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the middle included
REREADING ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
John Russon
THE MIDDLE
INCLUDED
Logos in Aristotle
Ömer Aygün
northwestern university press • evanston, illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
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Canım annemle babam Güzin ve Birol Aygün’e
contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Preface xiii
Introduction: e Question and the Method 3
Chapter 1: Being (Logos in the Categories) 23
1. Homonymy 23
2. Synonymy 30
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation 40
Chapter 2: Potentiality (Logos in On Interpretation) 43
1. e Inherence of Logos 43
2. Potentiality 51
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation 61
Chapter 3: Natural Motion (Logos in the Physics) 63
1. e Natural 63
2. e Organic 75
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation 86
Chapter 4: Animal Motion (Logos in On the Soul) 89
1. Sensation 90
2. Locomotion 101
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation 110
Chapter 5: Action (Logos in the Nicomachean Ethics) 113
1. Habit 114
2. Positive State 123
3. Character 130
4. Recapitulation and Reorientation 142
Chapter 6: Speech (Logos in the Politics) 145
1. Animal Communication 146
2. Human Speech: From “Letters” to “Words” 155
3. Human Speech: From “Words” to “Sentences” 168
4. Logoi: Definition, Account, and Law 178
Conclusion 189
1. Overview 189
2. e Human Condition: e Cycloptic and the Oedipal 194
3. Nous 208
Notes 211
Bibliography 249
General Index 261
Index Locorum 267
acknowledgments
I would like to thank the Department of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State
University, which provided me an educational and therefore philosophi-
cal environment between 2001 and 2005, the Fulbright Foundation which
granted me optimum work conditions for research in 2005– 6, and the Proj-
ects of Scientific Research at Galatasaray University which enabled me to
turn my dissertation into this book.
I am deeply grateful to Robert D. Metcalf and Eli Diamond for their
detailed notes and fair criticisms concerning the text in its manuscript form;
to the members of the committee of my dissertation on which this book
is based, Daniel Conway, Veronique Fóti, Christopher P. Long, and Mark
Munn, for their suggestions and encouragement after reading the earliest
version of this book; and also to Rémi Brague, Pierre Pellegrin, Jean- Louis
Labarrière, and Annick Jaulin for their insightful remarks during my presen-
tations of parts of it. I am also very much indebted to my friends, Katherine
Loewy, Eric Sanday, Hakan Yücefer, Sean D. Kirkland, David Bronstein,
Gregory Recco, William Harwood, Refik Güremen, Ali Çakır, and Michael
Schleeter, for their companionship and challenges.
I cannot express enough my indebtedness to John Russon who directed
my dissertation with immense philosophical motivation and genuine friend-
ship, and honored my work by including it in its present form in the series
“Rereading Ancient Philosophy” at Northwestern University Press. I am also
grateful to Maggie Grossman, Henry Lowell Carrigan, Anne E. Gendler,
and Nathan MacBrien at the Northwestern University Press for their help
during the editorial preparation of the book in its published form.
Finally, I am most indebted to my wife, Ayşenur Nuhoğlu, for the con-
stant support and diligent criticism she brought to these pages. Indeed, none
of the above is to be held responsible for any shortcomings in the following,
but the rest of it could not be written without them.
ix
abbreviations
Works by Aristotle (for complete bibliographic information, see pages
249–52)
APo. Posterior Analytics
APr. Prior Analytics
Cael. De Caelo, On the Heavens
Cat. Categories
DA De Anima, On the Soul
De sensu On Sense and Sensible Objects
EE Eudemian Ethics
GA Generation of Animals
GC On Generation and Corruption
HA History of Animals
MA On the Movement of Animals
Metaph. Metaphysics
Mete. Meteorology
NE Nicomachean Ethics
On Int. On Interpretation
PA Parts of Animals
Ph. Physics
Po. Poetics
Pol. Politics
Prob. Problems
Protrep. Protrepticus
Rh. Rhetoric
SE Sophistici Elenchi, Sophistical Refutations
Top. Topics
Secondary Works
DK Diels and Kranz, 1956
KRS Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, 1983
LSJ Liddell, Scott, and Jones, 1996
xi
preface
e project of this book originated from my fascination with quite a humble
natural phenomenon. I will explore this issue at length in chapter 6, but let
me briefly talk about it just so that the reader may have an idea about where
this book came from.
A scout honeybee sees flowers to exploit in a certain field. She returns to
the hive, and describes her firsthand experience of the location and quality of
the bounty to the other bees. Of course, these bees understand the message,
since they will fly off to the exact location and exploit the field. And indeed,
when they return to the hive, they too can convey their new firsthand experi-
ence to still others. But before they have this firsthand experience, they do
not or cannot relay to others what for them is not a firsthand experience.
Honeybees seem capable of understanding what is for them a non-
firsthand experience, but not of relaying it. ere are indeed animal species
that are capable of relaying non- firsthand experience, especially animals that
imitate. But while these species are capable of relaying this non- firsthand
experience, they seem to do so without understanding it.1
Is there an animal species that has the capacity for both understanding
and relaying non- firsthand experiences? Of course. We, humans, indulge in
this capacity. We understand non- firsthand experience as honeybees do, but
we can also relay it. We relay non- firsthand experience like, say, imitating
bird species do, but we do so while understanding that of which we never
had, do not have, or may never have, a firsthand experience. A sentence like
“I feel great today” is comparable to the message the scout honeybee con-
veyed to the other bees: I convey my firsthand experience to you who are
capable of understanding what, for you, is not a firsthand experience. But
when you say to others, “Ömer is feeling great today,” something different is
happening: like honeybees and unlike imitating birds, you are understanding
a non- firsthand experience, but, like those bird species and unlike honeybees,
you are also relaying that content to others. Since your audience may also
relay the same information to still others, this capacity boosts the speed with
which information is propagated. As there is no relay among honeybees, only
the scout honeybee can inform other bees. Hence, the rate of propagation
of that information will follow a linear growth. Among humans in everyday
life, however, since the receiver can in turn relay the message to still others
xiii
without having to undergo the experience firsthand, the propagation of
information can grow exponentially.
But this capacity is not only ubiquitous in our everyday exchanges. It also
sheds light on significant aspects of human experience. For it is this capacity
that enables me to communicate, not only that I feel great today, but also that
Socrates was executed in 399, that there are igneous rocks on the surface of
the moon, and that the form “circle” can be instantiated in an infinite number
of cases. I had understood these messages, as you just did, without ever need-
ing to have a firsthand experience of Socrates’s death, of the surface of the
moon, or, indeed, of the infinite instantiations of the form “circle.”
Actually, almost all science, all fiction, all history, all news media, all edu-
cation, all propaganda, all gossip, all utopian fiction, all sophistry as well as
all philosophy structurally require that the message relayed be such that its
content was not, is not, or even cannot be, experienced firsthand. Yet indeed,
when I speak, I may be expressing my firsthand experience, but I may also
be lying, I may be relaying something I heard from someone else who has
heard it who knows where. Further, you may further propagate this dubious
message without having to check its truthfulness. So I am exercising this
capacity not only when I say that Socrates was executed in 399, but also
when I say that Socrates was not executed in 399. Again, I am drawing on the
same capacity when I say, regardless of their actual or potential truth- value,
that Athenians will regret their execution of Socrates, or that his execution
was ordained by fate, that he will converse with great poets in the afterlife, or
that he will be resurrected. So, besides our everyday communications, it is the
major human institutions and traditions that require this capacity for both
understanding and relaying non- firsthand experience. And once the commu-
nicating parties possess this capacity, there is no preestablished control over
the truthfulness of the messages. is capacity pervades our experience. And
with it, truth, for us, becomes less a given than a task.
As I shall argue in chapters 5 and 6 of this book, when Aristotle famously
says that humans are the only animal species having logos, he is referring to
this capacity of understanding and relaying non- firsthand experience along
with firsthand experience. But while developing this claim, I noticed how
ubiquitous and polysemic the word logos was in the Aristotelian corpus. It
meant “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,” and “speech,” among other things. As I
found no survey of the meanings of logos in Aristotle either in his own texts
or in his posterity, I undertook the project myself and devised this book.
us, specifically, this book is about one of the most important words in all
philosophy and science, logos, as it was used by one of the greatest figures in
these fields: Aristotle. It is an argumentative survey of the four fundamental
xiv
meanings of this word, “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,” and “speech,” as they
appear in Aristotle’s logic, philosophy of nature, and ethics and politics.
On a more general level, however, I consider this book to be about ratio-
nality. From this point of view, chapters 1 and 2 deal with the inner structure
or requirements of rationality by means of an analysis of the sense of logos
as “standard” in Aristotle’s logical works. In chapters 3 and 4, I move on to
rationality in nature. ere I offer an analysis of natural motion, life forms,
organisms, animal perception and behavior, by turning to the sense of logos as
“ratio” in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. Finally, in chapters 5 and 6, I offer
an account of our rationality and use of language as humans, by elaborating,
in Aristotle’s ethics and politics, the last two fundamental senses of logos:
“reason,” and “speech.”
In short, this book is about the meanings of logos in Aristotle and the
relation between them, with a view to, and a claim about, the specificity of
human language.
xv
the middle included
INTRODUCTION
e Question and the Method
Logos is said in many ways. Yet the meanings of logos in Aristotle have not
been submitted to a thorough philosophical survey, either in the philoso-
pher’s work or in his posterity. Once we conduct this survey here in this
book, Aristotle’s traditional image as the father of formal logic, of classifica-
tory or taxonomic thinking, of the principles of the excluded middle and of
non- contradiction, will yield to a more accurate image of him as a thinker of
inclusion. For, I shall argue, such a survey reveals that all meanings of logos in
his works refer to a fundamental meaning, namely “relation,” “comprehensive-
ness,” or “inclusiveness.” More specifically, as suggested by the etymological
meaning of logos as “gathering,” “laying,” and “collecting,” this “relation” holds
its terms together in their difference instead of collapsing one to the other,
or keeping them in indifference.1 So logos involves different terms— typically
ones that appear incompatible, contrary, or contradictory in light of a sim-
ply exclusive, formal version of the principle of non- contradiction or of the
excluded middle. What logos does is to hold these terms together in a com-
prehensive way that was previously unnoticed or simply ruled out.
Let me offer some examples to illustrate this fundamental meaning of
logos as an inclusive relation. First, in its simplest form, logos means “ratio.”
Take the ratio 4 to 7. Logos here relates two numbers in such a way that it
neither collapses their difference as addition does (4 + 7), nor leaves them in
indifference as does the set {4, 7}.
Second, let us take an example from “physics.” In Fragment 51, Heraclitus
says: “ey do not understand how that which is disrupted has the same
logos as itself: a back- stretched harmony as in the bow and the lyre.”2 So two
contrary motions, such as an upward motion and a downward motion, can
be comprehended within a single stable framework as in a bow or the lyre.
If the cord is not to break off or stay loose, the upward and downward forces
must be exerted according to a logos, that is, within a certain range outside of
which the tension is dissolved. Once again, logos names the appropriate rela-
tion between the two opposite poles.
3
ird, an example from “psychology.” What is it like to feel the warmth
of a radiator? e sensation of warmth on my hand can be explained neither
as an activity of my hand, since it is distinct from heating, nor as a mere
passivity, since it is not reducible to being heated either. us, an account
of sensation must overcome the dilemma between activity and passivity, or
the dichotomy between subject and object, and admit both that I receive
the warmth but also that I am not simply becoming warm— we shall see in
chapter 4 that Aristotle’s word of this middle way is again logos. Feeling the
warmth of the radiator requires that I hold together and thereby distinguish
my hand and the radiator.
Fourth example: the desire to eat and the desire to lose weight may seem
incompatible. Yet a healthy diet and the very concept of health require a third
option between anorexia and gluttony, a way that is neither asceticism nor
indulgence, a previously unnoticed middle ground delineated by logos this
time in the sense of “reason.” Logos relates the seemingly contrary desires of
eating and of losing weight without yielding or suppressing any one at the
expense of the other.
Finally, let me illustrate logos in the uniquely human sense of “speech.”
My firsthand immediate experience of the world seems to be exclusively and
eminently mine— whether it be my feeling great today, the experience of see-
ing just this shade of blue, of feeling a toothache, or of listening to music.
ese experiences are private and unrepeatable, despite my facial expression,
my clenched fist, or my ecstatic smile. Nevertheless I can claim to express my
experience to somebody who is, by definition, not the one who had it. Beside
private experience, and not at the expense of private firsthand experience, we
also must have some access to non- firsthand experience given that we have
history, science, law, philosophy, and sophistry as part of our lives. Logos as
“speech” is precisely the human capacity for understanding and relaying first-
hand experiences not at the expense of experiences we never had, may never
have, or cannot ever have firsthand.
As to the overall structure of this book, it takes the hybrid form of what I
may call an argumentative survey. For, on the one hand, its six chapters survey
the various functions of logos by a cross- reading of central passages respec-
tively from Aristotle’s logic, physics, and ethics.3 On the other hand, the
book presents an overall argument about the fundamental meaning of logos
in Aristotle and also about its specifically human meaning as “speech.” So the
argumentative aspect of the book is well- suited to the reader who wishes to
read the book from cover to cover, while the surveying aspect accommodates
the reader preferring to pick out and read isolated chapters. To this end, each
part opens first with a road map for the overarching argument, but then
4
with a fresh introduction specifically designed for the topic of that chapter.
Similarly, each chapter closes with a recapitulation for that individual chap-
ter followed by a reorientation for the reader who wishes to move on to the
next one.
In this introduction, let me first present the main question of the book,
then offer a brief review of Aristotle’s method in order, then, to argue for our
own method in this book and give an outline of the overall argument.
e Question
ere is a story that a man and not a man
Saw and did not see a bird and not a bird
Perched on a branch and not a branch
And hit him and did not hit him with a rock and not a rock.4
is riddle illustrates two requirements for riddles in general: their terms
should be at once familiar to their listeners, and ambiguous enough to keep
them guessing. For a riddle is never an unknown out of nothing, but always
an unknown carved from out of the bulk of what is already known. Further,
this ignorance should be overcome neither by acquiring a hitherto unknown
piece of information, nor by making calculations, nor by multiplying blind
guesses in order to approximate the correct answer by trial and error. e
solution of a riddle requires that one look for that which was purposefully
designed to be overlooked, and recognize the twist at the heart of the rid-
dle. One must understand what the words “man,” “bird,” and “rock” mean.
But one must also notice the way in which these words were deliberately
designed in the riddle to have more than one straightforward meaning. Only
then can one properly solve the riddle: “A eunuch threw a bit of pumice to a
bat perched on a fennel plant, but missed.” All riddles are subtended by this
tension between familiarity and ambiguity.5
So is logos. is word is both extremely familiar in Ancient Greek and
highly ambiguous.6 In fact, the ten major senses listed in Liddell- Scott and
Jones’s Greek- English Lexicon range from mere “reckoning” all the way to
the “Word of God.”7 And this is without even speaking about the amaz-
ing number and significance of its senses in the later Stoic, Gnostic, and
Christian traditions.8 Equally extensive and equivocal is Aristotle’s own use
of logos.9 Bonitz reduces this ambiguity to a fourfold distinction which I shall
roughly adopt without following its order: “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,” and
“speech.”10 Yet Aristotle never offers an analysis of this ambiguity. Actually,
besides the fact that Aristotle’s traditional corpus opens with a discussion
5
of the ambiguity of words, since he insistently demands the dialectician to
disambiguate such terms, and accordingly analyzes the ambiguity of fun-
damental philosophical terms, it is puzzling to see that he does not even
mention that logos is used in many ways.11
us, just like the terms of the riddle above, the word logos in the Aristote-
lian corpus is as familiar as it is ambiguous. Logos is not that which Aristotle
did not think of. Indeed, far from it. Logos is rather a word that Aristotle per-
sistently used without ever explaining or even thematizing it— a “Purloined
Letter,” a blind spot, in his thought as well as in his vast posterity, ancient12
and contemporary.13 is, then, is the question: What does logos mean in
Aristotle, and how are we to make sense of these meanings? It is this unex-
plored question emerging out of terms most familiar to readers of Aristotle
that we shall attempt to answer in this book.
Aristotle’s Method
Dialectic Explicit in Aristotle
I must touch upon the thorny subject of Aristotelian dialectic if only because
it will provide justification for my own procedure in this book.14 In what fol-
lows, I shall claim that Aristotle’s method in most of his extant works can
be best characterized as dialectical. In support of this claim, I shall turn, first,
to some of Aristotle’s explicit statements about dialectic and his own typical
procedure, and then to his implicit use of dialectical method in his logic, his
physics, and his ethics. Finally I shall claim that our method in this book
should also be dialectical.
