Objectivity in Ancient Greek Philosophy

The Objectivity Problem in Ancient Philosophy

o)/yij ga\r tw=n a)dh/lwn ta\ faino/mena(Appearances are the sight of the unseen)

Anaxagoras, Sextus, adv. math. VII 140

The Objectivity Problem in Ancient PhilosophyKlaus Brinkmann

1. Formulating the Problem

The earliest period of the history of philosophy isfascinating not least because in their attempt to accountfor the underlying ground of phenomena these philosophers atthe same time are beginning to work out what it means togive an ‘objective’, and in this sense ‘rational’,explanation of the world as it is accessible to ordinaryexperience. The first Milesians not only put forth certaindoctrines about the origin and ultimate constitution of thephysical world, they are simultaneously engaged in definingand refining the idea of an explanation by natural (ornearly natural) causes. The proposals, revisions andadjustments offered successively by Thales, Anaximander, andAnaximenes concerning the ‘basic stuff’ of the universe arehighly instructive for the purpose of understanding what itmeans to be engaging in a non-mythological explanatoryproject aiming at some form of ‘objective truth’.1 Indeed,what might be meant by ‘rational’ and ‘objective’ here isprecisely what is at stake in these ‘lisping’ utterances ofthe earliest philosophers.2

1 See also K. Popper (1974), “Back to the Presocratics”, 136-53. Creditmust be given to Popper’s original attempt to take seriously themethodological background assumptions of the early Pre-Socratics,although his reading of them as the earliest fallibilists, so tospeak, is unconvincing.

2 This is how Aristotle characterizes the first steps in naturalphilosophy at Metaph. I 10, 993a 15f. Heidegger correctly cautions thatwe must not turn the early Presocratics into proto-physicist. Theirconcern was with Being, not matter: cf. Heidegger (2000) 14-6.

© Klaus Brinkmann 2014

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In any explanatory project of this kind, a distinctionbetween a surface reality and a deeper structure, cause, orground opens up necessarily. Without such a qualitativedifference between ground and grounded, appearance andunderlying reality, the explanatory differential would belost and the project would be one of description or, as inthe case of mythology, of narrative rather than explanation.However, necessary as this distinction is, it immediatelycauses a problem. Precisely because of the qualitativedifference between ground and grounded, the two cannotbelong to the same dimension of reality. They areontologically diverse. They are not merely different kindsof thing but different types of entities. In the case of theearly Milesians, the elements such as water, earth, air, andfire seem to be physical substances, but although they aresynonymous with the visible stuff of the same name they arenonetheless abstract entities not directly identifiable inthe things which are supposed to be compounds or ‘mixtures’of them. On the other hand, Anaximander’s apeiron, whiletranscending the abstract determinacy of the physicalelements, is still a kind of ‘stuff’, a divine, limitlesssubstance with an indeterminate texture. It will take awhile, although not that long, until with Heraclitus, forinstance, the need to establish an explanatory differentialby introducing a dimensional difference between surface anddepth level is formally being recognized.3

The qualitative difference of ground and grounded goestogether with an epistemological opaqueness of the surfacereality which aggravates the problem. This opacity wasrecognized early on, for instance in Anaxagoras’ aphorism,reported by Sextus Empiricus, that “appearances are a sightof the unseen”.4 However, as Hume – and before him theancient sophists and skeptics – made clear and as thedoctrines of the theory-ladenness of perception and the3 See fr. 123 “Nature loves to hide” (fu/sij kru/ptesqai filei=) andfr. 54 “The unapparent harmonia is stronger than an apparent one”(a(rmoni/h a)fanh\j fanerh/j).

4 DK 29 B21a: o)/yij ga\r tw=n a)dh/lwn ta\ faino/mena


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underdetermination of theory by observation have reiterated,any explanatory advance beyond immediate sense experienceand any process of induction must rely on inference andhypotheses.5 This means that in addition to the ontologicaldifference in dimension there exists an epistemicdiscontinuity between (overt) phenomenon and (covert) ground- the ground typically is not accessible to immediate senseexperience but is a posit of reasoning or a matter ofstipulation, sometimes by putting the proverbial two and twotogether, but more often it is the result of more complexcombinations and ‘speculation’.6 The cognitive opaqueness ofthe ground, the fact that it is not an object of immediateexperience, leads to the conclusion that even if itsstipulation may be based on sound inference, as long asthere is no independent confirmation of its existence theexplanans may turn out to be a mere construct or postulate.It may save the phenomena without being objectively true.7

Consequently, and contrary to the unavoidable dualdiscontinuity between ground and grounded, the logic of theexplanatory process also requires that there be someexplanatory continuity between explanans and explanandum bothontologically and epistemically. For without a plausibleconnection between the explanatory deep structure and theobservable phenomena the explanatory force of the ground

5 Cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, IV 1: “All reasoningsconcerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Causeand Effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond theevidence of our memory and senses. … All our resasonings concerningfact are of the same nature. And here it is constantly supposed thatthere is a connection between the present fact and that which isinferred from it.” For the claim concerning theory-ladenness ofobservation or perception see P.M. Churchland (1989).

6 Even if the cause seems to be obvious, as in the case of the Humeanbilliard balls, the actual ground of the motion (the moving force) isstill a matter of stipulation, as Hume has made us see.

7 For the distinction between the so-called Pythagorean orientation vs.that of ‘saving the phenomena’ (a precursor of the contemporaryopposition between realism and anti-realism) see J. Losee (2001) 14-7,39-41.


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would be lost. Hence, on one hand, the ontological dependencerelation between observable phenomenon and underlying groundmust somehow be made to work, on the other hand it must bepossible to remove epistemic doubts about the existence of thestipulated ground. Thus, typically, the grounded may be saidto be the effect of the ground or its expression ormanifestation. But what exactly is being explained by sayingthat the dependence relation is one of causation ormanifestation is itself a matter for further clarification.Again, the question of the existence of the ground isrelevant because of its status as a stipulation. Without aplausible demonstration that the stipulated entity, processor principle can be epistemically supported, it might justas well be considered a construct without a fundamentum in re.Epistemic support is typically secured by way of inferenceto the stipulated entity, based on some kind of ‘evidence’in support of an existence claim. In the natural sciences,the demonstration of the existence of the ground is believedto be concerned with a causal connection between observedphenomenon and its underlying ground where observedphenomenon and underlying ground are supposed to stand in adeterministic causal relationship. Some philosophers,however, do not accept the inference from observed phenomenato a specific type of entity or process which is supposed tobe its causal correlate. Nor is there a cognitive access tothe underlying reality other than inference based onobservation, i.e. the knowledge obtained is indirect and theground to that extent a bona fide posit. The current debate inthe philosophy of science between realists and anti-realistsfurnishes an excellent example with which to illustrate theproblem of an inference to the unobservable. It is onlybecause the grounding reality, despite its qualitativedifference from its causal correlate, is nonetheless part ofthe same basic ontological framework of space-time realitythat the inference to the existence of the stipulated entityor process is not totally rejected.8 However, when dealing8 Holding on to this framework has, however, itself become problematicdue to the ‘abnormal’ phenomena of quantum field theory which seem tosuggest a different ontology.


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with ‘metaphysical’ relationships of grounding, i.e.relationships in which the relata are not only qualitativelybut dimensionally different and where the ground is notitself physical, epistemic support for the existence of theexplanans cannot be established by inferential extension fromthe visible to the invisible relying on the assumption of acausal connection. And to the extent that explanatoryprojects in philosophy concern non-physical dependencerelationships, there needs to be a different solution to theproblem of the epistemic support of the ground thaninferential extrapolation based on the principle ofcausation.

Hegel’s Logic of Essence in the Science of Logic and theEncyclopedia is to a large extent an investigation into thelogical structure of these explanatory relationships, andindeed of their limitations as well. Hegel there alsosuccinctly diagnoses, if only in part9, the conflictingdemands which this kind of explanation must satisfy.Essentially, according to Hegel, the relationship betweenground and grounded is one of both identity and differenceand in such a way that this conflict is not immediatelyreconcilable - in fact, it is inherently contradictory fromthe point of view of the understanding.10 This contradictiondrives the progression through the various stages of theLogic of Essence and leads to its culmination in what Hegelcalls Wirklichkeit (actuality) and for which Spinoza’sspeculative identity of god (natura naturans) and world (natura

9 I say in part, because the epistemological perspective is largelymissing from the Logic. Its critique and ‘sublation’ is supposed tohave been accomplished in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Chapter Three belowwill be devoted to an examination of the Phenomenology’s argument inthis respect.

10 See Enc. § 121 (W): “The Ground is the unity of identity anddifference, the truth of what difference and identity have turned outto be - the reflection-into-self, which is equally a reflection-into-another, and vice versa. It is essence put explicitly as a totality”. Notethat Hegel here means by ground the entire grounding relationincluding both relata, not just the explanans. In other words, thegrounded is supposed to be contained in the ground.


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naturata) under the title of deus sive natura serves as theprimary model. It ultimately motivates thinking to transcendthe ‘external’ relationship of ground and grounded, in whichboth relata enjoy a relative independence, towards a moreclosely integrated, essentially systemic model ofexplanation, that of the Notion.

As we saw above, the explanatory procedure involves atits most basic level the positing of a distinction betweensurface phenomena and deep structure which are supposed tostand in an explanatory relationship of some sort. In otherwords, despite the qualitative or dimensional distinctionwithin the ontology of ground and grounded, there must alsoexist continuity between explanans and explanandum. This meansthat some plausible connection must hold between surface anddeep structure. However, we also noted that the ontologicalaspect represents one side only of the explanatory process.Put simply, in addition to stipulating a ground and giving aplausible account of its connection with the phenomena to beexplained, whether in terms of causation or some other‘sufficient reason’, there also needs to be an element of‘verification’ or confirmation, i.e. a demonstration to theeffect that the stipulated ground exists independently ofwhat immediate experience might tell us. The stipulatedground is, after all, necessarily beyond the reach of directobservation and its objective existence therefore remainshypothetical, even if the ontological continuity requirementhas been satisfied. The latter concerns the internalconsistency of the theory, but that in itself is notsufficient to make the theory objectively true. Without apersuasive demonstration that the underlying reality isexactly as the theory says it ought to be, the explanationhas the character of a conjecture rather than that of anobjective truth. Indeed, the objectivity problem concernsprecisely the question whether an epistemic warrant can beoffered for the inference to the unobservable. As we shallsee, the first Milesian philosophers, to the best of ourknowledge, were still unaware of this epistemic aspect ofthe explanatory process. Nor does it seem that the


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ontological distinction between qualitative and dimensionaldifference of ground and grounded was as yet entirely clearto them. Their genius consists in discovering thisdifference at all and then trying to find a way to bridgeit. Interestingly, the last of the three, Anaximenes, willredefine the difference as a quantitative one and thusprovide a surprising solution to the problem of thequalitative discontinuity between ground and grounded.

For the explanatory process to succeed, then, thereneeds to exist both an epistemic and an ontologicalcontinuity between ground and grounded while theirdimensional differences are likewise respected. There mustbe a plausible dependence of grounded on groundontologically, and there must exist or be constructed acognitive path that leads us from the dimension of directevidence to that of the inferred ground. Since theobjectivity problem is essentially an epistemic problem, itdoes not arise before the epistemic distinction between whatis immediately evident or what is in agreement with ‘commonlogic’ on one hand and what is true in and of itself hasemerged. As we shall see, Heraclitus is the first to ourknowledge to become acutely aware of this difference betweenwhat is subjectively evident (or ‘true for us’) and what isobjectively true (or ‘true in and of itself’). In otherwords, it is with Heraclitus that the objectivity problembegins to emerge. Keeping the basic structure of theexplanatory process in mind as a diagnostic tool we now turnto the early Pre-Socratics. Focusing on the problem of the‘basic stuff’ of the universe in the early Milesians and thequestion of the unity and coherence of phenomena inHeraclitus, Parmenides, and Zeno we will witness theattempts to come to grips with the requirements of theexplanatory project. We will see how after the firstMilesians the awareness of the objectivity problem begins togrow and to demand a solution. I will briefly comment on thepreliminary responses in Heraclitus, Parmenides and Zeno.This will then set the stage for a discussion of thePlatonic and the Aristotelian attempts to justify the


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objectivity of knowledge concerning the relationship betweenphenomena and their underlying ground.

2. Beginnings of the Objectivity Project:The Pre-Socratics

We do not know how Thales supported his claim that the basicstuff of the universe must be water. The rationalizationsfor this proposal stem from philosophers who lived longafter Thales and who apparently had to rely on second handreports. Whatever Thales’ justification may have been, itseems fair to assume that his reasons for choosing water asthe origin and/or the basic component of things and as thephysical support of the earth were largely based onintuition and the generalization of observations.11

Aristotle was perhaps right to suggest that Thales thoughtof water because he had noticed that without it life couldnot exist. One may also surmise that early ideas about thelandmass of the earth being surrounded by a vast expanse ofwater played a role. However, the very idea of conceiving ofa basic element on which everything on earth is dependent orof which it is composed implies an astounding intellectualfeat, viz. the capacity for radical conceptual abstraction.While many cultures have developed imaginative theoriesabout the origin of the universe and its fundamentalcoherence, mostly in the form of mythological narrative, noother, so far as we know, has gone so far as to reduce thevisible world essentially to one element, and a physicalelement at that.

To choose water as the origin and perhaps also as thefundamental building block of everything means to orient theexplanatory project in a specific direction, viz. towards aninvestigation into the elements of nature and the visibleuniverse in general. In the reports we have from the later11 Aristotle is our main witness here (see KRS 88-90 and DK 11A12,11A14).


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commentators water is also called an arche, and part of thetask for the earliest thinkers is to determine the meaningof this crucial term in the process, since arche can beanything from a ‘beginning’ or ‘origin’ to a ‘fundamentalelement’ or a ‘principle’ of some kind which has explanatoryforce. In the case of water, the claim that it is the sourceof all life and perhaps a component in all the things we seearound us does not yet make it the ultimate explanatoryprinciple. But such is apparently the direction of this lineof inquiry, if we take the ideas of Thales’ immediatesuccessors as an indication. From their explorations we caninfer that what they were after was indeed not only a searchfor the most important elements or factors that might benecessary for the formation of the universe, but for the oneelement that could be considered its most basic substance.Obviously, there is a distinction between saying that water(or air, or fire, or earth) is very important for the originand existence of life, or even the single most importantelement, and to say that it is the fundamental element towhich everything else can ultimately be traced back or intowhich it can be resolved. It is in the latter, but not inthe former sense that water can be said to be an explanatoryarche.

This is what Anaximander must have understood when heproposed the apeiron as an improvement over Thales’ water.With the apeiron, there emerges for the first time a cleardistinction between the phenomenal and the explanatorylevel. If we are to believe our second hand reports, theapeiron is an indeterminate, limitless, divine substance,that is to say, it is at least qualitatively and possiblyalso dimensionally distinct not only from any of thesensible phenomena, but from the four elements whichthemselves are already abstractions.12 On the other hand, it

12 Cf. KRS 106-8 and DK 12B1. Note that the apeiron is both a distinctuniversal element as well as that from which the visible universe isgenerated and into which things are equally dissolved when theydisintegrate – an indication that Anaximander may be aware of both thedimensional difference as well as the continuity of ground and


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is still a kind of ‘stuff’, a form of matter, even if notmatter in the modern sense. Whether Anaximander’s reasoningwas that water was a poor candidate for an arche because ofits incompatibility with an element such as fire or whetherhis argument was that the ultimate substance must belimitless in volume, and water perhaps was not, his thinkingdefinitely marks the point at which a substance or stuffwhich is not directly observable and not identical with anyof the physical elements is being postulated as anexplanatory principle. It is fair to say that this step fromthe visible to its supersensible ground marks the beginningof a metaphysical inquiry, especially since the apeironcannot, it seems, simply be equated with physical matter.One can only marvel at the enormous leap of abstraction sucha notion presupposes. At the same time, we are beginning tosee the first indication of a radical difference, achorismos, between phenomena and explanatory ground.

The metaphysical orientation developed by Anaximanderwas, however, not pursued by his immediate successor.Anaximenes believed that he had an even better solution tothe problem of the ultimate explanatory principle. Hisproposal is truly ingenious, insofar as he managed to killseveral birds with one stone. He is the first true physical,if not metaphysical, monist. His arche, air, functions bothas the one fundamental substance out of which everythingelse is composed and as a support for the earth which doesnot itself stand in need of some other support and whichthus avoids the infinite regress that seems to have been aproblem with Thales’ water. And while Anaximander hadhimself found a way to address the question of the infiniteregress quite judiciously by making the earth a stationarybody at the center of the universe, this idea had noexplanatory role to play in solving the question as to thefundamental stuff. Anaximenes’ principle could serve ineither role.13 Moreover, through re-interpreting thequalitative differences of the four elements as the result

grounded.


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of quantitative changes of condensation and rarefaction ofthe basic stuff itself, he re-established continuity betweenthe arche and the phenomena which had become problematic dueto the chorismos between Anaximander’s apeiron and the sensiblereality that was supposed to originate from it.14

On the face of it, the explanation of the dependencerelationship between ground and grounded now seems to beimmune to criticism - there is only one arche, and itscontinuity with the diverse elements is easily explainedthrough quantitative variations in the basic element. Andyet there are conceptual problems and unanswered questions.For one thing, there obviously needs to be a force at workwhich accounts for the condensation and rarefaction of thebasic substance, and the action of that force again needs tobe explained, issues Anaximenes seems not to have addressed.And, if the question as to why air behaves in a certain waysuch as to generate solid bodies in one instance and fluidand gaseous ones in another is not answered, Anaximenes’arche is only the beginning of an explanation rather than ananswer. Indeed, the stipulation of air as basic stuffaddresses neither the question which force must act upon orthrough it nor does it offer a rationale for the formationof different kinds of substance. In trying to find apersuasive solution to the continuity problem Anaximanderhas ignored the fact that the answer to the questionregarding the ultimate constituent of the physical world isnot necessarily also an answer to the question regarding the‘why’ and ‘what-for’ of things. Air may be the fundamental13 Since air is infinite, so is the floating on it of the flat earth. Nofurther support is needed (see KRS 144-5, 153 and DK 13A20).

14 It has been denied that Anaximenes held a theory of change involvingcondensation and rarefaction and that these features are actually aninvention by Theophrastus: see G. Wöhrle (1993) 19-23. On this issuesee D.W. Graham’s recent response to Wöhrle’s thesis in D.W. Graham(2003) 1-20. While I find Graham’s rehabilitation of Anaximenes’theory of change persuasive, I cannot follow his further conjecturethat Anaximenes was not a material monist, because air is only thematerial origin, but not the identical substance in the transformationof the elements into one another.


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element, but it is for all that not itself a reason foranything. The same may of course also be said of Thales’water and Anaximander’s apeiron, but at least inAnaximander’s case a reason for the why and the for-the-sake-of-what seems to emerge when he says that things bynecessity pay penalty and retribution for their injustice inaccordance with the assessment of time.15 Furthermore, inAnaximenes’ idea of rarefaction and condensation of onefundamental substance the dimensional difference betweenground and grounded is now blurred, and with it theexplanatory differential. The surface phenomena aredifferent forms of one of the elements which is itself boththe explanatory ground as well as one of the surfacephenomena. This is indeed some kind of explanation, but itfails to maintain the explanatory difference between groundand ground which becomes instead a variation of states ofone and the same element.

Finally, as we saw above, addressing the ontologicalaspect of the explanatory project is not enough. There needsto be an epistemic continuity between surface and ground aswell. We can no longer determine whether Anaximenesaddressed this issue at all, i.e. whether he had a theory asto how he might be able to support the truth of his doctrinewith some sort of evidence. There is no way we can tellwhether the rationalizations offered by our second handsources were Anaximenes’ own or whether they are thrown infor good measure by the later commentators. The next step inworking out the explanatory project will therefore have toaddress two things: on one hand there needs to be thestipulation of a genuine explanatory principle, on the otheran attempt needs to be made to connect the surface phenomenaepistemically with the stipulated ground. Heraclitus seemsto have been responding to both desiderata.

The evidence we have shows that Heraclitus haddeveloped an acute awareness of the necessity to convince

15 Cf. KRS 108 (DK 12A9).


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others of the truth of his ideas. Even if his language issometimes dismissive of his fellow men, the fact that heopenly addresses the problem of not being understood by themis significant.16 And while he chastises them for theirincapacity to distinguish between surface phenomena and thedeeper underlying reality he also exhorts them not just totake his word for what he believes to be the truth: Theyshould not listen to him personally but to the logos, headmonishes them.17 There is a distinct expression here notonly of a difference of perception between him and other mensuch that one opinion would merely be opposed to that ofothers. Rather, by referring men to the logos and thusdisclaiming his own authority Heraclitus makes it quiteclear that there is a difference between subjective opinionand objective truth. What we see emerging here is a clearconsciousness of the difference between opinion (doxa) andknowledge (episteme). Not only that. Despite the haughty toneof his admonitions Heraclitus does in fact make a seriouseffort to convince others of what he believes to be the truenature of the reality underlying the surface phenomena.While on one hand he criticizes his fellow men for theirinability to see that the ‘unapparent’ connection which theydo not perceive is more important and ‘more real’, so tospeak, than the ‘apparent’ connection they do see18, he alsotries very hard to construct a bridge from the apparent tothe unapparent by pointing out structural parallels betweensurface and depth reality.

16 “Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to beuncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once theyhave heard it” (KRS 187, DK 22B1). And: “… although the Logos iscommon the many live as though they had a private understanding (KRS187, DK 22B2).

17 “Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that allthings are one” (KRS 187, DK 22B50). Charles Kahn (1979) 98 puts itthus: “The logos can be his [i.e. Heraclitus’] ‘meaning’ only in theobjective sense: the structure which his words intend or point at,which is the structure of the world itself (and not the intensionalstructure of his thought about the world).”

18 Cf. DK 22B54.


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Heraclitus’ desire to make himself understood is madeparticularly difficult by the fact that the explanatoryprinciple he proposes seems to be paradoxical in nature. Theprinciple, called logos, is a unifier of opposites orcontraries and it implies that the very essence of thingsmust involve a contradiction. Heraclitus’ reasoning is thatthings derive their identity from the co-existence in themof two contrary properties - or even numerous pairs ofcontrary properties - such that they cannot have the onewithout having the other also. Thus the path is both up anddown, water is both polluted and healthy, and the bow is inagreement with itself just because it is at variance withitself.19 What people do not understand is exactly the factthat these contraries, despite being mutually exclusive, doreally co-exist simultaneously in one and the same thing.They are not merely alternating but co-present. People donot want to acknowledge the contradiction. They will saythat the path is both up and down, but that it appears onlyas such from the perspectives of two different observers,one located at the bottom of the path, the other at the top.Looked at this way, there is indeed no contradiction - thepath is up from the point of view of one observer, and downfrom the point of view of the other, but the path itself isneither up nor down – or so people persuade themselves.Similarly with salt water: It is healthy for fish anddeleterious for humans, but the water itself is neither.This is how common logic views the matter, but common logicis blind. For how could water make humans sick while fishthrive in it, if it did not either contain some propertywhich is causing sickness and another which is responsiblefor health or even one and the same property which causesboth sickness and health? Or how could the path be neither upnor down without ceasing to be this path? To be sure, thismakes phenomena essentially paradoxical. However, that thisparadoxical structure is indeed the true nature of thingscan be shown less ambiguously in cases in which the verydefinition of the thing points to a contradictory makeup at

19 Cf. DK 22B60, B61, B51.


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its core. Thus the principle in accordance with which thebow or the lyre are constructed is that of an equilibrium oftwo forces pulling in opposite directions. The tension thuscreated is necessary for the instrument to fulfill itsproper function, but the forces which create and sustain thetension are diametrically opposed. In this case, then, thevery nature of the thing is such that in the absence of oneof the two contraries it could not even be the thing it is.Moreover, neither of the two forces could exist without theother - no outward pull without inward contraction and viceversa. Thus reality is indeed contradictory at its very heart- it is literally para-doxical in that its nature is beyondbelief from the point of view of common logic. Things arethe things they are, because they disagree with themselves:diafero/menon e(wut%= cumfe/retai (DK 22B51).

Perhaps the most startling example of the view that thenature of reality is paradoxical is offered by fr. 62:

Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, these livingthe others’ death, those dying the others’ life (DK22B62, cf. KRS 208, my transl.).

What common logic assumes to be absolutely opposed andtherefore mutually incompatible, mortality and immortality,is here identified.20 To be mortal is also to be immortaland vice versa. Mortality and immortality do not constitute twoseparate realms of reality but each is characterized by theother and could not itself exist without being the otheralso. For to be alive means to be capable of dying. And if –which seems to be the assumption here - immortality is aform of life, then what is immortal must also be capable ofdying. Neither mortality without immortality nor immortality20 As Kahn points out, to attribute mortality to the gods would havebeen blasphemous to Greek ears, and at Athens Heraclitus might wellhave been put to death for impiety for it, as Wilamowitz surmises.Unfortunately, despite his distinction between a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’reading of fragment 62 Kahn’s treatment of fr. 62, Kahn’sinterpretation seems to miss the dialectical nature of Heraclitus’insight: cf. Kahn (1979) 216-20.


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without mortality would be life. Things which are immortalwithout being mortal exist eternally but are not alive andmortal things which would not be immortal would not bemortal either, i.e. they would not belong to the class ofliving things. The body of an organism is a body that haslife potentially, as Aristotle will put it later.21 A bodywithout the potentiality of being alive would be inorganicmatter, it could not even qualify for becoming the body of aliving being. Thus the unity or co-existence of mortalityand immortality distinguishes living things from dead thingsor, rather, from things that can be neither dead nor alive(such as inorganic matter on one hand and numbers ormathematical truths on the other). In this sense we can saythat a man is immortal as long as he lives, a sentence whichmust not be confused with the purely tautological statementthat a man is alive as long as he lives. For while man isimmortal as long as he lives, he does not live eternally.

It is with Heraclitus (and Parmenides, about whom wewill have to say more shortly) that philosophy seems to havefound its true moorings and direction. The reason is thatHeraclitus for the first time proposes a ground which isdimensionally different from the grounded and is at the sametime considered a governing principle, an arche in the truesense.22 Heraclitus’ problem is, however, that theconnection between ground and grounded, apparent andunapparent reality, is unintelligible because the groundingprinciple itself seems to represent a paradox. There is anattempt to build a bridge between the observable and theunobservable by way of analogical structures such that theway things are put together from contraries at the surfaceis supposed to be a reflection or mirroring of the situationat the deeper level of logos. The problem with this is thatwhile some of the surface phenomena can be so understood,21 Aristotle, De anima II 1, 412a 20.22 The dimensional difference as well as the primacy of the ground overthe grounded are tangible in fr. 54 and 123: “An unapparent connection[harmonia] is stronger than an apparent one” (DK 22B54); “Nature [i.e.the true nature of things] loves to hide” (DK 22B123).


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the conceptual analysis of the grounding principle itselfleads to an apparent logical impossibility. Stated in simpleterms, Heraclitus must be implying that things areconstituted by properties which are mutually exclusive ofone another, i.e. which cannot coexist in the same thing atthe same time in the same respect, and which are nonethelessboth essential to its reality.23 The principle whichfunctions as ground has the structure of a unity ofopposites that are both essential to the definition of thething. But to assume the coexistence of mutually exclusiveproperties in the definition of one the same thing seems todestroy the thing’s identity. The logic of logos seems to beunacceptable. To make matters worse, the surface phenomenamay not really be structurally analogous to logos after all,or in any case the claim that they are can be avoided –water may be deleterious with respect to humans only, notper se. The closest we get to the logical structure of theground are cases such as the bow and the lyre. The two areleast ambiguous in that unlike in the examples of the pathand the water the presence of contraries cannot beattributed to the different perspectives of differentobservers. Nor are bow and lyre cases in which thecontradiction can be avoided by temporal relaxation suchthat something has essentially contrary properties insuccession only or at different times, as in the example ofthe unity of day and night, summer and winter etc. However,even in the case of the lyre common logic will point outthat there are two forces here which are in equilibrium,whereas the logic of logos would require that there be oneforce only with contrary properties. This Heracliteaninsight will not be lost on Hegel, as we shall see later.

Obviously, the notion that the identity or essence ofsomething should be constituted by mutually exclusiveproperties is just too much to swallow not only for commonlogic, but for any kind of logic. Hence, even though

23 Edward Hussey felicitously characterizes the logical situation as “anonrelative copresence of opposites”: cf. E. Hussey (1999) 95-6.


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Heraclitus tries hard through the method of analogy to makepalatable the truth of his insight, he does not succeed indemonstrating the consistency of his doctrine. People mayfollow him when he explains logos by reference to surfacephenomena, but they don’t follow him in the transition tothe purely conceptual level. This is why he admonishes themto listen to logos, not to him. It is not, then, that peoplewill not listen to him, they do, but they are unable to‘make the connection’ between surface and depth reality dueto the paradoxical nature of the grounding principle.Moreover, even when people listen to him explaining the‘apparent connection’ to them, they still interpret hismeaning in accordance with common logic, and thus miss thepoint. This may be the reason for his saying that even ifpeople believe they understand when he explains things tothem, they still do not comprehend, as if they were beingwoken up from their slumber and yet continue as if they hadtheir own private understanding.

The result is an impasse in the explanatory project.The explanatory principle, logos, stands opposed to commonlogic and the connection between the level of doxa and thatof episteme becomes inscrutable. The clear dimensionaldifference between logos as unifying ground and the flux ofphenomena has been established, but the epistemic continuitybetween surface evidence and conceptual ground isinterrupted because the explanatory principle appears to beunintelligible. For while it seems that the unifying groundis structurally the same as the phenomena themselves - thevariously scented smoke combines different smells just likelogos unites all opposites24 -, the conceptual appropriationof the ground seemingly leads to paradox. Similarly, theontological continuity is rendered problematic since twoincompatible logics seem to be operative at the two levels.Consequently, the dependence relation between logos asprinciple and phenomena as principiatum remains without24 Fr. 67 : “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger…; he undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed withspices, is named according to the scent of each of them” (KRS 190).


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justification. Heraclitus’ fragments therefore assume thecharacter of pronouncements, not arguments. There is noexplanation as to why phenomena must be construed as unitiesof opposites. The explanatory project seems to have entereda blind alley. In this situation, one possible way out ofthe deadlock is to reconceive of the nature of the groundentirely and to eliminate the discrepancy between ground andgrounded altogether, now, however, in a direction oppositeto the one suggested by Anaximenes. This is what we find inParmenides.

We do not know whether Heraclitus responded toParmenides or Parmenides to Heraclitus, or whether the twophilosophers knew of each other’s thoughts at all.Nonetheless, as an interpretive maxim it makes sense toassume that Parmenides may have been responding to what fromthe point of view of common logic must have appeared as atour de force in Heraclitus. The opposite scenario is just asplausible, however. Parmenides’ doctrine is no lessprovocative in its way than is that of Heraclitus, and onemight just as well suspect that with his principle of theidentity of opposites Heraclitus responded to Parmenides’doctrine of the One. Either scenario would be plausible aswell as illuminating. Heraclitus might have thoughtParmenides’ interpretation of the principle of thecoincidence of thought and reality and its ensuing radicalmonism sterile, and Parmenides might have found Heraclitus’principle of the identity of opposites logical nonsense.Both philosophers would have had credible reasons forattacking the other’s position.

Parmenides’ central tenet may be formulated thus:Knowledge is possible only of what is, and what is notcannot be known. This, however, is already an interpretationwhich will work only if ‘knowledge’ is equated with thinkingand is understood to mean knowledge of what exists.25

25 The identification of knowing (gignw/skeinandnoei=n can indeed beestablished through a comparison of fr. 2 and fr. 6. In fr. 2, ‘toknow’ is used in the same role that ‘to think’ plays in fr. 6. See


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Furthermore, knowledge of negative facts, i.e. of things orfacts that are ‘known’ or ‘thought’ not to exist or to existonly ‘in the mind’, i.e. as possibilities, must likewise beexcluded. In support of this interpretation one may point tothe lines in fr. 8 where Parmenides apparently establishes adependence of thought on being rather than of being onthought:

The same thing is there to be thought and why there isthought (ou(/neken e)/sti no/hma). For you will not findthinking without what is, in all that has been said(fr. 8, 34-6, KRS 252).

There is no thought (no/hma) without that which is, andhence no knowledge of what is not. At most there is theerroneous belief that there could be thought and knowledgeof what is not.26

It seems, then, that Parmenides needs to make a casefor saying that presumed knowledge of what is not can atmost be a belief, doxa, and can never be knowledge proper andhence not an object of thought either. His claim becomesinconsistent, if he is interpreted to mean that whateverideas we may be forming in our minds, these ideas mustnecessarily either refer to something or be real qua ideas.It also becomes inconsistent if we include knowledge ofnegative facts in his concept of knowledge or thought.However, to rule out knowledge of the form ‘x does notexist’ is clearly a challenge for Parmenides. For hisargument that what is not cannot be known relies on thetruth of the claim that what is not is not and cannot be,i.e. on the knowledge of the non-existence of nothingness.On the face of it, it does not seem to be open to him toknow or think the existence of nothingness. Rather, he mustargue that there is nothing of which a negation could be

also Ch. Kahn (1968-9) 700-24.26 I would not go so far, however, as to make thinking a property ofbeing. On the mind/being identity thesis see the illuminating exchangebetween A. A. Long (1998) 125-51 and Stanley Rosen (1998) 152-62.


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true because there is nothing for such a negation to beabout. He thus creates the interesting logical conundrum ofdenying the possibility of a thought – viz. that “it is not”– which must be capable of being thought in order for it tobe denied. It has been suggested that Parmenides can escapethis dilemma only, if he argues that the thought that ‘itis’ is a true thought while the thought that ‘it is not’ isnot a genuine thought, but mere doxa.27 The truth of thethought that ‘it is’ would then win by default, so to speak.This line of reasoning is not entirely convincing, however,if only because the fact that what is not cannot be knownmust likewise be a piece of genuine knowledge or else wecould not know whether it is true or not.

The original lines of the beginning of the Poem arerather terse:

Come now, and I will tell you … the only ways ofenquiry that are to be thought of. The one, that [it]is and that it is impossible for [it] not to be, isthe path of Persuasion (for she attends upon Truth);the other, that [it] is not and it is needful that[it] not be, that I declare to you is an altogetherindiscernible track: for you could not know what isnot – that cannot be done – nor indicate it (KRS 245,DK28 B2 = fr. 2).

The goddess who is here speaking is apparently addressing acontroversial issue which seems to allow of two alternativeways of resolution but whose background is not beingdisclosed to us. Of these two alternatives, the goddesstells us, only one is possible, the other unthinkable andimpossible. It should be noted from the outset that thegoddess is mentioning two paths along which truth may or maynot be found, respectively. This is an indication that theseopening lines of the Poem do not themselves contain thetruth to be communicated but rather that they formulate that

27 See, for instance, Scott Austin’s chapter “Why not ‘is not’?” inAustin (1986) 11-43, especially 41-2.


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presupposition which alone opens up the path towards thetruth. In other words, the opening lines identify theconditions under which truthful knowledge will be possibleor impossible, respectively. The truth proper communicatedby the goddess is contained in that part of the Poem whichdescribes the essence of Being or the One, i.e. itsunchangeableness, its complete homogeneity, its eternity,its infinite yet bounded nature, etc. This true doctrine canbe found and understood only on the condition that the pathof Persuasion be chosen.28 It is completely blocked, if onewere to follow the ‘indiscernible track’.

All we are being told about the two alternative paths,however, is that “it is” is necessarily true and “it is not”is necessarily false. There is, however, a rudimentaryargument in support of the goddess’s claim that only thethought that “it is” opens the path towards the truth. Theexplanatory clause at the end of the excerpt quoted abovetells us that “it is” is true, because that which is not (to\mh\ o)/n) cannot be known nor signified in speech (ou)/tegnoi/hj ... ou)/te fra/ssaij). It seems, then, that Parmenidesis saying that only what is can be known and signified,whereas what is not cannot. We may derive from this thethesis that it is impossible for knowledge to know, or forthinking to think, or for language to signify what is not,

28 To interpret Parmenides’ position as one of “predicational monism”,as Patricia Curd has done, in which ‘what is’ refers to “a being of asingle kind …, with a single account of what it is”, but for which “itneed not be the case that there exists only one such thing”, seems tobe a considerable stretch: see P. Curd (1998) 5. It is difficult tosee how a plurality of beings can be upheld against thecharacterization of ‘what is’ as being both homogeneous through andthrough, having a “furthest limit”, and being “changeless within thelimits of great bonds” in fr. 8. That the One is immediately also aninfinity of many ones is an argument which requires the considerablesophistication of Hegel’s dialectic to be pulled off: cf. SL 164-9.Jonathan Barnes has likewise questioned the claim that Parmenides is astrict monist: see J. Barnes (1982) ||||||||. Like John Malcolm I findthis position difficult to reconcile with the text: cf. J. Malcolm(1991) 77, footnote 7.


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and that only that which is can be known or thought orindicated.

The fact that Parmenides sees a connection between‘what is not is not’ and ‘not-being cannot be thought’ suchthat the latter depends for its truth on the former isechoed by the famous line according to which “The same isthere for thinking and for being” (DK28 B3). This is oftentranslated as ‘thinking and being are the same’ but is, Ibelieve, best interpreted as saying that genuine thinkingmust always think what is.29 Thinking necessarily alwayscommits to the objectivity of its thought. As pointed outabove, Parmenides holds that thinking is dependent on being.This makes it difficult or impossible to interpret him assaying that whatever one thinks must exist or be true.Parmenides’ argument seems to be the inverse of this, viz.that in order for there to be thinking there must be being.In other words, thinking can be equivalent to genuineknowledge only if being is presupposed as its object. Morethat than, thinking in the sense of genuine knowing ispossible only, if its object is what is truly real. Wheneverthinking is genuine thought, it must be thinking thisgenuine reality. Interpretations, therefore, that suggestthat ‘what is’ “refers to anything that can be thought ormentioned” point in the wrong direction.30 After all,Parmenides claims that what is must exist, and only Beinghas that privilege.

29 A.A. Long characterizes this thinking as “veridical”: see A.A. Long(1998) 126.

30 See Merrill Rink (2000) 88. Kirk, Raven & Schofield corrected thesimilar interpretation of Kirk & Raven, but their comments are stillhampered by the prejudice that estin must be read as an existentialpredicate or as a predicative copula or both (cf. KRS 245-6). Theproblem with the former is that existence as a predicate mustultimately attach to a particular or class of things – and Being isneither –, and with the latter that the predicate itself is missing.According to the interpretation here proposed, ‘to be’ for Parmenidesmeans ‘having genuine reality’. A comparison with Plato’s andAristotle’s later distinction between apparent and real or true being(ontos on) seems closer to the mark.


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Again, one might think that Parmenides’ principle thatonly what is can be thought or known is an early formulationof the Russellian point that terms cannot refer to non-existent entities. According to this analysis, famously “Thepresent king of France is bald” is neither true nor falsebut meaningless precisely because the descriptive phrase‘the present king of France’ does not refer.31 However,Parmenides’ thought is much more radical than that. ForParmenides there are no referring expressions at all, not tosomething which exists nor to something which does not. Thisseems surprising given his claim that to be true a thoughtmust be about something. Does this not mean that thoughtmust refer to something, i.e. to some being or other?However, for Parmenides thinking can refer to or expressonly being or reality as a whole. For him, that which is isnot some one thing as distinct from others. It is all thereis. An expression cannot refer to it as we refer to a tableby using ‘table’ or ‘this thing over there’, simply becausethere is nothing which is distinct from reality as a whole.And if not-being is not, being is not even distinct fromthat which it is not, since that from which it is supposedto differ is not. Referring to something presupposes that wesingle out which something we mean, but reality as a whole cannotbe singled out. This, I suggest, is the heart of Parmenides’insight.

Nor did Parmenides think that being is the collectionor class of all things. After all, it would be natural toassume that being is the sum total of all individual thingsand that by ‘all there is’ one would have to understand‘everything there is’. If this were so, then being could besignified by calling it the collection or sum total of allbeings. However, to conceive of being as the class of allbeings is impossible according to Parmenides. In order tomake sense of this we need to understand why he believes31 See Bertrand Russell, On Denoting |||||||||||. I do not think thatnon-referring expressions make a statement meaningless, but this isnot our concern here.


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that ‘all there is’ is not equivalent to ‘everything thereis’.32 Parmenides seems to have believed that anyproposition or genuine thought containing a negation must beillegitimate. There are two kinds of negative propositionsthat seem to be relevant in this context, depending onwhether the negation is thought to attach to the copula orto the predicate term itself.33 In addition, we need todistinguish between the existential and the predicative useof ‘is’.34 In the existential use of ‘is’, ‘is’ functions asthe predicate term and consequently there is no additionalcopula.35 This results in three cases of negativestatements: (1) ‘a is not’, (2) ‘a is not F’, and (3) ‘a isnot-F’. Parmenides explicitly makes use of (1) whenaccording to fr. 6 he says that ‘nothing is not’ (mhde\nou)k e)/stin). This may perhaps best be interpreted as sayingthat there is nothing that could be said or thought aboutnothing and hence a fortiori nothing true. For this reason, theattempt to think nothing or to say anything about it, isfutile. It results in a non-thought. The statement ‘nothingis not’ would therefore not be about nothing, but aboutnothing. It would make the point that the statement ‘Nothingis not’ lacks a logical subject. If, per impossibile, one were32 Aristotle would later distinguish between various forms of oneness orunity, from the one as indivisible whole to the sum total of distinctparts (= to pan): cf. Aristotle, Metaphys. V 6, 26.

33 See Aristotle, De interpretatione 10, 19b 20-4. For Aristotle, when thenegation is joined to the predicate, the proposition expresses aprivation (steresis). I interpret this to mean that the so-called‘proposition of the third adjacent’ expresses the absence of aproperty which might potentially be present and the presence insteadof some opposite property. For instance, a man who is said to be not-just is said to be unjust (i.e. cheating, deceptive, fraudulent,extortionist, etc.), whereas a man who is said to be not just is notjust, but instead rich or powerful or drunk or handsome or anythingyou please.

34 McKirahan distinguishes and discusses four meanings of ‘is’: see R.McKirahan (1994) 161-3.

35 It is, however, possible to reformulate a negative existence claim ofthe form ‘x is not’ in such a way as to add a predicate term to it.Thus we could construe ‘x is not’ either as ‘x is not real’ or as ‘xis non-existent’.


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to posit nothing as the object of thought this would resultin the collapse of thinking or the lapse of thinking intoopining. Although ‘nothing is not’ contains negation, then,the expression does not conflict with the prohibition ofusing negation in statements expressing the truth. ‘Nothingis not’ is a meta-level proposition, a proposition about thestructure of propositions.

None of this, however, does as yet explain whyParmenides arrives at the conclusion that there is only onetrue object of thought, viz. Being itself or the One, andthat is it is impossible to think anything apart from, ordiscern anything within, Being itself. Why, we need to ask,does he preclude the possibility of making true statementsabout individual things that exist? This is the part of theargument that is missing in the extant fragments and in lieuof which, for better or worse, we need to construct anargumentative bridge. We need to determine whether the useof negation must be invoked when making affirmativepredicative statements about individual objects. That ismanifestly not the case – evidently there is no negationinvolved when we say that ‘fire is hot’ or that ‘earth iscold’, for instance. However, if we suppose that Parmenideswas not so much concerned with the surface structure ofaffirmative predications but with their logicalpresuppositions, we might arrive at a different conclusion.Let us assume that Parmenides reasoned as follows. Anyreference to a particular thing presupposes that this thingbe distinguishable from other things. Distinction inevitablyinvolves negation – omnis determinatio est negatio. To refer to aimplies that a be conceptually distinct from b or c or d, etc.Similarly, to attribute a specific property to somethingimplies that this property be this particular one and notsome other property. In other words, to pick out or identifyanything in particular, whether a subject or a predicateterm, necessarily presupposes the separation of one term


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from the next or from all other terms. Such separation ispossible only through negation.36

This leaves us with the onus of giving credence to theclaim that negative statements of the kind ‘a is not b’, or‘a is not-b’ or ‘a is not F’ or ‘a is not-F’ areillegitimate from Parmenides’ point of view. We have no wayof determining whether Parmenides distinguished betweenthese formulations. It cannot hurt, however, to try and seewhy neither of them may have been acceptable to him. Takingthe case of ‘a is not-b’ or ‘a is not-F’ first, Parmenidesmay have reasoned that ‘not-b’ or ‘not-F’ is not somethingthat a could actually be. That is to say, ‘not-b’ is not anobject at all nor ‘not-F’ a property. ‘Not-b’ is empty, and‘not-F’ is the non-existence of a property. How couldsomething be characterized by something that does not existor by something that does not belong to it? How could not-Fattach to a, if it is nothing? Hence, ‘not-F’ is not alegitimate property at all and consequently cannot bepredicated of anything.37 Similarly with ‘not-b’. ‘a is not-b’ and ‘a is not-F’ are contradictory because they are bothaffirmative and negative at the same time. They affirm thatsomething that does not exist nonetheless is or belongs tosomething.

What if, however, the negation is taken together withthe copula? In that case, Parmenides may have reasoned that

36 My interpretation of the illegitimacy of a negative predicate or ofdenying the predicate is similar in spirit to Alexander Mourelatos’reading of the Parmenidean copula as introducing a “constitutivepredicate”, although my technical analysis differs from his: seeA.P.D. Mourelatos (1970) 78-80.

37 I believe this line of reasoning gains some plausibility through thefact that in his criticism of Parmenides Aristotle will laterinterpret the expression ‘not-F’ as standing for the absence ofsomething which might potentially belong to a thing. As he shows inPhys. I 8, Parmenides rejected the possibility of change because hemistakenly conceived of ‘not-F’ or ‘not F’ not as a privation or lackbut as a non-entity. But privation is not a nullity, rather it is adisposition for change.


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‘a is not b’ and ‘a is not F’ are contradictory because theyare again both affirmative and negative at the same time. Hemay have construed the negative copula as an attempt todetermine the subject term by first attributing (‘is’) andthen abrogating (‘not’) one and the same property. Somethingcannot be what it is not. Here the contradiction iscontained in the fact that even a negative statementexpresses an attribution while what it attributes is thenot-being of something. In other words, nothing is beingattributed. That this construal could conceivably have beenthe one actually adopted by Parmenides may be gleaned fromthe following lines in fr. 6:

… nothing is not. I bid you ponder that, for this isthe first way of enquiry from which I hold you back,but then from that on which mortals wander knowingnothing, two-headed; for helplessness guides thewandering thought in their breasts, and they arecarried along, deaf and blind at once, dazed,undiscrim-inating hordes, who believe that to be and not to beare the same and not the same … (KRS 247, my italics).

Mortals cannot make up their minds about the meaning of thenegative copula – while they want to say that something isnot something they say in the same breath that something isnot something. They do not realize that to affirm the not-being of something is to make an affirmation that denieswhat it affirms. However, if neither of the above negativesare legitimate forms of expression, the possibility ofdistinguishing F from G, H, or J falls flat. Likewise, itwill be impossible to distinguish a from b, c or d. As aresult, genuine thinking and knowing can have only oneobject, viz. Being itself due to the dichotomy betweeneither thinking what is or not thinking at all. Toconceptualize the difference between any two things we mustbe able to think in negations. And yet, for Parmenides nocombination of ‘is’ and ‘not’ is logically permissible -with the one exception of the meta-level proposition whichprovides the reason for this being so. From this there


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follows the startling consequence that only Being as suchcan be thought. A plurality of things must be logicallyruled out, and a fortiori being cannot be the sum total of allparticulars. It can only be the One. Parmenides musttherefore call the world of sense and experience a world ofillusion which, although it exists in people’s opinion, hasyet no substance or reality.

To sum up this somewhat tortuous (but hopefully notdeceptive) argument. Parmenides holds what one might call a‘realistic’ interpretation of the negative copula. Inessence, he construes it as expressing the contradictionthat something is said to possess a feature that it lacks.This interpretation finds sufficient support in thefragments, in particular in fr. DK28B6 just quoted whichaccuses mortals of confusion, because they conflate to beand not to be. It also, I believe, derives additionalplausibility from the fact that Aristotle’s anti-Parmenideanargument in Physics I 7 contends that the attribution of a lackor absence of something (ste/resij, a)pousi/a) is precisely the‘two-deadedness’ that is needed to conceptualize change.38

We might suspect that another dramatic consequencefollows from the rejection of negative propositions. If weeliminate negation we simultaneously eliminate the truthdifference, i.e. the difference between true and false. Ifthought thinks at all, then what it thinks cannot but betrue. In other words, thought, if it thinks anything at all,thinks what is and thus thought’s thinking is equivalent toknowing, if by knowledge we understand to think what istrue. This obviously does not mean that anything we care tothink must be true. As we saw, in abandoning negativepropositions, Parmenides also abandons that level ofreasoning at which thought and reality are distinct. Theclaim that whatever we may happen to think must be true isvalid only for the kind of thinking for which the separationof thought and being holds. A thinking that subscribes to

38 Cf. Aristotle, Phys. II 7, 191a 3-14.


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this separation we may call fancying, imagining or opining,but it must be kept distinct from what Parmenides callsthinking. While thinking in the strict sense is always true,imagining or opining may be either true of false. The rideon the chariot has catapulted philosophy into the realm ofphilosophy as episteme. The world of the true-falsedistinction has been left behind. This is yet anotherinsight that will not be lost on Hegel who likewisedistinguishes between correctness and truth. Opinions may becorrect or incorrect and in this sense true or false.Philosophical thought, on the other hand, already moves inthe domain of truth. Philosophical knowledge can be more orless adequate and in this sense more or less true, but itcannot be false – a conception I will have more to say aboutin the final chapter.

The context in which Parmenides’ argument was conductedmay very well have been a debate about the nature of Beingitself. After all, the positive doctrine Parmenides proposesas the truth concerns the peculiar nature of Being asuncreated and unchanging, undifferentiated and all-encompassing. It is conceivable that Parmenides developedhis views about the nature of Being while rejecting thearguments of others who claimed that it was necessary thatnothingness exist since otherwise Being could not be limitedby anything. If so, Being would have to be infinite and thusincomplete, i.e. always unfinished. Parmenides may haveargued in response that to make nothingness the limiter ofBeing was absurd since there would be nothing in nothingnesswith which to limit Being. Nothingness could not exist and afortiori could not be used to limit Being. As a consequence,the notion of Being, too, would have to be rethought. Beingwould have to be limited while still being all-encompassing.Or it would have to be complete and thus perfect withoutbeing limited by anything outside itself, not evennothingness. But if nothingness has no being and is not aviable concept, then neither could Being be limited on theinside. It must be solid through and through, not “more hereand less there” (fr. 8). This would have been the first time


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in history that the idea of totality would have beenconceptualized. Totality is the all-encompassing unity thatexcludes nothing from itself, not even nothingness. It is aself-limiting completeness. While this scenario is entirelyspeculative, there can be little doubt that Parmenides wason to such an idea of totality:

… it is right that what is should not be imperfect;for it is not deficient – if it were it would bedeficient in everything [viz. in being itself]. …since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected, likethe bulk of a ball well-rounded on every side, equallybalanced in every direction from the center (KRS 252,fr. 8).

