Notes on Book Theta.
A)Before turning to book theta it is worth remembering that the oddest part in Aristotle’s theory of matter and form is surely the weirdness of the relationship of the two, one to the other. Matter is not simply the stuff of form (in spite of Aristotle’s yowls of protest). It also in being that stuff is replete with forms of its own, albeit only potentially, forms that are then draw off in service of the current form into which it is drawn.
Moreover this containment of others in y o means simply. Matter can contain forms that it latter becomes directly, and intrinsically, as wood contains all forms it can be, or it can have them foistered upon it through the action of another (they can be its accidents, as it is used in another construction). Both of these elements then have accompanying series into which they are drawn, series that move either quickly of slowly into the universal (, the comforts of a house requires buildings. To build is to harness the hardness the of brick is of itself accidental to the house it builds: it hardness is however within clay, clay within fire( and so one moves suddenly and very quickly off into the universal).
And yet the picture is complicated by two other dimensions:
i)Some matter for instance the matter what is more explicit within the feminine is also botched form. To be overflowing with matter, to have too much matter is therefore to be in the wrong body, or to have a body a-wrong (or a little a-wrong. Aristotle needs this distinction the ensure that female and male remain the same species, the same form). The purest forms of matter will therefore warp the elements they are it. They create eddies of imperfection, which form naturally wants to suppress (and yet which to be form at all it of course needs). Matter is therefore internal, to form or better in can express or give a form in a botched state, just as surely as it can give it in a state which also contain over forms. Or again in this botched state it gives it in reference to a perfection which it is not. to being a form, which it cannot be . The forms however needs these botches as it actualizes.
ii)Just as interesting is the fact that the infinite of itself remains only given in the potential. It cannot be realized save in thought. The infinite is therefore infinitely passive, and yet…
B)First Note Series. Potentiality. Hat is Potentiality? This is a very real question for Aristotle, where potentiality is used for so many things. Here is it best to talk about what needs to be avoided.
i) Potentiality is clearly not simply tantamount to not being One is not the proverbial essence hanging around awaiting existence. – if it was then it would not have the connection it does to matter (wood is potentially a box).
ii)Nor though is the potential akin to the virtual. The virtual is different from that actual it enfolds. This difference being one of kind. Matter is clearly different to that which is contains, and yet it is somehow dependent upon that form.
Additionally r in the realizing of that form something rather curious happens. As the form itself is pulled out, it is pulled out as a partial confirmation of that matter. To be a wood is confirmed in the pulling out of the wooden. The box pulled out, was as it was box, and so contained in the mind of another (a man) already present awaiting in the wood. This awaiting was key to its being wood. It was not simply accidental to it (although there are of course other elements which might be accidental, ) Where the virtual will have a change between virtual in the hind of duration intoxicated minds and the actual world, the form-matter distinction insists on a dual series of division. There is the world in which mater contains elements, a containment which defines the essence of that matter. These elements can only be reached then by a matter presenting itself as that which already contained these elements. And yet this reaching, this giving of these elements is only possible when another element comes in, the mind of a man and fashions from its own conception of wooden what these elements are.
It is this last move that is of course so gloriously complex. Form is not simply imposed upon matter as something external, as there is no simply division between the mind of man and the matter of matter itself (which is the point of the infinite, which guarantees this connection). The mind thinking, of wood, and the wooden itself are then linked complexly- but not simplistically (as perception and its object). it is in this domain that the mind itself matter. The mind of he box maker will contain that box complexly. Of itself (the mind which makes boxes will contain its box making skills potentially at times0, but also is reference to a certain alternate series. The Box maker makes a box, or had the mind turned towards box making, because of other things, other things (money or perhaps a desire to see a certain kind of box) makes that mind think again of box making…. The essence, that is the box to be made depends upon the final cause of a mind. Ts final cause, this determination to make boxes is then contained directly but also in other causes. In the mind of man therefore there is a very direct containment (one far more direct then anything contained in wood), but also an accidental containing (why did the box maker’s mind turn to boxes).
Likewise in other species of matter, there are element which are accidental (in the same way that the mind might well accidentally turn to boxes). Hardness of a brick is only the accidental element of that brick. Something then it is, and is as it is of use to an utterly different form. It is taken up into another composing…
Aristotle is of course happy that all these ways of relating are really different to each other. Her he is being utterly consistent. If these elements were not so different then different forms of matter would themselves cease to be different (the mind would become synomous with matter, or matters way of doing thing). Real differences are therefore conveyed in the different ways one is actual and potential. And yet this difference needs not to be very greatly exaggerated. It is not the difference of god with creation (or if it is that demeans God which is not necessarily bad…) The potential-actual relation is indeed a real element in common, or better it is a way of relating to which is common within A way which implies of the one hand and element to be pulled out of another (call it matter), where it lies awaiting, and an external cause of that awaiting, but also at another level some fixing elsewhere (a final cause) which is capable of pulling or composing this potential.