For Aristotle, dialectic is a kind of syllogismos in the loose sense of “rea-
soning.” Syllogism in the strict sense is a logos in which “certain things
having been put, something else necessarily follows through them” (Top. I, 1,
100a25– 27; APr. I, 1, 24b19– 21). A dialectical syllogism, on the other hand,
is one that starts from endoxa, from widespread opinions, opinions accepted
by everyone or by the majority or by the wise (Top. I, 1, 100a30– b21). Unlike
syllogism in the strict sense, dialectic then begins, not by positing primary and
true things, but by assuming a receptive stance, by an “induction” (epagôgê) or
even a “perception” in the sense of a recognition of what is “out there” in the
form of opinions, utterances, and appearances.15 Yet dialectic begins by tak-
ing these for granted only in order to then return upon them with a critical
evaluation and an argumentative account.16 Starting out with an “induction,”
dialectic typically uses deductions in order to follow up or push through
the implications of those opinions or appearances into eventual impasses.17
For, as Aristotle says in resonance with Socratic elenchus, Plato’s aporetic
6
dialogues, and even the Cave Story, “it is not possible to resolve anything if
you do not see how you are bound” (Metaph. III, 1, 995a29).18 us dialectic
is characterized less by its starting point than by its commitment to critically
return there, to create and sustain opposition and tension. is function of
dialectic is precisely that which a syllogism in the strict sense cannot do, and
indeed is not intended to do.19
Hence, besides the gymnastic function of dialectic, Aristotle states two
other uses which are both critical:
[Dialectic] is useful for philosophical sciences because, if we are able
to question both [sides of a question], we shall more easily discern
truth and falsehood at each point.20 But further, [it is useful] in con-
nection with the first principles in each science, for it is impossible
to say something about them on the basis of the principles peculiar
to the science in question, since principles are prior to everything
else, which is why it is necessary to deal with them through the
widespread opinions on each point. is belongs characteristically or
most appropriately to dialectic: for, as it is investigative, it lies along
the principles of all methods. (Top. I, 2, 101a35– 101b4)21
Dialectic starts out with what is already “out there,” what is already known by
us, already familiar, obvious, clear, and distinct for us, in order then to reach a
point from which we can and must freely and critically evaluate it.22 In this
sense, dialectic is typically equipped with some sort of “principle of charity,”
and is in close affinity to democracy and freedom of thought and expres-
sion.23 In this light, Aristotelian dialectic appears to be an inheritance of
what Socrates says about dialectic and hypotheses in distinction from math-
ematics in Plato’s Republic:
[In dialectic, the soul] makes its way to a principle that is free from
hypotheses; starting out from hypothesis and without the images
used in the other part, by means of forms themselves it makes its
inquiry through them... e argument itself grasps [the highest
segment of the intelligible] with the power of dialectic, making
hypotheses not principles but hypotheses— that is, steppingstones
and springboards— in order to reach what is free from hypothesis
at the beginning of the whole. (VI, 510b5– 8, 511b3– 5)24
We shall shortly see affinities between Aristotelian method and two other
Socratic- Platonic methodological concepts: maieutics and elenchus.25
7
Aristotle’s explicit remarks on dialectic seem to resonate with his avowed
procedure at the opening of a great number of his central works: to proceed
from what is clear and known to us, toward what is clear and known simply or
by nature.26 is procedure is clearly closer to dialectic proper than to either
demonstration or gymnastic dialectic. For, first, neither demonstration nor
gymnastic dialectic begins with “what is clear to us”: demonstration begins
with what is true and primary, while gymnastic dialectic can begin anywhere.
Dialectic proper, however, begins with the endoxa, whether it be widespread
opinions or perceptions. Second, neither demonstration nor gymnastic dia-
lectic leads us toward “what is clear by nature”: for, demonstration is a way
down from the true and primary toward what is implied therein, while the
goal of gymnastic dialectic is victory, as rhetoric’s goal is persuasion. Dialec-
tic proper, on the other hand, being “inquisitive” (peirastikê),27 “investigative
(exetastikê),28 or “questioning” (erôtêtikê),29 is committed to truth.30 In a word,
gymnastic dialectic can start anywhere, but is not supposed to lead us to truth;
demonstration can only start with what is established as true and primary,
and thus cannot lead us to truth either.
To illustrate the claim that typical Aristotelian method proceeds dialec-
tically from what is known and already clear “to us” toward what is most
knowable and clearest “according to nature,”31 let us now turn to Aristotle’s
implicit use of this procedure in his logic, his physics, and his ethics.32
Dialectic Implicit in Aristotle’s Logic
Inasmuch as we know a language, an immense range of things is “clear to us.”
We are immersed in a first “domain of obviousness”: phonetics, vocabulary,
grammar, syntax, text forms, expressions, proverbs, jokes, riddles, songs, and
so on. A language is not only a tool for acquiring or exchanging informa-
tion, nor simply a set of rules to which we constantly and anxiously obey. It
is also such a seminal paradigm in our “outlook” on the world that it tends to
be, and must be, “overlooked.” Language speakers “get” a language to such a
degree that they necessarily “forget” that it was acquired in the first place and
is not exempt from examination. Our mother tongue is precisely developed
enough to become a possible object of questioning with regard to the catego-
ries, the distinctions and conflations it instills. And it is precisely as speakers
familiarized in a particular language that we may demand more rigor or jus-
tification than that language presently offers.
No wonder Aristotle often starts out in his works with an analysis of the
obvious meanings of common words, and ends up challenging the status
quo of his own language by introducing unnoticed distinctions or by can-
celing redundant ones.33 In fact, the very opening of the traditional corpus,
8
the beginning of the Categories, abruptly introduces the distinction between
homonymy and synonymy, suggesting that he takes for granted that homon-
ymy is possible as a mismatch between words and things34— an inescapable
ambiguity in words taken by themselves.35 It should not be far- fetched to
say that Aristotle’s logic addresses various levels of linguistic and mental
operations dialectically first by observation and then by problematization.36
at Aristotle’s starting point is our preliminary familiarity with our mother
tongue can also be expressed by the fact that, although he is arguably the first
to formalize linguistic structures in logic, he seems to be tempted neither by
the idea of an Adamic language, nor by the typically early modern project of
an artificially engineered “perfect language.”37 So, far from naively imposing
the categories of the Ancient Greek language onto things, far from being
tempted by the dream of a perfectly rational artificial or natural language,
Aristotle’s dialogue within language is oriented from what was already
clear to Ancient Greek speakers of his time, toward what is clear in itself or
“according to nature.”38
Aristotle’s logic then is dialectical at least in the sense that it can be seen
to be performing a dialogue of language with itself on various levels. One
could even argue that this dialogue takes an essentially Socratic form, in that
he openly follows up and critically pushes the claims inherent to native lan-
guage speakers including himself.39 In this sense, Aristotle’s logic is not only
a dialogue with and within language, but also a “maieutics” of language, in
that he assists language to “give birth” to the implicit significance with which
it is pregnant.40
Dialectic Implicit in Aristotle’s Physics
But there is at least a second “domain of obviousness.” For we know a lot
more than words, meanings, grammatical rules, and constructions: first of
all, our body, our health, our needs, and further the weather, day and night,
animals, plants, motions and changes. In life, there is an obvious and unprob-
lematic character to what all these are, how they work and especially how
and when they do not work. e wildest of fantasies and the most awesome
miracles precisely presuppose this practical familiarity we have with nature.
is familiarity, however, is once again preliminary and far from offering us,
and is not expected to offer us, say, an explicit definition of time, motion,
or void. Although much is apparent to us “out there” in nature, most of it is
barely sufficient to even let us ask what is going on “in there.”
Similarly, Aristotle’s method in his philosophy of nature is neither deduc-
tive nor simply inductive, but once again mostly dialectic.41 First, as is obvious
from any short glance at the History of Animals or the Generation of Animals,
9
Aristotle’s extensive work on nature obviously stands on a wealth of eager
investigation and direct exploration, on secondhand accounts of the experience
of hunters, physicians, fishermen, farmers, beekeepers, travelers, and indeed
also on the various accounts of nature by his contemporaries and predeces-
sors.42 But anyone who has read any part of the Physics, Parts of Animals, or
On Generation and Corruption would know equally well that his philosophy of
nature is not reducible to this minute and extensive work of recording and col-
lectorship. If Aristotle begins as a spectator or listener of natural phenomena,
he does so as one who wants to understand as much as to know, one fascinated
by the concrete plurality of natural phenomena, with all its deviations, excep-
tions, and monstrosities, as well as by the relations and regularities embedded
in nature. Whereas investigation and exploration constitute the first moment
of his philosophy of nature, they are in fact meant to provide material for com-
parison, interpretation, specification, and generalization, in order to subject
natural phenomena to an internal critique, to become informed by life forms,
to access the “logic” Aristotle claims his “interlocutor,” nature, to have.43
Just as Aristotle’s logic can be seen as a gradually expanding dialogue
of language with itself, reminiscent of Socratic maieutics, his philosophy
of nature can be considered as equally dialogical. For it indistinguishably
involves a patient and systematic listening to natural phenomena, followed
by a critical challenge and cross- examination quite in line with Socratic
elenchus.44
Dialectic Implicit in Aristotle’s Ethics
Finally, we also know much, and perhaps most, about ourselves and about
others, our desires, our thoughts, our goals, about our personal history and
about the communities we live in. All these are out there in the form of dis-
course, gestures, reactions, customs, conventions, and artifacts. is clarity is
what makes us able to navigate in everyday social life with a relative amount
of comfort in so far as we do so. If so, then the realm of human significations
and institutions may be said to constitute a third “domain of obviousness.”
And yet, indeed, as our acquaintance with human meanings and institu-
tions is the closest, strongest, and oldest kind of familiarity, it is also the
hardest and most crucial kind of knowledge to critically examine. Most often
this “knowledge” does not exempt us from, but rather obligates us to, much
reflection and long hesitation when it comes to bearing undeserved pain,
to making decisions for us and for others, to figuring out what is going on
“in there” as we listen to someone or even to ourselves, to discussing what
is meant by “freedom,” “democracy,” “terrorism,” “violence,” and “justice,” or
what Aristotle means by logos for that matter.
10
Along similar lines, Aristotle sketches a twofold program in the Nicoma-
chean Ethics: an extensive review of his predecessors’ opinions on political
constitutions, and then an evaluation of them on the basis of his collection of
constitutions of Greek city- states (X, 9, 1181b16ff.). To this extent at least,
his ethics and politics follow the same dialectical pattern as his logic and
physics: a gathering of a great amount of research beyond firsthand or even
secondhand experiences, and then a subsequent critical discussion of them
and with them.45 e Nicomachean Ethics goes as far as to claim that ethics
does not start from a clean slate, but requires preliminary experience (I, 3,
1094b28– 1095a8; II, 4, 1105b9– 18). Further, the Ethics can be seen to pro-
ceed dialectically, and to offer a view of individual human beings and of their
political life as itself dialogical all the way down. For, according to the Ethics,
the human soul is structured as an environment of “dialogue” between the
desiring part of the soul and the rational part, comparable to one’s listening
to “both one’s father and friends” (I, 13, 1102b29– 1103a4). In fact, the Poli-
tics further elaborates a dialogue that is no longer metaphorical, but literal,
between the two “interlocutors” just mentioned: one’s growth, education,
and decision- making, both within the familial environment, and within the
larger political community.46 us Aristotle’s ethical and political philoso-
phy can be seen as not only proceeding dialectically, but also as thematizing
“dialogue” as constitutive of the individual and social life of human beings.47
e Modality of Aristotle’s Dialectic
For these reasons, dialectic seems to characterize Aristotle’s typical method
quite well, especially when he investigates earthly phenomena and the
human world,48 by its procedure from what is “clear to us” toward what is
“clear according to nature,” that is, from the pre- given widespread opinions,
habits, and perceptions toward principles.49 But what do these starting points
look like, these opinions or perceptions that are “clear to us” before being
exposed to dialectical scrutiny? More importantly, what do these “principles”
look like? What form does Aristotle’s procession toward them take? Are we
not far off from the traditional view that for Aristotle knowledge is of uni-
versals and science is demonstrative and hence from his general “theory of
science” in the Analytics?50
ese questions call for two distinctions. e first one is between research
and exposition— a distinction perhaps effaced by a traditional reading of
the Posterior Analytics as a theory of scientific methodology.51 Indeed, some
of Aristotle’s works are expositions starting out with definitions and gradu-
ally exposing the results of earlier research:52 the Poetics, the Categories, the
Sophistical Refutations, the Prior Analytics, to a certain degree, some of the
11
Parva Naturalia, the Rhetoric, and On the Heavens.53 On the other hand, in
many of his central works, Aristotle explicitly presents the problems at hand,
and proceeds to search for answers through a critical discussion of his pre-
decessors’ views. Among such works are the Metaphysics,54 the Physics,55 the
Nicomachean Ethics,56 On the Soul, and the Posterior Analytics.57 So there are
some Aristotelian works where Aristotle exhibits his doctrine, and in these
works his procedure is not dialectical. Yet the other works, which are marked
less by exhibition than by research and inquiry, are dialectical.
Secondly, in order to grasp Aristotle’s procedure, one must recognize the
crucial cosmological distinction he makes between the supralunar realm,
marked by the perfect regularity and eternity of the heavenly bodies beyond
the Moon’s sphere, and the sublunar realm characterized by the relative irreg-
ularity and temporariness of earthly phenomena.58 e modality required by
the sublunar realm is irreducible to the apodictic principles of the supralunar
or mathematical, and its rigor falls between pure necessity and pure contin-
gency.59 is modality is expressed by Aristotle in the recurrent phrase hôs epi
to polu, often translated as “for the most part,” “usually,” “to a large extent,” or
“generally.”60 Despite appearances, this phrase is not strictly speaking a quan-
tifier. It is rather a modifier that governs conclusions and principles typically
concerning the sublunar realm.61
For instance, the proposition “For the most part, sheep have four legs” is,
strictly speaking, neither a universal nor an existential. It differs from the
existential proposition “At least one sheep has four legs” in that it presents
a level of generality that may be necessary for even recognizing “at least one
sheep” in the first place. It also differs from the universal proposition “All
sheep have four legs” in that its truth would not be refuted in a situation
where not all sheep would have four legs.62 Sheep having four legs is neither
apodictically necessary nor a mere eventuality on a par with them having
none or seventeen. If the only options of scientific method were pure deduc-
tion and pure induction, if the only logical modalities of propositions were
the universal and the existential, there would be no knowledge of the living
beings on earth. So sheep having four legs can be established neither through
an abstract, all- encompassing principle, nor through existential propositions
concerning particulars, but by means of an inquiry into what it is for the being
at hand to be— in this case, into the mode of sheep locomotion, its diet, its
environment, and so on. us here the adequate method of inquiry is neither
deduction nor induction alone, but dialectic, and its propositions must hold
true neither universally nor existentially, but “for the most part.”
Let us see another example of Aristotle’s use of this phrase, “for the most
part,” this time from his ethics. According to Aristotle, although there are
12
many incompatible opinions concerning the supreme human good, some-
thing is clear to all humans: the supreme human good is “happiness” (NE I,
4, 1095a14– 21).63 is is where the dialectical process begins, for this is what
is clear to us, what is obvious, the common opinion or common sense. But
what do the majority or the wise exactly mean by “human happiness”? And
do their views hold up?64 Aristotle scrutinizes the view that happiness basi-
cally means, say, honor, fame, or recognition. He does not object to this view;
he simply questions it in a clearly Socratic fashion: First, if one prioritizes
fame and recognition in life, who exactly would one want to be recognized
by? Why would one prefer to be recognized by some people rather than by
others? What is it about those people that makes their recognition worthy of
being identified with the supreme human good? Secondly, what would one
want to be famous or recognized for? For one’s looks, for one’s talent, for one’s
wealth? Aristotle simply observes that the answers to both of these questions
converge on the idea of “virtue”: people want recognition and honor, but
actually they pick and choose, for they want recognition precisely from people
who they believe to have some sort of excellence or distinction, and they
want recognition precisely for what they believe to be their own excellence or
distinction. In this way, Aristotle dialectically eliminates, conflates, disam-
biguates, or nuances a number of candidates (pleasure, honor, money, etc.),
gathers what is left from, and common to, his criticisms and distinctions,
and defines “human happiness”:65 “the actuality of the soul according to vir-
tue” (NE I, 7,1098a3– 5, 17– 19).66 us the opening dialectical discussion
of the Nicomachean Ethics leads to a principle.67 Because of the very subject
matter at hand, this principle is neither necessary in the way a geometrical
principle would be, nor is it on a par with any proposition, for instance, its
negation (NE I, 7, 1098a21– 1098b8). e logical modality of “for the most
part” thus secures a level of generality, characteristic of the sublunar region,
which allows the validity of the conclusion that human happiness requires
the virtuous work of one’s soul not at the expense of the fact that some virtu-
ous people are unhappy. If happiness is so “for the most part,” then one must
inquire further into the human soul, habits, and virtues, and the external con-
ditions of happiness— which is what Aristotle does in the rest of the Ethics
and indeed in the Politics.68
To sum up, then, as his explicit procedure from “what is known and
already clear to us” toward “what is most knowable and clearest according
to nature,” Aristotle’s dialectical method stands midway between induction
and deduction. e specific modality of his statements, “for the most part,”
occupies a middle ground between necessity and mere accidents or chance
(APo. I, 30, 87b19– 21). Hence Aristotle tries to distinguish incidental being
13
not only from necessary being, but also from that which happens “for the
most part.”69 is is why it is difficult to locate Aristotle’s discourse within
the dilemma of prescription and description, or within the divide between
“is” and “ought.” In each of these cases, there are two terms that we typically
take to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, in accordance with the
principles of non- contradiction and of the excluded middle, whereas Aristo-
tle’s method is precisely to seek a middle path that seemed ruled out.70
I already suggested that Aristotle’s method perpetuates the Platonic, and
especially Socratic, notions of dialectic, elenchus, and even maieutics.71 I may
even argue that Aristotle diversifies, extends, and even radicalizes Socratic
dialectic. For, besides “conversing with his own soul”72 and with others, as
Socrates does,73 Aristotle also believes, unlike Socrates, that “the countryside
and the trees” can teach him as much as “the people of the city,” his con-
temporaries or his predecessors.74 But then wouldn’t Aristotle be abusing,
violating, or overstretching the Socratic method, at least in his investigation
of nature? Here we should remember that, before Socrates “called philosophy
down from heaven, and placed it in cities, and introduced it even in homes,”75
there was a younger Socrates, an almost Milesian Socrates, who, according
to the Phaedo, was “wonderously eager for the kind of wisdom called the
investigation of nature” (96A), and who investigated the “cause of generation
and corruption” (95E)— a Socrates who, lacking “natural gift” (96C), had to
turn away from nature, for fear of being blinded by it, and to “have recourse
to logoi” as a “second sailing” (99D- E).76 If so, Aristotle, it would seem, took
up where young Socrates left off.77
Our Method
Our method in this book must also be dialectical for the same reasons. Read-
ing, understanding, and interpreting Aristotelian texts are not much different
than the above- mentioned human undertakings and reasonings, irreduc-
ible to both chance and necessity, and impracticable by either deduction or
induction alone. Our opting for a dialectical method itself can be substanti-
ated dialectically by taking up and internally criticizing two possible opposite
procedures: induction and deduction.78
e First Impasse: Inductive Method
So we are to begin a philosophical survey of the meanings of logos in Aris-
totle. Where are we to begin? ere is a corpus of writings in Ancient Greek
which is called “Aristotle’s work” with more or less rigor. is is apparent
to us not through reasoning, but already from our acquaintance with the
14
world and its history. So we may simply open up “his books,” note the occur-
rences of the word logos and make a generalization: “if logos means this here,
and that over there, and so on, then the meanings of logos in Aristotle are
such and such.” is inductive- statistical approach of matching and counting
seems to yield at least a clean- cut starting point by answering the question:
“Does it exist?”79
Induction [epagôgê] is the forward way from particulars to univer-
sals. For instance, if the skilled pilot is the best pilot and the skilled
charioteer the best charioteer, in general the skilled person too is
the best in each case. Induction is more convincing, clearer and
more easily knowable by perception, and is shared by many, whereas
syllogism is more cogent and more efficacious against objections.
