Part
III.
How
far, then, does Aristotle depart from Plato’s idealistic duality, which he
himself criticizes? Apparently, not far at all. If the human soul is a form,
not only is this form superior to the matter and spatial boundary of the body,
but it can exist independently from the body, and eternally as well… At least,
this is what every Christian reader of Aristotle has believed, according to the
doctrine of his Church, and, not surprisingly, has found in Aristotle’s theory
of forms too! Here is what Bertrand Russell writes about Aristotle’s clandestine
Platonism:
The view that forms are substances which exist independently of the
matter in which they are exemplified, seems to expose Aristotle to his own
arguments against Platonic Ideas. Forms are intended to be different
from universals, but they have many of the same characteristics. Form is,
allegedly, more real than matter; this is reminiscent of the sole reality of
the ideas. The change that Aristotle makes in Plato’s metaphysics is less than
he represents it as being.
And
here’s a paragraph on this subject by the eminent German classical scholar,
philosopher, and theologian Eduard Zeller (1814-1908), taken from his Platonische
Studien (1939), as appropriately quoted by Russell:
The final explanation of Aristotle’s want of clearness on this
subject is however to be found in the fact that he had only half emancipated
himself from Plato’s tendency to hypostatize ideas. The Forms had for
him, as the Ideas had for Plato, a metaphysical existence of their own
as conditioning individual things. And keenly as he followed the growth of
ideas out of experience, it is still true that these ideas, especially at the
point where they are farthest removed from experience and immediate perception,
are metamorphosed in the end from a logical product of human thought into an
immediate presentment of a supersensible world, and the object, in that sense,
of an intellectual intuition.
This
whole discussion is by no means to imply that Aristotle was overrated as an
original thinker, and that he was just another, most talented, but still a
follower of Plato. Aristotle’s originality and uniqueness have been proven by
the totality of his titanic philosophical endeavor, and his “clandestine
Platonism,” as I call it, occupies just this limited aspect of his metaphysics,
where the influence of Plato is, indeed, overwhelming.
We
could go on and on with our discussion of Aristotle’s theory of forms, but the
reader can satisfy his or her interest by going to the source, Aristotle’s Metaphysics,
or reading about his metaphysics in reputable histories of philosophy.
There are a few brief points left for me to make, before I move to my next subject.
The form of a thing is both its essence and its primary substance. Forms are
substantial, but universals are not. Not every thing contains matter; there are
eternal things devoid of matter. And, lastly, things increase in “actuality” by
acquiring and developing form, but matter without form is only a
“potentiality.” This last distinction needs some clarification.
The
doctrine of matter and form distinguishes between potentiality and actuality.
Bare matter is conceived as a potentiality of form; all change consists in an
accrual of form: after the change, the thing has more of form than before. What
has more form is said to be more actual. God is pure form and pure
actuality. And it is to the question of God, as perceived by Aristotle, that we
turn our attention in the next entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment