One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics

Alpha to Delta

• Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781930972582
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Antike & klassische Philosophie

In this first volume of One and Many, Halper argues that books Alpha to Delta should be read as a coherent treatment, within the larger whole of the Metaphysics, which addresses the problem of how there can be a single science of metaphysics. Halper shows that Aristotle poses and pursues the problem of the existence of metaphysics as a version of the problem of the one and the many, which he resolves by introducing doctrines of being and substance.

CHAPTER 1
The Problem and the Method

1.1 AN OVERVIEW

1.1.1 Metaphysics and the One

Aristotle’s Metaphysics is notoriously difficult. Avicenna, the great medieval philosopher, is reported to have said that he read it forty times but still did not understand it. Apart from the intrinsic difficulty of its ideas, the text itself is extraordinarily terse, apparently disjointed, and mostly lacking in the signposts that explain what particular discussions are supposed to contribute to the goals of the whole. Indeed, there is considerable discussion in the secondary literature about whether the work is a whole or a collection of writings assembled by later editors. The latter position is fueled by Aristotle’s referring to the science in different ways in different places and by the fact that it was his editor who named it “metaphysics.” Because the status and meaning of the whole is problematic, there is often no agreed context against which to interpret particular passages, and doubts about the unity of the whole have encouraged readers to interpret passages without presupposing any context. Terse passages are sufficiently ambiguous to admit multiple interpretations when taken in isolation. Thus, the text of the Metaphysics has spurred a vast literature that reflects strikingly divergent interpretations of the work. Our understanding of the text is further complicated by the fact that it has been, through much of the history of philosophy, a rich source of inspiration for original reflection on metaphysics itself. Thus, despite its standing near the beginning of western philosophy, there is an oddly living dimension to the Metaphysics that makes it hard for readers, contemporary as well as ancient and medieval, to separate Aristotle’s conception of the discipline from their own and the truth of his claims from the accuracy of their interpretation.

The bulk of readers’ attention has always been focused on clarifying and evaluating Aristotle’s key metaphysical doctrines—the doctrines of being, ousia, and the unmoved movers—and rightly so. These doctrines represent his important conclusions, and they persist as metaphysical issues. There is, though, a theme that, though no longer vital to philosophers, should have garnered more scholarly interest because of its centrality to Greek metaphysics: the problem of the one and many. We will see that this problem has many formulations, but it is enough for now to understand it as the question whether all things are one or many. Aristotle often, possibly always, discusses the metaphysics of his predecessors in terms of their treatment of this problem. Much of the first two books of the Metaphysics, A and α, consider whether the causes are one or many (or infinite). It is clear from Aristotle’s discussion that this is also a way of considering not only whether all things are one or many but also, because the number of causes often reflects the causes’ characters, what the causes are and, thereby, what all things are. Toward the end of the Metaphysics, Aristotle pays special attention to a more arcane version of this problem, the Academic notion that all will be one unless a many can be generated from one and its opposite, the indefinite dyad (N 2, 1088b35–1089a6). Rather than addressing these two one/many problems directly, Aristotle uses them critically. Thus, he dismisses the Academic problem as outmoded, and he expounds the causes in the first two books to criticize both monists and pluralists. However, Aristotle is a notoriously poor historian of philosophy. He presents only doctrines that suit his ends, and he presents them mostly in his own terms. For just this reason, his treatment of the problem of the one and the many as the central metaphysical issue for his predecessors surely signals his own interest in this issue. Worth noting also is that the problem of the one and many continues to be central to Greek metaphysics after Aristotle, particularly for Neoplatonic thinkers like Plotinus and Proclus. They, too, are deeply concerned with how a one becomes many and how pluralities manifest unity.