(Top. I, 12, 105a13– 19)
So we may tentatively adopt this convincing, clear, and straightforward strat-
egy of looking for particulars and of inferring general rules.
But first, what exactly are we to look for? e word “logos,” of course. But
what about its declinations and compounds, and its root, the verb legein?
is method can provide us with more statistics concerning these “relatives”
of logos such as logismos, physiologos, dialegesthai, and so on. It may even map
out the words that are often coupled with logos, its “neighbors,” so to speak,
such as ergon, mythos, ekhein, onoma, or ousia. Still, the true weakness of the
inductive method becomes clear as soon as one tries to understand, interpret,
or translate even one occurrence of logos. For instance, take the famous line of
the Politics: “logon de monon anthrôpos ekhei tôn zôiôn,” translated by Rackham
as: “and man alone of the animals possesses speech” (Pol. I, 1, 1253a9– 10).
e inductive method can provide more information about the verb ekhein
which neighbors logos in this sentence. But even if in an ideal situation logos
turns out to be always followed by ekhein throughout the corpus, how does
this give us any insight into the meaning of that particular occurrence? To
answer this, we are rather led to the question of what ekhein means and thus
we fall into infinite regress.
From the viewpoint of a strictly statistical- inductive method, a single
occurrence of logos can mean anything, and this is indeed expectable at the
beginning; but it can equally mean anything however often it is used, how-
ever much it is explained by Aristotle. Statistical information defers the
task of understanding because it is a preparation for that task. It is a mate-
rial, in the sense in which, in dialectic, knowledge “draws its material” from
common opinion.80 It provides us namesakes (“homonyms”) and cognates
15
(“paronyms”), none of which guarantee the unity of meaning (“synonymy”). It
processes words so as to provide more words, but does not supply any insight
into the “logos of being” of what is being sought (Cat. I, 1a1– 12). While it
provides a potentially infinite list of the “relatives” and “neighbors” of logos,
it remains incapable of detecting its “friends,” that is, terms that are neither
etymologically related, nor textually adjacent, but conceptually connected to
it, such as meson, êthos, mixis, physis, or eidos. e statistical- inductive method
then turns out to be fundamentally inadequate for moving from premises to
any conclusion. Employing a rigorously statistical- inductive method for our
task cannot supply a satisfying answer to the question: what exactly are we
to look for?
Besides, where exactly are we to conduct our search for whatever it is
we are looking for? Of course we can always choose a certain edition or
manuscript— but not by using an inductive- statistical method. Editors and
philologists typically warn us that a lot of choices are already made in the pro-
cess of editing or translating an Aristotelian text.81 So the strictly statistical
method will have no resource for justifiably evaluating the potentially infinite
possible readings from which it must choose, and is fundamentally inade-
quate, not only for enabling us to draw any inference, but even for delimiting
the premises from which we wish to draw a conclusion in our task.
e Second Impasse: Deductive Method
If the statistical method pulverizes the question of what is to be sought,
and unjustifiably picks where to conduct the research, one may well think of
solving the first problem by simply consulting a reliable dictionary, and the
second by using the most authoritative or most recent edition of the Aristo-
telian corpus. Besides the wealth of available resources in our subject, anyone
more or less acquainted with philosophy has already some general ideas about
Aristotle’s thought from which one can also infer the meanings of logos in
Aristotle’s philosophy. us, we can conduct the research by thinking in the
following way: “Since we already know that Aristotle’s philosophy is such and
such, and since this authoritative translator or commentator understands logos
as that and that, therefore logos means such and such.”
But how exactly are we to qualify Aristotle’s philosophy in our first prem-
ise? What exactly is “clear to us” such that it may provide our much- needed
starting point? Besides their unwarranted character, our preconceptions are
no more consistent than dictionaries, editions, and translations we shall draw
upon in our second premise. Which preconception are we to start out with?
With Aristotle the empiricist or Aristotle the rationalist?82 With the natu-
ralist or the theologian? With the universalist or the particularist? With the
16
“young zealous Platonist” or with the “mature virulent critique of the Acad-
emy”? Even assuming that we have clear- cut answers to these questions,
these clear- cut answers or our adoption of the authoritative commentator or
most prestigious translations exempt us from appealing to Aristotle’s own
text at all. For instance, we will simply repeat that the specifically human
meaning of logos means “speech,” “reason” or “rationality.”83 Using a strictly
deductive method, we will then end up investigating not the meanings of
logos in Aristotle, but the meaning of, say, “reason” in the work of the transla-
tor or commentator. Hence this task also leads to infinite regress.84
Similar reservations apply to philosophical inferences made from sec-
ondary sources, from biographers and from biographical indications.85 For
instance, most significantly, Aristotle has been undoubtedly influenced by
Plato, and he does argue for and against him, but it is the Aristotelian corpus
itself that tells us why this is so, and not mere biographical incidents reported
from yet other, often much later, sources which may themselves be no less
subject to suspicion.86 So, does Aristotle’s leaving Athens after Plato’s death
mean that he turned or would turn away from Plato’s thought— assuming
that he did leave Athens at that time?87 Or does it rather mean that he would
cling on to Plato ever more fervently with a stronger sense of duty, extolling
him as “the man whom it is not lawful for bad men even to praise”?88 Either
way, this will not help us understand why Aristotle reacted the way he did.
Further, it seems far- fetched to explain Aristotle’s dynamic development by
appealing to such a static and unitary view of Plato’s philosophy, and to such a
rigid dilemma of either supporting or rejecting it. To say the least, we cannot
begin by reducing Plato’s philosophy to a “eory of Ideas,” and Aristotle’s
career to an adherence and a subsequent reaction to that doctrine.89 But, as
we already suggested, we may well end up drawing conclusions that may shed
light on Aristotle’s relation to Plato, concerning the way he radicalizes the
Platonic and/or Socratic undertaking of logos, but also concerning the way
he perpetuates the “dialectic road” toward the intelligible in the divided line
from Plato’s Republic, and thereby answers Socrates’s question: “And do you
call that man dialectical who grasps the logos of being of each thing?” (VII,
533d7– 534a8; 534b3– 4).90
Just as the strictly inductive method turned out to be unable to move away
from premises to any conclusion in the argumentative survey we are about
to conduct, a purely deductive method is bound to question- begging. Just
as a merely inductive method falls into infinite regress for lack of a critical
distance from the texts, the exclusive adoption of a purely deductive method
will do so by moving us further and further away from them. In the first case,
we are stuck with “what is clear to us” without any access to “what is clear
17
in Aristotle himself.”91 In the second case, we start out with what is sup-
posedly clear in Aristotle, with imported “principles,” but we are deprived
from resources for questioning, criticizing, evaluating, or justifying them, for
arriving at them. In short, while pure induction disables us from interpreting
anything in the Aristotelian texts, pure deduction relieves us of the task of
interpreting anything in the Aristotelian texts.92
Our Method
So we want a procedure that starts out with what is clear to us and that argues
its way to principles. If our starting point does not reflect the whole truth, as
it most probably and hopefully does not, then we want to be able to return
there with an evaluation of its shortcomings and overstatements. Returning
to where we were, our procedure must directly involve us at each stage, and
this return should take the form neither of petitio principii nor of tabula rasa,
but of self- criticism. is is why our method must be dialectical.
More concretely, what are we to do? First, we have occurrences of logos in
the Aristotelian corpus, along with dictionaries, indexes, commentaries, trans-
lations, and preconceptions of our own. Since our book is not on a specific
Aristotelian text, we shall go directly to the very first lines of the traditional
corpus, the distinction at the opening of the Categories between homonymy
and synonymy by the criterion of a common “logos of being.” is distinction
not only opens the traditional Aristotelian corpus, but it also opens up our
problem. For, in these opening lines, synonymy is distinguished from hom-
onymy by entailing a commonality of the “logos of being” of two beings in
addition to the commonality of their names. us, these opening lines abruptly
problematize the relation between beings and words by means of the concept
logos. ey designate our problem without thematizing it. It is this question of
the meaning of the phrase “logos of being” in the Categories that shall drive this
book as a whole by unfolding from logical and metaphysical questions into
Aristotle’s accounts of nature and human life in every following chapter.
Outline
Our attempt to solve the question of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy shall
cross six chapters: the first two on his logical works (Categories, On Interpre-
tation), the third and fourth on his work of philosophy of nature (Physics and
On the Soul), and the fifth and sixth on his ethical- political works (Nicoma-
chean Ethics and Politics).93
Let me give a more concrete outline of the book. In chapter 1, “Being,” we
will discuss the function of logos in Aristotle’s Categories. At the very inception
of the Categories, logos distinguishes homonymy and synonymy by providing
18
an answer to the question: “What is it for this being to be?” (Cat. 1, 1a2ff.).
rough a discussion of the questions emerging from its context, I will argue
that logos here must mean something like “standard.” For, without this stan-
dard, the commonality between an ox and a human being as “animals” will
be reduced to a relation between mere namesakes like a “spelling bee” and a
“honey bee.” us, logos in the sense of “standard” requires a relation between
a being and “what it is for it to be.” at a being has such a standard means
that it holds on at once to its own being and to its claim concerning what it
is for itself to be, without letting one yield, or remain indifferent, to the other.
Yet what would such a standard mean if it is not truly inherent to the being
in question, but arbitrarily imposed from without? How are we to warrant
that a standard is in fact inherent to the being at hand?
Chapter 2, “Potentiality,” deals with On Interpretation and elaborates
this question of the inherence of logos as standard. For a being to have an
inherent standard implies that it is neither indifferent nor identical to that
standard and that its meeting the standard is neither merely necessary nor
an eventuality on a par with an infinite number of others. So, to have a “logos
of being” means to hold one’s actual state and one’s inherent potentiality
together without letting one yield to the other (On Int. 9; 13). is actuality
of a potential as such is precisely Aristotle’s definition of “motion.” us, the
inherence of this standard shall be exhibited first in inherently motivated
motions, that is, in natural motions, and secondly in human action as emerg-
ing from a “potentiality with logos,” from a potentiality for two contrary
outcomes without one outplaying or remaining indifferent to the other (On
Int. 13, 23a1). In our research into the first major meaning of logos, namely
“standard,” we are thus led to the two following questions: How does natu-
ral motion instantiate the inherence of the “logos of being”? And how does
human action do so?
Chapter 3, “Natural Motion,” offers an answer to the first question. If
nature is an inherent source of motion and the “form according to logos” in
the Physics (II, 1, 193a30– 31), then natural beings shall exhibit logos as their
inherent standard by means of internally motivated motions, namely repro-
duction, nutrition, sensation, and locomotion (192b8– 16). While a natural
element, although capable of locomotion under compulsion, is indifferent
to its likes and inimical to others’ difference, living beings further instantiate
logos in reproducing and self- nourishing by others in a “ratio”: a reproducing
being holds contrary elements together by integrating them to its own “form
according to logos” in another body, while the self- nourishing being does so
in its own body (DA II, 4, 416a10– 18; On Breath 9, 485b18). is part of the
book thereby introduces the second major meaning of logos: ratio.
19
Chapter 4, “Animal Motion,” goes further into On the Soul. Unlike repro-
duction and nutrition, the “ratio” involved in sensation, which is the defining
feature of animal life, does not destroy other forms according to their own
logos. “Sensation is a logos” in that it holds together the state of the organ
and that of the object in their very difference instead of being indifferent to
or overtaking one another (DA III, 2, 426b7– 8; II, 12, 424a25– 28). As to
the second characteristic animal motion, namely locomotion, Aristotle also
analyzes it in the “logical” form of the immediate conclusion in the “prac-
tical syllogism”: unlike the univocal “universal” motion of elements, animal
locomotion happens when the animal holds both the universal premise
“spoken” by desire and the particular premise “spoken” in sensation (MA 7,
701a32– 33; DA III, 11, 434a17– 22).94 en, the “logos of being” in the Cat-
egories means the inherent standard of a being as exhibited here in Aristotle’s
philosophy of nature by the being’s natural motions. Each of these motions
involves a rationing or a proportioning: reproduction, nutrition, sensation,
and locomotion.
Chapter 5, “Action,” then turns to our second question: how does human
action, and not motion as such, instantiate the inherence of the “logos of
being”? is discussion leads us to yet another major sense of logos: “reason.”
Having two- sided potentialities, namely “potentialities with logos,” a human
being is able to hold two contradictory options open at once without let-
ting one yield to the other. is precisely complicates the immediacy of the
“practical syllogism”: the particular premise is no longer provided by imme-
diate sensation, but rather reelaborated by positive states (hexeis) (NE II, 5).
Specifically human potentialities do not exist at the expense of a contrary
eventual potentiality. us, on the one hand, intellectual virtues such as art,
science, and prudence, all positive states with logos, presuppose “potentiali-
ties with logos” (NE VI). Virtues of character, on the other hand, are positive
states according to logos, and they involve the desiring part of the human soul.
A courageous citizen is intellectually but also emotionally apt at deliberating
well concerning matters involving fear, that is, he keeps open the possibility
that a particular situation may call for retreat instead of attack for the action
to be courageous. Positive states according to logos hold contrary interpreta-
tions of particular sensibles in so far as the latter are objects of desire: “e
desiring part in general somehow partakes [in logos] insofar as it listens to
and can obey it in the sense in which we say ‘taking account [ekhein logon]
of both one’s father and one’s friends’ ” (NE I, 13, 1102b31– 1103a3).95 Just
as the human being is not a member of a family at the expense of being a
citizen, she is not bound by habituation at the exclusion of acquiring positive
states. e Politics takes this metaphor of an inner dialogue within one’s soul
20
quite literally, and claims that logos, this time finally as “speech,” establishes
both the household and the city (Pol. I, 1, 1253a8– 18).96
So in chapter 6, “Speech,” I shall develop an Aristotelian account of
“speech” as the fourth and last major meaning of logos. I shall argue that
speech is the human capacity to both understand and relay not only firsthand
experiences, but also experiences which are not and even cannot be made
firsthand.97 is meaning of logos shares the same structure as all the previous
ones: just like logos as “speech” breaks down the boundary between what one
has experienced and what one has not, human beings are able to understand
and relay firsthand experiences not at the expense of non- firsthand experiences.98
is meaning of logos founds both the household and the city, and provides a
necessary condition for historiography, myth, politics, science, sophistry, and
philosophy. It also made our inquiry since chapter 1 possible, since it enabled
us to ask the question of the “logos of being,” namely what it is to be for an ox,
that is, for a being whose experience we can never have firsthand.
Hence we shall have come full circle back to the question we started out
with in the context of the Categories. At the term of our lengthy pursuit of
answers to the question of what a being should be like if it is to have any-
thing like a logos of being, we shall also reach an answer to the question as
to what we should have been like all along if we even came up with such a
question, that is, the question concerning the logos of being of something we
are not. e question of the “logos of being” presents itself only to a “being
having logos.”
So the overall thesis of this book is the following:
All the senses of logos in Aristotle, “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,” and “speech,”
refer to the same fundamental meaning: they are all relations that do not let
their different terms yield or lay indifferent to one another. Propelled by the
principle of non- contradiction along with this relational structure of logos,
Aristotle’s philosophy presents itself as a Heraclitean attempt to “understand
how that which is disrupted has the same logos as itself: a back- stretched
harmony as in the bow and the lyre” (Fr. 51).99 For each of the various mean-
ings of logos names a comprehensive grasp of an unforeseen common ground
between seemingly disjunctive terms, an inclusive counterpart to unduly
formal versions of the principles of non- contradiction and of the excluded
middle. Logos refers to a mediation or a synthesis in all of its meanings
without exception, and never to anything simple, pure, or immediate. In
this sense, logos may be contrasted with nous as I shall do at the very end of
this book. Further, in its specifically human sense, logos as “speech” or even
“reason” is never associated with any animal nor with anything divine. It is
strictly and rigorously secular, mundane, full of wonder, but not mystical. is
21
may be fruitfully contrasted with the Stoic, Gnostic, and Christian uses of
the word.100 Finally, perhaps precisely because it refers to something humble,
prosaic, or at least lacking purity and divinity, this ambiguous but common
word has remained unthematized, hidden in plain sight, and riddle- like,
both in Aristotle and in his posterity.
Hence, the project of this book.
22
CHAPTER 1
Being
Logos in the Categories
e focus of this chapter is the meaning of logos in the Categories. More spe-
cifically, here I shall elaborate the expression “logos of being” which appears
at the very opening of the traditional Aristotelian corpus.1 Since this expres-
sion distinguishes synonymy from homonymy, I shall study “homonymy” in
section 1 below, and then “synonymy” in section 2, by drawing out an expe-
riential stance, a governing principle, and an example for each of the two. In
section 3, by the comparison of synonymy and homonymy, I shall basically
claim that logos here means “standard.” But, as I shall show in our discussion
of the Cartesian concept of “substance,” if logos is to distinguish synonymy
from homonymy, this “standard” must be inherent to the being at hand. us,
the question of this chapter extends into a discussion of On Interpretation,
the focal text of the next chapter of this book.
