Active and Passive Intellect & Aristotle’s Metaphysics

 Three criteria for perception:

 1. The potentiality (capacity) to be affected (ear for sounds; eye for seeing, etc.)
by perceptible forms.
 2. The perceptible forms affect the right potentiality (I can’t hear sights or see
sounds).
 3. To perceive something the right potentiality is isomorphic with the perceptible
forms.
 S perceives → x iff (sight) ← perceptible form (color) of x; perceptible form of x
is like the perception.
 What does he mean by a capacity being like a perceptible form (isomorphic
relation)?
 That in seeing Socrates tan is my eye tan? Or
 That in seeing Socrates I merely receive, not the quality of tanness but its
structure?

 429a10.
 Nous = intellect
 The intellect is unlike perception b/c it lacks an organ.
 The intellect does not require the body (429b10)
 The intellect grasps essences.
 429a25ff
 Passive Intellect: potentiality for understanding. Potential for intellectual
understanding (1st actuality).
 Active Intellect: actually understanding. Actually understanding (2nd actuality)
 Ignorance (1st potentiality) → learning (1st Actuality) → thinking/understanding
(2nd Actuality)
 Separable? See 430a10ff.
 In account (theoretically) or really separable?

 Active mind makes things intelligible; able to be known.

 Analogy:
– Light makes ‘potential colors (things) into actual colors’
– Active Mind makes the forms or essences of things
 Eternal, divine, separable?
– “Only when it has been separated is it precisely what it is, all by itself.
And this alone is immortal and everlasting…”(430a25).

Metaphysics
 The study of primary substance & being is the task of first philosophy.
 Second philosophy: study of nature (form and matter).
 “There is a science which studies being insofar as it is being”
  Inquires into ‘Being itself’. What exists? Being as Being.
 Specific kind of being: Substance.
 Substance is the primary kind of being; “In every case the dominant concern of a
science is with its primary object, the one on which the others depend and because
of which they are spoken of as they are. If, then, this primary object is substance,
the philosopher must grasp the principles and causes of substances” (1003b18ff).

Focal Meaning

 “Being is spoken of in many ways, but always with reference to one thing, i.e., to
some one nature, and not homonymously” (1003a33ff).
– Callias is made of flesh and blood.
– Callias is made of bronze and marble.
 Homonymous – the name is common but the account is different (C. 1a4ff).
 Call this 1st Homonymy:
 2nd Homonymy
– Jim had a healthy dinner.
– Socrates has healthy features.
 One is productive of health and the other is indicative of health.

 2nd Homonymy: ‘healthy’ in both sentences refer to the same notion of health.
 Being functions in the same way:
 “Similarly, then, being is spoken of in many ways, but in all cases it spoken of
with reference to one principle. For some things are called beings because they
are substances, others because they are attributes of substances…” (1003b5ff)
 Focal meaning: F is called F with reference to one thing.

Candidates for Substance

 “Substance is spoken of, if not in several ways, at any rate in four main cases. For
the essence, the universal, and the genus seem to be the substance of a given
thing, and the fourth of these cases is the subject. (1028b34ff).
 Substance 1028a10ff
– Separable
– A particular thing
– Everything else is a being because of it.
– “In its own right”; not dependent on anything else for its being.

Not Matter

 Suppose you could ‘strip’ an object of all its qualities (i.e., Categories)?
 What is left?
 “length, breadth, and depth, by which every body is determined” (P. 209a4-6).
 See also (M. VII 1029a9ff).
 Remove all these, what is left?
  “By matter I mean what is spoken of in its own right neither as being something,
nor as having some quantity, nor as having any of the other things by which being
is determined” (1029a20-22).
 Prime Matter.

 The Argument (1029a9-1029b2)

1. Assume: The substratum is the primary substance.
2. Assume: Matter is primary substance.
3. Matter is not a determinate thing (it lacks characteristics) and is dependent on
something else.
4. Substance is a determinate thing and not dependent on anything else.
5. ∴ Matter is not substance (1-3, RA).
6. ∴ The substratum is not the primary substance.
 Matter fails the criteria for substance; it is nothing in its own right and depends
upon form for its being a ‘this’, i.e., an existing thing.

Universal and Genus

 “For it would seem impossible for anything spoken of universally to be

substance” (1038b9-10).
 Why?
 A substance does not belong to anything else; universal is common. Universals
are said of many things.
 A universal is said of a subject; substance is not.
 A universal cannot be the ‘what it is’ (essence).

Essence

 Essence: ‘what it is’

– What is Socrates?
– Not a pale man. He could lose this quality and still be Socrates.
– Socrates is a man and essentially so.
 Essence: “The essence of a thing is what the thing is said to be in its own right”
(1029b14-115).
 We know something whenever we know its essence (1031b7-8).
 Aristotle’s conclusions
 Primary being is the essence of each thing, i.e., the what it is.
 The essence is the form of each thing.
– It is not the matter, nor the composite of form and matter.

 Essential Predication:
 To be a ‘this’ it must be definable by its essential predication.
– In answering the question “what is Socrates?”, we do not say a pale man,
but simply a man (human).
  The only thing which is satisfies this criteria is species.
– Natural kinds; living members of species.
 So what makes something essentially x?
– Form
Form

 Form is not identical to matter and is the principle cause of a compound.

1. Composite objects are composed of something.
2. Suppose: x, y, z compose (are elements of) O.
3. Whenever x, y, z are removed from O, x, y, z still exists and O does not.
4. ∴ x, y, z, are not identical with O.
5. Any composite object (O) requires some further thing (z) which unifies the
elements in such a way to make (O) exist.
6. If (z) is an element, then (1-5) again.
7. ∴ (z) is not an element of O.
8. ∴ (z) is the cause of O’s being a composite thing.

 “Now this is the substance of a given thing; for this is the primary cause of the
thing’s being [what it is]… (1041b28ff).
 Form is the cause of a thing having an essence.
 That is, form is the cause of a thing being a substantial thing.
 So, what gives individuality to the flesh and blood of Socrates?
– Form
 Form is what retains identity through time.
 So what is the primary substance? The safe answer.
 Individuals of species.
– Socrates as man.

1. How can an essence/form, such as man, be the essence of two separate, non-
identical things? Socrates and me?
– Isn’t this essence/form also a universal?
– ‘man’ is predicated of Socrates, Callias, etc.
– Isn’t it impossible for something spoken of universally to be a substance?
 Individual essences and not just species:
– Isn’t soul the individual essence of Socrates and not just species?
– In this way Socrates has his own individual essence, which is being this
ensouled man.