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Aristotle's Theory
of the
Unity of Science
Aristotle was the first philosopher to provide a theory of autonomous scientific disciplines and the systematic connections between those disciplines.
This book presents the first comprehensive treatment of these systematic
connections: analogy, focality, and cumulation.
Wilson appeals to these systematic connections in order to reconcile
Aristotle's narrow theory of the subject-genus (described in the Posterior
Analytics in terms of essential definitional connections among terms) with
the more expansive conception found in Aristotle's scientific practice. These
connections, all variations on the notion of abstraction, allow for the more
expansive subject-genus, and in turn are based on concepts fundamental to
the Posterior Analytics. Wilson thus treats the connections in their relation
to Aristotle's theory of science and shows how they arise from his doctrine
of abstraction. The effect of the argument is to place the connections, which
are traditionally viewed as marginal, at the centre of Aristotle's theory of
science.
The scholarly work of the last decade has argued that the Posterior
Analytics is essential for an understanding of Aristotle's scientific practice .
Wilson's book, while grounded in this research, extends its discoveries to
the problems of the conditions for the unity of scientific disciplines.
MALCOLM WILSON is an assistant professor in the Classics Department
at the University of Oregon.
PHOENIX
Journal of the Classical Association of Canada
Revue de la Societe canadienne des etudes classiques
Supplementary Volume xxxvrn
Tome supplementaire XXXVIII
MALCOLM WILSON
Aristotle's Theory of
the Unity of Science
185
C99-932973-1
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
vii
ix
I. Speed of Change 39
2. Value 41
3. Animal Locomotion 47
CHAPTER 2: ANALOGY IN ARISTOTLE'S BIOLOGY
Problems with Analogy 53
I. Fixity of Analogy 60
2. Difficult Cases 67
3. Analogues and the More and Less 69
4. An~logues and Position 69
5. Analogy of Function 72
6. Genus as Matter 74
A Solution 77
A Challenging Case 83
Analogy and Abstraction 86
53
vi Contents
CHAPTER 3, ANALOGY AND DEMONSTRATION
89
116
134
207
Souls 208
1. The Analogical Account 210
2. The Cumulative Account 214
Friendship 224
1. Eudemian Ethics and the Problems of Focal Friendship 225
2. The Nicomachean Version 231
The Place of Theology in the Science of Being 235
Conclusion: Analogy, Focality, and Cumulation 239
INDEX
243
255
265
175
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My first thanks go to my teachers at Berkeley, T any Long, John Ferrari, and Alan
Code, who supervised the dissertation from which this book arose. Mary Louise Gill
and James Lennox also kindly read my entire dissertation and provided encouragement and advice. Friends and colleagues have read and commented on various parts
in various stages of completion: Andrew Coles, William Keith, John Nicols, Scott
Pratt; and my wife, Mary Jaeger, who conquered 'philosophy-induced narcolepsy'
to read the entire manuscript more than once. Two anonymous reviewers for the
University of Toronto Press provided much detailed and general comment useful in
improvement. Finally, I should also like to thank Ancient Philosophy for permission
to use ma terial published in 'Anal ogy in Aristotle's Biology: Ancient Philosophy
17 (1997) .
......................------
ABBREVIA nONS
Works of Aristotle
APo
APr
Cat.
DA
DC
DI
EE
EN
GA
GC
HA
IA
Juv.
Long.
MA
Met.
Mete.
MM
PA
Phys.
PN
Pol.
Resp.
SE
Sens.
Somn.
Top.
Posterior Analytics
Prior Analytics
Categories
de Anima
de Caelo
de Interpretatione
Eudemian Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
Generation of Animals
Generation and Corruption
History of Animals
Progression of Animals
On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death
On Length and Shortness of Life
Movement of Animals
Metaphysics
Meteorologica
Magna Moralia
Parts of Animals
Physics
Parva Naturalia
Politics
Respiration
Sophistical Refutations
Sense and Sensibilia
de Somno
Topics
x Abbreviations
Other Works
LSj H.G. Liddell and R. Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised and
augmented by H. jones. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
ROT j. Barnes. The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford
Translation (Bollingen Series LXXI.2). Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984.
Acronyms and Summary of Per Se Relations
IPO
SGA
WP
is predicated of
species-genus-analogy
wholes-parts
per se (1) predicate: is contained in the definition of its subject, e.g., linear
is predicated of triangle.
per se (2) predicate: contains its subject in its definition, e.g., female is
predicated of animal.
per se (3) is self-subsistent subject, e.g., man.
per se (4) predicate: is predicated of something on account of itself, e.g.,
dying is predicated of being slaughtered.
INTRODUCTION
practical reasons familiar today. He did not worry about the limitations of
the individual human mind faced with the explosive growth of knowledge
and the consequent drive towards ever-increasing specialization . Quite the
contrary, he thought humans were naturally capable of fulfilling their desire for understanding and he did not view the sheer amount of knowledge
as an impediment to this end. His concern lay instead with the form that
that understanding takes. He denied that all of our knowledge falls into a
single undifferentiated domain, a single universal science, and he developed
a solution, the subject-genus, which served to separate and isolate each
subject matter.
But his solution created problems of its own. J shall contend that the
isolating force of the subject-genus was so powerful that additional techniques were required to provide for the legitimate causal and explanatory
links between sciences and subject-genera. To effect the happy compromise
between universal science and genus-isolation, Aristotle developed four
techniques of connection: subordination, analogy, foeality, and cumulation,
of which the last three are the special concern of this book.
J intend to study these techniques both at a specific and a general level.
J am first of all interested in the use Aristotle makes of them. The specific
passages in which he explicitly puts these techniques to work are among
the most controversial in the Aristotelian corpus. They concern such fun-
it has focused primarily on the single isolated genus. There is good reason
for this focus. While the APo does discuss the subordination technique at
some length, it only briefly notes analogy and never mentions focality or
cumulation at all. And yet these are important organizational tools in the
several sciences. In view of the success in applying the APo's single-genus
theory to Aristotle's scientific practice, I want to reverse the hermeneutic
process, as it were, and ask whether the widespread use of analogy, focality,
and cumulation in the special sciences can be given any theoretical account
within the terms of the APo. I believe that this is possible, and shall adduce
evidence and argument to show that Aristotle had the APo in mind when
he formulated these techniques. I shall also argue that this fact yields
important results. Not only do we obtain a theoretical account of these
techniques, but we also discover that, far from being a random assortment
are all logical developments of the most important concepts in the APo, per
se and qua predication. This fact both confirms our belief in the relevance
of the APo for these techniques and also allows us to provide a general and
unified account of them, for they are variations on a Single logical theme.
5 Introduction
the one that 5,0 successfully applies to Plato lead me to view the historical
question as less interesting than the philosophical question concerning
the logical organization of concepts. It would be absurd to deny that
. any philosopher underwent intellectual ' development, but I am inclined
to believe that Aristotle's development is more like the articulation of
basic ideas than the repeated creation and destruction of whole systems of
thought.
The story begins with Aristotle's objections to a single universal science. These objections arose out of the historical context of debates with
his older contemporaries Plato and Speusippus, heads of the Academy. It
was a common supposition of ancient Greek epistemology that we know
something when we know how it is related to other things we know. This
relational view of knowledge manifests itself in two patterns. First, Plato
held that we know the particulars best (to the extent that we actually can
know them ) when we understand how they imitate the Forms, and since
we understand the particular in virtue of the universaL Plato exalted the
Form or universal and depreciated the sensible particulars. Since we can
understand only what is common and universal among the particulars, the
variations among them are relegated to the shadowy realm of opinion.
With the quip that Meno was providing a whole swarm of virtues, Plato's
Socrates compelled him to avoid examples, like manly virtue and womanly
virtue, and state instead the single definition of virtue that covers all these
cases. For virtue, Socrates claimed, must be the same whether it is present
in a man or a woman (Meno 71e-73a) . Likewise, in the Republic he supposed tha t justice will have the same nature wherever it is found, and as a
result, he argued, justice in the soul will be the same as justice in the state
(368c-369a).
In the drive for the universal definition, Plato often overlooked genuine
ambiguities in terms. For Aristotle, detecting and disarming these ambiguities became something of a philosophical obsession. He faults Plato on
the grounds that justice exists properly as a relation between two people,
and exists between the parts of the soul only by a metaphorical extension
(EN V.111138a4-b14). Similarly, Plato's universalization of virtue, which
is manifested in the Republic's inclusion of women in the leadership of
the state (4S1d-e), prompts Aristotle to distinguish between men's and
women's tasks and therefore between their virtues (Pol. II.S 1264b4-6). For
Plato, then, the possession of any common characteristic among particulars
was a sufficient condition for positing a Form and universal, and as a
result he failed to detect other more subtle relationships. The preference
for the universal over the particular is recapitulated in the preference for
the more general Form over more specific Forms, as is clear in the example
fields and sciences were blurred, and in the Republic all knowledge became
an articulation of the unified politico-philosophical super-science of the
Good, in which the Form of the Good made all other Forms intelligible.
[n his later work, plato studied a second form of relational knowledge.
[n the Sophist the Forms themselves are known through a process of division by their participation in Sameness and Difference with respect to other
Forms. Here, the relations among the Fanns themselves are the source
would tell us nothing about the manifold nature of reality. Nor would it
be useful, since we do not even need it in order to know about specific
pieces of reality.
As Aristotle presented it, plato identified Being and Unity as the highest genera of things, under which all Forms fall. He also identified Being
and Unity as the elements of things, since he supposed that the Forms
were somehow constituted out of them. Being and Unity, then, were at
the same time both principles and the highest genera (Met. B.3 998b9-21).
For Plato, the more universal a thing was, the more of a principle it was
and the greater its generative and explanatory power. Aristotle, by contrast,
argued that there was a limit to the degree of universalization attainable
among all objects . Neither Being nor Unity, he thought, form a genus with
a Single unambiguous definition, and therefore neither can be a principle
7 Introduction
Aristotle was also concerned about the epistemological etiolation that
attends increasing universalization. The more one grasps at what is com
man, the less one retains of the particular kinds. And yet what a thing is
spe"cifically is as much a part of its Being as what it is at a high level of
generalization. For being biped is as much, if not more, part of the Being
of a man as being a substantial unity, the actuality of a potentiality. This is
not to say that Aristotle rejected general understanding altogether, but he
did not think that we know something solely in virtue of its membership
in a genus. Nor did he believe that the genus always provides the cause
and explanation for a thing. He preferred instead the constitutive element
and the various kinds of cause as explanatory principles, and in his theory
of science the genus comes to denote the extension of the explanation,
rather than the explanation itself.
Aristotle also took issue with the Academic doctrine that all knowledge forms a single science. He made the observation - hardly original
conSidering Socrates' frequent appeal to it - that there were experts who
understood their own field but not others. It was clearly not necessary
to know everything in order to have expertise in a single field.' Nor was
it necessary to know the most general science. Plato, for his part, had
been scandalized that the mathematicians simply accepted the principles of
their science without investigating its foundations. He supposed that their
hypothetical principles could be perfected by an unhypothetical science,
philosophical dialectic, which would remedy the deficiency of mathematics
and indeed all hypothetical sciences. Only the philosopher, then, could
legitimately lay claim to true knowledge of the special sciences. Aristotle,
though he recognized a first philosophy that examined the first principles
of the special sciences, thought it right and proper that the special sciences
should merely presuppose and not examine their own first principles.
Accordingly, Aristotle sought to redress the imbalance apparent in the
Academic prejudice towards the universal. He attended more equally to
both the specific and the general levels of inquiry and studied the causes of
things in addition to their similarities and differences. These new concerns
found logical expression in his theory of scientific understanding, whose
foundation is the demonstrative syllogism. A syllogism is composed of at
least three terms, a major (e.g., having wings), a middle (e.g., fliers), and
a minor (e.g., birds), arranged in at least two premisses and a conclusion;
for example,
2 See PA I.l, where Aristotle draws the distinction between the specialized expert and
the generaUy educated layman. Also Balme 1972, 70, on the connection with Plato and
Speusippus.
terms are so related, they are said to be per se (Ka8' aim5) or essentially
related. Only essentially related terms may be joined in a demonstrative
premiss, and a string of such premisses wi1l form a string of essential
relations. Terms that are not essentially related are said to be accidentally
related, and cannot be connected in a demonstrative premiss.
In addition to this per se requirement Aristotle introduces the rule that
terms in a demonstrative syllogism must be proved of the subject as such
and universally, indicating this criterion by the use of the relative pronoun
Ti (qua). The effect of this requirement is to restrict further the terms
admissible to a demonstration and therefore to a science. A triangle, for
for the autonomy of disciplines. Since not all terms are per se related to
one another, and since they are different in their qua designations, they
3 This syllogism is frequently presented differently by modem commentators:
birds are fliers
fliers have wings
birds have wings.
This is not, however, Aristotle's presentation, and it will be most convenient for our
purposes to adhere to his chara([eristic fonn.
4 These issues will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 1 below.
S In relating tenns within definitions Aristotle allows for some paronymy, Le., flying for
flier.
9 Introduction
cannot all be included in one universal science. Each science has a subject or
a subject-genus. This is what the science is about and the subject of which
the predicates are predicated. A science is the sum of the demonstrative
syllogisms that concern the same subject.' The subject of the science is
indicated by the qua expression, and the per se criterion for including
other terms in a science implies that each science is autonomous and has
its own and unique set of principles.
When these restrictions are violated, when there is an attempt to
introduce a term that is not per se and qua related to the other terms
into a demonstrative syllogism, the result is an error, which Aristotle calls
I'ETa/3arJ'lS or kind-crossing, and this will destroy the demonstrative power
of the syllogism and the cogency of the science.
In contrast to Plato's and Speusippus' universalizing and inclusive
tendencies, Aristotle's theory of demonstration is a powerfully isolating
force. The qua requirement especially entails that understanding occurs
within a single subject-genus, and not in relation to other genera through
an analysis of sameness and difference.' Each science will be specialized
and isolated from every other except by incidental connections, and there
will be no communication between disciplines. Each subject-genus, bound
by necessity solely to its own principles and predicates, will form an island
in the sea of Being. The view of the world that this theory of science
represents will be that of a heap of subjects, in which one genus is only
incidentally related to another.
It is clear, however, that Aristotle never advocated such a degree of
isolation. In fact there are a multitude of ways in which sciences are connected with one another and share principles. The axioms, like the principle
of non-contradiction, are common to all sciences, and are the precondition
for any understanding at all. More elaborately developed within the APo
is the connection between a more abstract, superordinate science and a less
abstract, subordinate science. A superordinate science, usually a branch of
mathematics, supplies principles and explanations for a fact or conclusion
found in a distinct and subordinate natural science, for instance, harmonics
or optics. Since this technique and its place in the APo has been well studied
6 I am deliberate in avoiding the claim that a science is the sum of demonstrations which
have the same minor term for reasons which will be discussed in chapter 4.
7 No doubt, division remains an important part of Aristotle's epistemology, but it plays a
preliminary role in establishing the extent of the subject-genera and the attributes that
are coextensive with them. It is not the primary form of understanding. See Ferejohn
1991, who places division in the 'framing' or pre-demonstrative stage of science. See
also chapter 2 below.
8 See e.g., Lear 1982, McKirahan 1978, CartWright and Mendell 1984, and Lennox 1986.
11 Introduction
can prove that wing is predicated of bird by using the proper principles
of the subject genus, bird; similarly with the fish's fin' In spite of the
independence and autonomy of the demonstrations, there is a parallel in
the proofs, an analogical identity of relation: as wing is to bird, so fin is to
fish. This identity, however, cannot be abstracted from, and must always be
per se related to, the subject-genera in which the demonstrations take place.
This is a result of the fact that the subjects, bird and fish, determine the
qua level at which the attributes and causes are treated. At the same time,
behind the generic difference there is the intimation of a more abstract
subject-genus to which both bird and fish are related. This subject-genus
arises from the fact that flying and swimming are forms of locomotion,
and that wing and fin are instrumental parts of locomotion. The second
and third chapters of this book will be devoted to explaining how analogy
facilitates this limited degree of unity among different scientific subjects.
The second object of our investigation, the focal relationship, is a
method for drawing together in a single subject matter objects that are
of different genera lO According to Aristotle's favourite example, the term
'medical' applies to many different kinds of objects. For instance, we call
an operation medical, a doctor medical, a scalpel medical, not because they
possess the same attribute, medical, but because they are all related to the
thing that is called medical in the primary sense, the medical art. The other
medical things are so called because they are the work of the medical art,
the possessor of the medical art, or the instrument of the medical art. The
definitions of these derivatively medical things contain in themselves the
primary term or its definition. Chapter 4 will be devoted to analysing the
focal relationship in terms of -Aristotle's theory of science and showing
that medical is predicated of the derivative medical things in virtue of a
variety of per se relations. Although all the medical objects do not form a
single genus, in the sense that they are not of the same kind or similar to
one another, the definitional relations among them show how they form
a genus in another important sense of the term, objects related by per se
connections to a single subject-genus.
13 Introduction
important means that employs elements of focality and analogy to create
a series of similar objects. I call this method 'cumulation,' and it will be
the subject of the final chapter. l3 It is a special form of a series, which is
arranged in order of priority and posteriority, and is used in Aristotle's
discussions of souls and friendships. It is also important for determining
the place of theology within metaphysics. The prior members of the series
are logically and ontologically contained in the posterior members, as for
example the nutritive soul is contained in the sensitive soul. The latter
cannot exist without the former, and the latter contains the former in its
definition potentially. Members of cumulative series do not form standard
genera, but they all share some essential attributes with one another, as
analogues do; they are also per se related among themselves, since the
definition of a later member contains the definition of a prior member, just
as focally related objects do. In spite of the features of cumulation that are
common with foeality, cumulative objects cannot form a focal genus. The
reasons for this will emerge in my interpretation of the soul series. The
chapter will be filled out with an examination of Aristotle's two discussions
of friendship and an argument that he abandoned the focal analysis of
friendship he provided in the Eudemian Ethics for a cumulative view in
the Nicomachean Ethics because of the intractible difficulties in applying
focality in this context. Finally, I shall use the lesson of cumulation and
focality to shed light on the problem of the place of theology in the science
of Being.
Together, analogy, focality, and cumulation provide Aristotle with the
means to balance the claims of the universal science advocated by the
Academy and the isolation of the subject-genera, which arises within the
logic of his own theory of science. This solution, by preserving the autonomy of sciences without creating a chaotic heap of subject matters, allows
each subject to be treated separately while still maintaining its place in the
intelligible architecture of the world.
Genus, Abstraction,
and Commensurability
In this chapter I shall first discuss two issues preliminary to 'semi-abstraction.' I shall begin by presenting in more detail the per se and qua relations, and show how they make a subject-genus a single subject-genus
distinct from other subject-genera. Aristotle illustrates these relations by
the familiar 2R example and the proof for alternating proportionality. In
both cases the per se and qua relations provide an adequate set of criteria
These preliminary discussions provide the background for semi-abstraction, and allow for a distinction between semi-abstraction and pure abstraction. In pure abstraction, such as the abstraction of mathematicals
from their physical substrates, the abstracted subject-genus maintains no
per se connections to the substrate from which it was abstracted. In semiabstraction, by contrast, the abstracted subject-genus does maintain some
per se connections to its substrate. I shall argue that, precisely because
these per se connections are maintained, the lines of demarcation between
a semi-abstracted subject-genus and its substrate cannot be sharply drawn.
As a result ambigUity arises in determining which subject-genus is under
consideration, the semi-abstract or its substrate. We shall see this problem
first arising with the proof for alternating proportionality, and then more
acutely in the 'mixed' or subordinate sciences, like harmonics and optics.
In these latter cases more than one subject-genus is involved in the same
proof, and therefore proofs in such sciences do not occur clearly within
one or the other subject-genus, but rather occur in both.
(or per se as I shall refer to it; <ae' aUTo) and universal aeor-ov) relation,
and since the in itself /per se relation is logically prior to the universal
relation, let us follow Aristotle and consider it first .
In a controversial passage (1.4 73a34-b16), Aristotle distinguishes four
kind s of in itself or per se relationships, which in accordance with the recent
convention I shall call per se (1)_(4)' Three of the four describe a relation
between the terms of a demonstrative syllogism, and in these three cases
the terms are related by definition. Indeed, it is precisely because these per
se predicates are definitionally related that they are necessary and so useful
in demonstrations. In the first form (73a34-37) B is predicated per se of
A, if B appears in the account that makes clear the essence or th e 'what is
it' of A (EV T(~ .\oy~ T0 Ayovn Ti EaTL), as, for example, line is present
in the definition of triangle, since triangle is a figure bounded by three
straight lines. The proposition, 'triangle is linear' or 'line is predicated of
triangle,' then, passes the per se test as a demonstrative premiss. In the
second form (73a37-b3), B is predicated per se of A, if A is present in the
account of B, as curved is predicated of line, because line appears in the
definit ion of curved,2 In this case, the proposition 'line is curved' passes the
per se test as a demonstrative premiss. A third thing (73b5-10), that which
is not predicated of a substrate, is called per se, but this hardly provides
us with a description of a predication at all, and so cannot be relevant to
demonstrative premisses. But the fourth use of per se, that which belongs
to each thing on account of itself (Ilt' aUTO, 73b10-16), clearly involves
predication. Aristotle cites as an example death (cinoaau"u ) belonging per
se to slaughter (<TcpaTT<TeaL). Accordingly, 'to be slaughtered is to die'
passes the per se test as a demonstrative premiss.
Though there is no small amount of controversy surrounding these
relationships, we can reasonably maintain that to the extent that they are
1 This list may be compared to Met. 6 .18, which arguably covers all the four kinds of
APo 104. For detailed discussions of these relationships, see Ferejohn 1991, 75-130, and
McKirahan 1992, 80-102.
2 Aristotle later qualifies this form (1.6 74b8-l 0) by saying that these predicates are
opposites. There is some controversy whether so restricted a relation is useful. I agree
with McKirahan (1992, 90) that the more general formulation of 1.4 captures the
important aspects of this relation.
name (in the language of the Categories, h6yo< KOro. rovvoJ.W.). This is an
intensional condition and provides an imr0rtant restriction, since it is not
identical with the extensional condition. For as Aristotle points out (1.5
74al6--17), if there were no other kind of triangle besides isosceles, the
2R predicate would seem to belong to isosceles qua isosceles, because all
and only isosceles triangles would have interior angles equal to 2R. But, in
fact, it would not, since the definition of isosceles triangle includes having
two sides equal, and it is not in virtue of this fact that the 2R predicate
holds. The distinctive differentia of isosceles triangle is irrelevant to the
predicate. That two of those sides are equal in length is not the part of the
definition in yirtue of which 2R holds. As a result, even if 2R, triangle,
and isosce les triangle were coextensive with one another, nevertheless 2R
5 On this issue I side with Lennox 1987a and McKirahan 1992 against Ferejohn 1991
that the qlfa requirement has an intensional aspect. There are variations on these
positions. Ferejohn (70-1; 149n9) claims that qlfa itself is an 'essentially extensional
requirement: While he grants that it is not always purely extensional, he claims it is
in APo IA. He cites as evidence the bronze isosceles triangle example, which shows that
commensurate universals are the only concern. Lennox (92) claims that both per se
and qua requirements are intensional. McKirahan (102) agrees, claiming that the qua
requirement derives its intensionality from its connection with per se.
6 Compare a similar passage at Met. Z.l1 1036a26-b3 using as an example a bronze
circle. Here the abstraction must be made between the circular fonn and the bronze
material, rather than between two mathematical fonns.
7 The examples cited by Bonitz 1961 all point in this direction. There are no cases to
my knowledge in which 2R is said to be a per se accident of isosceles triangle. Met.
6. .30 1025a30-32 cites 2R predicated of triangle as an example. APo 1.7 75a42-bl
strongly suggests that the per sc accidents must be within the same genus as the
subject. Most clear is Met. B .2 997a21-22: 'to investigate the per Sf accidents of one
subject-genus, starting from one set of beliefs, is the business of one science' (modified
the subject:'
2R IPO (per se / qua) having angles around the apex of the triangle = 180
having angles around apex of triangle = 180 IPO (per se / qua) triangle
2R IPO (per se accident / qua) triangle
So long as we keep the distinction between premiss and conclusion in
mind, these qualifications to the theory present little difficulty. But there
is another form of argument, important for analogy, called an 'application
argument,' in which certain tensions arise between the per se and qua
criteria. 9 In such an argument a predicate can be proved to belong to the
ROT); explicitly too in the context of qua, Me t. M.3 1078a5-8 (d . PA I.1 639a15-19).
Phys. II.2 193b26-32 clearly mentions mixed sciences as dealing with per se accidents.
APo 1.22 83bl9-20 comes the closest to extending the formulae to all necessary
concomitants, but it is unclear, and even if it does, it seems to connect only a string of
genus tenns.
8 Per se accidents (/Cae' aiml OlJf'j3lj3'1Kora) such as 2R predicated of triangle are not
under consideration in APo 1.4, where Aristotle is only concerned with immediate
connections (73a24-25), which indeed must be either per se or accidental. He is not
talking about conclusions, though, admittedly, 2R, which is not an immediate predicate,
is discussed in this context. At Met. 6..18 Aristotle seems to grant a per se accidental
conne(:tion an unqualified per se status: a man is alive per se, because the soul is a part
of the man, and in it primarHy is life (1022a31-32). This example, however, is fou nd
together with a dear case of per se (2) predication. A stronger claim is made at APo II.4
91al8-21: 'if A belongs to every B in what it is (Ell T~ Ti EOTl), and B is said universally
of every C in what it is, necessarily A is said of C in what it is.' The question of
the status of per se accidents and how they are to be fit into Aristotle's classification
of per se is fraught with difficulty. Tiles 1983, 13-14, and Ferejohn 1991, 123, for
example, place th em among per se (4) predicates, on the grounds that they cannOt
be placed under per se (1) or (2) fonns, since the per se accident is not de6nitionally
included in a direct way with its subject. McKirahan 1992, 169-71, by contrast, argues
that conclusions are per se (1) predications, supposing' that definitional inclusion is a
transitive feature. He tends to minimize the importance of all per se relations except
(1) and (2) (164).
9 For application arguments, see McKirahan 1992, 177-87, who coined the term. Lennox
1987a, 92-3, earlier identified the application argument as Type A (I have modified
his fonn somewhat), and the argument proving the predicate universally of the
subject-genus as Type B. For an in-depth treatmem of the problem of syllogizing the
2R theorem, see McKirahan 1992, 151-5.
It is an important point made clear in this passage that this sense of 'genus/
the identity condition of a science, is not the same as the sense in which a
group is divided into species by differentiae. This' genus' includes a subject,
its principles, its parts, and its attributes. Many of these will not be in the
same divisionary genus, and will not even be in the same category as the
subject itself. Whereas members of a divisionary genus like animal are all
similar and share some characteristics, members of a scientific genus are
related to one another by per se relations. 12
The terms of a single science, then, all belong in the same genus,
because they are related per se and qua the subject. Conversely, terms that
are not related per se and qua the subject do not belong in the genus.
What is not related per se is incidental (APo 1.4 73b4-S), and since it is
impossible to demonstrate anything with incidental premisses, one can only
demonstrate with terms from the same genus. Each thing must be proved
from its own principles (A Po 1.9 7Sb37-38), and the principles used must
be coextensive with the subject. Aristotle repeatedly warns about breaking
this rule: what is proved must not be proved of a subject narrower in
extension than the predicate:
One cannot, therefore, prove anything by crossing from another genus (E~ aAAOV
yivovS' flETaj3a.vTa) - e.g. something geometrical by arithmetic ... For this reason
one cannot prove by geometry that there is a single science of opposites, nor even
12 For further comments, see McKirahan 1992, 61-2. The senses of the tenn are hardly
exclusive, and as Andrew Coles has pointed out to me they are central to two moments
of a single inquiry. The first, the divisionary moment in which subjects are connected
with attributes at various levels of generality, requires that a genus be divisible into
species. After this stage each level becomes a genus-subject of demonstration. See
especially Lennox 1987a.
Again, if we use a general proof for a specific subject and suppose that
we are proving the attribute of that subject as such, we commit metabasis
and prove the attribute only inCidentally. The per se and qua requirements
for predicates demand that attributes and proofs be adapted to their appropriate genus (icpap!lOTTEW hr' TO YEVO,) and not cross to another kind
(y.,m/3aiv,w Ei, ail.il.o yEVO,). It is clear from the examples Aristotle provides that, practically speaking, metabasis does not usually occur between
unrelated genera, since it is unlikely that we would look for principles
among irrelevant objects. Instead the danger of metabasis is most acute
between closely related genera, like a sub-group and a more extensive
genus (e.g., straight lines and beautiful things). Although they are closely
related, the sub-group forms a different genus from that of the larger
13 There is a long-standing difficulty with the case of Bryson. Heath (1949, 47-50)
discusses the possibilities and despairs of a solution. More recently, Mueller 1982
supports Proclus' interpretation that Aristotle's objection stems from Bryson's not
providing a constructive proof to correspond to the intuition that the circle has the
same area as a certain polygon intermediate between the i.nscribed and circumscribed
polygons. In short, Bryson moved from premisses to conclusion without using the
immediate premisses. But it is not clear on this explanation how Bryson then is proving
in virtue of a common feature. Mueller admits that this is a weakness in Prod us'
interpretation (160-4).
beautiful or that the isosceles triangle has 2R. We can prove that straight
lines are the most beautifuL but not qua lines.14 Beauty, even if it is an
inva riable concomitant of straight lines, does not belong to lines qua lines
nor qua geometrical entities. Beauty belongs to straight lines because they
are a particular set of beautiful things. Beauty is common to many other
things besides, namely to beautiful things qua beautiful, a genus with its
own principles. In order to prove that straight lines are beautiful, we need
an application argument. As we saw, this applies a predicate that is proved
of a gen us to a species or instance of that genus. It must have one more
premiss than the argument that proves the attribute of the genus qua the
genus. The application argument for straight lines being beautiful might
be something like the following:
.
beauty IPO intelligibility
intelligibility IPO symmetry
symmetty IPO straight line
beauty IPO straight line
The first two premisses are sufficient to prove that symmetrica l things
generally are beautiful and the third premiss merely applies the general
conclusion to the species. This is a perfectly legitimate proof. But if we tty
to prove straight lines beautiful without the intermediaty of symmetty,
we shall have committed metabasis. 15
14 The contrary relation of straight line and circumference may be an allusion to DC 1.2
268h17-19, which sta tes that they are the only simple motion s. This, then, will be a
physical rather than a geometrical proposition.
