Aristotle on God's Life-Generating Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle

Abraham P. Bos

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781438468303, 9781438468297
• eBook ISBN: 9781438468310
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this deep rethinking of Aristotle's work, Abraham P. Bos argues that scholarship on Aristotle's philosophy has erred since antiquity in denying the connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the earthly sphere. Beginning with an analysis of God's role in the Aristotelian system, Bos explores how this relates to other elements of his philosophy, especially to his theory of reproduction. The argument he develops is that in talking about the cosmos, Aristotle rejected Plato's metaphor of artisanal production by a divine Demiurge in favor of a biotic metaphor based on the transmission of life in reproduction, in which pneuma —not breath as it is often interpreted but the life-bearing spirit in animals and plants—plays a key and sustaining role as the vital principle in all that lives. In making this case, he defends the authenticity of the treatises De Mundo and De Spiritu as Aristotle's, and demonstrates Aristotle's works as a unified system that sharply and comprehensively refutes Plato's, and in particular replaces Plato's doctrine of the soul with a theory in which the soul is clearly distinguished from the intellect.

1

God’s Life-Generating Power and Its Transmission in Aristotle’s Biology and Cosmology

Is it possible that Aristotle presented three very different phases in his philosophy and that only one of these was scientifically important? Such was Werner Jaeger’s claim in 1923, and still there is no alternative theory.

Is it likely that, during his lectures in the Peripatos, Aristotle talked about a vital pneuma connected with the soul as the principle of life, but that pneuma plays no role in his seminal work On the Soul?

Is it conceivable that he called God the “Great Leader” of the cosmos, but saw no divine governance in Nature?

These critical questions about the standard theory on Aristotle have spurred the author of this book to develop a perspective on Aristotle’s philosophy that breaks with the accepted view.

A crucial part is assigned to pneuma as the vital principle in all that lives. Pneuma is the fine-material carrier of all psychic functions and is governed by the soul as entelechy. The soul is the principle that controls the activity of pneuma in a goal-oriented way (oriented, that is, to the form of the living being). The entelechy is a cognitive principle that acts on the vital pneuma and is active from the very beginning of life, as a kind of automatic pilot. In human beings, however, the entelechy can also be “awakened” to intellectuality. All entelechies of living beings, including those of the stars and planets, are actuated by the Power that proceeds inexhaustibly from the divine, transcendent Intellect.

This book also defends the authenticity of On the Cosmos (De Mundo), because this work does not present God as “Maker” but as “Begetter” of the cosmos. The same case is put for Aristotle’s authorship of On Pneuma (De Spiritu), because Aristotle had to explain how there could be vital processes in plants and trees and in embryos and eggs, which do not possess respiration. Hence, he introduced pneuma as principle of vital heat, which is already present and active before the formation of lungs that enable breathing.

Many experts on Aristotle’s work are in no doubt that he attributed a preeminent role to God in his philosophy of nature and cosmology. On the other hand there are authors who find it difficult to formulate the importance of God in Aristotle’s analysis of everyday natural phenomena.1 My intention is to describe how Aristotle held that nothing in the cosmos can exist independently of God, its ultimate Cause, whereas the existence of God depends on nothing external to him.

In this study I will first list some particulars about God’s role in the Aristotelian system (in chapters 2–5). I will deal there with texts in which Aristotle talks about the dependence of the visible world on God and the degrees involved in this dependence. I will also discuss the structural desire for immortality and the condition of God in everything forming part of the cosmos, and the “love” (erôs) for God, which is a way in which this desire may also manifest itself.

I then explore how these particulars are related to one another and to other elements of Aristotle’s philosophy, especially to his theory of reproduction, which I discuss in chapters 6 and 7.2 In these chapters I consider how Aristotle came to see the life of plants and trees and the vegetative, nutritive or reproductive function of animals and humans as the most general function of life in the sublunary sphere, and the first in the development of all living creatures. This function is essential to all mortal living entities, but does not depend on respiration or breath. It is already active before the birth of living creatures, from the moment of fertilization or conception. Focusing on this subject, Aristotle started to wonder how specific identity (the eidos) is determined for a new living being from the moment of fertilization, and what agency is responsible for producing the new being, since that agency cannot be an immaterial soul that enters a previously formed embryo from outside. This led Aristotle to draw up his entirely new theory of the soul as carrier of specific form and as entelechy of a pneumatic instrumental body. His radical new outlook on the genesis of life also led Aristotle to describe God’s relationship with the cosmos caused by him in a very different way from his predecessors Plato and the Presocratics (chapter 9). For Aristotle, God is not an entity that produces the world as a Creator or Demiurge. He is, however, the cause of all things, such that Aristotle is convinced of a divine design of the cosmos. Aristotle’s view of the cosmos is “teleological,” because everything functions in the best possible way, not through an external entity that creates something as a producer, but through an internal power, in the same way that this works in a grain of wheat or in an embryo. God is the cause of the cosmos as the source of all order, structure and governance, which manifests itself in a material reality that is subservient to this order and structure.

In the theory developed here, Aristotle’s concept of pneuma plays an important role. In other views on Aristotle his theory of pneuma seems strangely disconnected, as if scholars are at a loss what to do with it. The divine element, ether, and pneuma (in the sublunary sphere) are instruments functioning as bearers of the divinely emanating Power that brings about order and structure. All facets of pneuma as sublunary analogue of the astral element ether will be discussed in chapter 10. A number of important questions that often are neglected will be considered there:

Can pneuma be a “natural body”?