It is then in the light of such a formula that the case by case is settled. In complex ways. To be asleep is the potential of being awake. It is different then from wakefulness, and yet as a wake I do not change. What was only implied in sleep becomes real, its state being to contain this reality, when not occupied. What awake be, the wakefulness of the mind itself (that which wake was only potential of) is of cause another matter. Or again to see and to keep ones eyes closed, involves a far closer union. Of close ones eye is to be sight in potential. Te eye remains appealing then o what it currently has eclipsed, to sight. When the eye is opened again that sight will spring into action (but this is not to confuse the lack of sight either with something positive, or the sate achieved. The seeing, the sight is not in the closed eye which relates to the thing of matter….
This is then a great handshake of a theory. The potential reaches out from matter into the mind, there that potential is taken up as what allows forms. The mind is then able to give itself final causes (which it creates according to it own rhythms of containment – the builder’s mind turns to building which was within…)
C)Note 2: the distinction of process and activity. An activity contains its own sense to be a past within what it is. The see is also to have seen. To ache is also to have ached. Te end of the process in then contained within what it is. The past of the having been is strictly speaking synomous with what imply as there. It therefore feeds back directly within itself. this then contrast with those actions which are firmly not of this kind. To learn and to have learnt are therefore separate things. One follow on the other as to walk and to have walked). the past in this case it therefore removed from that action which initiated it. These latter elements Aristotle calls processes.
What makes the process is therefore the fact that it cannot be thought to be complete in the current series. One completes it externally, in the looking back on what one was. In how one had walked a rainy mile or not. The Having Been of the process is therefore fundamentally different from the process itself. It imposes a real difference . Moreover (although Aristotle is not overtly explicit here) the example be gives for process are all bound up in an intention elsewhere, which they fulfil. One intends to build a think – that is ones mind thinks of what it is to build a thing, and so builds ( or excite the building parts f ones ‘mind’. Or again one desire health, and so acts to become healthy. The contras with activities is by means absolute. Aristotle gives examples of activities that are also clearly motivated elsewhere (becoming prosperous for starters) ,and yet it (clear that certain element in activities firmly include there own final cause within themselves. Sight and seeing being the example given again and again..
More interestingly however it is also clear that activities are linked to intuitions. Te mind is haring has heard, or seeing has seen. The definition of perception, that is ones relationship to another, in therefore caught up in having an element within is at once an idea and a perceiving, at once a present and a past. To perceive is therefore always also to place oneself in a past that is always increasing. The Nature of this placement is then all the more complex, as what was ‘simple’, I intuit something will as I have intuited it, be caught up in a nexus of other having been intuitions. On intuits, one is in a past, and yet… Each action is therefore simple and singular of itself, and yet as it of itself jumps also into the having been, involves complexities- which necessary open it into other having beens (I might also be waking, or …)
This move is no doubt utterly vital a sit is within these immediate present-having beens that really guarantee the nature of actual. Beyond any series or sequence of elements which were connected to in a past (as sequence of impression, or immediate having beens) lies the forces in which those elements were given (the real event which was at the same time as the past). That is this process id clearly reversible. To have a sequence of impression grounded in a having been, and given as interlinked one to the other, is therefore to find that one has been walking. What is more this walking will, as these thoughts where really composed in the past, were composed and that which in the present oscillated into the past, that which was in being real was in and of both, also be real. The potential chaos of perceptions will therefore turn around. One was walking all along.
The world of form is then the world of the real which exists is the ‘present; element of the intuition which in being present is also of the past. The past contains the potentials of perception. The world of the form is then utterly first. It is what intermeshed within the intuitions intersplicing them to form a matter. Or even better, the fact that sight is synomous with the potentials it creates the having been which it also is (the having seen), grounds these potentials within something else (walking say- these perceptions are the matter of walking). They impose cap upon infinite series. That is at the point of intuition an infinite series of potential and actual is in one case terminated, with the result that every thought is in being related to something real also related to my own sequence of final causes. I might see then an entire panoply of shifting perceptions, which I realize relate to the world of building. I am the builder building, and these perceptions are mine in seeing that building there. In building it. There reality is thereby tied to building. And yet in this tying, I am given as the builder (or the built for or something). I am therefore also defined in this actual cause, as that which finished the cause of. I gain thereby a right to think or locate the thought in he. It in the real world in which things are built, but also in that world, in being a flicker of it, I have the ability in also be – that is to have the right to final causes.
D)Final causes then erupt onto the in expecting world, I a way that simply includes we within creation. I an a human, and so the final cause of humanity is floating above the world, pulling its this way or that. These causes will predate matter, as they are general, and so as they were that to which an element of matter must conform. Moreover it is clear enough this generality is not something over and done with- or abstract or of the same kind as individuality – it is an active force, and yet one that has its very generality in part of its action. The final form Man therefore directly inhabits individual men, and yet does so I a way that also in inhabiting, in pulling these elements in to being its matter, it does so in a way that can necessarily inhabit many bodies. It is necessarily never contained in the one, and forms the ones it forms in the light of this non containment (in this it is of course truly genetic in scope).