15 Aristotle provides an interestingly different analysis of thi s situation at Met. M.3
l 078a31-b5: 'Now since the good and the beautiful are different (for the fonner
always implies conduct as its subject, while the beautiful is found also in motionless
things), those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful
or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a very great deal about
them; for if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are
their results or their formulae, it is not true to say that they tell us nothing about
them. The chief fonns of beauty are order and symmetry and defin iteness, which
the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree. And since these (e .g. order
and definiteness) are obviously causes of many things, eVidently these sciences must
treat this so rt of cause also (Le. the beautiful) as in some sense a cause.' Mathematics
ate steps of proof are not followed, and this happens when we misidentify
the appropriate qua-level for demonstration and produce a mismatch between the subject and the property proved of it. Sometimes these errors
occur through carelessness, sometimes because of the difficulty of the
problem involved. Aristotle discusses one especially difficult case:
And it might seem that proportion alternates for things as (i1) numbers and as lines
and as solids and as times - as once it used to be proved separately, though it is
possible for it to be proved of all cases by a single demonstration. But because all
these things - numbers, lengths, times, solids - do not constitute a single named
item and differ in sort from one another, it used to be taken separately. But now
it is proved universally; for it did not belong to things as lines or as numbers, but
as (n) this which they suppose to belong universally. (APo 1.5 74a17-25)
Aristotle says, because it did not have a single name. The definitions and
proofs for alternating proportionality had to be couched in terms of the
specific magnitude, length a or time b or volume c. Because of the lack of
a common name the laws of proportionality masqueraded as a problem re-
Aristotle was familiar with the general proof that had been developed
by Eudoxus, a friend of Plato and member of the Academy.l7 Subsequently, Euclid incorporated Eudoxus' di?coveries along with the earlier,
seems to provide some of the causal material for the science of beauty. It explains
why a straight line is symmetrical. Other principles will be necessary to show why
symmetry is beautiful, i.e., what symmetry, order, and definiteness have in common,
say, intelligibility, which makes them all beautiful. This passage also makes clear
that one science may say a lot about another science without being the same as that
science.
16 But even for Aristotle the general kind, though constituting a common nature, does
not have a general name. By the time Euclid composed the fifth book, however, the
general teon JlfYf.8os was in use.
17 For the professional activities of Eudoxus, see Heath 1981, I, 322- 7.
18 See Heath 1956, II, 112-13; Mueller 1970a. For the general proofs of Eudoxus, see
Produs, In primum Ellclidis 67, 3- 5: 7rPWTM TWV Ka86.\ov Ka.\ov}J.EvWV 8wpruuiTwv TO
7J'.\i180S' 'YJU{'YJfTv.
19 So also V. def. 2: 'The greater is -a multiple of the less when it is measured by the
less,' and VII. def. 5: 'The greater number is a multiple of the less when it is measured
by the less.' Translations from Heath 1956.
Comparison with a passage at APo 1.11 77a26-35 shows that the common
items discussed here are axioms, one of the three kinds of principles in
demonstrations, and that without which no learning is possible (1.2 72aI617). Though these axioms, such as the 'equals taken from equals' axiom,
are common to many genera (or common to all genera in the case of the
principle of non-contradiction), they are not used in their common form
within a specific genus. Instead they are adapted to the genus in which
they operate.'o When there is a multiplicity of such adaptations in many
different genera, the axioms are analogically the same, since they perform
corresponding functions in each genus. The issue is similar in the case
of alternating proportion. Each proof is conducted within its own proper
genus, but each part of one proof corresponds to that of another. Prior to
Eudoxus analogy was the nearest one could come to a general proof among
this group of subject matters .
The substitution of the appropriate terms in order to adapt the definienda of one specific-genus to another specific genus seems to be fairly
trivial. The general science of proportionality, however, accomplishes far
more than merely introdUCing a general term that will adequately cover all
the specific cases. Eudoxus developed a science that holds good for irrational
20 Ross 1949, 538: 'other {principles are} common, but common in virtue of an analogy,
since they are useful just in so far as they faU within the genus studied.' Cf. Met. r .3
1oo5a26--27: 'men use [common axioms} JUSt so far as to satisfy their purposes; that is,
as far as the genus whose attributes they are proving extends.'
V. def. 6: Let magnitudes which have the same ratio be called proportional,
where being in the same ratio is defined as
V. def. 5: Magnitudes are said to be in the same ratio, the first to the
second and the third to the fourth, when, if any equimultiples whatever
be taken of the first and third, and any equimultiples whatever of the
second and fourth, the former equimultiples alike exceed, are alike equal
to, or alike fall short of, the latter equimultiples respectively taken in
corresponding order.
We are instructed to multiply the first and third quantity by any equal
factor, and multiply the second and the fourth quantity by any other equal
factor. If the quantities stand in proportion, then, no matter what factors
we use, the first and third will always be likewise smaller than, equal
to, or larger than the second and the fourth respectively. This definition
is expressly formulated in terms of equimultiples in order to overcome
the challenge of incommensurability, which arises in the environment
of irrational quantities. For this reason the definition requires neither a
rational relationship between the first and the second term, and the third
and the fourth, nor between the two pairs of magnitudes. Compare this
with
VII. def. 20: numbers are proportional when the first is the same multiple
or the same part, or the same parts of the second that the third is of the
fourth,
which assumes that all the members of the proportion are commensurable
rational numbers.
For the single theorem Aristotle is referring to, that if A:B::C:D, then
A:C::B:D, Euclid's proofs are parallel in broad outline, both depending on
finding some means of measuring the first quantity by the third. They
accomplish this in different ways: V. prop. 16, the general proof, uses
equimultiples to establish the proportion between A and C, and Band 0,
while the theorem for discrete number, VII. prop. 9, can show this more
directly, since A is the same part of B that C is of 0 , and wholes with the
same number of parts have their parts proportional with their wholes.
en
'Since in each genus what belongs to something per se and qua the genus
belongs to it necessarily' (modified ROT 1.6 75a28-29), it follows that not
only is mathematics a different genus from natural science, but triangle is
21 Aristotelian mathematical theory has recently received a great deal of attention. See
e.g., Mueller 1970b; Annas 1976; Lear 1982; Cleary 1985 and 1995; and Graeser 1987.
I take the per se view, that all per se connections to natural substance are ignored or
abstracted away from. That the imperfection of natura~ things cannot be at issue in
mathematical abstraction is shown by the fact that mathematics provides the causes
in mixed sciences, such as optics, and the mathematics in these sciences is laid out in
strictly mathematical fonn.
22 So Phys. n.2 193b32-33: 'nor does [the mathematicianI consider the attributes indicated
as the attributes of such [narural1 bodies.'
other, and there is not the tidy separation of genera we find with triangles
and isosceles triangles or with mathematicals and natural objects. It is one
to a comparison of Aristotle and Euclid. To the extent that Euclid provides clarification for points Aristotle is making, we may use him for
corroborating evidence. We may start by turning to the proofs for optical
phenomena found in his Optics, which at once clarify Aristotle's discussion
31 This is the interpretation given by McKirahan 1978, 201, and Lennox 1986, 48. Lennox
1987a, 94, notes the similarity between 2R-isosceles and mixed science, but rightly does
not identify their structure.
32 McKirahan 1992, 178, 184, recognizes that application arguments need not be to species,
but does not deal with cases where the application may not be immediate.
but qua lines and numbers' (Met. M.3 1078a14-16). At what qua-level
optical phenomena are to be proved is clearly in doubt. By contrast, 2R is
clearly proved of isosceles triangle qua triangle. Optics cannot be studied
purely qua geometry (i.e., those mathematical proofs that apply to optics),
since then we should merely cull proofs from the Elements, and without
adapting their terms in any way, call them optics. No reference could
be made to rays or eyes. Obviously, neither Aristotle nor Euclid does
this, since this would not make clear how they explain optical phenomena.
Alternatively, we might cull proofs from the Elements and briefly apply
them to optical instances by identifying, for example, point A as centre of
a sphere, B as eye, and so on. Again, neither Aristotle nor Euclid does this,
since it would still not be clear what we were trying to prove, namely,
why this optical phenomenon exists. Instead, in both authors we begin
at all in the explanation of 2R. It is clear, then, that optics studies optical
phenomena but makes use of geometry in its explanations. How is this
the case?
We have already seen both the setting out of Optics 23 and the manner
in which Aristotle in Mete. III.3 begins his explanations of halos. It is
clear that geometry is not the only explanatory factor in these explanations. Instead, part of the explanation is optical and part is geometrical.
In demonstrative form we may represent the explanation for halos as
follows:
forming a circle IPO equal lines falling from one point
equal lines falling from one point IPO a halo
forming a circle IPO a halo
But this is not yet a demonstration, since neither premiss is immediate.
Between .the major and the middle term we must 'pack' or insert further
geometrical premisses. Equally, between the middle and the minor terms
we require packing of premisses containing optical terms in order to explain
why optical terms can be described in geometrical terms. These premisses
lines falling from a point IPO equal rays falling from a light source
rays falling from a light source IPO equal rays falling from the sun
rays falling from the sun IPO equal rays reflected by mist to the eye
rays reflected by mist to the eye IPO halo.
even part of the definition of halo. For this reason, the transference of
per se attributes of common features (geometry) to the instance (halo) is
not an immediate fact, but itself requires explanation. Aristotle describes
the situation in terms of facts and causes, because he is interested in
the reason why the halo takes a circular shape, rather than why it fall s
under geometrical analysis at alL Nevertheless, the example illustrates that
where the subordinate science is not a species of the superordinate science,
the subordinate science makes a genuine and unique contribution to the
34 1986,41.
35 Aristotle's example of snub has an ambiguous status in this scheme. Inasmuch as snub
is an accident of nose, it behaves as a predicate of the subject-genus nose. As such, it
is completely embedded. But inasmuch as it is emblema tic of fonn in a "matter-fonn
compound, it behaves as a semi-abstract, since, like soul and the form of natural objects
generally, it can be abstracted to the extent that it forms a subject of discourse with its
own per se predicates.
36 Cat. 6 6a19-25 claims that quantities themselves do not admit of the more and the less,
i.e., one three cannot be more three than another three.
1. Speed of Change
In one of the more important and searching passages for issues concerning abstraction, Physics VIl.4, Aristotle argues that the forms of change
(alteration, locomotion, etc.) must be specifically identical in order to
be commensurable. The chapter begins with an aporia: is every change
Again (248b17-19):
In fact there are some terms of which even the definitions are homonymous; e.g.
if 'much' were defined as 'so much and more', 'so much' would mean something
different in different cases; 'equal' is similarly homonymous; and 'one' again is
perhaps inevitably homonymous.
37 Aristotle directly calls on the fact that these changes are not in the same category at
Phys. 1Il.1 200b32-201a3.
38 Cf. Top. US l07b13-18: 'See if tenns cannOt be compared as more or less or as in like
degree, as is the case (e.g.) with a dear sound and a clear argument, and a sharp lavour
and a sharp sound. For neither are these things said to be dear or sharp in a like degree,
nor yet is the one said to be dearer or sharper than the other. Clear, then and sharp are
homonymous. For synonyms are always comparable. For they will always hold either
in like manner (o,iJ.oiw~), or else in a greater degree (}.diAAOU) in one case.'
39 The analogical relation probably refers to the onns of change in different categories (e.g.,
substantial change and alteration), generic relation to different form s of alteration, etc.
that the affection or kind of change cannot be abstracted from the primary
recipient, what the change occurs in. Three elements are present in the
definition of speed of change: the time in which it takes place, the affection,
like white or health, and the substrate, like surface or man (249a29-b26).
Speed is measured by the amount of the substrate changed to the affection
in a certain time: 10 square feet of surface changed to white in 40 seconds.
The affection and substrate must be related to one another per se and
not incidentally.'" Therefore, the affection and the substrate must both be
specifically the same in the cases compared, and equality of amount will be
denominated in amount of substrate. Thus the white of dog and the white
of horse are commensurable because both dog and horse have surface, and
surface, not dog or horse, is the primary recipient of white. The surface
becomes the single subject that allows for commensuration, and we are not
name, change, which suggests that there will be a single definition, and a
Single commensurable genus. But, in fact, the re is no abstract change apart
2. Value
The concept of value admits of a greater degree of abstraction than change,
but remains nevertheless bound to its substrate. Aristotle's discussion of
this subject at Politics 1.9 1257a6ff. is aimed at showing how wealth properly speaking must always be bound to its substrate, property, which fulfils
some specific function for its owner:
Of everything which we possess there are two uses (XP7jffl:tS'): both belong to the
thing as such (KaO' aUTO). but not in the same manner, for one is the proper (oLKEia),
and the other is not the proper use of it (OVK OLKEla). For example, a shoe is used
for wear, and is used for exchange; both are uses of the shoe. He who gives a shoe
modified ROT)
The first problem is to provide an account for the apparent confusion of
terms, according to which a per se (Ka8' aim)) use of an object, one in which
the object is used qua that named object, is, however, not proper (olKda).
It is clear that the wearer of the shoe is using the shoe as a shoe. But the
exchanger is not wearing the shoe; he is instead using it for exchange. This
is not the proper use of it, because the shoe was not made for the purpose
of exchange. This, however, cannot be the whole story, because nothing
prevents the cobbler from making shoes expressly to exchange them.
In spite of the confusion in the technical expression, Aristotle's thought
seems to be this: 41 there is a natural circumstance in which some have too
much and others too little of some natural good (1257al4-17), and this is
caused by the practice of the crafts. The cobbler makes shoes. He wears
them (a per se and proper use of shoes). But he keeps on making them,
because he is a cobbler and cobblers make shoes to be put on feet. But
now he has too many, and other people are unshod. In trading his shoes
he is treating his shoes qua shoes, and they are achieving their per se
use, because they are protecting feet, the reason the cobbler made them
in the first place. But in the act of exchange he is also treating them as
exchange goods to fulfil his own natural needs other than shoes. This is
not the purpose for which they were made (OUK oiKfia), but they serve this
purpose because others need them and he needs what they have more of.
The exchange comes to an end when everyone has what they need. The
shoe can serve as an exchange good precisely because it is being treated as a
shoe and is needed as such, for otherwise it would have no exchange value.
The retail trader, by contrast, is neither interested in shoeing the world
as the cobbler is, nor in fulfilling his natural needs. He buys shoes not .to
wear them, but to sell them again at a profit, and since he sells them
neither to supply himself with other necessaries nor in accordance with
the art of seeing people shod, he is neither using the shoe as a shoe nor
using it in one of its two per se uses.
between the cobbler and the housebuilder must be some form of equality
for exchange to take place. We might think to express the relationship as
follows: the claims of and demands on the cobbler are equivalent to those of
the housebuilder. 45 But considering Aristotle's suspicion concerning equal-
48 Cf. Judson 1997, 171, for a rather different view: 'Aristotle means that, if one considers
"houses and shoes in isolation from human needs, there is simply no fact of the matter
as to what a house is worth. This is quite compatible with thinking that there can be
such a fact of the matter when houses and shoes are considered as objects whicl;l satisfy
human needs.'
49 A similar analogical relationship is discussed at GC II.6 (333a20--34), where Aristotle
is criticizing Empedocles for holding that the elements are commensurable and
non-transfonnable:
'If it is meant that they [the elementsI are comparable in their amount, all the
comparables must possess an identical something whereby they are measu red. If, e.g.,
one pint of Water yields ten of Air, both are measured by the same unit; and therefore
both were from the first an identical something. On the other hand, suppose they are
not comparable in their amount in the sense that so much of the one yields so much of
the other, but comparable in power of action (a pint of Water, e.g., having a power of
cooling equal to that of ten pints of Air); even so, they are in their amount, though not
qua amount, but qua having power. Instead of comparing their powers by the measure
of their amount, they might be compared as tenns in an analogy: e.g., as x is hot, so Y
is white. But "as," though it means equality in quantity, means similarity in quality .
Thus it is manifestly absurd that the bodies, though they are not transformable, are
comparable not by analogy, but by a measure of their powers; Le. that so much Fire is
comparable with many times that amount of Air, as being equally or similarly hot. For
the same thing, if it be greater in amount, will, since it belongs to the same kind, ha~e
its ratio correspondingly increased.'
If the elements cannot undergo mutual transfonnation, then they can only be compared
by analogy. There seem to be tWO kinds of analogy under consideration, one that
allows for commensuration by quantification on the basis of measure of power, and one
that does not (as x is hot, so Y is white), since there is no similarity of the qualities.
Though the elements are not transfonnable, they may still be capable of eHecting
some common thing in a similar manner, and on that basis a ratio may be established
between the amounts necessary to bring about the similar effect. The commensuration
of the elements in question cannot be separated from the elements they are, since we
are not trying to commensurate cooling power, but the elements that bring about the
cooling. Commensuration through analogy is possible when some common attribute
is shared by different subjects, and can be partly abstracted from the subjecrs it is
found in.
50 See Peck's (1983, 8-10) comments on the organization of the biological treatises.
why each part is such as it is and to what end [a nimals] possess them, and
second, the differences between these parts both in one and the same creature, and
again by comparison of the parts of creatures of differen t species with one another.
(1 70435-9)
51 Lennox 1987a has done much to clarify the relationship between the PA and the
HA. According to him, the HA is a pre-demonstrative historia that collects facts into
divisionary groups according to commensurate universals, thus facilitating the process
of discovering the middle tenn. The PA begins the work of demon stration with a
consideration of the material and final cause. The GA continues with a study of the
moving cause. Though these trea tises are distinguished by the causes they treat, there
is nothing in the requirement for generic unity that demands their separation. Indeed
both causes do belong in the same genus, since the efficient cause is subsumed under
and is for the sake of the final cause.
52 Indeed. IA seems to be presupposed by the PA (IV.11 690bl4-16).
53 Cf. PA I.l 639a29-b3: 'Very possibly also there may be othe r characters which, though
they present specific differences, yet come under one and the same category. For
instance, flying, swimming, walking, creeping, are plainly speCifically distinct, but yet
are all fonns of animal progression.'
(ICOW7}S-
Aristotle shows in the first chapter that there must be a point of rest in the
animal that is the origin of motion. In addition there must be something
outside it that is absolutely at rest (ch. 2). This is a fact that extends beyond
animals even to physics in general, and is treated as useful for the present
science. 55 The MA will also consider how the soul moves the body. Accordingly there is a brief discussion of the practical syllogism (7701a7-bl),
which provides the psychological part of the answer. The corporeal part of
the answer is found in the expansion and contraction of the connatural
spirit (a1JJ.'CPVTOV '1TVEvJ.'a) located in the origin of movement (i.e., the soul)
which pushes and pulls and thus causes other movements in the instrumental parts. Absent from this common treatment is any mention of the
specific kinds of instrumental p~rts. Instead we learn about some common
material conditions for movement in general (not just locomotion), the
internal and external unmoved, and the joint; and some common formal
conditions, desire and the practical syllogism; and that which mediates
between formal and material, the connatural spirit. How and in what way
the soul is moved is the subject of the DA (MA 6 700b4-6).
In the treatment of movement in the DA all material considerations
are absent on the grounds that examination of it falls within the province
of the functions common to body and soul' (!IUO 433b19-21). Instead
the DA asks what part or parts of the soul are responsible for movement.
No one faculty by itself is sufficient, Aristotle avers, but appetite initiates
the movement and together appetite and thought or imagination suffice.
In general. then, the DA merely considers which faculties of the soul are
responsible for movement and the nature of the conflict between various
desires and faculties.
These four treatises, then, are organized in order of increasing generality and formality, away from what is specific and material towards
what is common and forma1. 56 Each step in the abstraction provides a
I
55 Cf. Nussbaum 1978, 107-14, who argues that the MA is 'a deliberate and fruitful'
(113) departure from Aristotle's strictures on metabasis; Kung 1982 correctly replies
that this does not constitute metabasis in any usual sense, that it is assimilable to the
subordinate-science model.
56 In organizing a subject matter, Aristotle sometimes identifies two levels of principles,
the first of which might roughly be characterized as internal to the subject matter,
the second as external. Patzig referred to this technique in the context of metaphysics,
which he called a 'doppelt paronymische Wissenschaft' (1961, 196). Here all being
depends on substance and cannot be separated from substance. Substance is, as it
does Aristotle suggest that the abstraction of the soul faculties from their
material substrates can be fully effected in definition. Soul faculties must
always be defined as actualities of material potentialities. And yet it is
clearly legitimate to consider appetites and imagination separately from
the instrumental parts of locomotion in a way it was not appropriate for
money to be considered separately from specific exchange goods. Whereas
value is always tied to the specific good of exchange, the material conditions
of locomotion become increasingly abstracted and generalized from their
specific manifestations as Aristotle generalizes the formal components. The
increasingly abstract formal sequence, flying, locomotion, motion, desire,
is per se and qua related to the increasingly abstract material sequence,
wing, limb, joint, potentiality for desire. 57
Second, the more abstract and formal subject matters provide the causes
for the more concrete, and for this reason they remain necessarily connected to the more concrete. The soul provides a principle of animals (DA
L1 402a6-7) in several ways, being the formal, final, and moving cause of
living things. The instrumental parts are ultimately explained by reference
to the faculties of the soul, though they are not the subject of the DA.
The examples we have considered in this chapter develop the notion of
scientific autonomy. The case of 2R belonging to triangle is the simplest
case of 'pure generic autonomy,' in which a per se predicate is proved to
belong to a subject qua that subject. Alternating proportion shows that
the same predicate can be proved of two subjects of different extension
The case of optical proofs and mixed science introduced the notion of the
'mixed genus,' in which two different but related genera were active within
a single proof. The genera are no longer treated as autonomous, but both
contribute to the same proof.
were, an internal cause. But in addition, god is the first substance and an external
cause of all other substances. Similarly, general and internal causes of the organs of
locomotion are considered, then the external causes of their motion. For desire and
perception are not part of the wing, etc., but instead are present in the heart. So
also Met. A.10 1075al4-15: 'For the good [of the army] is in the order and in the
leader, and more in the latter: for he does not depend on the order but it depends on
him.'
57 Cf. Met. H.3 1043a34-37, which by using the example of animal rather than man
or horse, implies that different levels of generality in form imply different levels of
generality in matter and composite. See Loux 1991, 163.
"
or animals,
some resemble one another in all their parts, while others have parts
wherein they differ. Sometimes the pa rts are identical in form, as, for instance,
::me man's nose or eye resembles another man's nose or eye, flesh flesh, and bone
bone; and in like manner with a horse, and with all other animals which we reckon
to be of one and the same species; for as the whole is to the whole, so each to
~ach are the parts severally. In other cases the parts are identical, save only for a
1 The biological works represent 26 per cent of the Bekker edition. The uses of
avclhoyol1 / avahoyia. in these same works represent 36 per cent of the uses. The other
extensive use of the tenn is in the discussion of justice in the ethical works (EN and
MM, 12 per cent).
deal of dispute concerning the technical terms genos and eidos. Eidos is
extensively used in the biological works and has been a source of confusion
and perplexity. Balme was the first to argue that Aristotle's genus -species
system was not a precursor of the Linnaean taxonomic system, and that
which analogy has nothing genuine to contribute. David Balme and Pierre
Pellegrin are the principal advocates of this view 10 They have emphasized
that Aristotle's use of the terms genus and species in the biological works is
not the same as the Linnaean, taxonomic use of genus and species, and that
Aristotle is not interested in constructing a taxonomy based on fixed levels
of generality. For our purposes it is important to note that Balme extended
his argument to analogy: since Aristotle frequently claimed that the same
groups both differ by more and less and are analogically identical, the
distinction between genus and analogy is just as confused as that between
species and genus. To cite one of Balme's more difficult examples: 'oo-ToBv
and xovopo, are "vaAoyov at P.A. 653b36 ... but differ Tcr P.UAAOV Kat ~TTOV
at 655a32.' Moreover, Balme thought - if rather inconsistently -that
analogy was wholly dependent on the genera of whole animals, so that
any similarity in part or function between animals of different genera,
say, birds and fish, was ipso facto an analogue. Pellegrin, by contrast,
argued that the biological use of species and genus was consistent with
their hierarchical use elsewhere in the corpus: species and genus are only
fixed relative to one another, and are tools of analysis that can be applied
of analogy, p. 87). He explicitly calls the more and less a criterion of generic identity
(73-4). According to Gotthelf (1985, 48), the distinction between a part and its analogue
is precisely one between two parts with (essentially) the same function but which
differ in material constitution and structure, and do so by more than 'the more and the
less'; d. a similar description in Lennox 1987b, 341n8, who rightly stresses that the
function is the same at a very abstract level. Also see Ross 1949, 670. Cf. Nussbaum
1978,83: 'When [Aristotle] so frequently users] the phrase "the x or its analogue" [he
is] emphasizing that we are interested in a functional state of the organism, which is
realized in some suitable matter or other. An artificial pump might perform the heart's
function, whereas a non-functioning heart would be only homonymously a heart.' This
position is supported by Cohen 1992, 59, and Charles 1990, 157, who holds that the
genera are based on distinctive modes of discharging some function.
10 Balme 1962; also important for issues in this chapter are Balme 1961 and 1987a.
Pellegrin 1986a, 88--94. The English edition contains extensive revisions of his section
on analogy, and so I omit reference to the original French edition (La Classification
des animaJlx chez Aristote: Statllt de fa biologie et unite de l'aristotelisme. [Paris: Les
Belles Lemes, 1982]) . For a quick summary of most of the main issues in his book see
Pellegrin 1987. Balme 1987a, 79n8, said that he came to agree with Pellegrin on the
issue of analogy.
11 Lloyd 1962; Rorty 1973; Lennox 1980, and for his revised position see 1987b.
a bird-like beak. 12
In fact, differences of more and less are pervasive throughout all levels of
generality. Within a single species one animal is taller, darker, and thinner
than another. And even within an ~ndividual animal variations are found,
for instance, in the temperature of blood, the lower parts being cooler than
the upper pans (PA IL2 647b29-35). Difference of degree is, therefore, not
they deny that analogues are similar, have sidestepped the problem.
My own interpretation will attempt to combine the virtues of these
three accounts: remaining close to the text and respecting analogy as a
significant part of Aristotle's system of difference (as the functionalists
do), embracing the more and less of analogues (as the relativists do), and
providing a theoretical framework in hylomorphism and qua-levels that
will account for the fixity of analogy (as the embryologists do). But before
proceeding to that positive step, I shall argue against the relativists that (1)
12 Cf. also Pol. V.3 1302b33-1303a2: 'Political revolutions also spring from a
disproportionate increase in any part of the state. For as a body is made up of many
members, and every member ought to grow in proportion so that symmetry may be
preserved. but it loses its nature ($8f'pfTal) if the foot is four cubits long and the rest
of the body two spans; and, should the abnormal increase be one of quality as well as
of quantity, it may even take the fonn of another animal; even so a state has many
parts, of which some one may often grow imperceptibly; for example, the number of
poor in democracies and in constitutional states.'
that (2) in spite of a couple of difficult cases, the analogues are fixed and do
not vary. I also wish to show, against the functionalists, that (3) analogues,
in a certain sense, are related by the more and the less, that (4) relative position is of fundamental importance in assigning analogical status, and that
(5) identity of function in different matter cannot be a criterion for ana-
1. Fixity of Analogy
In the passage quoted above Aristotle describes analogy as a form of
identity in a descending scale together with generic and specific identity.
But in one important respect analogy is quite different l3 Whereas whole
animals can be specifically and generically identical, analogical identity
applies only to the parts of animals14 For analogy depends on two objects being compared as parts of two different systems, in this case whole
animals. But inasmuch as Aristotle groups analogy together with specific
and generic identity, he invites comparison between them. And to make
13 In addition to the three common kinds of difference in animals - specific, generic, and
analogical- Aristotle adds several others: position, arrangement, possession/lacking.
These are not often included in the standard list because they do not fit logically into
that series. They are similar to analogy in that they deal prinCipally with parts rather
than wholes. So, for example, in viviparous quadrupeds teats may be found in the
breast or dose to the thighs (HA I.1 486b24-487a1). Identity of relative position is
almost always a condition for analogical identity.
14 Muskens 1943, 33. There is only one case where Aristotle calls whole animals
analogous. At GA 1II.1l 761a24-32, testacea and plants are said to be analogous (T~V
4>ucnu a.uaAoyov iXH) because the nature of testacea is to be in such a relation to water
as plants are to earth, as if plants were, so to say, land shellfish and shell fish water
plants. In this case the analogy is between the organisms and their environment, rather
than between pans a~d whole organisms.
Other genera, like viviparous quadrupeds, do not show this same degree
of internal unity.
At HA 11.1 497b6-12, Aristotle says that some organs and parts are
This passage clearly implies that if generically identical species can have
parts that are specifically the same, vary by degree, or are missing from
some members altogether, some parts of generically distinct animals will
be more closely related than others (e.g., the eyes of fish and birds are
more closely related than their scales and feathers)'8 Likewise, a part of
an animal in one genus may simply not have an analogue in an animal
of another genus. For example, cephalopods simply do not have analogues
of hair; testacea do not have analogues of lungs. Alternatively, a certain
17 The last part of the passage reads: UXEOOV yap oa-a y' fUTl yivEt Eupa TWV '~WV, Kat TO.
7TAftt1Ta rwv P.fPWV (Xft EUpa Tip dOft, I(al TO. ,!.tEV l(aT' avaAoyiav aOta.cpopa p.Ovov, Tlf yivEt
o EUpa. Til Of T~ yivEt }lfV TaVra r~ f!'Oft 0' fUpa.
18 The passage is nOt without controversy. In comparing it with HA 486al4--b22 quoted
above, Balme took issue with those who interpret them together and claim that
generically distinct animals have some partS generically distinct, others specifically
distinct (1962, 91): 'Thompson, ad loe.: "In the opening sentences, which must be read
together with those of Book I. brevity leads to a certain appearance of confusion: we
are reminded that a generic difference between two animals carries with it generic
difference between certain parts as wdl as specific difference between many others." But
the words which I have italicized are nOt in accord with I. 486316f. (above) . yivEt Eupa
are, for example, opw~ and 'XOvs (486a21 ). Their pans are to be compared ouu fWEt
OUTE KaO' inrfPOX~V I(al (hAEt",'V, ahAa I(ar' ava,).,oyiav ... 0 yap f V opvt8t 7TTfpOV. ToilTO
fV ;''X!JVl fO"T ~ hf1Tls. KaTa. ,!.tfv o~v .uDPla a. fXOtXnv (lC.aO"Ta TWIJ (~WIJ. TOVTOV roy rpinrov
fUpO. fO"Tll(a~ mimi (486bl8-23). The expression fUpa T<!J EWU, if used technically, is
applicable only to rivu Tairrcl (e.g. the difference between p1lX.pbv P1rtx0s and fJpaxjJ
frVrxos 486b10). Hence at 497blO lou cannot mean "species" but must either mean
"form" or be equivalent to yivEt (as at Cat . 1b16 TWV TEPOYfVWV . .. ETEpa TCf EWfl Kat
a1 ola$opai, cf. Top. l07b19).'
19 There is one statement which suggests that analogies are ubiquitous, since all similarities
between genera are analogues: TOVTO ~E 7rOLt:tV i1rl1TdCTul au pq.~tDlr TO. yap 'lTo.\M (~a
ava..\oyolJ
wf:rrov8f:v (PA 1.4 644a22-23). Peck translates: 'It is not easy to do this in
all cases, for the corresponding analogous parts of most groups of animals are identical.'
