interpreted as an allu- sion to the “political science” by means of which he identifies the whole of practical philosophy at the beginning of the Nicomachean Ethics, in so far as both are said to be “architectonic,” i.e., most authoritative.30 Aris- totle says that such a “politics” and phronesis are the same state of mind, though their essence is different. Politics includes legislative wisdom and political wisdom, i.e., capacity to take part in politics (politeuesthai), which in its turn can be deliberative or judicial; it also includes the capacity of managing the household, which is called “economy.” On the other hand, phronesis, which is common to all these habits, is normally used to indicate the form concerned with a man himself, i.e., with the individual.31 This distinction could also be interpreted as identical to the distinction of practical philosophy in politics, economics, and ethics. But Gadamer interprets, rightly in my opinion, Aristotle’s mention of “politics” not in the sense of political science, but rather in the sense of the art of governing the state (Staatskunst), i.e., eventually as a part of phronesis. He emphasizes its connection with participating in politics

29. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.8, 1141b 18–21. 30. Ibid., 1141b 23–25. See Nicomachean Ethics. I.1, 1094a 26–28. 31. Ibid., 1141b 25–33. 294 enrico berti

(Politik machen) and affirms explicitly that we must not make the mistake of exchanging this passage with a reference to the beginning of Nico- machean Ethics.32 Aristotle here speaks of a kind of phronesis, i.e., of practical knowledge, which is the virtue of practical reason, not of political science that rather is one of the sciences belonging to theoretical reason. Here, Gadamer clearly avoids every confusion between the two forms of practical knowledge. In chapter nine Aristotle repeats that practical wisdom, taken in all its forms (regarding the city, the household, and the individual), is concerned not only with universals but also with particulars. For this reason it requires experience and, unlike mathematics but like theoretical wisdom and physics, it is not at the level of the understanding of young people. To illustrate the thesis that practical wisdom takes in both universals and particulars, Aristotle introduces another example of practical syllogism, “all water that weighs heavy is bad, this particular water weighs heavy, we don’t drink this particular water.” Finally, he declares that practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular fact (to eschaton), therefore it is opposed to intellect (nous), for intellect is of the definitions, for which no reason can be given, while practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particulars, which is the object of perception (aisthesis).33 Ignoring again all reference to practical syllogism, Gadamer interprets the “ultimate” (eschaton) regarded by practical wisdom not only as the ultimate concrete (Letzt-konkreten), i.e., the ultimate particular fact, but also as the most general end of every action (das allgemeinste Ziel), i.e., the good, or the right. For this reason, instead of opposing practical wisdom and intellect, as Aristotle does, he tends to fuse them, speaking of an evidence (Evidenz) which is similar to the evidence of intellect, with the only difference that it is the evidence of a practical right.34 In this way, he takes position, without saying so, in a famous dispute that opposed the Dominican Father Rémi Antonin Gauthier, who claimed (differently from Aquinas) that for Aristotle practical wisdom concerns not only the means but also the ends of human acting, and Pierre Auben- que, who affirmed that it concerns only the means.35

32. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 12–13. 33. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.9, 1142a 8–27. 34. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 13. 35. See René Antonin Gauthier, La morale d’Aristote (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), and his introduction to Aristote, L’Ethique à Nicomaque, 2d ed. (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1970); Pierre Aubenque, La prudence chez Aristote (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963). About Aquinas’s position See Antonino Poppi, “Il ruolo della ‘phronesis’ nella fondazione dell’etica,” in Forme di razionalità pratica, ed. Sergio Galvan (Milan: Angeli, 1992), 95–130. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 295

In chapter ten Aristotle introduces the first of the habits connected with phronesis, i.e., “excellence in deliberation” (euboulia), distinguishing it on the one hand from knowledge (episteme), because men who know do not inquire, while those who deliberate inquire and calculate (zetei kai logizetai), and on the other hand from “skill in conjecture” (eustochia), because the latter does not involve reasoning and is something quick in its operation, and because the one who deliberates needs a long time and deliberation, which again involves reasoning. For the same reason, excellence in deliberation is different from “readiness of mind” (anchinoia), which is a sort of skill in conjecture.36 It is interesting that Gadamer in his translation omits an entire sentence of Aristotle’s text, namely, that captured by the English “deliberation is a kind of inquiry,” and that in the commentary on this chapter he never mentions the acts of deliberating, inquiring, and calculating, emphasizing only the political and social responsibility involved in the excellence of deliberation (called by him Wohlüberlegtsein, “to have been well reflected upon”). Very important, on the other hand, is his remark that practical wisdom, with which excellence in deliberation is connected, is not simple cleverness (Klugheit), as it was interpreted by Kant.37 In chapter eleven Aristotle compares practical wisdom with the “understanding” (sunesis) and the “goodness of understanding” (eusunesia); affirming (1) that they are similar, because they have the same object, and (2) that they are distinguished only by the fact that practical wisdom issues commands (epitaktike estin), while understanding only judges (kritike monon).38 In the same chapter Aristotle also defines “judgement” (gnome) and “forgiveness” (sungnome), the right discrimination of the equitable (epieikes).39 In the commentary, Gadamer, who translates sunesis by means of Verstehen and gnome by means of Einsicht, emphasizes the hermeneutic character of the understanding, which he interprets as “‘knowledge about himself’ and understanding of the other” (das “um sich selbst Wissen” und Verstehen des Anderen). He emphasizes also the role of the equitable in the gnome, claiming that by using this term in such a context, Aristotle means to indicate that some well-known juridical concepts belong to the realms of the intellectual virtues, and in this way has developed the intention of Socratic dialogue and of Platonic dialectic.40 This tendency to affirm a continuity between Socratic dialogue, Platonic dialectic, and Aristotelian practical wisdom has been recently recog-

36. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.10, 1141b 31–1142a 5. 37. Nikomachische Ethik VI, 14. 38. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.11, 1142b 34–1143a 10. 39. Ibid., 1143a 19–23. 40. Nikomachische Ethik VI. 14–15. 296 enrico berti nized as one of the major characteristics of Gadamer’s hermeneutics.41 At the beginning of chapter twelve, Aristotle declares that all the states we have considered, i.e., judgement, understanding, practical wisdom, and intellect, converge on the same point, because all these faculties deal with the “ultimates,” i.e., with particulars. He adds that intellect (nous) is concerned with “ultimates” in both directions, for in demonstrations it grasps the primary deﬁnitions, while in practical reasoning it grasps the last and contingent fact, i.e. “the second premise” (tes heteras protaseos). “These principles,” says Aristotle, “are that for the sake of which,” i.e., the ends, and “of these therefore we must have perception, and this is intellect.”42 It seems to me that we can conclude from this passage that in a practical syllogism the end is the object of the major, the universal premise, and is grasped in a way that is comparable to that which in demonstrations is proper to the intellect, while the means are the object of the minor, the particular premise, and that this is the work of practical wisdom. Gadamer, as we rightly expect, emphasizes the immediate character of the apprehension of principles, i.e., of the ends accomplished by the intellect, without distinguishing this apprehension from practical wisdom, to which he also attributes, in this way, also the task of grasping ends. However, Aristotle is explicit in saying that practical wisdom establishes only the minor, which concerns the particulars, i.e., the means. Gadamer says nothing, obviously, about practical syllogism, which in this chapter is the practical equivalent of a theoretical demonstration. But as a conclusion of the chapter he asserts that “practical reason, and not only the theoretical reason, is also a highest virtue of the knowing being (des Wissendseins).”43 iv. the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom The last chapter of the book (the thirteenth in Gadamer’s division, the twelfth and thirteenth in the ROT division) is the longest and treats of the relation between theoretical and practical wisdom (sophia and phronesis). After having formulated some difﬁculties both about these virtues in themselves and about their utility, Aristotle responds that theoretical and practical wisdom are the excellence of the two parts of the soul respectively, even if neither of them produces anything. But he adds that theoretical wisdom produces happiness, not as the art of med-