Additionally it is in this process that the temporal distinctions above start to seriously matter. To learn science as a process, and therefore the learnt is different from the learnining. And yet the final cause – to know a science floats above the process. On is then in the learning, already occupying some to the space of the science: One is already located within its possibilities, and realizing the nature of that possible, even as one follows the logic of a process. The sequence of intuitions, are then contained within the final cause of learning, (where the learnt is different, as those intuits keep on coming), but also contained within a process where the having been and the present are one and the same (the learnt science), and is so even though what is learnt is always a part something general.
Effectively there is here then a three fold texturing to time: there are those activities (intuitions) which are also in the pas in the giving, and always and directly so. To intuit is therefore necessarily to have intuited. The past and the present are effectively synomous. There are those process which are never caught in what they are. Te final cause of learning is therefore never to be found in the learnt. Leaning imposes on the mind, that is on the domain of having been intuitions a process of perpetual changing and challenging . Science of the other hand located these challenges within a final cause, in which they are always a potential a part. Every element in that science is merely provisional, is merely its matter, of a generality which realizes itself across the whole, and yet (unlike learning) allows each element within it to be included in that whole.
To be hopelessly post Heidegger’s-Kantian (and not the real one) one might suppose that the first is the mechanics of the present, the second is the giving of the past and the third the future. That is the mind immediately apprehends a things, it grasps it and in grasping gives that element also in the past (recollection and apprehension are given together). In learning every intuition is taken of into a past. It is the past of a process which can never be realised. The learnt is endlessly put into the past, and firmly in its place by learning, which can be guaranteed to follow the lessons it has already taught. What lingers n in the past, is the hat which was found unworthy, and yet which in that very unworthiness embodies the learning. Or again the every fire of science lies in sweeping elements up into futures (which are necessarily never simply given). it power, its final form therefore lies in the fact that elements are not simply giveable…
It is clear by now than Aristotle’s characterization with rather richer than Kant-Heidegger axis. Each tense includes within it the untimely element, the final cause that is creating the difference in which that tense is necessarily compose. It includes then that which it never simply contained, and which in its reaction in the world drive one to suppose a difference in the mind.
Where of cause the final cause difference from modern difference is that it challenges – it drives open a difference, and yet in that driving it also contains. That is it drives the difference into a sequence, which is unique itself, and locked within a process. And yet even here one needs so much caution, before one rushes into thinking one knows where Aristotle’s mistake is (if there is one at all). One must not assume that the challenge, of containment here s one and the same, it is not.
E)Note four on Series: Aristotle is of course fond of series. These series have though a somewhat peculiar order. They are not linear. That is A then B the c. what stops them being so is the existence of final cause as a real and actual entity. Is this the final cause of house (in man) or of children (in human desire or a wooden box) . Final causes mark therefore always the point one element of he world is forced to be as matter for another element. Intuitions are given over to the walking, or knowledge to the learning. Final causes reach across the mind courtesy of there generality, and force a difference to be – a difference which is then contained. And yet as the method or even better the place these final causes reach into are never simply the same, there is nothing to make these differences univocal (indeed as argued above Aristotle goes out of his way to rule this move out). As things are actual they are not at all given in the same manner or form. This is not to say where is never an accord. The potentials of learning and the potentials of science are bound up to the actuals in the same manner 9and are matter to a form is the same manner). The process of addressing the world in then one and the same. And yet the difference that process deals within and therefore the matter it creates) are different. that is it is not difference which is univocal and so not time) but rather the way one is composed in making that difference in a world. It is one placement that speaks of actual and potentials. That is of an eruption of difference which it itself a container for what was there (and already being different in its own way).
Everything is the located within a series. That is it is located within the mechanics of final causes reaching into creation., and yet what is doing the reaching, and therefore the matter it needs and it composes are never one and the same.
Nor is there even univocallity in a single series (this the point of accidental cause), the sequence fire-earth-brick-house-architect. Contains clear accident in the hardness of the brick, which allowed it to be taken up into another sequence. Whose motivation driven as they are by human the builder are quite different. It becomes a part of a building (and so in a design, draw into a living space, and so finished, a ruin, a reused element a piece of archaeology – and all because of an accident) . But even within the human elements different differences are clear. I build a house, and you use it, and the two are only partially related (indeed in my motive is money not craft, or it is my own craft for itself, the two might only be accidentally related). Difference erupt across series, and so
place each other in difference sense, different sense of tense.
As ever the game in all his is never to allow oneself to simply know what Aristotle says. He is better than that. He erupts even across the most plodding (or bombastic) of translations, to pull a text into different thoughts – thoughts which are not nuanced in standard reading to him. The games of essence tense and temporal exposition, where Aristotle’s long before they were Spinoza’s (no coincidence there then!)