That Being is a self-limiting totality is the substance ofthat “unshaken heart of well-rounded truth” (KRS 243, fr. 1)whose revelation the goddess promises the philosopher.

But now it turns out that in order to formulate theconcept of Being, Parmenides cannot quite stay within thenarrow boundaries of his logical universe. Strictlyspeaking, all that could be said about being would be thatbeing is. “It is” or “Being is what it is” would have to bethe only text of Parmenides’ metaphysics. However, accordingto what we know about the positive Parmenidean doctrine ofBeing, Being is whole, not composed of parts, unchangeableinstead of changeable, imperishable instead of perishable,homogeneous instead of heterogeneous, eternal instead oftemporal, infinite instead of finite, etc. Violating his ownlaw, Parmenides thus effectively re-introduces distinctionand hence non-identity into being. There may be aninterpretation which makes this fact less obvious. Thus onemight say that just because not-being cannot be part ofbeing, being must be uncreated, eternal, without change,etc. Being is as it were everywhere, and it is everywherethe same pure positivity, a totality without plurality.Nonetheless, in order to think or conceptualize this purepositivity, Parmenides must use a number of attributes which


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derive their meaning from the contrast with theircontraries. He thus acknowledges, at least implicitly, theHeraclitean principle that all essential determinationsacquire meaning only through their opposites. The result isthat while being is the totality of reality and an unalloyedpositivity, i.e. supposedly not affected by negativity, itsconcept cannot be completely undetermined. But then neithercan being, if the principle of the identity of thought andbeing is to be maintained. Hence being cannot be absolutelypure and without determination. At least a rudimentarydistinction between being as subject and its attributes orproperties will need to be accepted. If so, negation must beallowed to play a role. Despite what Parmenides may havehoped for, philosophy is now well on its way to conceive ofreality as substance. At the beginning of his Logic, Hegelwill argue that if being is indeterminate, so must itsconcept be as well, i.e. pure being and nothingness areequivalent in terms of conceptual determinacy. Looked at inthis way, Parmenides’ One is either nothingness itself or acase of determinate being.39

Whereas Heraclitus argued that reality cannot beunderstood unless we accept that it is fundamentally a unityof contraries with logos as the universal unifier, Parmenidescounters this doctrine by insisting that being must be self-identical pure positivity. But we need to ask now in whatway Parmenides provides a solution to the failed Heracliteanattempt to connect being as ground with the surface realityof everyday experience. Here we notice that while Parmenidesmaintains a clear dimensional distinction between being andthe sensible world their difference has become so radical39 In the Logic, Hegel in fact treats Parmenides’ being as an example of‘pure being’: “… the starting point of the history of philosophy is tobe found in Eleatic philosophy, and, more precisely, in the philosophyof Parmenides, who apprehends the Absolute as being. For he says that,‘Only being is, and nothing is not.’ This must be taken as the properstarting point of philosophy, because philosophy as such is cognitionby means of thinking, and here pure thinking was firmly adhered to forthe first time and became its own object” (E § 86 Z 2, p. 138, GSH,modified).


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that any connection between them seems lost. The logic ofbeing constitutes a different sphere altogether from commonlogic which, unlike in the case of Heraclitus, is no longersupposed to reflect the logic of the underlying ground.Rather than being imperfect, common logic is confused. Theretherefore exists neither an ontological nor an epistemiccontinuity between the explanatory level and the world ofexperience. No structural similarity between phenomena andground can be appealed to and no analogy will help us makethe transition from the world of sense to the sphere ofbeing. Unlike Heraclitus, Parmenides does not even attemptto construct a path leading from everyday phenomena to thelevel of being. Common logic with its use of negation andits assumptions about the separateness of thinking and beingis simply incompatible with Parmenides’ speculativeprinciple of the inseparability of thought and reality. TheProem to Parmenides’ Poem can serve as a beautifulconfirmation of this interpretation. Given Parmenides’ pithylogic and the extremely terse argument he offers - at leastin the extant text of the Poem - it must seem puzzling atfirst that he should have recourse to a quasi-mythologicalsetting with which to lend authority to his doctrine. We arebeing told that the philosopher is carried towards theheavens in a chariot accompanied by two daughters of the sununtil he reaches the gates between night and day. Thephilosophical doctrine, or its fundamental principle that“it is and cannot not be” is put in the mouth of a goddess,no doubt not only to endow it with divine authority but alsoto signal with dramatic effect the depth of the abyss thatdivides common understanding from the realm of truth. Thesymbolism is obvious. The path up and the path down are nolonger the same. Common logic moves in a world of darkness(negation), hence the confusion of the mortals, while therealm of truth is bright as daylight (pure positivity). Inorder to achieve this insight, the philosopher must turn hisback on the world of sense and transcend the universe ofhuman discourse. There is no ordinary path between the worldof wrongheaded opinion and the sphere of knowledge, topenetrate into the latter nothing short of a divine


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revelation is necessary. How could the message that thetruth about reality is not to be found in the world ofcommon understanding be made clearer? From the point of viewof common logic, the Parmenidean principle of the identityof thought and reality is para-logical.

However, Parmenides’ quasi-mythological Proem containsyet another message. The rejection of epistemic continuitygoes together with the affirmation of a position of theimmanence of thought. Reality, Parmenides seems to want toconvince us, is exclusively the object of pure thought, athinking which transcends the true-false distinction whichleads mortals astray. This is probably the first time in thehistory of Western philosophy that thinking as such, withoutthe aid of sense-perception and observation, is regarded asa source of knowledge. The structure of thought itself, viz.that it can think only what is, leads to a metaphysicalconclusion according to which being is pure positivity.Because of the very fact that thought cannot think or knowbut that which is, it can also know the nature of being.Parmenides has discovered onto-logical thought. Insofar asthe very structure of thought coincides with the object ofknowledge which is at the same time its content, we can saythat with Parmenides thinking becomes the measure of being.The logic of onto-logical thought does not merely disqualifycertain statements as formally incorrect or impermissible,it qualifies some as erroneous and others as true and, moreprecisely, it entails certain truths which are non-tautological and non-trivial, i.e. neither true merelylogically not merely semantically. Parmenides believes hehas shown what Kant will later claim to be impossible, viz.that knowledge a priori of that which is beyond experience canbe derived through thinking alone.

But it is not only the epistemic path that no longerleads from ‘down here’ to ‘up there’ with Parmenides. Theontological continuity between ground and grounded seems tohave disappeared as well. This is not due merely to logicalincompatibility between surface and depth logic as in


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Heraclitus. The logic of being does not only contradictcommon logic, it invalidates it.40 Parmenides seems to havegiven up the idea of a dependence relation between being andphenomena altogether, or in any case that relation does notaccord the grounded much weight so that it becomes difficultto recognize a ground-grounded relationship between beingand the sensible world at all. Epistemically, the world ofsense now seems a mere psychological phenomenon, a productor construct of human imagination, although it is notnothing. It has the reality of an illusion or deception.Ontologically, the relationship between the One and the Manyseems that of reality vs. semblance. The phenomenal world isnot the appearance or the manifestation of some underlyingreality but a mere show or a veil. The relationship betweenthe two is entirely negative, it seems, the sensible worldhas no independent standing and it does not ‘participate’ inthe realm of being. Should we call this a groundingrelationship at all? Grandiose as Parmenides’ thought is,the fact that the sensible world is dismissed as the productof error seems not only counter-intuitive but deeplyunsatisfactory because reality has become disconnected fromexperience. The One seems to be left without an explanatoryfunction, and it is therefore fitting that the philosophershould discover the truth in a world far above that of hisfellow mortals.

Before we examine the unfolding of the explanatoryproject in Plato and Aristotle and their solution to the

40 Hence the debate in the literature as to how Parmenides can evenadmit the existence of opinion and its mistaken beliefs: see W.K.C.Guthrie (1965) II 75-7. The suggestion that the Heraclitean-Parmenidean dualism that pits being against nothing inspired Plato tofind a new solution makes good sense. Cf. also Margot Fleischer (2001)71-2. Fleischer appropriately refers to the illusion of the finiteworld as “a real illusion”. She sees in Plato’s Timaeus the attempt toreconcile the ‘two beginnings’ of European philosophy in Heraclitusand Parmenides. Heidegger’s explanation of the seeming contradictionin Parmenides’ constrast between pure Being and the existence of aworld of doxa is both illuminating and superior to many: cf. M.Heidegger (2000) 83-8.


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problem of objectivity generated by it, we need to lookbriefly at Zeno’s contribution to the issue at hand. Zeno isfar from being an epigone who merely tried to fill in thedetails of the position worked out by his teacherParmenides. Nor does his originality consist exclusively inthe ingenuity of his antinomies and paradoxes whose bafflingresults rest on anything but simple mistakes. Against thebackdrop of the structural problems raised by Parmenides’handling of the explanatory project, viz. his dismissal ofthe question of epistemic and ontological continuity betweenground and grounded, we can see that his genius consists toa significant extent in a rethinking of Parmenides’methodological approach. Zeno’s achievement residesprecisely in the fact that he supplied the epistemicexplanation why the link between the sensible phenomena onone hand and Parmenidean Being on the other must be non-existent. What makes his position endlessly intriguing isthe fact that while starting from unshakable everydayexperience he ends up with an entirely counter-intuitiveresult by relying on a procedure which accords perfectlywith common logic. In other words, Zeno effectively replacedParmenides’ mythological ‘justification’ as it appears inthe Proem with a rational method, and one which can be readas confirming Parmenides’ doctrine at that.

Typically, Zeno’s attack on the undeniable reality ofplurality, space, time, and motion proceeds by demonstratingthe unacceptable results that follow from a conceptualanalysis of their nature.41 The philosophical brilliance ofZeno’s thought consists not only in the ingenuity of theparticular paradoxes themselves but already in hisidentification of the fundamental trait of all finitethings, viz. their discreetness or divisibility, bothspatially and temporally. Conceptually, there is of courseno reason to deny that divisibility is infinite in the sense41 On the question whether the four paradoxes (Dichotomy, Achilles,Arrow, Stadium) do or do not form a ‘constructive dilemma’ see J.A.Faris, The Paradoxes of Zeno, Aldershot-Brookfield USA-Singapore-Sydney(Avebury) 1996, 113-5.


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of being interminable, because divisibility and finitude arecoextensive. As long as there is something finite it willalways be divisible. Consequently, Zeno’s procedure isstrictly analytic. He exploits the contradiction whicharises from the analysis of infinite divisibility itself. Ifsomething is infinitely divisible, then it must haveinfinitely many parts. Something with infinitely many parts,however, is not finite, but infinite. Hence all finitethings are contradictory phenomena. Zeno thus bequeathes theproblem of the unity of the finite and the infinite toposterity. The details of Zeno’s proofs differ somewhat fromone example to the next, the Dichotomy and the Achilles areconstructed along the lines just indicated, while the FlyingArrow takes advantage of the fact that anything which movesmust also be in a definite place at any moment of itstrajectory - and therefore does not ‘really’ move. But inessence, we find the same ingenious procedure throughout.Plurality, space, and motion cannot be genuinely real sincewhat follows from an analysis of their very naturecontradicts their phenomenal reality. The latter musttherefore be doubted or dismissed as an illusion or adeception, because phenomena which contradict themselvescannot be real. Common logic is the measure of reality. Onemay conclude from this that Parmenides must have been rightwhen he claimed that the nature of reality must be purepositivity and that the spatio-temporal world of the Manyrests on human confusion. Alternatively, one may alsoconclude, however, that Zeno challenges us to discover ananalysis of finitude which will avoid those contradictoryresults and thus bring out the error in his owndemonstrations. Until we do, however, his demonstrationsremain valid.42

Zeno’s procedure is so remarkable because it representsa method for letting the standpoint of common logic and42 For a defense of the thesis that Cantor’s notion of a super-denumerable infinity undermines the validity of Zeno’s point see A.Grünbaum (2001) 164-75. For further critiques see also A. Grünbaum(2001) 176-99 and 200-50.


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everyday experience transcend and abolish itself in theprocess of analyzing its own fundamental assumptions aboutthe nature of reality. Zeno shows that common logic self-destructs. If consistently adhered to, it will end in aporia.He is thus the father of a genuinely dialectical procedurewhich leads to the ‘sublation’ of the presuppositions ofeveryday beliefs. By virtue of its own logic, doxa abolishesitself, but in a sort of anti-climax it then refuses to leadus back to the threshold of Parmenidean episteme. Thedialectic into which Zeno draws thinking is negative. Itseffect is the complete erosion of the idea of theobjectivity of knowledge. On the other hand, however, andsimilar to Socratic questioning, by pulling the rug fromunder the feet of everyday beliefs it creates theprecondition for a philosophical periagoge. Zeno’s procedureis a model of what Hegel will later call “the dialectical ornegatively rational side” of reason which, in his conceptionof the dialectic, must be complemented by the “speculativeor positively rational one” (E § 79). Typically, thedialectical stage of reason, if pursued for the sake ofitself, ends in skepticism according to Hegel (E § 81), andthere can be little doubt that Zeno was a seminal thinkerfor the skeptic and sophistic traditions that came afterhim.43 As far as the explanatory project is concerned,Zeno’s ‘negative dialectic’, to borrow a phrase, forced arethinking of the possibility of objective knowledge. Zenodoes indeed construct a path from ‘down here’ to ‘up there’and he replaces Parmenides’ scenario of a supernaturalenlightenment with rational argument. And yet, what awaits

43 It makes sense, therefore, to see in Zeno something like the fatherof radical skepticism, as Drew Hyland suggests: cf. D.A. Hyland (1973)208. Hyland quotes Timon of Philius who refers to Zeno as “the two-edge tongue of mighty Zeno, who, /Say what one would, could argue ituntrue …” (206). To restrict Zeno’s significance to the purpose of“repay[ing] those who ridiculed Eleatic philosophy in their own coin”and to “the fact that Zeno attacks common sense” as does Richard D.McKirahan Jr. seems to me to downplay Zeno’s role in the unfolding ofpre-Socratic thought: see R.D. McKirahan (1999) 135 and 156,respectively.


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us at the end of this path is profound perplexity. Theexplanatory project, it seems, needs to be rethought.

3. Platonic Ascent and Descent

Looking back on the explanatory project as it unfolds fromthe earliest Milesians through Heraclitus, Parmenides, andZeno we note that a successful conclusion of the projectwill require a solution to the problem of the disruption ofthe connection between level of experience and opinion onone hand and the logic of the ground on the other. It mustbe possible to understand phenomenal reality as being insome sense dependent upon the underlying reality rather thanbeing merely invalidated by it. This will require that anepistemic path be pointed out leading from the sensibleworld to the supersensible or non-sensible ground, a pathwhich is not merely negatively dialectical. However, as weturn to the culmination of the explanatory project among theAncients in Plato and Aristotle, we will notice that theirtask has become more complicated than merely re-establishingthe ontological and epistemic continuity between ground andgrounded. In order to understand the complexity of theproblem as it presented itself to these two philosophers, wefirst need to consider in greater depth the fundamentaltraits of the project as they are beginning to emerge atthis point.

To recapitulate. The ‘desire to understand’, asAristotle calls it44, initiates the explanatory projectwhose goal is objective knowledge as justified knowledge, orepisteme as opposed to doxa. From the start, we witness theemergence of a difference between the phenomenal reality onone hand and a ‘deep’ reality on the other, an ontologicaldifference which is a structural feature of the formexplanation takes. Notwithstanding this difference, the

44 Aristotle, Metaph. I 1 980a 22.


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explanatory relationship between explanans and explanandumrequires that there also exist a continuity between groundand grounded. Both the difference and the continuity areepistemic as well as ontological. By the nature of theproject, the explanatory ground is always a posit whichtranscends observation and direct perception. In this sense,it is not, strictly speaking, the billiard ball which uponimpact moves the other billiard ball. That which isresponsible for imparting motion is a ‘force’, not a thing.Thus the force not only belongs to a different category ofobjects than the balls, it also stands in a specialrelationship to them, viz. that of ontological priority. Theforce is ‘responsible’ for the motion, something the Greekscall an aition. It is therefore ‘greater in dignity’, to use aPlatonic expression, than that which is dependent upon it.Ontologically, the force is the ‘one’ which governs the‘many’ and the arche which ‘rules’ their behavior. This iswhy Aristotle conceives of it as a universal (katholou).Similarly, by its very nature a force is observable onlyindirectly through its effects. Its epistemic status is thatof a noematic posit, as distinct from, say, an objectpresent in its self-givenness in sensation or perception.But while the distinction between force and thing marks aqualitative difference within the same ontologicaldimension, the ontological difference between ground andgrounded is dimensional in character, i.e., the underlyingreality does not belong to the same ontological ‘level’ ofbeing as the grounded. I suggested that perhaps the earliestexample of this is Anaximander’s apeiron which is set offdimensionally from phenomenal reality by being void of thoseattributes which characterize the abstract elements. InAristotle, the dimensional difference will reappear as onebetween matter and form while epistemically Plato willoppose the sensible and the intelligible and ontologicallythat which is a mixture of being and not-being vs. thatwhich is ‘pure’ being.

The fundamental problem generated by the explanatoryproject, however, is that of the objectivity of our


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knowledge of the underlying ground. Objectivity impliesepistemic accessibility and independent or non-relativeexistence of the ground. Thus objectivity becomes a problemas soon as the opposition between subjective perspective,belief and opinion (doxa) on one hand and the idea of asubject-independent, and in this sense objective, knowledge(episteme) on the other has arisen. As we have seen, however,this opposition is structurally implicit in the ground-grounded relationship because of the epistemic opacity ofthe ground. It indicates a fault line which sooner or latermust create a credibility problem for the explanatory posit.Credibility problems of this sort surfaced in Heraclitus andParmenides and were brought to a head by Zeno’s negativedialectic. Zeno’s thought creates a particularly provocativesituation in that he undermines the trustworthiness ofsensible experience while doing nothing to soften theparalogical edge of his master’s monism which results fromhis paradoxes without the possibility of an alternative.Sense-perception and doxa have been discredited, but thetruth which lies beyond belief and common logic seems to beas paradoxical as the everyday phenomena. As far asParmenides’ failure to provide for a dependence relationbetween ground and grounded is concerned, no progress hasbeen made. Moreover, the credibility of both doxa andepisteme has now been put into doubt. The hour of the skeptichas arrived, and he finds his first important incarnation inthe Greek sophists.

A brief reference to two skeptical responses to theexplanatory project must suffice for our purposes. The doubtcast on both ordinary experience as well as philosophicalspeculation about the nature of ‘true’ being may prompt areturn to the immediate certainties of sensory perspectivismsuch as Protagoras’s homo mensura principle. As aconsequence, however, the idea of an epistemic path fromdoxa to episteme must be given up completely. The notion ofobjective knowledge is lost because the subjectiveexperience has now been made private and hence incorrigible.Furthermore, due to the fragmentation of ordinary experience


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into a multitude of individual perspectives the notion of anobjectivity over against the many subjective perspectivesitself disappears. This opens up the possibility of awholesale attack on the entire explanatory project which wefind in Gorgias’ claims that (1) nothing exists, (2) ifanything existed it could not be known, and (3) even ifsomething could be known about reality, it could not becommunicated.45 If this were so, the explanatory projectwould of course be at an early end, and the rest would berhetoric. Nonetheless, through his radicalization of Zeno’snegative dialectic Gorgias indirectly indicates the problemthat needs to be resolved for knowledge of the real to bedemonstrably possible. Whatever is suggested as a ground orunderlying reality must be shown to be objectively real,objectively knowable, and objectively communicable, i.e.universally intelligible. To this we need to add therequirement that the ontological dependence relation betweenground and grounded be such that the ground actually groundsand does not annihilate the grounded. How are theserequirements to be met?

Taking Plato’s triptych of the three similes in theRepublic as our point of departure we may begin to appreciatehow complex the solution to the explanatory project hasbecome. As we should expect, we again find a cleardifference between phenomenal reality and ‘true’ being. Thisdichotomy is expressed in terms of both epistemic andontological characteristics. Epistemically, Platodistinguishes between the visible and the intelligible withwhich he associates, on one hand, the senses and on theother phronesis, dianoia or nous. Ontologically, the two spheresare juxtaposed as that which consists in a mixture of beingand not-being vs. pure being or relative vs. absolutebeing.46 Next we notice that Plato devises not one, but twoepistemic paths which are supposed to connect the world of

45 See Curd (1996) 99-102 (DK 82 B3).46 See, for instance, Resp. 477A-B and 478C-D on the correlation of doxawith that which is intermediate between being and not-being.


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sense-experience and phenomena with the world of thought andbeing. One path, represented by the simile of the Line,introduces a hierarchy of cognitive faculties (guessing,opining and dianoia or nous 47) on one hand and types ofcognition (eikasia, doxa, episteme). The latter correspond toobjective correlates (shadows, visible things, geometricalobjects, and Forms). As a result, this path also representsan ontological ascent from the sensory realm of shadows andobjects of belief to that of the intelligible, clearlyimplying both an epistemic and an ontological dependencerelation between the different levels of the hierarchy suchthat the entire sequence culminates in the highest principleof both knowledge and being, the idea of the Good. The otherepistemic path, the one presented in the parable of theCave, describes the ascent of the individual soul from itsbeing mired in a fake reality of mere reflections ofreflections to the sphere of true being, and back again. Itemphasizes the crucial importance of personal periagogethrough education without which the individual could notdiscover the objective relationships, epistemic orontological, that obtain between the phenomenal realm andthat of true being. In other words, the parable of the Cavedescribes what it would take to gain access to the realm oftruth indicated in the two preceding similes of the Sun andthe Line, and then to act upon this insight. It also showsPlato’s concern with the vulnerability of the individual andhis openness to manipulation by others – symbolically, thetrain of people carrying artifacts along the wall behind thebacks of the prisoners who together with the fire in thecave create a ‘virtual reality’ for the chained cavedwellers. The Cave is a powerful statement of Plato’s beliefthat theoretical insight alone does not enable us to use ourknowledge wisely, and moreover that virtue of character is aprecondition for exercising knowledge because only throughvirtue are we capable of resisting the powers ofmanipulative persuasion and corruption. Hence the importanceof moral psychology for Plato, the central role of his

47 Plato calls these paqh/mata e)\n th|= yuxh|= (Resp. 511D).


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analyses of the soul and of his diagnosis of the temptationsand seductions to which it is prone to succumb and themeticulous planning of an educational curriculum in theRepublic.

While the simile of the Line, then, designs atheoretical path from the visible to the intelligible, anascent in the abstract, as it were, or one ad usum delphini, forthe ‘lovers of wisdom’, the Cave adumbrates the much hardertask of kindling philosophical eros in the uninitiated and,as the parable indicates, even hostile members of thecommunity. In addition to devising an educational path inthe Cave and an epistemic path in the Line, however, Platospecifies yet another epistemic relationship in the analogyof the Sun. It is here that a genuine epistemic dependencerelationship is being described between the idea of the Goodand the Forms as well as the capacity of thought (nous) tothink the Forms such that ultimately the idea of the Goodgrounds the possibility of the Forms as well as that ofphilosophical knowledge or episteme. It is interesting tonote that the simile of the Sun likewise affirms theexistence of an ontological dependence between the idea ofthe Good and the visible world 48, but the emphasis onepistemic concerns even in the simile of the Sun is obviousand together with the epistemic orientation of the other twoparts of the tryptich reinforces the impression of apreponderance of the concern with the epistemic and theeducational in Plato which seems to outweigh his interest inontology. Other passages in the Republic as well as in anumber of other dialogues add one more element to thosealready mentioned. In addition to the overall relationshipbetween the idea of the Good, the Forms, and the sensiblerealm there exists another, partly epistemic, partlyontological relationship between the Forms on one hand andindividual things or particulars on the other. This complexof considerations is usually referred to as Plato’s doctrine48 Cf. Resp. 509B. The sun is said to nurture and make grow things in thevisible world which suggests that it supports them in their being (to\ei)=nai kai\ th\n ou)si/an.


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of Forms, and there can be little doubt that it plays amajor role in Plato’s response to the objectivity problem.49

To summarize what we have found so far. All theelements of the explanatory project previously identifiedare present in Plato plus a few more. There is a pronounceddifference, but also a strong continuity, between thegrounding sphere and the phenomena, and the difference aswell as the continuity are both epistemic and ontological incharacter. Viewed against the background of our earlieranalysis concerning the explanatory project, Plato’s thoughtdoes justice to its systematic requirements in all respects.Not only that, his own analysis of these requirements seemsto have led him to add elements to it, such as theeducational path indicated in the Cave simile, which beforehim were underdeveloped at best. Looking back at thechallenges posed by Zeno, the sophists, and the newlydiscovered possibilities of using rhetoric to manipulativeadvantage, we can understand Plato’s conclusion that itwould be impossible for philosophy to survive unless itfirst undertook to work towards a moral reform of societyand the individual nurtured by it. What good can philosophydo, even assuming that it alone can point the way towards ajust society and a life of genuine happiness for theindividual, if the smokescreens of ideology obscure thedifference between what is true and what is profitable andsuccessful? For Plato the survival of philosophy itself wasat stake because his times seemed too hostile to sufferlovers of wisdom gladly - witness the fate of Socrates. Buthe also knew that philosophy had to make a much better casefor itself than it had in the past. It was not enough toexpose ignorance and manipulation, philosophy also needed toconfront the question of its own true calling, its innerpossibility, and its very foundations. One cannot fight

49 There is an extended discussion on whether there exists or does notexist a ‘theory of Forms’ in the dialogues into which we cannot enter:see, for instance, J. Annas (1981) 233-41. That Forms play animportant, even indispensable role in Plato is, however,uncontroversial.