This is a rather difficult construal of the text, but he seems to mean that in most
animals (Le., between mOSt animals groups, however you take them) the proportional
relation is really identity (i.e., not analogy). So, e.g., as wing is to sparrow, so wing is to
finch, and the relationship, even if set in analogical form, is really identity. That is why
it is. difficult .to find genuine analogies, because most of them are really identities. If this
is what Peck has in mind, it strains the meaning of the words. The ROT translation ('It
is not easy to do this in all cases; for in most animals what is common is so by analogy';
W. Ogle) makes good sense of the last sentence, but it does not seem to fit the context.
The TOVTO 11"Otf:IV almost certainly refers back to the beginning of the chapter, meaning
that it is difficult to comprehend two groups into a single kind (so Balme 1972, 121),
and since it is difficult, presumably the common lot of men have not done it, and they
were right not to do so. The implication of the passage is that it is difficult to find a
common nature among distinct groups (animals that breathe do fonn such a common
nature). Among such groups analogy is a much more common relation. This passage,
then, does not constitute evidence that every transgeneric Similarity is an analogy.
ravTo
eide of the genos "organs of defense", and from this perspective nail and hoof are no
longer analogous. One may even suppose that when a little later Aristotle reminds us
that these parts are all composed of earth (655bll), that is a way of saying that they
form one genos:
22 1986a, 88: 'A logical examination of the concepts of genos and analogia shows us .
that feather and scale can be said to be analogues from the moment one decides to take
"bird" and "fish" as gene.' The italics are Pellegrin's.
23 The immediate context of the passage he quotes for this second perspective, PA 11.9
655a32-34, discusses the use of bone and cartilage in the same animal (i.e., in addition
to bones, we have cartilage which supports our ears and nose) .
24 Aristotle says (PA II.9 65Sb2-4; HA IILll 517b21-26) that nail etc. are the same as
bone with respect to hardness or to the touch, but at HA III.9 517a6-10 he goes $0 far
as to say that though these parts do not have the same nature, it is not too far removed
from that of cartilage and bone.
25 Pellegrin 1986a, 1987.
2. Difficult Cases
Though the relativists, in order to maintain their basic thesis concerning
the primacy of parts over wholes, must"concede that the identity relation
which the demarcation between analogy and genus seems far from
fixed. For example, the distinction between flesh (TCipt) and its analogue
usually follows that between blood and its analogue (PA III.5 668a25-27;
HA 1.4 489a23-26). But on one occasion Aristotle divides among blooded
animals, and makes the division correspond to bone and fish-spine, thus
making fish-flesh only analogous to other blooded flesh rather than generically identical (HA II1.16 519b26-30). Likewise, there are variant accounts
about chests (aTijea,). On the one hand, 'all animals have a part analogous
to the chest in man, but not similar to his; for the chest in man is broad, but
that of all other animals is narrow. Moreover, no other animal but man has
breasts in front; the elephant, certainly, has two breasts, not however in
the chest, but near it' (HA I1.1497b33-498a2; d. HA 11.12 503b29-32). The
difference in the arrangement of the elements of the parts and the shape
of the whole parts are sufficient in this case to make the parts analogous.
Since the breasts are the major component of the chest in man, and this is
a major part of what chest is, without the breasts 'chest' can only deSignate
a position.27 Alternatively, when all perfect animals are divided in three
parts, the middle is called the chest in the largest animals, and in others
it is the analogue Uuv. 2 468a13- 17). In this context, the chest is invoked
26 For good reasons we need not, and should not, follow him in his ontological claim:
Aristotle clearly says that the whole individual C!idos is primary (PA I.4644a23-27).
Moreover, pans are often the explananda, not the explanantia, and so ultimi'!!ely may
not form pan of the definition of the animal. While pans are methodologically the first
way of looking at animals, they are not the last or best way. Cf. also G.E.R. Lloyd
1990.
27 Cf. HA I.12 493a12-16, which mentions the breasts as the only component of the chest:
'Next after the neck in the front part is the chest, with a pair of breasts. To each of the
breasts is attached a nipple, through which in the case of females the milk percolates;
and the breast is soft. Milk is found at times in the male; but with the male the flesh
of the breast is tough, with the female it is spongy and porous.'
and its analogue can be drawn either (i) between man and other animals,
or (ii) between big perfect animals and other perfect animals.
Again, there are two quite different levels of analogy among wombs.
Copulating female insects frequently have a part that is extended into the
male, and this is called an analogue of a womb (GA 11.4 739a18-20). In what
is obviously a remoter analogy, an eggshell is also called an analogue of the
womb (GA 111.2 753b35-754a3). Some analogues even extend beyond animals. Without giving explicit examples Aristotle says that mouths among
animals may be analogous (HA 1.2 488b29- 32), but more remotely, the
roots of plants are analogous to the mouth in animals (Juv. 1 468a9-12).
It is clear from these examples that analogical distinctions can be made
float in and out of the definition according to the demands of grouping and
explanation. So chest may be defined either as the place where breasts are
located or as the seat of nutrition. Because named analogues like wing and
fin pick out clearly defined objects, there is never a question whether these
are analogues or form a genus. A nameless analogue, however, is invoked
which does not provide full definitions from the outset, but uses partial
definitions in an often ad hoc manner.
28 In the following review I have nOt included uses of a1.'Ti or any other looser expression
where one part is substituted for another that performs the same function. To do so
would immediately prejudice the results in favour of a purely functional interpretation
of analogy. I do not assume that Aristotle explicitly used avaAOYov on every appropriate
occasion, any more than he explicitly calls every genos YfllOr and so on, but any
even-handed study must start from his actual use of the tenn .
29 Among other examples that indicate the material similarity of analogues, we find DA
11.11 423aI2-15: 'For no living body could be constructed o f air or water; it must be
something solid. Consequently it must be composed of earth along with these, which is
just what flesh and its ana/oglle tend to be.'
30 Richard Owen (1804-92) first drew the distinction between homology (structures
differing in function and appearance but deriving from the same part in the 'archetype')
since the position is always relative to the particular kind, but their positions can correspond. While viviparous quadrupeds have hair, oviparous
tioned are the heart, blood, blood vessel, and flesh and their analogues.
Together they form the most basic nutritive and sensitive system of an
animal. Heart and its analogue are the principle of nutrition, movement,
and sensation; flesh and its analogue are the medium of touch. Blood and
its analogue are food for flesh and its analogue, and must be contained in a
blood vessel or its analogue. Among these analogues shared function is not
the only consideration. The /lUTtS in cephalopods is clearly the analogue
of the heart because it occupies the same position (PA IV.5 681b28-30
furl TO aVO,AOrOV Tff KapOiq. TOVTO TO jJ.0PLOV, 017AOL (; T07TOS' (O~TOS'
yap f(rnV 0 aUTOS)). 2 The position of the P:UTtS' is not incidental to its
on o
function: the heart and its analogue occupy the central position of the
body, because they are the sources of control (PA IV.5 681b33-34). Again,
the fact that the fluid in the /lUTtS is sweet and has undergone concoction
shows that it is the analogue of blood. 33 Likewise, it is necessary that blood
and its analogue should be contained in a vessel (PA III.5 667b18- 20). At
HA 1.4 489a19-22 Aristotle mentions various similarities between blood
(aT/la) and its analogue, ichor (ixwp).34 They are both found throughout
the body, and they exhibit various material similarities. But ichor, when
present in blooded animals, does not serve the same function as blood. It
is only as parts of systems that parts can be analogous.
The brain is the only clear case of an inference to the existence of an
this state is called sleep. Although Aristotle cannot say with certainty
that all animals sleep, he accounts for those in which sleep is observed,
namely all the blooded animals, cephalopods, and insects, and says that
if his argument from sensation is persuasive (7HeaVOS'), it will persuade
32 That position plays an important role in analogy was recognized and briefly commented
on by Lones (1912, 211): 'It cannot be decided to what extent, if any, Aristotle was
thinking of the plan of structure of the parts, when he compared them [by analogy], but
it is clear that he was rderring chiefly to their functi ons, positions, and mere external
resemblances.' Cf. also Leblond 1945, 41-2.
33 For sweetness of the blood, HA III.19 520bl8-19.
34 Elsewhere he mentions the counterpart of blood without calling it ichor (e.g ., 645b8-10,
648a4-5, 650a34-35). At PA IVA 678a8-9 blood's analogue is said to be without name.
5. Analogy of Function
So it is clear that analogues are based on more than shared function. But
even the function that analogues share cannot be identical, for there are
analogies of functions as well as of parts. Alrhough the passage is neither
clear nor consistent, Aristotle at least recognizes that activities (7TpatHS')
may be analogically, generically, or specifically identical (PA 1.5 645b20-28):
6. Genus as Matter
Like the functionalist account we just considered the genus-as-matter approach tries to establish a clear demarcation between generic and analogical
identity, but it rejects as arbitrary or ad hoc the more and less criterion.
Instead it finds an empirical solution in certain facts about embryological development. Aristotle does, in fact, provide some tantalizing hints
that embryos develop towards greater articulation and specification from
a more common and generic form . But according to the genus-as-matter
interpretation there is some point in their development when all embryos
of a genus will have a common form that later becomes differentiated into
the various specific forms. This common form is the matter for further
differentiation, and will be different for each genus. Thus birds are generated from bird matter, fish from fish matter, and so on. If this were true,
then generic boundaries could be determined by a thorough study of the
embryos.
There are two variations on this account, corresponding to two rather
different views of division. The first treats the differentiations on the model
of Metaphysics Z.12 and successive divisions, for instance, footed, clovenfooted. On this model embryos become successively differentiated from a
common genus, and the history of this development can establish those
common attributes that are truly generic from those that are analogicaL 35
The second account begins from the system of differentiation laid out in
PA 1.2-4. 36 Starting from a group of generic characteristics that all embryos
of a genus have in common, each species takes on its specific differences.
This account would seem to be more consistent with the basic approach of
the biological works. Both accounts, however, face the problem that there
is no clear evidence in the GA that Aristotle seriously tried to establish or
A.c. Lloyd (1962) argues for a physical process of differentiation from the genus that
he identifies with matter to the ultimate species, identified with fonn. M. Grene (1974)
has pointed out difficulties that Lloyd and those who identify matter and genus face.
Though there are clearly passages where they are identified (Met. 6..28 1024b6-9; Z.12
1038a3-9; H.6 1045al4-25; 1.8 1058a21-26), it is not dear that matter must mean
material substrate. While these kinds of genus may be related by analogy, they are not
the same (Grene 1974, 65).
36 Once championed by Lennox: 1987h, 358. Since that time he has repudiated this view,
hut it is important to consider it for the lessons it teaches about analogy.
35
Though this passage offers some superficial support for the position, the
genus that is differentiated here is animal, not one of the greatest genera.
Yet it was essential for the argument that it be the matter of the greatest
genera that is differentiated, if the matter is to be that which distinguishes
the genera. In fact, all of the parts whose development Aristotle describes
in this chapter are parts common to all animals, and not generic parts or
attributes at all. ROT translates a:rravTa as referring to all the parts, but
this passage as a whole is found in a discussion about the formation of
homoiomerous parts, and Aristotle is describing the changes that occur
in the nutriment to form these parts. It is far more likely then that
Q.7TavTa refers to these homoiomerous parts, and this is corroborated by the
differences these parts later take on: differences of hardness and colour are
associated with flesh, skin, nails, and so on. 37 And homoiomerous parts,
38 A similar point is made by Preus 1983, 344. Preus treats the 'genotypiC' (roughly
the account through embryological development) and the 'phenotypic' (common-sense
divisions of genera) to be rival methods of classifying animals, rather than two parts of
an explanation of phenomena.
39 Compare what Balme (1961, 208) says about the dualiZing animals: 'They are not
dismissed as exceptions that prove the rule, nor are they assigned to both sides of a
division .. . [T]hey compel a more precise definition of the division ... Their proper
grouping is rarely decided, and they seem to be brought into the discussions, not in
order to be classified, but in order to bring out sharper distinctions in the differentiae
concerned, or more precise statements of the ways in which the differentiae can be
combined.' Aristotle's method allows for increased accuracy and finer distinctions, but
even in a thoroughly empirical study such as biology, common-sense distinctions must
remain more or less intact.
A Solution
Aristotle, then, recognizes analogy as a legitimate and distinct level of generality based on perceptible similarities as well as functions. The weakness
of the functionalist, the relativist, and the genus-as-matter interpretations
is their failure to provide a convincing theoretical framework that accommodates these facts.
Analogy was not always a part of Aristotle's system of identity and
difference. Neither the Categories nor the Topics makes use of it. 40 But in
the biological works, as we have seen, it is clearly introduced in contrast to
the relationship between genus and species. However inadequate the more
and less is as a criterion of generic identity, the very fact that Aristotle
invokes it shows that he intends the species-genus and the genus-analogy
relationships to be different. The relationship between genus and analogy is not intended to be a recapitulation of the relationship between
genus and species, and the efforts to make it so, especially to view analogy as a functional genus, silence Aristotle on a point he seems urgent
to make.
A simple observation about the species-genus-analogy hierarchy may
serve as a starting point towards providing a reason for this difference. The
species-genus-analogy system (let us call this the SGA system) is a narrow
40 If these works are early and represent a pre.hylomorphic stage of Aristotle's thought,
there is good reason, as we shall see below, for the absence of analogy in them.
The system is limited to three and only three steps, and there is nothing more specific than long wing or more general than the analogy,
wing:bird: :fin:fish. It is also a narrow system in the sense that the genus
term appears at all three levels of generality. These genus terms are particular denominated parts: wing, blood, hoof, and so on. They form the pivot
or centre of the system, and of these there are determinations of 7Tae~fJ.aTa
(species) and correspondences (analogues).
The parts, which are the cornerstone of the system, are those picked
out by common language. What Aristotle says concerning whole animals
(PA 1.3 643b10-13) applies equally to the parts:
We must attempt to recognize the natural groups, following the indications afforded
by the instincts of mankind, which led them for instance to form the class of Birds
and the class of Fishes, each of which groups combines a multitude of differentiae,
and is not defined by a single one as in dichotomy.
The common names pick out the appropriate groups, and although birds
and fish share some common features, these groups should be separated and
variations on the basic type should be taken together (PA 1.4 644a12-23).
Importantly, the various great genera of animals are not in turn species
of some higher genus like animal, nor are they distinguished among
themselves by contraty differentiae of more and less. Instead, birds are
defined by the generic differentiae 'having wings: 'having beaks: and so
on. The sum of these differentiae provides an autonomous characterization
of the genus defined in its own terms rather than by its difference from
other genera. Each genus, then, is other than, and not different from,
the other genera. The situation is exactly similar with the parts. Aristotle
41 Balme 1962, 88-9, makes this observation in support of his claim that the eidos' and
genos are not used in the biological works as they are in the logical works.
between them. Each part constitutes a genus and is defined by its generic
differentiae. Each is autonomous and other than, rather than different
from, all others. Since difference operates only within the genus, it follows that one generic part cannot differ from another by more and less.
Conversely, a part may differ by more and less only within the determinate
limits of the genus. For a wing can be a long wing or a short wing, but
it cannot be modified so as to cease to be a wing. The requirement that
a part must remain what it is in spite of its modification is reflected in
the way Aristotle describes the more and less in the passage from HA 1.1:
some flesh is soft, some hard, some things have the bill long, others have
it short. Soft, hard, long, short are differentiae of the genus, and yet they
are hardly constitutive of the genus. For the 'what-is-it' of flesh or bill is
not its hardness or shortness, but its function and so on. Certainly many
of the variations are essential features of species of the genus, especially
when they are confirmed by causes (e.g., birds of prey have hooked beaks,
because they are rapinous), but at the generic level the variations do not
affect the essence of the genus 3
42 Cf. also for the same idea HA 1.6 491a19 SI.a.r;f>if)E' TWV .7Ta.8-qp.6..WU (vo.unoTl]n. Bonitz's
Index cites Met. A.4 985b1D-13: 'And as those who make the underlying substance one
generate all other things by its modifications, supposing the rare and the dense to be
the sources of the modifications, in the same way these philosophers say the differences
in the elements are the causes of all the other qualities' (Ka.6o.'7I'EP oi EV 71'OWVVTES' ~u
inroKHllill1Jv oWiw T(~.\Aa TOtS' 71'0.8(o'lV aUrijS' yt'VVWul, TO 1Ul1l0V Kal TO '7I'1JKlIOll D.pXo.<;
n8illVO~ TWV '7I'a91tJuiTwv). The rare and the dense are not themselves '7I'u8lj,uara, but
are the principles or sources of the 1Tu8lj,uura. The 1Ta8~,uara are the great variety of
phenomenal qualities that are generat~d from a limited group of apxui.. Most important
is the contrast between the U1TOKtlliv'J] OV(1'LU and the '7I'u8lj,uum. It is the substance and
not the 7TO.8lj,uam that is essential and answers to the 'what-is-it.' Peck is surely wrong
in identifying these as secondary sex-characteristics (1965, 5 n.(b)). Further evidence for
this view of 1Ta8lj,uara comes from Phys. V.2 226a26-29, where modification (d..\Aoiw(nS')
is defined as change in respect of quality and as 'alteration in respect of affection.'
As Kirwan points out, when Aristotle says at Met. 6. 211022b15- 18 that the '7I'0.80S'
(and as Bonitz points out [Index, 554a56-b23], Aristotle's use of 71'&.80S' and 71'a.91t,ua is
promiscuous) is a quality in accordance with which a thing is capable of undergOing
alteration, he implies that there are qualities in accordance with which a thing is not
capable of undergoing alteration, namely essential differentiae (Kirwan 1993, 171).
43 Aristotle mentions 7Ta8lj,uara at the beginning of GA V like blue and dark colour of
eyes, high and deep pitch of the voice, colour of feathers and hair, that is, differences
Birds
wing
Simple parts
feather
Simple stuffs
horn
Powers
hot
cold
Fish
fin
Testacea
stomach
scale
flesh
flesh
bone
sticky
brittle
Crustacea
hand
tooth
kidney
skin
blood
wet
dry
Each of these parts has per se predicates that belong to it qua itself, and
each is found in the demonstrations characteristic of the PA. Each of the
levels of the table provides definable subjects, and none can be reduced to
another: wholes cannot be eliminatively reduced to their component parts.
Moreover, it is dear that Aristotle intended to map the SGA system onto
the WP system. He explicitly describes this mapping in HA 1.1 (486al4487a10), where he first discusses the SGA levels of complex parts, then
the SGA levels of simple parts: we find species, genus, and analogy at the
middle levels of the whole-parts system, the complex and simple parts.
We do not find analogy at the level of whole animals for reasons already
considered, and we do not find analogues at the level of powers for reasons
that will be important below.
Since the WP system is a system of composition, not difference, each
part is not different from, but other than, all others. They are certainly
related to one another, but not by sameness and difference. They are beyond difference, and as such provide grounds for the application of analogy.
At the same time, the WP system displays the correspondences typical of
analogy. For as we saw, analogy depends on relative position and similarity
the relativists would have us do, casually form a new genus from the
analogues on the basis of the common function those analogues perform.
For to do so would be to change the subject of discourse and the qua-level
of the science. In the HA and PA the parts are the subjects and each has a
definition in accordance with its name. Functions are important, of course,
especially in the FA , but they are not subjects, they are middle terms.
45 The investigation begins with what is more familiar to us and moves towards what is
more familiar without qualification . The order of the treatises as I have laid them out
here does not, therefore, reflect a logical priority. Indeed, Aristotle makes clear (Met .
Z.10 1035bl4-22) that the parts of the soul of the animal are prior to the composite
and that parts of the body (with the exception of the heart [or brain}) are posterior.
This same passage, however, clearly distinguishes the parts of the body from the parts
of the soul, and so wa rrants their being treated as different subjects.
46 For example, there is the analogy, sharp I fl at: hearing:: sharp I blunt : touch at DA 11.8
420b1-4; we find the analogy between taste and smell and their sensibilia at II.9
421016-20.
47 See Peck 1983, 9-10, for one interpretation.
A Challenging Case
Let us return to the case of bone and its analogues, which has been widely
cited as an instance of hopeless confusion in Aristotle's use of analogy and
genus just because of the close similarities they exhibit. As we shall see,
this case illustrates some of the factors Aristotle had in mind in calling
parts analogous: the dependence on definition in accordance with the name
and the tendency to choose as analogues parts that are similar in material
and relative position.
As we might expect, Aristotle does not always give the same account
of what the analogues are. In the APo (11.14 98a20-23) he says that
bone (OOTOVV), fish-spine (aKav8a), and pounce (cn)1TWV in cephalopods)
are analogous. [n his main treatment of bone in the PA they are bone
(OO"TOVV), fish-spine (aKav8a) in some fishes, and cartilage (xovopo<) in
other fishes (11.8 653b35-36), and their purpose is the preservation of
the soft parts. Later, when dealing with the internal parts of bloodless
animals (IV.5 679a21-23), he says that the pounce (cn)mov) is cartilaginous
(xovOpWOE<)48 Thus, the representative genera of animals are (1) man and
viviparous quadrupeds, (2) oviparous fishes, and (3) either selachia or some
cephalopods.
Moreover, the correspondence between analogue and greatest genus is
not strict. Birds have weak bonesi in small serpents the bones are spinous
(aKav8woT/<); in big serpents they are bony; selachia are cartilaginousspined (xovopaKav8a PA 11.9 655a17-28). The flesh support of these animals
forms a 'series of graduated changes' (Peck; 1TapaA""TT" KaT" JlLKpOV) as
48 The tn/7Ha are especially earthy, indicated by the earthy ink and the presence in them
of the tn/7J'tOU (PA IV.S 679alS-21).
655a12-14; a20-23).
Again, the materials are very similar. Bone and cartilage have the
same nature (~ 4>vO' ~ aVT~) and differ by more and less and for this
reason neither continues to grow when cut off (PA 11.9 655a32-34). These
analogues also share relative position: they are clearly contrasted with the
exoskeletons of crustacea and testacea, which though they discharge the
same function are not called analogues, because their relative positions are
different (PA 11.8 653b35-654a19). For all these reasons these analogues
are as close as any Aristotle offers and could conceivably be treated as a
genus. But at the same time, there are reasons why they are not. Though
they share many attributes, they are parts bearing different names, and
each has its own definition. At APo 11 .14 (98a20-23) Aristotle says that
one may excerpt commonalities according to analogy: ffor you cannot get
one identical thing which pounce and spine and bone should be called.'
There is no common term that can be applied to all three kinds of flesh
support, But the lack of a common name is merely a sign of the lack
of a genuinely common nature. One reason for denying that these parts
differ by more and less is the fact that there are sharp discontinuities
in the 'series of graduated changes' from small cartilaginous animals to
large bony animals. Aristotle clearly does not think that the kinds of
flesh support are determined solely as a function of the size of the animal
they are found in. Dolphins, for example, which are no larger than many
selachia and oviparous fishes, have bone rather than fish-spine (PA 11.9
655a16- 17).
Moreover, as corresponding parts of different systems, bone, fish-spine,
and cartilage have a claim to autonomous genera. One of the major external
differences between selachia and oviparous fish, and one that marks them
off as different genera, is the presence or absence of gill coverings. While
fish have them, seIachia do not, since the gill coverings require fish-spine
for their formation, and the selachia have a skeleton invariably made
of cartilage-spine (nl oE O'AO.Xry 71'avTa xovopaKavGa PA IV.13 696b2-6).
The difference in material has other effects in their 71'pat<L< and /3io(,
as Aristotle goes on to describe: the motions of spinous fishes are rapid,
those of selachia are sluggish, since they have neither fish-spine nor sinew
(696b6-8).
So the case can be made that these flesh supports should be analogous,
since they correspond to other major differences as well. Though selachia
and oviparous fish share a great number of external parts, Aristotle clearly
affection
power
bone
harder
softer
hard
/
harder
cartilage
~
softer
soft
qualities (PA ILl 646b20-22): 'one part will be soft, another hard, another fluid, another solid,' and so on. As such, in their very nature they
are relative and on a scale of more and less. But the simple parts, like
bone and cartilage, have different powers, and inasmuch as the powers
contribute to the 'what-is-it' of a part, they are essential features of that
a part may have the same quality both essentially and non-essentially.
There is, for example, an absolute hardness of bone that is necessary for
bone to maintain its essential nature and a different hardness that, while
not being essential to bone, makes lions' bone especially hard. While the
power is absolute, the affection differs by more and less within the genus.
The confusion for bone and cartilage arises because the power, which is
necessary and absolute for the simple part and its nature, may be considered
(2) bone qua having the power hard is harder than cartilage qua having
the power soft.
According to Aristotle, (1) is false, (2) is true. By keeping in mind that the
various compositional levels of the WP system are causally related but not
reducible to one another, we can see why parts may be analogues while
exhibiting material similarities to one another.
based on affections among the parts (e.g., the liver is softer than the heart)
do not reveal much of scientific significance. Rather it is the compositional
relations and finally the causal relations among the parts that explain most
about their nature. For this reason it seemed most profitable to Aristotle to
limit the study of difference to the generic part, then continue with other
forms of relation among the parts. Analogy has a liminal position in this
dual system. It is placed within the SGA system of difference, but it is
logically dependent on the WP system in a way that neither species nor
genus is. The compositional system is not necessary in order to identify the
genera and species of parts, but it is necessary in order to identify analogies,
since analogies are determined by material and positional factors, and these
but not made explicit. Functions within this system are fully embedded in
the parts.
Analogues, while not haVing any term in common, point towards a
common term. There are two sets of related terms, a proper set, per se and
qua related to the special substrates, as snub and bandy are related to nose
and leg, and a common set, no longer qua related to the substrates. The
two sets are related because the common set is per se predicated of its own
particular manifestations (as curved is contained in the definition of snup
and bandy). The common set, then, is abstracted from the proper. Analogy
arises in this context, when terms specifically embedded in certain genera
are per se re lated to other terms that are more general and therefore at
a different and more abstract qua leveL So, for example, wing belongs to
bird qua bird; and fin belongs to fish qua fish. Wing and fin have their own
peculiar per se and qua relations. The sciences that study these features
are the science of wing and the science of fin, or morely properly the
science of bird qua winged and the science of fish qua finned. But wing
and fin have per se features in common. They are both instrumental parts
for locomotion that have joints and are related to the anterior pair of
the points of motion. These features extend beyond either of the particular genera, and although they may be useful in proofs concerning the
particular genera, attributes cannot be proved of the particular genera at
it in the series. Each, therefore, forms a different but related subject, partly
abstracted from its predecessor.
Analogues exist in this no man's land between the level of lower and
strictly autonomous genera and a higher common genus. This no man's
3
Analogy and Demonstration
While the relationship between the SGA and the WP systems seems to
account for the phenomenal demarcation of analogy from other forms of
identity, the place of analogy in demonstration is more difficult to account
for. There are clear indications in the Posterior Analytics that analogy plays
a distinctive role in demonstration, but just what that role is, and whether
and how it is worked out in the biological writings is far from clear. Part
of the difficulty lies in the fact that analogy was not a central interest to
Aristotle when composing the APo. In fact, of the three passages in which
analogy in the appropriate sense is discussed, all seem to have the status and
importance of footnotes to major discussions. Moreover, the passages do
not all point in the same direction. Some suggest that analogy is manifested
in a distinctive form of demonstration, others seem to present analogues
as specific instances to which general principles and causes are applied.
The same difficulty, too, arises in Aristotle's analogical demonstrations in
can now fill in some details from the Analytics 1 APo 1.4-10 discusses
demonstration in terms of the most stringent conditions, demonstrative
syllogisms in Barbara, where all the terms are related per se and qua the
subject. Proofs that fall short d this are incidental. Now the predicates
of animals and their parts apply at various levels of generality. Some
1 For more elaborate attempts to organize single.genu s biological proofs on the APo
model see Gotthelf 1997 and Dete11997.
the instance qua what it is, but only through an application argument.
Analogy arises, then, within the strictest conditions for demonstrations
laid out in the core of Aristotle's demonstrative theory.
TO
And things which are the same by analogy will have their middle terms the same
by analogy (KaT' <ivaAoyiav) too. (I1.17 99a15-16)
From the first and second passages we learn that analogy affects both
axioms and special subject-genera; the third shows us that if major terms
of a demonstrative syllogism are analogous, the middle must also be analogous. Since analogies can only obtain between different genera, all the
terms of one demonstration will be in a different genus from the analogous
demonstration.
But these passages also point in two different directions, the first of
which is towards a trivializing of analogy. The first passage explains that
certain principles are common, but common by analogy, rather than common absolutely. But in this case there seems to be no reason intrinsic to
the principles themselves that they should be analogous, since they seem
to admit of a completely general formulation. Rather, what seems to be
at issue is the range of application of the common principles. Though the
this restricted subject-genus, we require that the principle hold good only
for number. Does Aristotle mean by this that in applying the common
principle we should retain its general formulation (if equals are taken ... ),
and simply use it in the special subject-genus, or that we should adapt
it to the specific subject matter (if equal numbers are taken from equal
numbers, equal numbers remain)? By describing the commonality as 'by
analogy' Aristotle indicates that he prefers the latter alternative: when
the common principle is used, it must be specifically adapted, not merely
applied. Nevertheless, the equals axiom seems to be quite intelligible in its
general formulation, and its adaptation to the specific subject-genus seems
to be a trivial matter of substitution of terms. It is true that Aristotle
held to the common opinion that arithmetic and geometry were separate
genera and studied quite different objects, but the common principle will
be analogical only because the genera in which it is used are different
and not because the principle itself is ambiguous. If this is so, then the
cause of the analogy of the principles in this case is the subject-genera to
which they are adapted, and the common prinCiple, even if it admits of a
general account, is given analogical formulations only because the subjects
to which it attaches are analogues.
This is surprising, since what we have learned about analogy so far
of the third passage from 11.17. The fact that the middles of analogues are
analogues implies that the causes of analogous phenomena are themselves
analogous. But again Aristotle is not clear in his expression, and this
statement can be interpreted in at least two ways: that the middle terms
are analogous in their own right, that is, though they are not identical
with one another, they hold identical relations within their corresponding demonstrations. On this interpretation the fact that the middles are
analogous will explain why the major terms are analogous. Alternatively,
the middles may be analogous merely because they apply to subjects that
are themselves analogous, and because the rules of demonstration require
them to be adapted to their genus. In this case it is the analogous subjects
if there is a nature it
a common name. And yet, as he says here, there are items that follow
bone, pounce, and spine as if they were a single nature, and this suggests
that for some purposes analogues may be treated as species of a genus. So,
again, it is not clear whether these common items are generically common
or common only by analogy.
The third passage is found in Aristotle's discussion of whether the
same thing may have different explanations, and it deserves to be quoted
more extensively (II.1? 99al- 16):
Is it possible for there not to be the same explanation of the same thing for every
case, but a different one? or not? Perhaps if it has been demonstrated in itself and
not in virtue of a sign or accidentally it is not possible (for the middle term is
the account of the extreme), but if it has not been demonstrated in this way, it
is possible? One can inquire accidentally both about what it is explanatory of and
about what it is explanatory for - but these do not seem to be problems. Otherwise,
the middle term will have a similar character - if they are homonymous, the middle
will be homonymous; if they are in a genus, it will have a similar character.
E.g. why do proportionals alternate? For the explanation in the cases of lines
and of numbers is different - and the same: as lines it is different, as having such
and such an increase it is the same. And so in all cases.
The explanation of a colour's being similar to a colour and a figure to a figure
is different in the different cases. For what is similar is homonymous in these
cases; for here it is presumably having proportionate sides and equal angles, but
in the case of colours it is that perception of them is single, or something else of
that sort.
ically the same, the middle is generically the same. The examples Aristotle
provides are not intended to correspond precisely with these degrees of
identity, but they clarify his general point.' The alternation of proportionals among lines and numbers are given different explanations when
the terms of a demonstrative syllogism, outlining the schema for application arguments (99a16-37), and cases where a single major term belongs
for different reasons to different subjects (99a37-b7). These latter cases
have strong affinities to analogical explanation, and the example Aristotle
offers may provide some insight into the demonstrative structure of anal-
ogy (99b4-7):
It is possible for there to be several explanations of the same thing, but not for
things of the same species - e.g. the explanation of longevity for quadrupeds is
their not having bile, but for birds their being dry or something else.