41. See François Renaud, Die Resokratisierung Platons: Die platonische Hermeneutik Hans- Georg Gadamers (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 1999). 42. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.12, 1143a 24–1143b 6. 43. Nikomachische Ethik VI. 16. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 297 icine produces health, but as health produces health.44 This means that happiness, i.e., the aim of the whole human acting, consists in the exercise of theoretical wisdom. As regards practical wisdom, Aristotle says that, “the function (ergon) of man is achieved only in accordance with practical wisdom and with moral excellence (ethike arete); for excellence makes the aim right, and practical wisdom the things leading to it.”45 This passage shows deﬁni- tively, in my opinion, that the end of moral acting, i.e., the good, happiness, is indicated by moral excellence, in the sense that the man who is morally excellent tends to the right end, and that practical wisdom indicates the means that are more adequate to obtain this end. Therefore the exercise of theoretical wisdom, i.e., happiness, is the end of man, while the exercise of practical wisdom is the path to achieve that end. But the choice of the right end does not depend on practical wisdom, it depends on man’s moral excellence. Aristotle continues by observing that both practical wisdom and moral excellence are forms of ability. Practical wisdom supposes a capacity, which is cleverness (deinotes), but is different from this ability, because it is cleverness directed to a good end, and the right choice of the end depends, as we have seen, on moral virtue. At this point Aristotle mentions the practical syllogisms (syllogismoi ton prakton, literally “inferences that deal with acts to be done”) and formulates its major in this way: “since the end, i.e., what is best, is of such and such nature,” adding that “this is not evident except to the good man.” Therefore goodness, i.e., moral excellence, is responsible for the major of the syllogism, which concerns the end, while practical wisdom is responsible for the minor, which concerns the means. In any case practical wisdom cannot be separated from moral excellence.46 Moral excellence also presupposes a form of ability, which is a natural excellence (phusike arete), i.e., a form of excellence due not to character, but to birth. This is not yet an excellence in the proper sense, i.e., moral excellence, but it becomes such when it is conjoined with practical wisdom. Therefore Socrates, says Aristotle, was wrong in afﬁrming that moral excellence consists in practical wisdom, because they are different, but he was right in seeing that moral excellence is not possible without practical wisdom. Aristotle repeats that they cannot be separated, because “the one determines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead to the end.”47 The reference to Socrates shows that Aris- totle’s discourse proceeds at two levels. On one hand, he speaks, as does Socrates, about the common man, who is no philosopher and who

44. Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13, 1144a 1–6. 45. Ibid., 1144a 6–8. 46. Ibid., 1144a 11–b 1. 47. Ibid., 1144b 1–1145a 6. 298 enrico berti needs moral excellence to tend to the right end. On the other, he criticizes Socrates in his discussion with him, on the philosophical level, about what moral excellence is and, consequently, about the end of the human being. This means that from the point of view of its realization, the end requires moral excellence, while from the point of view of its theoretical determination, it requires practical philosophy, i.e., that form of knowledge represented by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In neither case is the end determined by practical wisdom. Finally, facing directly the problem of the relation between practical and theoretical wisdom, Aristotle says, I quote, “but again it (practical wisdom) is not supreme (kuria) over (theoretical) wisdom, i.e., over the superior part of us, any more than the art of medicine is over health; for it does not use it but provides for its coming into being; it issues orders (epitattei), then, for its sake, but not to it. Further, to maintain its su- premacy would be like saying that the art of politics rules the gods because it issues orders about all the affairs of the state.”48 The relation between the two forms of wisdom is here clarified in the best way: practical wisdom orders the whole of human life in view of the attainment of happiness, i.e., of theoretical wisdom. The latter is the end, like health for medicine, but the first is that which orders, i.e., which governs the behavior of man. Only in this sense is it authoritative. Something similar is said by Aristotle at the end of the Eudemian Ethics, where he affirms: Since man is by nature composed of a ruling and of a subject part, each of us should live according the governing element within himself—but this is ambiguous, for medical science governs in one sense, health in another, the former existing for the latter. And such is the case with the theoretical faculty; for God is not an imperative ruler, but is the end with a view to which wisdom (phronesis) issues its commands .l.l. for God needs nothing. What choice, then, or possession of the natural goods—whether bodily goods, wealth, friends or other things— will most produce the contemplation of God (tou theou theoria), that choice or possession is best; this is the noblest standard, but any other choice that through deficiency or excess hinders one from the contemplation or service of God (ton theon therapeuein kai theorein) is bad.49 Gadamer’s commentary to this chapter is very short. He limits himself to the observation that neither practical nor theoretical wisdom are a knowledge that can be applied, but rather a knowledge in which the being of man is always already involved (es ist immer schon mit da). He does not delve into the issue of the superiority of the one to the other.50

48. Ibid., 1145a 6–11. 49. Eth. Eud. VIII.3, 1249b 9–21. The interpretation of this passage is controversial, but the comparison with the passage of Nicomachean Ethics, VI.13 can bring some light also to it. 50. Nikomachische Ethik VI. 16–17. Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues in Gadamer 299