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successfully the enemy without, if one’s inner strength isin doubt. This is perhaps Plato’s deepest motivation, theone which propelled him to lay the foundations not only forthe ethics of the polis and the individual, but for philosophyitself.

It is precisely the question of how to justify theobjectivity of knowledge and the possibility of genuineepisteme which is at the center of Plato’s attempt to putphilosophy on a new basis. Given the fact that the notion ofobjective knowledge had come under attack and beenundermined by the discovery of rhetoric’s capacity fordeception and the nomo-physei debate which had madeconventionalism fashionable a radical rethinking of theconcepts of knowledge and objectivity seemed to beimperative. But how to justify claims to objective knowledgein a climate in which such a notion was seriouslydiscredited to begin with? It must have seemed hopeless toput forth a thesis for disputation, to defend it witharguments, only then to have it turned into a sophisma by arhetorically trained interlocutor. This would have meant toaccept the rules of a game which by definition was meant tobe a disputational contest about who wins rather than asearch for the better argument. He had learnt from Socratesthat to accept the conventional rules of eristic debatingmeant to surrender to external standards of success. On theother hand, debate and discussion were the only means toretain some influence over the mind of the public. It wasapparently Socrates’ genius through which the solution tothis dilemma was found. The only possible way of instillingcritical self-reflection was to engage in a dialogue whichseemingly accepted the conventional rules of the eristicdebate but avoided declaring winners and losers at the end -the technique of the aporetic dialogue was born. Onlythrough avoiding advocating a doctrine of his own couldSocrates escape the mechanisms of reduction of complexitycharacteristic of disputational competition, i.e. theneutralizing of arguments by simplification and labeling, aprocedure Socrates himself refers to as an ‘eristic


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argument’.50 Only thus did he have a chance to stimulate are-orientation in thinking.

Socrates realized, however, that the aporetic approachwas only the beginning of the process of self-criticalthought. The Socratic promise of achieving insights thatcould be objectively and intersubjectively validated couldnot be fulfilled through the aporetic dialectic alone, eventhough aporia was a necessary step on the way towards theinterlocutor’s periagoge which was the goal of the dialogicalform. The method of dialegesthai and of logon didonai needed afoundation capable of lending credence to the expectationraised by Socrates that an objective determination of keyconcepts such as virtue, justice or the good was possible.An answer to the what-is-X? question could not beindefinitely postponed without turning the dialegesthai of thedialogue into a negative dialectic in the manner of Zeno.But what exactly is it that Socrates was implicitlypromising when he raised the what-is-X? question? I suggestthat it is the prospect of a normative clarification. Thenotion of normativity forms the backdrop for Socrates’ironic denial of knowledge. His denial is again a defensemechanism against those who would pounce on him the minutehe were openly to affirm a definitive doctrine. But thepretence of ignorance sits ill with his rejections andreductiones of the arguments offered by his interlocutors. Howdoes one know deception, sophisma or simple error from thetruth, if one has no idea of what kind of an answer to thewhat-is-X? question would be appropriate? Consequently, theaporetic technique needs to be supplemented by demonstratingthe possibility of objective knowledge to be gained througha dialogical-dialectical process of hypothesis formation forwhich the positing of Forms is the crucial element. I cannotenter here into a discussion of how far Socrates himself hadalready progressed along the way towards formulating thisdoctrine. We may also set aside the question to what extentSocrates had already worked out the implications of the myth

50 Meno 80E: e)ristiko\j lo/goj


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of recollection and the principle of the epistemic priorityof the Forms. However that may be, this principle seems tome to be the key to Plato’s attempt to rethink the internalbases of philosophy as a precondition for its continuedintellectual viability and socio-political efficacy. It isto this core element in Socratic-Platonic thought that wenow turn.

To claim that normative pronouncements about whatconstitutes good government, justice, or happiness arepossible implies that there exists such a thing as anormative definition of these concepts.51 In a climate inwhich definitions are regarded as a matter of convention andpragmatic convenience, normative definitions are beingviewed with skepticism. Worse still, where the technique ofmaking the weaker argument look the stronger has become apopular device for confusing the audience and evading thetruth, the claim that one’s argument has normative force isnot even credible anymore. How to escape this situation?Obviously, what is needed is a dual strategy which whileundermining eristic debating practice at the same timeengages the interlocutor in the rebuilding of thefoundations on which normative claims can be successfullydefended. It seems that with his method of exposing thethoughtlessness of unexamined beliefs and conventional doxa,Socrates had found a way of stimulating self-criticalthought in his interlocutors and aiding them in overcomingtheir inveterate patterns of thought. Not that he is alwayssuccessful as several of the early dialogues, among them theGorgias and the Meno, show.52 Occasionally, Socrates will eventurn the technique of his adversaries against them by usingthe illicit quid pro quo of the sophists in an effort to

51 For a discussion of what Peter Geach has called the Socratic fallacysee T.C. Brickhouse-N.D. Smith (1994) 45-55 on “the epistemologicalpriority of definitions” and J. Beversluis (1987).

52 For a recent discussion of the relative chronology of Plato’sdialogues see J. Howland (1991), C.H. Kahn (2002) and C.L. Griswold(2002).


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demonstrate the nonsensical results of such procedures.53 Inall of this, however, there must be a basis from which tostart the process of rebuilding a normative foundation forargument, but under the circumstances it seems hopeless tofind one because such a basis cannot be presupposed as ashared common ground. In this situation, Socrates’ ployconsists in redirecting the focus of the discussion on theelement of universality contained in thought. Moreimportantly, Socrates has understood that the universal isinherently normative, because it is the universal that isthe object of knowledge. By definition, knowledge claimstruth. Whether a universal is truly understood, however,must be made explicit through the attempt to provide adefinition for it. Thus Socrates hopes that the normativeforce driving the attempt at defining universals will assertitself in the process of giving reasons and findingjustifications for one’s definitions. Aristotle’scharacterization of Socrates’ contribution to the history ofphilosophy captures this basic rationale of Socrates’maieutic technique very well:

… there are just two innovations which may fairly beascribed to Socrates: inductive reasoning and thedefinition of the universal (to\ o(ri/zesqaikaqo/lou, both of these are associated with thestarting-point of scientific knowledge (peri\ a)rxh\ne)pisth/mhj (Metaph. 4, 1078b 27-8, tr. Tredennik,modified).54

53 See the Protagoras. 54 Note that Aristotle elsewhere adds the other important Socraticconcern to his characterization: “… Socrates, disregarding thephysical universe and confining his study to moral questions (peri\ta\ h)qika\ pragmateuome/nou, sought in this sphere for the universal(to\ kaqo/lou zhtou=ntojand was the first to concentrate ondefinitions (peri\ o(rismw=n e)pisth/santoj prw/tou th\n dia/noian…”(Metphys. 6, 987b 1-4).


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We can see the complexity of Socrates’ procedure.55 Thedialogue must instill critical reflection in theinterlocutor by confronting him with the conventionalism ofhis unexamined beliefs, but it must also avoid theimpression of proposing a ‘solution’ which needs to bemerely absorbed without engaging in a process of self-discovery.56 And while the ground is being removed fromunder the feet of the interlocutor and the realization ofhis ignorance becomes possible Socrates must, at the sametime, also throw his disoriented partner57 a rope, so tospeak, with which he may pull himself back up on his feet.In other words, the negative dialectic of the aporeticapproach needs to contain a positive dialectic which letsgrow the seed of normativity present from the start. AsPlato has shown in the dialogues, there is no guarantee,however, that the seed will always fall on fertile ground.But how is the normativity of the universal going to makeitself felt? And how do we make a plausible case for theclaim that the universal is inherently normative to beginwith? I will try to address these issues taking the lastquestion first.

A definition, then, is the paradigmatic expression of anormative claim. To define a word is to assert that it has anormative content or meaning. The crucial point forSocrates’ strategy is that by its nature as object ofknowledge any universal either calls for a definition orcontains one implicitly. This is what any of hisinterlocutors has implicitly accepted at the start of thedialogue, even if they are quite unaware of this fact asyet. Socrates will try to make them see that this is indeedthe case. There is thus an intrinsic connection between theuniversal and its definition. Why this should be so is55 For a good analysis of the Socratic method see T.C. Brickhouse-N.D.Smith (2000).

56 Time and again, Socrates is asked to state his views, to explain thetruth, to put forth the ‘definitive’ answer. Characteristically,Socrates refuses to do so or offers a myth or an analogy instead.

57 See Meno’s complaint about Socrates the stingray at 79E-80B.


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perhaps best explained by Aristotle’s discussion of theprinciple of the identity of meaning in Metaph. IV 4.Aristotle argues, incontrovertibly, it seems, that for aword

not to have one meaning is to have no meaning, and ifwords have no meaning our reasoning with one another,and indeed with ourselves, has been annihilated; for it isimpossible to think of anything if we do not think ofone thing (Metaph. IV 4, 1006b 5-10, my italics).

Aristotle connects the meaning (logos)of a word with itsdefinition. Thus the meaning of ‘man’ may be rendered by thedefinition ‘two-footed animal’.58 It is clear from thecontext that Aristotle is talking about universalsgenerally, even though he refers to words (onomata). If it istrue that in order to think of anything we must accept theprinciple ‘one word, one meaning’, and if the identity ofthe meaning is constituted by a definition, then thinkingitself requires that each word or universal have anidentical meaning or that it be at least implicitly defined.As such, therefore, words potentially stand for concepts, ifwe call the defined meaning of a word its concept.Incidentally, Aristotle precludes a possible objection tothe ‘one word, one meaning’ principle by pointing out thateven if a word happens to have several meanings, thesemeanings would need to be represented by differentdefinitions so that “a peculiar name might be assigned toeach definition”.59 Now it may be the case that many wordscannot be defined in a precise way or that most words arenever explicitly or clearly defined by anyone. Thus manyadjectives in a language are only vaguely defined byassociating them with a number of synonymous adjectives in alarger semantic field, and for many words and phrases usedin everyday speech it would be unnecessary to require morethan a contextual definition. Still, in cases where theexact meaning of a word matters, its concept matters, too.58 Metaph. IV 4, 1006a 31-34.59 Metaph. IV 4, 1006b 4-5.


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The fact that Socrates developed a focus on the definitionof key ethical concepts tells us that in his view the properunderstanding of these concepts mattered greatly.

It is important to point out, however, that more isinvolved here than merely an identity requirement. Theprinciple ‘one word, one meaning’ does not fully capture thethought behind Aristotle’s argument. For Aristotle not onlywants to assert a logical principle, he also seeks toestablish a much stronger epistemic claim to the effect thatwords, in particular names or universals, indicate thenature or essence of something and that therefore theirmeaning cannot be merely conventional even though theirphonetic appearance is. While it is true that any given wordmay have one meaning only, what that meaning is may be amatter of convention, agreement, or stipulation. Asconventions change and agreements are revoked, so may themeanings of words. This in itself does not constitute aviolation of the identity principle as long as the word’smeaning can be ascertained without ambiguity and its useremains consistent within a given context. A word’s meaning,therefore, while it needs to be fixed in some way, may bedefined by a convention such as a language game. In thiscase, its meaning is, as we might say, normative byconvention (kata syntheken) 60. If, however, a word is supposedto become an object of knowledge, it must indicate a thing’snature or essence. In this case, a change in meaning wouldimply a change in the nature of the thing. But if the natureof a thing is supposed to be fixed and unchangeable, achange in meaning is likewise impossible. In these cases themeaning of a word cannot be conventionally defined. Rather,its meaning must have per se normativity. The question thenbecomes whether or not names or universals do indeedindicate the essence of things.

Aristotle for one thought that this is true of speciesnames and genera. Species names reveal the ‘what-it-is’ of

60 See Aristotle, De Int. 16a 19.


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primary substances, and not only is the species name said ofits substratum (hypokeimenon), but so also is its definition.61 Yetthe thesis that while we may be able to change the meaningof a word we cannot change the nature of the thing which theword designates is clearly Platonic. Consequently, it oughtto follow that unless the meaning is misleading it shouldreflect the nature of the thing named. Indeed, the notionthat names indicate the nature of things seems to have beenat the root of the so-called doctrine of Forms.62 In theCratylus Socrates, in his discussion with Hermogenes, at onepoint concludes:

But now that you and I have talked over the matter, astep has been gained, for we have discovered thatnames (o)/noma) have by nature a truth (o)rqo/thj),and that not every man knows how to give a thing aname (Crat. 391A-B, tr. Jowett).63

Socrates’ reference to the truth or correctness of namesgoes beyond what we might call a merely formalinterpretation of the principle of ‘one word, one meaning’.This is confirmed by Socrates’ claim that names may be trueor false just as propositions are.64 Words, he says,

must be supposed to have their own proper andpermanent essence (ou)si/a); they are not in relationto us, or influenced by us, fluctuating according toour fancy, but they are independent, and maintain to

61 See Cat. 5, 2b 29-33.62 See, for instance, Resp. 596A: Socrates: “ … we customarilyhypothesize a single form (ei)=doj in connection with each of themany things to which we apply the same name (o)/noma.”

63 See also Crat. 386 D-E and Prot. 349 B-C: “The question, if I am notmistaken, was this. Wisdom, temperance, courage, justice, and holinessare five terms. Do they stand for a single reality, or has each term aparticular entity underlying it, a reality with its own separatefunction, each different from the other? Your answer was that they arenot names for the same thing, but that each of these terms applies toits own separate reality …” (tr. Guthrie).

64 Cf. Crat. 385B-C.


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their own essence the relation prescribed by nature(Crat. 386D-E).

The meanings of words according to this theory arepermanently fixed, because words are supposed to stand for‘realities’, and these realities represent ‘by nature’permanent essences.65 Consequently, there can be nolegitimate agreement or convention to change a word’smeaning, if the realities or essences indicated by it areassumed to be unchangeable. So the assumption here seems tobe that the correlation between word and meaning ispermanently fixed because a word’s function is not only torefer and connote, but also to signify or give access to the essence ornature of the thing signified.66 A word or nominal phrase may referin various ways, but its meaning need for all that havenothing to do with the ‘nature’ of the thing referred to (apoint Locke was anxious to bring home in his discussion ofnominal vs. real essences).67 A word’s connotation may be

65 To be sure, the Cratylus undermines any naïve etymological andonomatopoeic theory of word meaning or a mimetic correspondencebetween thing (pragma) and word generally. The relationship between wordand meaning remains in this respect ‘arbitrary’ in de Saussure’ssense. This does not mean, however, that the assumptions just quotedare themselves being invalidated or set aside. On this question seethe excellent article by J. Szaif (2001) – with further literature –and C.H. Kahn (1973). Kahn puts it this way: “The whole point of thislong discussion of names is to lead us back from words to things, andultimately to the Forms” (153). And: “Plato’s mention of the Form ofName [tou= o)no/matoj ei)=doj, at 390A] is designed to bring us backfrom names as phonetic configurations to names as signs for things, andultimately as signs for Forms” (165).

66 I am using connotation here as a synonym for conventional meaning.The important point is to distinguish between the function ofreferring and the linguistic (or extra-linguistic) means with whichthat function is fulfilled on the one hand and, on the other, not toconfuse the reference fixing function of a name or definitedescription with what for the sake of avoiding terminologicalconfusion I here call its signifying function which is supposed toindicate the what-X-is of things.

67 See Locke, Essay III 3, 11-7.. It is interesting to note that withinthe context of linguistic philosophy this distinction seems to be re-emerging. See the recent controversies about the ‘real’ meaning of


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anything from its mental image to its definition, and it mayvary, within limits, from one person to the next. We mayperhaps say that there is a core meaning of the word whichis reflected in its use in typical contexts. In whicheverway we wish to identify a word’s meaning, it seems that weneed to distinguish between meaning as connotation andmeaning as signification of a thing’s essence. Socrates’what-is-X? question aims at the genus/Form/essence of thething as represented by its name whose definition thereforeclaims per se normativity.68 Just as we contrastedconventional and per se normativity in the case of a word’smeaning above, so we may now differentiate between a word’sconventional and its essential definition. The fact that thetwo may be disconnected from one another is precisely what asophistical argument tries to exploit and a Socraticdialogue to rectify. As Hegel will put it later, the factthat we are familiar with something (kennen) and thus haveopinions about it does not by itself mean that we haveknowledge of it (erkennen). It is this distinction that we aresupposed to become aware of on the occasion of a Socraticexchange, i.e. the distinction between opinion or doxa andgenuine knowledge or episteme.

We can now answer the question concerning thepossibility of objective knowledge. Assuming it to bepossible to ascertain the ‘true’ definition of a universaland thus to disclose the essence of the thing signified, wewould be in a position to claim per se normativity for theessential definition. The essential definition would not bebased on the word’s connotation, but on the nature of the

“water” after Putnam’s influential 1975 article on “The Meaning of‘Meaning’”: B. Abbott (1997), J. LaPort, (1998), and B. Abbott (1999).

68 Thus we see Socrates trying to make Meno understand that what he isafter is a definition of virtue, not a list of examples which woulditself be dependent on the unexamined, conventional meaning of theword. For an account of the Forms that covers some of the samematerial but is more interested in the distinction between theSocratic and the Platonic version of the theory of Forms see T.H.Irwin (1999).


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thing signified. In devising a path from the word’s acceptedor typical connotation – its conventional meaning – to itsessential definition, we would simultaneously chart a routefrom doxa to episteme, if by episteme we understand knowledgeof the essential definition of things. This seems to be atleast one of the routes the Socratic-Platonic dialectictypically explores.

But there is a problem connected with this approach.For it is crucial for the per se normativity of essentialdefinitions that there be a nature or essence of thingswhich exists independently of our beliefs and thefluctuations of our fancy, as Socrates puts it in the abovequote. In other words, the ‘essentialist’ approach ispossible only if there are such unchangeable, trans-conventional essences. A demonstration to that effect wouldimplicitly constitute a rejection of nominalism as well.Socrates is the first to acknowledge the problem. Accordingto the passage in the Cratylus referred to above, theexistence of such permanent essences is here only‘supposed’, even if necessarily, but not proved. Hence westill need an argument to show that such essential naturesdo have an independent existence, and that they areepistemically accessible. If an argument can be made to thiseffect, we would have come much closer to establishing thepossible objectivity of episteme and the possibility of per senormativity.

It seems that the famous myth of recollection plays animportant role in securing the independent existence of such‘realities’ (ousiai) by showing that the Forms are fundamentala priori principles of cognition and that they likewiserepresent essential being (if not exactly the essence ofindividual things69), while the triptych in the Republic69 It has recently (again) been argued that Plato’s ontology lacks theconcept of thinghood and that sensible things do not have an essentialnature according to Plato but are ‘mixtures’ in a constant state ofbecoming: see Mann (2000) Part II, in particular 157-172. A similarargument which, as Wolfgang-Rainer Mann (2000) 157 points out goes at


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illustrates what might be meant by providing thefoundations, ontologically, epistemically, andpedagogically, for a defense of the objective reality andthe knowability of these Forms. If this interpretation iscorrect, the Forms would provide that realm of per senormativity which alone can underwrite claims to objectiveknowledge – provided of course that they can be cognized andknown to exist. One of the dialogues in which the a prioricharacter of the Forms as epistemic principles, theirontological priority and their independent existence isbeing defended and indeed argued for extensively is thePhaedo. We will therefore briefly recall the argumentpresented there and then return to the question whetherthere exists an epistemic path from doxa to episteme and whatgrounds there may have been for Socrates to justify a beliefin the per se normativity of universals and the power ofdialectic to lead us towards a recognition of suchnormativity. Before we do so, however, I would like tocomment on the dimensional difference Plato sets up betweenthe visible and the intelligible and explain myself on whatI take the ontological status of the Forms to be.70

Plato attributes a variety of characteristics to theForms, one of which regards their unchanging nature andtheir distinction from visible things. The distinctionbetween the ever-changing appearance of the sensible realmover against the stability, eternity, and unchangingidentity of the Forms is of course a commonplace. We findreferences to the eternal self-identity of the Forms in

least as far back as John Burnet’s 1914 Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato, hadearlier been made by Gerold Prauss (1966) 99-100. I fundamentallyagree with this view. For an examination of individuation andindividuality in Plato’s dialogues that takes the issue beyondthinghood to questions of personal identity see Mary M. McCabe (1994),in particular ch. 9.

70 For a good overview of the main features of the theory of Forms inthe middle dialogues see Kenneth Sayre (1983) 5-10. For a systematicand near comprehensive reconstruction of the theory of Forms and itsgrowth in complexitiy from the middle to the late dialogues see JuliusMoravcsik (1992).


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several of the so-called middle dialogues such as theSymposium, the Meno, the Phaedo or the Republic.71 Plato similarlyemphasizes the difference in ontological status between thevisible on the one hand and the intelligible on the other,most notoriously perhaps in the Republic where he opposesbeing mixed with not-being and ‘pure’ being.72 He associateswith this difference that of ontological status and truth -that which has more being is more real and is truer thanthat which is weaker in being, so to speak.73 Moreover,while the visible is the object of opinion (doxa), theintelligible is the object of knowledge (gnosis, episteme).74There thus results a hierarchy with not-being at one end,pure being at the other, and ‘intermediate’ being inbetween, and a continuum on which being, truth, andintelligibility run parallel to each other and whichstretches from what is least real, least true, and leastintelligible to what is most so. Accordingly, the Forms areoften identified with being itself (to on), with ousia, i.e.genuine reality, with that which ‘is real in the fullestpossible sense’, or with ‘being which is most real inbeing’.75

71 See, for instance, Symp. 211A: a)ei\ o)/n, ou)/te gigno/menon ou)/tea)pollu/menon, ou)/te au)cano/menon ou)/te fqino/n Meno 72C: e(/n tiei)=doj tauto\n a(/pasai e)/xousin 73D: e(\n kata\ pa/ntwn 74A:h( mi/a [a)reth\](\ dia\ pa/ntwn tou/twn e)stin Phaedo 78D:monoeide\j o)\n au)to\ kaq’ au(to/, o(sautw=j kata\ tauta\ e)/xei kai\ou)de/pote ou)damw=j a)lloi/osin ou)demi/an e)ndexetai; Resp. 479E:a)ei\ kata\ tauta\ w(sautw=j o)/nta 485B:h( ou)si/a h( a)ei\ ou)=sakai\ mh\ planwme/nh u(po\ gene/sewj kai\ fqora=j; cf. 506B et passim:i)de/a mi/a

72 Cf. Resp. See also the Simile of the Line, Resp. 509Dff. and thecharacterization of the idea of the Good as the ‘most shining[reality] in being’ (to\ fano/taton tou= o)/notoj, 518C).

73 Cf. Resp. 585C-E.74 Cf. again the discussion about the distinction between doxa and gnosisor episteme at Resp. 476C-479D.

75 See, for instance, Phaedo 65C: to\ o)/n 65D: ou)si/a; 77A: ei)=naima/lista; 78C-D: au(th\ h( ou)si/a h(\j lo/gon di/domen tou= ei)=nai;and Phaedrus 247C: ou)si/a o)/ntwj ou)=sa.


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The nature of the ‘true upper region’ of being76 hasbeen the object of criticism since Aristotle. For ourpurposes it will suffice to state how I tend to view thematter. Perhaps the best clue to understanding the nature ofthe Forms is Plato’s repeated reminder that they cannot bethe objects of sense perception, but can be known only bythought (dianoia, nous, noesis).77 If so, it becomes very difficultand in any case unnecessary to hold on to a realisticinterpretation of the Forms as transcendent entitiesexisting in some place or region.78 Forms are not objects ofreference existing in a ‘beyond’. They may perhaps be betterunderstood as objective realities existing in thought, notunlike mathematical truths. Plato’s frequent use ofmetaphor, analogy, symbolism, and myth when talking aboutthe Forms (e.g., in the similes of the Republic or in thePhaedrus) should in itself be a warning that a realisticunderstanding of the Forms might be misleading. They are‘truths’, albeit truths in the form of ‘eideticsingularities’, to borrow a phrase from Husserl.79 I tend to

76 Resp. 586A: to\ a)leqw=j a)/nw.77 Cf. Phaedo 65C-66A, 79A, Resp. 476C-479D, 508D, 526A-B, Phaedrus 247C:“What is in this place is without color and without shape and withoutsolidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all trueknowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman”. ThePhaedrus makes an exception for the Form of beauty: It alone can beperceived by “the sharpest of the physical senses”, i.e., the sense ofsight; it alone “has this privilege, and therefore it is most clearlyseen and loveliest” (Phaedrus 250D). The reason for this is well put byCharles Griswold, viz. that beauty “anchors a connection between theliteral and the metaphorical senses of eidos/idea … and between thesesenses and the faculty of sight … ”: C. Griswold (1986) 123. Theobjects of dianoia cannot be restricted exclusively to mathematicalobjects: see K. Dorter (2004) 16-7 and footnote 12.