The fact that this example is based on the genera of the biological works
suggests that it might be relevant to our problem, although it does not
deal with any of the standard analogues we have seen. Aristotle does not
make explicitly clear which, if any, of the three candidates for multiple
causes the longevity case corresponds to, but the context indicates that it
is not an application of a generic feature to an instance, nor does longevity
3 McKirahan 1992, 171-2, treats longevity, but does not comment (except hriefly in
n. 39) on its connection with analogy.
4 This is the conclusion that Goldin 1996, 147, comes to from an examination of the
relationship between the nominal definition (the major) and the causal explanation. He
denies, however, that Aristotle 'envisages the possibility of this sort of homonymy' in
which one nominal definition might have two causal definitions (147n13).
5 Cf. PA 11.2 648b2-8: 'There ought, then, to be some clear understanding as to the sense
in which natural substances are to be termed hot or cold, dry or moist. For it appears
manifest that these are properties on which even life and death are largely dependent,
and that they are moreover the causes of sleep and waking, of maturity and old age, of
health and disease.' Even among vivipara dryness may contribute to long life; d. EN
VIl.3 1147a5-6: dry food is the most healthy.
virtue of their being bileless or dry and it is from these different causes that
we can infer the common effect, their capacity for long life. It is, however,
in virtue of the familiar fact of their longevity that birds' dryness and
quadrupeds' bile less ness are gathered together as analogues, since this is a
conclusion that follows from both of them S
And yet that is hardly the end of the story, for it is clear that we need
not settle for' capacity for long life' as a common definition of longevity.
Instead, 'preservative of vital heat' seems to provide a common cause for
longevity in birds and viviparous quadrupeds, and this can serve as the
common middle and the causal definition of longeviry. We would now have
an unambiguous (generic) middle explaining an unambiguous (generic)
major. What, then, would be wrong with accepting the general explanation
of longeviry, that which preserves vital heat, and applying it directly to
the specific instances? The reason has to do with the asymmetry of causal
explanation. We can construct the following explanatory syllogism for it:
viviparous quadrupeds
therefore,
6 There has been a considerable amount of attention given to the issue of nominal
definition: Bolton 1976; Demos and Devereux 1988; Goldin 1996.
7 Similarly in PA 1.4, in his defence of the common division of animal groups, Aristotle
says that water animals and feathered animals, though their correspondence is only by
analogy, share some 7ralhj .
8 In Long., Aristotle actually does discuss the causes of absolute longevity. He explains
why generally larger animals are longer-lived than smaller animals, viz., they contain
more moisture and this moisture is hotter and less liable to freeze or congeaL
Bilelessness is not mentioned in Long. as a cause of longevity, nor is dryness a cause in
animals (though it is in plants 16. 467a6-8}) . The scenario Aristotle lays out in Long.
does not involve the same examples as in the APo.
notice.
There are some important similarities and differences between the
longevity case as I have interpreted it and Aristotle's treatment of analogy
in the biological works. In both cases, common features are attributed to
different genera for different reasons, thus making these features analogous. We also find a similar distinction between general and specific cause,
where the latter is appropriately adapted to the subject-genus, and the
former is not. In all the important formal respects longevity is a case of
analogical explanation.
But there are also some significant differences that point to the variety
of forms and degrees of abstraction in which analogy can be found. In
the case of longevity, the common feature is the major term or the fact,
while the middle terms or causes are distinct. This is not always the
case in the biological practice. Frequently, to all appearances the causes
for which features belong to analogues are common. On other occasions
the entire demonstration has analogous terms throughout, the common
terms being explicitly nowhere in sight. Moreover, in the PA, which is
devoted primarily (though by no means exclusively) to explaining biological phenomena through the final cause, this cause tends, as we shall
see, to be more common and universal than the phenomena it explains. In
the case of longevity, by contrast, the causes, being material and efficient,
cons titute different explanations for a common explanandum. And indeed
it is generally the case that the relationship of common and specific terms
to
become
part of the definition of the animal groups, they are predicated of the
animal subjects per se and universally. It is not the more general terms
that are part of their definitions. The general term 'having nutriment,'
for example, is not part of the definition of blooded animals, but rather
'having blood.' For this reason we should expect to find separate rather
than common demonstrations concerning and involving analogues.
We may safely assume, in view of the second use of 'vessels,' that the
first use is lax, and properly should be 'blood vessels or their analogue.'
In this passage we find two entirely analogous demonstrations appearing
Again, throughout the HA, PA, and GA, Aristotle discusses various
kinds of body covering: hair, feathers, scaly plates, and fish scales. Some of
these analogues are more closely related than others. Some attributes are
analogously common to them all, others just to some. At HA 1.l486b21-22
Aristotle says that what the feather is in a bird, the scale is in a fish,
and it is clear that they are not related by difference of degree. At a
general level, they share a function, external covering for the animal, but
they also share certain material and structural similarities . They form a
covering over the skin, made of many discrete identical parts of similar
basic material lodged in the skin. To this extent hair among viviparous
quadrupeds is also analogous. The hair is said to protect from the heat
and cold (PA Il.14 658a6-7). Treating oviparous quadrupeds separately,
Aristotle says that they are covered with horny scales for the same reason.
Crocodiles and tortoises have especially hard and bony horny scales (PA
IV.ll 691a17-19). Aristotle tentatively says that the shell acts as a lid for
the heat (PA 11 .8 654a5-9)."
13 Note that this is also a function of exoskeletons and shells, which are, of course,
nowhere called analogues of hair and feathers.
one goes bald on these or on the back of the head. Some such affections occur
in a corresponding manner also in animals which have not hair but something
analogous to it, as the feathers of birds and scales in the class of fish.
Again, the same features are apparent, including explicit mention of the
fr~l1 of tastes corresponding to those of smell. No causal explanations are
at work in this case, but we may safely assume that Aristotle would feel
obliged to give a common account of these variations. We do see some
explanations at work in the following passage (Sens. 5 443b3-12):
Here the general argument extends not only beyond the analogues themselves, but even beyond animal to encompass everything capable of nutrition. Again, the general argument seems to be applied to the heart and its
analogue as to species.
These examples of demonstration seem to belie the claim that a COIDman genus and a common explanation cannot be given for analogues. For
Aristotle seems to be perfectly capable of articulating the cause at a general
level and applying it directly to the analogues. These cases, then, support
the relativist interpretation whereby analogues can with no modification
be gathered into a genus.
How are we to account for this wide variation in practice, where sometimes, as we see, purely general arguments seem to be applied to analogues
as if to species, sometimes general features seem to be adapted to genera
15 So also at PA 11.1 647al4-21 we are told the reason for the existence of flesh and its
analogue, but in general terms; sensation takes place in the simple parts, but tou ch takes
place in the least simple of the parts. This part must be more complex, because this
sense deals with more than one sensible. Only after providing this general explanation
does Aristotle say that the sense organ of these, the flesh and it s analogue, is the most
corporeal of the sense organs.
18 Again, at GA 11 .3 737a36-b4, All bodies are held together by the glutinous; this quality,
as the embryo develops and increases in size, is acquired by the sinewy substance,
which holds togeth er the parts of animals, being actual sinew in some and its analogue
in others.' Sinew and its analogue are both glutinous, a material feature necessitated by
their common function. As such they share a power, and therefore differ by the more
and the less in a weak sense. And yet they remain analogues.
I
produces that scientific unification through hierarchy which is so characteristically Aristotelian. But at the same time it creates a tension with the
rules of demonstration, which require that the cause be treated at the same
qua-level as the fact.
The tendency to introduce the universal cause is especially strong when
will have no special name. It is not surp~ising, then, that the vast majority
of cases involving demonstrative analogy of the third kind involve parts
with nameless analogues.
Analogies arise in a demonstrative context when the subjects we are
treating are generically different. According to the rules of the APo, the
emerges. In cases where Aristotle does not follow this strict model, the
tendency to generalize the cause is usually matched by the unavailability
in the common language of specific causal terms. The language of facts is
more specific than the language of causes.
better than the other. It is clear from what we have said that various parts
of animals have different extensions, and some attributes, for example,
different genus. Indeed Pellegrin has asserted that analo~l has the purpose
of joining together animals in an intelligible hierarchy:
[I]n the Hi story of Animals (8.1.588a25), Aristotle explains that psychological
faculties differ between man and various other animals either by the more and the
less or analogically. And this example helps us to understand the truly fundamental
function of the analogical relationship in biology. It does not serve so much to
set apart natural families of living things as to relate one group of animals to
another by some point of reference, and ultimately to relate all living things to
one unique being, taken as a model of intelligibility, man ... Thus, in a sense,
all the 'anatomical' parts of the Hi story of Animals. really do not constitute,
19 1986a, 90--2. He cites Leblond's attempt to tie analogy to taxonomy by supposing that
analogy allows comparison of parallel and independent genera, and as such is a kind of
comparative morphology within a taxonomy (LeBlond 1945, 41-2).
20 See Preus 1983 for this and other normative aspects of Aristotle's biological definitions.
21 See Lovejoy's judicious comments on Aristotle's use of scalar arguments, 1964, 55-9;
also Coles 1997.
22 These issues have been effectively discussed by Granger 1985.
23 OVTW l)' EK TWV a'/tvxwv Et~ TO. (0a IJ.ETaj3atvn KaTo. IJ.tl<POV ~ cpvrTt'). waH T~ I7VVEXEtq.
AaVOWEU! TO fJ-E86ptov atrrwv Kat TO fJ-EO"OV 7rOTEpWV EO"TW.
to
This passage does not claim that demarcations are impossible to determine.
In the first sentence the subordinate clause is constructed with WfJT and
the infinitive of natural result, and as such does not affirm that it is
impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, but only that it
is something that would naturally escape our notice 24 Obviously Aristotle
does not think that it has escaped his notice. Indeed, comparison of other
passages with WaTE plus Auv8civftv clearly shows that what escapes notice
nevertheless unequivocally exists." It is also seldom observed that this
passage is situated in the midst of Aristotle's introduction to the psychological traits of animals, and that throughout he is remarking not on
the difficulty of distinguishing the external forms of the various genera of
plants and animals, but of locating demarcations in psychological capaci ties.
We see the same kind of issue at stake in the other oft-cited passage,
PA IV.5 681a9-15:
The ascidians differ but slightly from plants, and yet have more of an animal
nature than the sponges, which are plants and nothing more. For nature passes
from lifeless objects to animals in such unbroken sequence, interposing between
them beings which live and yet are not animals, that scarcely any difference seems
to exist betWeen two neighbouring groups owing to their dose proximity?6
Again we see the same tentative natural-purpose clause with a verb which
distinguishes appearance from reality, and which states that the distinction, though obscure, nevertheless exists. 27 Again, Aristotle seems to be
and yet some animals are sessile. Sponges, when pulled off from their
attachments die just like plants (681aI5- 17). Sponges and sea cucumbers
have no sensation (681aI9-20). Ascidians are sessile like plants, but they
are fleshy like animals and therefore probably are capable of sensation of
a kind (681a25-28). The loci classici do not support the interpretation that
the scala is so continuous as to erase the distinctions between genera. 28
In fact, dualizers, far from destroying the distinctions between groups, are
a strategy employed to preserve the essential natures of the genera. The
problem of dualizers occurs not because there are no generic differences,
but precisely because there are and those differences are set by the system
of internally defined multiple differentiae. Only in a system of dichotomous division could we ensure that there are no dualizers.
There is also clearly a normative component to the scala naturae. 29 One
passage, for example (PA IV.I0 686a24-687a2), places man first among the
animals because of his upright posture. Man stands erect because he is god-
like, and so must think and be wise. This hypothetically necessitates his
being not earthy, since earthiness impedes thought. Man has the natural
and normative posture (what we might call the default posture that occurs
without invoking the principle that quadrupeds have four legs; instead it
uses man as a principle and demonstrates quadrupediry as a conclusion.
For one of the premisses must state that quadrupeds are dwarf humans,
and as such quadrupeds will be related per se to humans. This is either a
clear case of Jlfj(J./3acns or it genuinely erases generic distinctions.
Scalar arguments of this sort depend upon the highest member of the
scale to provide a principle for all the members. But it is evident by the fact
that Aristotle introduces many more specific principles to explain groups of
narrower extension that he did not consider the broad scalar attributes fully
explanatory. The subsequent changes from humans through quadrupeds
and testacea to plants cannot all. be explained on the principle of increasing
weight and dwarfishness. In fact, no single set of principles starting from
man can explain the variery of animals and their parts, and Aristotle clearly
does not suppose that they all can be completely explained as deficient
humans.
The normative status of the human is also undercut by the fact that this
passage explicitly states that thinking is in man's logos. For this implies
that thinking is a specific element in the definition of man, and as such is
not present in the logos of other animals. The series argument, by_contrast,
Although Aristotle clearly thought that vital heat was the common element
4
The Structure of Focality
2 For the substitution of a name for a formula in focality, see Ferejohn 1980, 118-19.
Also, Met. Z.5 1030b23- 26: 'And such attributes [per se attributes1 are those in which
is involved either the formula or the name of the subject of the particular attribute, and
which cannot be explained without this; e.g. white can be explained apart from man,
but not female apart from animal: On the replacement of the name for the definition,
see Owen 1965, 262, who cites D1 21a29-32, APr 49b3-5; and Top. 101b39-102a1,
130,39, 142b2-4, 147b13-14, 149a1-3.
3 For EPYOV as function (i.e., final cause) see Met . Z.10 1035b16-18, where the soul is
equated with the EPYOV; also 2.11 1036b30-32 and 0.8 1050a21-23.
4 Bolton (1995, 427) independently came to the same conclusion, noting that the per
se relations of focal science are the same as those of demonstrative science according
to the APo. His interest is not in categorial focality, however, but rather - if I may
characterize it in my own tenns - with the core science of substance discussed in the
later chapters of 2.
scalpel, patient, and so on are different names and refer to different things,
there is clearly no homonymy among them. Likewise, there is no homonymy between quality, quantity, and substance. Homonymy arises only
when a common term, medical or Being, is predicated of them, but each
in a different sense. This way of viewing the matter gives the appearance
of a one-over-many structure, and this is why Aristotle says that in some
sense the focal term is predicated univocally (we' EV r.2 1003bl4-15):
medical
is predicated of
patient scalpel operation doctor
in virtue of the relation of
undergoing instrument means having
The issue of homonymy, then, which results in an apparently universal
For if names and the definitions of these names signify the same thing,
then we can replace all the names with definitions and thereby eliminate
the homonymy. For example, it does not change the structure of the science
of health if we just talk about food, climate, exercise, and disease, without
explicitly saying that they are all healthy. The fact that they are all healthy
things results from their being related to the primary item, not from their
common name. That is, their focality does not arise from their being called
healthy climate, healthy exercise, or any other name, but from the fact
difficulties only if we fail to make the distinction between the primary and
we call drugs healthy, rather than the natural causal relationship between
drug and health. In order to show the linguistic fact of focality (i.e., that we
call drug healthy), the derivative term (i.e., drug) will appear as the minor,
the focus term (i.e., healthy) will appear as the major, and the definition
of the minor as the middle. These two features suggest that this is not a
proper demonstration, and for this reason it is a poor candidate on which
that proves the linguistic fact consistently places the focal term in the major
position, the demonstrations of natural connections are much more flexible,
and in fact place it in any of the three positions. Using as a model the causal
demonstrations discussed in APo II.ll and the rather loose way in which
Aristotle connects terms there, we can arrange the focally connected terms
in a variety of ways:
fact anymore, but of the natural fact. Now, the explanation given here is
the formal cause, and indeed, this sort of substitution will in every case
change a demonstration of the focal linguistic fact into a demonstration
through the formal cause. Obviously, too, in this case, the arrangement
of the terms and the premisses will remain the same as in the linguistic
demonstration. But when we provide other causes, we must often rearrange
the fact:
75a42- b2 implies that the genus is that of which the attributes are proved,
and this can only be the minor term . And yet it is clear that among the
focally related terms the focus will frequently, and in the specific case of
health most often, not be found in the minor or subject position. Not only
will the focus not be the subject, but there will be a variety of different
subjects and therefore a variety of different sciences. For if we accept the
claim that the identity of a science is determined
either there will be many sciences where there should only be one (in the
demonstrations given above, a science of patient, of health, of drug, etc.), or
all these demonstrations must ultimately be attached to some basic subject,
which will be the true genus of the science. An obvious candidate for such
a genus is patient or man qua healthy. The latter is especially appealing,
because it points to the two-fold answer to the question. The subject-genus
is determined by the qua expression, but the subject of predication is what
appears before the qua expression? This is Aristotle's practice in the PA.
The ultimate subjects of predication are the animals, which have parts and
attributes, but in each demonstration they are treated qua having some
part or other, and this is the genus. So, for example, having lungs is the
cause of having necks in animals that have necks (IlI.3 664a12-36). The
subject of predication is animal, but not animal universally. In this passage
Aristotle is talking about necks, so the subject-genus and minor term of
demonstration is animals qua having necks:
having
having
having
having
a
a
a
a
7 There is some evidence to suggest that the subject lenn must be a substance. APo 1.22
83,2-17; Met. Z.9 1034.30-32. Cf. Lewis 1991, 57.
-------------------------
subject of the MA, PN, and DA . Since the focal term is animal, we might
look for a subject-genus of animal apart from all the derivative sciences. Of
course, it does not exist separately,9 Animal is always the ultimate subject
of predication, but it is always qualified by some qua expression.
This system of organization is not peculiar to the biological or even to
the theoretical works. The ethics too manifests all the traits of a wide focal
science. It studies. eudaimonia, which is defined as activity in accordance
same as the focus of the wide science. In the zoological works it is always
animal. In the narrow science the subject of predication is animal without
qualification, while the several biological treatises themselves are focused
on animal qua this or that feature .
niches) a source of explanation for the animal. The study of ecology, the
way species are affected by one another and by inorganic factors, is a
natural development of this mode of explanation. Aristotle for the most
part avoids explanatory factors that come from outside of the animal, and
when avoidance is impossible, he redescrihes them so as to make them
internal to the animal's nature itself. So, for example, the environment is
marsh birds to live in marshes, and if they are to do so, they must have
such and such features. This is consistent with Aristotle's general system
The reason why Aristotle chooses this method is fairly clear: his method
privileges unity of definition, while the evolutionary account makes a large
part of the cause and therefore the essence of an animal external" to the
animal. Obvious difficulties arise if we make antelope focally related to
lions because they are prey for lions. For in the definition of the antelope would be found the fact that they are essentially food for lions.
The problem here is not that this would represent a constraint on natural
teleology, but rather that those constraints would come from the outside
rather than, as Aristotle invariably presents them, from within, either as
material limitations or as limitations imposed by the need to fulfil other
functions.
Aristotle does, however, discuss some cases where environment, living
and non-living, plays a role. The terrestrial and marine environments
provide sources of explanation, but they have been focalized and are
of carnivores, for example, are hard because they have to fight for their
food (PA II.9 655a12-17). We also find adaptations designed for defence
or preservation (aAK~ and O'wT'/Pia). But only rarely (as with eyebrows
and eyelashes, PA II.l5 65Sbl4-15) does Aristotle state explicitly what
external threat these parts provide defence against. Now, Aristotle does not
provide a hypothetical deduction for the existence of parts instrumental for
defence, but if he had, his clear inclination would be towards explaining
them as hypothetically necessitated by the life of the animal, rather than
as means to avoid being injured by something external. This tendency
towards exploiting internal principles of explanation has some effects on
his selection of facts for which he provides explanations. In explaining why
some animals lack certain modes of defence, he never cites lack of external
threats but only notes that the animal's own nature prevents such defence
from being useful.
The major source of external causation, however, is in the explanations
for sensation. For the organ of sensation is potentially what the sensible
object is actually, and the nature of the sense organ must correspond to the
nature of the sensible and the medium for the sensible. Since the actual
is prior in knowledge to the potential (Met. 0.S), external sensible objects
will have a causal role in animals l l So since the organ of touch deals with
more than one kind of sense-object, it must have several oppositions in it,
even though it is a uniform part (PA II.l 647al4-19). Likewise, the ears are
placed on man halfway around the head because they have to hear sounds
from all directions (PA 11.10 656b26-29). Environment also clearly plays
a role in the explanation of why fish have fluid eyes (PA 11.13 65Sa3- 10):
10 Cf. Top . VI.6 144b31-145al: 'See, too, if he has rendered being in something as the
differentia of a thing's substance, for it seems that locality cannot differentiate between
one substance and another. Hence, too, people condemn those who divide animals by
means of the terms terrestrial and aquatic, on the ground that terrestrial and aquatic
indicate locality. Or possibly in this case the censure is undeserved; for aquatic does not
mean "in" anything; nor does it denote locality, but a certain quality; for even if the
thing is on the dry land, still it is aquatic - and likewise a land animal, even though it
is in the water, will still be a land animal and not aquatic.'
11 See Cleary 1988, 57.
Sense perception is not only an external cause; it is also the ultimate final
cause of animals, and all other parts and functions are in one way or
another instrumental towards this end. In fact, all the major soul faculties
and their objects (nutrition, sensation, and intellection) provide explanatory
grounds outside of the animal in the wider world, and in all three cases
. Aristotle provides this connection with a theoretical basis in potentiality
and actuality. So the material in the environment that animals ingest is
given a functional description as a potentiality and is consistently called
food (TpO<l>~) (e.g., PA II.3 650a2-8). Only rarely does Aristotle describe
food in independent per se terms. For example, in his discussion of beaks,
the kind of food each bird eats provides an explanation for the shape of its
beak. Crooked-taloned birds have hooked beaks because they feed on flesh;
their beaks are useful for them to master their prey and for the exertion
of force. Conversely, some birds have finely constructed beaks, because
they pick up seeds and minute insects. Swimming birds have broad beaks
because they dig for roots, and sometimes they have a sharp point at the
end of the beak by means of which they may easily deal with herbaceous
foods (III.l 662a33-b16).
There is one notorious case of environmentalism (PA IY.13 696b2431):
[In] the dolphin and the Solachia, [the mouth] is placed on the under surface [of the
body]; so that these fishes turn on the back in order to take their food. The purpose
of nature in this was appar~ntly not merely to provide a means of salvation for
other animals, by allowing them opportunity of escape . . . but also to prevent these
fishes from giving way too much to their gluttonous ravening after food.
If we are to follow the strict criteria of APo, 'preserving other animals from
them' must be per se related to dolphins and selachia and therefore part of
their definitions. It is probably for this reason that Aristotle provides an
alternative internal explanation for their mode of eating, which he seems to
consider more likely, namely avoiding the dangers inherent in the natural
gluttony of sharks.
12 See Cleary 1995, 71f., for a discussion of Aristotle's critique of Plato's use of
mathematical principles in physics.
5
Metaphysical Focality
1 E.g., Owens 1978, 119; Ross 1924, i, 256. Kirwan 1993, 81, comments only on the
inadequacy of the illustrations to vindicate the possibility of metaphysics. Burnyeat et
a1. 1979, 25-8, do not mention these cases at all. Ferejohn 1980 and Bolton 1995 are
notable exceptions.
2 Owen 1960, 1965. See Shields 1999, 225-36, for a criticism of Owen's position.
3 Ferejohn 1980.
Aristotle allows us only the most tentative and sketchy conclusions. This is
nowhere more true than at our starting point, Aristotle's avowed reasons
for denying a genus of Being. In fact, I shall conclude rather reluctantly
that the reasons for his denial are relevant to the focal solution he proposes
only in the most general way. I shall then go on to consider focality in the
context of the categories of Being, and finally broaden the discussion by
considering the rather neglected focal relation between the One and Being.
On all these issues the difficult and ambiguous texts require both c.a ution
and speculation.
that this argument should shed light on the focal science of Being that
Aristotle introduces. However, the context of the passage iS ,an argument
against the Platonists, who hold that the highest genus is the highest
principle. Since Aristotle merely needs to refute the Platonists, he need not
introduce a full-blown theory concerning the categories. Nevertheless, the
6 Met. B.2 997a25-33: 'Further, does our investigation deal with substances alone or also
with their attributes? I mean for instance, if the solid is a substance and so are lines and
planes, is it the business of the same science to know these and to know the attributes
of each of these classes (the attributes which the mathematical sciences prove), or of a
different science 7 If of the same, the science of substance also must be a demonstrative
science; but it is thought that there is no demonstration of the essence of things. And
if of another, what will be the science that investigates the attributes of substance?'
7 There is a brief recapimlation of this argument at K.1 1059b31-34. For Being being
said in many ways: DA I.5 410a13, Met. E.2 1026a33, Z.l 1028a10, Z.4 l030bll, H.2
1042b25, 8.10 1051a34, 1.2 1054a14. Being falls immediately into genera: r.2 1004a5,
1\.4 1070bl-2. For a recent treatment of this argument see Shields 1999, 247--60, who
argues against its relevance to the categories. His book was published too late for me to
take proper account of his argument.
In spite of the specific example Aristotle has chosen, this argument seems
to be of general application, and there does not appear to be anything
preventing our applying it to Being. We may best begin with Aristotle's
8 Ross 1924, i, 235, cites this passage as an explanation of the Metaphysics passage, and
provides the following interpretation: '(a) If Igenus were predicated of the differentia],
the genus would be predicated of the species many times over, since it would be
predicated of each of the successive differentiae which constitute the species. (b) If
"animal" is predicable of each of its differentiae, each of them will be either a species
or an individual, since "an animal" always means one or the other.' There is no reason
to suppose with Ross that Aristotle has successive differentiae in mind. As in 2.12, the
iteration of the predicate is not impossible, just redundant.
clause 'if they are animals' (Er7fEp (0a 144b2), implies that the genus must
be predicated as the what-is-it (TL fUTL) of the differentiae, and so if animal
is the genus term predicated of the differentiae, then the differentiae must
be species (or individuals) of animal. Since biped is obviously not a species
of animal, the genus cannot be predicated of differentiae. This argument
prompts us to think of the genus as a pile of objects to be divided up. If this
pile is to be divided by differentiae, the differentiae cannot be members of
the pile, since the differentiae function quite differently from a species of
the genus. And so if we place the differentiae in the genus, we would have
to include both the items in the pile and the criteria used to distinguish
one sub-pile from another.
The first objection is less obvious and less cogent, but it probably
involves the issue of babbling ("OO'\EOX"")' a dialectical misdemeanour
(SE 3 165b12- 17) perpetrated when someone repeats himself (usually
implicitly) a number of times. Strictly speaking, babbling occurs in the
context of relative terms (SE 13 173bl-11) and so is not properly applicable
to this situation. Notwithstanding, Aristotle probably has in mind a less
vicious form of babbling, in which the same information is given twice,
once explicitly through the genus of the species and once again implicitly
through the genus of the differentia. If there are multiple differentiae for
one species the genus will be given many times. 9 Now, Aristotle claims
that both the differentia and the logos of the differentia are predicable of
the species (Cat. 5 3a22-28). If that logos contains a genus term, then the
genus of the differentia will also be predicable of the species. So man, who
is a biped animal, may have two genera predicated of him, animal and
legged, if legged is the genus of biped. Aristotle requires this conclusion in
order for the babbling charge to hold. And yet this same conclusion opens
up the possibility of a genus being predicated of a species, but not as a
genus of the species (legged is not the genus of man), and this seems to
9 So Ross 1924, if 235. Alexander objects that these arguments are tOO dialectical
(206.12-13) and provides a couple of counter-examples. First, if all differentiae are
qualities (7Tot6v), then the differentiae of quality will be qualities, and so in the category
of quality, the genus will in fact be predicated of the differentiae. Second, even if the
immediate genus is not predicated of the differentia of a substance as, for example,
biped taken by itself is not animal, yet at a higher level biped is ollsill . Alexander's two
objections arise out of the unclear categorial status of the differentia.
apart from this difficulty, babbling is at worst a venial sin, one that anyone
talking about the physical realm is bound to commit. The definitions of
snub nose and all natural substances also entail babbling (Met. 2.5), but
this does not immediately exclude their being defined. They may still be
defined with a qualification.
We face further problems when we apply the general argument of the
Topics to the specific case of Being. According to Aristotle's objection (a),
if we admit a genus of Being, we are forced to babble, since all definitions
will take the form, 'x is a Being differentiated by y whiCh is a Being.'
According to objection (b), a species is a Being with a differentia, which
is itself a Being. This species, then, would be many Beings, whereas in
fact it is just one. Again, the predication of the genus is to be taken in
the strictest sense: the genus is always predicated of species and when
predicated always creates species. Under this interpretation, a species like
man will not just be many Beings (which hardly seems problematic if we
understand animal and biped as two Beings), but he will be many species.
Since a man is essentially his differentiae, if his differentiae are species of
his genus, he will be several species of the same genus, and the unity of
man will clearly be lost.
This strict interpretation of the genus predication reveals further presuppositions of the argument. It is not possible for one object to be two
species, and the what-is-it question must have a unique answer for every
well-formed object. This presupposition becomes clear when the correct
genus is predicated of the differentia, for though the object will have
two different genus terms predicated of it, if its differentia is part of the
what-is-it of the species, it will not belong to two genera, since the genus
of the differentia is not the genus of the species (e.g., man is legged, but
legged is not his genus). By contrast, when we attempt to predicate the
genus univocally of its differentiae, the differentiae become species of the
genus in the same sense as the species (e.g., man) themselves.
Aristotle also presupposes that if the genus is predicated of a differentia,
then that genus cannot create species that will stand alongside (i.e., be
cogeneric with) the species of which the differentia is predicated. This is
tantamount to saying that the genus and the differentia play different roles
in definition and classification. If we try to predicate a term like Being of
both the species and the differentia, then we are assuming that, if Being is
univocal, it is being predicated in the same way, whereas in fact it is not.
To be a genus, then, implies among other things that its species are of the
same logical and predicational type.
There are a number of ways of interpreting the claim that Being is not
a genus. Drawing on the class model, we may suppose that the differentia,
since it is Being, will be a member of the pile of Beings; but since it is
a differentia, it must be the criterion by which the piles are divided. If
a differentia is a criterion, it cannot be a member, and so cannot have
Being. Conversely, if it is a member, we shall need a new criterion by
which to divide the pile. Nothing on this view prevents all existing things
from forming a pile, but this pile cannot be divided and therefore cannot
be a genus. It must remain one pile, indeterminate and indeterminable,
an inchoate unintelligible AIL Not only can it not be divided, but nothing
positive can be said of it at alL Certainly no predicate can be applied to it,
since that predicate is Being, and therefore must be applied to all Beings
and itself. Since the predicate is a Being, we must still find something
predicable of all Beings, and so we must look for a further predicate, and
so on to infinity, In this way the genus of Being falls victim' to a third-man
argument.