In the Zusammenfassung of his whole commentary, however, he criticizes the reduction of phronesis to a simple means in view of an end. He identifies this reading of phronesis with a reduction of prudence to cleverness (deinotes, Klugheit), and he observes that practical wisdom concerns the whole of human life. He recognizes that Aristotle attributes primacy to theoretical knowledge, but he affirms that men can only approach this ideal, which for the Greeks was accessible only to the gods.51 Gadamer then asks himself about the meaning of Aristotle’s practical philosophy for the present situation of philosophy. He answers that, first, Aristotle indicates that there is a highest knowledge, furnished of coercive evidence (von zwingender Evidenz) for the individual, the society, and the state, which all govern human acting; and, second, that there is an inseparable exchange between the knowledge of the right and the good and the theoretical ideal of contemplation. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle shows that the being-present (Gegenwärtigkeit), the Da, comes to its present time (Gegenwart) in the conscience of the human being. Hei- degger, on the other hand, had the merit of having understood the necessity of starting from this Da and in this way made fruitful for philosophy the practical rationality analyzed by Aristotle. Many categories of contemporary hermeneutic, such as “life-world,” “facticity,” “existence,” “hermeneutics,” “dialogue,” “fulfillment,” have opened up new ways of thought toward the practical philosophy of Aristotle. It is Aristotle himself who justifies practical over and against theoretical knowledge.52 In the Nachwort to his edition, entitled The Foundation of Practical Phi- losophy, Gadamer returns to chapter thirteen. He observes, first of all, that the foundation of practical philosophy, which must be attributed to Aristotle, involves a development of the conception of knowledge proposed by Plato in the Stateman, which corresponds to the Aristotelian concept of phronesis, i.e., of practical knowledge.53 In this way, he suggests again, almost implicitly, an identification of practical philosophy with phronesis. As regards the relation between practical and theoretical wisdom, Gadamer affirms that both are excellences (Bestheiten) of the human soul and are inseparable aspects of the same spiritual being, but he adds that Aristotle never brought this relation to a careful exposition, suggesting rather that pure theoretical activity is more accessible to the gods than to men. Furthermore Gadamer says that practical and theoretical wisdom have the same character of immediacy which is proper to the intellect, but only the former, i.e., phronesis, is at the center of Aristo- tle’s interest in the sixth book of the Ethics.54 As regards chapter thirteen, Gadamer recognizes that Aristotle con-

51. Ibid., 19–21. 52. Ibid., 21–22. 53. Ibid., 61–63. 54. Ibid., 64–65. 300 enrico berti siders practical wisdom inferior if compared to the ideal realization of theoretical knowledge, but he observes that the latter, as he makes clear at the end of Nicomachean Ethics, also includes the life of praxis. These two represent, respectively, the human and the divine element in man, which cannot be separated. In this way, philosophy itself must be conceived as practical philosophy, and practical philosophy must be interpreted essentially as approaching the intellectual excellence in which phronesis consists. Between practical rationality and the exercise of theoria there is, following Gadamer, the same relation that exists between the human ideal of the theoretical life and the kind of existence proper to the gods.55 Here again we find Gadamer’s tendency to downplay the primacy of theoretical knowledge in favor of a primacy of practical wisdom. The observation with which Gadamer concludes his Nachwort is interesting because it contains a criticism of Heidegger’s treatment of Aristo- tle’s intellectual virtues, included in the course on Plato’s Sophist given at Marburg in the Winter Term of 1924/25, a course Gadamer himself attended and the probable origin of his interest in this subject. Gadamer affirms that Heidegger does not do complete justice to Aristo- tle’s intention in Nicomachean Ethics because he treats this text principally in connection with the first two chapters of Metaphysics, which deal with theoretical philosophy. This shows, for Gadamer, that Heidegger’s interest was more directed to the understanding of being than of practical knowledge. On the contrary, says Gadamer, the aim of Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VI was essentially to show that also in the realm of practical knowledge a solid knowledge is possible, which is at the same time a true excellence.56 To conclude with a comparison between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s reception of the intellectual virtues of Aristotle, we may say that Heideg- ger emphasizes the primacy claimed for theoretical wisdom by Aristotle, but he does so in order to refute this claim, and this in order to appropriate in a tacit manner Aristotle’s practical philosophy,57 Gadamer, on the contrary, does not seek to refute Aristotle, but rather to follow him. To do this, given his commitment to the primacy of practical knowledge, he also tries to attribute this intention to Aristotle, downplaying the role of theoria. In my own view, Aristotle definitely accords primacy to theoretical knowledge, and this is not a defect, as Heidegger supposes, but goes very much to Aristotle’s credit.

55. Ibid., 65–66. 56. Ibid., 67. 57. See at this regard the numerous writings of Franco Volpi, the most recent of which is “The Rehabilitation of Practical Philosophy and Neo-Aristotelianism,” in Action and contemplation: Studies in the Moral and Political Thought of Aristotle, ed. Robert C. Bartlett and Su- san D. Collins (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1999), 3–25. Contributors

Enrico Berti (Ph.D., University of Padova) is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Padova. His interests are Ancient Phi- losophy, Contemporary Philosophy, and Aristotelian Tradition. Author of Il De re publica di Cicerone e il pensiero politico classico (Padua: Cedam, 1963); L’unità del sapere in Aristotele (Padua: Cedam, 1965); Aristotele: dal- la dialettica alla filosofia prima (Padua: Cedam, 1977); La metafisica di Pla- tone e di Aristotele nell’interpretazione di Antonio Rosmini (Rome: Città Nuo- va, 1977); Le vie della ragione (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987); Le ragioni di Aristotele (Rome: Laterza, 1989); Aristotele nel Novecento (Rome: Laterza, 1992); Introduzione alla metafisica (Turin: Utet, 1993); Il pensiero politico di Aristotele (Laterza, 1997); La filosofia del primo Aristotele (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1997). Editor of Aristotle on Science: The Posterior Analytics (Pad- ua: Antenore, 1981).

Richard Cobb-Stevens (Ph.D., University of Paris) is Professor in the Philos- ophy Department at Boston College. He works on American Pragma- tism, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, and Husserl. Author of James and Husserl: The Foundations of Meaning (The Haugue: Nijhoff, 1974); Husserl and Analytic Philosophy (Kluwer, 1990); Husserl et la philosophie analytique (Paris: Vrin, 1998).

Daniel O. Dahlstrom (Ph.D., St. Louis University) is Professor in the De- partment of Philosophy at Boston University. His interests are in Phe- nomenology, German Idealism, Aesthetics. Author of Das logische Vorurteil (Vienna: Passagen, 1994); Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cam- bridge University Press, 2001). Editor of Metaphysics of Substance (Na- tional Office of the ACPA, 1987); Hermeneutics and the Tradition (Nation- al Office of the ACPA, 1988); Nature and Scientific Method (CUA Press, 1991); Philosophy and Art (CUA Press, 1991). Co-editor of The Emergence of German Idealism (CUA Press, 1999). Translator of Moses Mendelsohn, Philosophical Writings (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

301 302 Contributors

Michael Davis (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is Professor in the Humanities Department at Sarah Lawrence College. Interests in Greek philosophy, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy and literature. Author of Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science (South- ern Illinois University Press, 1988); The Politics of Philosophy: A Commen- tary on Aristotle’s Politics (Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 1996); Aristotle’s Poetics: The Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine Press, 1999); The Autobiography of Philosophy: Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker (Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 1999). He is member of the editorial board of Ancient Philosophy.

John P. Doyle (Ph.D., University of Toronto). After teaching at St. Michael’s College in Vermont he went to St. Louis University, where he has been professor of Philosophy since 1973. He has published Francisco Suarez, S.J., On Beings of Reason (Marquette University Press, 1995), Fran- cisco de Vitoria O.P., Reﬂection on Homicide (Marquette University Press, 1997), plus thirty articles reﬂecting his interest in late Scholastic philosophy, especially that of Suárez.