78 See T. Borsche (1996) for an interpretation of the Forms as the(true) meaning of names.

79 See Husserl, Ideen I, 36 (§ 15). - I wouldn’t go so far as Ebert,however, and view Plato’s Forms as analogues of mathematicalconstructs and thus as “ideative Begriffe”: see T. Ebert (1974) 146-51. Nor can I follow Wieland’s interpretation of the Forms as non-propositional principles of knowledge incapable of discursivearticulation: see Wieland (1996) 22 and Wieland (1982). For a


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believe that they stand for complex noematic structureswhich constitutes their content, and that this contentneeds to be ascertained through a difficult and arduousprocess Plato calls ‘dialectic’.80 It is therefore notenough to grasp the Forms intuitively in order to know whatthought they embody. Rather, on the basis of an intuitive –and to that extent preliminary - understanding of them onemust work one’s way upward until one reaches the that whichis no longer an hypothesis (anhypoteton) the principle ofeverything (arche tou pantos) and after having grasped it(hapsamenos autes) derive the actual contents of the Forms inan explicit manner.81 We should be mindful, however, thatPlato nowhere promises to present us with a worked out‘theory of the Forms’, i.e. a treatise containing theirsystematic explication and exposition. On the contrary, thedialogues – as well as the Seventh Letter – indicate thatsuch a systematic presentation may never have been Plato’sintention, partly because the preparatory work of bringingabout the necessary periagoge in individuals as aprerequisite for philosophical learning was so enormous,partly because such an undertaking poses methodologicalproblems which cannot be easily resolved. Presumably then,what we have in the dialogues is for the most part anattempt to awaken appreciation for the need to accept theidea of a per se normativity of a particular kind of noematiccontent on one hand and a meta-theory of the Forms, self-critical at times, on the other. This, however, does notmean that Plato believed that an explication of the Formswas in principle impossible, and that an intuitiveunderstanding of them was all that could be hoped for.

metaphysical interpretation of the Forms as “absolute realities” whichare not just forms of thought but objects that become the ‘contents’ ofthinking see Giovanni Reale (1996) 80 and Reale (1994). Mostcontemporary analytically inspired interpretations view Forms as“attribute-like entities”, as Moravcsik (1992) 66, 289 calls them. Itshould be kept in mind, however, that Forms are neither attributes norpropositional predicates.

80 Cf. Resp. 511B-C. See also Soph. 253B-258C.81 Ibid.


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However that may be, we should keep in mind that the Formsare located among the ‘intelligibles’ (ta noeta) and that, ifone were to ask where and how they ‘existed’, one mightrespond by the counter-question where and how thePythagorean theorem exists. Clearly, the Pythagorean theoremis not just a ‘mental entity’, but a noematic structureaccessible to whoever wants to study it. I am not suggestingthat it is easy to say exactly what the mode of existence ofnoemata is, but I would like to claim that the answer neednot commit us to a metaphysical realism concerning the Formsor a ‘two-world’ doctrine.82

Taking up the myth of recollection as it is being toldand illustrated in the Meno,83 the Phaedo develops a fairlydetailed theory of knowledge and learning as recollection.The latter is situated within the larger theme of theimmortality of the soul and meant to contribute to it.84

Immortality is not only a fitting topic for Socrates’ finalhour but its choice may also be a subtle hint thatphilosophical knowledge is perhaps the only form ofimmortality we are able to participate in. The portion ofthe text between Phaedo 72E and 76D, however, develops quitea rigorous argument in favor of the a priori nature of theForms, i.e., their independence from experience, an argumentwhich then serves as a premise for the inference to thesoul’s immortality. The argument may, however, be examinedindependently of this context. The philosophical

82 At least not in a literal, realistic sense: see Andreas Graeser(1996) 148-9. I agree with Graeser when he argues that not even thecritique of the Forms in the first part of the Parmenides could forcePlato to abandon the doctrine of Forms altogether, since the critiquetargets the mistaken reification of the Forms and thus suggest that adifferent understanding of their nature is required (152). He pointsto 135B where Parmenides says that one who were to abandon the Formsbecause of the difficulties raised would end up destroying the powerof dialectic entirely (148). See also Graeser (2003). For a similarview see W.J. Prior (1985) 82-4. How Plato’s theory of Forms may havedeveloped after the Parmenides is the topic of Sayre (1983).

83 See Meno 81A-D and the slave boy experiment at 82B-85D.84 Cf. Phaedo 72E-73A.


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significance of the myth of recollection is enormous. In it,Plato raises and tries to provide an answer to the questionhow the intelligibility of things, and thus how cognitionand science, i.e. philosophy itself, are at all possible. Asalready indicated, for Plato the investigation into thepossibility of cognition is not undertaken out of a merelyepistemological motivation. Rather, it functions as thefoundation for his larger ethical and political concerns.But precisely for this reason, a clarification of itsimplications and its feasibility is so crucial to thePlatonic enterprise as a whole that without at least anawareness of the problems it poses the larger project couldnot seriously be entertained.85

There are several important points that the argument inthe Phaedo makes. Not only are the Forms a necessaryprecondition for identifying features of things, they alsoenable us to recognize something as the kind of thing it is.In this respect they function as fundamental principles ofintelligibility – we know them prior to our recognition ofthe visible things (proeidenai). This foreknowledge may betaken in the sense of a logical or epistemic priorityaccording to which not all our knowledge is derived orderivable from experience. The fact that, according to theargument, knowledge of the Forms could not have beenacquired through experience but must precede it is obviouslyan indication of their a priori nature – they are, inanachronistic language, conditions of the possibility ofcognition and thus of knowledge (although they are notKantian-type conditions).86 But their function is notlimited to being principles of intelligibility. They alsorepresent norms (paradeigmata) against which the imperfection

85 One only needs to remember the role the Forms play in the Republic, andthe idea of the Good in particular, which functions as the capstone ofthe entire ethico-political model of the ‘city in speech’.

86 They do, however, come close: cf. Phaedrus 249B-C. Famously, Natorpeven believed to have recognized at Theaet. 184D an anticipation ofKant’s transcendental unity of apperception. He speaks of“Bewußtseinseinheit”: see Natorp, (1903) 108.


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of things can be ascertained. Socrates makes the point quiteclearly: The Forms are standards of perfection which thingsin the visible world aspire to emulate or equal, but ofwhich they (necessarily) fall short.87 There thus exists anontological and an epistemic discontinuity between visiblethings and intelligible Forms, but in such a way that both‘kinds of being’88 remain firmly related to each other.89

Their continuity is emphasized by the claim that the visiblethings ‘remind us’ of the Forms.90 It is on the occasion ofsensible experience that the process of recollection of theForms becomes possible, and by definition recollection couldnot occur without such exposure to the visible. But Socrateslikewise maintains the existence of an ontologicalcontinuity between things and Forms by famously invoking arelationship of participation between them.91 That thisparticipation is not meant to be merely epistemological innature is underscored by expressions such as thatparticipation in the Forms ‘makes’ things what they are.92

The co-existence of epistemic as well as ontologicalcontinuity and discontinuity is captured by Socrates’ pointthat the sensible object is both like and unlike therecollected original.

87 Phaedo74D-E: e)sti\ faulo/teron75A-B: e)kei/nou te ore/getai tou=d’e/)stin i)/son, kai\ au)tou= e)ndee/stera/ e)stin

88 Phaedo 79A: du/o ei)/dh tw=n o)/ntwn89 The object of recollection is both like and unlike the objectperceived (Phaedo 74A).

90 Phaedo 74B: e)k tou/twn e)kei=no e)nenoh/samen, e(/teron o)\n tou/twn;cf. 75E; see also Phaedrus 249D, 250A.

91 In addition to the usual expression me/qecijormete/xein the Phaedoat 100D refers to two other kinds of relationship called presence(parousi/aand communion (koinwni/arespectively. See also Soph.256B. On the question of the relationship between participants andForms see D.T. Devereux (1994). For an intriguing attempt to resolvesome of the paradoxical consequences of participation with the help ofintroducing form-copies see A. Silverman (2002) 78-103.

92 Cf. Phaedo 101B-C: It is not through the action of cutting somethingin two that the Form of Two is created. Rather, things can become twoonly because twoness is one of the ontological possibilitiespreexisting ontic realization. See also Meno 72C.


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This is not the place to discuss the problems that havebeen raised with regard to the ontological priority of theForms or the fact that in their capacity as epistemicprinciples they enable us to define things and ideas.Aristotle criticized the Forms on both counts, but Plato hadin fact anticipated much of that criticism himself.Aristotle very likely, however, did not question theirfunction as principles of intelligibility. Hischaracterization of the primitive universal arising in thesoul as something existing besides the many (para ta polla) andwhich remains one and the same while being in the particulars(en hapasin en ene eikeinois to auto) echoes Socrates’ description ofthe eidos as that which is the same in all (hen kata panton).93Similarly, the Aristotelian interpretation of the eidos asfinal cause is clearly anticipated by Plato’scharacterization of the Forms as paradeigmata which thevisible things endeavor to emulate.94 We will return toAristotle’s criticism of the lack of explanatory as well as‘real’ work for the Forms to do. The important question tobe addressed now is how Plato hoped to secure both theindependent, objective status of the Forms as well as theirknowability. For as we saw earlier, their independent, non-relative status and meaning, i.e. their per se normativity, isclearly asserted in the dialogues.

There is not much direct help in the text to answerthis question. Instead, there is the frequent assertion that‘we’ assume or presuppose the existence of the Forms. Thismay mean that the very concept and nature of the Forms was

93 Cf. Aristotle, An. post. II 19, 100a 7-8 and Meno 73D: e(/n ge/ tizhtei=j kata\ pa/ntwn. Cf. the expression to\ e)pi\ pa=sin tou/toijtau)to/nat 75A. Admittedly, the universal kata panton is not yet theuniversal in them all.

94 Moravcsik (1992) 64 argues that the passage about equality in thePhaedo does not allow for a “‘perfectionist’ interpretation” of theForms. However, he agrees nonetheless that things may participate inForms “more or less adequately” (276) and that the Forms may be“reflected imperfectly or incompletely” in sensible particulars (246).


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thought to be problematic by Plato himself. Not, however, inthe sense that their existence or validity was in question,but only how their existence could be proven and theirdeterminate concept established. Clearly, short of assumingthe existence of the Forms, there could not be a per senormativity. So either the Forms have objective reality insome sense or other, or the hope to defend the possibilityof non-relative knowledge beyond doxa had to be given up.Once the existence of Forms is conceded, however, a numberof consequences can be derived concerning their ontologicaland epistemic priority and objectivity.

In this context, the important role Plato assigns tomathematics and the objects of geometry in particular can beseen to contain a valuable clue. For it seems undeniablethat mathematical objects form a bridge between the visibleand the intelligible in that they exist both as sensible andas purely ‘ideal’ objects. Indeed, their ideal nature cannotbe accessed other than through their sensiblerepresentatives, and, conversely, without reference to theirideal types the sensible instantiations could not becomeintelligible. The two mutually require one another. Theexistence of the ideal type is in this case quiteundeniable, for in every demonstration what is beingreferred to and what the demonstration is about are self-evidently different. What is being referred to is thesensible image of the object (‘this’ circle which is also‘a’ circle), while the demonstration is about its ideal type(‘the’ circle). The relationship between names and theirconcepts or definitions may be similarly construed, exceptthat in this case the sensible (acoustic) sign becomesamalgamated to the meaning of the name and both the meaningand its definition are ‘ideal’ to begin with. Or, to useKantian language, both the meaning and the definition mustbe constructed with the help of concepts alone and withoutthe possibility of exhibiting them in intuition (except inmetaphorical form, as for example in a diagram). In thisway, the procedure in mathematics could be regarded as ananalogy in accordance with which the relationship between


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meaning and per se definition is to be understood. The text ofthe Line simile seems to favor such an interpretation whenit says of the science of dialectic that it starts fromhypotheses by using them not as ultimate posits but asstepping stones only, and having reached the unhypotheticalprinciple of everything

reverses itself and, keeping hold of what follows fromit, comes down to a conclusion without making use of anythingvisible at all, but only of forms them-selves, moving onfrom forms to forms and ending in forms (Resp. 513B, myitalics).

What we seem to lack is that Platonic treatise which wouldexhibit in concreto what the Line simile describes in suchmeager words. But to deplore the inexistence of such atreatise might be missing Plato’s point. For at least theascending part of the dialectical science mentioned in theLine simile seems to have been worked out by Plato numeroustimes. Are not the dialogues themselves written precisely inaccordance with the general structure of the dialecticalprocess outlined in the simile of the Line? Do they notfollow the requirement specified there, viz. to take thehypothesis not as an hypothesis (or as an axiom, as Menodoes in his reliance on the commonly accepted ideas ofvirtue), but as a real stepping stone, i.e. as dependent onan unexamined presupposition which needs to be brought to lightand examined and which in turn may prove to rely on anotherpresupposition and so on. So even if we may find itdifficult to see the descending leg of the dialectic mappedout satisfactorily in the dialogues, we still have numerousattempts to complete its first leg. The dialogues themselvesare in fact exemplifications and implementations of theascending line of the dialectical science.

This observation finally brings us back to our initialproblem. How is it possible for Socrates/Plato to unlock thenormative force of the universal? We may now be closer togiving an answer to this question. He does so by organizing


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the dialogical exchange in terms of a dialectical process ofuncovering the presuppositions of a given opinion. If weaccept the idea that as a matter of principle no opinion canbe presuppositionless but as an hypothesis is dependent onand informed by an underlying presupposition, we invest thedialogue with an autonomous dynamic which propels it beyondthe initial opinion towards its presupposition. Thepresupposition exposed may turn out to be dependent uponyet another presupposition, and this regress cannot stopuntil we identify a presupposition which is no longer anopinion but an anhypotheton, i.e. a true object of knowledge.The dialectical regress/ascent then turns out to be anascent to presuppositionless principles invested with per senormativity. This interpretation is in fact born out bySocrates’ own words. In a passage in the Phaedo immediatelyreminiscent of the dialectical ascent indicated in thesimile of the Line he says:

… in these cases [of adding and dividing] you do notknow of any other cause of [something] becoming twoexcept by sharing in Twoness, and that the things thatare to be two must share in this, and that which is tobe one must share in Oneness, and you would dismissthese additions and divisions and other suchsubtleties, and leave them to those wiser thanyourself to answer. But you, afraid, as they say, ofyour own shadow and your inexperience, would cling tothe safety of your own hypothesis and give thatanswer. If someone then attacked your hypothesisitself, you would ignore him and would not answeruntil you had examined whether the consequences thatfollow from it agree with one another or contradictone another. And when you must give an account of yourhypothesis itself you will proceed in the same way:you will assume another hypothesis, the one whichseems to you best of the higher ones, until you cometo something acceptable, but you will not jumble thetwo as the debaters do by discussing the hypothesisand its consequences at the same time, if you wish todiscover any truth (Phaedo 100C-E).


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To conclude, what we see in the Platonic dialogues isan advanced and sophisticated attempt to resolve theobjectivity problem. There is a clear awareness of whatwould be required for this enterprise to succeed. But thedialogues do not present us with the completion of thistask. All the elements of an argument to support thepossibility of objective knowledge are in place, but theproject remains to some extent programmatic. The map for theroad to Larissa has been drawn up and the route has beencharted, but the journey has not been completed.95 Theobjective reality of the Forms, their per se normativity andtheir knowability are assumed but not proven in thedialogues. There are arguments to demonstrate the non-relative status of the Forms through their ontological aswell as epistemic independence and priority, but thesearguments are predicated on the acceptance of thepossibility and the viability of a theory of Forms.96

Indeed, the use of myths and analogies at crucial moments ofthe objectivity argument may be an indication that no‘knock-down’ proof of the objectivity of knowledge shouldeven be expected – there is only so much one can do topersuade the skeptic. As Socrates puts it in the Phaedo:

95 As Nicholas P. White puts it, “this sketch is never filled in”: seeWhite (1976) 219. The claim that most of the elements are there in thedialogues except for a theory that unifies them and others are atleast hinted at is regarded by some as the strongest immanent textualevidence in favor of an “unwritten doctrine”: see, for instance,Szlezák (1999) 61-84. Interestingly, Sayre accepts the first claim butdenies that the inference to an unwritten doctrine follows. Instead,he argues for a “middle ground”: see Sayre (1983) 75-84. For anoverview of the discussion about the unwritten doctrine see C.J. deVogel (1986) 3-56. See also L. Brisson (1995) and M. Hoffmann/M.Perger (1996).

96 For a classic formulation of the argument in support of ontologicalindependence and priority see again Phaedo 100D – 102A (we do notcreate Twoness, rather because Twoness exists we are able to make twoout of one); for the ontological independence of the Forms see alsoParm. 133C-D. The classic argument for the epistemic independence andpriority of the Forms remains Phaedo 72E – 76D.


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“[T]his is … what I mean. It is nothing new, but whatI have never stopped talking about, both elsewhere andin the earlier part of our conversation. I am going totry to show you the kind of cause with which I haveconcerned myself. I turn back to those oft-mentionedthings and proceed from them. I assume the existence ofa Beautiful, itself by itself, of a Good and a Greatand all the rest. If you grant me these and agree that they exist,I hope to show you the cause as a result, and to findthe soul to be immortal (Phaedo 100B, tr. Grube; myitalics).

Finally, in the idea of a descent ending with theForms we find an indication that the exposition of the truthwill unfold within the medium of thought alone. This istantamount to saying that the determination of thephilosophical truth can occur only in the immanence ofthought. If the objectivity of knowledge is to beestablished, we need both the ascent beyond the realm ofdoxa as well as the descent among the Forms themselves, butthe content of that objective knowledge can be exhibitedonly from within the immanence of thought.

4. Aristotelian Isomorphism

Looking back at Plato’s attempt to respond to theobjectivity problem we see that Plato is much more concernedwith devising an epistemic path leading from the visible tothe intelligible and the presuppositionless highestprinciple, i.e. the idea of the Good, than with working outthe theoretical descent.97 For not only is there no “theoryof the Forms” corresponding to the descending branch of thedialectic, according to the Line there is also noreconnecting of the Forms with the visible, i.e. there is no97 As we saw, there is, however, a ‘practical’ or ‘political’ descent,as the Cave allegory shows, and it does not seem to have a benignending.


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re-establishing of the ontological and epistemologicalcontinuity between the Forms and the things for which theyare the paradigms. While things are said to be struggling tobe like their Forms, it is difficult to see what quality ofthe Forms might be responsible for that struggle. Insofar asthe Forms are purely eidetic entities a ‘causal’ role forthem seems improbable. Indeed, this is precisely one of thetwo crucial aspects of the Forms which Aristotle, rightly orwrongly, finds so unsatisfactory. The Forms are useless, heargues, because they cannot explain either the nature ofthings or the phenomena of change and motion.98

Furthermore, even the epistemic link between mundanethings and extramundane Forms appears to be problematic. Theproblem is not that the epistemic ascent leads us beyond therealm of the visible. Rather, the question how the Forms asuniversals enable us to understand particular visible thingsis fraught with difficulties. Although the Forms aresupposed to be instantiated through individual things(particulars), the link between them and the particulars isnot very strong – in fact, there is no intrinsic link betweenthem at all. According to a long tradition of scholarship,Plato viewed visible things essentially as collections oraggregates of changeable (and exchangeable) qualities.99 Onthis reading, things would simply not exhibit any intrinsicunity of their own, and the Forms would represent theparadigmatic ‘look’ of these things and of their attributesindependently of whether things could ever instantiate themfully or clearly or with some degree of permanence. Whatthis means for the Forms is that they do not reallyconstitute the identity of any mundane thing or attribute,only the identity of the concepts which things exemplifyimperfectly and haphazardly. In other words, the purpose ofthe Forms is not really to make intelligible things andqualities in the visible world, but to direct our attention

98 See the survey of Aristotle criticisms of the doctrine of Formsbelow.

99 See above footnote 25 in Ch. I 3.


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to the fundamental ideas that underlie our perception ofmundane things, and underlie them not in the sense ofconstituting their identity or ‘objectivity’, but in that ofrepresenting the model to which these things strive toconform. Given this interpretation of the purpose of theForms, it is possible – and I even consider it likely – thatPlato did not think the problem of how to explain theintelligibility of mundane things to be crucial to hisenterprise. If so, it is not surprising that there should bea touch of insouciance about this issue in Socrates’ remarkthat he “will not insist on the precise nature of thisrelationship [between Forms and things], whether we assumeit to be participation (methexis), presence of the Form in thething (parousia), or community of Form and thing (koinonia).100 Nordoes the self-criticism of the Forms in the Parmenides, ifseen in this light, necessarily tell against the Forms – thefact that the relationship to their visible instantiationsseems paradoxical need not lead to the abandonment of theForms themselves, if it is the intelligibility of the latterrather than that of the former which is at stake. In thatcase indeed how the Forms relate to the mundane becomes acura posterior. The visible world is merely one of the steppingstones making the ascent possible. The descent is a matterof praxis rather than theoria.

And yet it was of course precisely Aristotle’s concernto understand how the mundane can be better explained by anappeal to Forms. Do we not take a delight in our sensesbecause they reveal a world rich in sensible distinctions?Should not science uncover the true causes of sensiblethings not only in order to determine the nature of thosecauses but with a view to understanding better why things inthe visible world behave the way they do? Does not thereview of Pre-Socratic philosophy show that thesephilosophers for the most part neglected the form element socrucial in determining the nature of things? It is true,when explaining the reasons for undertaking an investigation

100 Phaedo 100D.


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into sensible substances in Metaphysics 11, the rationaleoffered there is that this is a necessary preparation forthe investigation into non-sensible substances.101 However,almost all of Metaphysics deals with the problem of howthe form (eidos) relates to matter. The Physics presents a clearcase in which the formal and final causes are soughtprimarily because they allow us to understand the behaviorof phenomena in this world. It is the attempt to find acoherent explanation for the possibility and the causes ofchange in nature which drives the investigation there,leading to the doctrine of the four causes and the theory ofthe teleological (as opposed to deterministic or random)structure of change. Clearly, Aristotle is interested justas much in the connection between phenomena and their causesas in the connection between sensible matter andintelligible form. He is interested, in other words, just asmuch in the ontological as in the epistemological connectionbetween surface and depth reality, and apparently these twoaspects are for him just two sides of the same coin. Heseems to assumes that the ascent to the unapparent causes ispossible only because there exists a genuine continuitybetween the two in both the ascending and the descendingdirection. Against the background of what we have said aboutthe Pre-Socratic philosophers, the following Aristoteliancomment reads like a hard won response to a problem with along and difficult history:

The natural course is to proceed from what is clearerand more knowable to us (e)k tw=n gnwrimwte/rwn h(mi=nkai\ safeste/rwn, to what is more knowable and clearby nature (safe/stera t$= fu/sei kai\gnwrimw/tera(Phys. I 1, 184a 17-9).102

Even though Aristotle here seems to confine himself to theascending path towards the first causes and principles,there can be little doubt that for him the connection mustalso hold in the descending direction. This conviction,101 Cf. Metaph. 11, 1037a 10-6.102 Cf. Metaph. 3, 1029b 1-12 and An. post. I 2, 72a 1-5.


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after all, underwrites his notorious critique of thePlatonic chorismos, the disconnect between the Forms and thesensible world:

… the cause which exists of the Forms (taken in thesense in which some maintain the existence of theForms, i.e. if they are something apart from theindividuals) is useless with regard both to comings-to-be and to substances; and the Forms need not, forthis reason at least, be self-subsistent substances. …Obviously, therefore, it is quite unnecessary to setup a Form as a pattern (for we should have looked forForms in these cases if any; for these are substancesif anything is so) … (Metaph. 8, 1033b 26- 34a 3).103

From the start, it seems, Aristotle is focusedprecisely on the issue of how to re-connect the PlatonicForms with sensible reality and thus to complete the descentback to the world of sense or to reconnect the intelligiblewith the natural realm.104 Knowingly or unknowingly, he mayhave expected the Forms to function in ways Plato was notparticularly anxious to have them function. If that is thecase, his critique of the Forms is at least a partialmisunderstanding. However, as we shall see shortly,Aristotle saw Plato in the tradition that had begun with thePre-Socratics, i.e. the tradition of the explanatory projectas we described it earlier. Hence at least for his part hebelieved that his expectations vis-à-vis the Platonicdoctrine of Forms were fully justified. Whatever Plato mayhave intended, in Aristotle’s eyes he should at least havecontributed to resolving the longstanding quest to bridge

103 Cf. Metaph. 10, 1075b 24-8: “… if besides sensible things no othersexist, there will be no first principle, no order, no becoming, noheavenly bodies, but each principle will have a principle before it,as in the account of the mythologists and the natural philosophers.But if the Forms or the numbers are to exist, they will be causes ofnothing; or if not that, at least not of movement.” Further passageswill be discussed in what follows.

104 Already the Categories which are generally believed to be an early workreconnect the form as a universal with the sensible particular.


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the ontological and the epistemological discontinuitybetween natural phenomena and their true ground. That thisview of Aristotle’s can be substantiated by the texts willemerge from a brief survey of his critique of the Forms thatwe will now undertake.

That the chorismos is indeed the original birth defect,so to speak, of the doctrine of Forms for Aristotle isapparent from his comments in Metaph. A 9 and M 4-5, the twotexts which are believed to summarize the arguments of thelost Peri Ideon.105 To begin with, at Metaph. M 4 Aristotle putsthe blame for the separation squarely on the Platonists andthe Academy rather than on Socrates whom he explicitlyexempts from having committed this mistake:

… there are just two things one might fairly ascribeto Socrates, arguments from particular to general andthe definition of the universal (toÜ o(ri/zesqaikaqo/lou), both being concerned with the starting-pointof knowledge (periÜ a)rxhÜn e)pisth/mhj). – Well,Socrates did not take the universals to be separate(taÜ kaqo/lou ou) xwristaÜ e)poi/ei), nor thedefinitions, but they [the Platonists] made themseparate, and called such entities Forms (i)de/aj)(Metaph. M 4, 1078b 27-32, tr. Annas, modified).