1. Homonymy
Words are conventional signs for things according to Aristotle.2 e Atlantic
Ocean has a name in a weaker sense than the sense in which we have a name
for it. At this level, language seems to be the realm of an inadequacy or dis-
tortion, but this inadequacy entails an unlimited indifference, disregard, and
freedom: the freedom of naming things, calling them as we wish, and articu-
lating those words, forming higher units even more loosely related to things
themselves. is freedom is indeed at the level of language or thought, indeed
it does not touch the world— and that is precisely its virtue. is freedom,
this infinite malleability of anything by means of language makes it possible
to consider the world as wide open to our conventions, our interpretations,
our projects, our retrospective distortions, our capricious manipulations and
arrangements. Hence the acquisition of language is the acquisition of an
immense power which may well provoke the fantasy of a world presented to
23
us instead of standing outside us, around us, and often against us: the fantasy
of an undetermined, infinitely determinable world.
And yet, for the most part, we do not live in a world that appears to be
waiting for us to be shaped all along, preparing treasures or traps for us. We
also live in a world we await and adapt to. e world is less a candidate for
answering our own demands than a question we are answerable to. But how,
if at all, can, and indeed does, the world divert us from this tendency to inter-
pret it in terms of our own control and egocentrism? What, if any, are the
powers of the world for dissuading us from the capricious significations we
may give it? ese are the questions in the background of this first chapter.
Aspect
What does logos mean in the Categories? Since we are investigating the func-
tions of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy, it may be reasonable to begin our
investigation with one of his logical works, the Categories, insofar as logic
already seems to promise us at least something relating to logos.3 Hence, in the
Categories, there is a clearly philosophical and yet cursory remark concerning
the priority of things themselves to logos (Cat. 12, 14b15– 20).4 Apart from
this, there is one use of logos in the Categories that seems to be philosophically
loaded and extensively employed in the text. is usage of logos appears in the
very first sentence of the Categories within the phrase “logos of being”:
ose whose names5 only are common, but whose logos of being
according to this name is different, are called homonyms, such as
“animal” for both the human being and the representation;6 for if
one supplies what is it for each of them to be animal, one will sup-
ply a particular logos for each. ose whose names are common and
whose logos of being according to this name7 are also common, are
called synonyms, such as “animal” for both the human being and
the ox; for each of these are addressed [prosagoreuetai] with the
common name “animal” and their logos of being is the same. For if
one supplies the logos of what it is for each to be animal, one will
supply the same logos. (Cat. 1, 1a1– 13)8
We may understandably call both a human being and her picture an “ani-
mal,” and to this extent they are homonyms. In Aristotle’s work, homonymy
can designate the relation between a representation and a thing represented
as in this example.9 But it may equally refer to a number of other relations:
the relation between leukon as color (“white”) and leukon as sound (“clear”)
(Top. I, 15, 106b6– 10); the relation between a particular circle and “circle said
24
simply” (Metaph. VII, 10, 1035b1– 2), between a hand of a living being and
a wooden hand or the hand of a corpse (PA I, 1, 641a1), between a part and
a whole (PA II, 1, 647b18), and even between a species and its genus (Top.
IV, 3, 123a27).10 Besides this wide range of relations, two random namesakes
in English such as a “latch” (a collarbone) and a “latch” (a kind of lock) are
no less homonyms (NE V, 1, 1129a29– 31).11 Further, given that the relation
between beings and words is not natural for Aristotle, we may call any two
beings by the same name and thus make them homonyms.12 Moreover, hom-
onyms need not share a name uttered, but simply a way of being “addressed.”
As his examples suggest, such as the hand of a statue being a hand in name
only, even one being can be “addressed” homonymously as long as it is
addressed regardless of what it is for it to be, as long as its logos of being is
disregarded.13 If language is conventional, we may designate two things with
any word, and a fortiori we may designate any one thing any way we want.
What then is there in a being that is apart from its logos of being, such that
it can be addressed homonymously? We encounter a conceptualization and
an example of this in section 2. I shall quote extensively for later reference:
Of beings some are said of some underlying thing but are not in an
underlying thing, for instance human being is said of some under-
lying human being, but is in no underlying thing. en some are in
an underlying thing but are not said of an underlying thing (by “in
an underlying thing” I am not saying that which is present in some-
thing as a part, but that for which it is impossible to be apart from
that in which it is), for instance grammar is in an underlying soul,
but is not said of any underlying thing, or the “a certain whiteness”
is in an underlying body (for all color is in a body), but is not said
of any underlying body. en some are both said of an underlying
thing and in an underlying thing, for instance knowledge is in the
underlying soul and is said of the underlying grammar. en some
are neither in an underlying thing nor said of an underlying thing,
for instance this human being or this horse. (Cat. 2, 1a20– b5)
Aristotle’s fourfold distinction here is made along two criteria: (1) being in
or not being in an underlying thing, and (2) being said of or not being said of
an underlying thing. “Being in an underlying thing” (en hypokeimenôi einai)
here is used, not in the sense that a man is in a house or my wallet is in my
pocket, but rather broadly in the sense that grammar is in a soul and all
whiteness is in a body. On the other hand, the second criterion of Aristo-
tle’s fourfold distinction here, “being said of some underlying thing” (kath’
25
hypokeimenou tinos legesthai), is used very narrowly in the sense that animal is
said of a human being and knowledge is said of grammar, but whiteness is not
said of a body. In order to address a being homonymously, in order to address
it while disregarding its logos of being, one then may address it merely with
respect to that which is in it— not, Aristotle emphasizes, as that which is
present in something as a part, but as that which cannot be apart from that
in which it is. us, to consider an ox not as an ox per se, but as meat, or as a
mascot, is to address it homonymously.14 Similarly, a book may be used as a
fan, a person as a corpse, a bottle as a weapon, a key as a saw, or perhaps most
simply as something right here (tode ti). e easiest and safest way to avoid
addressing a being in its logos of being is to address it in the most immediate
way possible, as “just this right now.” For this homonymous appearance, for
this appearance of that which is in an underlying being and yet is not consid-
ered in its logos of being, I shall use the term “aspect.”
Aspects of Somnolence
e wide range of homonymy is irreducible to a lexicological class of
namesakes; it rather implies a certain experiential stance, a corresponding
understanding of the relation between aspects and, most importantly, an
understanding of being. To get a more firm hold on homonymy and on what
is implied by its disregard for the “logos of being,” let us first elaborate it in its
experiential form.
e homonymous way of viewing things as aspects, however abstract, is
not foreign to routine everyday experience. Waiting for a bus, one is not really
thinking of the bus. One is rather thinking of “all sorts of things.” If inter-
rupted and interrogated about what exactly was on one’s mind, one may say:
“I was just thinking...” If insisted, one may say: “A yellow blur, a rattling,
then something said yesterday, then something a little bit far away...” All
this adding up to: “Nothing really.” e content of thought here is a sequence
of free- floating aspects as in daydreaming. A similar loose texture shows
itself in casual conversions where people engage in small talk, “just talking,”
where they talk about “this and that,” about “nothing really.” And indeed the
world is such that it can be treated in this way: to the daydreamer waiting for
a bus, it offers at all times a yellow blur, a rattling, things said yesterday, then
something a little bit far away, and so on; to people chatting, it always sup-
plies a “just this now” and then a “just that.” In everyday life, experience often
takes the form of a sequence of aspects that do not, and are not expected to,
add up to anything— aspects of “nothing really.”
To be exact, however, we must acknowledge that there is something fun-
damentally inaccurate about our enumerations of aspects: a yellow blur, a
26
rattling, and so on. For, first of all, they are made after the fact, from our sober
analytical viewpoint. Hence, once enumerated, each aspect comes to mean
more than it in fact did. ese enumerations fail to reflect the way in which
these aspects precisely do not count, the way in which their flow adds up to
“nothing really.” To be more precise, we may say that these aspects were less
aspects of nothing really than they were simply not aspects of. e experiential
form of these discreet homonymous aspects is comparable to somnolence.
An Exclusive Version of the Principle of Non- Contradiction
However inadequate our sober analytical perspective may be when it comes
to thematizing this somnolence, we may say in retrospect that these free-
floating aspects are detached from one another. Each aspect is just what it is,
no more or less. at is why it defies description. It either is or is not. Aspects
do not imply one another. ey are not of one another or of anything else.
ey are so isolated that they cannot explicitly oppose or reject one another
either. If there is anything regulating these disparate aspects, it is a broad
or formal version of the “principle of non- contradiction,” formulated as a
negated conjunction: ~ (p & ~p), and its complement, the “principle of the
excluded middle,” formulated as an exclusive disjunction: p v ~p. Since this
version of the principle of non- contradiction excludes an aspect from any-
thing other than itself, it may be called the exclusive version of the principle
of non- contradiction.15
It is indeed Aristotle himself who first formulated both the “principle of
the excluded middle” and the “principle of non- contradiction” in this exclu-
sive form as “most certain” and “most familiar” (On Int. 9; Metaph. III, 1,
996b26– 30; IV, 7, 1011b26– 27; 3, 1005b10, 13). is he did in explicit oppo-
sition to what Heraclitus supposedly says: “it is impossible for anyone to
suppose the same to be and not be, as some think Heraclitus says” (Metaph.
IV, 3, 1005b23– 25).16 A reformulation later in the same chapter of Metaphys-
ics IV underlines a temporal qualification: “it is clear that it is impossible
for the same to be and not be the same at the same time” (Metaph. IV, 3,
1005b30– 32).17 us, as each aspect is present to the exclusion of all others,
the only relation between aspects is a formal, temporal one: pure succession.
A yellow blur, then a rattling, then something said yesterday, and so on.
“Underlying ing”
But is there any constant underlying being in which these homonymous
aspects inhere temporarily in pure succession? If so, what is it? What might
this being be that keeps receiving aspects at different times, although never at
the same time?
27
According to chapter 5 of the Categories, there is indeed something of
which it is “most characteristic” to admit contraries. It is called ousia, which
we shall translate as “being”: “Most characteristic of being seems to be that,
while the same and numerically one, it admits contraries, in such a way that
one cannot show anything else which is not a being that, while numeri-
cally one, admits contraries” (4a10– 13).18 Admitting contraries without itself
becoming a contrary is what is most characteristic of being and unique to
it. So a being is somehow uniquely capable of being now white and later
not white while remaining the same being it is. A being cannot be and fail
to be at the same time any more than an aspect can, and a being cannot
present this aspect and another aspect at the same time either; but unlike
anything else, there is a being which can present this aspect at one time and
that aspect at another, without itself ceasing to be (2b5– 6). What is being,
as both detached from and implied by the somnolent flow of homonymous
aspects? Aristotle says: an “underlying thing.”
But how is this underlying thing not just another aspect? What is this
underlying thing which admits and subtends different qualities that are in
it at different times? One may think: that which remains constant after the
abstraction of aspects. If it is true that aspects are abstractions, then being
turns out to be the abstraction of those abstractions.
An Example
Descartes’s famous wax example may be of some assistance in clarifying this
conception of being. As it is well known, the “Second Meditation” engages in
such a systematic abstraction of sensuous aspects in order to prove that the
underlying thing is perceived by the mind alone and that the mind is there-
fore better known than the body.
Let us take, as an example of the thing [causa], this piece of wax. It
has been taken recently from the honeycomb; it has not yet lost all
the honey flavor. It retains some of the scent of the flowers from
which it was collected. Its color, shape, and size are manifest. It is
hard and cold; it is easy to touch. If you rap on it with your knuckle,
it will emit a sound. In short, everything is present in it that appears
needed to enable a body to be known as distinctly as possible. (AT,
VII, 30; AT IX, 23; emphasis is ours)
Descartes’s emphasis that the characteristics of all five senses “are present in”
(adsunt) the piece of wax translates literally the way Aristotle says that color
28
“is in” (en esti) an underlying being. Descartes thinks that, in order to prove
that the mind is better known than the body, the sensuous characteristics in
the piece of wax must turn out to be less known than the mind. So, in order
to demonstrate this, he burns the piece of wax and observes that the aspects
of hardness, whiteness, or coldness vanish, and are replaced by softness, dark-
ness, and heat. For, indeed, contraries cannot coexist. e crucial question is
whether anything remains throughout the experiment: “Does the wax still
remain? I must confess that it does; no one denies it; no one thinks other-
wise” (AT VII, 30; AT IX, 24). Descartes thus infers that there is something
unchanged although all sensuous characteristics have changed. He then asks:
“So what was there in the wax that was so distinctly grasped?” e answer is:
something extended, flexible, and mutable.
But isn’t this alleged “underlying thing” simply just another aspect like
others, albeit relatively more constant? No. For, as Descartes acutely empha-
sizes, unlike any actual aspect whatsoever, the underlying thing is neither
flexed nor unflexed, but flexible. e underlying thing is neither mutated nor
unmutated, but mutable. It is not even simply extended: “What is it to be
extended? Is this thing’s extension also unknown? For it becomes greater in
wax beginning to melt, greater in boiling wax, and greater still as the heat
is increased” (AT VII, 31; AT IX, 24). Properly speaking, then, that which
underlies the change of aspects is a thing minimally extended and further
extendable or retractable, flexible and mutable. As it is precisely not deter-
mined by any actual magnitude or shape, the underlying thing can neither
be seen, nor heard, nor smelled, since all sensation is of something actu-
ally exhibiting the sensuous characteristic it has; nor can it be an object of
imagination, since one can imagine only one of a finite number of actually
flexed and mutated things each time, whereas the underlying thing is infi-
nitely flexible, mutable, and, perhaps, extendable. us, Descartes claims, the
only possibility is that the underlying thing is inspected by the mind alone,
free from both sensation and imagination— and this essentially distinguishes
the “underlying thing” from any aspect whatsoever. e underlying thing can
be anything, but by itself it is pure indeterminacy, a “just this,” an x. Fur-
ther, according to Descartes’s argument, being purely extendable, flexible and
mutable, it reflects that which may change it. In other words, being purely
indeterminate, it simply reflects the mind’s power of determination, the
mind’s power of judgment asserting: this is such and such. It indeed reflects
the power of judgment regardless of the truth and falsity of the judgment: as
the object of a true or false judgment, the underlying thing attests the very
existence of the mental act of judgment. Descartes concludes that the mind
29
is clearly and distinctly known to itself as giving a judgment, regardless of
the correctness of this judgment. To return to our initial question, then: what
is this underlying thing admitting and subsisting different aspects that are in
it at different times? Descartes’s answer is the following: something infinitely
indeterminate.
In our task of understanding the logos of being as the differentia between
homonymy and synonymy, here we come to the end of our brief elaboration
of homonymy. Homonymy is a way of addressing beings in mere aspects; its
experiential form is a kind of somnolence where the relationship between
aspects is nothing more than pure succession, a relationship governed alone
by an exclusive version of the principle of non- contradiction; and finally, the
understanding of being implied in this stance is that of a purely indetermi-
nate substratum— Cartesian substantia.
2. Synonymy
Seen from a somnolent viewpoint, “being” in Aristotle is not different from
Cartesian substantia. is can be seen from Aristotle’s discussion with his
predecessors about the number of the “sources” in the first book of the Physics.
ere he starts by asserting that the source is either one or many (185a5):19
in a dialectical procedure, first he takes up the Parmenidean hypothesis that
the source is one (184b15ff.), criticizes it for implying the impossibility of
motion, change, and nature as such (184b27– 185a1),20 and gradually picks
from this hypothesis the term “underlying thing” (hypokeimenon) (185a32);21
then he takes up the hypothesis of the “Physicists” according to which the
sources are many, and specifies it by claiming that in one way or another all
take contraries to be sources (Ph. I, 4, 187a12; I, 5). In a word, Aristotle there
takes both the term “underlying thing” and the contraries from both sides
of the argument concerning the number of sources. What does Aristotle do
with this underlying thing and the contraries? He simply puts the underly-
ing thing beneath both contraries to ensure the transition from one to the
other.22 Aristotle even calls this underlying thing an “underlying nature”
(hypokeimenê physis) and his examples are akin to Descartes’s wax example:
e underlying nature is knowable through analogy: as bronze is
in relation to a statue, or as wood is in relation to a bed, or as the
formless is before taking on its form in relation to any of the other
things that have form, so is this [underlying nature] in relation to
a being [ousia] or to the “this” [to tode ti] or to that which is [to on].
(Ph. I, 7, 191a7– 12)
30
us, here at least Aristotle is clearly not at odds with the idea that transient
sensuous aspects inhere in something constant that is indifferent and irre-
ducible to them.23 Even if it is clearly true that Aristotle does not connect
this constant being with the “subjectivity” of the thinker as Descartes does,
both the idea and the Latin word subiectum translate, or at least are derived
from, Aristotelian hypokeimenon.
is being said, the concept of being implied in homonymy as indetermi-
nate stuff is Descartes’s conclusion, not in Aristotle’s. To be the underlying
being in which aspects inhere is only half of the account of “being” in Aris-
totle, and we must return to the first chapter of the Categories in order to see
what is left out: the logos of being.
Logos of Being
Homonyms have their names in common, not their logos of being. Synonyms,
however, have both in common,24 which is why they are key to our investiga-
tion of the first meaning of logos:
ose whose names are common, and whose logos of being accord-
ing to this name are also common, are called synonyms, such as
“animal” for both the human being and the ox; for each of these are
addressed with the common name “animal” and their logos of being
is the same. For if one supplies the logos of what it is for each to be
animal, one will supply the same logos. (Cat. 1, 1a6– 13)
Just as homonyms, synonyms too seem to at first come in pairs: a human
being and an ox, as “animal,” are synonymous, because what it is for them
to be animal is the same, their logos of being is the same, unlike that of
homonyms. My calling a cloud “a whale” is due to my association; but the
commonality between an ox and a human being as both “animals” is their
commonality, since they nourish themselves, they perceive, they move, they
desire. us a being can be addressed synonymously on its own as well: if
one can address an ox and a human being not as “white” or “powerful,” but as
“animal,” one already has in view the logos of being of each, and can address
them one by one on their own.
Note that the unlimited possibilities of homonymous designations are here
suddenly limited by a condition not emerging from language or thought, but
from the thing at hand: what it is for it to be. Simultaneously, the power of
naming the aspects that are in an underlying being is limited by that which
is said of it. According to Aristotle’s examples, the difference between hom-
onymy and synonymy is the difference between the way a representation of a
31
human being is an “animal” and the way a human being is an “animal.” us,
despite our analyses in the last section, being is not only that in which all
others are, but also that of which they are said: “All others are either said of
these underlying beings or are in them” (Cat. 5, 2b5– 6).
What is the implication? e implication is that the world is not sim-
ply made out of underlying beings and whatever is in or on it. Being is not
simply an underlying thing similar to Anaximander’s apeiron, in which deter-
minations come and go while it remains undetermined. e world is neither
mere stuff, nor some stuff plus external determinations. Being, in turn, is no
more a purely indeterminate being than it is a mere aspect. It has a particular
determination that is irreducible to an aspect, but it also does not survive the
coming to be and passing away of any determination. Birth and death are not
simply changes. en not all motion and change occur in and out of beings;
there are beings that come to be and pass away themselves.25 ey have a limit
which binds them and, if transgressed, leads to their destruction. Indeed, it
is “most characteristic” of being to admit contraries, yet being is not defined
as that which underlies simply any change from one contrary to the other.
Aristotelian being is not infinitely indeterminate and determinable as such,
but already has determination. For a being, to be is not to be anything in any
way, but to be something in a certain way.
is is the second half of the account of being we find not in Descartes,
but in Aristotle.
A Kind of Waking
Everyday life is not exhausted by examples of somnolence where one is “just
thinking” or “just talking,” where homonymous aspects parade while adding
up to “nothing really.” ought also seems capable of some kind of waking.
To take up our previous examples, then, a daydreaming while waiting for a
bus may be disturbed by an event, an accident, an object, or a memory. A
chat may be interrupted by the emergence of an issue, the telling of a story,
or a discussion. In Latin, such a matter for speech and deliberation is called
a causa as a cause one is engaged in or as a case debated in court.26 It is also
called res, as has been suggested by the answer of the daydreamer saying
he was thinking of “nothing really.”27 ere is then something “real” about
this waking stance, in the sense that it is concentrated around an issue.28
is does not imply that there is something necessarily serious, truthful, and
objective about this stance or that the matter at hand is important, but it
does imply that, once awake, the somnolent thinker is no longer at the center
of the world. Instead of being the pivot of disparate transient aspects, experi-
ence now gravitates around an “issue,” a “case,” “something real.”
32
Already, when one interrupts a daydreamer and asks what she was think-
ing, one is operating in a waking stance, and there is already something at
issue. It is indeed from a waking stance that somnolence can be thematized
and analyzed, and indeed this thematization will be made after the fact and
will remain inaccurate to that extent. is waking stance is obvious from our
present argument as well, since here we are not thinking or speaking about
“just this” and we hope that all that we say does not add up to “nothing really.”
Although somnolence can be thematized only in retrospect, the advantage of
a sober stance is that it can keep in mind this inappropriateness and recog-
nize that neither thought nor the world are exhausted by somnolence.
Indeed, the world is such that it offers “something real,” instead of aspects
that add up to “nothing really.” Instead of “just something bulky” or “just
something warm” or “just something moving,” what appears now is a living
being, say, an ox: the ox is bulky and warm, he is laying down on the grass
and he is moving his tail and digesting food and he is turning to look at me.
He is where his tail is and where his horns point and where his chest lays and
wherein his eyeballs revolve. It is however only in comparison to the somno-
lent viewpoint that we may remark that these aspects are no longer simply
exclusive of one another and constitute an aggregate. From a properly sober
standpoint, we should rather say that the sober appearance is less a conjunc-
tion of formerly disparate aspects than the appearance of a standard. Aspects
have not vanished here, but they appear as aspects according to this standard,
that is, aspects of something. In a way, what distinguishes synonymy from
homonymy, or sobriety from somnolence, is this simple conjunction: of. A
selfsame aspect of “nothing really” is open to infinite manipulation because
its only “demand” is to be clearly and distinctly selfsame, to be just “this”—
which it actually is anyway. But the sober world offers something that is not
infinitely malleable, something that has a demand, or better, something that
is such a demand: to be an ox is to be what it is for an ox to be so.
Similarly, the small talk that could go in any direction is now interrupted
by something to attend to: a story that organizes characters, actions, and cir-
cumstances, a topic of discussion that articulates different aspects of an issue,
a suggestion that demands responsiveness. Note that this demand may well be
rejected, the ox may well be seen as a lump of meat or a mascot, and one may
well refuse to attend to an issue raised in a conversation. Nevertheless such a
rejection will never make it as if the demand has never been made. A somnolent
stance is conceivable only in reference to, and as a departure from, the sober
world. “Nothing” as an answer almost always means “Nothing really.” Hence
Aristotle’s definition of the “fictitious” (plasmatôdes) necessarily involves not
pure creation out of nothing, but compulsion, a counterforce exerted against
33
a preexisting force resisting it: “By ‘fictitious’ I mean ‘forced in [bebiasmenon]
for the sake of a hypothesis’ ” (Metaph. XIII, 7, 1082b3).29 e rejection or dis-
missal of this demand will turn the demand into a rejected one, and to that
extent will affirm its having been. Logos of being means this standard of being.
An Inclusive Version of the Principle of Non- Contradiction
Every extended being has magnitude. So every extended being is at once
“here” and also “elsewhere.” Similarly, the ox occupies some stretch of space.
But further, the motion of his tail depends on the fact that it moves in certain
ways while his body remains still. e motion of the tail of the ox depends
on his somehow being at once “here” and “elsewhere.” e head of the ox
is cooler, harder, and more silent than his stomach. is “of” does not sim-
ply tack on different aspects, it does not just connect the formerly disjoined
coldness and hardness and heat. e word “of” refers to an original that orga-
nizes, hierarchizes, and defines aspects according to something that is not an
aspect. Aspects here are no longer simply subject to the exclusive version of
the principle of non- contradiction. e motion and rest of the ox’s tail is far
from excluding the motion and rest of all its other parts. In short, here the
principle of non- contradiction works no longer as a formal law of disjunction
and exclusion, but as an original demand of inclusion. e principle here can
no longer simply preclude the cohabitation of contraries at the same time; it
must also proclaim that contraries can and are typically meant to belong to the
same at the same time— but in different respects.30
Aristotle’s discussion of the principle of non- contradiction seems to
have its roots in the fourth book of Plato’s Republic. In the passage from the
Republic, while discussing the unity of the soul, Socrates suggests to Glaucon
that “it is clear that the same will not be willing to do or undergo opposites
at the same time in the same respect [kata tauton] and in relation to the same
[pros tauton]” (IV, 436b8– c1). Later, Socrates shifts this emphasis from the
unwillingness of being toward impossibility (436c5– 6). After considering the
examples of a man moving his arms and a spinning top, to which we shall
return shortly, he modifies his first statement:
en the saying of such things will neither scare us nor persuade
us that something, being the same, would ever suffer, be, or do
opposites at the same time, in the same respect [kata to auto] and in
relation to the same [pros to auto]. (436e8– 437a2)
Here then Socrates states at least a qualified version of the exclusive principle
of non- contradiction: the exclusive version holds in the same respect and in
34
relation to the same, thereby implying that it would not necessarily apply if
different respects were involved. Simply put, he draws our attention to the
respects in which contraries are not disjoined, but conjoined. Let us call this
version the “inclusive principle of non- contradiction.” en, while it is true
that a top either moves or does not move absolutely, it may well be, and in
fact must be, moving and not moving in different respects— in this instance,
with respect to its different parts— according to the inclusive version.
In fact, Aristotle’s statement of the principle in the Metaphysics takes into
account these respects in which it is possible for the same to be and not
be the same at the same time: “it is impossible for the same to belong and
not belong to the same at the same time in the same respect [kata to auto]”
(IV, 1005b19– 20).31 Although Aristotle’s version of the exclusive principle of
non- contradiction was formulated precisely in opposition to “what Heracli-
tus is supposed to have said,” here, on the contrary, Aristotle joins Heraclitus
in recognizing the need to modify the exclusive version and, as Heraclitus
says, to “understand how that which is disrupted has the same logos as itself: a
back- stretched harmony as in the bow and the lyre” (Fr. 51). In fact, precisely
in order to reject the absolute disjunction or conjunction between being and
non- being, Aristotle appeals to these respects or ways:
In one way they [those who simply conjoin being and non- being]
speak correctly, in another way they do not know. For, being [to
on] is said in two ways so that in a way being can come into being
out of non- being, in another way it cannot. And the same can at
once be and not be, but not in the same respect [all’ ou kata tauto].
(Metaph. IV, 5, 1009a32– 35)
is passage is a major part of our textual evidence for claiming that Aris-
totle is a thinker of inclusion and that the recognition of this depends on the
central notion of logos. Hence, the inclusive version of the principle of non-
contradiction will inform us more about “what it is for this being to be” than
the exclusive version: where the latter will compellingly show that the same
thing cannot be both white and not- white, moving and not- moving at the
same time, the former will add that this is true not absolutely, but only as long
as we are considering the same respect. e latter will view the motion of the
tail of an ox as simply moving, while the former will illuminate the intercon-
nection between the motion of the tail and the stillness of the spine of the
ox, and agree with Heraclitus that “changing, it is at rest” (Fragment 84).32
Aristotle then has both the exclusive and the inclusive versions of the prin-
ciple of non- contradiction. Without the inclusive version, one cannot draw
35
the difference between homonymy and synonymy, between free- floating
aspects and beings having a logos of being in their own right, a standard of
being. Logos here means “standard.”
Another Sense of “Underlying ing”
Let us briefly return to Socrates’s examples in the Republic in order to see how
logos mediates respects that previously were mutually exclusive. Socrates’s
first example is of a man standing still while moving his arms and head. e
example may seem to present us with a trunk standing still, an arm and a
head in motion. A surgeon or a beauty contest jury member may well give
judgments and advice from this stance, focusing on each part of the human
body in isolation from the others. A gym teacher, a coach, or a dance teacher
may well approach the human body in this way, having different diagnoses
and exercises for each of its parts. For, as the exclusive principle of non-
contradiction dictates, his arms cannot be moving and not moving at the
same time, no more than his head or his trunk.
But Socrates’s example is not about a trunk and two arms and a head,
but about a man. e motion of his arms and of his head, as well as the stabil-
ity of his trunk, are not random aspects of his motion and rest. ey are not
aspects, they are rather respects precisely regulated by a standard, by the man’s
logos of being, by what it is for him to be (Metaph. VIII, 6, 1045a14ff). To
be a human being is to be a living body, and to be a living body is to be the
natural demand that one’s motion and rest originate in oneself, the demand
to articulate motion and rest in such a way that the body can find in itself
both a stable ground and a joint around which motion is possible (Ph. II, 1,
192b8– 23; MA 1– 2). However different and contrary the possible motions
of his arms may seem, they do remain specific in comparison to all possible
motions as such. For they make up, or take part in, a certain species- character
of a being. Even further, the motion of a living body is a demand not only to
orchestrate its internal parts, but also to adapt itself to the system between
the organism and its environment: the earth underneath, the water, the air,
the heat of the sun, and ultimately the celestial spheres.33 Briefly put, to move
his arms and head while standing still is not a challenge to the selfsameness
and unity of the man’s body and life; it is precisely an indispensable part of
what it is for him to be, of what it is for him to be human, of his logos of being.
Socrates’s second example is a top which is spinning, that is, moving with
respect to its periphery but not with respect to its axis. Again, this motion
and rest are not primarily exclusive aspects in their own right, but rather
respects precisely regulated by what it is for a top to be, since to be a top is
to be the very conjunction of peripheral motion and axial rest.34 Once this
36
conjunction is disrupted, once this demand is rejected, one has a top in name
only. For if the axis cannot stand still vertically while spinning, one has a
wheel. And if the axis cannot stand still in any respect, then one has a ball.35
Either way one does not have a top that is adequate to what it is for a top
to be. Aristotle would say “one has a top only homonymously.” In this case as
well as in the previous one, the principle of non- contradiction is at work not
by simply excluding different aspects, but by offering different respects in
which the same can conjoin contraries and in fact demands this conjunction
according to what it is for it to be— according to its logos of being.
Here, then, we find out that being is not simply that in which determina-
tions are indifferently applied, but also that which has an inherent standard, a
claim or a “say” on its being. Here, then, we find Aristotle much closer to the
Heraclitean “logos of being” than to Cartesian substantia. To go back to Hera-
clitus’s examples, both the bow and the lyre require that the cord be pulled in
two opposite directions, that it be stretched within a certain range, according
to a ratio or a standard. In fact, the notes of the lyre and the accuracy of the
bow depend on how well their cords are thus stretched. Requiring that their
cord be pulled in two opposite directions, they also require a stable frame to
hold the tension together without one pull yielding to the other. One would
disrupt what it is for a bow to be not by establishing such an opposition, but
by removing it, for instance by pulling the cord too hard or by burning it like
Descartes did to the piece of wax.
Return to the Example
If it is true that the regard for logos of being that we find in Aristotle and
Heraclitus is the second half of our story, how are we to modify our previous
treatment of the famous wax example? After all, wasn’t it true that the wax
survived the alteration of all its sensuous aspects under fire, and that its true
nature was to be pure indeterminacy, that is, pure possibility?
ere is something one- sided about Descartes’s argument. Now that we
have a better understanding of logos of being, we can shed light on what it
is. First, one may ask: Why does Descartes take a piece of wax as his most
crucial example? Because, as he says, it exhibits various sensuous aspects? Or
because the “demand” of the piece of wax as a thing is almost unapparent
and thus already seems to be immediately reducible to infinite possibilities
of manipulation— which will be Descartes’s conclusion? In other words, sus-
piciously, the piece of wax seems to be a thing that is not a res or a causa at all,
an object that only minimally makes a case on its own.36 Descartes does not
take an ox, a country, or an artwork, but a piece of wax as his example. e
wax is thus an almost perfect example for muffling the logos of being and for
37
thereby reducing all synonymy to homonymy, all inherent determinacy to
plasticity, all waking to somnolence. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Des-
cartes grants the possibility that he is at sleep throughout the Meditationes,
and makes recurrent references to his own sleepiness. In fact, his argument
against skepticism draws much of its power from his noncommittal stance
as to whether he is awake or not. As Heraclitus puts it in his first fragment:
“Of the logos of being, humans are always uncomprehending... they forget
what they do when awake as they forget [what they do] in sleep.” Descartes’s
meditations as well as his wax example are excellent descriptions of somno-
lence, but not of the piece of wax as having a “logos of being.”
For it is true that the sweetness, the scent of flowers, and the whiteness
were in the wax and that after being heated these properties were replaced by
other properties. As we have said, Aristotle’s exposition and criticism of his
predecessors in the first book of the Physics often suggests this structure of
an underlying thing which remains constant throughout the transition from
some property to its contrary. But, to return to the language of Categories,
everything other than beings is either in them or they are said of them.37 Des-
cartes’s reasoning omits the question as to whether anything is said of beings,
suppresses the fact that, however unthingly, the wax is a thing, it is a res and
a causa. ere are not only things that are in the wax, but also things that are
said of it.
What then is said of the wax? In the History of Animals, one finds an elabo-
rate account of the various functions of wax and hence the corresponding
kinds of material used in its production:
After the hive has been handed over to them clean, they build the
wax combs, bringing the drops from the flowers and especially from
the trees, from willow and elm and others that are very gummy.
With this they also smear the floor against the other creatures;
the bee- keepers call this dusting. ey also build up the entrances
if they are wide. ey fashion first the combs in which these bees
themselves are produced, then those in which the so- called kings
and the drones are produced. (HA IX, 40, 623b27– 34ff.)38
As the rest of the passage makes abundantly clear, for Aristotle wax is a
substance taken from flowers and trees by bees for the sake of building hon-
eycombs and other complex structures. However muffled, wax does seem to
exhibit a standard: just like the bow requires that the cord be tended neither
too much nor too little, and in both directions, the piece of wax must have
the appropriate consistency for building a honeycomb, the right dosage of
38
softness and hardness, of cold and heat, of dry and wet. It seems then that
wax does have an “essential formula,” a logos of being, a standard stating of
it what it is for it to be wax. One can always reject, dismiss, or omit this
demand, deform this specific form, as Descartes does, but one can do so pre-
cisely because there is already something to reject, dismiss, or omit to begin
with. Indeed, the wax can be seen as something infinitely malleable, but it
will not survive all manipulation as the wax it is. Turning from sweet to not-
sweet and from white to not- white, the wax is perhaps still what it is for it
to be so; but the piece of wax is no longer what it is for it to be itself when it
is heated and loses the consistency that is required for the construction of a
honeycomb.
For Descartes, if it is true that the wax remains throughout the trans-
formations of all its sensuous aspects, then it validly follows that the wax
was nothing but pure extension to begin with— an object of the mind alone.
us, Descartes asked the crucial question: “Does the wax still remain?” en
he immediately gave a strong, straightforward answer: “I must confess that it
does.” Although he was alone in his meditation, he added: “No one denies it;
no one thinks otherwise.” Why must he confess that the wax remains? Who
is there to deny it? Who are these others that “do not think otherwise”? (AT
VII, 30; AT IX, 24) It seems as if Aristotle, for one, would think otherwise,
claiming that after the heating the wax remains only homonymously, and not
synonymously, because the fire did disrupt its logos of being as wax. Before
the experiment, Descartes seems to have already assumed that the wax would
remain independently from its properties and to have simply inferred that
the wax is indeed pure extension. Descartes’s reasoning may appear to be a
petitio principii. It is not true that the wax remains throughout the experi-
ment, unless homonymously, thus it does not follow that the mind perceived
the same piece of wax all along and was thereby confirmed in its own exis-
tence. Did anything remain constant throughout the experiment, if not the
wax? Perhaps only a purely indeterminate thing, a “just this,” an x. But the
piece of wax did not remain as a piece of wax that it was.
Note that Aristotle was not unaware of philosophers who reduced the
logos of beings to incidental properties, and all being to indeterminacy—
precisely the ones who deny the principle of non- contradiction:
In general those who say this [those who deny the principle of non-
contradiction] do away with being and what it is for something to
be. For it is necessary for them to say that all things are incidental
[symbebêkenai] and that there is no such thing as the very thing it is
to be human or animal. (Metaph. IV, 4, 1007a20– 23)39
39
In order to demonstrate that the mind is better known than the body, Des-
cartes picks up a most “unthingly” thing as a paradigm for all extended
beings, treats it as indifferent to all of its aspects. He thereby spreads a waxy
texture to all things, as it were, and tailors sober experience on the model of
somnolence. He reduces all synonymy to homonymy and brackets the pos-
sibility for beings to have a logos of being, and the possibility for other beings
to attend to that logos.
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation
What then does logos mean in the Categories? It means standard. In general, it
is what it is to be for the being at hand; in the case of an ox or a human being,
this means at least what it is for each of them to be an animal. e emphasis
here is not so much on “being x” or “being y” as it is on the phrase “for each
of them” (autôn hekaterôi). e question “What is ‘being x’?” can be investi-
gated from the perspective of the interested being itself only if synonymy is
distinguished from homonymy. One may well designate a representation and
a human being homonymously as “animals.” But what is overviewed here
is not the question “What is being animal?” itself, since a detailed repre-
sentation of a human being may well be more “informative” than a blurred
perception of one, but rather what being animal has to do with the being at
hand.40 By distinguishing synonymy from homonymy at the very opening
of the Categories, Aristotle suggests that it is possible to address, and equally
to fail to address, beings from the perspective of their being, and not simply
in the aspects that appear to us. Logos articulates the way in which a being
presents one aspect not at the expense of another or of an underlying thing.
Logos means the standard that articulates the being at hand in the manifold
of its aspects.
Logos is a promise to provide us something no sculpture, representation,
impression, or name necessarily does: the way of being for the very thing at
hand. To address an ox as an animal is to consider it with respect to what
it is for it to be: to address it not only as something here, something there,
something now, something then, something brown or black, but as a being
that grows, desires, perceives, and moves. Logos captures a being from within
the perspective of that being, that is, in its temporal stability, in its spatial
spread, and in its inherent manifoldness. Logos captures the “extendedness” of
beings with a crucial connotation of “stretch” that will pervade the rest of this
book. Unlike Nietzsche who thinks that Aristotle simply accuses Heraclitus
of contradicting the principle of non- contradiction, Aristotle’s seminal use
of logos at the opening of the corpus is a retrieval of the Heraclitean effort to
40
“understand how that which is disrupted has the same logos as itself: a back-
stretched harmony, as in the bow and the lyre.”41
Logos means “standard” in the Categories: a being’s holding on both to its
being and to what it is for it to be, without letting one yield to the other.
ere remains an essential question: even though things may seem to be
irreducible to free- floating aspects, is it true that a piece of wax, a spinning
top, a bow, or a lyre has itself a logos of being? Aren’t we speaking loosely or
metaphorically when we claim that being a “substance taken from flowers by
bees for the sake of building a honeycomb” is what it is for the piece of wax to
be? Shouldn’t logos be imputed not to the piece of wax, but to us or to bees,
and interpreted accordingly as a result of a mental synthesis carried out by us,
in us and for us, instead of taking place “in the world,” in and for the beings
themselves, within and for the piece of wax? Even though we have seen how
synonymy cannot be reduced to homonymy in the Categories, we need to
make a dialectical step back in our argument in order to pursue the mean-
ing of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy: what warrants for the inherence of the
standard we concluded logos in the Categories to be?
41
CHAPTER 2
Potentiality
Logos in On Interpretation
We tried to show that “logos of being” means the “standard” of a being at
the opening distinction between synonymy and homonymy in the Categories.
Yet this does not mean much unless this supposed “standard” is shown to be
inherent to the being at hand. How can we make sure that the “logos of being”
is not an external imposition on our part? In this chapter we shall thus pursue
this question by focusing on the next text in Aristotle’s corpus: On Interpreta-
tion. In section 1, we shall first develop the problem and return to Aristotle’s
own examples from the previous chapter. is shall lead us, in section 2, to a
discussion of his distinction between necessity and possibility or potentiality.
From this, we shall conclude that having an inherent standard requires that
the being somehow be at once actually and potentially. We close the chapter
with the conclusion that the inherent character of logos as the standard of
being can be demonstrated either in natural and animal motion, the topic
of chapters 3 and 4, and in human action and speech, the topic of chapters 5
and 6. So the rest of this book is the development of this chapter’s conclusion.
1. e Inherence of Logos
“Being is said in many ways”— the leitmotif of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Before
we enter our discussion of On Interpretation, let us make a preliminary reflec-
tion on the relevance of the multivocity of being. And let us do this in the
form of a reductio ad absurdum, that is, by thinking on what the univocity of
being would entail.1 So what would the world look like, assuming that there
are not different and irreducible ways of being, but only being as such? ere
would be nobody capable of building a house without necessarily building
one in actuality, nobody capable of seeing who is not constantly seeing, no
sensibles other than the ones actually sensed, no habits, no arts, no education,
no memory, in extremis no coming to be.2 A realm of eternity, necessity, pure
actuality, a realm with no shade, nor depth. In a way, this world is a dream
43
world, at least a world we humans can logically conceive and aspire to, a
world involving no second thoughts, no decision- making, no responsibility.
For Aristotle, however, such a world is not a dream world; there is such a
realm of eternity and necessity: the supralunar realm.3 Our sublunar world,
however, is the world of finitude, of limitation, of materiality, of potentialities
with all that it entails: precisely a world of growth, decay, natural capacities,
fulfilled and unexplored potentials, habits and arts. And yet, despite its sharp
distinction from the serene supralunar realm, this world of finitude is not
reducible to a world of random events: although being finite and lacking
immediate actuality, the world of finitude exhibits forms and events that are
neither absolutely necessary nor merely contingent. Much of Aristotle’s work
instills a wonder, not only in front of the realm of eternity and transpar-
ency which we do not inhabit, but also in front of the humble, hesitant, and
yet multifarious beings among which we belong and find ourselves. In other
words, the claim that being is said in many ways precludes the collapse of the
distinction between actuality and potentiality, and inspires a sense of curios-
ity in front of the internal logic of sublunar beings, their logos— if, indeed,
there is such an inherent standard, which is the problematic of this chapter.4
Trouble
We attempted to develop the philosophical meaning of logos in the Cat-
egories. ere it appeared in the phrase “logos of being” and was employed
to distinguish synonymy from homonymy. We discussed two different ver-
sions of the principle of non- contradiction; we developed two corresponding
conceptions of “being” operative in homonymy and synonymy; we offered
two approaches to Descartes’s wax example; thereby we concluded that logos
in the Categories means “standard”. At the very end of chapter 1, however,
we remarked that this conclusion can only be temporary because, being the
exposition it is, the Categories does not supply us a justification for the fact
that this standard is an inherent one as it must be. But how can one establish
that the standard of being of something is inherent to it? How can one find
warrant for the claim that the “logos of being” is truly of that being?
In distinguishing the wax from its homonymous aspects, for instance, we
claimed that its “logos of being” is to be a substance produced by bees from
flowers for the sake of building a honeycomb, that wax itself is not an inde-
terminate underlying being that is indifferent to its properties, and therefore
that it cannot survive all imaginable modifications without giving up the
very claim that we said it is. In a word, we claimed that wax was inherently
determined and thus was destroyed when it was burnt for the sake of Des-
cartes’s example. In the same line of thought, we treated our other examples
44
as if they themselves demanded their properties to harmonize with their
logos of being. We spoke as if a bow itself had its own standard and that a top
made a claim for its own being.
Even if we were right that these beings were neither free- floating aspects
nor a pure underlying substance nor a conjunction of the two, we were speak-
ing inadequately or only metaphorically in talking about their logos of being.
For the standard of wax is set not by the wax itself, but precisely by bees,
the bow’s standard by a bow- maker, a top’s by the toy- maker. To claim that
the piece of wax is concerned about whether or not it is hot, white, liquid or
solid, is not to attend to its logos of being, but precisely to fail to attune one-
self to what it is to be for the piece of wax. e bees view the wax as material
for building the honeycomb, but it is precisely them who “build the honey
comb by bringing drops from the flowers and especially from trees” (HA IX,
40, 623b27– 28). Just like the bees use these drops as wax for building their
combs, a human being may view the wax as a material for sealing envelops or
as an example in a meditation on the immortality of the soul. Similarly with
the examples we imported from Heraclitus, and from Plato’s Republic. e
top, the bow, and the lyre are themselves indifferent to the properties they can
and cannot have if they are to be at all. Strictly speaking, it does not make
sense to say that a lyre’s existence, production, and quality are an issue for the
lyre itself. ese are of concern not for the lyre itself, whatever that means,
but for the craftsman, for his customers, for lyre- players, for the lyre- players’
audience, for the political community, and even ultimately for humanity as
such.5 us, if logos is a standard, as we claimed, its inherent character remains
metaphorical or figurative, and therefore in need of philosophical rigor.
So, isn’t all addressing ultimately homonymous? Aren’t beings palimpsests,
or precisely wax tablets, receptive to all inscription and manipulation? Isn’t
all “standard” externally imposed according to the interpretation, imagina-
tion, skill, and power of the viewer? If beings have no specific powers already
inherent in them, aren’t they potentially anything? What a being can or can-
not undergo or do while remaining the very being it is— isn’t this question
always settled from without, that is, from the perspective of a human being,
a bee, or a flower, and not from within the piece of wax? Aren’t all possibili-
ties mere possibilities of a purely extendable, mutable, and flexible substance
devoid of inherent determinacy? Aren’t we thus back to the Cartesian posi-
tion according to which, on the one hand, there is a minimally determined
substance with infinite plasticity, a res extensa, and on the other hand a purely
active mind, the res cogitans? Aren’t we back to the exclusive options of pure
potentiality, and a mind fully at work in pure actuality? What warrants for
the inherence of the “logos of being”? How are we to establish that there is
45
something like synonymy, and that logos is not yet one external imposition
among others?
Return to Aristotle’s Example: A Matter of Life and Death
Something went wrong. As we read the opening of Aristotle’s Categories,
we thought the “logos of being” meant “standard,” and had to be something
ontologically determining enough to distinguish synonymy from homon-
ymy. Yet our examples did not live up to this task. e Cartesian example of
the piece of wax, the Heraclitean examples of the lyre and the bow, and the
Platonic/Socratic example of the spinning top did not reveal any inherent
standard of being, but rather perspectival “aspects,” not issuing from the wax,
the top, or the lyre, but from anything that had the power to impose external
determination of these “things.”
It is time to remember that none of these were Aristotle’s examples, and
it is time to return to his own examples. Aristotle’s examples in the opening
of the Categories were an ox and a human being.6 If we return to Aristotle’s
examples, we may well find a way to fruitfully pursue our investigation of the
meaning of logos as “standard” in the phrase “logos of being.”7 Is the logos of
being of a human and an ox, namely “being an animal,” a contingent, acci-
dental, and arbitrary aspect for them as the color or temperature of the piece
of wax is for it?
Take Socrates for example. Socrates can become handsome or cul-
tured without ceasing to be. He is also famous for being able to endure
cold weather and to handle much wine (Plato, Symposium, 214A). In these
respects, Socrates then resembles the Cartesian substance subtending and
surviving changes. However, Socrates is also known to have not survived his
drinking of the hemlock. What was Socrates such that, when he drinks the
hemlock, he no longer underlies change as a res extensa, but passes away, and
becomes a human being “only homonymously”? Plato’s Phaedo offers us an
almost forensic account of Socrates’s death, a perfect example of both the
incremental progression and the sudden breaking point of his demise:
He walked around and when he said that his legs had gotten heavy,
he laid down on his back. For the man told him to do so. And with
that, the one who had given him the potion laid hold of him and,
after letting some time elapse, examined his feet and legs, and then
gave his foot a hard pinch and asked whether he felt it; he said no;
and after this, his thighs; and going upward in this way, he showed
us that he was growing cold and stiff. And he touched himself and
said that when it reached his heart, then he’d be gone. At that time
46
the chill was around his groin; and uncovering himself— since he
had been covered— he said what was his last utterance: “Crito, he
said, we owe a cock to Aesclepius. Pay it and don’t be careless.”
“at,” said Crito, “will be done; but see if you have anything else
to say.” He did not answer this question, but after a little while he
moved [ekinêthê] and the man uncovered him and his eyes stood still
[estêsen]. Seeing this, Crito closed his mouth and eyes. (117e– 118a)8
is passage first describes Socrates performing all sorts of motions and
undergoing many changes. As the exclusive principle of non- contradiction
would forbid, Socrates cannot be walking around and lying down at once,
but he can lie down after walking while remaining the same. Further, as the
inclusive version of the principle would allow, he can be at once cold and stiff
with respect to his legs and yet still warm and flexible with respect to his upper
body. Here he seems as determinable as Cartesian substance. None of these
motions and changes really change him. After speaking to Crito, the latter
asks him: Do you have anything else to say? Socrates does not respond. If
he heard the question, did he have something to say and could not because
he passively lost his ability to speak? Or did he actively choose to remain
silent and thereby answer the question with the negative— very much like he
actively refrained from fleeing prison despite Crito’s insistence in the Crito?9
A similar ambiguity shows up in the subsequent phrase: “after a while
he moved,” “ekinêthê.” is verb, kineô in the aorist indicative passive, does
not clarify whether Socrates is actively moving as a living being (the sense
indicated in B.4. in the LSJ article for kineô), being moved emotionally by
something (B.2), or being moved passively as an inanimate object by the
attendant (B.1.). In short, this ambiguous verb seems to mark a threshold
by sharing both in Socrates’s previous deliberate acts and in the subsequent
passivity of the corpse. Before ekinêthê, Socrates acts and moves, is called to
move and rest, uncovers himself, accepts, refuses, or fails to move, and under-
goes changes, is touched and addressed as a living being. After ekinêthê, the
attendant covers him and Crito closes his eyes and mouth. Before, he was lis-
tened and questioned. After, he was recounted and mourned. In the middle,
ekinêthê stands as a boundary stone, a herma.
e reason we are focusing on the text here is because this text provides us
something Descartes’s meditations on the same subject, namely the immor-
tality of the soul, passed over: life and therefore death. Despite the “proofs”
of the immortality of the soul that occupy the previous discussion, the Pla-
tonic text shows that here a threshold has been crossed in Socrates’s case.
After burning the wax, Descartes asked: “Does the wax still remain? I must
47
confess that it does; no one denies it; no one thinks otherwise” (VII, 29.11–
18; AT IX, 24). In Socrates’s example, however, the mourners would clearly
think otherwise, and deny that Socrates remains intact. Being alive or not
for Socrates is fundamentally different from what being cold or not was for
the piece of wax. And, as the text shows, being cold or being hot is not unre-
lated to being alive, it is a condition, a symptom, a manifestation of life and
death. No longer being alive, Socrates is fundamentally violated in his “logos
of being,” in what it is for him to be, so much so that we cannot really say that
Socrates undergoes or underlies the process like the wax. For that is not the
kind of underlying being Socrates is (GC I, 4, 319b6ff ).
Our argument about the logos of being may then survive, provided we can
uphold the fundamental difference between Socrates’s drinking of the hem-
lock and the burning of the wax. If so, “being alive” may well be an inherent
determination of Socrates’s being. In that case, there may be an inherent
standard, a logos of being of Socrates, and thus a fundamental difference
between homonymy and synonymy. How are we to reformulate our question
concerning the inherence of logos?
Return to Logos
Apparently, life is not an external determination or a simple aspect of
Socrates, but is part of his logos of being.10 Cartesian substantia is pure pos-
sibility somehow facing a pure mind which is fully and actually at work
beyond all interference from imagination and sensation. Socrates, however, is
not pure possibility, since there is at least something inherently impossible for
him: to exist without being alive. Furthermore, even supposing that the wax
is determined externally under the influence of fire, under the manipulation
of bees building hives, or under the experimentation of meditating human
beings, still the question remains whether the fire itself, the bees, and this
experimenter themselves are equally determined from without.
Now that we have left aside non- Aristotelian examples and turned to
Aristotle’s own examples, we may have some hope of fruitfully pursuing the
inherence of logos. To do so, we must now conceptualize a position between
infinite possibility and pure actuality— not a stage indifferently squeezed
between the two, but a phenomenon that stretches between them, includes
them, holds them together. To take up Heraclitus’s fragment 51, quoted in
chapter 1, we must “understand how that which is disrupted has the same
logos as itself,” “a back- stretched harmony,” but this time, not exactly “as in
the bow and the lyre,” but as in a human being and an ox.
e true mistake, committed here by us and by Descartes, was that we
took up beings as individuals of one kind, namely “being,” and thereby
48
allowed ourselves to reflect on solely one example in order to draw conclu-
sions concerning all beings. And yet, for Aristotle, if being is said in many
ways, this is because not all beings are of one kind, their being does not take
the same form, they do not exhibit a similar logic. Other than kinds or forms
of being, there are ways of being. is is why there is something dramatic
in the story of the ugly duckling: ducks and swans are synonymous with
respect to being “animals” and even “birds.” Yet a baby swan is a duckling
“only homonymously.” And the story would lose the recognition (anagnôrsis)
and the reversal (peripeteia) that give it its dramatic power if the baby swan
were always what it was for her to be in full actuality, and also if she never
fully became what it was for her to be. e story is dramatic, riddle- like, and
ambiguous, precisely to the extent that it is possible to make a fundamentally
false assumption about the swan egg and to come to see this mistake. is
is enabled by the tension between familiarity and ambiguity. No “stuff” is
capable of such fundamental falsity— which is precisely why Descartes takes
“stuff” as his object in his search for certainty.