Alfredo Ferrarin (Ph.D., Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) is Associate Pro- fessor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pisa. His interests are in German Idealism, Aristotle, Kant, Phenomenology, Aesthetics. Author of Hegel interprete di Aristotele (Pisa: ETS, 1990); Hegel and Aristotle (Cam- bridge University Press, 2000).

Edward P. Mahoney (Ph.D., Columbia University) is Professor in the De- partment of Philosophy at Duke University. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John S. Guggenheim Foundation and he was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at the University of Rome. His interests are late ancient philosophy; medieval and Renaissance philosophy and science; and political philosophy. Edi- tor of Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning (Duke University Press, 1974) and Philosophy and Humanism (Columbia University Press, 1976). He has published articles in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Francis- can Studies, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Journal of the History of Ideas, Review of Metaphysics and other journals. His recent publications include studies on “the Great Chain of Being,” critiques of Aristotle, and late medieval psychology. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and The Catholic University of America. He is a former President of the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Phi- losophy. Contributors 303

Christia Mercer (Ph.D., Princeton) is Associate Professor in the Philoso- phy Department of Columbia University. She is an authority on seventeenth-century German Philosophy. Her book on Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development (Cambridge University Press, 2001) provides a comprehensive approach to the sources of Leibniz philosophy.

Antonino Poppi (Ph.D., University of Padova) is a Franciscan (Conv.) priest and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Padova. His interests are in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy, Aristotelianism, Scotism, Contemporary Ethics and Metaphysics. Author of La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarella (Padua: Antenore, 1972); Classicità del pensiero medievale (Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1988); L’intelligenza del principio (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1989); La filosofia nello Studio francescano del Santo a Padova (Padua: Centro Studi Antoni- ani, 1989); Introduzione all’aristotelismo padovano (Antenore 1991); Cre- monini, Galilei e gli inquisitori del Santo a Padova (Padua: Antenore, 1993); Etiche del Novecento (Naples: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1993); Studi sull’etica della prima Scuola francescana (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1996); L’etica del Rinascimento tra Platone e Aristotele (Naples: Città del Sole, 1997).

Riccardo Pozzo (Ph.D., University of Saarland, 1988; Habilitation, Univer- sity of Trier, 1995) is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Uni- versity of Verona. He works on the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and German Idealism. Author of Hegel: Introductio in Philosophiam (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1989); Kant und das Problem einer Einleitung in die Logik (Frankfurt: Lang, 1989); Georg Friedrich Meiers Vernunftlehre (Stuttgart- Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2000). Co-editor of Zur Rekon- struktion der praktischen Philosophie (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann- Holzoog, 1990); John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding (Stuttgart Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996); Vorlesungsverze- ichnisse der Universität Königsberg (1720–1804) (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1999). He is general co-editor of the collection Forschungen und Materialien zur Universitätsgeschichte (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog).

Stanley Rosen (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Boston Uni- versity. His interests are in History of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Contem- porary Philosophy, Social and Political Thought. Author of Nihilism (Yale University Press, 1969); G. F. W. Hegel: An Introduction to the Science of Wisdom (Yale University Press, 1974); The Limits of Analysis (Yale Uni- 304 Contributors versity Press, 1980); Plato’s Sophist (Yale University Press, 1983); Plato’s Symposium (Yale University Press, 1987); The Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry (Routledge, 1988); Hermeneutics as Politics (Oxford University Press, 1989); The Ancients and the Moderns: Rethinking Modernity (Yale University Press, 1989); The Question of Being (Yale University Press, 1993); Plato’s Statesman (Yale University Press, 1995); The Mask of the En- lightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Metaphysics in Ordinary Language (Yale University Press, 1999). Editor of The Examined Life (Ran- dom House, 2000).

Currently Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy, Catholic Uni- versity of America, Richard Velkley received his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1978. His research centers on the relation between morality, reason, and nature in modern philosophy with emphasis on the German tradition. He is author of Freedom and the End of Reason (Uni- versity of Chicago Press, 1989), and has edited and introduced The Uni- ty of Reason: Essays in Kant’s Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 1994), a collection of essays by Dieter Henrich. His articles include “Realizing Nature in the Self: Schelling on Art and Intellectual Intuition” in Figur- ing the Self, edited by D. Klemm and Günther Zöller (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1997), “Kant on the Primacy and Limits of Logic” in Graduate Fac- ulty Journal, and “Edmund Husserl” in History of Political Philosophy, edited by Leo Strauss and John Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). He is Associate Editor of the Review of Metaphysics.

William A. Wallace is a Dominican priest with doctorates in philosophy (1959) and theology (1962) from the University of Fribourg, Switzer- land. He is Professor Emeritus of the School of Philosophy and the De- partment of History at the Catholic University of America and Adjunct Professor in the Center for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. He turned to intellectual life after serving in the U.S. Navy from 1941 to 1946, during which period he pi- oneered in techniques later known as operations research. His philosophical work has focused on the Aristotelian understanding of nature and on the methodological roots of modern science with special emphasis on Galileo. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of The Scientiﬁc Methodology of Theodoric of Freiberg (Fribourg, Switzerland: University of Fribourg Press, 1959); The Role of Demonstration in Moral Philosophy (The Thomist Press, 1962); Causality and Scientiﬁc Explanation (University of Michigan Press, 1972–74); The Elements of Philosophy (Alba House, 1977); Galileo’s Early Notebooks (University of Notre Dame Press, 1977); Prelude to Galileo (Reidel, 1981); From a Realistic Point of View (Uni- Contributors 305 versity of America Press, 1983); Galileo and His Sources (Princeton Uni- versity Press, 1984); Galileo, the Jesuits, and the Medieval Aristotle (Gower, 1991); Galileo’s Logic of Discovery and Proof (Kluwer, 1992); Ethics in Mod- eling (Pergamon, 1994); The Modeling of Nature (CUA Press, 1996). Edi- tor of Reinterpreting Galileo (CUA Press, 1986); Translator of Galileo Galilei, Logical Treatises (Kluwer, 1992). 306 harvesting the enlightenments Bibliography