Does it have its own natural motion or its own natural place?

Is pneuma an independent, sixth natural body alongside ether and the four sublunary elements?

What does it mean that pneuma is an analogue of the astral element?

Why can’t it change into one of the sublunary elements and why doesn’t it share any common matter with these elements?

Is pneuma (infinitely) divisible?

Is pneuma imperishable or can it be affected by old age and disease?

Should pneuma be regarded as an efficient cause, or is it also the material cause of living beings?

How is it possible that pneuma pervades other natural bodies?

Is this also the reason why pneuma is invisible?

How is “vital heat” related to pneuma?

And finally, as the most important question: How is the soul as entelechy the rei(g)ning principle of pneuma? If we succeed in understanding this, it is possible to fathom Aristotle’s teleological view of nature.

This requires us to consider in a new way the question: What is the meaning of Aristotle’s proposition: “In being soul there is sleep and waking”?3

In chapters 12–17 I try to show why an entirely unhistorical outlook on Aristotle’s philosophy has become dominant since Antiquity from the time of the teaching and commenting activities of Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd century CE), an outlook that cancels any connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the sublunary sphere.

Chapters 18–19 provide a summarizing overview of the problems discussed. Chapter 19 especially can be read as a short summary of the line of argument developed in this book.

My working hypothesis in this study is that Aristotle’s philosophy proposed a drastic correction of Plato’s views. The most fundamental correction was his rejection of Plato’s doctrine of the soul and his own sharp distinction of intellect and soul instead of it. Aristotle did not view God as a perfect Soul and Demiurge, but as a pure, transcendent Intellect.

Distinguishing the Intellect from the Soul, Aristotle could not accept the three “parts” of the soul posited by Plato in his famous myth about the soul in the Phaedrus. Of the three parts, solely “the driver” of the team of horses remained as First Principle and Cause of everything. But an essential connection with the “psychic” components was maintained. To this “driver” Aristotle attributed a guiding influence, as a “Leader” (κοίρανος, στρατηγός, ἡγεμών, οἰκόνομος) and Chief Intelligence Officer. It was impossible that this driver could “strive” or “desire” or even “will.” Nor could this driver be the Maker of the elements of the cosmos, as Plato had posited, because this would clash with the dogma of the unchangeability of the First Principle. Only intellect-principles or guiding principles can proceed from the divine Intellect. They are the soul-principles, which Aristotle saw as representatives of God’s procreative Working Power in all that lives, as guiding principles that are active in organization and production, clothed in a fine-material body consisting of ether or (in the sublunary sphere) pneuma. In order to understand Aristotle’s theology, we must recognize that the guiding Dynamis of the Great Cosmic Helmsman is active in all entelechy-principles4 in the cosmos with their instrumental bodies, as in the horses that draw the chariot containing the driver in Plato’s famous comparison.

However, in talking about the cosmos Aristotle exchanged the metaphor of artisanal production (by a divine Demiurge) for the biotic metaphor of the transmission of life in reproduction.5 His radically new insights into reproduction and his different outlook on “life” inspired him to speak about God as “Begetter” of all forms of life in the cosmos through the Power (Dynamis) proceeding from him, as a critique of Plato’s concept of the Demiurge and the World Soul. What is vitalized by that divine Power is the materies, “the underlying,” the female contribution to all what lives. This Working Power of God differs from God’s Essence by manifesting itself in a natural body differentiated into a multitude of divine astral beings, who in turn are productive as efficient causes of countless life forms of mortal creatures, with the results of spontaneous generation and plants and trees as last and lowest species. In this ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. God’s Life-Generating Power and Its Transmission in Aristotle’s Biology and Cosmology
• 2. The Dependence of All Nature upon God
• 3. The Natural Desire of All Things for God
• 4. God as Object of Erôs and Source of Attraction
• 5. God as Unmoved Principle of Motion and Source of Power
• 6. Reproduction: A Power Transmitted by the Begetter
• 7. Life Begins at the Moment of Fertilization
• 8. The Magnet as Model of a Mover at a Distance
• 9. God as Begetter of All Life According to On the Cosmos
• 10. Pneuma as the Vehicle of Divine Power in the Sublunary Region
• 11. Desire as a Form of Nostalgia for the Origin
• 12. Why Doesn’t Pneuma Play an Important Role in Ancient and Modern Interpretations of Aristotle?
• 13. The Dubious Lines of On the Soul II 1, 412b1–4
• 14. Why Can’t the Words Sôma Organikon in Aristotle’s Definition of the Soul Refer to the Visible Body?
• 15. Collateral Damage of the Hylomorphistic Explanation of Aristotle’s Psychology
• 16. Resulting Damage to the Assessment of On the Cosmos and On the Life-Bearing Spirit (De Spiritu)
• 17. Damage to the View of the Unity of Aristotle’s Work
• 18. Intellect, Soul, and Entelechy: The Golden Rope
• 19. Aristotle on Life-Bearing Pneuma and on God as Begetter of the Cosmos: Brief Survey of Results
• Bibliography
• Index of Modern Names
• Back Cover