The Two lines of De amina
It is indeed only in two lines: but what a pair! Aristotle is discussing how it is that sensations produce an idea of an external object that is both white and sweet, while whiteness and sweetness are drawn of into their own realms – and related to their own forms. This is not the problem of the common sensation movement. This will have no such problem as to grasp the moving object is to grasp it straddling sensations. Movement therefore, and with it common sensations are that which is enriched in difference- in being in different sensation (a point to come back to, as it is a matter for imagination). The problem then is how one comes to understand sweetness and white as being in the same thing. What is it in the thing, or better in sensation, that allows one to say sugar is sweet (or deadly or…). Aristotle’s answer in a sense is jus what you would expect it to be. It is because they are both given at the same indivisible now, that their indivisibility is known. This be contrasts with the reality of sweetness and bitter. This has a reality of its own, and yet this reality is arranged across different now (one cannot be sweet and bitter). It is therefore different to the being of the same now. Being in the indivisible (and very rich) moment of the now.
Without the now then all arbitrary, all accidental links between sensations would be impossible.
Now once again the complexity here needs to be appreciated. One needs to understand what that now is, and what it is not.
Aristotle’s very famously argued that he sensations of perception owe everything they are to form. A sensation is the therefore like the imprint of wax, a form of the mind. It is then known in sight, in the form of colour, and known as such be seeing in the awareness of that being colour. The awareness and the form are different. They are only united in the seeing. That is they are united in the activity. The use of activity of course matter. They are unite to the moment in intuition, the one so vigorously defined in physics, which allows seeing and having seen to be one and the same. Why one wants this alliance is now clear, The knowing of seeing, that is its awareness, is tat which in th activity is the same. It retains the acting, it retains across its own time, what that colour is (and does it according to its own series of potentials and actuals, which belong to it alone). It therefore grasps in the activity (and at a now), the sense of a thing, and the thing itself. As it does do, or perhaps within this unit alone, the sense of seeing and sight is given as at the same moment that thing is both seen and in the seeing. This union at the Now – is moreover the moment in which is included all other present (and yet accidental) images thought. To seen at the moment – to have a sight is therefore to also, in blending the sight back with a past with it is one and the same as, to also have in that past in that now all he other dimensions of sensations, such that one cannot separate the ones from the other.
Moreover in this giving – in the actualization something even order is also demanded for us to think. Sight and colour are different potentially. There realization is therefore never simply in the giving, in mind and eye the same. And yet in the now, and at the point of actualization they must be understood to be the same. The sense of this difference is perhaps clear here. They are different in that the seeing, will as it is actualized, also include the past (the seen), and in that including, or rather in the very moment that allows that inclusion also to be possible (that is in the now, which was so very difficult to build within the mind); will also be included.
Each seeing therefore will not bind the whole together, one does not have Kant therefore (or rather not quite yet – Kant is elsewhere in Aristotle). But rather one has a situation where the very point of point, the very point that also one to know one is seeing, is also the point in which that sight is given in present and past as one and the same, and the point that it is given is such a way to necessarily allow for other. The present, the ‘now ‘ is thereby a productive force. Additionally in this giving, at this moment of actualization (where colour and sight are the same), will be as of those stamps in wax.
Firstly there is the sensation and its matter (say the matter that produces colour, and the colour given). This paring, is then in the giving, in the pouring of those colours into a now’s mold one and the same as t giving of sight. One sees this form within sight. And yet the knowing that one has this shape, and it is bound up in the now (and therefore knows the thing in present and past as one and the same, include also in that knowing what else is in that now. This inclusion is clearly not simply one of the wax impression. If it were imply the wax impression, at the now, then it is clears enough the wax would not of itself be. Or Perhaps better, the from of the now, is a little different from the form of the sensation in that now. The sensations, as they are seeing (and not merely colurs) are united within th coulors, even though they are articulated by it different. they thereforeasre caught up, in giving what is theres to give. But then this same form (one is tempted to repeat the move to a one off union, and speculate that the Now includes seeing as seeing includes colour, in a greater now, which is at the same vein in the same form or nearly the same form). The No of itself then as it gives the form of seeing includes in that form, in that giving elements o other forms. They are all caught p in its form. The Now’ of sensation appear perhapos to be the matter to this now. And yet (as a parallel between sight and colour suggests) this is not simply the case. Seeing is itself rather an active inhabitant of the now (or rather it is as it in the intellect, which in understanding a things being, understands that being as necessarily being at once past and present.