Again, Aristotle assumes as a premiss of his argument that all differentiae are Beings and, as such, have Being predicated of them. 1O As a result,
------
-------
Since this is the only argument Aristotle provides for his claim that
Being does not form a genus, it is important to ask how it is related to
the solution Aristotle apparently developed for it, focality . The argument
against the genus of Being involves a fundmental distinction between
genus and differentia, and the categories seem at best secondary in this
scheme. If we assume that genus and differentia are the principal kinds
of Being, then we should expect these to enter into the focal relationship. On this interpretation genus would be the primary and differentia
the derivative Being, containing in itself the focal term, genus. This is a
plausible interpretation of the relationship, since differentia is arguably a
per se (2) predicate of genus. There is a focal solution that corresponds to
this problem, precisely that which solves the aporia quoted above in the
passage from H.6 1045al4-17. The genus animal is potentially man, and
the differentia biped is man in actualiry. They form a single thing just
because they are focally and per se related to one another, as we shall see
more clearly in chapter 6. Genus and differentia, then, cannot be in the
same genus of Being, but they can be studied by the same focal science of
12 So Met . 6.28 l 024b9-16: 'Those things are said to be other in kind (TeP )'fllH) whose
ultimate substratum is different, and which are not analysed the one into the other nor
both into the same thing ... and things which belong to different categories of being;
for some of the things that are said to be signify essence, others a quality, others the
. other categories we have before distinguished; these also are not analysed either into
one another or into some one thing:
13 In Metaphysica, 206.13-22.
14 Cf. Met. Ll.14, which distinguishes the senses of 7TOWV (differentiae from the attributes
of natural bodies); K.12 l068b18-20.
and there will be many Beings. But accidents clearly are, and therefore
Being must be of a different kind in the case of accident and what the
accident is predicated of. This version of the argument seems as valid as
the differentia form, and moreover, it will come closer to generating the
canonical categories. At least it fits the description of the categories we
find
at Topics I.9. For there the ti esti corresponds to genus, and the other
categories are in the first instance non-ti esti predications, that is, accidents.
So the accident version of the argument rather than the differentia version
is more suitable to the generation of the categories. It also avoids some
of Alexander's criticisms, since a thing and its accident are not in the
same category. Aristotle did not make use of this version presumably
because the context of the B passage is an argument against the Platonists,
and he does not require the theory of the categories for his immediate
purposes.
Nevertheless, the argument of B.3 suggests that Aristotle's basic objection to a genus of Bein& whether that objection is described in terms of
differentia and genus or in some other way, consists in his observation that
different Beings have different logical functions, and that discourse itself
depends on the difference in these functions. To treat all things as species
of a genus will destroy discourse as surely as the sophists destroy discourse
by replacing all essence with accident. If this is the fundamental insight, it
is one that focality can address. For focality is precisely intended to provide
within a single study a treatment of items that are functionally related to
one another without being species of a genus. It is ideally situated to deal
with the problem of the unity of genus and differentia just because its
objects are relatives rather than congeners.
15 On this interpretation we shall face the problem that once again the same genus wlll be
predicated of both species and differentia; Top. VI.6 143a29-32; Met. Z.12 1038aI8- 21.
model of health and ordinary science generally. The core science studies
substance and its functions, being a substrate and essence. But just as health
does not exist without a body or an animal without activities, so substance
does not exist without non-substance. Indeed, the most characteristic feature of substance, its being a substrate, requires that it be a substrate
for something. As such, substance in its designation as substrate cannot
be completely abstracted from that of which it is the substrate. In this
way the core notion of substrate points to the more expansive science of
Being, a science that includes non-substance. In addition to being substrate,
substance is also essence, and in a similar manner substantial essence will
necessarily imply non-substantial essence. For example, in the study of
nose (which is a substance or part of a substance) we must consider snub
(presumably, a quality), and in the study of animal, we must consider male
and female (an affection). Again, this view is in accordance with the model
of health: we can hardly have grasped much of the essence of the focus
health, if we do not know that it is the body that has health, or much of
medicine, if we do not know that it aims at the medical goal health 1 6 I aim
to show, then, that by taking seriously Aristotle's models of focality we
can construct a coherent interpretation of categorial focality and maintain
that in its broad outlines metaphysics is a normal science.
But first a couple of preliminary issues and observations. The claim
that the focus implies the derivative or network terms seems to be in
direct contradiction with the statement that the focus does not contain
the derivative objects in its definition (EE VII.2 1236a21- 22). But, simple
reflection on the cases involved shows that the situation cannot be so
straightforward. Some of the focally derivative items, as we have already
16 It is clear that the two examples of focality, medicine and health, are themselves focally
related, presumably with health as the core, since medicine contains health in its
definition, but not vice versa. This fact serves as a further indication that derivative
tenns can form semi-abstract subject matters on their own. Cf. EE VII.15 1249b9-13.
19 Though the categories play only a very minor role in the Topics, Aristotle is very
generous in providing definitions of non-substances and treats them as uncontroversial.
It is clear that his treatment of non-substance as essential is not confined to I.9.
20 See Frede 1987a and Malcolm 1981 for promising attempts to provide an essentialist
reading for Topics 1.9. I do not, of course, follow Frede in his contention that substance
is not a category in the Topics.
Metaphysics Z provides a more searching investigation of the relationship between the categories and the centrality of substance in that
relationship. Focality among the categories of Being is featured in three
early chapters (1, 4, and 5), and in each chapter non-substantial Being
is per se. 21 Aristotle discusses the problem of categorial Being before he
ever comes to a definite conclusion regarding the nature of substance
itself, and so it is clear that the question of the focality of categorial
Being can be satisfactorily addressed without entering into a discussion
of form and matter. Z.l, as we shall see, considers Being as per se (3),
a self-subsistent subject of predication in its own right. Aristotle asks to
what extent non-substances have this 'sort of per se Being. Both Z.4 and
5 consider Being as essence, which is predicated as a per se (1) predicate,
that is, what can be predicated essentially of something. Substance has
essence primarily and -the non-substance categories have it by an addition
(7Tpo(J'8w'''). Z.5 also takes up per se (2) Being, in which categorial Being
is treated as belonging to its primary recipient.
Z.l begins with a recapitulation of the ambiguity of Being:
There are several senses in which a thing may be said to be, as we pointed out
previously in our book on the various senses of words; for in one sense it means
what a thing is or a 'this' (Ti fern Kal T(}OE TL), and in another sense it means that
a thing is of a certain quality or quantity or has some such predicate asserted of it.
While 'being' has all these senses, obviously that which is primarily is the 'what,'
(r{ EUTL) which indicates the substance of the thing. (Met. Z.1 l028a10-15)
We notice that the first category has changed, and in place of the simple
what-is-it (rt a-n) that we saw in the Topics we find rL tOIL Kat
n.
This does not, however, prevent the what-is-it from being applied to nonsubstances later in the chapter (1028bl-2) and again at Z.4 (1030a17-23).
It merely implies, as in the Topics, that the what-is-it is applied first and
foremost to substance. The this (ToIiE Tt) is the subject of predications, and
it itself is not predicated of anything else. Because of the identification
of the what-is-it with the this, subjecthood and essence belong primarily
to substance. Now, there has never been a doubt that substance serves as
subject, but the question becomes whether non-substances can also serve
as subjects. This question is addressed in a passage starting Z.11028a20:
roo
And 50 one might raise the question whether 'to walk' and 'to be healthy' and
'to sit' signify in each case something that is, and similarly in any other case
of this sort; for none of them is either self-subsistent (Kat)' aim)) or capable of
being separated from substance, but rather, if anything, it is that which walks or is
seated or is healthy that is an existent thing. Now these are seen to be more real
because there is something definite which underlies them; and this is the substance
or individual, which is implied in such a predicate; for 'good' or 'sitting' are not
used without this. Clearly then it is in virtue of this category that each of the
others is. Therefore that which is primarily and is simply (not is something) must
be substance. (1028a20-31)
The distinction in this aporia between that which walks (TO /3alii(ov) and
to walk (f3a/ii(ELv) lies in the fact that the latter is not per se (3) (i.e.,
self-subsistent) or capable of being separated from substance. By contrast,
there is something underlying that which walks, and therefore it involves
something self-subsistent. It is clear, then, that the sense of per se used in
this passage does not refer to a per se predicate, but rather to per se Being,
and it is described by the same example of walking that we find at APo
1.4.22 It is Aristotle's point in Z.l that although 'that which walks' is not
a per se Being, it is more like one than 'to walk' is. While such a Being
22 'What is not said of some other underlying subject - as what is walking is something
different walking (and white), while a substance, and whatever signifies some "this"
(T(~bE n) is just what it is without being something else. ' (73b6-8).
23 It has long been noted that the paronymy relationship of Cat. 1 1a12-1S is a precursor
to the focal relationship. It differs from focality, however, in that.it makes the
non-substantial category the focus, rather than the substance (the grammatical contains
grammar in its definition). Moreover, paronymy, for all its similarity with focality,
simply is not invoked as a means of scientific unification . See Owen 1960 and Patzig
1961.
24 Cf. the recapitulation at 0.1 1045b27-32: 'We have treated of that which is primarily
and to which all the other categories of being are referred - i.e., of substance. For it
is in virtue of the formula of substance that the others are said to be - quantity and
quality and the like; for all will be found to contain the formula of substance.'
25 So Ferejohn 1980, 122-3 .
Kae' auro
26 The fact that the subject is 70 Ka8' (KarrrOV (1028a27) does not have any Significant
effect on the nature of the definitional inclusion. Both the categorial and the generic
relationship can be expressed individually (white is predicated of this/these individual
substance[s]; white is predicated of this/these individual surfacers]) or universally
(white is predicated of substance; white is predicated of surface).
.
27 It may be objected that Aristotle's fonnulations 'the healthy,' 'the sitting' do not
invoke accidental relations. However, they are part of an aporia that explicitly (ota
1028a20) grows out of the categorial distinction that dearly treats non-substantial items
as accidents.
28 For example, that 'good' or 'Sitting' are not said without substance (1028a28-29); d.
Cat. 5 2a34--b5.
(Met. Z .4 l030a29-b3)
Essence can be extended to white man and the white in much the same way.
White man and the white will have essences because in their definitions
will be found respectively man (or its definition) and substance (or its
definition). The inclusion of non-substance in the science of essence is
based on the same inclusion of substance in a quality and quantity as we
saw in Z.l. Such inclusions extend to accidental relationships and are not
restricted to per se relationships such as that between female and animal
or snub and nose. It is because a quality, whether it is an accident or
not, must be predicated of a substance, that its definition and essence will
contain substance.
Aristotle seems also to express the focal relation in terms of addition
and abstraction, and it is probable that he had in mind the same logical
operations we have discussed in the first chapter. For in both cases what
is abstracted is part of the essential nature of some more concrete entity.
Now, it is easy to see how we can get -rrpo,; fV definitions by addition: we
simply add the definition of the primary entiry in the proper logical relation
to the other elements of the derivative's definition. But it is more difficult
to see how abstraction works, and there has been some dispute. 31 In view
31 Ross 1924, ii, 171, reports Ps.-Alexander's view, hut disagrees and offers 'If we say
that they [non- substances} are OUTa we add a qualificati on to, and deduct from the full
meaning of, Oll.' (Owens 1978, 350, agrees.) Bumyeat et al. (1979, 27-9) considered this
question twice. They are unhappy with Ross's suggestion because it means that different
types of things are being added and subtracted. If linguistic items are subtracted, then
the primary term. If we start from the primary term, we obviously need
no addition to arrive at its definition, but if we start from the definitions of
compounds we must abstract the essence of substance from them, just as
'known' can be abstracted from 'not-known.' The abstraction and addition
in this context proceeds in the opposite ontological direction from the
abstraction we observed in the mathematical context in chapter 1, but
the underlying logic of definitional inclusion is the same. Mathematics
abstracts quantity from sensible substance, and treats it in its per se
nature. The mixed sciences add quantity to sensible substance and treat
the composite nature. Conversely, the science of substance abstracts the
Z.4 continues the work of Z.l, then, by investigating the essence of accidental compounds. The Z.l investigation began with the subject function
of substance, admitted non-substances as accidents, and consideTed how
these accidental non-substances might be subjects. 2.4, in turn, studies
the essence function of substance and considers how these same accidental
non-substances might have essences.
Aristotle's thoughts on this issue are far from clear, and many factors are involved that are not altogether consonant. Z.1 suggests how
non-substances may have subjecthood. This form of subjecthood is open
to accidental as well as necessary attributes. Accidents are included now
in the wider focal science, not merely by negative inclusion, but in virtue
of the fact that their accounts include substance as subject. Essence too is
extended from substance to non-substance, but this extension takes two
forms. Z.4 treats the essence that corresponds precisely to non-substantial
subjecthood, a form of essence that can cover accidents. And within this
rype of essence there appear to be two further sub-types, the fully specified accidental compound, like white man, and the unspecified accidental
compound, the white. Such compounds have essences because the essence
of substance or the essence of a specific substance is included in their
definitions.
The second main form of non-substantial essence is the special concern
are not substantial. So, odd is predicated per se of number, but number
is not substance (Z.5 1031a2-5). White is predicated per se of surface,
but surface is not substance. Now this peculiarity is problematic, because
Aristotle does connect the odd-number predication closely with the categorial predication. It is supposed to serve as an example that there is
definition only of substance, and that of the rest of the categories there
is definition only by addition. In fact, this difficulty is only apparent.
Such items will still have essence and belong in the science of Being in
virtue of a mediated focal relationship to substance. Odd, for example,
2 .4 l030a23-27. This interpretation could account unproblematically for the example of
white man, a genuine accidental compound with no per se connections between white
and man. It is considered by the science as that which is not a per se thing.
tions and qualities both of substance and 'of things which are relative to
substance' (1003b8-9).
Nevertheless, the fact remains that the logic of odd and snub is different
from that of accidents, and their importance for the science of Being is
indisputable. For the definition and existence of such objects form the first
principles of demonstrative sciences (APo 1.10), and metaphysics in some
way provides these first principles (r.l). If Aristotle cannot account for
the Being of such entities, then his theory of science is in grave peril.
For such predications are the bulwark of the special sciences. We need,
therefore, some account of the essence of objects that are not substances
and whose Being is not merely to be accidentally predicated of substance
(as white man or the white is). In fact, the very model of focal science
itself, health, is in danger of lacking an essence for exactly this reason,
Health is a state of a living body, not a substance itself, and yet Aristotle
t~eats it as the focus of its genus, upon which other objects are dependent.
In order for it to do its work as the subject of a science, its Being and
essence cannot be merely an accident of some substance, since accident is
not the subject of any science. It is for this reason that the coupled terms
are so important. For whereas the Being of accidents and its corresponding
science is questionable at best, the Being of necessary attributes (per 5e (2))
dearly comes under the purview of the science of Being (for this science
studies Being qua Being and its per se attributes 1003a21- 22), and if Being
means in the first instance substance, such per se (2) attributes of substance
are also a part of the science.
The focal science of Being, then, consists of two parts. The first is the
core study of substance. The science of Being is the science of substance
(Z.l 1028b2-4), because substance is the focal term to which all other
terms of the science are related. Of substance in general, some things
can be said and perhaps even proved, for instance, that it is species form
or individual form; that some substance is enmattered, and therefore is
sensible; that because substance is a subject, it has attributes, both necessary
and accidental. These and similar propositions and proofs constitute the
core science of substance. 35
In addition, the derivative items may themselves act as parts of a more
diffuse focal science and may be treated in different sections of that science.
34 So Loux 1991, 84.
35 See Bolton 1995 for an attempt to flesh out some aspectS of this core science.
40 Frede 1987a.
all, neither would scalpels exist, but a scalpel is at least physically separable
from the state of the doctor's soul (the medical art). This is not true
of quality and substance. In fact, it is clear that the ontological priority
of substance over quality, quantity, and so on, is the very basis of the
categorial focality. For if qualiry were not dependent on substance for
its existence, then there would be no reason to suppose that substance is
substance in the definition of the accident. If this is the case, then categorial
metaphysics, contrary to what Aristotle avers, is focal in a different way
from medicine. It is focal for ontological (dependency of existence) reasons.
This means that its subject matter is special and importantly different from
that of medicine or health.
There are a number of answers to this challenge at a couple of levels.
First, even if the challenge is cogent, nevertheless the ontological basis of
focality applies only to the categorial form of Being, and not generally
throughout all the areas of metaphysics. Processes towards Being, mentioned in r.2, for example, are not predicated of substances in the same
way as qualities arc, and therefore arc not focally related to substance on
the basis of ontological priority. For this reason, the ontological predication
involved in categorial Being cannot be the grounds for focalizing the whole
science of Being, since the same ontological conditions do not obtain in the
other parts of this science. Nothing, then, prevents most of the science of
Being from following the pattern of medicine.
Moreover, there are reasons to suppose that the challenge itself does
not hit the mark. While the ontological dependency certainly grounds and
provides the cause for the definitional inclusion, ontological dependency
is not identical with the focal relationship. The distinction we drew above
between natural, focal, and universal forms of predication makes this clear.
The demonstration,
per se (3) Being IPO what is predicated in the category of quality of a per
se (3) Being
what is predicated in the category of quality of a per se (3) Being IPO
qualified thing
per se (3) Being IPO qualified thing
manifests and distinguishes all three levels of discourse. The conclusion of
the demonstration displays a connection that applies universally (Ku8' EV)
subjects, involves all three forms of predication and displays the dependency relationship, according to which the universal conclusion is proved
from focalizing premisses constructed out of terms that express the natural
relations.
If these predication relations are distinguished, there is no reason to
other per se relationship. In fact, they are mentioned in r.2 alongside other
quite different focal relationships. Along with privations of substance and
things that generate substance, we find qualities and affections of substance
different from the focality we find in a normal science like the science of
medicine.
.
In fact, the normalcy of the science can be seen when we alter the focal
demonstration so that the conclusion no longer expresses the universal fact
that quality is a per se (3) Being, but rather expresses the natural fact that
quality is predicated of substance:
subsidiary subject. For snub naturally contains nose in its definition, and
this makes it part of the science of nose; but at the same time, the essence
of nose contained in the definition of snub provides snub with its claim to
essence and per se Being.
The Wider Focal Science of Being
Categorial focality is only one part of the science of Being. Focality shows
its unifying power, not only by joining substance and non-substantial
categories, but also by joining a host of other items. First, the science
of Being treats substance and its essential attributes:
We must inquire ... whether OUf investigation is concerned only with substances
or also with the essential attributes of substances. Further, with regard to the same
and other and like and unlike and contrariety, and with regard to prior and posterior
and all other such terms, about which the dialecticians try to inquire . (Met. B .1
995b18-24)
Aristotle then goes on to include qualiry as well as the things that belong to
quality per se. This will naturally include substance (since substance is per
se related to quality) but also other things, for example, 'it is in virtue of
qualities only that things are called similar and dissimilar' (Cat. 8 11a15).42
In focal terms, the statement 'qualified things are similar' forms part of the
science of Being, because similar is per se (2) predicated of a qualified thing,
and qualified thing, of course, is per se related to substance inasmuch as it
implies substance as its subject. Thus, this statement in the science (still
unified focal science. In this way the science of Being is articulated and
ramified.
r .2 presents an outline of the elements and architecture of the science
of Being. In general Aristotle's task is to show that a number of different
subjects fall under the same science. Focaliry is one, but only one, of the
means used to accomplish this task. The two great parts of the science,
rule without any mention of focality, although, since one of the pair of
opposites is explainable by the presence or absence of the other (Met. Z.7
1032b2-5; Phys. 1.7 191a6-7), and presence or absence is a focal relation
(Met. r.2 lO03b8), the rule of opposites can be subsumed under focality.
These, then, are the three techniques Aristotle uses to unify the science
of metaphysics. Other information is provided in Met. i, but from r .2 alone
we can construct an already quite elaborate scheme, as illustrated in the
accompanying figure.
Within r the science of One is represented as a large part of the science
of Being. I wish to discuss it in some detail, because the connection between
Being and One is not entirely clear and has been largely ignored. [ shall
argue that the most promising candidate for the connection between Being
and One is the notion of measure, which is the Single nature (cpvu) that
receives different logoi according to whether it is treated as Being or as
One. It is the difference in these logoi that accounts for the structural
differences in the two parts of the science.
Aristotle's claim that One is said in as many ways as Being leads us to
expect that the ambiguity of One will be isomorphic with Being and will
be overcome by the same focal strategy.43 He encourages this expectation
in r.2.44 He argues that One is studied by the same science as Being
(1003b33-36), and that One and Being are the same and have a single
nature (1003b22-25) and follow one another (i.e., are coextensive), though
they do not have the same logos's Aristotle even goes so far as to say that
I
qualifications
engenderings
productions
affections of
road to
I
!
,-------------__ on< ______________-,
Being (species of)
similar
same
equal
[p rivation / denial}
I
dissimilar
other
unequal
making
opposition
having - - - - - - - '
we may suppose that the logoi are similar, since the phrases 'one man
and 'man being' and 'man' do not refer to anything different from one
another. His argument is intended to show that the species of One are as
many as the species of Being (l003b33-34), and that the reason why Being
forms its species applies to the One with analogous results.
We are led to expect, then, that the articulations of the science of
Being (categoria! Being, potentiality, etc.) will be mirrored in the science
of One. Moreover, if One is ambiguous in the same way as Being is,
------,
. 49 The predominant interpretation of the passage, however, which stems from Alexander
and is accepted by Ross (1924, i, 303-4) and Kirwan (1993, 138) views the One here
as relational: honey is one with honey because it affects things similarly, musician is
one with musician (having), the heated with the heated (suffering) . This interpretation
is, however, almost certainly wrong. Kirwan finds the passage intrusive and strange,
bur, in fact, the immediate context (starting 1016b1) shifts from the relational to the
definitional sense of unity. That passage argues that those things, of which the thought
of the essence 'is one, are one. If man qua man does not admit of division, it is one.
Substances most of all are one in this way. Whatever does not admit of division in this
sense is one. It is at this point that Aristotle adds his focal qualification: most things
are called one because they do things that are one, etc. The immediate context gives no
indication that Aristotle is considering relational unity.
50 Cf. Lewis 1991, 88-90.
strategy undeveloped.
There is also some evidence of categorial focality in the context of
the second, relational, form of unity. r.2 lists as kinds of One, the Same,
Similar, and such like (1003b35-36), which suggests that he has catogorial
species or forms (cLOry) in mind. The Same means oneness in substance,
Similar means oneness in quality, and so on. However, there is no attempt
to arrange these relational predicates in focal order, and rightly so, since
Similar does not seem definitionally dependent on Same. Moreover, when
Aristotle elaborates the ambiguity of these terms in 1.3, he does not observe
the strict categorial correspondences. So the Same is used to denote what is
numerically the same, what is the same both in form and number, and what
is the same in the definition of the primary essence. For the latter Aristotle
provides the example, equal straight lines are the same, and so makes clear
that 'same' does not refer solely to substances. Likewise, Similar is not
restricted to quality: 'Things are similar if, not being absolutely the same,
nor without difference in their concrete substance, they are the same in
form, e.g., the larger square is similar to the smaller' (modified ROT;
1054b3-6). It is clear, then, that relational unity is not focally organized
in a way parallel to categorial Being.
We have considered two possibilities of focal ordering within the field
of One, the first concerning internal unity, the second concerning relational
unity. In both cases we see that Aristotle does not develop these schemes
unity (and it hardly need be said that relational unity is not a necessary
condition for internal unity).
----
--
substance alone is. Difficulties by all means arise if we demand a metaphysical structure identical to that of Being, one that sets substance in
the preeminent position. For measure is found primarily in the category
of quantity. Nevertheless, to the extent that there is an internal unity to
measure, that unity will be based on essence.
It is somewhat more complicated to establish the nature of the connection between essence and relational identity. As we noted, there seems to
be no reason to suppose that identity depends on essence. One man may
be identical with another man, one heap with another, and the degree of
internal coherence of the objects being compared is irrelevant to the issue
of identity. And yet it is clear that all identity is identity in some respect;
explanation from its contrary .. so that in formula, plurality is prior to the indivisible:
It is clear that the divisible must be de6nitionally prior to the indivisible, so that if
this is what we mean by One, then it will be posterior to plurality. The oddity of this
reversal of priority is increased by Aristotle's statement that 'plurality and {he divisible
is more perceptible than the indivisible' (l.3 1054a26-29). This is obviously unusual
for Aristotle. Perception cannot ground definition
this way, and it is impossible that
plurality should be prior to one, for in order for there to be plurality, there must be a
measure, and the measure is the unity. So the measure must be prior to the plurality
measured. Moreover measure, the principle of number, is that by which quantity is
known: plurality cannot be prior to one. This difficulty points to the problems involved
in establishing the appropriate priority relations. If we define the One as the indivisible
we may not be defining it in terms more intelligible without qualification, and if we
define in this way, as Aristotle makes dear in Topics V1.4, we cannot show the essence
of the definiendum (141b15-18). Such a definition is intended only to lead a less
scientific mind to some understanding of the subject.
in
Mixed Uses
of Analogy and Focality
Because the categories constitute the irreducible genera of Being, and everything that exists is predicated in one of these categories, it is reasonable
to suppose that relational similarities among them will best be expressed
by analogy. However, as we saw in the biological context, analogies are
resolved into identities by choosing a new common subject, which, though
not their genus, is nevertheless pe"r se related to them. Among the categories, by contrast, there is no common Being that is not already a Being in
one of the categories, and so analogies at this level cannot be resolved into
a more abstract identity. For this reason analogy in metaphysical contexts
has sometimes been viewed as significantly different. 1 For since no absolute
identity can be found, analogy is the only form of commonality available.
I want to argue, however, that this difference between categorial analogy and analogy in the special sciences has been exaggerated. We often find
that these metaphysical analogies, like potentiality and good, are not in fact
based on the categories, but rather on lower and abstractable genera. But
more importantly, we invariably find that they are based on a commonality, not of course on the absolute generic commonality of the biological
analogies, but on some kind of natural or focal relationship among the
subject-genera. Whereas wings and fins share common principles of locomotion, potentialities are found in categories, like substance and quality
that are focally and naturally related. In no instance, however, is analogy
a fundamental and independent form of similarity; there is always some
relationship besides analogy that exists between the subject-genera. Now,
this issue has had a controversial history. G.E.L. Owen, because of his
1 Hesse 1965.
ger claim should also be made. Whether or not focality was explicitly
articulated at a later stage of Aristotle's development, in its logical nature
it is prior to analogy in two ways.4 At a general level it is a logical
precondition for all analogy, and as a result one might say that analogy
is a focal derivative of focality. For in order for there to be analogy, there
must be different genera, each one constituted out of elements per se
related to its core subject in the focal manner. So, while focality can exist
independently of analogy, analogy cannot exist independently of focality.
Since th~ focal connection is identical with the normal per se connection,
this focal precondition has generally escaped notice, in spite of the fact
that it is common to all analogies. It is most apparent in the case of
potentialities: they are analogously the same, but each is homonymous
2 1960,193 and n. 39.
3 1978, 125; so also Berti 1971; Rist 1989, 276; Menn 1992; Code 1996; for recent
contributions on the question of development see Wians 1996.
4 Cf. M. ~ D. Philippe 1969, 46-7: 'These various ways of considering unity in diversity
[analogy and focality] do not necessarily exclude one another; on the contrary, they
can complete one another, yet remain distinct, each having its own proper character.'
However, Philippe holds that analogy has precedence over focality: 'unity according to
analogy is surely ultimate, since it is achieved within the greatest variety and reduces
this diversity to a certain unity.'
There is, in addition, a special use of focality that, together with the
natural priority relation, provides the framework for some metaphysical
analogies. As we have seen, analogues must share some abstractable and
Aristotle explicitly connects analogy with the fact that the principles are
found in different genera; and this difference in the genera certainly provides the reason why they can be treated as only analogically identical. It
is also dear that analogy holds equally among the categories and among
the more specific genera. The passage above cites specific genera, but the
question concerning the identity of principles is first taken up in -the context
have clearly already supposed that all the analogies are purely formal. And
if analogy applies to potentiality for this reason, it applies equally to all
the other principles merely because they are principles of several genera.
In corroboration of the relativist interpretation is the fact that Aristotle
is explicitly discussing the principles of things, and talk about the principles
of things is distinct from talk about things in their own right. We can,
for example, talk about earth, its nature and transformations, in which
case earth is the subject-genus and receives predications. But once we caU
earth a potentiality, we treat it as relative to something else, say wood.
Earth now explains something about wood, namely its material nature. s
This distinction between subject and principle is made clear in a different
context at Met. 1.1 (10S2b7-16):
This [that there is sometimes a difference between what a thing is called and the
essence of the thing so denominated] is also true of 'element' or 'cause', if one had
both to specify the things of which it is predicable and to give the definition of the
word. For in a sense fire is an element (and doubtless 'the indefinite' or something
else of the sort is by its own nature the element), but in a sense it is noti for it is
not the same thing to be fire and to be an element, but while as a particular thing
with a nature of its own fire is an element, the name 'element' means that it has
this attribute, that there is something which is made of it as a primary constituent.
And so with 'cause' and 'one' and all such terms.
5 See
---------------------
is to include this relative function in its definition. All causes and elements
as such will be definitionally related to that of which they are the causes
and principles.
This very distinction provides a reason why matter and potentiality
especially should be considered analogous: matter is said to be that which
is potentially form or privation directly and per se (1fpwrov Ka8' aim) A.4
1070b12-13). This fact about matter and potentiality clearly impressed
Aristotle, since he mentions it on several occasions. 6 Potentiality or matter
is not like any other term that happens to be useful in a specific genus;
rather in its own nature it is adapted to that of which it is the potentiality. Unlike earth, which can be both a per se thing and a principle,
for something to be a potentiality, it must be defined in terms relative to
its actuality, and as a result it cannot even be logically abstracted from
what it is the potentiality for without ceasing to be a potentiality. This
seems to be less the case with a principle like form or actuality, because
form and actuality are not what they are relative to something else. There
is no difference between being something and actually being something,
and this is certainly why Aristotle pays more attention to the analogy of
potentiality than to the analogy of actuality.
This interpretation is attractive, but there are some reasons to suppose
by matter I mean the primary substratum of each thing (KaO"Tce), from which it
comes to be, and which persists in the result non-accidentally. (modified ROT)
There is no mention here of specific actualities of which matter is the
There is no such thing as motion over and above the things. It is always with
respect to substance or to quantity or to quality or to place that what changes,
changes. But it is impossible, as we assert, to find anything common to these
which is neither 'this' nor quantity nor quality nor any of the other predicates.
Hence neither will motion and change have reference to something over and above
the things mentioned; for there is nothing over and above them .
8 For a similar point see Owen 1978-9, 283; and Kung 1986, 11.
--
---------
--
tween the analogues. The commonality extends further than each analogue,
but not further than the group of analogues. This commonality prevents
the analogues from being incidentally or metaphorically connected; it prevents the introduction of inappropriate analogies, like sail:boat::wing:bird,
into biological science. Minimally, the analogies must occur at the same
level of generality, categories with categories, genera with genera, and in
selected contrast sets, and minimally the relata must be essentially of such
a nature as to admit of that relation.
Where are we to look for a similar commonality among the analogues
of potentiality? One obvious answer is that since thes e analogies are pur-
if
one speaks universally and analogically, they are the same for all. (1\.4
1070.31- 33)
The expression 'universally and analogically' (Ka86Aov ... Kat KaT' dvaAo~
yiav) is initially surprising, but as Aristotle goes on, he makes clear what
kinds of sameness and difference he has in mind. 12 In a way the causes
of substance are the causes of all things because if they are destroyed, the
other things are destroyed (A.5 1071a34-35). This expression of natural
yet in each there is something analogous to substance; and as in substances that which
is predicated of the matter is the actuality itself, in all other definitions also it is what
most resembles full actuality.'