The case for examining this theme in the Metaphysics would be strong enough on textual and historical grounds alone, but there is a more compelling reason: the problem of the one and many is intrinsic to metaphysics. To see this requires some reflection on what metaphysics is. Metaphysics is supposed to be the highest science because it knows the first cause or causes of all things. Yet, it is not obvious that it exists because it is problematic whether there are first causes. Every science seeks the principles or causes of its own subject matter. In order that there be first principles or causes, there would have to be causes or principles of the causes or principles known by particular sciences and, ultimately, causes or principles that are themselves without higher causes or principles. Any cause or principle that was composite or plural would have prior constituents and, thereby, fail to be a highest principle or cause. So the first principles or causes must each be one. Importantly, all things would need to fall under the scope of these principles or causes. To do so, all things need to have some degree of unity, minimally the unity of what has common causes. Hence, the existence of metaphysics turns on whether all things are sufficiently one to be known through common causes or are, rather, insurmountably many.

The degree of unity is critical. Insofar as metaphysics treats all things, at least some of its subject matter is also treated by particular sciences. It is puzzling what metaphysics could add to what these sciences know. If each thing falls under some particular science, a metaphysics would seem impossible or unnecessary. On the other hand, if metaphysics does know all things, there would be one science of everything. A first cause would have to stand above other causes, but how could it do so without making them mere effects—causal cogs, as it were—set to work by the first cause, and thereby reducing all to a single cause? Apparently, there is either one science that knows all things or many autonomous particular sciences, each with its own subject matter. Neither circumstance would admit a proper metaphysics, the former because there are no lower sciences it could stand over, the latter because there is no highest science.

Such concerns are intrinsic to metaphysics. It differs from particular sciences in that it alone is concerned with its own existence. For metaphysics to exist, the first causes and all that they cause, that is, all beings must be able to be known by one science. All beings can be so known if they have the pertinent sort of unity. In order to determine whether beings do constitute such a unity, metaphysics will need to determine what being is, that is, what makes something a being, and also what one is. Hence, metaphysics will study being and one in order to determine its own being and unity as a science. The reflexivity in this formulation is not accidental. Its subject, the being of being, is intrinsically reflexive, and since being will be only if it is one, the question of the one and the many is intrinsic to metaphysics. Metaphysics must either raise this question or assume an answer to it. Moreover, metaphysics is concerned to determine whether there is a first cause or principle, and this latter must, as I said, be one but also, somehow, a cause of the principles of the many particular sciences. Because metaphysics is intrinsically connected with the many particular sciences, for it to know its own existence, it must be able to resolve the one/many problem.

We do not find this reasoning in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, but some of it is similar to remarks he makes about another architectonic science. The two opening chapters of the Nicomachean Ethics speak of a “master science” or architectonic science that makes use of all other arts and sciences for its own end (1096a14–15). Aristotle identifies this ruling science with politics and claims that it has as its end the good for man (1096a26–b2, b6–7). It rules other sciences in the sense that it determines whether they should be present in a state, who should practice them, and to what extent. All these sciences, including politics, are activities that aim at the human good, and the latter is itself the activity Aristotle terms “happiness” (cf. 7, 1098a7–18). Politics is, thus, the architectonic activity that arranges itself and the other human activities so that those who engage in them will thereby engage in, or come closest to engaging in, the activity that constitutes the human good. Thus, the unity of politics is grounded in the unity of human nature. Other sciences come under its authority insofar as they too are human activities and aim directly or indirectly at the human good.

In contrast, Plato identifies the good that is the subject of the ruling science with the good itself. Aristotle criticizes this identification by denying the unity of the good: the good is different in different categories (6, 1096a23–28). That is to say, Aristotle denies that all good things are instances of a single universal good and, therefore, that they contain sufficient unity to be known by a single science. His own science of the good is limited to the human good and what contributes to it. Thus, he thinks that politics is one science that can rule over many sciences because there is some unity in their ends. The point is that its existence as one science standing over many particular sciences necessarily invokes the problem of the one and the many in its subject.

