Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (ii)

Notes

[^1] Basically, these are the conclusions obtained in the first part of this study: ‘Aristotelian Perspectives for Post-modern Reason (I). Phronesis, Scientific Rationality and Environmental Responsibility’. I have reserved the term ‘post-modern’ and derivatives, hyphenated, simply to refer  to the time coming after the modern period. I shall use the term ‘postmodern’ in reference to a given style of philosophy, with a tendency to the so-called weak thought, relativism and æstheticism. This type of thought is post-modern chronologically, but typically modern in content, for it is a reaction like so many others that have counterpointed the progress of the enlightened rationalist project (nominalist, relativist and romantic, nihilist, existentialist, vitalist and irrationalist currents, etc.). The terms ‘actual’ and ‘Actual Age’ are used to designate a certain content for post-modern time, a different content, of course, from the merely postmodern, a content inspired in the notions of act, actuality, and action. So, ‘Actual Age’ will be the name of a period, like ‘Modern Age’, or rather, far from any historicist interpretation, the name of a proposal to give content to the post-modern period, which may or may not be fulfilled

[^2] I believe that it would also be correct to say that in its dynamics, nature discovers (to us) aspects of reality.

[^3] In this section I shall use basically the conclusions drawn in a previous article: A. Marcos (1997): ‘The Tension between Aristotle’s Theories and Uses of Metaphor’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 28: 123-[^139]: In Marcos (1997), an attempt is made to interpret the Aristotelian theory of metaphor. According to it, for Aristotle, metaphor would be a creative discovery of similarity, the same in science as in poetry: a discovery because in substances there already exists the possibility of their being seen as similar in some aspects, and creative because this possibility can only be brought into effect by the action of a cognizant being. There I stated that the formula ‘creative discovery’ was in the spirit but not in the letter of Aristotle’s texts. Today, I think, nevertheless, that this formula is indeed also present in the letter: in Ethica Nicomachea (VI 2), Aristotle speaks of ‘aletheia praktike’, practical truth, but it could also be translated as discovery that is made, creative discovery.

[^4] Ethika Nikomacheia (EN) 1140b 4 et seq.; see also 1140b 20 et seq.. I take aristotelian texts in their english translation from W.D. Ross and J.A. Smith (eds.), The Works of Aristotle Translated into English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908-1952).

[^5] EN 1142a  34 et seqq.

[^6] EN 1139a 26 et seqq.

[^7] EN 1105b 10 et seqq.

[^8] EN 1103a 32 et seq.

[^9] Aristotle, in some parts of EN VI, suggests that genuine wisdom belongs to gods (EN 1141a  22; 1145a 9-11), but also that man must, in his knowledge and behaviour, aspire to the divine, for man really is what there is of divine in him (EN 1178a 25 et seqq.).

[^10] EN II [^9]:

[^11] EN 1140a [^26]:

[^12] Meta 980a [^22]:

[^13] EN 1104a 10-[^14]:

[^14] EN X 6-[^8]:

[^15] ‘The extraordinary: everything’. Jorge Guillén put it like this and it is difficult to get more into fewer words.

[^16] P. Duhem: La théorie physique. Marcel Rivière, Paris, 1914, p. [^337]:

[^17] Duhem, op. cit., p. [^390]:

[^18] Duhem, op. cit., p. [^391]:

[^19] EN 1138b 22-[^25]:

[^20] EN 1106b 36 et seq.

[^21] P. Ricœur: La métaphore vive, Du Seuil, Paris, [^1975]: See also, for example, Poetics 1448b 34 and the note added by V. García Yebra in his excellent, erudite and highly documented translation (1992, pp 138 and 257, note 68).

[^22] M. Heidegger: ‘Die Frage Nach Der Technik’, in Martin Heidegger: Die Technik und Die Kehre. Neske Verlag, Tübingen, 1962, pp. 5 and ff.

[^23] Aristotle: Poetics 1448b 17;  author’s translation following García Yebra, 1974 (see note 21 above).

[^24] I take this interpretation of the Aristotelian theory of action from Lear (1995): Aristotle. The Desire to Understand. Cambridge University Press, [^1988]: The practical syllogism would only be a dried, fossilized version of this living characterization which is integrated into human action. The practical syllogism would be a logikós study of the action. While this characterization adopts the physikós way, it seeks to tell us what the action is really like, which is not the sum of wish plus intellect, but desire-differentiated-by-intellect. Logical analysis is necessary, but if we go no further than the logical analysis of what physically is the same, we are preparing the ground for ‘the schizophrenia of modern man’.

[^25] Rhet 1410b 10-[^19]:

[^26] Rhet 1371b 4 and f..

[^27] S. Mas Torres, ‘Platón  y Aristóteles: sobre filosofía y poesía’, in D. Sánchez Meca and J. Domínguez Caparrós (eds.) Historia de la relación filosofía-literatura en sus textos, Suplementos de Anthropos, No. 32 (Barcelona: Anthopos, 1992), pp. 5-10, see p. [^8]:

[^28] Poet, 1457b 6 and ff.

[^29] I take the expression ‘creative discovery’ from M.C. Haley, The Semiosis of Poetic Metaphor Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), where a Peircian theory of poetic metaphor is explained. I think that it could be a valid translation of  ‘aletheia praktike’.

[^30] Even our natural ability to catch surface similarities has phylogenetically evolved by means of creative activity and corrections, as authors like Popper or Quine have pointed out. See, for instance, K. Popper; A World of Propensities (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990); W.V. Quine, ‘Natural Kinds’, in W.V. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), pp. 114-[^138]:

[^31] Rhet 1412ª 10 and ff.

[^32] Poet 1459a 5 and ff. See also PN (464b 5 and ff.), where Aristotle wrote a beautiful passage on resemblance in dreams in the same purport as the previously quoted ones (it even contains a metaphor full of suggestions).

[^33] In this sense, Scaltsas affirms that ‘similarity between substances cannot consist in the presence of a distinct (abstract) component in different substances. Rather, it consists in the derivation of the same distinct entity out of different substances’, in T. Scaltsas, Substances & Universals in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 197-[^8]:

[^34] See Rhet 1405a 8 and ff.

[^35] See Rhet 1411a 25 and ff.

[^36] Rhet  1411b24-[^26]: The author is stressing the sensitive aspects of understanding in this passage. Others exist in the same direction, for instance, those that establish the cognitive relevance of images: Aristotle affirms that we take delight in our senses, ‘and above all others the sense of sight’ (Meta 980a 21 and f.), and that never does the soul think without an image (DA 431a 14-17; PN 450a 1 and f.). Understanding is compared to the soul’s sight  (EN 1096b 29), and, especially, active understanding to the light (DA 430a 14-17). With regard to wise and prudent persons (phrónimos) we can read: ‘for because experience has given them an eye they see upright’ (EN 1143b 11-13). On cognitive functions of imagination for Aristotle, see also M.V. Wedin, Mind and Imagination in Aristotle  (London: Yale University Press, 1988); on perception, D.K.W.    Moddrak, Aristotle: The Power of Perception, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

[^37] P. Ricœur: La métaphore vive. Du Seuil, Paris, [^1975]:

[^38] Aristotle: Poetics, 1459a 5 and ff..

[^39] I have made an extensive commentary on these passages in Aristóteles y otros animales. Una lectura filosófica de la biología aristotélica. PPU, Barcelona, 1996, pp. 138-146 and 166-[^175]: