CHAPTER FOUR

ARISTOTLE: MIND AND PERSON

It is most unlikely that Aristotle ever subscribed to anything which might reasonably be called a theory of Forms of the Platonic type. Even if he did, he had abandoned it by the time we know much about him. The consequences of this for Aristotle's attitude to human beings and to other possible objects of value need to be worked out, especially since he held when young a very Platonic theory of the soul, much of which he never discarded.! For if in Plato value derives from the Forms and from characterization by them, above all from characterization by Goodness, then what happens when these sources of value disappear?2 In a large number of areas which it would be inappropriate to enumerate, let alone discuss here, it can be argued that Aristotle tries to save Platonic posi­ tions, or assumes that such positions can be saved, even though the Forms have been abolished. When considering Plato, we noticed that although the Forms are the objects of value, we are not invited to attain likeness to the Forms but likeness to God (homoiosis theot). Aristotle retains this doctrine in a famous text of the tenth book of the Nicomachean Ethics (1177B30ff). The whole tone of the passage is Platonic: we are to seek to immortalize ourselves as far as possible. The poets were wrong to preach that mortals should think mortal thoughts; we should think like the gods. But beneath the clearly Platonic surface lie substantial difficulties of interpretation. What gods does Aristotle believe in in any case? What sort of thoughts do they have? Perhaps we can get round these difficulties by supposing that by "immor­ talizing oneself', Aristotle is referring, somewhat vaguely, to concep­ tions of God different from his own. That is not very plausible in such a serious passage. Perhaps he is not alluding to God's thoughts, but to some other activity? That is not possible, since the whole passage is con­ cerned with theoria (contemplation), an activity which Aristotle tells us man can share with the gods. So we are driven back to the problem that God's thoughts must be understood in the only way in which Aristotle allows them to be thought of, namely that we are dealing with God think­ ing of himself. And since god is to be identified with some kind of faculty of immediate apprehension (nous, noesis), this must be also the highest activity for man. In the Metaphysics Aristotle specifically rules out the possibility that this immediate apprehension is of anything other than God himself (1074B); only since we know nothing of Aristotle's God ARISTOTLE: MIND AND PERSON 43 except that he has such apprehension, we find ourselves unable to give any content to his thinking. But we are not completely stymied at this point. The activity of' 'think­ ing" (if we may use that word for nous, noesis) is certainly the most im­ portant phenomenon of Aristotle's world; indeed it is to be equated with life itself (Met. l072B28). And the beings which are able to exercize it, and in so far as they are able to exercize it, are the most important within the Aristotelian world. In a revealing section of the Metap~ysics Aristotle observes that it is more "honourable" (timios) for the Prime Mover to think itself than it would be for it to think of something else (1074B). And in the De Anima (430A18) we learn that acting is more "honourable" than being acted upon. 3 With the origins, murky as they may be, of this notion, we are not concerned, but an immediate contrast with Plato at a certain level should be remarked. The Forms do not act upon anything; they are the conditions for certain sorts of excellence; they are imposed on the cosmos by the Demiurge. In this sense the highest beings in a Platonic world are passive. But, as we have already observed, there is nothing cor­ responding to the Platonic Forms in the Aristotelian world. So he reverts, if you will, to the second level ofthe Platonic world for his supreme value, to the most active principle in the world, that is to Soul, or more pre­ cisely, to a certain function of soul, namely nous. In Plato's Laws, in response to Protagoras' challenge that "Man is the measure of all things", Plato had laid down that "God is the measure of all things" (716C). The phrase contains a certain ambiguity; either God measures (determines) all things, or God is the standard by which all things are measured. The latter is in a sense Aristotle's position, for beings (particularly souls) are higher or lower on the scale of value in so far as they more or less approximate to the nature of the divine, that is to the divine mind. Obviously that means that above the level of man is not only the Prime Mover itself, but the other unmoved movers. That is clear enough, but when we come to the nature of man himself, the difficulties begin. The normal doctrine of the mature Aristotle is that man is informed matter, and that on the death of the individual the form (soul) disappears and the matter is recycled elsewhere in the cosmos. But there are two apparently divergent variations on this theme, one, that of the nous thyrathen, to be found in the "strictly" biological writings! the other, involving the distinction between an Active and a Passive Intellect, in the De Anima (3.5.). Bot of these theories, the first of which seems to have cer­ tain affinities with Platonism, but is more probably of immediately "medical" origin, being associated with the notion of pneuma, seem to suggest that there is something in "us" but not of "us", where we are defined as being a soul-body complex. 5 The two theories appear to be