Metaphysics is also an architectonic science, but whereas politics knows only the human good, metaphysics knows the best in all of nature (Met. A 2, 982b2–7). The latter’s subject, all things, must also be sufficiently one to be known by one architectonic science, but all things do not have as much unity as human activities can. Hence, whereas the existence of politics is no more in question than the existence of human nature, the existence and nature of metaphysics is more problematic and requires investigations of one and being. Still, if I am right to think that Aristotle recognizes that politics can be one science over many subordinate sciences only if the latter, and their subjects, have some sort of unity, then there is some reason to think he recognizes the intrinsic connection between metaphysics and the one/many problem.

The question of the relation of one ruling science to a plurality of subordinate sciences is also broached by Plato. He has Socrates argue against an architectonic science either by arguing (1) that there is no subject matter for it to treat because particular sciences treat everything (Charmides 170a–171c; Ion 540b–c) or else (2) that it has either no product besides those of the subordinate sciences (Charmides 174c–175a, 165c–e; cf. Gorgias 459b–460a) or no product other than making more rulers (Euthydemus 288d–292e). Although these arguments are left unanswered in early dialogues, Plato disarms them when he recognizes, in the Republic, separate beings that are the exclusive province of philosophers and claims that it is knowledge of these forms that entitles philosophers to rule. These forms are at once the causes of everything else and, because nothing else can be properly known, the content of all knowledge. That is to say, Plato narrows the scope of being to the causes themselves, and he places outside of being, in “becoming,” nearly all of what Aristotle takes to be the subjects of particular sciences. He solves the one/many problem by narrowing the scope of what is known and relegating it to a single science. The problems with this move are the problems of Platonism: First, since all things besides the forms are reduced to becoming, they cannot be known, and metaphysics or philosophy cannot explain, or even contribute toward explaining, whatever we grasp of becoming. Second, since mathematicals do not fall under becoming, they must be forms or accounted for by forms. But mathematicals, except for the unity and the point, are each pluralities; so Plato still needs to account for a plurality by means of unity. Third, inasmuch as there are multiple forms, there must be a still higher cause, more one than they, through which they are derived. Hence, Plato’s neat solution to the one/many problem creates a host of other one/many problems, problems that are much discussed in the Academy and by Aristotle.

In sum, even though Aristotle does not argue, in the Metaphysics, that the one/many problem is intrinsic to metaphysics, (1) his discussion in the Nicomachean Ethics of politics as the ruling science addresses the sort of problem of the relation between the one architectonic science and the many subordinate sciences that arises for every architectonic science, (2) he must be aware of Plato’s arguments against an architectonic science as well as Plato’s solution, and (3) he considers at length the one/many problems that arise from this solution. None of these points is conclusive, but they make it more plausible to suppose ab initio that he sees the intrinsic connection between metaphysics and the one/many problem.

If, though, this problem is intrinsic to metaphysics, we cannot help wondering why Aristotle does not say so explicitly. The answer, I think, is that the arguments I have presented on his behalf belong among the framing considerations and general orienting remarks that are almost completely absent from the Metaphysics. As I noted, Aristotle repeatedly presents arguments for a conclusion without instructing us why he treats the subject or how the conclusion fits into his overall scheme. He asks in Metaphysics A whether the kinds of causes are one or many and, within each kind, whether there are, again, one or many. But he does not explain why he investigates the causes by considering their number. Such an explanation would frame the argument and, likely, enable us to see how it contributes to the whole. I think that the reason Aristotle does not frame arguments is that his subject here is simply the causes, whereas the decision to investigate the causes by asking about their number does not belong to the causes. In general, the remarks that would explain the rationale for an argument are not properly part of the argument itself.

Whether or not this last thought explains the text, we should not dismiss the suggestion that one/many issues structure the text on the ground that the Metaphysics says little about them; for, again, there is nothing in the text about its overall structure. Many would point to this absence and the seemingly confused state of the text as justifications for not ascribing any structure to the Metaphysics. They would say it is far safer simply not to make any assumptions...