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Index of Names

Adickes, Erich, 179 Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm, 89 Aertsen, Jan A., 23 Bautz, Traugott, 89 Agricola, Rudolf, 185 Bazán, Bernardo Carlos, 7 Albert the Great, Saint, 4–5, 12, 22, 28, Beck, Lewis White, 185 32–33 Becker, Immanuel, ix, 182, 193 Albinus, 11, 20 Beierwaltes, Werner, 209 Alexander of Aphrodisias, vii, 7–9, 17, 25, Bellarmino, Roberto, Cardinal, ix, 77, 81 29, 32, 36, 86, 135, 183–84, 193, 198 Benardete, Seth 148, 154, 222 Allen, Michael J. B., 19 Benedetti, Giovanni Battista, xi, 67, 77 Americks, Karl, 241 Bernaldo de Quiros, Antonio de, 88 Anaxagoras, 200 Bernard of Chartres, 12 Andreas, Antonius, 24–25 Bernard of Clairvaux, 26 Andronicos of Rhodos, vii Berti, Enrico, ix, xv, 44–46, 48–49, 60, Andujár, E., 7 286, 301 Annas, Julias, 57 Berubé, Camille, 6 Anscombe, G. E. M., 266–67 Bessarion Nicaenus, Cardinal, 15–20 Anselm, Saint, 11 Bettoni, Efrem, 23 Anthiocus of Ascalon, 11 Bianchi, Luca, 5 Anton, John, 220 Bindseil, H. E., 117 Archimedes, 67, 70–71, 76 Bloom, Allan, 151, 169 Ariew, Roger, 33 Blum, Paul Richard, ix Armstrong, Arthur Hilary, 11, 127, 129–31 Bobbio, Norberto, 31 Arnauld, Antoine, 134 Bock, C. V., 210 Arnold, Richard E., 24 Boese, Helmut, 12 Aubenque, Pierre, 286, 294 Boethius, 11, 20, 95, 119 Augustine, Saint, 116, 122, 123, 125–26, Bolzano, Bernhard, 87 128, 129, 137 Bonaventure, Saint, 22, 25 Averroes, x, 2–4, 9, 17–18, 22, 24–25, 29, Bonfatti, Stefano, 185 32–33, 36–37, 46, 86–88, 94, 121, Bonitz, Hermann, 182 135–36, 183, 188, 198, 210 Bordes, Charles, 156 Avicenna, 22, 210 Borghese, Camillo (Pope Paul V), 81, 89 Ayers, Michael, 115 Borghini, Jacopo, 66 Borro, Girolamo, 67, 72, 77 Backus, Irena, 184 Boswell, James, 210 Bacon de Verulam, Francis, 121–22 Bouillon, Dominique, 38, 42 Baconthorpe, John, 28 Brague, Rémi, 291 Balduino, Girolamo, 183 Branca, Vittore, 3 Barbaro, Ermolao, 7, 9–10, 36 Brandt, Reinhard, 179–80 Barberini, Maffeo (Pope Urban VIII), 81, Brann, Eva, 233 83 Brentano, Franz, 112, 267 Barnes, Jonathan, 287 Bretschneider, Carl Gottlob, 117 Barocci, Francesco, 239 Brockliss, L. W. B., 33 Bartlett, Robert C., 300 Brown, Gregory A., 115, 146 Bate, Henry, 9, 12, 29 Brown, James Robert, 124 Baumeister, Friedrich Christian, xiii, 191 Brown, Robert F., ix Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 176, 182 Brown, S., 123

329 330 index of names

Brucker, Jakob, xvi Cottingham, John, 240 Bruni, Leonardo, 7 Coudert, Allison, 115, 124 Bruns, I., 193 Courtine, Jean-François, 291 Bucher, Alexius J., 175 Crary, Alice Marguerite, 279 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de, 157 Cremonini, Cesare, 303 Buonamici, Francesco, 67, 77 Cropsey, Joseph, 222, 304 Burger, Ronna, 220 Cudworth, Ralph, 125 Burns, George, 217 Burnyeat, M. F., 106 da Diacceto, Francesco, 19 Burr, David, 23 Dahiyat, I. M., 210 Bussmann, Johann E., 185 Dahlstrom, Daniel O., xv, 301 Butcher, Samuel Henry, 225 Dal Pra, Mario, 38, 40 Butterﬁeld, Herbert, 64 Dannhauser, Werner, 226–27 Butterworth, C., 210 Dante, 67 Davis, Michael, xiii–xiv, 148–49, 157, 302 Cairns, Dorion, 242 de Backer, A., 89 Cajetan, see de Vio, Tommaso, Cardinal de Bellis, Daniela, 7 Callistus, Andronicus, 8 de’ Bernardi della Mirandola, Antonio, Calvin, John, 90 182 Campanella, Tommaso, 22–23, 25, 29–32, de’ Blavis, Bartolomeo, 183 123 de Franco, Luigi, 30 Canonicus, Joannes, 24–25, 28 de Giovanni, Ettore, 26 Capagna, Victorino, 110 delle Colombe, Ludovico, 78–79 Carboncini, Sonia, 188–89 del Medigo, Elia, 3 Carleton, Thomas Compton, 88, 95 del Monte, Guidoubaldo, 75 Carr, David, 247 Delorme, Ferdinand M., 23 Caselius, Johannes, 184 de’ Medici, Antonio, 73 Cassirer, Ernst, viii, 42 de’ Passeri, Marcantonio, 37 Castellesi, Adriano, 7 De Rijk, Lambert Marie, 24, 85 Causabon, Isaac, 117 Descartes, René, viii–ix, 33, 122, 145, 161, Cavalli, Francesco, 7–8 186, 204, 237, 239–41, 245 Cessario, Romanus, 5 de Vio, Tommaso, Cardinal (Cajetan), 5 Champier, Symphorien, 20 Diamond, Cora, 278, 280–81 Chandler, David, 175 Diano, Carlo, viii Charlton, William, xvi, 193 Di Liscia, D. A., 47, 70, 184 Charpentier, Jacques, 20 Di Napoli, Giovanni, 5 Chastegnier de la Rocheposay, Henry- Diophantus, 237–38, 240 Louis, 136 Dirlmeier, Franz, 269 Cheneval, F., 5 di Segni, Ugolino (Pope Gregory IX), 21 Christina, Queen of Sweden, 74, 80–81 Donato, Girolamo, 9, 36 Churchill, James S., 241 Donno, Daniel J., 31 Cicero, 11, 119, 122–23, 182, 184, 301 Doyle, John P., xi–xii, 87–88, 93, 95, 96, Ciliberto, Michele, 49 111–12, 302 Clavius, Christopher, xi, 67, 76 Drabkin, I. E., 69 Cobb-Stevens, Richard, xiv, 301 Drake, Stillman, 66, 69, 75 Cohen, T., 155 Dreier, Christian, 185 Collins, Ardis B., 6 Duns Scotus, John, x, 6, 25, 28–29, 32, 43, Collins, Susan D., 300 119, 303 Conway, Anne, 125 Duodo, Andrea, 176 Copenhaver, Brian P., 117 Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, 25, 28 Copernicus, Nicholas, xi, 73, 77, 81–82, 112, 186 Ebbesen, Sten, 86, 95 Corneille, Pierre, 210 Eco, Umberto, 226 Cornford, F. M., 85 Edwards, William F., 37, 68 Cosimo II de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tus- Einstein, Albert, viii cany, 68, 76 Else, Gerald Frank, 225 Index of Names 331