12 There is no reason to suppose that the Kat is not epexegetic. For another use of Ka8dholJ
that does not mean 'univocal universal,' see Phys. 1.1 184a23-25. Cf. r.2 l003bl4--15,
where focally related Beings are said to be Ka8' fV.
-.-
--
--
---------------~~~~
naturally primary.
Aristotle nowhere says that the analogies hold because some other
relation holds. Nevertheless we have seen reasons why analogues should
be fixed in a framework avoidance of metaphor and, what is essentially
the same thing, the need for the parts of a science to be bound by per
5e relations. Of the connection between the analogy of principles and the
underlying connections among their subject-genera, Aristotle has little to
say. His comments opening A..5 are the clearest:
Some things can exist apart and some cannot, and it is the fanner that are substances. And therefore all things have the same causes, because, without substance,
affections and movements do not exist. Further, these causes will probably be soul
and body, or reason and desire and body.
The statement at the end of A.5 that 'the causes of substances are the
causes of all things, in this sense when they are destroyed all things are
destroyed' (modified ROT; 1071a34-35) supports the second interpretation.
Indeed, in 0.7 Aristotle presents a way of understanding the causes of
substance, at least matter and form, as the causes of all other things.
Aristotle says there that man, both body and soul, is the substrate for his
affections, the affections being the white and the musical (1049a29-30).13
It is clear that musical is an affection of the soul and white is an affection
of the body. If we understand the issue in this way, then the causes of
substance, both matter and form, serve as subs trates, potentialities, and
existential preconditions for non-substance. 14
Although this natural priority does not proVide as tight a form of unity
as foca lity and definitional inclusion, it does provide a sufficient framework
for treating the principles as an analogical unity. The non-substantial genera are dependent on substance for their existence, and they are dependent
in a specific way, not as I am dependent on the sun, but because they
are inseparable (0,) xwp'O'T<i) from substance. They are inseparable because they are predications of substance. The substances, Aristotle says,
will be soul and body, or mind and desire and body (1071a2-3). The
non-substances are predications of these, as 0.7 makes clear: the mu-
_.
--
the grouping of examples: on the one hand, statue, bed, and other things
that have form are contrasted with bronze, wood, and the unformed before
it gets form (7Tpiv !l.a{3.lv T~V !-,opcp~v); on the other side of the analogy, the
underlying nature is contrasted with substance (overia) and the particular
thing (T66. n) and the being (TO ov). The grouping within the analogy
suggests that the first three pairs illustrate some common relation. If so,
Aristotle is not interested in shOWing the analogy of potentiality across all
genera as he was in A. Instead he is pointing to two sets of differences
in the very notion of potentiality. First, craft production (though a!-'opcpov
is certainly ambiguous in this respect), in which there is, a pre-existing
substrate, is contrasted with substances (like animals) in which there is
no pre-existing substrate, but only a coexisting one. Second, there is a
status between the three- and the two-principle view. With res pect to
their names they behave like substances (wood:bed::f1esh:man), but their
categoriallogic is closer to that of an accidental compound, since the q,UG...
of bed is not bed, but wood, and bed is an accidental arrangement of wood.
According to the logic, therefore, artefacts follow the three-principle structure: wood is what exists before it takes on the form; it is formles s, then
it takes on a form. The analogy, then, is not primarily about a comparison
between artefact and natural substance, since it is clear that the general
formulation in the first half of the analogy is applicable to cases other than
artefacts (e.g., substance-accident relations). Nevertheless, artefacts setve
16 50 Charlton 1970, 80; see Waterlow 1982, 14nll.
17 Keeping the reading of the M5S against Diels ~nd Ross 1936, 494.
worthy that Aristotle does not explicitly state that a general definition of
the underlying thing is impossible. Although induction is not explicitly
mentioned, the fact that the underlying nature is known (E7ftaT'IT~) by
analogy recommends the inductive view, and this in turn may suggest that
we are supposed to arrive at a universal account. Moreover, there is a clear
movement of discovery in the chapter as Aristotle approaches a solution
does so in fact only in this passage, 0.6, H.2 (1042a4-5) (all passages
concerning principles), and in the discussion about excerpting problems in
APo 11.14 (98a20--23). In all these passages Aristotle carefully distinguishes
and its being is to have that form potentially. Aristotle makes this clear
when he says that the potentiality-actuality distinction is an alternative
cidentally related. Artefacts provide more than merely metaphorical understanding of the underlying principle in substances. The three-principle
genus is related to the two-prinCiple genus in virtue of the fact that only
in the latter is the matter directly and per se related to its form. That is,
a per se relation is added to the three-principle genus in order to generate
of change. At the same time, the addition entails the subtraction of the
principle of privation conceived independently from the substrate. The fact
that they are related by addition and subtraction ensures that the principles
will be of different genera, but it also ensures that they will be per sc
related. And this in turn provides a reason why the two genera should
be treated together and why we may legitimately move in the process
of understanding from one to the other. Although this structure is only
implicit in the Phys., Aristotle develops it further and more explicitly,
though with different emphases, in Met. 0.6 18
The discussion of potentiality in
per se Being in its own right. We noticed that, when this happened, the per
se relations of non-substance did not remain entirely consonant with those
of the first step. For instance, when non-substances, like white or odd, are
treated as per se beings, they do not dir,ectly contain substance generally or
any specific substance in their definitions. And even if ultimately, through
several focal connections, white and odd are per se related to substance,
nevertheless this connection is expressed differently from the connection
of accident to substance. White, treated as an accident, has different per
se relations (it contains raj substance directly in its definition) from white
treated as a per se Being. In a similar way the ovvci,u.t), when considered
18 Cook (1989, 118) denies the parallel between 8 .6 and Phys. 1.7: 'The 191a7- 12
analogy and the 86 analogy do not have the same sort of structure. In 86, Aristotle
uses generalization from examples to understarid what sort of "thing" actuality
is. We understand this through understanding the role that actuality plays in the
actuality-potentiality pairing. At 191a7- 12, we come to know through an analogy what
the underlying nature is in particular cases of substantial coming-to-be.'
--------
19 Burnyeat 1984, 47. For a full focal transcription of related terms see 46-8. Scrupulousness
in definitional inclusion can be overdone, since it is dear from the present passage
that Aristotle is casual: 'the accounts of the prior SVllcillt:t~ are somehow present in
the accounts of these SVVcillt:t~' (Wo"TE Kat (I) TOt~ TOWWV A6)'ot~ (vv7rcipX0txTl 7TWS 01 TWI)
7TPOTEPWI) SVllall(WV Myot 1046a17-19). Aristotle may have wanted the definitional
inclusion to be casually expressed for reasons that pick up on problems discussed in
chapter 4. It is difficult to see why the active capacity is primary and the passive
secondary, if, as Owen has claimed, the inr' aAAov phrase is the basis for the focality.
For JUSt as the passive capacity clearly implies the active capacity (that implication is
noted explicitly at 1046al4-15, inr' apxfis p.ETaJ3A1]nKfj~) , so that which is capable of
changing something for the same reason surely implies something that is capable of
being changed. Since Aristotle clearly intended the inT' aMov expression to be the basis
of the focality, it is impossible on the basis of definitional inclusion alone to assign focal
primacy to one or other of the pairs. For otherwise we quickly face the problems of
recursive definitional inclusion to which Aristotle was so sensitive: active capacity could
be defined as 'principle of change in another or in itself qua other (i.e., in something
that has a principle of change by another or by itself qlta other [i.e., by something that
has a principle of change in another or in itself qua other ... 1).' Cf. snub nose nose . . .
Within the framework of change some kind of mutual or bifocal relationship seems to
be inevitable. Burnyeat et a1. 1984, 11-13, on H.3 1043a29-b4 discuss the ambiguity of
'man' and the problem of the focal meaning, and suggest two readings (soul is primary;
man [as composite] is primary). They are reasonably perplexed as to which of the twO
senses of 'man' is primary. This example reveals the disturbing fleXibility in the notion
of definitional priority.
(1048a30- b9)
We note some immediate similarities with the Physics passage: induction is
explicitly mentioned (E7TaywY'i); the statement that the potential is known
as different from the form or actualiry (fOT' a~ EVpy"a TO V7Tapx"v TO
7TpdYJ.La J.L~ OVTWS wrnrEp AyoJ.L'" BvvaJ.L" 1048a30-32; J.Lia J.LEV ouv iipX~
aVTl1. ouX ovrw jJ.ia ova-a Ou~ ovrws- OV WS TO r6~ n 191a12-13) . In
addition, it is clear that Aristotle is engaged in a process of discovery,
since he begins from the more familiar senses of Suva/.us- and moves to the
less familiar and technical senses; moreover, he is investigating the familiar
sense for the purpose of arriving at the technical sense (B,o ('1ToilVTfS Kat
7TEpt TOVTWV a,~A80J.LEV 1048a30). This process is linked with induction and
analogy in the passage above (1048a35-37). Nevertheless, even in the context of induction the rigours of per se connections apply. The language of
definition and the distinction between universal and particular are present
(opos, TWV Kae' EKaOTa, 7TavTos). In this passage the use of analogy is an
explicit indication that no universal definition of BVvaJ.Lts can be attained.
The scheme introduced in the first chapter of 0 in its simplest form
had consisted in the focal relationship, active BVvaJ.L'..-passive BVvaJ.L's, According to this scheme the application of the first element to the second
produces change. It is reasonable to suppose that when EVPYELa is introduced it will be paired with each BVvaJ.L'S, and that by this pairing a new
sense of BvvaJ.L's will emerge. Aristotle does not make explicitly clear how
active ~UVa.J..LL~
(building art)
passive Bvva/-LLS
(buildable material)
active fvepYELa
passive fvepyta
(building activity)
The examples provided here are still suitable for and adapted to bVVa}LLS in
the context of change, and as a result the conception of the scheme has not
moved significantly beyond 0.1. But a new sense of OVVa}LLS emerges when
the focal relation bet~een active and passive 5vva,u.Ls is set aside, and the
significance of the OVVci,uHS' are no longer seen in relation to one another,
but each in a new relation with its corresponding form of Evipyf.w. This
of change that bound them in the first scheme 20 Change is now no longer
being considered as an essential feature of ovva}u~, and is abstracted from
the definitions of the terms. The new scheme contains the same terms as
the original (but now expanded) scheme, but those terms are understood in
a new set of per se relations, and therefore take on a new significanceY The
senses of ovva}LL< and EVEpYHa are now apprehended by analogy, since the
focal arrangement based on change (EV aAA'f'-inr' aAAov) that kept active
and passive capacity linked has been set aside, and the BVVG.}LEL< are being
treated in relation to their actualities.
KiV17GU
is to ovvaJlt~, so ovuLa is to
some vA'I (1048b6-9). This in some ways seems to recapitulate the Physics
analogy. The first pair seems to imply change, the second pair persistence.
It has been often pointed out that the distinction between the OVVa}LLS
of 0.1- 5, ovva}L'~ for change, and the ovva}LL< of 0.6, ovva}LL< in stable
20 Charles 1994, 97, discusses the significance of this distinction between the two schemes.
2] This seems to be Frede's (1994) basic point, though he seems to extend the focal sense
from the first scheme to the second (190 and passim).
understanding of being qua being and not qua moving and changing. 22
But the examples provided at 1048a37- b4 do not fit this pattern well:
waking/ sleeping and seeing/having eyes shut do not suit either side of
the analogy. I follow Gill, therefore, in interpreting all the examples
as belonging to the conception that has been abstracted from change:
building, waking, and seeing are active VPYlaL that correspond to the
active owaf"' ability to build, sleeping, and being able to see but having
one's eyes shut. No doubt the activity of building usually implies change,
but strictly within the pair as Aristotle has provided it - building and
the ability to build - there is no change in another thing or even in
oneself as other. 23 It is merely the actualization of the internal learned
capacity. The last two examples of ivipYHa, that which has been separated from the matter (a7ToK'Kp(f'ivov) and that which has been worked up
(o:TrHpyaap.vov), co.rrespond to the passive QvvafJ.EL>, matter and what is
not worked up. As Gill points out, the fact that perfect participles are used
in both cases suggests that the persistent state, not change, is at issue .24 On
this interpretation, then, active ovvaj.w; is a capacity for an activity, passive
ovvaf' a potentiality for a form. The KtV'1CT-ovvaf' pair (1048b8) must
accordingly be interpreted as ivipYHa- OVVaf'.25
What is the relationship between the original focality and the analogy that arises between the
OVVcljJ.H)
actuality is added to the original focal scheme, nothing prevents the expanded scheme from being applicable to change. In fact, the example of
building provides a complete range of terms to fill up a scheme associated
with change. In this case, the original focality and the original range and
22 Gill 1989, 172ft and 214ff. distinguishes the first scheme concerning change from the
second scheme concerning persistence; d. Ide 1992, 3-4 and Burnyeat et al. 1984, 48,
who advert to the use of SVVaI-'LS' and fVfpYHa in H.6.
23 Gill 1989, 21Snll cites DA II.S 417b8-9 for building as pure activity.
24 Gill 1989, 215. But how are we to interpret the first set of examples? The first two
representing MVUI-'LS' are the Hermes in the wood and the half in the whole. They
are potentially, because they could be taken out of what they are in (d. the almost
identical example at Phys. 1.7 190b7-8 in the context of coming*to.be). The third is
the knower who is not actively studying/ contemplating. The first two, then, seem to
imply change, and the third does not. I suggest that since at this point Aristotle has
not yet introduced analogy or the induction, we should not be too concerned about
finding consistency in this set of examples. Their purpose here is merely to give an
outline of the distinction between actuality and potentiality, and to introduce actuality
as a kind of Being not like potentiality. Aristotle then goes on (in accordance with his
stated purpose) to distinguish the senses and draw the analogy.
2S See Gill 1989, 217 and Ross 1924, ii, 251.
analogy rather than a focality will take its place. The focality will cease
to exist, because the necessary relations concerning change no longer hold
universally. It is dear that the first pair at least (e.g., active thinking, seeing,
etc.), when it is considered complete in itself, extends beyond sources of
change in another and encompasses activities that do not result in any
may enter into a new per se relationship with their respective EVEpyta;
and the function of ovva!"L> is quite different in these two relations.
Aristotle, then, makes two very different uses of analogy in the context
of potentiality and matter. One is a relativist use appropriate for the study
of principles, the other a realist view intended to lead us to a new conception
The Good
The good has traditionally been treated alongside other transcategorial
terms, like Being, One, and potentiality, in discussions of analogy and
focality. 26 It seems especially promising for our purposes, because Aris-
r. ,242.5-6.
.--~-
'"'-
--
---
"'po,
The derivative good, means, has a different significance and different properties from a good in some other derivative sense, for example, evil, which,
ov
by the I'~
rule of focal inclusion, can also be called 'good.' Means, though
they qualify as focally derivative because they are homonymous with the
focus and imply the focus in their definition, are also peculiar in that they
actually share some properties with the focus. For the final good and the
derivative good are both objects of desire and both are pursued. This is
obViously one of the reasons that Plato was led to the idea of the Good,
and it is preCisely this fact that allows goods to be treated analogically as
philosophy.
Since Aristotle does not provide a solution to this question here, we
should not immediately take the disjunction, ~, to imply that only one
or another of the techniques of unification is correct, nor even that thet;
are exclusive.31 Certainly to look for three distinct techniques is hopeless. 2
The first two disjuncts are to be treated as a unit, T~ acp' vO~ ElvaL r, 7TPO~ V
a:rravTa CTVVTEhELV. Granted, the diction, as Fortenbaugh has pointed out,
30 Met . r .2 1003a35-36: CPVNiTHIV, 7fOllV; 1003b17: ~l ' 0 AEYOVTal .
31 Berti 1971, 170, claims that the goods can he both analogically and focally related. So
also Menn 1992, 551n11.
32 Ross 1914, 291, distinguishes acp' EVOS as the efficient cause, 7fPOS fV as the final cause.
This is not an Aristotelian usage.
--------------------
.-
(T1)VTEAtV
is chosen in part
"'pos fV
closest parallel to the EN, since it deals with the logical organization of
an investigation. 36 As the order of questions contributes, but is not neces-
and b24-25.
39 See Tuozzo 1995 for some similar conclusions, though from a different perspective.
- - - - - - - - - -- -
---
The key to the correct interpretation of these passages comes from Topics
1.15 107a3-17: terms, like AfVKOV, when they are applied to subjects, like
body and sound, have different significance, and indeed refer to predicates
in different categories 1 For a body to be AfVKOV is for that body to be
40 A slight alteration from the Oxford translation, which reads 'since things are said to
he good in as many ways as they are said to be {for things are called good both in
the category .. .' The Oxford translation inclines towards the correct interpretation, hut
without indication from the Greek.
41 lowe this interpretation to Ackrill 1978, who noticed the significance of the Topics
passage: 'Look also at the classes of the predicates signified by the tenn, and see if
they are the same in all cases. For if they are not the same, then clearly the term is
homonymous; e.g. good in the case of food is what is productive of pleasure, and in
the case of medicine what is productive of health, whereas as applied to the soul it
is to be of a certain quality, e.g. temperate or courageous or just; and likewise also,
as applied to a man. Sometimes it signifies what happens at a certain time, e.g. what
happens at the right time; for what happens at the right time is called good. Often
it signifies what is of a certain quantity, e.g. as applied to the proper amount; for the
proper amount too is called good. So then good is homonymous. In the same way also
hUlK"" as applied to a body, signifies a color, but in regard to a sound it denotes what
is easy to hear.' Notice that this tapas does not consider the possibility of ambiguity
between the good in the area of food and good in the area of medicine {a shock for a
some effect. Since the Topics treats the cases of good and II.VKOV as parallel,
the term good, when predicated of various objects, will likewise fall into
different categories. For a man to be good is for that man to be virtuous,
category, but it is equally clear that the predicate, that which teaches, is
not the only good in the category of change. Virtue, moderation, and so on
are predicates that signify 'good' for various things, and these predicates
fall under different categories. Within some categories, doubtless, 'good'
has several significations, for others it has not only just one signification
categorial level, while possible, is not especially useful for Aristotle, and
for this reason he makes no mention of it.
The examples of the Topics passage do provide some superfiCial encouragement for an analogical arrangement of the good along categoriallines: as
and so on. In this analogy, the goods are clearly not the goods for a
category, in the sense that Aristotle develops his analogies of the good
elsewhere. While in some sense substance is for the sake of god, clearly
quality is not for the sake of virtue. If these goods were the goods for
their categories, then all and only the members of the category would be
instrumentally good for the good of that category. Vice would then be
an instrumental good for virtue. Moreover, as we saw, the goods by no
means have to be in the same category as that of which they are goods, so
there is no reason to suppose that the good for a quality will be a virtue.
Again, if the good for a category falls into several categories, then there
can hardly be one good that is the good for that category. This seems
to happen in many cases: the good of an express delivery (a 7TO"'V) is a
7TOT<, but the good of a dry-cleaning (a 7TO"'V) is a 7To<on/< (it matters
that the spots are removed). Moreover, Aristotle maintains that goods
of sciences fan into many categories (medicine has a good in time and
quantity; EN 1.6 1096a31-34). He also consistently interprets the good
as something different from the essence of the thing for which it is the
good. Strategy is the art of fighting wars, but the good of strategy is
victory. Even the <pyov argument follows this pattern: Aristotle draws the
distinction between playing the cithara and playing it well, and ap<n7 is
added to the <pyov (1.7 1098a7-17).45 The good of each thing, then, is not
what the thing is, but some additional accident of it. The relation in our
proposed analogy cannot be 'is the good for'
Although these facts about the good prevent there from being a categorial analogy on the basis of the 'for the sake of' or the 'good of' relation,
the relation virtue:quality: :god:substance, and so on, is as legitimate as the
analogy same:substance::similar:quality. That is, virtue, moderation, and
45 So Gomez-Lobo 1989.
--
-~---------
-_.. -
-~
because it is the 'for the sake of' relation that does the real explanatory
work. This may be one of the reasons why the good is not treated extensively in the Metaphysics (with the exception of god, whose essence is
to be good), and with that exception does not belong in a study of being
qua being: good is an accident and is best understood in the context of
action and in the analogical and focal arrangements that relate one good
to another rather than to Being. Their categorial status, which is the basis
of the science of Being qua Being, is largely irrelevant 4 '
In thi~ respect the good is significantly different from potentiality,
for which the categorial analogy is genuinely significant. For potentiality
discharges its function as potentiality in the category for which it is the
potentiality. Good does not. Potential substance does not exist in several
categories, but if in any category, in substance. 47 The categorial status of
focally, in spite of the attractive suggestion that god as substantial good can
be viewed as the focus 4s It is true that god is the ultimate final cause and
end (DA 11.4 41Sa23-b7), the goal towards which all things strive, and that
for the sake of which they do whatsoever their natures render possible.
At the end of EE (VII.IS 1249a21-b2S) god and the ruling principle in
us are likened to health and medicine respectively: it is with an eye to
46 Shields 1999, chap. 8, comes to a slmilar conclusion from a very different argument.
47 As 6.7 says, per SI! being is said in the categorial ways (1017a22-27; d. 2.3 1029a20-23),
so potentiality, since it is not a per se being, may be thought not to be in a category. But
A.4-5 presents matter as associated with categories, and matter is one sense of Ol/sin
(e.g., Z.10 1035a2; H .2 1043a19-21), and so would seem to be categorially detennined.
48 As Berti rightly points out (1971, 166), Aristotle's positive thesis about the organization
of the goods does not depend on the doctrine of the categories.
the theory.
That inclusion, however, does not depend on substance and its relations
to the other categories of Being. The fact that good falls into all the
categories is not relevant to Aristotle's theory of the good, alid he only
alludes to it in these passages because he is criticizing the Platonic idea of
the Good. The dependence of the good does not follow the dependence of
Being. For virtue (as good quality) includes in its definition a substance, not
god, but man, or whatever substance of which it is the quality. And the
case is similar with all the other non-substantial categories. Moreover,
the proposed focality is peculiar in that the non-substantial goods are
dependent on god rather than on substance generally, as is the case with
the focality of categorial Being. Since there is no substantial good except
god, non-substantial goods must be directly dependent on god for their
goodness. This is clearly not the way that Aristotle chose to develop the
focal relations among the goods in his ethical theory. Aristotle made the
important and anti-Platonic discovery that, though it is a transcategorial,
good does not follow Being per se. As such the categorial organization
of good does not reveal the nature and function of the term, and in fact
disrupts the fundamental relation of means and ends. To pursue the good
through categorial Being and essence is to resign oneself to a second sailing
and to ignore the winds blOwing towards the o~
fVKa.
Analogy and focality, then, are not merely compatible means of providing necessary scientific relations among terms; rather, they bear a fixed
and determinate relation to one another. In the cases we have studied,
analogy is posterior to focality (or some similar logical arrangement such
7
Cumulation
Finally, we turn to a fusion of analogy and focality, an Aristotelian technique I shall distinguish by the term 'cumulation.' According to this technique objects from the same categoty form a series of priority and posteriority, each member of which potentially contains in its definition the
antecedent term. We have already seen similar techniques in the scala
naturae and the ends-means relationship among the goods. It is due to
this similarity that cumulation is sometimes supposed to be a focal relationship, but I hope to show that this is not accurate 1 In spite of the fact
that focality and 'cumulation share the definitional inclusion criterion and
manifest an order of priority and posteriority, they have very different
logical properties and involve different kinds of objects. Whereas focally
derivative objects have a single subject to which they are causally related,
each cumulative object is first and foremost a subject in its own right,
though it may also exhibit certain causal relations with other objects in
the series. It is not the purpose of cumulation to form one genus. In
contrast to focal objects, Aristotle takes pains to show why cumulative
objects cannot form a single genus. Although these objects are the same
basic type of thing at a certain level of generality, they show less coherence
with one another than do focally related objects.
The difference between cumulative objects and other serial objects, like
the scala naturae and the goods, is more subtle. The latter series might
be called series of perfection, because the first members are the perfect
instances, and the subsequent members are qualifications and diminutions
1 E.g., Owen 1960, 187, who notes that there are differences between foeality and
cumulation without discussing them. Shields 1999 most recently conlates them as
'core-dependent homonymies.'
tionship to the end, and they are intelligible as goods only in virtue of
that relationship. By contrast, in cumulative series, where the members
are not primarily viewed in causal relationship with each other, the genus
is weaker: the sensitive soul is a soul in its own right and not because it
requires the nutritive souL Because perfective series are best understood
as a variation on focality, my main attention will be on cumulative series.
Two cases are of especial interest to us, souls and friendships. Aristotle's
treatment of souls is a paradigm case of cumulation and allows us to
determine the pattern. The discussion of friendship provides variations
on the theme and allows us to compare a focal arrangement (in the EE)
with a hybrid account that contains elements of cumulation and elements
of similarity (in the EN). We shall, however, return at the end to a series,
which Aristotle seems to understand as perfective, but which may be more
amenable to a cumulative interpretation, the series that locates theology
Souls
In turning to Aristotle's treatment of the soul in the de Anima we are
completing the task of chapter 3 by considering the affiliations among the
functions of animals at the most abstract level (KaT' aKpif3ELav 402a2).
For this treatise deals with the highest functions of animals, nutrition,
sensation, locomotion, and intellect, and these constitute the final causes
of all of the instrumental parts. These highest functions are, however, not
independent of one another. In an intricate analysis Aristotle considers in
turn whether they are universally (KaB' fV), or analogically, or cumula-
tively related.
Aristotle's analysis in DA 11.1-3 of the kinds of souls and their relationships to one another is framed as an answer to three problems that he
has introduced in 1.1. As he solves these problems he calls upon the universal (<aB' EV), analogical, and cumulative explanation. The first problem
concerns whether there are different parts or species of soul (1.1 402bl-8).
Aristotle asks whether we should look for a single generic definition of
the soul or whether we should rest content with several specific ones.
There follows a second closely related problem: if the soul does have parts,
should we study it as a whole or should we study these parts, their per
se accidents, their functions and objects, and, if we should, to what extent
(402b9-403a2)? Finally, are all the parts of the soul enmattered vvAa) or
are some separable from matter, and for those that are inseparable should
209 Cumulation
we define them in terms of their final cause or in terms of their material
conditions (403a3-b19)?
Each of these problems presents a contrast between abstract and concrete approaches to the subject. While we must look for the most general
legitimate explanation, if we focus too narrowly on abstractions, we run
a risk of committing one of three related errors corresponding to each of
these three problems: defining a genus where there is none, providing a
definition that explains nothing about how living things live, and asserting
that the entire soul is separable from the body.
Aristotle devotes DA II.1-3 to solving these three problems in a preliminary way. As he solves each problem, he moves in turn towards a
fuller account of soul. Since voil, does not easily fit into the organizational
format he is constructing, he leaves it conspicuously on the side. 2 He takes
the problems in reverse order, declaring that the faculties of the soul are for
the most part not separable from the body. The reason he gives constitutes
the first' definition' of the soul: the soul is the first actuality of a natural
organic body potentially having life (Il.1 412b4-9). Since the soul is the
actuality of a body, it is as inseparable from the body as the impression of
a signet ring is from the wax that bears it.
Without completely solving this problem (Il.1 413a8-9), he moves on
to the second aporia, which is the subject of the second chapter and half
of the third (to 414b19). The quick answer is that we simply cannot study
the whole soul, since soul is said in many ways. We must distinguish
the faculties, since each is a sufficient condition for calling a thing living
(413a22-23). Later at II.3 414b6-14 (and again at II.4 415al4-23) Aristotle
impliCitly accepts the need to consider the objects of the senses as well as
the individual faculties, and so answers both parts of the second problem.
Again he promises further investigation (414b14).
In the last half of II.3 he takes up the first problem, and concludes
that we must consider the individual kinds of souls, since there is no
single kind (414b32- 33). The tendency in all three solutions is to drive the
investigation away from the general account towards the particular, and
away from the separate soul towards the composite. The three solutions are
set in a discussion that moves from the most common and familiar account
of the soul to the most sophisticated and explanatory. Each of the three
successive accounts of the soul explains and grounds the preceding account,
and is contained in the next. They are respectively universal, analogical,
and cumulative. Let us consider them in more detail.
2 IU 413,8-9; IL2 413,31-32; 413b24--27; II.3 414b16-19; 415,11-12. Cf. Me'. E.1
1025b34--1026,6.
natural organic body potentially having life (11.1 412b4-5). Before introducing his second account of the soul at 11.2, Aristotle says that this first
account is more evident to us (tK cpaVPWTEpWV) rather than more familiar
in account (KllTa TOV AOyov yvwP'/,-WTpov), and that it plays the role of
the conclusion of a demonstration rather than the middle, as a definition
should (413a11-20). The first definition is too general to deduce all the per
se accidents of the soul from it. Though it tells us something about souls, it
does not tell us what soul is, since soul is not a Single general thing. In the
Topics (V1.10 148a25-26) Aristotle had already cast this problem in terms
of homonymy: ' [IJf the definition applies in a like manner to the whole
range of the homonym, it does not define any of the objects described by
the term. ,3 Life is homonymous, he goes on to say, and there is no single
definition that holds good for both animals and plants. Dionysius' account
of life, which Aristotle quotes in the Topics passage as 'movement of a
creature sustained by nutriment, congenitally present in it,' is common to
plants and animals, but is not the definition of either because (W'I names
particular kinds of life, not an abstracted and general concept of life 4 In
3 There is no mention here of ordered series, or what kind of homonyms we are dealing
with, and Aristotle does not suggest that some kind of homonyms can be gathered
together under one definition. Owen (1960, 187) notes the Topics position as a stage
along the path to the final position in the DA. Comparing the use of 'focal meaning'
in metaphysics and psychology, he remarks, '[Alt the same time there are large
differences in the two uses of focal meaninSt and we are not concerned with the
psychology.' A more thorough study of the DA forrilUlation could well have altered
some of his conclusions, especially his depreciation of the role of analogy (192-3): he
denies that analogy engages in studying 'a particular connexion between the definitions
of a polychrestic word ... [I]t is merely to arrange certain tenns in a (supposedly)
self-evident scheme of proportion.'
4 We find a similar test for homonymy in APo II .13 (97b7-15):
We should look at what are similar and undifferentiated, and seek, first, what they all
have that is the same; next, we should do this again for other things which are of the
same genus as the first set and of the same species as one another but of a different
species from those. And when we have grasped what all these have that is the same,
and similarly fo r the others, then we muSt again inquire if what we have grasped have
anything that is the same - until we come to a single account; for this will be the
definition of the obje<:t. And if we come not to one but to twO or more accounts, it is
dear that what we are seeking is not a single thing but several.
Aristotle cites as an example high-mindedness (p.eyall.0o/uxia.) and advises us' to look
at individual cases - Achilles, Ajax, Socrates. There is nOt just one thing in virtue
211 Cumulation
the DA Aristotle elaborates this argument by introducing the language of
demonstration as a way of explaining the homonymy of the objects. At
II.2 he sets aside the common 'definition,' and turns to the species of soul.
