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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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XI. Deficiencies of the System of Aristotle The metaphysics of Aristotle has as its historical and logical precedent the system of Plato, whom Aristotle tries to surpass. The problem which troubled Plato most was the reconciliation of the "being" of Parmenides with the "becoming" of Heraclitus, and that Plato solved this problem with a metaphysical dualism (Ideas -- non-being) and interposed between these two points the work of Demiurge, which effect the becoming. For the world of Ideas Aristotle substitutes the concept of Pure Act; he replaces Platonic non-being, an irrational reality, with the concept of potentiality, or tendency toward new perfection (act). The great merit of Aristotle consists in this surpassing of Plato's system; this is his finest contribution to metaphysics. But metaphysical dualism is present in Aristotle no less than in Plato. Aristotle's Pure Act is completely separate from potency; Pure Act is not the creator of potency; it ignores the existence of potency and the tendency of potency toward act or perfection. This tendency of potency is directed toward Pure Act, since the latter is the efficient and final cause of the former. Yet Pure Act knows nothing of its own causality. What is the origin of this potency, which is no mere nothing, from the moment it possesses the potency to be something? This is the great question which remains unanswered in Aristotle because he did not have a concept of creation in which potency and act arise from nothingness through the volitional act of Pure Act. It is useful to point out another deficiency in Aristotle regarding the concept of form, or entelechy, as he calls it. For Aristotle entelechy is the form immanent in matter, in which it develops itself according to its own nature. There is no doubt that the concept of entelechy -- as a principle which limits and determines the possibilities of matter -- is the most outstanding and original contribution which Aristotle gave to philosophy. However, the historian of philosophy has to note that it is exactly this fundamental Aristotelian concept that has caused one of the most profound crises of thought in regard to the human soul. According to Aristotle's famous definition the human soul is "the entelechy of a natural body having life potentially within it." (1) Now Aristotle himself acknowledges that the nature of the human soul is not such that the soul is limited to the organic operations of the vegetative and sensitive life; the soul also possesses understanding, which is an operation "unmixed" with matter and is "divine." Thus it would be expected that Aristotle, who gave the concept of a form acting in dependence on matter, would expound also the nature of a form independent of matter; in other words, Aristotle should have made clear what is the nature of the intellective soul in itself and in its relations with the human body. Unfortunately this was not done, and such a lack was to give origin to the question of the separated intellect. References: (1) On the Soul, II, i, 412a, 20.
The literary activity of Aristotle was a complexus of philosophy and of the sciences. The ages immediately following him placed greater stress on scientific development by given an empirical bent to the Peripatetic School. This was in keeping with the times. The first to direct the Lyceum after Aristotle was Theophrastus, who wrote a book on plants. Philosophically, Theophrastus' system did not have developments of significance. The Peripatetics can be considered as commentators on Aristotle, with the intent of giving development to this or that part of his system, but without departing from the ensemble of his metaphysics. Thus we record as commentators on Aristotle Alexander of Aphrodisias (second century A.D.), who interpreted the doctrine of the Stagirite in a naturalistic manner, denying the immortality of the soul and the finality of the world. This is an interpretation which was to pass into Arabian philosophy and beyond Greek thought. Aristotelianism was to have its greatest success and its ultimate development outside Greek thought, in Christian thinking. Thomistic Scholasticism drew from the depths of the Peripatetic system its logical theistic conclusions, which are the rational basis of Christianity.
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