Elswich, Johann Hermann von, 183 Gaukroger, Stephen, 235, 239 Emery, Kent Jr., 23 Gauthier, René Antonin, 115, 117, Epicurus, 189 269–70, 294 Euclid, 44–45, 67, 207, 235–36, 241, 244 Gendre, Michael, 248 Eudoxus, 235 Geny, P., 91 Euripides, 212, 219, 221, 225 George of Trebizond, 14–20 Eusebius, 27 Gerhardt, Carl Immanuel, 126 Eustratius, 61 Gerson, John, 28 Gilbert, Neal W., 48–49 Fabro, Cornelio, 6 Gilson, Étienne, 22, 110 Fairbanks, Charles, 148 Giphanius, Obertus, see Van Giffen, Hubert Fakhry, Majid, 19 Giunti, Luca Antonio, viii, 3, 183 Fantoni, Filippo, 67 Giunti, Tommaso, viii, 3, 183 Farber, Marvin, 239 Goclenius, Rudolf, 135–36 Farmer, Stephen A., 4, 20 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 210 Fasolo, Giovanni, 37 Goodman, Martin, 129 Fatouros, Georgius, 89 Goodman, Sarah, 129 Favaro, Antonio, 65–66, 68, 72, 83 Görland, Albert, 179, 181 Ferrarin, Alfredo, xiii, 177, 193, 266, 302 Gourevitch, Victor, 148–49, 155–56, 158 Ferreira Gomes, Joaquim, 101 Gregory, Tullio, 12, 34 Ferriguto, Arnaldo, 7 Gregory IX, Pope, see di Segni, Ugolino Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 149 Gregory of Rimini, 25, 28 Ficino, Marsilio, 6, 11, 19, 117, 126 Grifﬁths, A. Phillips, 266 Findlay, John N., 234, 241 Grimani, Giovanni, 7 Finster, Reinhart, 188–89 Guazzo, Stefano, 185 Firpo, Luigi, 31 Gunther, Owen, 183, 189 Flaccius Illyricus, Matthias Jr., 184 Gutke Georg, 183–84 Floyd, Juliet, 266, 279 Guyer, Paul, 155 Fonseca, Pedro da, 101 Foscarini, Paolo Antonio, 81 Haller, Rudolf, 267 Fox Morcillo, Sebastian, 20 Hamilton, Sir William B., 192 Frank, Günter, 116–17, 184 Hankins, James, 6–7 Frankfurt, Harry G., 114 Harris, Henry S., ix Frede, Michael, 85 Harth, Helene, 7 Frederick William I, King of Prussia, 185 Hassing, Richard, 148 Frege, Gottlob, 231, 278–79 Hawenreuther, Johann Ludwig, 184 Freud, Sigmund, 216–17 Hayduck, Michael, 86, 193 Friedländer, Paul, 285 Haynes, Holly, 148 Friedlein, G., 193 Headley, John M., 23, 31–32 Friedrich, C. J., 114 Heath, T. L., 235 Funke, Gerhard, 175, 191 Heerebord, Adriaan, 145 Furth, Hans, 266 Hegel, G. W. F., vii, ix, xii–xiii, 40, 152, 177, 182, 193–209, 211, 277, 292, Gadamer, Hans-Georg, vii, ix, xiii, xv, 193, 302–3 248, 285–300 Heidegger, Martin, vii, xiii–xv, 40, 176, Gagnebin, Bernard, 148 193, 248–65, 300–301 Galen, 20, 47–48, 61, 122 Heinsius, Daniel, 225 Galilei, Galileo, vii, x–xi, 33, 39, 42, 45, Heinze, R., 193 48–49, 51–52, 64–83, 304–5 Henrich, Dieter, 181, 304 Galilei, Vincenzio, 66–68 Henry, John, 3 Gallagher, David M., 9 Henry of Ghent, 28–29 Galvan, Sergio, 294 Heydt, Colin, 266 Garber, Daniel, 115, 123 Highet, Gilbert, ix Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, 4, 11 Hill, David, 75 Garin, Eugenio, 6, 49 Hinske, Norbert, 180–81 Gassendi, Pierre, 34, 122, 189 Hintikka, Jaakko, 86, 275, 278 332 index of names

Hippocrates, 20 Knigge, Adolph von, 185 Hispanus, Petrus, 182 Knutzen, Martin, 189 Hissette, Roland, 22 Knuuttila, Simo, 86 Hobbes, Thomas, 119, 123, 146, 149, 168 Kobusch, Theo, 85–87 Hochstrasser, Timothy J., 113–14 Kosman, A., 203 Hoenen, M. J. F. M., 5 Koyré, Alexandre, 65, 75 Holcot, Robert, 28 Kraye, Jill, 6, 115–16, 120, 145, 175 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 149–50 Kripke, Saul, 279 Homer, 119, 213–15 Kristeller, Paul Oskar, 5–6, 12, 19, 36 Honate, Beninus de, 10 Kuksewicz, Zdislaw, 3 Honate, Johannes Antonius de, 10 Kusukawa, Sachiko, 183 Horace, 122 Kypke, Johann David, 186, 191 Horky, Martin, 77 Hume, David, 175 Lachterman, David, 232, 235–36, 240, 245 Hunter, Ian, 114 Lagarde, Bernadette, 13 Husserl, Edmund, vii, xiv, 112, 231–47, Lambert, Johann Heinrich, 190 301, 304 La Ramée, Pierre de, viii, 50, 183–84 Latham, M., 239 Idel, Moshe, 129 Launoy, Jean de, 23 Imbach, R. 5 Lear, Jonathan, 273–74 Iparraguirre Aldanondo, Ignacio, 89 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, vii, xii, Iturrioz, J., 87 113–47, 182, 303 Leijenhorst, Cornelis Hendrik, 118 Jaeger, Werner, ix Leo XIII, Pope, see Pecci, Gioacchino James, William, 246, 301 Lerner, Michel-Pierre, 31 James of Viterbo, 9, 29 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 210 Jansen, Bernard, 23 Levere, Trevor, 68 Jardine, Nicholas, 2, 46–47, 49 Libera, Alain de, 5 Jaumann, Herbert, 150 Liberatore, M., 92 John of Jandun, 4–5 Liceti, Fortunio, 83 John of Salisbury, 12 Liebeschütz, Hans, 11 Johnson, Samuel, 210 Liechtenstein, Hermann, 10 Jolif, Jean, 115, 117, 269–70 Linden, Mareta, 180 Jolley, Nicholas, 115 Lines, David A., 7, 114, 116, 147 Joyce, James, 275 Lloyd Jones, G., 129 Locke, John, 149, 175, 261, 303 Kahn, Charles, 232–72 Loemker, Leroy E., 126 Kaluza, Zenon, 5 Lohr, Charles H., 33 Kant, Immanuel, vii–ix, xii–xiii, 40, Lombardus, Petrus, 25 112–13, 149–52, 156, 173–92, 208, Loyola, Ignatius de, Saint, 33, 90 253, 277, 292, 302, 303–4 Lucas, D. W., 213 Kassim, Husain, vii Luther, Martin, 35, 115–18, 145, 183 Keckermann, Bartholomaeus, 114, 183 Lüthy, Christoph, 118 Kelly, Christopher, 149, 158 Lynch, Richard, 88, 93 Kemp Smith, Norman, 175 Kennedy, Leonard A., 24 Mach, Ernst, 65 Kennington, Richard, 155 Machamer, Peter, 68 Kenny, Sir Anthony, viii Machiavelli, Niccolò, 154 Kern, W., 199 Mackie, J. L. 106 Kersten, Frederick, 242 Maggi, Francesco, 37 Keßler, Eckhard, ix, 2–3, 47, 70, 175, 184 Maggiolo, M., 84 Kirk, G. S., 85 Mahoney, Edward P., x, 2–11, 25, 37, 182, Kisiel, Theodore, 248–49, 253 302 Klein, Jacob, 233–34, 236–39 Maierú, Alfonso, 182 Klemm, D., 304 Mansel, H. L., 192 Klemme, Heiner, 186 Mansﬁeld, Harvey, 148, 15 Knebel, Sven K., 93 Manuzio, Aldo, viii, 183 Index of Names 333