We can deduce from the definitions of the species both their specific per se
accidents and the general account, which is posterior (414a17-28). This is
not to say that Aristotle considers the conclusion of the first chapter false,
but its status is down-graded from that of a first principle to a theorem
of psychology. He can prove the first' definition' by means of the second
using the same scheme as we used for longevity;
first actuality of a certain body IPQ that in virtue of which things live
(414a12-19)
that in virtue of which things live IPO nutrition, sensation, intellect
(413a22-25; bl-2)
nutrition, sensation, intellect IPQ soul (413bl1-13)
first actuality of a certain body IPQ soul (414a27-28)
From the conclusion we can further deduce that the soul is not separable
from the body, since inseparability from the body is predicated of the first
actuality of a certain body. Since soul is homonymous in the sense that
many values can be substituted for it, the conclusion must be proved for
each of the homonyms S Although Aristotle's argument is not so neatly
laid out as this, it is clear that he reaches this conclusion at the end
of 11.2.
When Aristotle claims that living (TO 07v) is homonymous (413a22),
he is not denying that plant and animal life have something in common.
What he denies is that the definition in accordance with the name is the
same in each case. When we answer the question 'What is it for this plant
to be alive?', we say that it absorbs nutriment and grows. When we answer
of which they are called high-minded, but two, unwillingness to brook insult and
indifference to misfortune. If there is some attribute common to both, say self-respect,
it is secondary and explained by the two kinds of states of the soul. The fact that
unwillingness to brook insult is manifested in different actions, withdrawing from the
fight (Achilles), committing suicide (Ajax), and making war (Alcibiades), does not mean
the 'unwillingness to brook insult' itself is homonymous. These actions are not kinds
of high-mindedness, but rather the results of high-mindedness. Unwillingness to brook
insult is not part of the concept of committing suicide, even though it may be a result
of it in particular cases. Such cases are contrasted with animal, which, at least in the
Categories, is predicated of man and ox in virtue of the same account of substance.
S Bolton (1978) has proposed that the definitions of the soul in Il.1 (he counts four) are
indeed proved by the definition of Il.2, but they are proved generically.
6 Bolton 1978 deals more extensively with this feature. I think he is generally right in
saying that there is no fundamental contradiction between the hylomorphic view of the
soul in the VA and the unembodied soul of the unmoved mover. Aristotle is almost
completely consistent in his resolve to deal with soul only among 8v'T/TCt. I disagree with
Bolton, however, that there is a generic definition of soul. Like Hicks, he assimilates the
serial problem to the nonnal dependency of the genus on the species. More recently,
G. Matthews (1992, 190-1) has also tried to discover a generic definition of life.
213 Cumulation
are of different sorts of things, and this is sufficient to eliminate the general
account as a universal definition.
Finally, the analogical strategy also suits the basic Greek conceptions
of the soul. It is among humans primarily and, through theories of transmigration of sout among other animals too, that the traditional Greek
notion of tvx~ is most at home? For Greeks it is an extension of the
term to apply it to plants. Aristotle complains that previous thinkers had
confined their discussions to human soul (1.1 402b3-5), but in fact they
were doing nothing more than following common conceptions. But the
common conceptions are also the source of the homonymy. Since "'VX~ is
a term that applies first and best to humans and to what human beings are,
Aristotle and the Greeks in general find it more natural than we do to say
that man lives by virtue of his intellectual soul. It would be for Aristotle
an abuse of the term to say that human "'vX~ is a "'VX~ in virtue of its
vegetative functions. Moreover, the higher faculties are in some way the
purpose of the lower faculties, and thus are the most important part of the
but it does legitimate their being treated under the same study.
2. The Cumulative Account
The second half of DA 11.3 answers the first aporia, concluding that there
is no genus soul, and explaining how instead the souls are related to one
another. Here Aristotle considers the serial nature of the faculties and its
The two basic features of cumulation are clear from this passage. First,
souls and figures form series by adding some factor to a prior member
in order to form a posterior member. Second, the addition does not alter
the category or basic type of the object, that is, the addition of a triangle
to a triangle creates another figure, and the addition of sensitive faculties
to nutritive faculties creates another kind of soul. This is in contrast to
215 Cumulation
of a different category from that of the focus term, 'doctor.' Yet in spite of
the explicit comparison between figures and souls, there are several ways
in which the likeness is inept. Since this passage is the locus classicus for
cumulation, it is important to examine in detail how the example of figures
Whereas the figures form a potentially infinite series, the souls form a
finite series; and whereas the figures are generated by the same addition
at each step, the generation of the souls requires a different addition. 9 For
thi s reason sensitive and intellectual soul cannot be ana lysed into vegetative
soul, as if three digestive systems connected together could make a mind.
these examples. The prior member can exist independently of the posterior,
but the posterior cannot exist without the prior (415al - 11). In the context
of psychological faculties this natural priority can also be described as
hypothetical necessity: if an animal is to have sensation, it must have the
nutritive faculty to sustain it (d. PA I.l 640a34-35). Nutrition, therefore,
is not present in the essence of sensation, but is necess itated by it. In the
geometri cal context, the triangle is naturally prior, since if there were no
accou nt of the series, for Aristotle says, ' [T]here might be a common
9 Cf. Met. 1.2 l054a3-4, where the triangle is the uni t measure of rectilinear figures.
---
------ -
217 Cumulation
EN 1.6 1096a17-23 assures us that this argument had a Platonic origin, and
was used to deny Forms over Form numbers and over any other series in
which there was prior and posterior. Aristotle turns the argument against
the Platonists by showing that trans-categorials like the good, among which
substance is prior, cannot have a genus.
Even in its Platonic contex~ the motivation for the argument is not
undisputed. There are those who hold, contrary to Aristotle's express statement, that the argument is directed specifically and solely against Forms
of Form number. Their position can be outlined as follows. Plato identified
three kinds of numbers, sensible, mathematical, and Form numbers. The
mathematical numbers (we can ignore sensible numbers) are combinable
with one another and subject to all manner of ordinary mathematical
operations . They are eternal and without matter, but there is a multitude
of each kind so that, for example, two can be combined with another two
so as to make four. Of Form number, by contrast, there is only one of
each kind, Oneness, Twoness, and so on. These numbers, being Forms,
cannot change or undergo operations. They cannot be divided so .as to
become other numbers, for in that case they would admit of becoming and
not-being. Unlike mathematical numbers, Form numbers exhibit an order
of priority and posteriority, since their unchanging Oneness, Twoness, etc.
make them well suited to staying in their appointed order.
Cook Wilson, the champion of this view, asserted that there is no
Form of Form numbers because Form numbers are aa1;M{3A:TlTO~, incomparable with one another, and therefore uncombinable; and because the
numbers are incombinable, they form series of prior and posterior over
which there is no Form or genus. This uncombinability stems from their
being Forms, since no Forms can be combined with one another. 'They
are entirely outside one another, in the sense that none is part of another.
Thus they form a series of different terms, which have a definite order.'l2
This interpretation does go some way towards explaining why they are
uncombinable: if the Two and the Three were combinable so as to make
up the Five, then the Three will be part of the Five. But it does not explain
why their uncombinability entails their forming a series of priority and
posteriority. After all, in order to be related as prior and posterior, Form
numbers must be related to one another, even if they are not part of
one another. Making them uncombinable and incomparable is precisely to
take away the grounds upon which they may be compared as prior and
posterior. The Two cannot be prior to the Three in generation, since Form
numbers are not generated; nor can it be prior ontologically, since one
Form does not depend on another for its existence; nor logically, since in
the realm of the Forms logical priority is identical to ontological priority.
What makes the Two prior to the Three, if not the fact that the Three is
One more than the Two? Form numbers must either be combinable or they
cannot form a series. Contrary to Cook Wilson, then, the uncombinability
of the Form numbers, far from providing a sound reason for priority and
posteriority, destroys any possibility of there being a series among thernY
Not only is the Form number interpretation of the argument suspect
on its own grounds, but Aristotle also states that Platonists considered the
argument valid in all series of prior and poste rior, and not just among Form
numbers.14 Michael Woods, while adduCing reasons why such an argument
could not be held by Platonists at all, suggests a different approach to the
Platonic argument, one that neither relies on the uncombinability of Form
numbers to ensure their serial order, nor restricts the series argument
solely to Form number. In the main issue he is correct. Woods's interpretation relies on seriality to show that there can be no genus, and as
such has the virtue of being consistent with Aristotle's claims about the
argument. He points out that the Form of the Form numbers will be prior
to the Form numbers, and because of the self-predication of the Forms, the
Form of Form numbers will also share in the essential features of Form
numbers. But he argues that the Form of Form number will be prior in a
different sense from that in which the first member is prior to the second:
'[TJhere seems no good reason why a holder of the theory of Forms should
retain the premiss that the number two is, without qualification, the first
number. It may be the first number in the number series, but there seems
13 For variations on the Cook Wilson thesis, see Burnyeat 1987, who claims that
incomparability is the Aristotelian incomparability of the constituent units of each
Form number.
14 Cherniss charged that Aristotle misunderstood Plato's argument in a way that affects
his own prior-posterior arguments. He argued that the Platonist argument was intended
only for application among Form numbers, that the priority and posteriority here
is numerical order and not ontological priority and posteriority (1944, 522); that
Aristotle's criticisms, which imply that the Platonists did not distinguish between the
twO senses of priority (first in the sense of ideal and first in the sense of first term of a
series), is belied by the fact that the Platonic 'first one' and 'first twO' etc. (mentioned
Met . 1081b8-10) did not imply a series of ones and twos, etc. (520). Cherniss contends
that when Aristotle extends the prior-posterior argument beyond mathematicals by
generalizing the argument and making it hold good in every case of ontological priority
(to which, citing Met. 1019a11- 12, Cherniss claims Aristotle reduced all other forms of
priority), the argument that had been inappropriate against the Platonists suffices for
his purposes to show that there cannot be a genus of things arranged in a series.
219 Cumulation
no reason why a holder of the theory of Forms should continue to hold
that it is the first number in every sense, if he holds that each Form is prior
to its particulars and is itself a possessor of the character it represents. The
the full implications of their own argument, and admit that the Form of
Form number will become the first member in the number series. For the
power of self-predication entails the Form's inclusion in the series, and
this way, the argument does what Aristotle says it is meant to do. For
he says that the Platonists denied Forms over series of prior and posterior
things generally, and not only over Form numbers. This argument holds
good in all cases where members of series are essentially serial, and for
the Platonists that will occur wherever Forms are serially ordered. It also
shows how being a series prevents there being a genus of it, and does not
rely on the obscure argument from uncombinability.
Problems arise, however, when we suppose that Aristotle accepts the
argument as his own and applies it to the soul series. To create an Aris~
totelian metaphysical framework for the argument we need only change
the meaning of XWPLrrTOV from 'separable' to 'logically or conceptually
distinct.'16 The denial of the genus is established by two sub-arguments.
First, it is a fact about series that the first element is a member of the series,
a subject alongside all the others, for all that it may also be the principle
of the series. If it were to serve as the genus of the series, the members
of the series, including the first member, would become its species. The
identical thing, the first member, would have to be both a species and its
own genus; and this is impossible, since a species is distinct from its genus.
This argument is sufficient to eliminate the first member of the series as a
candidate for genus. Second, it is necessary to argue that there is nothing
grant that a genus will be prior without admitting that it must be the first
member of the series.
For this reason, Aristotle might make the stronger claim that the
prospective genus must become the first member in the series displacing the
previously first member. He describes this prospective genus as common,
distinct, and naturally prior. But the prior members of the series are also
described as common, distinct, and naturally prior to the posterior members
(d. t..ll1019a3ff.). By describing the genus in such a way that it has all
the same logical characteristics as a prior member, Aristotle might argue
that the genus will become the new first member of the series. And if
this occurs, then the genus is identical with one of the species, and this is
impossible.
Such an interpretation provides a fine description for a Platonic genus,
but does some violence to Aristotle's notion of genus and consequently
faces serious difficulties in explaining why this argument would apply to
the souls 17 The Platonic genus is naturally prior to the first member of the
series, is common and separable, and this will make it into the new first
member of a Platonic series. 18 But this does not fit Aristotelian doctrine. For
if the common element were an Aristotelian genus, the difference between
it and the original first member would have to be the specific differentia of
the original first member, and since we are supposing that all.the members
of our new series have the same logical relationship to one another, the
genus-species relationship, which holds between the new first member and
the original first member, will hold between all the subsequent members
of the series. The result will be that the series is merely an extended
genus-species string. 19 Since the series will form a string, each successive
species will be differentiated by the differentia of the preceding differentia,
in the manner of Met. 2.12's footed, cloven-footed model. But Aristotle's
argument never explicitly assumed that series create genus-species strings,
and a consideration of the applications of the argument amply shows that
17 Chemiss 1944, 513ff.
18 For these characteristics of a Platonic genus, see Met . B.3 999a16-23 .
19 This position is defended by A.c. Lloyd (1962) .
221 Cumulation
the assumption is absurd: a quadrilateral is not a species of triangle nor a
sensitive soul a species of nutritive SQu1. 20 Posterior members are not 7TOta
of prior members . On logical grounds also it is impossible: there cannot be
only one species of a genus, but this is what this argument entails. 21 The
EE argument against the genus of series, then, seems to be better adapted
to Platonic than to Aristotelian logic and metaphysics.
So far, then, the dialectical interpretation of the DA passage provides
only unAristotelian reasons for denying a genus over a series. There is,
however, an alternative interpretation. There are two contexts in which
Aristotle uses the prior / posterior argument in his own voice, our DA
passage and in the Politics, and in neither passage do we find the dialectical
formulation for the rejection of genera of ordered series. Instead, other,
pragmatic reasons are offered. At Pol. III.1 1275a34-b2 Aristotle discusses
the definition of the citizen:
But we must not forget that things of which the underlying things (imoIH:i,uwa)
differ in kind (njJ Ei'OH), one of them being first, another second, another third,
have, when regarded in this relation (Y TOtaVra), nothing, or hardly anything,
worth mentioning in common. Now we see that governments differ in kind, and
that some of them are prior and that others are posterior; those which are faulty
or perverted are necessarily posterior to those which are perfect. (modified ROT)
The passage itself seems clear as far as it goes. Unlike the previously
considered passages, Aristotle does not deny that there may be some commonality among the citizenships, only that this commonality is negligible .
This is quite a different objection from arguing on dialectical grounds that
per impossibile the genus will become the first member of the series. The
passage suggests that, when the objects are arranged in a series TOLaiha) ,
the first member is contained in all the others, and therefore by treating
it, one not only treats something that is explanatory, but also everything
that is common to the series. Accordingly, he leaves open the possibility
that there may be some arrangement other than a series in which there is
significant generic commonality.
This is borne out in Aristotle's discussion of the citizen. The definition
of the first citizen is provided immediately prior to this passage, a definition
that he says is most adapted to all those who are called citizens (}.ta)u(1T'
Ecpapp.oCTa~ OPLCTP.O~ E7T1. 7T(iUTa~ TOV~ AyOP.UOV~ 7TOAtTar; 1275a33- 34):
en
au
20 Cf. Me t. A.9 992a18- 19 for a similar series; ' [TJhe broad is not a genus which includes
the deep, for then the solid would have been a species of plane.'
21 So Top . 1.5 102a31 b3 .
says (1275b5-6) that the definition is best adapted to the citizen of the
democracy, which is only one of the perfect constitutions (aristocracy and
through deliberative and judicial function, and not, say, through being an
overseer (a Spartan ephor). For this reason, Aristotle treats the Spartan
citizen as a perversion of the perfect citizen. Accordingly, he provides a
of all, since he has a penn anent hold on these offices and exercises them
throughout his life. The Spartan citizen, who holds definite offices, has
limited opportunity to be a citizen; and limited in two ways: limited in time
because of the definite tenure of the office, and limited in extent, since the
deliberative and judicial job is split up among the various definite offices.
The second definition is more generaL in the sense that it will include the
democratic as well as the oligarchic citizen, but it is also defective because
in the addition of the itovCTia clause is contained the notion that the ex
officio potential for citizenship activity is sufficient to qualify as a citizen.
In those respects in which the second kind of citizen is similar to the
first, it is similar because it is related to the first, that is, it is a perversion
of the first. The first member, then, will appear in explanations concerning
the second, but not vice versa. In the investigation of the citizen we should
22 Irwin 1990, 82, has sensibly argued that the first definition is not annulled by the
second, but that they are serially ordered. He provides a different reason for the order:
the first definition is first because it accounts for the fact thaI in order for the citizen
to be good, he must rule as well as be ruled, and this is not ensured by the Spartan or
Ca rthaginian constitution.
223 Cumulation
expect the majority of the attention to be paid to the judicial and legislative
functions of indefinite tenure and only secondarily to the definite executive
functions. It is clear that citizenship can be studied in its most common
form, but to treat it as a set of differences within a genus would ignore the
fact that the second form is a perversion of the first. The genus arrangement
would neither capture citizenship in its fullest sense, nor would it call upon
the explanatory principles central to understanding the deficient citizenship
as deficient.
Now, the series of citizenships is in some important respects different
from the series of souls. It is a perfective series: the definition of the first
form of citizenship is logically prior and is somehow contained in the definition of the second on the basis of the 'better and worse' relationship (ef.
Met. B.3 999a13-14). Moreover, the citizenships are not arranged by ontological addition, nor by natural priority; rather Spartan and Carthaginian
citizens are included as citizens on the basis of a qualification to the first
form of citizenship. In spite of these differences, the common account of
the souls is vacuous for the same reasons. Though the second account of
citizenship will cover all cases, we should first explain democratic citizen-
ship and its legislative and judicial functions, since that is where the real
citizenship power resides, then turn to the executive functions of Spartan
citizenship and their relationship to the authoritative functions. Similarly,
Aristotle does not deny that there is a general account of the soul, he only
says that it is absurd to overlook an account that will treat the peculiar
nature of the serial objects. Though 'the actuality of the potentially living
body' is common to all the souls, it only explains inseparability of the soul
and body. What are most important for explanations are the particular
faculties of the soul and their per se relations among one another.
If the members of the series do not form a strong generic unity, what
makes them a Single group, that is, what are the principles of extending
and limiting the series? First, each requires a non-nindom addition to the
member before it. The prior member is the precondition for the posterior
member. DA III.12 provides a more detailed account of the faculties in the
series: nutritive soul is first, because it is necessary for all living embodied
things. As such, it can be treated as an independent and per se subject. Taste
is a sort of touch and is relative to nutriment, which is tangible body. For
this reason, taste and touch presuppose nutrition (which is now relative
to them) and are next in the series, first among the senses. Imagination
does not occur without sensation, nor thought without imagination. In
this way a prior faculty can be treated both per se and as related to
a posterior through hypothetical necessity: the relations of hypothetical
necessity establish the order and explain the reasons for that order.
change of simple bodies is prior to the nutritive soul. Why should the
natural change of simple bodies not be such a member? To say that this
natural change is not life is to beg the question, since life is said in many
ways and the only thing binding homonyms together is their serial order,
in which natural change also participates. It is clear that the series is
generated, but not limited, by logical potential containment. The limits of
the series come from the posterior commonality that the members of the
series generate, specifically from the material component. Natural change
the series both at the beginning and at the end. For there is no activity
that is logically prior to nutrition that requires an organic body, and there
is no activity logically posterior to embodied intellect that in its own right
requires an organic body. Nevertheless, 'having an organic body' cannot
be the genus of soul, because the genus must be the genus of the form,
not the matter. 'Having an organic body' is not what the soul is.
The cumulative soul series, then, introduces us to a new form of organization among subject matters. The subjects are generated by a series
of additions. The additions are ontological, in the sense that one faculty is
added to another faculty, but the relationship between the members is one
of natural priority and hypothetical necessity, that is, the posterior faculty
requires the existence of the prior. The members of the series share a
common account that is not the account of their genus, but rather of their
material correlate. Nothing prevents such subjects from having a genus,
but it is unlikely that the genus will explain much that the first member
of the series does not.
Friendship
Aristotle trears friendship both in the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics. In both works he distinguishes three kinds of friendship,
those based on virtue, pleasure, and utility. In the Eudemian Ethics Aristotle characterizes the relationship between these three kinds as focal, but
in the Nicomachean version he speaks in terms of similarity (op.oiwp.a
and Ka(J' O,uoLoT17Ta). The Ka8' o,umoT11Ta solution is characteristic of many
discussions in the EN, and has close affinities to cumulation and analogy.
225 Cumulation
There has been much discussion as to whether Aristotle changed his mind
about the relationship between the kinds of friendship. I think he did,
but not in the way or for the reasons often attributed to him. I interpret
the shift not in terms of a general chronological development away from
focality, but as a realization that the focal analysis of friendship does not
do justice to the phenomena. 23
1. Eudemian Ethics and the Problems
of Focal Friendship
TLVt.
PRINCIPLE:
iff x is aya80v
or x is $aWOJ.l.EVOV
a.yaeD".
2. Additional premiss:
3. Therefore
if x is
4. and, since
5. Therefore
6.
PRINCIPLE:
~avl x is
0PE/(TOV
a7TA(JYi!
PRINCIPLE)
some is aya86v
nVL
7. From induction:
8. (an interpretation
of 2)
x is ~ov
TLVL,
iff x is aya6lov
HIlt
Aristotle has established a focal relationship between the good and the
pleasant, since the pleasant can be defined as a function of the good. If
something is pleasant without being absolutely good, then it is pleasant
25 The structure of the argument is not entirely dear. He needs to argue that there is a
certain kind of ~M that is both r,ov tt1TAw!> and aya80v cbr'\'wS', and especially that there
are psychic as well as physical pleasures that fall into this category. He argues from the
obvious case that what is advantageous to a healthy body is aya8ov, to what is pleasant
to a health body is pleasant without qualification, and finally to what is pleasant to
a healthy soul is pleasant without qualification. There is no explicit connection made
between the pleasant and the good until the end of the passage, and this is stated as a
conclusion: 'To [sensible and good adults] that which suits their habit is pleasant, and
that is the good and noble' (1236a5-7) .
227 Cumulation
because it is apparently good." Although both the pleasant and the good
are objects of desire, they are not coordinate species of desirables. The good
is prior, while the pleasant is posterior and dependent on the good.
By establishing a focal relationship between the objects of friendship
Aristotle prepares the way for a focal interpretation of the friendships
themselves. Since pleasure is definable in terms of the good - for it is the
apparent good, if it is not the good itself - pleasure is said to be focally
related to the good (VII.2 1236a15- 33):
There must, then, be three kinds of friendship, not all being so named for one thing
or as species of one genus, nor yet having the same name quite by mere accident.
For all the senses are related to one which is the primary, just as is the case with
the word 'medical'; for we speak of a medical soul, body, instrument, or act, but
properly the name belongs to that primarily so-called. The primary is that of which
the definition is contained in the definition of all/7 e.g. a medical instrument is one
that a medical man would use, but the definition of the contained is not implied
in that of 'medical man.' Everywhere, then, we seek for the primary. But because
the universal is primary, they also take the primary to be universal, and this is an
error. And so they are not able to do justice to all the phenomena of friendship;
for since one definition will not suit all, they think there are no other friendships;
but the others are friendships, only not similarly 50. But they, finding the primary
friendship wiJI not suit, assuming it would be universal if really primary, deny
that the other friendships even are friendships; whereas there are many species of
friendship; this was part of what we have already said, since we have distinguished
the three senses of friendship - one due to excellence, another to usefulness, a
third to pleasantness.
It is clear here why the medical things are not one species or species of
one genus. In spite of their per se relations, they are different kinds of
things, substance (man) and non-substances (actions, events, etc.). But the
application of the principle here to friendship is much more problematic,
and has been used to support the theory that the EE is earlier than the
EN, which rejects the focal relationship in favour of mB' Ol'-o<aT'Ira28
The focal argument faces two major problems.'9 Much of the difficulty
lies in the fact that Aristotle is forced to make pleasure friendship into a sort
of sick or failed virtue friendship, an interpretation that is intuitively unconvincing. In the EN by contrast it is characterized as merely incomplete.
The EE account classes desirables as either goods or apparent goods, and
bases the difference on psychological faculties of cognition. Apparent goods
are the objects of cpavTaO'La alone, whereas goods are at least accompanied
by opinion (OOta 1235b27- 29). Aristotle cites four examples to illustrate
the identity of the ayaB,," Q.1f)..w, and ryo;' Q.1f)..w" and indicates the way in
which the relative ayaBa" and ryov are dependent on the absolute form in
virtue of a debility or sickness:
For we say that what is advantageous to a body in health is absolutely good for a
body, but not what is good for a sick body, such as drugs and the knife. Similarly,
things absolutely pleasant to a body are those pleasant to a healthy and unaffected
body, e.g. seeing in light, not in darkness, though the opposite is the case to one
with ophthalmia. And the pleasanter wine is not that which is pleasant to one
whose tongue has been spoilt by inebriety .(for they add vinegar to it), but that
which is pleasant to sensation unspoiled. So with the soul; what is pleasant not to
28 Fortenbaugh (1975, 59-60) has said that it is difficult to construe the three friendships in
the 7fPOS ElJ arrangement. He suggests that the E illustrates and explains focal meaning
but does not apply it directly to friendship, because it does not work. '[TJhe Eudemian
Ethics does not go on to apply this analysis to the different kinds of friendship. Having
stated that the focal logos must appear in the other definitions, the Eudemian version
does not show how the definition of perfect or primary friendship is involved in the
definitions of other kinds of friendships.' He suggests that the friendships of the EN
are analogically related, claiming oddly as the reason that the three kinds of friendship
do not perform the same function. Walker (1979) argued that the EN did not present
an analogical arrangement.
29 For a recent defence of the focal arrangement, see Ward 1995.
229 Cumulation
children or brutes, but to the adult is really pleasant; at least, when we remember
both we choose the latter. And as the child or brute is to the adult man, so are the
Aristotle implies a division into two kinds of desirables: those goods and
pleasures that are natural and not peculiar to an individual in aberrant
condition, and those that are both cpaLVO/lEVa aya86. (apparently good) and
aya86. TLV' (good to someone). The examples provided imply that cpavTaIT{a
incorrectly affirms the not-good object to be good. Thus, an immature
person will mistake the pleasant for the good. He must mistake his pleasure
friend for a virtue friend. Now, if the pleasant is to be focally related to
the good, pleasure must contain the definition of good in it. But equally
there are many pleasure friends who can accurately identify the basis of
their friendship. There is no reason to suppose that every person must
say of his pleasure friend that he thought he was a virtue friend and
intend by 'virtue' what the word is defined to mean. We do not have to
be deluded or bad to have a pleasant friend whom we do not think to be
virtuous. If this is so, the focal relationship between pleasure and good
breaks down.
Aristotle is not wholly unaware of this problem. He treats virtue and
pleasure friendship together and makes it clear that bad men are not capable
of virtue friendship. Owing to their debility the pleasure they derive is
perverted:
Nothing prevents [bad men's] loving with the other kinds [0 friendship]; for
owing to pleasure they put up with each other's injury since they are incontinent.
The harm they do one another is a result of their perversion. Such a view,
however, makes it impossible for a good man to pursue a purely pleasure
friendship, something Aristotle makes room for at the end of the chapter:
For the bad may be pleasant to one another, not qua bad or qua neither good nor
bad, but (say) as both being musicians, or the one fond of music and the other
a musician, and inasmuch as all have some good in them, and in this way they
harmonize with one another. (VIL2 1238a35-38)
The pleasure friendship that a good man enters into cannot be for merely
the apparent good, for he would not in that case be good. Conversely,
the pleasure friendship that the bad man shares with the good man is
the focal relationship. And, as we shall see, this is precisely what happens
in the EN account.
Clearly, though, Aristotle intended this argument to be the basis of his
claim that the friendships are focally related. In order for the argument to
succeed, the cpawoJ.Lwou aya80v must appear to the bad man to be virtue,
but in fact be pleasure; he must mistake pleasure for virtue. Since virtue
is pleasurable, Aristotle may have supposed that the mistake would not be
infrequent.
231 Cumulation
2. The Nicomachean Version
In the EN Aristotle makes no explicit mention of analogy or focality of
friendship. But, just as in the EE, EN VII/'2 says that the problem of friendship can be solved if we first come to know the purposes of friendships, and
by knowing the purposes we shall be able to make the distinctions. Since
the purposes of friendship differ in species, so do the friendships differ in
species (VIII.3 1156a6-8)31
The most notable feature of EN VIII.2 is Aristotle's dismissal of the
focal relationship between the ends of friendship (1155b17-27):
The kinds of friendship may perhaps be cleared up if we first come to know the
object of love. For not everything seems to be loved but only the lovable, and this
is good, pleasant, or useful; but it would seem to be that by which some good or
pleasure is produced that is useful, so that it is the good and the pleasant that are
lovable as ends. Do men love, then, the good, or what is good for them? These
sometimes clash. So too with regard to the pleasant. Now it is thought that each
loves what is good for himself, and that the good is without qualification lovable,
and what is good for each man is lovable for him; but each man loves not what
is good for him but what seems good, This however will make no difference; we
shall just have to say that this is that which seems lovable.
Aristotle assumes from the beginning that there are three ends of friendship, the good, the pleasant, and the useful, and asks whether one loves
the good or what is good for oneself. Although his analysis of the problem
considers only the good, the pleasant could be easily substituted. He implies
that the ends are to be treated ,eparately for the purpose of his analysis,
and makes no attempt to connect or relate the pleasant and the good. In
this way he treats the good and the pleasant as independent objects of
love and, as a result, eliminates the basis for the focal arrangement. As for
utility friendship, it is almost brushed aside, this time not because it is easy
to fit into a focal arrangement (although it is), but because it is not an end
in itself. This separate treatment for the three objects of love is picked up
again in chapter 3, where Aristotle considers the three kinds of friendship
in terms of their ends. Virtue friends love each other for themselves, but
pleasure and utility friends abstract some feature from their friend that is
of interest to them. The pleasant aspects of another person are abstracted
from the whole person, and are not considered as logically dependent on
31 bta<PipH bf mvm a.lI.lI.~lI.wv "rOEt' Kat at
EWl1. lCTapt8p.a TOtS QHlI.l1Toi:s.
CPtll.~CTHS
apa Kat
TE
34 This is contrary to the opinion of Walker, who holds that the definition states the
necessary and sufficient conditions for all kinds of friendship (1979, 185).
35 Cf. Phys. VIl.4 248b17-19 and the discussion above on the soul.
233 Cumulation
friendship. The nature of the containment has also changed. The term
'pleasure friendship' is not contained in the definition of virtue friendship,
but pleasure friendship is nevertheless implied in virtue friendship, and can
be proved to belong to virtue friendship because of the essential attributes
of virtue friendship. So at EN VIII.3 1156b12- 17, Aristotle says:
And each [virtue friend ] is good without qualification and to his friend, for the
good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So they are
pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other,
since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions
of the good are the same or like.
- -- - -
The likeness and unlikeness are based on three sets of factors that serve
to determine friendships: the general account, the purposes of friendship,
and the characteristics (Tp07TO< ) of the complete friendship .'6 The general
account establishes their common claim to the title, while their purposes
differ. The purposes, in turn, entail certain characteristics that the complete
friendship has most completely and others share more or less." The friendships are even described as differing by the more and the less, in spite of the
fact that they are speCifically different (VIII .11155b13-16). The Similarity
among the characteristics of friendships, then, is a deduced result of the
36 These three sets fonn a
SOrt
IlEt EVVOEtii aA'\~'\otS' Kat !3ovAE(!"8aL TayaOci 2. J.l.~ Aav8civoVTa~ 3. OL' ill TL TooV Elp1JJ.l.f.vwv.