In short, we were mistaken in assuming that the examples taken for
“being” are neutral. e implications of some examples are incompatible with
those of others. Since there seems to be no way of settling the question of
the “logos of being” from without, it must be filtered through the plurality of
irreducible ways of being.
Return of Logos
What are these ways of being then? We have already seen one way of being
in chapter 1, that of an aspect: of just not being what one is not, of being
determined solely in terms of self- identity, contrariety, and exclusion. To this
seems to correspond in Aristotle the two pairs of contrary properties such as
the hot and the cold, the wet and the dry (GC II, 2, 329b7ff.). ese four are
precisely defined according to the exclusive version of the principle of non-
contradiction as two pairs whose terms exclude one another absolutely. Just
as aspects, these properties are unitary and pure. ey are precisely not things.
ese four properties do differ, however, from aspects in that each aspect is
only at the expense of any other, whereas the hot, while excluding the cold,
is indifferent to the dry and the wet. e relations between these properties
are minimally more specific than those between free- floating, all- excluding
aspects. us, these contrary properties exhibit a first way of being that is
slightly but crucially distinct from that of aspects.
e distinction is important precisely because, unlike aspects, the hot,
while excluding the cold, in fact can combine with the dry or the wet. ereby
a second way of being comes into play, beyond the aspect- like way of being: a
49
bodily way of being. It is by means of the four possible combinations of these
two irreducible pairs of contraries (hot and cold, wet and dry) that Aristotle
analyzes the “simple bodies” (GC II, 2, 330a25– 29).
No wonder it is at this first level of inclusion, of holding together, of com-
prehension or combination that the term logos returns:
[ese contraries] have attached themselves to the apparently sim-
ple bodies, fire, air, water and earth, according to a logos; for fire is
hot and dry, air is hot and moist (as vapor is air), water is cold and
wet, and earth is cold and dry, so that it is reasonable that the dif-
ferences be distributed to primary bodies and the amount of these
be according to a logos. (GC II, 2, 330b3– 8)
A logos then is involved in this way of being which is primary at least in
the context of perceptible beings (GC II, 5, 332a27– 28). Whereas the way of
being of the hot is simply not being cold, fire is according to a logos in that it
necessarily holds together one term from both pairs of contraries— the hot
and the dry. e simple bodies exhibit a logos of being, an inherent standard:
they have a way of being by means of holding onto two aspects together
without letting one yield to the other (otherwise, say, fire would turn back
into the hot or the dry) and without letting one lay aside the other (otherwise
there would be no fire, but the hot right next to or after the dry). us, logos
reassumes the meaning of a being’s holding on to the spatiotemporal mani-
fold of its aspects without letting one yield to the other: unlike Cartesian
substantia, a fire can be extinguished, just as Socrates can die as much an ox.
Whereas at the level of mere aspects the hot merely excluded the cold and
was indifferent to the wet and the dry without any common denominator,
here fire excludes water but preserves its affinity to earth by means of the
dry, and to air by means of the hot. Aspects here no longer exist in isolation
from everything else, but serve as media or common denominators between
simple bodies: instead of simply being a property abstracted from concrete
beings, the hot is the middle term of two bodies, the articulation of fire (dry
and hot) and air (wet and hot). Each of these simple bodies also has a place
in the cosmos as distinct from the aspects that simply are away from their
contrary: “Being four, the simple bodies make up two pairs belonging to two
places: for fire and air are carried toward the limit [of the cosmos], while
earth and water are so toward the center” (GC II, 3, 330b31– 33; Cael. IV, 1,
308a14ff.).
e transition from the two basic pairs of contraries to the four simple
bodies is developed by more complex formations: just as the hot, while
50
excluding the cold, combined with the dry in fire according to a certain logos,
now it is fire which is combined with air and earth in a certain logos in the
form of composite bodies (GC II, 3, 331a2– 4).
As for hardness, softness, toughness, brittleness and the rest of such
qualities which belong to the parts that have Soul in them— heat
and cold may very well produce these, but they certainly do not
produce the logos in direct consequence of which one thing is flesh
and another bone. (GA II, 1, 734b31– 34)
is is the point we wish to close this section with: unlike our and Des-
cartes’s assumption that being is an overarching kind with an underlying
homogenous structure and superficial modifications, there is a capital asym-
metry between the divisibility of composite beings into simple bodies and
the possibility of their generation out of them.11 ere is something called
generation and corruption in a strong sense. Unlike aspects that simply
negate their contrary in all senses, and unlike contrary properties (the hot, the
wet, etc.) which negate one another and remain indifferent to other pairs of
contraries, composite bodies exhibit a third way of being that is irreducible
to the previous two.12 eir destruction is such a fundamental violation that
it is not on a par with the changing of one of their aspects, just like Socrates’s
body temperature was not. ey are the beings that reveal the inherence of
their logos of being, the standard of “what it is for them to be.”
2. Potentiality
We are still trying to justify that logos means inherent standard. A standard
is necessarily distinct from a state of affairs for the latter to meet or not meet
the former. ere cannot be any standard in a strict monism, as there can be
no logos.13 An inherent standard, further, is one that is not imposed on, or
externally set before, a state of affairs. If logos is to be an inherent standard,
then there must be a way of being that is not simply and purely an actuality;
there must be a specific way of being in potentiality which is fundamen-
tally different from mere flexibility, malleability, and extendibility. If there
are beings that have an inherent standard, they must be neither determined
in no way as the Cartesian res cogitans is, nor determinable in any way like res
extensa.
Are there such beings? We saw above that even simple bodies are among
them: fire is fire at work, but also it may be extinguished by water. A more
explicit answer is found in On Interpretation:
51
It is clear from what has been said that the necessary is actual, such
that if the eternal beings are prior, then actuality also is prior to
potentiality; and some are actual without potentiality, such as the
first beings, and some are with potentiality; these are prior with
respect to nature, but posterior in time; and some are never in actu-
ality, but potentiality only. (On Int. 13, 23a21– 26)
If the task of proving the existence of an inherent standard necessitates a way
in which this standard should be different from, but internally connected to,
the state of affairs, then it is neither fully actual beings, nor only potential
beings, but beings that are actually at work with some potentiality that will
warrant for the inherence of logos as standard.
A Trivial Concept of Potentiality
Actuality seems to be experientially the most available way of being of things
in everyday life: we seem to feel the hot, we seem to see the fire, we seem
to be actually surrounded by present, available, and ready things. Given its
relatively obvious character, actuality or being- at- work (energeia) takes its
explanatory force from its distinction from potentiality (dynamis), which is
ontologically secondary, but also less obvious to our everyday stance. us
when Aristotle engages in a discussion of actuality and potentiality, it is the
latter that seems to him to be the real topic of debate. But potentiality is said
in many ways:14
Some potentialities are homonymous. For “possible” [dynaton] is
not said simply; [it is said], on the one hand, due to being true as
an actuality, for instance, “it is possible for someone to walk because
one is walking,” and in general something is said to be possible
because it is already in actuality; on the other hand, [“possible” is
said] because it might be actualized, for instance “it is possible for
someone to walk because one might walk.” (On Int. 13, 23b7– 13)
Something already actually at work has a potentiality only in a trivial sense.
While walking I may say a fortiori that I can walk; I may say that it is pos-
sible for a white door to be white. All these would be, not untrue, but trivially
true, and in fact homonymously true. For these trivial statements use the
word “can,” but efface its “logos of being,” that is, its distinction and relation to
actuality. Let us call this meaning of potentiality as simply inferred from an
actuality a “trivial potentiality.”15
52
A Temporal Concept of Potentiality
Trivial potentiality indeed defers the question of potentiality. Looking at a man
who has already recovered from a disease, one would hardly say “it is possible
for him to recover.” For this would rather suggest that he has not recovered,
that actually he is not healthy. While addressing a present actuality, it is trivial
to infer the present possibility and more reasonable to infer a past possibility:
“So, it was possible for him to recover after all!” us even everyday speech
understands the ambiguous character of trivial potentiality and tends to correct
it by expressing it in the past tense. Put in another way, a trivial potentiality is
discovered retrospectively and analytically without any need for a connection
or a logos: if the event is happening now, then by necessity it was possible.
However, this temporal conception of potentiality as a past state of affairs
inferred from the present, a conception suggested by Aristotle’s own words,
conceals a distinction which will be the object of his next step in the argu-
ment: the distinction between the modal concept of potentiality and the
temporal concept. Hence, there is a sense of potentiality that is neither trivial
nor temporal. It is this modal concept of potentiality that will enable us to
construe logos as inherent standard.
If logos is an inherent standard, there must be a certain “distance” between
the standard itself and that of which it is the standard. Here we are indeed
using the word “distance” metaphorically, since the distinction we are after is
not a spatial or positional one. In fact, temporal dimensions are more prom-
ising than spatial ones in understanding potentiality. And the very discussion
of potentiality arises from Aristotle’s discussion of the principle of non-
contradiction in terms of the dimensions of time in On Interpretation: he
argues that positive and negative statements concerning the present and the
past are necessarily either true or false.16 is indeed follows from the prin-
ciple of non- contradiction: if it is impossible for an event to be and not be at
the same time in the same respect, and if the truth and falsity of a statement
concerning the event depends on the event itself (SE 1, 165a6– 14), then by
necessity the statement will either hold true or be false. So much for state-
ments about present and past events.
e Modal Concept of Potentiality
Statements concerning particulars in the future, however, are not necessarily
true or false according to Aristotle. In order to prove this, he embarks upon
a reductio ad absurdum in On Interpretation, 9, where he hypothesizes that
statements concerning particulars in the future are now necessarily true or
false. is hypothetical position is also known as necessitarianism: if it were
53
true that contradictory statements concerning a particular future event nec-
essarily excluded each other, until the event we would have to deny both its
occurrence and its nonoccurrence, “but it cannot be said that neither is true,
for instance that it will neither be nor not be. For, first, while the affirma-
tion is false, the negation is not true; and while the negation is false, the
affirmation happens to be not true” (On Int. 9, 18b17– 20). So, according to
necessitarianism, just as it is now either true or false that it rained yesterday,
it is now either true or false that it will rain tomorrow. But then, is it now
true that it will rain? No. Is it false? It is not false either. Both horns of
the dilemma lead from the present denial of contradictory particular future
events to the present assertion of contradictories. We are bound to affirm
that it will rain (since it is not true that it will not rain) and that it will not
rain (since it is not true that it will rain). is is the contradiction that allows
Aristotle to infer the untenability of the necessitarian hypothesis and indeed
a formal version of the law of the excluded middle:
If it is true to say that it is white and black,17 both must be; if both
will be tomorrow, both will be tomorrow. If it will neither be nor not
be tomorrow, there would be no contingency [to hopoter’ etukhen]; for
instance, a sea- battle. For the sea- battle would have to neither hap-
pen nor not happen. (On Int. 9, 18b20– 25; emphasis is ours)
Under the necessitarian assumption, one cannot affirm the event of a future
sea- battle, but one cannot deny it either. us, since any middle or third
option is excluded, one must respectively deny and affirm its future occur-
rence in the same respect, which is absurd.
One possible reply to Aristotle’s refutation of necessitarianism is an
appeal to a view of events sub specie aeternitatis, an appeal to the standpoint
of an eternal spectator. All events are necessary from the point of view of a
spectator situated in eternity; indeed, pretty much as the past is irrevocable
for us, it is neither true nor false that a sea- battle will happen tomorrow, but
simply it is neither true nor false yet, that is, it is true or false in the eyes of a
being not confined to temporal distinctions such as past, present, and future.
To that being, the sea- battle tomorrow is at least as unalterable, irreversible,
and actually accomplished as the sea- battle of yesterday is for us now. us
necessitarianism, the denial of all possibility and potentiality, may be saved
by assuming the point of view of a spectator the day after tomorrow— a point
of view of which we never had any firsthand experience.18
But besides the problems involved in positing and justifying the point
of view of such an eternal spectator, this attempt to save necessitarianism
54
defers the problem: if one now admits that one does not know whether or
not a sea- battle will happen tomorrow, how can one now know whether or
not the eternal spectator will be right tomorrow? Instead of asking “Will the
sea- battle happen tomorrow?”, necessitarianism simply raises a new ques-
tion: “Will the eternal spectator be right tomorrow?” en one might supply
yet another omniscient spectator to warrant for the other, and so on. As long
as we are confined to the options of mere being and mere nonbeing, to the
options of necessary affirmation and negation, to a formal version of the
principle of the excluded middle, the denied affirmation will contradict the
denied negation, and we will hit upon a contradiction.
As a result, necessitarianism seems less to solve the problem of future con-
tingencies than to defer it. Note further that the contingency of particular
future events immediately contaminates the apparent necessity of the past
and present state of affairs. For, applied to the past and the present, the very
same question takes the following form: “Could a sea- battle have not hap-
pened yesterday?” or “Could a sea- battle have not happened today?” us,
contingency ends up affecting all dimensions of time. Although it appears
most clearly in relation to the future, contingency is not a dimension of
time. e fact that a sea- battle happened, is happening, or will happen is
strictly distinct from the possibility that it may not have happened, may not
be happening, or may not happen. In other words, Aristotle’s argument is
not intended to clarify a feature of the future as distinct from the past and
present. e argument is rather intended to clarify contingency, which as a
modality may apply to all three dimensions of time.
It is not necessary that all affirmation and negation of contraries be
either true or false; for, the case for those that have the potentiality
of being and of not being is not the same as for those that are and
are not. (On Int. 9, 19b1– 4)
As distinct both from trivial potentiality inferred retrospectively from a pres-
ent actuality, and from a potentiality which is inferred retrospectively from
an actuality seen sub specie aeternitatis, potentiality presents a modal charac-
ter. If logos is an inherent standard, it must show itself neither in actual being
as such, nor in being at a certain time, but in actually being in a certain way.
In what way?
Motion
“en we do not destroy the [principle] that everything either is or is not...
but one can say these according to potentiality or according to actuality”
55
(Ph.I, 8, 191b27– 29). e beings that exhibit the inherence of logos will then
be understandable not in terms of the option of being and nonbeing, but in
terms of both being and having a standard. eir actuality will be exactly the
actuality of a particular potentiality. In a word, these beings will move.
ere is, on the one hand, that which is actual only, and that which
is in potential and actual... A distinction having been made with
respect to each kind19 between the actuality and the potentiality,
motion is the actuality of that which is potentially just as such. (Ph.
III, 1, 200b26– 28; 201a10– 12, 28– 30)
Moving beings will exhibit logos as the very articulation of their actuality with
their potentiality. Unlike a res extensa, they will be in actuality; but, unlike a
res cogitans, their potentiality will be neither trivial nor temporal. ey will
exhibit their potentiality modally, that is, as potentiality.
Motion then may attest and exhibit the inherence of logos. What kind
of motion can do so? In other words, aside from its trivial and temporal
versions, what is a potentiality, and what is the specific kind of potential-
ity whose actuality exhibits the inherence of logos? According to Aristotle’s
compact definition, a potentiality is “the source of change in another or [in
itself] as another” (Metaph. IX, 1, 1046a11; V, 12). Let us think about the
first part— namely potentiality being the source of change in another thing.
To use Aristotle’s example, the potentiality of building a house is a source
of change in another, in the material: bricks, stones, and so on. Similarly,
we already saw how bees had a potentiality for preparing wax— they had
a source of change in the “drops from the flowers and especially from the
trees” (HA IX, 40, 623b28). But, as we have also seen, being used for build-
ing honeycombs is not the inherent standard of being of wax, it is a function
externally imposed on a material by bees, just as bricks and stones have the
potential of being a house from the viewpoint and initiative of the builder.
us, a potentiality as a source of change in another cannot help us find any-
thing like an inherent standard.
What about the second half of the definition of potentiality? What about
potentiality as a source of change not in another, but in itself as another? Here
the mover and the moved are no longer separate as in the case of the builder
and the house, or bees and wax. For now they happen to be the same thing.
e classical example of this kind of potentiality is the case of the physician
who heals himself. He is the source of change as having the art of medicine,
and he also happens to be the one who is being cured. Sure enough, this kind
of potentiality seems inherent to be being that is undergoing the change,
56
unlike the piece of wax which was turned into building material by bees or
used for a thought experiment by Descartes. And yet, here it is only by coin-
cidence that actuality and potentiality, “fact” and “standard,” are in the same
being. In other words, it is not as a patient that the person heals himself, but
only as happening to have acquired the art of medicine. ere is no inherent
connection between this person’s being sick and his medical intervention.
us, a potentiality as source of change in the changing being itself as another
cannot help us either in finding an inherent standard. For, if the inherence of
logos is to show itself, it can only be in a potentiality as a source of change in
the changing being itself as itself, and not as another, and in a motion as the
actuality of this kind of potentiality as such.
Is there such a potentiality? Is there such a source of change in the thing
itself as itself? ere is a third option:
By “potentiality” I mean not only that which we have defined as “a
source of change in another or [in itself] as another,” but all source
of motion or rest. Nature too is in the same genus as potentiality,20
for it is a source of motion, but not in another, but in itself as itself.
(Metaph. IX, 8, 1049b5– 10)
It is here that actuality and potentiality, “standard” and “fact,” logos and being,
finally manifest themselves in one and the same being in a non- accidental
way. Here the moving being, being the source of change in itself, will pre-
cisely exhibit the inherence of its standard of being. at it has an inherent
standard will be apparent by its having an inherent source of motion. It is
not the wax that we must focus on for finding the source of the process, for
finding the logos of being, but bees. By preparing wax for honeycombs and by
building them, it is not the wax, but the bees that exhibit their way of being,
what it is for them to be, their “logos of being” as inherent standard. So the
logos of being shall exhibit its inherent, non- external and non- coincidental,
character in potentialities as sources of motion or change in the moving or
changing being itself as itself.
What is this source of change that lies within the changing being as itself?