Metaph. A 9 repeatedly faults “those who posit the Ideas” formaking them exist apart from the things they are supposed toexplain. The Forms are characterized as follows:

… the Forms (taÜ ei)/de) are practically equal to – ornot fewer than – the things. In trying to explain thelatter these thinkers proceeded from them to theForms. For to each thing there answers an entity whichhas the same name (kaq°e(/kaston o(mw/numo/n tie)/sti) and exists apart from the substances (kaiÜ

105 For a reconstruction and thorough examination of the arguments in PeriIdeon see Gail Fine (1993). For a general account of the textualtradition and the arguments of Peri Ideon see Ingemar Düring (1966) 245-53.


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paraÜ taÜj ousi/aj), and so also in the case of allother things there is a one over many (e(Ün e)piÜpollw=n), whether the many are in this world or areeternal (Metaph. A 9, 990b 4-8, tr. Ross, modified).

And again:

Above all one might discuss the question what on earththe Forms contribute to sensible things, either tothose that are eternal or to those that come intobeing and cease to be. For they cause neither movementnor change in them. But again they help in no wiseeither towards the knowledge of the other things (forthey are not even the substance (ousi/a) of these,else they would have been in them), or towards theirbeing, if they are not in the particulars which sharein them (mh\ e)nupa/rxonta toi=j mete/xousin); thoughif they were, they might be thought to be causes …(991a 8-15, tr. Ross).

At the beginning of M 5 Aristotle repeats this criticismalmost verbatim.106 Towards the end, he puts the mattersuccinctly as follows:

Besides, it would seem impossible for a thing’ssubstance (ousi/a) to exist separately from the thingwhose substance it is; so how could Forms existseparately, if they are the substance of things (pw=ja)\n ai( i)de/ai ousi/ai tw=n pragma/twn ou=)sai xwri\j ei=)en, 1079b 35- 1080a 2, tr. Annas, modified)?

Aristotle then refers to the Phaedo. He sees that dialogue asmaking the claim that the Forms are “causes” (ai)ti/ai) bothof being and of coming into being” (1080a 2-3). And yet,

106 “Most of all one might puzzle over what on earth the Forms contributeeither to eternal perceptible objects or to those that come into beingand pass away. They are not causes of movement, nor of any change inthem. But neither are they any help towards knowledge of the otherthings (they are not their ousia, or they would have been in them) nortowards their being what they are, not being present in theirparticipants” (M 5, 1079b 12-18).


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nothing would come into being, Aristotle argues, unlessthere was something “to start things moving”. The Forms, heimplies, are not the kind of cause that can triggergeneration or change and nothing would happen even if theydid exist, because they do not inhere in things themselves.Moreover, there are many things that come into being “ofwhich they say there are no Forms”, such as a house or aring, i.e. artifacts generally.107 Clearly, then, the Formsare not needed nor could they explain the coming into beingof things even if they existed. To use Aristotle’sterminology, the Forms are neither efficient nor finalcauses, and their claim to being formal causes is likewisecompromised by their existing in separation from the thingsthemselves. In sum, the fundamental defect of the Forms istheir unsuitability for explaining generation and change andeven for representing the nature of things or the ‘what-X-is’.

But the criticism runs even deeper. Aristotle accusesthe friends of the Ideas of a basic contradiction which,incidentally, is so glaring that one begins to wonderwhether Plato or anyone else would not have been aware of itright away. For he says that the Forms, while supposed to bethe ousia or real being of things, in reality fail to betheir ousia due to their separateness. In other words, whilethe Forms are meant to capture the true reality (ousia) of thethings that are named after them, they do not succeed indoing so on account of their separateness. They are put upas the unchangeable being of changeable things, and yet theyfail to be what they ought to be, because they do not inherein the things named after them. In short, they areparadoxically said to be the substantial reality of thingswithout also being their substance.

A number of comments are in order at this point. First,the chorismos is not merely a flaw or imperfection of

107 Aristotle obviously ignores the passage in Resp. X 597B-D whereSocrates refers to the Form of a bed made by the divine craftsman.


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Platonic Forms. If that were so, ways might perhaps be foundto rectify the mistake while holding on to the notionitself. Quite to the contrary, however, Aristotle doesn’tleave us in the dark about his real opinion according towhich the very concept of the Forms is inconsistent. As aresult, the Forms properly speaking do not even exist, i.e.they do not make the grade of being viable entities, eitherontologically or epistemologically. Even if they did exist,they could not serve any useful explanatory purpose.

Second, despite this harsh criticism Aristotle does notdismiss the doctrine of Forms entirely as a meaningless orfutile theory. To the contrary, his criticism is sotrenchant precisely because he views the theory of Ideas asa serious contender in the long standing, age old search foran answer to the question what being (to\ o)/n) is which, ashe famously puts it in Metaph. Z 1, is the question that “hasalways been raised, and [has] always been the subject ofdoubt”, until at last it was realized that the question ofbeing is the question of ousia. This realization philosophyowes, of course, to none other than Plato. As we saw, it wasPlato who argued that ousia is that which is truly real, andthat this genuine reality is accessible to the intellect inthe form of Ideas. It is all the more deplorable, then, fromAristotle’s point of view that Platonic Forms turn out to beunable to fulfill the explanatory purpose for which, hebelieves, they had been proposed.

Third, the assumption that Aristotle does indeedbelieve, rightly or wrongly, that the doctrine of Forms wassupposed to respond to the philosophical question parexcellence, i.e. the question concerning the nature of being,is born out by the comprehensive historical review heundertakes in Book One of the Metaphysics. There he addressesthe Socratic and Platonic philosophies in the context of thefundamental philosophical questions raised by the Pre-Socratics.108 In their reductionist, quasi-materialist

108 Similar things could be said about Metaph. 6-10 and Phys. I and II.


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approach, the Pre-Socratics notoriously, in Aristotle’seyes, failed to resolve the issues concerning the truenature of being just as they never managed convincingly toexplain the possibility and the nature of generation anddestruction and of change, not to mention the fact thattheir forays into epistemology were totally inadequate. AsAristotle tells us in Metaph. A 8:

… in trying to state the causes of generation anddestruction, and in giving a physical account of allthings (peri\ pa/ntwn fusiologou=ntej), they do awaywith the cause of movement. Further, they err in notpositing the substance, i.e. the what-X-is, as thecause of anything (988b 26-9, tr. Ross, modified).

Now we know from Metaph. A 6 and M 4 that Aristotle saw inSocrates the one who first broached the epistemologicalissue of what it is we know when we claim to know something.For this reason, he focused on the universal and ondefinitions which are the starting-points of true knowledge(episteme). It is with Socrates, then, that the self-reflective and self-critical question of the nature of theobject of knowledge is being raised. Hence Socrates’ concernwith the ti estin (M 4, 1078b 23) or the concept and thedefinition of things. But Socrates did not yet explicitlyunderstand the universal or definition to be a cause in theontological sense. That, at least, seems to be Aristotle’sview. Famously, in the Phaedo Socrates rejects causalexplanations of how things move or act and insteadrecommends focusing on why they move or act the way they do.This comes very close to an anticipation of a final cause inAristotle’s sense, but it remains restricted to the sphereof human action and is not applied to nature in general.109

Moreover, this passage of the Phaedo is apparently the onereferred to at Metaph. 5 quoted above and criticized by

109 In the context of his criticism of Anaxagoras’ principle of nousSocrates makes the point that “it shows inability to distinguish thatthe real cause is one thing, and that without which the cause couldnot be a cause is another thing” (Phaedo 99A-B)


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Aristotle as unconvincing – the teleological role of thisfinal cause remains ineffective, Aristotle implied, as longas its causal efficacy is left unexplained. Its causalefficacy becomes even more mysterious, if as Aristotleapparently believed the Phaedo is essentially Platonic. Inthat case, the ‘for the sake of which’ or final cause wouldbe thought to exist separately from that which implementsit. And yet separation of the final from the efficient causeundercuts the ontological role of the teleological cause. Toshow that the final cause has a ‘grip’ on the efficientcause it would be necessary to make the final cause part ofthe efficient cause. This Aristotle will do by interpretingthe formal cause as the final cause in the efficient causeand as the actuality of its material substratum.

Interestingly, then, both the separation of theuniversal from the particular as well as the relationship ofparticipation are a novelty which Aristotle attributes toPlato himself, and explicitly not to Socrates:

Plato accepted his [i.e. Socrates’] teaching, but heldthat … the common definition could not be a definitionof any sensible thing, as they were always changing.Things of this sort, then, he called Ideas, andsensible things, he said, were all named after these,and in virtue of a relation to these; for the manyexisted by participation (kata\ me/qecin) in the Ideasthat have the same name as they. Only the name‘participation’ was new; for the Pythagoreans say thatthings exist by ‘imitation’ of numbers, and Plato saysthey exist by participation, changing the name. Butwhat the participation or the imitation of the Formscould be they left an open question (Metaph. A 6, 987b4-14, tr. Ross).110

110 For a more detailed analysis of the entire passage see K. Sayre(1983) 84-95. For a more comprehensive account of Aristotle’s critiqueof the Platonic chorismos and for the question whether separabilitymeans capacity for independent existence see L. Spellman (1995) 5-20.Like Spellman, I view Aristotle’s doctrine of substance to beprimarily – but not as exclusively as she does – as a response to


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In short, Plato did indeed take up the issue of theontological ramifications of Socrates’ epistemologicalapproach, and this is why he and his followers would havebeen the first in the history of philosophy to addresssuccessfully the old issue of the true nature of beingtogether with the critical reflection about how we may haveknowledge about it. They would have been, had they notcommitted the mistake of first separating the Forms from theparticipants! That way the question of participation becamean insoluble problem.

But how to make the Forms into causes which are bothexplanatory of the conceptual identity of mundane things aswell as of their behavior in the world of sense? The answerhas already been indicated during our survey of Aristotle’scriticism of the Forms. Aristotle doubly re-interpreted theForms, both as essences with a view to making intelligiblethe substance (ousia) or form (eidos)of sensible things, and asthe actuality (energeia) and entelechy (entelecheia) of their materialsubstratum. In this way, the Form could be said to beintimately connected with the thing of which it is the formand that same form could, as final cause, become part of thematter-form compound as the efficient cause and so accountfor the generation, the behavior, and the identitythroughout change of sensible things. Because the PlatonicForms are not essences they are unable to express a thing’sidentity qua this particular thing. And because the Formshave no intrinsic relationship with things they cannot makeintelligible why a thing would endeavor so much to be likeit. If the Form is turned into an essence which is at thesame time the terminus a quo as well as ad quem of the naturallychanging thing, we can give an account both of what thething is according to its form or eidos as well as of itsidentity over time while it grows into its typical shape.Aristotle’s suggestion, then, is that the concept of anessence has a built-in reference to the thing of which it is

Plato’s conception of Forms as ousiai.


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the essence because by definition the essence represents thenature or identity of the particular qua particular. Hencethe formulation to ti en einai hekastouor hekasto) – that whichsome particular thing was by nature supposed to be allalong.111 A Form is a Form with or without any instantiation,but there can be no essence which is not the essence of someparticular thing. Even if the essence is not identical withthe sensible matter-form compound as such (as we shall seeshortly), there better be some things which are identicalwith their essences, Aristotle argues in Metaph. 6, forotherwise sensible substances will not be knowable at all.Consequently, the separation of thing and essence is calledan absurdity (atopon).112 Finally, the question raised in Z 2(incidentally, with direct attribution of the doctrine ofForms to Plato) and Z 11, viz. whether there exist separatesubstances besides the sensible ones, only adds to thepicture I am outlining. The separability of the Forms hasbecome the crucial issue for Aristotle in the Metaphysics. As aresult, all entities claimed to exist separately, whethernumbers or Ideas or Ideas as numbers, come under hisscrutiny. On the other hand, as he puts it dramatically inMetaph. Lambda 6, there must also exist an eternal separatesubstance, for without it everything would be perishable andthe eternal recurrence of generation and destruction amongsensible substances could not be maintained. The result, aswe know, is the doctrine of the Prime Mover. It is as thoughAristotle was determined to show that there is indeed onlyone entity in the entire universe that can exist both inseparation from any embodiment in matter and be an essence atthe same time. All other entities that had been put forward111 See, for instance, Aristotle, Metaph. 4, 1029b 14, 20; 7, 1032b 1-2. More than half a century’s worth of scholarly work has been done onthis Aristotelian formula which appears enigmatic primarily due to theimperfect tense of the auxiliary verb (‘what it was for X to be [thisparticular thing]’), starting with C. Arpe’s 1937 dissertation to E.Sonderegger’s 1983 article and H. Weidemann’s 1996 contribution. Ibelieve that the above paraphrase ‘what X was by nature supposed to beall along’ offers a natural and plausible explanation of the presenceof the imperfect as well as the general meaning of this expression.

112 Metaph. 6, 1031b 28-32.


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for this role, in particular Platonic Forms andmathematicals, must be denied this status.

The fact that Aristotle reclaimed the discovery ofousia as essence for himself he makes unmistakably clear inthe following comment:

The essence or substance (to\ ti/h=)n ei=)nai kai\th\n ou)si/an) no one has expressed adequately(safw=j). It is hinted at chiefly by those who believein the Forms; … they furnish the Forms as the essence(to\ ti/ h=)n ei=)nai) of every other thing, and theOne as the essence of the Forms (Metaph. A 7, 988a 34-b6, tr. Ross, modified).113

We may conclude from this that Aristotle believes hisinterpretation of ousia as essence and final cause to be theproper and conclusive response to the question concerningthe nature and the intelligibility of being, at least as faras sensible substances are concerned. Aristotelianessentialism makes it possible to understand (a) how thingsmay be thought to possess an intrinsic identity, (b) why andhow change and generation occur in nature, and (c) how wemay support the claim that the Form is intimately connectedwith sensible substances and capable of doing the desiredexplanatory work. The second issues had already been focusedon by the Pre-Socratic philosophers, but they were eithertoo naïve (for instance, the Ionians Thales, Anaximander,and Anaximenes) or too eccentric (Heraclitus, Parmenides) ortoo narrowly focused on matter alone (Leucippus, Democritus)– or simply too inapt, like Melissus or Antipho – to respond

113 Lewis (2000) 124 claims that Aristotle here acknowledges that Plato’sForms are essences of their participants. But the passage seems to besaying that the Forms are allegedly essences. Lewis himself admits thatthere are other passages where Aristotle does not view the Forms asessences, at least not in his sense. Aristotle usually prefers to callPlatonic Forms substances (ousiai) in a wide sense which inivites thequestion in exactly what sense they can legitimately be called such.Zeta must clarify what we understand by ousia precisely because thePlatonic Forms are among the most prominent contenders for that title.


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to them properly. The purpose of the theory of Ideas hadbeen to address all three questions and to supply adefinitive solution to them. However, the theory was ruinedby the ill-advised move of separating that which wassupposed to be the true reality or ousia of things from thephenomena themselves – or so Aristotle believes. His ownproposal of ousia as essence and final cause rectifies thesituation and fills the explanatory gap left open by thePlatonic doctrine of Forms.

If this sounds like a fair interpretation ofAristotle’s assessment of the explanatory function and valueof the doctrine of Forms in their historical context,another observation suggests itself. Apparently, inAristotle’s mind the theory of ousia as essence is the mostimportant and critical contribution to resolving theproblems that constitute the legacy of Pre-Socratic andSocratic-Platonic philosophy. If the theory can be shown tobe satisfactory and coherent, it succeeds where the doctrineof Ideas has failed. But when we ask where Aristotledevelops the theory of ousia as essence, the answer isobviously – Metaphysics Zeta and Eta. So the doctrine of ousiain these central books of the Metaphysics is on one hand theresponse to the most crucial issues in philosophy, but it isalso, and in our context more importantly, the only viablealternative to the doctrine of Forms. That Metaphysics Zeta isprimarily about the doctrine of ousia as essence hardlyrequires elaborate proof. Just to remind ourselves: Zeta 1argues that the primary sense of being is ousia. Chapter 3proposes to investigate the form (eidos) because it is “themost difficult” and because the matter can be dismissed asnot being ousia and the matter-form compound or synholon asbeing ousia only in a derivative sense. Chapter 4 announcesthat the topic of the following investigation is the essence(to ti en einai). Essence is here defined as that which each thingis said to be in virtue of itself, or kath’ hauto (1029b 12-4).During the course of this discussion essence is identifiedwith the substance of each thing (ousia hekastou, Z 6, 1031a


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18) and is likewise said to be that which we know when knowa thing:

For there is knowledge of each thing only when we knowits essence (e)pisth/mh e(ka/stou e)sti\n o(/tan to\ti/ h=)n e)kei/n% ei=)nai gnw=men, Z 6, 1031b 6-7, tr.Ross).

At Z 7, essence is identified not only with form andsubstance but more specifically with primary substance:

By form (ei=)doj) I mean the essence of each thing (to\ti/ h=)n ei=)nai e(ka/stou) and its primary substance(prw/th ou)si/a, 1032b 1-2, tr. Ross).

Going back to Z 6 we note that the issue discussed in thechapter is the question “whether each thing and its essenceare the same or different” (1031a 15-6, tr. Ross). Thequestion is answered in the affirmative, but the identity ofessence and thing is said to hold for those things only thatare said per se ( kath’ hauta).114 This seems to foreshadow Z 7 andnotably Z 11 which argue that the identity between substanceand essence holds for the eidos as primary substance and itsessence. It is in the context of discussing the question ofthe identity of each thing with its essence in Z 6 thatAristotle mentions Platonic Forms again and analyzes theconcept at length:

But in the case of so-called per se legomena, is a thingnecessarily the same as its essence? E.g. if there aresome substances such as some assert the Ideas to be?If the essence of good is to be different from theIdea of good, and the essence of animal from the Ideaof animal …, these others will be prior substances ifthe essence is substance. And if the posteriorsubstances are severed from one another(a)polelume/nai a)llh/lwn), there will be no knowledgeof the ones (ou)k e)/stai e)pisth/mh) and the others

114 Ta\ kaq’ au(ta\ lego/mena1031a 28; also ta\ prw=ta kai\ kaq’ au(ta\lego/mena, 1032a 5.


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will not be beings (ou)k e)/stai o)/nta) (1031a 28-4,tr. Ross, modified).

In other words, if the essence is separated from the thingof which it is the essence, the essence will not be a beingbut a mere concept or universal, and the thing will not beintelligible. Consequently, a little further on theseparation of substance and essence is called ‘absurd’(a)/topon, 1031b 28), as noted already above.

Putting Aristotle’s doctrine of ousia in Metaphysics Zetaand Eta in the perspective of his anti-separatist strategyagainst Platonic Forms enables us to recognize that thequestion of how essence relates to substance and to whatextent it makes substances knowable becomes the overridingissue for Aristotle in the central books of the Metaphysics.Furthermore, we can see how this issue structures hisdiscussion in Zeta and Eta. In particular, since there arefundamentally two kinds of substance (ou)si/a), viz.sensible substances (ou)si/ai ai)sqetai/) and forms(ei)/dh), it is necessary to determine what is to beunderstood by essence and how it relates to ousia as form andas sensible substance, both in the sense of a matter-formcompound and as an individual with accidental properties(Zeta 4-6); how the form – which, to complicate mattersfurther, may be either a universal or an ‘indwelling form’ –relates to the material substratum in sensible substances,in particular whether or not it exists separately from thelatter or not (Zeta 7-9), which parts of the sensiblesubstance are parts of the matter and which are parts of theform, which parts are prior and which posterior to eachother and how these parts relate to the definition ofsubstances (Zeta 10); and, since essence is supposed to bethe basis of the scientific knowability of reality, whichparts of the matter-form compound are part of the essenceand of its formula and whether apart from the definitionrelating to the form there is also a definition or someother kind of formula of the matter-form compound (Zeta 10,11). All these discussions turn ultimately on the question


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whether the form is a universal or not, how intimately theessence is connected to substance and whether indeed somethings are identical with their essence such that the essencecan be shown not to be separate from that of which it is theessence. The investigation is also undertaken with a view todetermine whether there are any substances in the sense ofform that are capable of existing separately, i.e.independently of matter, since this is what the friends ofthe Forms claim to be the case.115 Finally, since it turnsout that the essence is identical only with primarysubstance or form (ei=)doj) but not with the matter-formcompound (su/nolon), a case needs to be made to the effectthat primary substance is itself intimately connected withits material substratum. Aristotle makes a tentative claimto this end in Zeta 10 and 11, but his extended discussionof this aspect of his anti-separatist strategy comes in Eta.Concluding the investigation in Zeta and serving as a bridgeto the discussion in Eta, Zeta 17 proposes that the essenceis also the formal and final cause of sensible substances:

… the question is why the matter (u(/lh) is someindividual thing (ti\), e.g. why are these materials ahouse? Because that which is the essence of a house ispresent (u(pa/rxei o(\ h=)n oi)ki/# ei=)nai). And whyis this individual thing, or this body in this state,a man? Therefore what we seek is the cause (ai)/tion),i.e. the form (ei=)doj) by reason of which the matteris some definite thing; and this is the substance(ou)si/a) of the thing (17, 1041b 5-8).

In short, Aristotle’s overall argument proceeds in twosteps. First, he tries to demonstrate that essence isidentical with primary substance, and then he proposes thatprimary substance is the cause of the unity or the actualityof the underlying material substratum, i.e. that whichunifies the substratum into an individual of a particularkind. The anti-separatist strategy has come full circle.116

But how successful is this strategy? We will briefly address

115 Cf. Metaph. 2, 1028b 27-32; 11, 1037a 10-5; 1, 1042a 12-3, 23-5.


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this question. Ignoring much of the detail of Aristotle’sargument, we will focus on its most critical stages.

A good place to start is Zeta 8. In it, Aristotlediscusses the two components of the matter-form compound anddenies that either of them is created when a synholon isproduced. Neither the matter, for instance the bronze, northe form, e.g., the sphere, is created when a bronze sphereis being produced.117 Instead, the spherical form pre-existsand is imposed upon, or rather is made to emerge from, anequally pre-existing, but as yet formless, albeitpotentially spherical, piece of bronze.118 Aristotleimmediately realizes, however, that if not only the matterbut also the form must pre-exist he is coming dangerouslyclose to being mistaken for asserting the separate existenceof the eidos. To forestall this misconception, he explicitlyraises the issue himself: “Is there then a sphere apart fromthe individual spheres or a house apart from the bricks?”(1033b 19-21). The answer follows instantly: “Rather we maysay that no ‘this’ would ever have been coming to be, ifthis had been so” (1033b 21). The reason for this iscomplex. First, if the form needed itself to be generated itwould likewise have to be generated from a substratum and aform. If an infinite regress is to be avoided, it must be

116 There are, to be sure, further issues to be considered, the mostpressing among them being the problem of the definability of theindwelling individuating form raised in Zeta 13. Because this form “ispeculiar to an individual” and hence not a universal, its definabilityis in doubt, since as a rule a definition requires parts. We willreturn to this issue below..

117 This is so far quite in agreement with Plato’s argument in the Phaedothat in dividing one thing into two, it is not twoness that iscreated. Rather, twoness must be presupposed for the division to bepossible (cf. Phaedo 102B-C).

118 ‘Is made to emerge from rather than imposed upon’ because thecraftsman could never force a form upon the matter, if that form werenot potentially present in the material substratum. Forms that are notgenuine potentialities of the underlying material may be imposed uponit, but lead to dysfunctional products, such as a saw made of wood(cf. Metaph. Η 4, 1044a 26-7).


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denied that the form is itself generated. Second, if theform and the matter existed separately as substances intheir own right, the bronze sphere would have to consist oftwo substances, both of which would be matter-form compounds– a piece of bronze taken as an individual substance, and asphere, also taken as an individual substance (embodied inintelligible matter). In fact, however, the generatedsubstance is one and a ‘this’. It is not a duality but aunity. But even if, third, there is a universal formexisting in separation from the individuals, it could notexist separately in reality, only in thought, i.e. as anintelligible form or concept. As a mere intelligible form,however, it could never explain the coming-to-be ofanything. Universals or concepts just are not the kinds ofthing that enter into the generation or production ofindividuals except in the sense that the production ofartifacts is governed, and perhaps inspired, by a more orless precise ‘idea’ of the thing to be produced. That,however, does not mean that such ‘ideas’ are thereby beingimposed upon the material at hand. For even here the formthat actually does enter into the process of production mustalready pre-exist potentially in the underlying substratumor material. Otherwise there would be no way of explainingthe unity and ‘thisness’ of the resulting product. Theuniversal referring to the kind of thing produced – thesortal, as we might say with Locke and Strawson – is aconvenient label with which to classify the particular, butit does not for that reason enter into its constitution. Theuniversal is a kind of intelligible form. It is not to beconfused with the inherent form. The classificatory species-universal (eidos) or type, then, is a ‘such’ (toionde), i.e. auniversal, but a ‘this’ (tode ti) and something definite(horismenon) in the sense of being an individual it is not:

The ‘form’ [i.e. taken as a universal] … means the‘such’ (toio/nde), and is not a ‘this’ (to/de) – adefinite thing; but the artist makes, or the fathergenerates, a ‘such’ out of a ‘this’; and when it has


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been generated, it is a ‘this such’ (to/de toio/nde, 8, 1033b 22-24).