Manzanedo, Marcos F., 5 Mund, M., 7 Marc, André, 110 Munzel, G. Felicitas, 181 Mariani Zini, Fosca, 7 Murdoch, Dugald, 240 Marinus, 29 Murdoch, John Emery, 184 Marion, Jean-Luc, 241 Marshall, Terence E., 149 Nadal, Jerome, 33 Marsilius of Inghen, 25 Nardi, Bruno, viii, 3, 8, 10–11, 22 Martini, Cornelius, xiii, 184–85 Natali, Carlo, 57 Masai, François, 12 Natalis, Hervaeus, 28 Mauro, Sylvester, 88–89, 92, 96 Naylor, Ronald, 75 Mazzoni, Jacopo, 11–12, 20–21, 67 Nederman, Cary J., vii McCarthy, John C., 149 Nef, F., 93 McCormack, Thomas J., 65 Newton, Isaac, 175 McGuinness, Brian, 276 Nicholas V, Pope, see Parentucelli, Tomma- McIntyre, Alasdair, 181 so Meerhoff, Kees, 184 Nicholas of Autrecourt, 24, 26 Meier, Georg Friedrich, xiii, 182, 189, 303 Nicholas of Cusa, 19, 28 Meier, Heinrich, 149 Nietzsche, Friedrich, vii, xiii–xiv, 40, Meier-Oeser, Stephan, 120 210–30, 253, 256 Meinong, Alexius, 112 Niewöhner, Friedrich, 3 Melanchthon, Philipp, 116–17, 183–85 Nifo, Agostino, 3–5, 8–10, 25, 37, 182–83 Meliavacca, Balthasar, 8 Nizolio, Mario, 50 Mellor, D. H., 282 Nussbaum, Martha, 181, 203, 272 Melzer, Arthur M., 149 Mendelssohn, Moses, 301 Oberhausen, Michael, 186, 191 Mepham, John, 65 Obertello, Luca, 11 Mercer, Christia, xii, 5, 115, 118, 120, O’Donnell, J. Reginald, 24 124–25, 130, 135, 141, 178, 303 Okruhlik, Kathleen, 124 Merchant, Carolyn, 125 Oldrini, Guido, 183 Methuen, Charlotte, 47, 70, 184 Olivi, Pier di Giovanni, 23 Meyendorff, John, 15 Olivieri, Luigi, ix, 49, 51, 184 Meyer, Rudolf, 124 O’Malley, John W., 33 Meyronnes, Francis, 24–25, 28 O’Meara, Dominic J., 8 Mézeriac, Claude Gaspard Bachet de, 237 Orsini, Alessandro, Cardinal, 78, 83 Michaud, Louis Gabriel, 89 Orwin, Clifford, 149 Michel, K. M., 193 Ostrow, Matt, 266 Micraelius, Johann, 136 Owens, Joseph, 204 Mikkeli, Heikki, 8, 37, 46–47, 55 Miller, J. Philipp, 242–46 Pace, Giulio, 184 Millward, Arthur, E., 24 Pachtler, G. M., 90 Milton, John, 210 Pade, Marianne, 7 Minio Paulello, Lorenzo, 3 Palamas, Gregory, 15 Modrak, Deborah K. W., 232 Palladini, Fiammetta, 114 Mohler, Ludwig, 15 Palma, Marco, 8 Mojsisch, Burkhard, 85 Pappus, 240 Moldenhauer, E., 193 Parentucelli, Tommaso (Pope Nicholas V), Monfasani, John, 14, 19, 117 18 Monk, Ray, 268 Parmenides, 85 Montaigne, Michel de, 113 Paschini, Pio, 7 Mooney, Michael, 6 Passero, Giovanni Battista, 90 Moraux, Paul, vii Paton, Herbert, 175 Morawski, John, 88, 93–94 Patrizzi, Francesco, 34, 50 More, Henry, 124–25 Paul V, Pope, see Borghese, Camillo Morewedge, Parviz, 6 Pears, D. F., 278 Morgenstern, Mira, 167 Pecci, Gioacchino (Pope Leo XIII), ix Moss, Jean Dietz, 74 Pericles, 262, 290–91 Müller, Max, 180–81 Pertusis, A., 12 334 index of names

Peter of Abanus, 36, 70 Raabe, Paul, 114 Peter of Ailly, 25, 28 Rabe, Paul, xiii, 185–86 Petersen, Peter, ix, 175–74 Racine, Pierre, 210 Philo of Alexandria, 127, 129–30, 134, Raimondi, Francesco Paolo, 49 139, 143 Ramsey, F. P., 280–81 Philoponus, John, 8–9, 29, 32, 193, 203, Randall, John Hermann Jr., 36, 42, 70 207 Raven, J. E., 85 Piaia, Gregorio, viii, 114 Raymond, Maurice, 148 Piccart, Michaael, 114 Read, Rupert, 279 Piccolomini, Francesco, 37, 47, 49, 57, Rees, Valerie, 19 116 Renaud, François, 296 Picenino, Giacomo, 90 Renan, Ernest, 35–36 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, x, 20, Reuchlin, Johann, 129 26–29, 34 Rhees, Rush, 267 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 4, 9–10, Riccardi, Niccolò, 82 12, 19–21, 26, 117, 126 Ricci, Ostilio, 67 Pine, Martin, 4, 9 Ricklin, T., 5 Piro, Francesco, 123 Riedel, Manfred, 285 Placcius, Vincent, 121–22 Riemann, G. F. B., 244, 246 Plato, viii, x, xii, xiv–xv, 6, 10–21, 27, Riley, Patrick, 114–15, 142 30–31, 37, 48–49, 51, 61, 65, 67, Riondato, Ezio, ix 85–86, 115, 117–34, 137–39, 142, 144, Risse, Wilhelm, viii, 91, 176, 182, 188 147, 150–52, 158–59, 176, 197, Robinson, Richard, ix, 42 200–209, 212, 230, 234, 248–51, 253, Robortello, Francesco, 37 258, 266–67, 273–74, 278, 281–82, Rojcewitz, Richard, 176 285, 289, 291, 295, 298–99 Rombach, Heinrich, 181 Plattner, Marc, 152 Roncaglia, Gino, 185 Plethon, Georgios Gemistos, x, 12–13 Rorty, Amelio O., 203, 272 Pliny the Elder, 159 Rosen, Stanley, xiv–xv, 232, 303 Plotinus, 11, 119, 124, 126–27, 129–31, Roser, Andreas, 178 133–34, 207–9 Rosmini Serbati, Antonio, 192, 301 Pluta, Olaf, 9, 25 Ross, W. D., 86 Plutarch, 29, 150 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, vii, xii, 148–72, Politella, Joseph, 124 175, 177, 302 Pomponazzi, Pietro, 4, 9 Russell, Bertrand, 112, 267, 278–79 Poppi, Antonino, viii, x, 1, 3–4, 6, 9, 36–37, 42, 46, 53, 182, 187, 294, 303 Saccas, Ammonius, 11 Porphyry, 11 Sacrobosco, John, 68, 72–73 Pozzo, Riccardo, xii, 35, 147, 175, 184, Sarpi, Paolo, 75 186, 189, 190–91, 193, 266, 303 Savonarola, Gerolamo, 26 Prantl, Carl, 189 Sbrocchi, L. G., 7 Preus, Anthony, 220 Scattola, Merio, 113–14, 116 Prior, A. N., 105–6 Schegk, Jakob, 182–83 Pritzl, Kurt, 266 Scherb, Philipp, 184 Proclus, 126, 193, 207, 209, 239 Scherzer, Johann Adam, 120 Protagoras, 106 Scheiner, Christoph, 79–80 Pryds, D. N., 182 Schelling, F. W. J. von, xiii, 193 Ptolomaeus, xi, 68, 73–74, 77, 82 Scherzer, Johann Adam, 120, 124 Pufendorf, Samuel, 113–14 Schiffert, Christian, 186 Purnell, Frederick, 10–12, 20–21 Schlechta, Karl, 227 Putnam, Hilary, 155 Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, 113–14 Schmitt, Charles B., ix, 1–3, 8, 10, 26–28, Quain, Edwin A., 33 34, 36–37, 115, 117, 175, 184 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 112 Schneewind, Jerome B., 113 Quinn, John F., 22 Schoﬁeld, M., 85 Scholarius, George, 13 Index of Names 335