The last is divided into 1. virtue; 2. pleasure; 3. utility. Virtue friendship is then
characterized by (i) durability, (ii) age-group considerations, (iii) living together,
(iv) needing a long time to fonn, (v) getting the same thing from one another, (vi)
unsusceptibility to slander, (vii) between people who are similar, and (viii) who trust
each other.
37 The Magna Momfia ILll (1209a19-35) gives an explanation that combines elements of
the EE and the EN accounts:
And these forms of friendship, that of the good, the pleasant, and the useful ... hang
in a way from the same point. JUSt so we call a knife surgical, a man surgical, and
knowledge surgical ... Similarly ... the fri endship of the good which is based on the
good, the friendship depending on pleasure, and that depending on utility ... while they
are nm actually the same, they have still in a way the same sphere and the same origin
... [TJhe friendship of the virtuous ... is a compound of all these, of the good and the
pleasant and the useful.
Clearly, the author of the MM combines the definitional inclusion (from the medical
example) and association by accumulation. There is no reason why they can not apply
to the same objects, but they do not explain one another.
235 Cumulation
purposes. For this reason, these similarities are secondary and need not be
thought to establish any sort of rival order among the friendships: they are
posterior to the purposes. They are discussed at length, because Aristotle
is interested in explaining why pleasure and utility friendships are called
friendships (1157a25-32), in spite of the fact that he considers them to be
incidentally friendships.
On balance, then, Aristotle's analysis of friendship in the EN has
strongest affiliations with cumulation. He is able to give an account of
why one friendship is more, another less, like friendship properly so called
on the basis of the logically prior purposes, and these purposes most closely
resemble the order of inclusion among the souls. By these organizational
means Aristotle is able to provide a more convincing and plausible account
of the nature of friendship than he had in the EE.
Series in which there are prior and posterior members manifest a
variety of forms . The souls and the friendships, when viewed serially, are
generated through logical and ontological additions and they progress in
order of perfection. As such, they are basically cumulative series. For their
logical additions are not diminutions or perversions of the first member,
but rather completions. In other series, like that of citizenship, the order
is based on logical but not ontological inclusion: the first member is not
ontologically prior to the second member. Instead, the terms of the series
are related by the addition of an element that represents a qualification and
diminution of the first member. In all cases, though, it is the additions that
give the series their distinctive scientific form. For each member individually serves as a principle of explanation for analogically common features,
and the first member serves as the causal explanation for all the properties
that derive from it and that all the other members share in because of their
possessing that member.
Both Frede and Patzig view the relationship between sensible substance
and god (non-sensible substance) as focal; Patzig, insofar as god is the
cause, that is, the prime mover, for sensible substance, and Frede because
god is form and pure actuality, and therefore more abstract than sensible
substance, though containing that feature which is substance first and
foremost. 39 What is said of it qua Being will, therefore, apply as well to
concrete sensible substance, which in turn will be treated as a subordinate
science. 'Why would it be the task of the theologian to consider these
matters [i.e., general metaphysics]?' Frede asks. 'There are two possible
explanations. The first is that since these matters have to be discussed
somewhere, and since they are most naturally discussed in the context of
ontology, it will be the task of the theologian to deal with them, since
it is his task to do ontology. But there is another possible explanation
which ties this fact to Aristotle's claim that first philosophy is universal,
because it is first. Since it is first, and since these principles and notions
are unive rsal, first philosophy will be the first place where they are used.
Hence, it will be the task of the theologian to introduce them: 40
There are important distinctions between these views, and each is open
to particular objections. Patzig's view that god is cause, the prime mover
of all things, implies that god is useful in the explanations of sensible
substances and is adapted to these substances, just as Aristotle suggests
in A.4-S. Accordingly, the definition of god will contain the definition of
sensible substance, and god will be secondary to sensible substance. This
39 So also Owens 1978, 298: 'In studying thi s definite nature, one studies the Being found
in everything else.'
40 Frede 1987b, 93.
237 Cumulation
is not to say that god cannot be focally primary in some relation, but as
prime mover god will be derivative.
Frede, by contrast, claims that god, being pure form and actuality,
they are proved of the genus, general magnitude, and can be applied to
the specific instances of magnitude, geometry and astronomy. God, by
contrast, is a separate substance and not just the sum of common attributes
and means, in which the good of the means is defined in terms of the good
end. 41 If this is so, there are a couple of respects in which his account in E.l
is off the mark. There is no question that the substances form a series of
prior and posterior - god, sensible substances; and that god is the most abstract, lacking matter and change (the Metaphysics for the most part treats
substance with matter, but not with change). I suggest, though, that for
the purposes of the science of Being qua Being this series should be likened
to the cumulative soul series, vegetative, sensitive, intellectual, in which
conceptual and ontological additions are made to each member in order to
generate a series of objects that share the same category. As we saw, what is
said commonly of all living things, namely, that the soul is the actuality of
the potentially living organic body, is not said just of vegetative soul only
nor is it said of the other kinds of soul in virtue of vegetative soul. Rather
41 Compare also Aristotle's comment in the EE's discussion of friendship: 'But because the
universal is primary, they also take the primary to be universal, and this is an error'
(VII. 2 1236a23-25).
derived equally from the nature of the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual
souls. We may interpret the kinds of Being and the general attributes of
Being, like PNC, in a similar manner. In the series god, sensible substance,
conceptual and ontological additions are made, but the general attribute
PNC does not belong to sensible substance in virtue of god, but rather
it belongs in virtue of the nature of sensible substance. Now it may be
argued that the order of excellence is reversed in the two series: the series
vegetative, sensitive, intellectual increases in order of excellence while the
series god, sensible substance decreases. But in fact, this just strengthens
the point. For god is separate and unchanging essence and actuality. As
a result, PNC will belong to god if it belongs to anything. But PNC also
belongs to Beings that do not meet the stringent qualifications of god. In
fact, it applies to anything definite, substance or non-substance, in virtue
of whatever their definition is. Aristotle's favourite example in
r,
man as
a biped animal, indicates that PNC will hold even of. definition expressed
in terms of the matter of a substance. Moreover, Aristotle nowhere claims
that PNC holds in virtue of god or pure actuality; rather he makes clear
in APo 1.10 and r.3 (1005.22- 29), that PNC is common by analogy, just
as the common definition of soul is common by analogy.
239 Cumulation
isosceles triangles or even bronze isosceles triangles, 2R would still not
lative pattern rather than the focal and perfective pattern that Patzig and
Frede envision.
charge. Accordingly, Aristotle developed the doctrine of abstraction together with analogy, focality, and cumulation to provide a set of interlocking and mutually dependent techniques for overcoming the isolation
of the subject-genus. In spite of the fact that these techniques receive little
attention within the formal presentation of the APo, it is clear that they
can be expressed best within that theory and especially within the fundamental notions of genus and essential connections. Without sacrificing
the integrity of the autonomous genus, these techniques allow for the
inclusion of the relevant and necessary external objects and causes within
a science as the well as the connections between autonomous genera.
Focality is, of course, the primary relation, being identical with per se
predication. It provides a flexible description of normal science in both its
core and extended aspects. Focally derivative items, which surround a core
subject-genus, both reveal the nature of the core subject and may also be
semi-abstracted so as to become subjects in their own right. These new
subjects, nevertheless, remain part of the science of the core. Any per se
(2) predicate, for example, male and female which belong to animal, may
have properties proved of them per se, and these proofs will form a part
of the extended science of animal. Focality, then is the primary means of
241 Cumulation
virtue of which all subsequent terms are called by the same name. When
these three criteria are taken together, it becomes impossible for a series
of the soul type to be focally related.
Cumulation also has some analogical characteristics. Like analogues,
cumulative subjects are all in the same category; focally related subjects
are not; and all share some per se attribute and not just by relation.
Souls are all actualities of organic bodies, friendships are mutual and
recognized bonds of affection. The result of the cumulative TrpoO"$'O"t< is
not the creation of a genus network around a subject, but a proliferation
of parallel subjects, which share attributes analogically and in virtue of
common essential elements, for instance, the assimilation of the nutritive,
sensitive, and intelligible by that which has the capacity to receive them.
Souls are per se things and are treated in their own right and not as relative
to the first member of the series.
Cumulation differs from biological analogy because in biological analogy there must be some absolutely common element to which the analogues are all per se related, and which is semi-abstractable, but which,
given the concrete subject matter is not abstracted. This semi-abstractable
element is causally significant and distinct. In cumulation, by contrast, .
there is not a single common cause to which the members are all related;
their commonality is posterior and proved from different and specific
causes. Like metaphysical analogues, members of cumulative series are
gathered together because of their mutual focal relations of definitional
inclusion. Since members of cumulative series are not per se related to
some common and logically prior item, they do not need to be related to
anything more abstract than themselves in order to be analogically related.
For this reason they are well adapted to operate at the most general and
abstract levels of Aristotle's ontology. Indeed, analogues, precisely because
they require a distinct abstract can never be the ultimate form of scientific
unification, but instead always rely on focality or cumulative series.
Finally, these three techniques themselves can be seen to form a sort
of cumulative series: focality, analogy, cumulation. A new qualification is
added at each stage in order to create an additional form of unification.
To the per se relation between genera that is characteristic of focality
we add a proportional identity in order to create analogy, and the per
se relation among analogical genera is further qualified by progressive
ontological and logical additions in order to create cumulation. Together
these techniques contribute to a style of philosophy and science that is
distinctively Aristotelian. For Aristotle combines that rigour so admired
among us moderns, that isolates a subject matter for study and seeks
to understand it in its own right together with the synoptic vision of
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INDEX LOCORUM
Cat.
1
3
5
5
6
6
7
8
1.12- 15
1b16
2.34--b5
3.22-28
5.38-b10
6.19- 25
6.36-37
11.15
150n23
62n18
151n28
138
41n40
38n36
181
165
21.29-32
117n2
D1
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.5
1.6
1.6
1.7
11
1.7
1.7
73b9-10
73b10-16
73b26-32
73b32-33
74.12-13
74.16-17
74.17-25
74.35-b4
74b8-10
75.28-29
75.38-39
75.39-b2
75a42-b1
APr
1.39
49b3--5
117n2
72.14--24
72.16- 17
73.24--25
73.24--27
73.34--b16
73.34--37
73.37-b3
73b4--5
73b5-10
73b6-8
80
26
19n8
15
16
16
16
21
16
149n22
APo
1.2
1.2
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.9
1.9
1.9
1.10
1.10
1.10
1.11
1.12
1.13
75b10--11
75b12-20
75bl4--17
75b37-76.2
75b37-38
76.4--7
76.9-15
76.37- b2
76b16-19
77.26-35
77.40--b6
78b32-79.16
150
16
17n4
17n4
17n4
18, 239
24
30
16n2
30
21- 2
20
18n7,
126
21,90
21-22
33n26
22
21
18
32-3
157, 238
26, 91
81
26
33n26
33n26
IU7
11.17
11.17
11.17
11.17
11.17
11.18
11.19
Top.
1.5
1.5
1.9
1.9
U5
1.15
1.15
1.18
IV.6
V.2
V.8
VI.4
VI.4
VI.6
83a2- 17
83b13-17
83b19-20
87a38
91,18- 21
91bl-7
96b5--6
97.6-19
97.34-37
97b7-15
98a20--23
99.1-16
99.8- 10
99a15- 16
99.16--37
99.37- b7
101b39102.1
102.31-b3
103b20--39
107.3-17
107b13- 18
107b19
108b6
128a26-29
130.39
138b23-26
141b15-18
142b2--4
143a29-32
126n7
183
19n7
21
31
19n8
164n41
123
158n36
6n1
158n36
210
83, 84,
91,99,
188
212
93
28
83,91
94
94
97
109
117n2
221n21
143, 153
146-7
201
40n38
62n18
219
140nl0,
142
117n2
182
174n51
117n2
143n15
VI.6
VI.6
VI.8
VI.9
VUO
VI.11
144,31-b3
144b31- 145al
146,36- bl
147b13- 14
148,25- 26
149al-3
137- 8
131nl0
181
117n2
210
117n2
165.35- 37
165b12-17
173bl-11
181b37-182a2
198
138
138
32
198
184a23- 25
183n12
177-8
193n24
166
186
191
187
187
187
204
180n6
188
180
SE
1
3
13
31
34
Phys.
U
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.7
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8
1.9
11.2
190b7-8
191,6--7
191.7- 12
191a12- 13
191a17- 27
191a27-29
11.2
11.2
11.2
11.2
II.2
11.2
lll.1
191b4-10
191b15- 16
191b27-29
192a31- 32
193b22194.12
193b26--32
193b32-33
193b34
194al-12
194.7-15
194b9
2OOb32-201a3
IV.l
IV.8
V.2
209,9
214b22- 23
226,26- 29
30
19n7
30n22
30
35
31
181
40n37,
181
101n12
101n12
79n42
39-41,
212
VnA
24Sb17-19
40,49,
Vn.4
Vn.4
249.21-25
249a29-b26
232n35
40
41
26Sb17-19
299,13-17
23n14
31, 154
333a20-34
46n49
372b34373,5
373,6-16
373,16-19
34
35
35
DC
1.2
IIJ.I
GC
11.6
Mete.
III.3
III.3
III.3
DA
1.1
I.l
1.1
I.l
I.l
I.l
1.5
11.1
11.1
11.1
II.l
n.3
n.3
11.3
n.3
11.3
nA
11.4
1I.5
11.8
n.s
11.9
11.9
11.11
1II.l0
1IJ.12
414b19-33
414b19
414b32-33
415al-11
415a11-12
415,14-23
415a23-b7
417bS-9
420a30-b4
420bl-4
421,16-20
421,17-bl
423,12-15
433b19-21
214
209
209
215
209n
209
204
193n23
104
82n46
S2n46
104
69n29
50
223,
240
Sens.
443b3-12
104
454bl4-23
455b32-33
72
467a6-S
96
468,9-12
468a13-17
468b28-30
469b21-22
470.19-20
6S,72
67
75
95
95
478b32-33
479b19-26
480.23-b20
95
95
101
486.5-14
80
Somn .
402,6-7
402bl-8
402b3-5
402b9-403,2
403,3-b19
403,25-b19
410a13
412.7-8
412a4-5
412b4-9
413a8-9
11.1
11.2
413a11-20
413a22-23
11.2
11.2
11.2
11.3
n.3
413a31-32
413b24-27
414.12-28
41416-14
414b16-19
51
208
213
208
209
31n23
136n7
180n6
210
209
209,
209n2
210
209,
211-12
209n
209n
211
209
209n
1
2
72
Long.
6
Juv.
1
2
3
5
6
Resp.
17
20
21
HA
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.2
1.4
1.4
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.12
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.12
11.15
11.17
I1I.1
111.9
I1I.11
111.16
II1.19
III.19
IY.1
IV.3
IV.5
IV.8
IV.8
IV.11
V.4
486.14487.10
486.14-b22
81
53-4,
55n4,
62n18
486.20-21
60
486.21-23
38
486b5
38,79
486b14-16
61
486b17
65n21
486b20
70
102
486b21-22
486b24-487.1 60n13
55n4,
488b29-32
68
489.19-22
71
489.23-26
67
490b10-12
93
491.14-19
55n4
79n42
491.19
493.12-16
67n27
497b6-12
62
497b1S-20
70
497b26-27
70
497b33-498.2 67
503b29-32
67
506.15
112n25
508.16
112n25
510.21-23
112n25
517.6-10
66n24
517b21-26
66n24
519b26-30
67
520b1S-19
71n33
520b25-33
69
523b27-29
64n20
112n27
527b22-24
530b31-33
68
112n27
533.28-30
534b12-15
64n20
538b8-9
103
112n27
540bl-3
VI.12
VII(VIII).l
VII(VIII).1
VII(VIII).2
566b12-13
588.25-31
588b4-13
589b1S-19
64n20
73
111-12
101
PA
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
1.1
639.15-29
639.15-19
639.29-b3
639b5-10
640.10-19
640.34-35
1.2-4
1.4
1.4
1.4
644.12-23
644.14-16
1.4
1.4
1.5
1.5
1.5
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.1
11.2
112
11.2
112
11.2
11.3
11.3
11.4
11.7
11.7
11.8
644.22-23
644.23-27
645b6
645bS-10
645b20-28
646.13-24
646b20-22
646b30-34
647.14-21
647.14-19
647.24-33
647b29-35
648.2-7
648.4-8
648.4-5
648b2-8
650.34-35
650.2-8
651.17-18
652b23-25
653.10-12
653b35654.19
644.1~23
7n1
129n9
19n7
48n53
36n33
76
215
74
78
69
55n4,
65n21
63n19
67n26
101
71n34
55n4, 72
80
85
107n17
106n15
131
105
59
103
73
71n34
95n5
71n34
132
69
72
72
84
11.8
653b35
11.8
11.8
11 .9
11.9
653b36
65435-9
65538-10
655312-17
11.9
11.9
11.9
655317-28
655323-34
655332
11.9
11.9
655333
655b2--4
11.9
655b2
11.9
11.9
11.9
11.9
11.10
11.12
11.13
11.14
11 .14
11.15
11 .16
11.16
I1I .1
655b4--15
655b4--5
655b8
655bll
656b26-29
657318-23
65833-10
65836-7
658b2- 7
658bl4--15
658b35-36
659b23-27
661b3--<i
665b8
667b18-20
667b21-26
66834--7
668323-28
668325- 27
IlI A
I1I .5
I1I.5
111.5
III.5
111.5
III.6
III.6
111.6
IV.2
IVA
669.24--32
669b8- 12
677325-35
67838-9
65n21,
83
57
102
131
131,
84
83
69
57,
65n23,
84
65n21
69,
107n17
65n21,
66n24
71
70
66
65n21
131
101
131
102
131
131
70
59
70
55n6
71
198
100
101
67
101
102
100, 102
95
71n34
IV.5
IV.5
IV.5
IY.5
IV.5
IV.5
IV.5
IY.5
IV.8
IV.8
IV.10
IV.10
IV.10
IV.10
IV.10
IV.10
IV.10
IV.ll
IV.ll
IV.ll
IV.12
IV.12
IV.12
IVJ2
IV.12
IV.12
678331-34
679315-23
679b15
680315
68139-15
681315-28
681b28-30
681b33-34
683b28
684333-35
686324--68732
686325-28
686b2D-31
686b31-68731
68738-23
687b6
68832--4
690bl4--16
691316
691317-19
692b3-9
692b13
693b4--13
693b1D-13
693b13-14
693b26694312
100
83
56n7
55n6
112
113
71
71
56n7
100
113
100
113
72
114
55n6
70
48n52
70
102
61-2
55n6
100
48
90
695b17-19
696b2-8
696bl6-20
696b24--31
48
101
100
84
102
132
1
1
6
7
69831-7
69834
700b4--<i
70137-b1
49-50
108
50
50
70435-9
48
IV.13
IV.13
IV.13
IV.13
IV.13
MA
lA
704b9-11
714b3- 7
714b20-23
49
70n31
49
716b5- 9
717.4-6
725.5
726bl-5
735.16-26
737.36- b4
739.18-20
741b11-15
742.18-b17
743bl8-25
745b2-9
753b35- 754.3
756.32
76la24-32
779.2-4
782.14-20
783b2-8
112n27
112n27
198
107
106
108
68
75n37
75
75
166n45
68,72
112n25
60n14
73
103
69, 103
B.1
B.2
B.2
B.2
982.1- 3
982.25-28
985blO-13
992.18-19
995b18- 24
995b26-27
996bl4-22
997.21-22
997.25-33
159
31n24
79n42
221n20
165
165
148n21
18n7
136n6,
158n38
B.3
B.3
B.3
B.3
B.3
B.3
f.
998b9- 21
998b22-28
998b23-24
999.6-14
999.13-14
999.16-23
1003.21-22
GA
1.2
1.2
Ll8
Ll9
ILl
11.3
11.4
11.5
11.6
11.6
11.6
lll.2
111.5
IIL11
V.l
V.3
V.3
Met.
A.l
A.2
AA
A.9
B.l
6, 137
140n10
216
223
220n18
122, 157
f.2
f.2
f.2
f.2
f.2
f.2
f .2
f.2
1003.35- 36
1003b2-3
1003b5- 14
1003b5-6
1003b6-10
1003b8-10
1003b8
1003bl4-15
f.2
f.2
f.2
1003b16- 17
1003b17
1003b221004.2
1003b22-25
1003b32-36
f .2
f .2
f.2
f.2
f.2
f.2
f.3
f .3
6.2
6.6
6.6
6.6
6.6
6.7
6.7
6.8
6.11
6.11
6.14
6.18
6.21
6.28
6.28
6.28
6.30
.1
1003b33- 34
1003b35-36
1004.5
1004.6-9
1005.22- 29
1005.26-27
1014.1-3
1016bl- 3
1016b1
1016b6-11
1017.22-30
1019.3
1019.11-12
1022.31-32
1022b15-18
1024.36-b3
1024b6-9
1024b9-16
1025.30-32
1025b7-13
197n30
145
117
135n5
163
125, 157
166
120,
183n
135n5
197n30
166n44
166
166,
166n43
167
168, 171
136n7
135n5
238
26n20
20n10
170
168
170n49
169
170
148n21,
204n47
16n1
220
218
142n14
19n8
79n42
215
74n35
142n12
18, 18n7
159
E.2
E.2
E.2
E.2
2 .1
2.1
2.1
2 .1
2.1
2.1
2.1
1025b3G-1026.6
1025b341026.6
1026.23-32
1026.33
1026bl4-21
1026b27-33
1028.1G--15
1028.10
1028.18-20
1028.20
1028.20-31
1028.27
2 .1
2.1
2.1
2 .1
2.1
2.3
1028.28-29
1028.29-30
1028.35-36
1028bl-2
1028b2-4
1029.20-26
2.3
1029.23-24
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2 .4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2.4
2 .4
2.4
1029b14
1029bl6-18
1029b22-27
1029b22
1030.14
1030.17-27
1030.17-23
1030.17
1030.23-27
1030.25-28
1030.27-32
1030.29-b3
1030.33-34
1030b3-4
1030b8-12
31n23
209n
236
136n7
155n33
155n33
185n14
148
136n7
150
151n27
149
150,
151n26
151n28
150, 159
150
149, 153
157
180n6,
204n23
185n13,
204
189
151
154n32
152
152
152
152
149
152
156n33
160
160
116, 153
227n26
160
166n43
2.4
2.5
2.5
2.5
2.5
1030b11
2.5
2.5
2.5
2.7
2.9
2 .10
2.10
2.10
2.11
2 .11
2.12
103101- 3
1031.2-5
1031.7-11
1032b2- 5
1034.30-32
1035.2
1035bl4-22
1035bl6-18
1036.26-b3
1036b3G--32
2.12
2.12
2.16
H .2
H.2
H.2
H.2
H.2
H.3
H.3
H.4
H.4
H.6
H.6
H.6
8.1
8.1
1038.3-9
1038.18-21
1040b16
8.1
8.1
8.6
1030b18-24
1030b2G--21
1030b23-26
1042.4-5
1042b25
1043.2-7
1043.19-21
1043.29- b4
1043.34-37
1044.25-31
1044b8-20
1045.14-25
1045.14-17
1045.36- b5
1045b27-32
1045b361046.1
1046.11-13
1046.17-19
136n7
139
155
150
117n2,
155
155
156
155
166
126n7
204n47
82n45
118n3
18n6
118n3
74,
137n8,
220
74n35
143n15
166n43
143
188
136n7
182
204n47
190n19
51n57
107n17
127
74n35
140,142
169
150n24
189
190
190n19
177-8,
188
8.6
8.6
8.6
8 .6
8.7
8.8
8 .8
8.8
8.10
L1
L1
L1
L1
L1
L1
L2
1.2
L2
1.2
L3
L3
1048a30-b9
1048.37- b4
1048b6-9
1048b8
1049.29-30
1049b12- 17
1050.21-23
1051.34
1052.31-34
1052.33-34
1052bl- 19
1052b7- 16
1052bl8-20
1052b31-32
1053b20-21
1053b22-24
1054.3-4
1054.14
1054.26-29
1054b3-6
1.4
1.4
1.4
1.8
K.l
K.12
1\.4-5
1055a6-7
1055.35-38
1058.21-26
1059b31-34
1068b18- 20
1\.4
1\.4
1\ .4
1\.4
1\.4
1\.5
1\.5
1\.5
1\.5
1\.5
1\.10
1070.31-33
1070.33-b10
1070bl-2
1070b12-13
1070bl6-21
1071.2-3
1071.15-17
1071.26
1071.29-35
1071.34-35
1075.14-15
191
193
192
193
185
131
192
118n3
136n7
168
169
166n45
179
172, 173
172
141
166n43
215n9
136n7
174n51
171
61n16
38
169n48
74n35
136n6
142n14
177,
204n47,
240
183
179
136n7
180
178
185
184
178, 179
184
183, 185
51n56
M.2
M.3
M.3
1077b4-11
1077b17-30
1078.5-8
M.3
M.3
M.7
N.3
1078.14-16
1078.31-b5
1081b8-10
1090b19-20
EN
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6
1.7
1.7
1096.17-23
1096.23-29
IV.3
V.5
V.5
V.5
V.5
V.5
1096.31-34
1096b8-14
1096bl4-16
1096b16-25
1096bI7- 18
1096b24-25
1096b26-31
1096b26-29
1096b30-31
1097.3-8
1097al6-18
1097b2
1098a7-17
1098al6-17
1102.1
1104b8-9
1106b361107.2
1123b20
1133.7-29
1133al6-18
1133b7
1133b18-23
1133bI8-20
V.5
V.ll
VIL3
1133b23-26
1138.4-b14
1147a5-6
I.7
1.7
1.12
11.2
11.6
31n24
29, 239
19n7,
158
36
23n15
218n14
239
216, 217
195, 200,
201
203
197
198n38
195, 197
198
198n38
197
194-5
195
200
200
198
203
199
199
199
199
199
43
45n47
45
43
43n43,
44n46
45
5
95
1155b13- 16
1155b17-27
1156a3-5
1156a6-8
1156a1G-16
1156al6-17
1156b12-17
1156b331157a4
1157a25- 32
1157a32
1158b5- 11
1174b31- 33
1175b361176a1
1178b31-32
234
231
181, 232
231
232
232
233
233
235
232n32
234
199
200
200
199
MM
11.11
1209a19- 35
234n37
1216a33- 37
1217b25-34
1218al- 9
1218b16-24
1235b24-30
1235b27-29
1235b301236a7
230n30
201
216
195-6
225
228
EE
L5
L8
L8
L8
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
226
VII.2
VII.2
VIL2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.2
VII.10
VIL13
VII .15
VII.15
Pol.
L9
L9
L9
LlO
11.5
IILl
IILl
IILl
IILl
IILl
IV.1
V.3
1235b331236a2
1236a5-7
1236a15-33
1236a15-22
1236a21-22
1236a23-25
1236b15- 17
1236b17-26
1238a35- 38
1238b13- 14
1243b30- 35
1246a26-31
1249a21-b25
1249b9- 13
1257a6- 18
1257al4-17
1257b35
1258a38-b8
1264b4-6
1275a30- 33
1275a33-34
1275a34-b5
1275b5-6
1275b18-19
1288b12
1302b331303a2
229
226
227
117
144
237n41
229
227
229
230
45n47
43n42
204
144
41- 2
42
47
47
5
222
101n12
216, 221
222
222
101n12
59n12
GENERAL INDEX
ascidian 113
auditory passages 100
autonomy 8, 33
axiom 9, 26, 91
babbling 138
balding 103
Balme, D. 55, 92
barter 42
Being: difficulties in interpreting the
science of 136; and foeality 12,
142-3; genus of 136-43; internal
Being; metaphysics
Berti, E. 195
bifocality 166, 190n19. See also focality
breast 67
bronze triangle 239
capitalism 47
carnivore 131
cartilage. Sec bone
categories: analogy among 175, 182;
144--65, 183
coextension. See extension; noocoextension
commensurability 15, 38, 40-4, 46n49,
49
common cause 49-50
eggshell 72
embedded terms 32-6
embryology 58, 75
ends 230. See also means and ends
essence 151-5
Euclid 24-9, 33-7
eudaimonia 129, 199
evolution, theory of 130
exchange 43-5
explanation: asymmetry in 97; external
and internal 130-1; flexibility in
114; generic and specific 105 (see
also demonstration, at general and
specific levels). See also middle term
extended science 144-6, 156-7; of
Being 165, 171. See also core science
extension 158; of animal parts 61; in
demonstration 91; as part of definition 98. See also non-coextension
eye 131
familiarity (yvwP'fWV) 108, 191, 210
feather 69, 102
Ferejohn, M. 134
figures, series of 214. See also series;
soul
flesh 67
nail 70
names 117; generic 24, 32; lack of 68,
81
Owen, G.E.L 116, 134, 175, 190, 194
Owens, j. 176
packing 36
paronymy 8n5, 127n8, 170
particulars 7
parts of animals: corresponding to
whole animals 61, 76, 84; as
essential 100; order of generation of
75
Patzig, G. 236
Pellegrin, P. 55, 63- 6, 73-4, 92, 110
perfective series. See series, perfective
per se 4, 8, 11, 41, 45, 81, 188;
accident 19; goods 198; predication
and abstraction 15, 31; predication
and analogy 86-7; predication and
confusion of terms 42; predication
................................
.,
Timaeus 133
touch 104
trade, retail 42, 47
traditional language 78, 107
traditional view of analogy. See realist
view
transitivity. See focality, transitivity of
trunk 70
underlying thing. See substrate
universal: and cause 7, 97; and focality
120; and qua 17; science 3, 6, 7, 13
unity: accidental 170; within greatest
kind 61; internal and relational 168,
172- 3. See also One
universal predication 159, 162, 164. See
also nat ural predication; linguistic
predication
usury 47
value 41, 200. See also exchange; trade
virtue 109; friendship 228-30, 231-5
water animals 131
way of life (/3io,) 48, l30
wealth 42; and abstraction 43
what-is-it (Ti. fun) 147, 149
whole animals 60. See also parts of
animals
wholes-parts system 80, 107; and cause
86; and function 81; and position
81; relation to species-genus-analogy
sys tem 81. See also species-genusanalogy system
womb 68,72
Woods, M. 218
R.t. Fowler
27 Monumental Tomb s of the Helleni stic Age: A Study of Selected Tomb s from the
Pre-C lassica l to the Early Imperial Era Janos Fedak
28 The Local Magistrates of Roman Spain Leonard A. Curchin
29 Empedocles The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Tran slation with an
Introduction edited by Brad Inwood
30 Xenophanes of Colophon Fragments: A Text and Translation with a
Commentary J.H. Lesher
31 Festivals and Legends: The Formation of Greek Cities in the Light of Public
Ritual Noel Robertson
32 Reading and Variant in Petronius: Studies in the French Humanists and Their
Manuscript Sources Wade Richardson
33 Th e Excavations of San Giovanni di Ruoti, Volume 1 Alastair M. Small and
Robert J. Buck
35 The Excavations 0/ San Giovanni di Ruoti, Volume 2: The Small Finds c.J .
Simpson, with contributions by R. Reece and
J.J. Rossiter