It is then this jump into being which probably matters. The same move to intellect, understood and the faculty of forms, will allow the mind to articulate to the mind, as an active and real principle, what the nature of the split from present to past. That is this slip is made of the grounds that the past and present give the same being. the being is seeing of sight. That is I grasp as a sight what was otherwise merely a series of colours (and in ding so pull that seeing out of body excess – it becomes something of me). The Same act, then giving of being, is also articulated in the same now (and by the same products of the intellect) into a wider framework. That is as that being is given (as its schemata intermeshes times) – is present and past) will also into that intermeshing and that giving of being at the now include other dimensions other sensations. To allow a being to be, is therefore to allow it to include other sensation, and to do so as one says ok that is not merely a series of colour (or a snub nose) that is actually flesh/ I is flesh that I am seeing here (or Pale Cleon).
To allow something this own being as a being (the flesh of flesh – and not merely a sensation) allows it also to be not the one it is, and to allow it to defy tenses. .
Being therefore entires in the now, if it allows that to be as another to be (itself alone, which is the same is the past ass I have seen it in the present)., and which might well allow one t catch up in itself It allowed it does this by allow the other is own being understood as a form. Forms will therefore convey on that other both the right to have its own being, but also to include within that being (as it matter) other sensations. To have a form given within a faculty separate from the body (and so of the spirit) is to allow the world not so much ‘being’, as an element of otherhood. That is the element beyond the world in being which moves own elsewhere. The intellect is in me, and of the world, ad yet not shared by that world.
THe Now then comes in into its own as the point carefully positioned in time, that allows one to tear into a flux such that other elements, elements which are never given in perception are forced into the world. Or better in this forcing they are allowed themselves to be organizing a being. that is to be organizing sensations, to follow their form. Form is then almost the price one pays to be allowed to be other than sensation itself. the price one pays to be organizing within the minds of the perceiver.
This price is however intimately caught up with that other process of the how. In articulating the world as beings to oneself one can allow that world to also include oneself and onesown desires (which are organized in the flights of futures which the move to form and then final cause allows). One can therefore alow oneself one own ability to erupt as an acting thing in time, through allowing others also to b that. There is of course a clear difference The others are only allowed this final
form as they have a body. Oneself is allowed it as one uses ones body.
Te Now which is bread to be at once within the continua, and yet in it is rather a special way, is the pivot ground for this double giving of myself and other. I get to organise a world, or rather the final causes in me do) as long as I allow that other forms are also doing.
At which point another difference of me and others emerges. He others are in my, and are able to organize my final cuases as they have somekind of bodily organization. That is as they are a form. They need then the pay the price of unity to be for me at all. Myself? The price is paid by me in allowing the now to be, and in allowing others also necessarily to be at that now. In a sense then there is no extra tariff. I (contra kant) s not matter. What matters is not my fictious unity, but rather the nest of final causes in which an I finds itself acting.
At which point of course another question emerges. In what sense if then any conception of unity held within me? That is why given I and they pull apart in different ways do I have any idea of continuity. Here Aristotle surely has a really original answer. This is because beyond the world of the now there is still the world of flux and movement. As then my body moves, and in moving imaging it is at once caught up in a nest of the real world and the effects of that real world within the imagaination (this contrasts then with the transcedentl imagination…) tht is continua are not utterly useless to be and my own being. on the contrary I ned a level dimension of continua in which I and the world are ebound up in the same common principle, moving where it and me merge in the imaginating) to be at all (that is to have a mind).
One breeds then in the now a moment for truth to appear. A truth a lack of falsity and of active intellect in which the mind others past and present, forms and final cause are given. But then one also needs another element another dimension within the physical world, the system of flux itself, to then articulate or better is coordinate all the times beyond these nowings.
Elements or beings are therefore doubly in time (and thee is nothing to suggests that this being is of the same order).As they inhabit a world of others and truth they grasp in a now, which is wired to be utterly different to the world it grasps. I is then this now that allows one to articulate the relations of tense. And yet at the same time, or rather in the time beyond any one now, the time of continuity, the same move (the jump to a now) allow me to take within what I am a dimension of the flux or flow. The flows of the body become not experienced as flux, but rather imagination, across which I wander. The transcription is of course only allowed in the now (that is because atone point perception tore out of the system), and yet once allowed, allows continuity its on(it problematic) uses. One is doubly within temporality. One must breed a mind capable of using dimension of that temporality such that one can be in it – and yet in doing so one also needs to include others. And yet one can then only be as those others (and therefore only give a unity) as one allows error and continuity back it again.
There have bene many worse formula that that.