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 211 Tamburini, Michelangelo, 90 Schröder, Peter, 113 Taminiaux, Jacques, 248 Schulte, Joachim, 276 Tarcov, Nathan, 149 Schultz, Wolfgang, 87 Tartaglia, Niccolò, 67 Schüssler, Ingeborg, 176 Tedaldi, Muzio, 66 Schuwer, André, 176 Telesio, Bernardino, 30 Schwartz, Joel, 169 Tempier, Étienne, 22 Scotus, Octavianus, 10 Ternes, Charles-Marie, 7 Seidl, Horst, 271 Tertullian, 26 Seidler, Michael J., 114, 147 Themistius, 7–10, 12, 17, 19, 29, 32, 36, Semery, André, vii, xi, 84–112 193, 198 Semnos, G. F., 210 Theodoric of Freiberg, 304 Seneca, 119, 123 Theophrastus, 7, 19 Sextus Empiricus, 26 Thijssen, M. M. H., 118 Sharples, R. W., viii Thomas Aquinas, Saint, vii, x, xvi, 5–6, Shea, William R., 68 9–10, 17, 23, 25, 28–29, 32–33, 84, 91, Shell, Susan, 148, 150 294 Sherman, Nancy, 181 Thomasius, Christian, 113, 121 Shore, Bradd, 211 Thomasius, Jakob, 117–18, 120–24, Shulsky, Albert, 148 131–32, 143, 145 Siger of Brabant, 9, 22, 29 Timpler, Clemens, 191 Simplicius, 7–11, 16, 29, 32, 183, 206, 208 Todd, Robert B., 8 Sizzi, Francesco, 77 Tomeo, Niccolò Leonico, xvi, 7 Skinner, Quentin, 2, 175 Tomitano, Bernardino, 37 Smith, Barry, 267 Tonelli, Giorgio, 175–76, 180 Smith, D., 239 Tordesillas, Alonso de, 286 Smith, J. A., 232 Torretano, Andrea, 183 Socrates, xiii, 121–22, 149, 154, 158, 177, Trombetta, Antonio, 6 212, 224, 226–27, 285, 295–98 Sokolowski, Robert, xiv, 231, 233, 243, 245 Urban VIII, Pope, see Barberini, Maffeo Soleri, Giacomo, 30 Sommervogel, C., 89 Vallius, Paulus, 69 Soncinas, Paulus, 10 Van de Vyer, Emil, 12 Sophocles, 211–12, 217–25 Van Giffen, Hubert (Obertus Giphanius), Sorell, Tom, 5 119–20 South, James, 2, 5 Van Helden, Albert, 68, 77 Speer, Andreas, 23 Van Helmont, Francis Mercury, 124–25 Spiazzi, A., 84 Vanni Rovighi, Soﬁa, 6 Spicker, S. F., 155 Van Steenberghen, Fernand, vii, 21–22 Spinoza, 123 Vasoli, Cesare, 34, 49, 184 Stark, Werner, 179–80 Vázquez, Gabriel, 91 Steel, Carlos, 12 Veitch, John, 192 Stewart, J. M., ix Velkley, Richard L., xii, 148, 150, 177, 304 Stickney, Joseph Trumbull, 7 Venetus, Paulus, 182 Stone, Martin, xv–xvi Vernia, Nicoletto, 3–5, 8–10, 25, 37 Stoothoff, Robert, 240 Viète, François, 237–39, 242–43, 245 Strauss, Leo, 149, 155, 248, 261, 304 Villoslada, Riccardo G., 89 Stuart Crawford, F. 18 Vimercato, Francesco, 21 Sturlese, Loris, 3 Viñas, Miguel, 111 Sturm, Johann Christoph, 120 Vitoria, Francisco de, 302 Suárez, Francisco, vii, xi–xii, 87–88, 91, 93, Volpi, Franco, 248, 300 96, 184, 302 Vos, J. A., 6 Sutton, Sarah, 3 Swabey, Marie Collins, viii Walker, Daniel Pickering, 116–17 Swabey, William Curtis, viii Wallace, William A., x–xi, 42, 64, 66–70, Sylla, Edith Dudley, 184 74, 81, 184, 304 336 index of names

Wallis, Richard T., 130 Wollgast, Siegfried, 185 Weinberg, Julius R., 24 Woodhouse, C. M., 12–13 Weisheipl, Adam, 5 Wundt, Max, 185 White, Kevin, 148 Wieland, Wolfgang, 274 Yonge, Charles Duke, 127, 130 Wietrowski, Maximilien, 88 William of Moerbeke, 7, 9, 12, 193 Zabarella, Iacopo, vii, x, xiii, xvi, 8, 35–63, Wilson, Catherine, 125 70, 173, 176–78, 182–84, 187–91 Wippel, John F., 22 Zeidler, Melchior, 185 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, vii, xv, 266–84 Zetznerus, Lazarus, 119 Wright, Georg Henrik von, 267 Zimara, Marcantonio, 5, 183 Wolff, Christian, 182, 190–91 Zöller, Günter, 304