Universals do not have separate existence in the sense inwhich individual substances exist separately.119 They arepredicates said of something as a subject. They aresubstantial qualifiers of the individual that is generated,but they do not inhere in it. They are instantiated by, butdo not inhere in, the individual substance.120 finally, as a‘such’, the form is no help in explaining the phenomenon ofgeneration or production.121 In order to explain thepossibility of the latter we need a form that inheres inthings so that an efficient cause (parent, craftsman) may beable to transmit it to the offspring or elicit it from thematerial substratum. In other words, only embodied forms, notuniversals, Platonic Ideas included, can explain generation

119 16, 1040b 25-7: “… that which is one cannot be in many things atthe same time, but that which is common is present in many things atthe same time; so that clearly no universal exists apart from theindividuals”; see also 13, 1038b 30-4. Aristotle points out what theconsequences are, if despite their being universals Platonic Forms areascribed separate existence and made to be a ‘this’ in 14, 15, and16. Cf. also Metaph. M 9, 1086a 31-4.

120 Substantial universals such as species and genera still have thestatus they are assigned in Cat. 2, 1a 20-2. They are ‘said of’ but donot inhere in the substratum.

121 As will become apparent below, the indwelling form, the eidos enon of11, 1037a 29, will have to be a ‘this’ (individual), because unlikethe atomon eidos of Ζ 8, 1034a 8 it is apparently also a form that givesunity and identity to the underlying matter. The atomon eidos of 8 is a‘such’, i.e. a universal. It is said to be the same in differentindividuals. It is atomon in the sense of infima species in the sense bothof ‘man’ and of a particular kind of soul. Neither the atomon eidos northe eidos enon are separate in the sense in which the Platonists believethe Forms to be. Because the atomon eidos represents a (particularized)universal Aristotle can say in Z 8 that “the father generates a ‘such’out of a ‘this’; and when it has been generated, it is a ‘this such’”(1033b 22-24). Obviously, the father generates – together with themother – another individual human being, i.e. a ‘this such’, anindividual of a certain kind. Clearly, he does not generate theindwelling form = soul. And since the species-form is parasitic uponthe indwelling form, neither does he generate the latter.


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or production. To return to the original questions in Zeta8, the fact that the form of a house cannot have beencreated does not imply, then, that a universal house musthave existed by itself in separation from any kind ofembodiment, or even that it must have existed as an ‘idea’in the mind of the craftsman prior to its realization.Rather, it implies that it must have already existed in somestate of embodiment, either in potentiality as a potentialform in the appropriate matter (be this the pile of bricksor the seed), or in actuality, as the form of man in thefather of the child. It takes embodied forms, not only thesun, to explain generation.122

For Aristotle, the universal is post rem without having aseparate existence.123 That, however, by no means makesAristotle a nominalist. For one thing, as a potentiality andan actuality the embodied form is in re. And for another, theuniversal is parasitic upon the essence qua intelligibleform. The latter, as we have already seen, is supposed to beidentical with the embodied form. Indeed, havingdistinguished the universal from the embodied form and thusalso from the essence the question how the universal and theessence relate to the composite individual now takes on aparticular urgency.

Generally speaking, universals are what we know aboutindividuals, if we know anything about them. Universalsintroduce us to and make us familiar with individuals,

122 “For a man owes his birth to another man and to the sun” (Phys. II 2,194b 13-4, my italics). I take this to be an allusion to the Republic’sIdea of the Good. It is not through the Idea of the Good alone thatindividual sensible things are generated.

123 To be sure, the form as eidos is supposed to be both in the particularand in the soul cognizant of the particular. But eidos in Aristotle issystematically ambiguous as form in the particular and as form in thesoul (the latter again differs in the way in which ‘man’ and ‘rationalsoul’ differ). The two are “the same, although what it is for them tobe such is not the same” (De an. II 12, 424a 25-6); cf. De an. II 5, 417b22: “… actual perception is of particulars, while knowledge is ofuniversals; and these are somehow in the soul itself.”


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insofar as these instantiate kinds of things or kinds ofproperties. Without universals, the world would not beintelligible to us at all. It would remain a disorganized,fragmented aggregate of bits and pieces, much like a groupof soldiers routed in battle.124 Universals, then, apparentlyintroduce unity, cohesion, and order into our perception ofthe world and thus make possible its intelligibility. Butuniversals do not yet afford us knowledge of the world in ascientific sense, i.e. knowledge of the inner constitutionof things. They familiarize us with the surface of things asthey appear to us initially in perception, but they do notreveal their inner constitution or connections. By contrast,to know something scientifically is to know its cause andits definition, i.e. the cause why the thing is theparticular thing it is and what its essential identity issupposed to be in conceptual terms. Hence the distinctionbetween doxa and episteme. But even in the realm of episteme theknowledge of the cause why the thing is this particularthing and the knowledge of its conceptual identity need notcoincide. In fact, they coincide only when the definition ofthe universal is at the same time a definition of theessence of the thing. Only then do we know both the thing’scause and its essence. How is this to be understood?

First, we need to underline that the species-universalor genus such as man or animal does not necessarily refer tothe embodied form of an individual. Indeed, in the traditionof the Academy it stands primarily for the genus and someexternal classificatory feature such as two-footedness inthe case of man. However, since Aristotle believes to havediscovered the internal constitution of sensible substances,their hylomorphic structure, he has to rethink the questionwhat the definition of the species-universal is supposed tocapture. It would be a real – as opposed to a nominal orclassificatory – definition only, if it were to capture theinternal make-up of the species-individual. But even thenthe definition would not yet be the definition of the

124 Cf. An. post. II 19, 100a 10-4.


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thing’s essence, since the indwelling form rather than thematter is the actual cause of the thing and that to whichits essential identity attaches.125 This explains why in Zeta10 and 11 of the Metaphysics Aristotle devotes so much careto distinguishing between the formula that counts as adefinition of the essence of a species-individual and theformula that does not, but instead captures the individual’sinternal make-up ‘taken as a universal’.126 While the latterformula reflects the hylomorphic structure and thussomething typical of this kind of individual, it is stillnot a definition of its essence. It mentions the indwellingform by its name (e.g., ‘soul’), but it does not define thisform. The structural formula of the type ‘this particularform in this particular matter’ – or, in the case of livingbeings, ‘this particular soul in this particular body’ –certainly constitutes an advance over formulae that amountto no more than nominal classifications (such as ‘two-footedanimal’), but it does not yet define the essence of thething and therefore not the cause of the unity of the matter-form compound. Evidently, the cause of its unity is theindwelling form. To understand the thing scientifically,then, would require that we define the indwelling form, i.e.the essence.

We may learn from this that universals aresystematically ambiguous, not to say misleading, when we askwhat they stand for. Consequently, in Eta 3 Aristotle goesto some length to point out that

We must not forget that sometimes it is not clearwhether a name means the composite substance, or theactuality or form, e.g. whether ‘house’ is a sign forthe composite thing, ‘a covering consisting of bricksand stones laid thus and thus’, or for the actuality

125 Cf. the arguments in Phys. II1 in favor of the primacy of the form indetermining a thing’s nature and identity; see also Metaph. Z 17according to which the form is the cause of the thing’s unity andnature.

126 Cf., for instance, Metaph. Ζ 10, 1035 29-30; Ζ 11, 1037a 8-9.


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or form, ‘a covering’, … and whether an animal is asoul in a body or a soul. For soul is the substanceand actuality of some body; but animal might beapplied to both, not that both are definable by oneformula but because they refer to the same thing(1043a 29-36).

In other words, we may take ‘man’ to refer to the compositesubstance or only to the embodied form. If the former, wemay define ‘man’ as ‘this particular form in this particularmatter’ (i.e. a rational soul in flesh and bones arranged intypical human shape). In that case, we will be defining notthe essence but the composite structure of the individual.If, however, we take ‘man’ to refer to the rational soulitself, then we are referring to the essence whose formulawill be the definition of the unifying cause as well as ofthe essential identity of the individual – man isessentially a soul. In both cases, the inner constitution ofthe individual substance is being revealed, but there is adifference. In the former case, it is not the essence of thething that is being defined but only its hylomorphicstructure. In this formula, the essence is mentioned but notrevealed.

Now as we already indicated there is another formulathat is generally regarded as the definition of a universal.This is the definition by genus and differentia specifica such as‘man is a two-footed animal’. This formula describes neitherthe internal constitution of the definiendum nor does itmention its essence at all. Hence neither the cause of beingthis kind of individual, viz. a man, nor the essence ofbeing human are revealed by this formula. The dihaireticdefinition of the universal is nothing more than aclassificatory device whose function is primarily to help usidentify individuals in perception, not to understand theirinner constitution or nature. And yet this dihaireticformula is the one that is usually offered as the formulathat defines a Platonic Form.127 Evidently, this formula has127 Cf. 14, 1039a 24-6; cf. 6, 1045a 15-25.


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merely classificatory value. Because it does not mention theessence or cause of the thing’s being this particular kindof thing it cannot be of help either in making the thingintelligible or in explaining its behavior. It can only beused to sort the thing into one of the conventionallyestablished classes or types. Nor is there a synonymousessence corresponding to the universal ‘man’, no ‘man-ness’or ‘human-ness’, unless we understand by this man’s rationalsoul. ‘Man-itself’ as well as the dihairetic formula aretherefore useless for the purposes of scientific knowledge,quite apart from the many aporiai to which the concept of aseparate universal gives rise.128 In sum:

Therefore to bring all things thus to Forms and toeliminate the matter is useless labor; for some thingssurely are a particular form in a particular matter,or particular things in a particular state ( 11,1036b 22-4).129

As a corollary, it can therefore be said that we know thingsunscientifically if we know only the universal which istheir name. In that case, we have a familiarity with themwithout knowing what they ‘really’ are. Furthermore,however, we may also know things pseudo-scientificallywithout knowing what they ‘really’ are, if we believe thattheir scientific definition consists in the usual dihaireticformula of genus plus external characteristic. Bothunscientifically and scientifically, then, we may knowthings ‘universally’ or globally (katholou) only (from theoutside, as it were), but not specifically or analytically(from the inside or ‘unfolded’, haplos).130 For this reason,

128 Among other things, a separate universal must also, andparadoxically, be considered an individual or ‘this’ (cf. 14,101039a 30-39b 3). This separates the Form radically from sensibleparticulars, makes participation a mystery, and generates the ThirdMan (cf. 13, 1038b 17-39a 3).

129 The ways in which things can also be defined by the particular statethey are in is discussed at length in Eta 2.

130 An. post. I 1, 71a 25-9.


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it is critical to know which formula will give us access tothe inner constitution and essence of things and what thedefinition of the essence is a definition of.

Incidentally, there is yet another formula used todefine the species-universal, viz. in the case of ‘man’ theformula ‘man is a rational animal’ (to which one might alsoadd ‘man is a political animal’). This type of formula maybe taken to be a variant of the structural formula in whichthe essence is mentioned, but not defined. It would thus bevery different from ‘man is a two-footed animal’ in that itdoes contain a reference to the essence of the definiendum.‘Rational’ could then be short for ‘rational soul’, and‘animal’ would stand for the matter in the sense of ‘livingbody’.

Apparently, then, any future metaphysics that can claimto be a science will not be built on the kind of universalsknown as Platonic Forms because the latter contain noreference to the essence of things or their internalconstitution. Sciences that deal with matter-form compoundswill need to study both the hyletic and the eideticcomponent as well as their interdependence, as Aristotleexplains in the introductory chapters of the De Anima and thePhysics.131 For these sciences, the sciences of SecondPhilosophy132, the structural definition of hylomorphiccompounds will be the foundation, but only in the sense thatit steers the investigation to the two constituents oraspects that are the objects of further examination anddefinition. Still, it will be primarily the investigationand definition of the indwelling form of the compound thatwill lead us to a scientific understanding of the truenature of things, since it is this form that is the cause ofthe unity of the thing as well as that which sums up thething’s intelligible nature. Whether there also exist any

131 See De an. I 1, 403b 6-9; Phys. I 9, 192a 35- b 3; see also Phys. II 2,194b 10-5.

132 Cf. 11, 1037a 15.


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forms that are not by nature part of a matter-form compoundwould be a question for First Philosophy to determine.133

The preliminary result of this review is that PlatonicForms need to be replaced by indwelling forms because onlythey give us access to the cause and the essence ofcomposite substances and thus to the true reality (ousia) ofthings. The long quest that started with Socrates’ questionas to what it is that makes all bees bees has now beenbrought to a successful conclusion, after the unsuccessfuldiversion in the pursuit of separately existing universals.It is, of course, the being of bees that makes this bee abee, and what makes this bee a bee is what makes all beesbees. The being of this bee or any other bee, however,resides not in a separate but in a separable form –separable in thought, that is, but inseparable in reality.

This outcome poses a number of new problems. The beingof bees sums up what it means to be a bee, i.e. itrepresents the essence of this as well as any other bee. Is,then, the essence itself an individual or a universalessence? And if it is an individual essence, can it beknown, since we can have knowledge only of the universal?134

Furthermore, is the essence literally the same as theindividual? This nobody will seriously believe, since theessence is the essence of a hylomorphic compound. Socratesis in some sense summed up by his soul, but Socrates is asoul only metaphorically speaking. Hence Socrates’ soul isthe same as Socrates only in a qualified way, viz. only tothe extent that all that is remarkable and important andimmortal about Socrates is summed up by his soul. In short,only the essential Socrates is the same as his soul, theunessential aspect of Socrates, i.e. Socrates’ body, is not.

Let us continue with this last line of argument andreturn to the other questions afterwards. Socrates is

133 See Phys. I 9, 192a 35- b 3 and Metaph. 11, 1037a 10-8.134 See footnote 26 above.


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identical with his soul in one sense, and in another he isnot. He is not identical with his soul, if we take a‘scientific’ approach to analyzing Socrates. We will thendistinguish between the animus he displays in defendinghimself in front of the Athenian jury and the relativefragility of his body which is that of a septuagenarian. Ifwe were a doctor concerned about his health under thestressful conditions of such a severe indictment, we wouldwant to keep an eye on the correlation between his state ofmind and his physical condition. And yet, if anybody were toask whether anything could be learned about the ‘real’Socrates through the Apology, we would point to his emotionaland intellectual demeanor and his personality which areentirely a matter of his soul or mind. If our concern isknowledge of the real Socrates, then, it is indeed his soul(and its manifestations) that we need to be focusing on. Thetrue reality of Socrates, his ousia, resides in his essenceor primary substance, the soul, and if we want to know what theessential Socrates is, we need to define his soul, notSocrates the mind-body compound. Not to mention that anaccount of Socrates’ hylopmorphic composition, i.e. of thearrangement of his ‘parts’, does not yet explain what hisessence is.

As a consequence, Aristotle concludes in Zeta 11 thatin a sense there is a definition or formula of an individualsubstance, and in a sense there is not:

… for there is no formula(lo/goj) of it with itsmatter, for this is indefinite (a)o/riston), but thereis a formula of it with reference to its primarysubstance (kata\ th\n prw/thn ou)si/an) – e.g. in thecase of man the formula of the soul –, for thesubstance is the indwelling form (ei=)doj e)no/n),from which along with the matter the so-calledconcrete substance (h( su/noloj le/getai ou)si/a) isderived … And we have stated that the essence (to\ ti/h=)n ei=)nai) and the individual thing are in somecases the same, i.e. in the case of primary substances(e)pi tw=n prw/twn ou)siw=n) … But things which are of


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the nature of matter or of wholes which includematter, are not the same as their essences … (1037a26-b 6).

Aristotle tells us three things here. First, there is nodefinition of hylomorphic compounds because their mattercannot be defined. Hence to know a thing in the strict senseor scientifically means to know its essence.135 Secondly, theelement in a hylomorphic compound that is capable of beingdefined is its primary substance or the indwelling form.136

Thirdly, with the indwelling form we have identified thatsubstance of which we can say that it is identical with itsessence and hence knowable in the strict sense. Theindwelling form is that reality of which there can bescientific knowledge (episteme). 135 “… there is knowledge (e)pisth/mh) of each thing only when we knowits essence” (Ζ 6, 1031b 7-8). And: “Each thing, then, and its essenceare one and the same (e(\n kai\ tau)to/n) in no merely accidental way… because to know (e)pi/stasqai) each thing, at least, is to know itsessence (to\ ti/ h=)n ei=)nai e)pi/stasqai)” (1031b 19-22).

136 I take it that primary substances are included among the thingsAristotle refers to in Ζ 6 when he says: “.. not only are a thing andits essence one, but the formula of them is also the same … Clearly,then, each primary and self-subsistent thing (ta\ prw=ta kai\ kaq’au(ta\ lego/mena) is one and the same as its essence” (1032a 5-6). Hisexamples of the good and the one indicate, however, that ta prota istaken in a wider sense here. They may be included because of thepolemic against Platonic Forms which is central to this chapter. Onthe other hand, Aristotle also argues that horse and the essence ofhorse must be one, if an infinite regress of generating the essence ofthe essence of the essence is to be avoided. Hence: “… why should notsome things [viz., ta\ prw=ta] be their essences from the start, sinceessence is substance (1031b 31-2)? The argument is supposed to showthe “absurdity” (a)/topon, 1031b 28) of the separation of the essence(i.e. the Form) from that of which it is the essence. See also Ζ 4,1030a 3-7: “… the essence is what something is; but when one thing issaid of another, that is not what a ‘this’ is ... since being a ‘this’belongs only to substances. Therefore there is an essence only ofthose things whose formula is a definition.” Here again we can see howthe anti-separatist agenda structures Aristotle’s discussion in Zeta,for the next thing to investigate must be, then, whether there is adefinition of hylomorphic substances, since these are generallyrecognized as being substances – the topic of Zeta 10 and 11.


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A rather dramatic implication emerges at this point. Ifthe definition of the essence captures only the indwellingform and not the individual thing in its entirety, thenscientific knowledge can be had only of one aspect ofreality, viz. the embodied form, not of the sensiblesubstance as a whole or of its hyletic substratum:

For even if the line when divided passes away into itshalves, or the man into bones and muscles and flesh,it does not follow that they [i.e. these matter-formcompounds] are composed of these as parts of theirsubstance (ou)si/a), but rather as matter; and theseare parts of the concrete thing (tou= suno/lou me/rh),but not of the form and of that to which the formularefers (tou= ei)/douj kai\ ou=( o( lo/goj ou)ke/ti);and therefore they will not be in the formulae either(e)n toi=j lo/goij, Ζ 10, 1035a 17-23, tr. Ross, rev.Barnes, modified).

The hyletic component of sensible substances is not part oftheir definition. To be sure, the sensible individual andits matter are still knowable in the wider sense – they areavailable to perception and thought (noesis)137, but theseafford knowledge only of the species-universal, not of theessence. “Matter is unknowable in itself” (Ζ 10, 1036a 8-9).Only the primary substance is unequivocally and withoutqualification identical with the essence as expressed in thedefinition. Hence at least at the epistemic level thereopens up a disconnect between the essence and its embodiment(if we take the essence to be equivalent to the indwellingform, as Aristotle does).

This represents a curious case of chorismos redivivus,because the indwelling form now seems to be epistemicallydivorced from the matter or the underlying thing withoutwhich it would presumably not exist at all. Isn’t is odd, onemay wonder, that the form/essence of hylomorphic substances

137 Cf. Ζ 10, 1036a 1-6.


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should be definable without reference to their hyleticsubstratum? Are sensible substances not by nature dependenton a material substratum? Of course they are. Otherwise,there would be no point in opposing them to the one essencethat is not dependent on an embodiment for its existence,viz. the Prime Mover. Should their dependence on a hyleticsubstratum then not be reflected in their essence? Are theynot essentially hylomorphic? Does the fact that they can existonly in conjunction with an anchoring in the world of matterand change not affect their very identity as finite things?How do we even know, then, that embodied forms possess anintrinsic relationship to the underlying substratum? Or arethey all like the sailor of the ship without whom the shipis unable to sail, but who after completing the journey maystill go ashore all by himself, leaving the boat behind?138

Aristotle seems to think that this is so. In a revealingcomparison between geometrical forms and forms of livingthings he proposes that the soul is really like a circle inthis respect. Even if all circles that had ever been seenwere of bronze, nonetheless the bronze would not be part oftheir form. It is just that

the form of [living beings such as] man is alwaysfound in flesh and bones and parts of this kind; arethese then also parts of the form and the formula? No,they are matter; but because man is not found also inother matters we are unable to effect the severance(a)dunatou=men xwri/sai, Ζ 11, 1036b 3-7).

It is, then, strictly speaking a coincidence that the formof man is always found in flesh and bones with acharacteristic human shape. Comparing the form of livingthings to geometrical forms we can see that the form as suchmight possibly be embedded in other kinds of material thanhappens to be the case. Neither the form nor the formula,

138 Aristotle himself offers this Platonic analogy when he discusses therelationship of the soul to the body at De an. II 1, 413a 4-10.Incidentally, the same analogy is invoked by Descartes in the SixthMeditation (cf. Descartes, CSM II 56/ AT VII 81).


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therefore, contain a built-in reference to the hyleticsubstratum, even though they will presumably always beembodied in some matter, either sensible or intelligible.139

There exists no essential or intrinsic epistemicconnection between the indwelling form and the hyleticcomponent of the individual. Instead, scientific knowledgeis restricted to primary substances. But it will be objectedthat this flies in the face of Aristotle’s interpretation ofthe form/essence as the actuality of the underlyingsubstratum. Thus in De Anima the soul is famously defined asthe first actuality of a potentially living body.140 Also,Metaphysics Eta 6 argues at some length that the proximatematter141 of a composite substance and its form “are one andthe same thing”:

... people look for a unifying formula, and adifference, between actuality and potentiality. But,as has been said, the proximate matter and the formare one and the same thing, the one potentially, theother actually. Therefore to ask the cause of theirbeing one is like asking the cause of unity ingeneral; for each thing is a unity, and the potentialand the actual are somehow one. Therefore there is noother cause here unless there is something whichcaused the movement from potentiality to actuality(1045b 16-23).

139 Mathematical forms are embodied in intelligible matter: cf. Ζ 10,1036a 9-12. Even mathematical forms, therefore, are not separate Formsas some argue who “bring all things to numbers, and … say the formulaof line is that of two”, thus turning Forms into numbers (cf. Ζ 11,1036b 13-5).

140 Cf. De an. II 1, 412a 27-8.141 Proximate matter (e)sxa/th u(/lh) is the matter closest to the form,so to speak, matter that is already perceptibly informed by the formand thus has taken on the species-typical shape (morphe). Its antonym isremote matter which in its remotest, strictly formless state isprimary matter (prote hyle). For an excellent analysis of the importanceof this distinction for Aristotle see Irwin (1988) 241-259.


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Note that immediately prior to this passage Aristotle refersto those who introduced the ideas of ‘participation’ or‘communion’ or ‘combination’ to account for the unity ofindividual things.142 They believed that there had to be areal difference, i.e. a separate existence of two elementssuch as soul and body, as well as a unity of them. But theydid not understand that things without matter, such assouls, are immediately one and, furthermore, thathylomorphic compounds are intrinsically one, the distinctionbetween their proximate matter and their form being only adifference within a prior unity. Now already in MetaphysicsZeta 10 Aristotle had asserted that

… the soul of animals (for this is the substance ofliving beings) is their substance according to theformula, i.e. the form and the essence of a body of acertain kind (to\ ti/ h=)n ei=)nai t%= toi%=desw/mati, 1035b 14-7).

Here, essence is said to be the substance and essence of abody of a certain kind, not just the primary substanceconsidered in separation from the body. Again in Zeta 10 and11, Aristotle had entertained the idea, somewhattentatively, it seems, that the soul might be the animal orthat the soul of each individual might be the individualitself.143 And according to the actuality-potentialitydoctrine, the matter is in a sense the form:

… clearly, matter also is substance (ou)si/a kai\h( u(/lh); for in all the opposite changes that occurthere is something which underlies the changes, e.g.in respect of place …, in respect of increase …, inrespect of alteration …, and similarly in respect ofsubstance (kat’ ou)si/an) there is something that isnow being generated and again being destroyed, and nowunderlies the process as a ‘this’ and again underlies

142 Cf. Η 6, 1045b 8-16. The reference is not only to the Platonicfriends of the ideas but also to sophists such as Lycophron, afollower of Gorgias.

143 Cf. Ζ 10, 1036a 17ff, Ζ 11, 1037a 5-7.


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it as the privation of positive character(u(pokei/menon w(j kata\ ste/rhsin, H 1, 1042a 32-b4).

In particular, matter is ousia in the sense of the lack(steresis) of form, form waiting to be actualized. Matter ispotentially what the form is actually, i.e. it is apotentiality for receiving the form or for having the formelicited from it (through the action of some efficientcause, and ultimately through the presence of the ultimatefinal cause, the Prime Mover).

So it might be concluded that there is no chorismosafter all, or if there is a chorismos on the epistemic side,it is bridged or neutralized by an ontological claimconcerning the identity of (proximate) matter and form.Scientific knowledge of the indwelling form, while it cannotclaim to be knowledge also of the underlying thing and thehyletic substratum, can at least be sure that the essenceitself is intrinsically connected to or in some sense eventhe same as the underlying thing. The question is only, howsure can one be of this? Now it is clearly the case thatessentialism requires exactly this, viz. that the essencerepresent the core reality of something.144 In this respect,the essence both is and is not the thing of which it is theessence. It summarizes the ‘reality’ or true nature (ousia)of the thing, but it also sacrifices what does not belong tothis core. Aristotle seems to be very much aware of thisdual requirement. And yet he believes that it can besatisfied by combining two different meanings ofessentialism. His two-tier anti-separatist strategy leadshim to an identification of (proximate) matter and formthrough the potentiality-actuality doctrine. Havingestablished this identity, the epistemic chorismos betweenessence and matter suddenly becomes a moot issue – even if

144 For a similar view of Aristotelian essence see Charlotte Witt (1989)175-9. For an excellent critical discussion of the majorinterpretations of this issue and its corollaries see Holmer Steinfath(1991) chapter IV „Das ei)=doj als individuelle Form“, 205-317.


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there is no scientific knowledge of the material substratum(matter as such being unknowable145), we may rest assuredthat the essence is intrinsically connected to theunderlying thing. In other words, against the separation ofForms from things it can now be maintained that there exists(a) an immediate epistemic identity of intelligible essenceand primary substance and (b) an ontological identity ofprimary substance and proximate matter. Knowledge of formsis after all knowledge of being, viz. of primary substancesand indirectly of sensible substances, not just knowledge ofideas disconnected from things. The epistemic discontinuitybetween essence/Form and sensible reality which persists isnow acceptable because it is compensated for by theontological identity of proximate matter and form. Due toits dual role as knowable essence and as formal cause oractuality of the underlying thing the form (eidos) reconnectsthe Platonic heaven with the natural world.

Before we attempt a critical evaluation of Aristotle’santi-separatist strategy, it is important to address theissue of universal vs. individual essences and the problemof knowability connected with it, since this issue has adirect bearing on our discussion. Aristotle famously raisesthe point himself in Zeta 13. The idea of essence as theactuality of an underlying substratum seems to generate apotential aporia that threatens the viability of the entireconception of substance as essence. If the essence is not auniversal, then, it seems it cannot be known either since,as Aristotle states elsewhere, knowledge is of theuniversal.146 Now it should be clear that the essence quaformal cause or actuality of the underlying thing cannot butbe an individual essence because it organizes matter into a‘this’ and as such must also be a ‘this’ – or at leastbecome a ‘this’ in the process. Essence as form andactuality of a body individuates that body. Furthermore,anything that is an actuality must for that very reason also

145 Cf. Ζ 10, 1036a 8.146 De an. II 5, 417b 22-3; Metaph. Μ 10, 1087a 11 (see below).


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be an individual, since what is actual is real and what isreal exists and must therefore be individuated.147 At thesame time, however, whatever individuates something so thatit becomes a ‘this’ also makes it into a ‘this such’, i.e.an individual of a certain kind. In the case of Socrates, itis Socrates’ soul that individuates Socrates, the person,and also makes him a living being of the rational kind,because the kind of soul individuating Socrates is a rationalsoul. Hence there is no knowability problem here unless wewant to say that individuals cannot be known which in atleast one sense of ‘know’ is false. We can, that is to say,know Socrates in the sense of direct knowledge orfamiliarity with the individual Socrates through sense-perception as well as knowing indirectly the type ofindividual he instantiates, viz. man or human being, throughthought or ‘induction’. It is in this sense that Aristotleclaims in Posterior Analytics II 19 that we (sensibly) perceivethe particular while our (intelligent) perception is at thesame time of the universal – we perceive Callias, thisindividual, and him as a man, simultaneously.148 In a similarway we may indirectly perceive Socrates’ soul, mind, orpersonality while at the same time understanding that hissoul is of the rational, not the vegetative or appetitivetype. A rational soul is a kind of soul, and it can beinvestigated in its universal aspects notwithstanding thefact that qua actuality of some body it must be anindividual essence. Socrates’ soul is an individual soul andas such cannot be scientifically known or defined. But it

147 And this is precisely why the question of the separate existence ofessences becomes such a crucial issue for Aristotle – if they areindeed individuals, then they ought to be capable of existingseparately. The distant repercussions of the principle of theindividuation of the real are still found in Leibniz’ view thatuniversals are a fuzzy way of representing the real which is alwaysindividuated: see Leibniz’ April 30, 1687 letter to Arnauld: “… Iconsider as an axiom this identical proposition, which receives twomeanings only through a change in accent; namely, that what is nottruly a being is not truly a being”, G.W. Leibniz (1902) 191.

148 See An. post. II 19, 100a 15-b 1. It is possible to link this passage tothat on incidental perception at De an. II 6, 418a 20-3.


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instantiates a certain type of soul called rational soul.Hence we can know Socrates’ soul in so far as it exhibitsthe features of a rational or human soul. However, we canknow it only indirectly or ‘incidentally’ in this way, as auniversal that is co-perceived while what is actuallyperceived are the expressions of features that we interpretas being expressions of a rational soul.149 Presumably, inthis indirect way we can also know Socrates’ soul, mind, orpersonality through a cluster of traits, expressions, andmanifestations that convey the peculiar coloring that theuniversal called rational soul takes on in Socrates.

However, it should also be clear that such indirect,inferential or inductive knowledge of the soul in generaland of an individual’s soul in particular is not good enoughto serve as the basis for scientific knowledge of thesoul.150 If the universals that are known in this way are tohave a fundamentum in re rather than being merely nominalentities, they must themselves stand for realities. Thoserealities would be essences. Essences, therefore, are thosereal objects that back up our use of universals and preventthe latter from being ‘separate’ entities. Essences are(some of) the things universals are about. When we studySocrates’ soul through its manifestations, we posit anessence whose existence we infer. Obviously, such positingdoes not yet assure us of the reality of the thing posited.To be certain about the latter, we would need to possessdirect knowledge of essences. As Aristotelians, only suchdirect knowledge of essences can prevent our beingnominalists with regard to universals.

The legitimacy of positing essences as real entities inthe first place is thus crucially dependent on the questionwhether essences themselves can be known directly. Again,149 See De an. II 6, 418a 20-3. Again, as Aristotle explains at II 5, 417b22-4, the reason for this is that “actual perception is ofparticulars, while knowledge is of universals; and these [i.e. theuniversals] are somehow in the soul itself.”

150 This point is well put by C.H. Kahn (1981) 385-7.


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without being an object of direct knowledge, essence couldnot be known to exist as a reality in its own right ratherthan as a product of induction or inference. If Aristotlewants to base scientific knowledge on essences, he must showthat essences are cognitively available as substances, i.e.as substantial forms. Without the ability of being in touchwith essences in direct cognitive awareness our talk aboutessences as actualities would remain at the level ofhypothetical theorizing about unobservables. Aristotle hastwo responses to this problem. The first may be found inMetaphysics My 10 where he defends the possibility thatknowledge need not only be of universals. If this were thecase, we would fall into the same difficulties that thedoctrine of Platonic Forms generates, for we would have toassume that knowledge of the first principles would have tobe knowledge of universals. What is not substance would thenbe prior to substances and the principles themselves wouldnot be ‘substantial’, i.e. real. Consequently, if thepossibility of knowledge of first principles which are alsorealities is to be maintained, one must advocate theexistence of knowledge of substances. In a characteristicmove, Aristotle suggests that the actuality-potentialitydistinction can again save him from the Scylla of nominalismand the Charybdis of Platonic Forms. He duly notes theenormity of the challenge, however:

The doctrine that all knowledge is of the universaland hence that the principles of existing things mustalso be universal and not separate substances [for howon earth could separate substances participate inother substances?], presents the greatest difficultyof all that we have discussed; there is, however, asense in which this statement is true, although thereis another in which it is not true. Knowledge, likethe verb “to know”, has two senses, of which one ispotential and the other actual. The potentialitybeing, as matter, universal and indefinite, has auniversal and indefinite object; but the actuality isdefinite and has a definite object, because it isparticular and deals with the particular. It is only


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accidentally that sight sees universal colour, becausethe particular colour which it sees is colour … (1087a11-20, tr. Tredennick).151

While this passage cannot by itself corroborate the claimthat direct knowledge of essences is possible, it supportsour earlier proposal that knowledge of the universal is ofthe indirect, inferential kind, i.e. knowledge of what isindefinite and not directly perceived. By contrast, alldirect and definite knowledge must be of individuals. Or soit seems. The theory that direct knowledge of essences ispossible is advanced by Aristotle in Metaphysics Theta 10.According to this theory, essences are incomposites(asyntheta) that are either grasped (‘touched’) by intuitivenous or missed. They are, that is, not objects of judgmentabout which we might be mistaken, but objects of directnoetic awareness which does not admit of error, only ofignorance:

About the things … which are essences and exist inactuality, it is not possible to be in error, but onlyto think them or not to think them (h)\ noei=n h)\mh/). Inquiry about their ‘what’ takes the form ofasking whether they are of such-and-such a nature ornot (ei) toiau=ta/ e)stin h)\ mh/, 1051b 31-3).

And yet, it seems impossible that these essences shouldstrictly speaking be individuals. For then they would beindistinguishable form Platonic Forms. As individuals thatare actualities they would have to exist separately, i.e.independently of the act of thinking them. They would berealities existing not in things nor in thought alone, butin some independently existing noematic realm, in what Platometaphorically refers to as a hyperouranios topos. ThatAristotle will not in fact embrace such a consequence issuggested by the fact that the essence here under discussiondetermines what kind of form the indwelling form is supposed

151 I am grateful to John Cleary and Mary Louise Gill for bringing thispassage to my attention.


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to be. So we may rule out the inference that this essence isan individual in the sense of being fully individuated.Again, if this were so, it could not be the same essence inSocrates and Callias. Socrates and Callias

… are different in virtue of their matter (for that itdifferent), but the same in form (tau)to\ t%=ei)/dei); for their form is indivisible (a)/tomon ga\rto\ ei=)doj, Ζ 8, 1034a 7-8).

The essence we are dealing with and which in Zeta 8Aristotle calls atomon eidos is a particularized universal,i.e. an infima species.152 It is not an individuated essencebecause it is not exclusively the essence of this individualand no other. It is individual only in its noetic aspect,i.e. insofar as its actuality requires an act of thinking.But it is a particularized universal insofar as it is anoema, i.e. the content or object of a noetic act. Thisreading finds support in the passage from My 10 just quoted.There Aristotle draws a parallel between the object ofknowledge and the object of perception. However, instead ofimplying that the object of actual contemplation is anindividual, the passage suggests that this object is aparticularized universal or infima species, a particular hue ofcolor, rather than a singular instance (token) of a color.It seems that Aristotle cannot escape this conclusion, ifessences must be actualities without existing separately.For what distinguishes these forms from Plato’s eidetic152 The infima species is identical with the teleutaia diaphora, the specificdifference. According to Z 12, the infima species is a synthesis of genusand specific difference. Jonathan Lear similarly identifies the infimaspecies – or species-form – with the atomon eidos and argues that thespecies-form is a ‘this’ without, however, being a particular: see J.Lear (1988) 287, 289. But he also believes that the species-form is“ontologically independent” and not a universal. This will not work,since as being the same in Socrates and Callias the atomon eidos is auniversal and thus does not exist separately. The reason is that Leardoes not distinguish between indwelling and atomon eidos. He thinks thatthe species-form is that unique solution to all of Aristotle’sproblems which, in my terminology, can function both as epistemic andas ontological essence: see J. Lear (1988) 291.


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singularities is precisely the fact that the latter aresupposedly true individuals and as such also existindependently of being thought while not also existing inthings.

It should be noted, however, that I have now introduceda distinction between intelligible and indwelling form, orbetween atomon eidos and eidos enon. The indwelling form is notonly a particularized universal representing a certainnature (‘a rational soul’, i.e. some rational soul whichmight be any person’s rational soul), it is alsoindividuated. It is Socrates’s soul as opposed to Callias’s,whereas the intelligible form is supposed to be that sameform insofar as it is identical in both – the universalaspect of the individuated essence which has a separateexistence only in thought. That the indwelling form for itspart does not exist separately from the matter in which itis embodied, has already become clear.153

Assuming, then, that essences as particularizeduniversals or infimae species are indeed directly knowable asdefinite objects, another problem presents itself, and thisis the problem Aristotle raises in Zeta 13. Immediatecognitive awareness of particularized universals orparticular essences, it turns out, is not enough.154 For to153 Not only matter individuates according to Z 8, indwelling forms doso, too. M.L. Gill’s skepticism that either of them should be capableof explaining individuation stems in part from the fact that she, too,does not distinguish between atomon eidos and eidos enon: see M.L. Gill(1994), in particular 60-70.

154 I would like to emphaize that by ‘particular essence’ I mean auniversal, viz. the infima species. I am siding with Mary Louise Gill,therefore, who rejects the interpretation of the particular forms asindividuals, although I do not share her view that primary substancein Zeta generally should be reinterpreted as being synonymous withprimary substance in Categories: see M.L. Gill (2000) 135 and M.L. Gill(2001) 235-59. Nor can I agree with Daniel Graham’s conclusion in hisbrilliant study on Aristotle’s ‘two systems’ that the hylomorphicsubstantialism of the Metaphysics and the atomic substantialism of theCategories are two separate and incompatible doctrines (with atomicsubstantialism being the more coherent of the two): see D. Graham


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know something scientifically also means to be able to define it.Definition necessarily implies parts such as a genus and aspecific difference. If essence is an individual in thesense of an infima species, so the argument goes, then essenceis indivisible and incomposite – hence there seem to be noparts that could serve as parts of a definition.155

Aristotle’s answer to this aporia is not that this willindeed make substance (in the sense of essence) indefinable,but that there cannot be a definition of everything or,better, that “in a sense there can be, and in a sense therecannot”.156 With this, Aristotle concludes Zeta 13. But hehasn’t left his readers in the dark about how this issupposed to be interpreted. He has already given thenecessary hints in the passage that precedes thisconclusion.157 Nothing hinders a thing, he argues, to be oneand indivisible in actuality and yet to consist of partspotentially. In other words, particularized universals maybe compounds in potentiality and incomposites inactuality.158

(1987). I am skeptical that the perceived conundrum in Zeta will besorted out unless we accept a distinction between epistemic andontological essences along the lines here advocated.

155 The problem of the definability of the incomposite and that of thenon-universality of substance belong to the most discussed and highlycontroversial questions concerning Aristotle’s doctrine of ousia. For adetailed overview and discussion see Steinfath (1991) and C. Rapp(1996) 157-191.

156 For the entire argument see Ζ 13, 1039a 14-23. 157 Similarly F. Lewis (2000) 121-4. There is another school of thoughtthat sees the solution to Z 13’s worries addressed and solved by Z 15.For a thorough recent discussion of this pivotal chapter and thesecondary literature see M. Wedin (2000) 343-90.

158 Metaph. Ζ 12 proposes an explanation of the unity of a definitionalong these lines, but takes the Academic diahairetic formula (man asa two-footed animal) as an example which seems odd in the context of adiscussion of indwelling forms. A number of scholars have thereforeconcluded that Aristotle uses ‘two-footed animal’ only as a structuralformula and that in actual fact he redefines the existing dihaireticdefinition in terms of a matter-form unity: see E. Sonderegger (1993)333-9. On Z 12 see also H. Steinfath (1996) 229-251.


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This certainly leaves open a number of question.However, assuming that particular essences can be knowndirectly and that they can be defined we now need to ask howthis definable intelligible form relates to the substance ofwhich it is said to be the essence or to the indwellingform, the eidos enon. On this question depends the ultimatesuccess of Aristotle’s anti-separatist strategy. IfAristotle can show that the epistemically available form isthe same as the indwelling form, he has an argument forsaying that the intelligible forms in the soul are the verysame forms that structure reality.159 In other words,epistemic essences could be said to be the direct conceptualcounterparts of ontological essences. An isomorphism ofintelligible and indwelling forms would result. This wouldallow Aristotle to declare that he had finally resolved thePlatonic problem of how forms can be both principles ofintelligibility and of being. In a sense, he would also havesolved the Socratic problem of how what is universal can benot only “the one apart from the many” but at the same time“one and the same in all those things”, to use theformulation of Analytica posteriora II 19160, for the principles ofintelligibility and of being must be both universal in theirexplanatory function and real entities at the same time.161

159 Steinfath (1996) 248 briefly entertains the distinction heresuggested between indwelling form and species-form, but rejects it asunconvincing. I have been advocating a differentiation between anepistemological and an ontological perspective in Aristotle’s thoughton substance before: see K. Brinkmann (1996) 289-302. My distinctionbetween eidos enon and atomon eidos is, however, more recent: see K.Brinkmann (2003) 57-92. The latter is an earlier version of thiscurrent section which contains a number of revisions.

160 An. post. II 19, 100a 7-8. 161 Cf. the argument in Metaph. Μ 10. The elements or principles of things(which include their essential determinations) must be both real anduniversal, “for there is no logical conclusion that a given trianglehas its angles equal to two right angles unless every triangle has itsangles equal to two right angles, or that a given man is an animalunless every man is an animal” (1086b 34-6).


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There are doubts, however, that the intelligible andthe indwelling form can be known to be the same. That thisassumption is problematic and that their identity isanything but self-evident is suggested by severalconsiderations. First, there are two ways in which theindwelling form can be defined. For instance, we may definethe soul as the first actuality of a potentially livingbody.162 This definition tells us nothing about the soul perse except that it is an actuality unifying the underlyingsubstratum. But all forms are actualities of that which ispotentially present in the hyletic substratum, so nothingspecific is learnt about the soul through this definitionexcept that the soul is a form that supervenes only onorganic matter. This unfortunately also makes the definitioncircular. The soul is thereby defined as the life in aliving body, since an inanimate body is not the kind of bodythat could ever become animate. Moreover, the truth of thisdefinition is plausible but not certain. It may be the besthypothesis we can offer to explain the difference between aninanimate and an animate thing, but it remains a hypothesisnonetheless. If, then, we want to understand what kind ofsubstance the soul is we will have to define it as a form ofa certain kind, e.g. as a rational soul. In this definition,however, no reference will be made to the body. Is this,then, the same soul as the one that unifies the body?Presumably, but how are we to know? Again, the assumption isplausible but no more than that. For Aristotle, it wouldobviously be the same soul. But the identity of the soulthat can be known per se and the soul as first actuality of abody remains a hypothesis nonetheless. Finally, when we askhow the soul as essence is cognized we have to acknowledgethat it is not directly perceived. As long as we remain atthe level of perception, the soul is an unobservable entitywhose existence we infer. Where, then, do we become aware ofits existence as an essential form? According to Aristotle,the intelligible forms are objects of thought that are found

162 Cf. De an. II 1, 412a 27-8.


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among the sensible forms in the soul.163 They are intuited,that is to say, by the intellect in the immanence of thesoul on the basis of sensible forms or images. We cannotknow, therefore, whether or not they are intrinsicallyrelated to the body since their connection with the image ofthe body might be a matter of association rather than anessential connection. The passage we quoted earlier andwhich supports the suspicion that the connection betweenessence and the underlying substratum is at leastepistemically dubious may be quoted again:

… the form of man is always found in flesh and bonesand parts of this kind; are these then also parts ofthe form and the formula? No, they are matter; butbecause man is not found also in other matters we areunable to effect the severance (Metaph. Ζ 11, 1036b 3-7).

All this seems to confirm the reading we gave earlierof the conclusion Aristotle reaches in Z 11 that thedefinition of the indwelling form does not contain a referenceto the matter. If so, it cannot contain a reference to theproximate matter either. Clearly, the definition of theatomon eidos of Zeta 8 does not do so, since it is supposed tobe the same in two individuals who differ on account oftheir matter. In other words, while we have to say that itwould not make sense to suppose that the indwelling ‘form ofman’ could possibly exist without embodiment, the samecannot be said of this form taken as an epistemic essence oras ousia kata ton logon. That essence is ontologically theessence of a certain kind of body according to Zeta 10 isplausible but not a matter of scientific knowledge. Henceontological and epistemic essentialism do not coincide. Thismakes Aristotle’s isomorphism between the essence that is163 De an. III 8, 432a 3-6: “Since there is no actual thing which hasseparate existence, apart from, as it seems, magnitudes which areobjects of perception, the objects of thought are included among theforms which are objects of perception, both those that are spoken ofas in abstraction and those which are dispositions and affections ofobjects of perception.”


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the actuality of a certain body and this same essenceinsofar as it is knowable a bona fide assumption. It may be anecessary assumption, if we are to understand the world interms of intelligible forms, but it does not amount to thecertainty afforded by noetic intuition. The attempt toovercome the separation of Platonic Forms leaves us with anepistemic disconnect between the essential intelligiblestructures and their ontological correlates. The actuality-potentiality doctrine is a powerful Aristotelian tooldesigned to bridge this gap, but it lies outside the scopeof Aristotle’s epistemology. It allows Aristotle to save thephenomena, but it falls short of securing Pythagoreanidentity of thought and being.

To summarize. Aristotle’s essentialistic re-interpretation of Platonic Forms allows him to claim anisomorphism between indwelling and intelligible forms, i.e.a structural parallelism between thought and being, nous andto on. In theory, so to speak, isomorphism would be a perfectsolution to the challenge of making the mixture of being andnot-being that is our world intelligible and to explain itsprinciples and causes. But isomorphism has a securefoundation only when epistemic essentialism can be made tosupport and corroborate ontological essentialism thusaccounting for the objective validity of the noematicstructures grasped by the intellect. As it turns out,however, the identity of essence as definable and essence asunifying the hylomorphic compound remains problematic.Aristotle’s essentialist re-interpretation of Plato’s Formsthus fails to make a strong case for the inherence ofessence in the sensible thing, or of essential form inmatter. The position cannot therefore claim to be a decisivestep beyond Platonic Forms towards a scientific knowledge ofthe inherence of form in matter. The claim Aristotle is ableto defend is only the much weaker bona fide assumption of anisomorphism between intelligible form and the structure ofreality such that the world can itself be said to contain


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reason.164 One might raise the question whether anythingstronger than this can in the end be maintained. If it can,the problem of the objectivity of knowledge will presumablyneed to be fundamentally be re-evaluated. In what follows,we will see that Kant’s transcendental turn is the result ofprecisely such a fundamental re-evaluation. Kant willreplace Aristotle’s bona fide isomorphism with the project ofhaving concepts determine reality a priori.

Before we turn from Aristotle directly to Descartes andKant, I believe I owe the reader a word of explanation howsuch an enormous leap may be justified. The first thing toremember is that I am not here interested in the history ofphilosophy, or even the history of the problem ofobjectivity, per se. If that were the case, many morepositions prior to Kant, including those in Neo-Platonism,medieval philosophy, rationalism and empiricism, would haveto be considered. It would no doubt be intriguing to writethe history of philosophy entirely with a focus on theobjectivity problem, but quite obviously such an undertakingis not a project that fits easily into one book, if acertain level of attention to detail is to be maintained. Bycontrast, my focus here is on the most basic strategic movesby which philosophers in the history of philosophy haveattempted to close the objectivity gap, i.e. the inevitableontological and epistemological discontinuity between groundand grounded. As we shall see, Descartes exacerbates theobjectivity problem. His proposal completely underminesAristotle’s bona fide isomorphism. This situation does notfundamentally change with Spinoza or Leibniz.165 Their164 If there were no final cause, there would be no reason in things:ou)d’ a)\n ei)/h nou=j e)n toi=j ou=)sin (Metaph. α 2, 994b 14-5).

165 Take, for instance, Spinoza’s argument that an adequate idea in us isalso true, because it is simultaneously an idea in God’s mind andtherefore necessarily possesses an objective correlate (Ethics II P34).This together with the claim that “those things, which are common toall, and which are equally in a part and in the whole, cannot beconceived except adequately” (II P38) forms part of the foundation ofSpinoza’s theory of objective knowledge. The justification of bothclaims is problematic and in any case rests on bona fide assumptions


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efforts to ground objective knowledge in adequate ideas orinfinite analysis would be worth pursuing in their ownright, but they would not yield a fundamentally new positionon the question of objectivity. The empiricist approachfurther undermines claims of knowledge to objectivity.Famously, for Locke – not to mention Hume in this context –knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreementof our ideas among themselves, not of their agreement ordisagreement with some objective reality.166

It is only with Kant, then, that the attempt to resolvethe objectivity problem comes to be articulated at a levelnever before envisioned, viz. the level of transcendentalargumentation. Only in Kant do we find a compelling, somewould say: incontrovertible, argument to the effect that anisomorphism must obtain between specific objective features ofreality and specific structures of the mind for knowledge tobe possible at all, because otherwise a coherent experienceof the world would be impossible.167

about the nature of the divine intellect as does Leibniz’ idea of aninfinite analysis.

166 Cf. Locke, Essay IV 1, 2.167 Based on Aristotle’s defense of the principle of non-contradictionand excluded middle in Metaphysics IV it has been argued that Aristotle’smetaphysical realism is in fact a “transcendental realism”: see B.Hafemann (1998), in particular 34-45. It seems to me that this ideahas indeed merit. On the other hand, Aristotle’s justification ofobjective essentialism or metaphysical realism is for one thingelenctic, not transcendental. And for another, the argument that theremust be objective essences does not amount to a justification ofparticular categorial structures such as substance and accidents ormatter and form. The doctrine of the four causes, for instance, has notranscendental foundation, as far as I can see. Consequently, Hafemannintroduces a distinction between transcendental philosophy in generaland transcendental idealism in particular which allows him to stakeout a more modest transcendental position called transcendentalrealism that tries to account for “formal [!] concepts and judgments apriori that constitute conditions of possibility of thinking andknowledge” in general without prejudging the question of the“extension”, i.e. the possible application of such concepts andjudgments: see Hafemann (1998) 42. But objectivity as we here


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For a continuation of the argument up to Hegel andcontemporary interpretationism and constructivism see mybook:

Klaus Brinkmann, Idealism Without Limits. Hegel and the Problemof

Objectivity, Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/NewYork

(Springer) 2011

understand it is critically predicated on the idea of an objectivecorrelate of those a priori concepts and judgments. Still, Hafemann’sproposal is fascinating. It pursues the idea of transcendentalelements in the Ancients a step beyond K. Bärthlein’s earlier 1972study of the issue.


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Documents

Objectivity in Ancient Greek Philosophy