Aristotle already said it. Nature is exactly such a source: “Nature is a source
and cause of moving and resting in that which it is primarily by itself and not
coincidentally” (Ph. II, 1, 192b21– 23). We now know what this latter speci-
fication means: a man may happen to be a doctor and heal himself, but the
source we are searching does not happen to be inherent, but is inherent. We
are looking for a healing that does take place not because the patient happens
to have learned the medical art and to operate on himself. Logos will exhibit
57
its inherence not only by any moving being, but by natural moving beings,
because only the latter contain within themselves the source of their motion,
and not coincidentally. is is what we mean by saying that the living body
heals itself, and not as a physician heals his patient— regardless of whether
the patient happens to be himself or not. Further, it is because healing is
a natural process exhibiting the logos of the being involved, that Socrates’s
drinking of the hemlock is a violation of his logos of being. us, if we are
seeking concrete manifestations of logos as inherent standard, we must look
at natural motions. So this is what we shall do in chapters 3 and 4.
Action
And yet, Socrates does not simply die after drinking the hemlock. His death is
not just a motion or a change, a natural occurrence. e debate about immor-
tality is not just strategic ethical consolation as for the young Pythagoreans
around him. As he himself emphasizes in the Phaedo (98C–D), his death at
the end of that dialogue is the result of a very conscious and sincere decision,
whose story is told in the Apology, and of a resoluteness, attested in the Crito.
Similarly, On Interpretation does not simply distinguish the modal con-
cept of potentiality from the trivial and temporal ones. It also draws a crucial
distinction within the modal concept of potentiality itself. Potentiality is not
only at the basis of Aristotle’s concept of motion, but also of action. Hence, if
rhetoric is “concerned with things about which we deliberate,” and if “no one
deliberates about things which cannot become, be, or hold otherwise,” and
if, as we saw, all dimensions of time are in a way subject to contingency, and
therefore some kind of deliberation, then rhetoric is used with respect to all
dimensions of time (Rh. I, 2, 1357a). In fact, the kinds of rhetoric map onto
the three dimensions of time: “a member of the assembly judges about things
to come, the dicast about things past, and the spectator about the ability [of
the speaker]; so that necessarily rhetorical logoi will be three in kind: delibera-
tive, forensic and epideictic” (Rh. I, 3, 1358b). erefore Aristotle’s Rhetoric
develops the modal concept of potentiality into all three temporal dimensions.
Our reference to Socrates and rhetoric here is not incidental. For Aristotle
himself supplies his reductio ad absurdum argument against necessitarianism
with such empirical remarks: if necessitarianism were true, “it would not be
necessary either to deliberate [bouleuesthai] or to take pains [pragmateuesthai]
by saying that ‘if we will do so and so, then this will be; but if we will not do
it, it will not be’ ” (On Int. 9, 18b31– 33). Here Aristotle attacks necessitari-
anism first by stating that contingency exists by necessity, and secondly by
pointing to the empirical existence of “deliberation” and “taking pains”: “We
see that a source of that which will be depends also on deliberating and on
58
some acting [praxai ti]...” (19a7– 9). Aristotle here substitutes the earlier
pragmateuesthai with praxai. Although the two are etymologically related, the
meanings of pragmateuesthai are roughly “to busy oneself,” “to be engaged in
business,” “to take in hand,” “to elaborate,” while praxai is the aorist infinitive
of the broader verb prassein: to pass over, to accomplish, to effect an object,
to make, to have to do, be busy with, to manage state affairs, take part in
the government, to transact, to practice. In a word, Aristotle seems to have
broadened the scope of what he takes to be a “source of that which will be”
so as to include not only natural processes, but also personal business and
interpersonal undertakings.21
True, acts, decisions, and events can always be interpreted sub specie aeter-
nitatis, from the viewpoint of an eternal spectator. Perhaps this was what
early ancient Greeks meant by anagkê and what we call “fate” or “destiny.” In
light of the eternal spectator’s perspective, this interpretation must declare
illusory all human processes of projection, anticipation, deliberation, hesita-
tion, and trial and error with regard to things that, “supposedly,” could have
been, could be, and can be otherwise than they are. Humans are factually able
to degrade their powers as finite and illusory in light of an eternal spectator
of which they have no firsthand experience. Yet, in doing this, humans must
also be overrating their powers in claiming to know what an eternal specta-
tor knows or would know. If a person claims his ignorance about the event
of a sea- battle tomorrow, he must a fortiori claim his ignorance about the
existence of an eternal spectator who is right about all future occurrences. In
arguing against necessitarianism, Aristotle thus seems to side with Socrates
who, in the Apology, claims to have a wisdom that is on a par neither with
any human opinion nor with divine wisdom. Indeed, humans are able to
always imagine the future as that which will have happened anyway, or as
that about which what is claimed will turn out to be either true or false. And
yet this interpretation presupposes what the “source of that which will be,”
instead of explaining it. It conceals the distinction between the actual and
the possible— whether in the future, past or present. In the introduction of
chapter 4, we shall touch upon the human ability to articulate a world where
all human freedom, deliberation, decision, and responsibility are deferred; in
in section 3 of chapter 6, we shall offer an explanation of how humans are
even capable of construing such an interpretation of the world.
So far as this chapter of the book is concerned, potentiality is a necessary
concept for understanding logos as inherent standard because standard and fact
are neither identical (as assumed in the trivial concept of potentiality) nor sim-
ply temporally successive (as assumed by the temporal concept of potentiality
in necessitarianism). Potentiality grounds human action and deliberation for
59
the very same reasons. Socrates’s death is not a simple change. It is an action.
It is a performance.
It is curious that potentiality grounds both logos as inherent standard, and
action. Is this a coincidence?
We see that a source of that which will be depends also on delib-
erating and on some acting, and that to be possible and not to be
possible are in those that are not always actually at work, which do
admit both being and not being, becoming and not becoming. (On
Int. 9, 19a7– 11)
Aristotle clearly states his previous point about potentiality:
On the one hand, both [contradictories] admit of happening; on
the other hand, whenever one of them is, then the other will not
be true. For at the same time it has the potentiality of being and
not- being. But if it necessarily is or is not, then both will not be
possible. (On Int. 13, 22b18– 23)
For action, what is needed is the simultaneous, inclusive, or comprehensive
availability of both contraries, a relation that holds on to contraries without
letting one be reduced or indifferent to the other:
It also appears that not all that has the potentiality of being or
walking have the contrary potentiality, but there are some for which
this [i.e., not having both potentialities] is not true: first, on the one
hand, this applies to those that are possible not with respect to logos,
for instance fire has the potentiality of heating, a potentiality with-
out logos; but, then, the potentialities with logos are potentialities of
many and of opposites, whereas the ones without logos are not all
like this; as we said, fire does not have the potentiality of heating
and of not heating; but those that are always actual do not have this
either. However some potentialities without logos have the opposite
possibilities at the same time. But this is said for the sake of the fol-
lowing: that, even when they are said in accordance with the same
meaning [kata to auto eidos], not all potentialities involve opposites.
(On Int. 13, 22b36– 23a6)
Potentialities with logos are open to opposite outcomes.22 However, there
is something intriguing about Aristotle’s distinctions here: although all
60
potentialities with logos involve opposites, not all potentialities involving
opposites are with logos. And this is why the two distinctions do not overlap:
Aristotle explicitly leaves room for potentialities that, although without logos,
do involve opposites. In other words, although he does divide beings into
those that admit opposite potentialities and those that do not, this divide
does not map onto the one between “rational” and “irrational” beings. He
does not divide the world into spontaneously acting free rational beings and
irrational beings bound up by necessity. Here, in On Interpretation, Aristotle
simply mentions the existence of this grey area without giving any example.
is grey area also appears in an even more covert way in the famous
discussion of potentiality in the Metaphysics: “All [potentialities] with logos
involve opposites, but those without logos involve one [of the opposites]”
(Metaph. IX, 2, 1046b5– 6). is quotation and its context consistently gener-
alize the fact that potentialities with logos involve opposites by the adjective
“all” (pasa), but do not do so for the claim that potentialities without logos do
not involve opposites. Does Aristotle have in mind the grey area more explic-
itly indicated in On Interpretation? We will return to this grey area between
alogos and logos in our discussion of the human soul in our chapter 5 on the
Nicomachean Ethics.
However, the discussion in the Metaphysics does not simply problematize
the distinctions in On Interpretation, but also sheds light on its context:
Since some of these sources [i.e., potentialities] are inherent in
beings with soul, some in ensouled beings and in the part of
the soul that has logos, it is clear that some of the potentiali-
ties will be without logos, and some with logos. (Metaph. IX, 2,
1046a36– 1046b3)
e context of the Metaphysics clearly points to something that was implicit
in our discussion of logos from the beginning. In chapers 3 and 4, we shall
see that natural motion exhibits how logos is an inherent standard holding on
to the spatiotemporal manifold of the aspects of a being without letting one
yield to the other. en, in chapters 5 and 6, we shall see that human action
exhibits how logos is an inherent openness to opposites in human action as
we saw in this section.
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation
In this chapter of the book, we saw dialectic at work. We received the con-
clusion of our previous chapter 1 (“logos means standard”) as an endoxa or a
61
“tradition.” rough a discussion of examples, we challenged this conclusion
by showing that it must live up to assuming the predicate of inherence. us,
we asked: how can we claim that a certain logos, understood as “standard,”
belongs to a being unless this standard is inherent to it? Returning from the
non- Aristotelian example of artifacts to Aristotle’s own examples, natural
beings, we gathered an attestation of an inherent standard precisely in its
violation: that Socrates dies means that he himself no longer changes or even
undergoes change. On Interpretation allowed us to refine our understanding
of logos as inherent standard: if a being is to have an inherent logos, it must
hold on to potentiality in its very actuality. After distinguishing the modal
concept of potentiality from the trivial and temporal concepts of potentiality
by refuting necessitarianism, we inferred that this modal concept is noth-
ing but an expression of Aristotle’s concept of motion. So, we concluded,
logos will prove itself to be an inherent standard only by means of inherently
motivated, that is, natural, motions. is shall be the topic of chapters 3 and
4. Yet, On Interpretation also drew a distinction within the modal concept of
potentiality itself: potentialities with logos and those without logos— with an
ambiguous grey area in between. e examples of the potentialities with logos
were taken from human action and deliberation. us logos will prove itself
to be inherent if some actions turn out to be inherently motivated. is is the
topic of chapters 5 and 6.
As to the overall project of this book, until now we saw logos in the sense
of “inherent standard”: an inherent relation between the fully realized, actual
existence of a being and its having a claim, a potentiality for its being, with-
out letting one yield to or overtake the other.
So how does logos exhibit its inherence, first, in natural motion, and sec-
ondly, in human action?
62
CHAPTER 3
Natural Motion
Logos in the Physics
We are still trying to get a firm hold on the meaning of the phrase “logos of
being” in Aristotle’s Categories. In chapter 1, we argued that there logos means
“standard”; in chapter 2, we noticed that this standard must be inherent and
exhibit this inherence in the interrelation of actuality and potentiality, that
is, in internally motivated beings, in natural beings. us we are now led to
investigate Aristotle’s philosophy of nature. In section 1 we elaborate the
Aristotelian notion of a “theoretical” natural scientist and of a correspond-
ingly “spectacular” nature that exhibits the inherent character of its logos in
motion. In section 2 we focus on living beings and their motions: nutri-
tion and reproduction. We shall see that these two motions introduce a new
meaning of logos: since they involve the integration of matter into the “form
according to logos” within the living being’s body (in nutrition) or outside
it (in reproduction), this new meaning of logos can roughly be expressed by
“ratio.” But, in section 3, we shall note that not all meanings of logos denote
the integration of matter according to Aristotle, and thus we shall set the
stage for the elaboration of two other kinds of natural motion in chapter 4 on
animal life: sensation and locomotion.
1. e Natural
What does logos have to do with nature?
“Nature loves to hide itself,” says Heraclitus in fragment 123. When we
are bitten by a dog, when an earthquake destroys houses and crushes thou-
sands of lives, when we are struck by a virus, when we imagine a meteor
hitting the Earth, it seems like all this happens on the background of the
terrifying and yet essential ambient silence of the forces of nature. We may
well speak about nature, translate, interpret, or represent it, voice its claims
and defend or subjugate it. But it seems that, however much we try, we will
always be the ones who lend voice to it, who discuss our own interpretation
63
and understanding of it, who defend or reject one another’s claim about that
demand. Aristotle himself most famously proclaims: “Of animals, only the
human being possesses logos” (Pol. I, 1, 1253a10– 11). So, this seems to be the
dilemma of human alienation from nature: either we dominate nature and
control a servant indifferent to our command, the blind force of nature, or
else we are subjected to a deaf master that does not and even cannot ask for
our obedience. How can we ever approach nature neither as the compliant or
resistant, but in any case blind, material of human undertakings, nor as the
merciless and yet irrational avenger of the hubris of us mortals? How can
we ever approach nature beyond categories of subjugation and use, neither as
master nor as our servant? is is our first question.
Logos is said in many ways. But if there is anything common to these vari-
ous meanings, it may be that all may denote something “unnatural.” We are
not unfamiliar with thinking that nature is fundamentally alogos unless we
find a certain logic to it, unless we understand it, unless we give some form,
voice, and meaning to it. In fact, the specifically human vocation may well
be thought to be this imposition of meaning on the meaningless. Hence our
second question: how are we to make sense of Aristotle’s definition of nature
precisely in terms of logos?
is chapter of the book proposes to offer a solution to both of the ques-
tions above. In this chapter, we shall work out two major occurrences of
logos in Aristotle’s philosophy of nature: first, logos in Aristotle’s definition
of nature as “form according to logos” in Physics II, 1, 193a31 and 193b3, and
secondly logos in his understanding of organic nature, that is, living beings, as
a logos of growth, in On the Soul II, 4, 416a10ff.1 We shall show how and why
nature is defined in terms of logos for Aristotle, and argue that, according to
him, natural beings stretch out to put up their own show and to express their
“logic.”2
In laws, legislators unduly forbid children from stretching and
crying, for these are useful for growth since in this way a bodily
exercise happens; because holding breath produces strength against
hardships, which is what happens to children when they stretch
themselves. (Pol. VII, 15, 1336a34– 39)
According to Aristotle, natural beings are essentially “spectacular” before
being the dull and malleable material of human impositions or our sublime
but silent retaliator. Accordingly, Aristotle’s natural scientist is neither a voy-
eur watching nature through a keyhole, nor a colonizer in search of natural
resources, nor a crafty experimenter settled in a laboratory registering results.
64
He is rather a theoretical person— more precisely, a theôros, an envoy sent out
of his city to consult an oracle, to ask for a logos and to watch rituals, games,
or tragedies.3 Overall, we wish to awaken a sense of the natural scientist as a
“theorist” and a listener attentive and responsive to the “spectacular” charac-
ter of vociferating natural beings.4
Nature
In order to do this, we must try to momentarily bracket dualities that set
up nature against something else such as “human beings,” “history,” “cul-
ture,” or “nurture,” simply because we do not find such dualities in Aristotle.5
For, according to him, nature itself is not a section of beings as opposed to
another. Nature is not a pragma, it is not even a being (on) or a “substance”
(ousia) in the sense of an individual thing (tode ti).6 To put it in terms foreign
to Aristotle, nature is much less a being than the being of beings.7 Nature is
not even a general name for the totality of natural beings. If nature appears
at all, there is something “else” that appears “besides” nature. Perhaps this is
the sense in which it “loves to hide itself” according to Heraclitus. “Every
thing that has a nature is a being, since it is something that underlies, and
nature is always in an underlying being” (Ph. II, 1, 192b33– 34).8 en nature
is never clear and distinct in the sense of being separated, isolated, or even
isolatable. Nature is never over against, but under. Or rather, it is always in
something (en hypokeimenôi), is essentially responsible for something (aition)
or the source of something (arkhê).
ese emphatic “in,”“for,” and “of” all appear in the major Aristotelian
definition of nature: “Nature is a source of and cause for being moved and
coming to rest in that to which it belongs primarily” (Ph. II, 1, 192b21– 23;
emphasis is ours). Nature is the source of and cause for motion in moving
beings. Natural beings, instead of constituting the realm of nature, are by
nature and according to nature:
According to nature [kata physin] are both these things [an underly-
ing thing and a being] and as many things as belong to these in
virtue of themselves, just as being carried up belongs to fire. For
this is not a nature, nor does it have a nature, but is by nature [phy-
sei] and according to nature [kata physin]. (Ph. II, 1, 192b35– 193a2;
emphases are ours)9
Aristotle systematically and emphatically distinguishes nature itself from
natural beings or naturally oriented processes, without suggesting that nature
is apart and away from them. Whatever the true meaning of this distinction
65
between nature and natural beings, his examples for natural beings are “ani-
mals and their parts, plants, and the simple bodies (like earth, fire, air, and
water)” (Ph. II, 1, 192b9– 11).
Aristotle defines nature not in terms of life and soul, but in terms of motion
and rest. If it is possible at all to talk about logos in nature, we then must get
a hold of Aristotle’s understanding of motion. Motion is not only among the
few central concepts in Aristotle’s philosophy, it is the Aristotelian concept
that has been fundamentally modified, if not altogether rejected and aban-
doned, by early modern science. However counterintuitive it might seem, in
order to grasp Aristotle’s concept of motion, we must first clarify and undo
both post- Aristotelian and anti- Aristotelian conceptions of motion.10 But
we cannot simply do away with them, we must understand how they are post-
Aristotelian and anti- Aristotelian. More exactly, we must be able to have a
sense of the historical sedimentation of the concept of motion in order to
work our way through the early modern rejection of Aristotelian cosmology
towards that which they rejected. Since this is a task we cannot even claim
to attempt in the context of this book, what follows is a very rough attempt
to undo four interconnected reductions made in the early modern era pre-
cisely against the Aristotelianism of that time: (a) the reduction of causality
to material causation, (b) the reduction of hylê to matter, (c) the reduction
of motion to locomotion, and (d) the reduction of kosmos to infinite space.11
us, we shall be able to recover Aristotle’s concept of motion, grasp his defi-
nition of nature, and understand the function of logos therein.
Undoing Physics
A. e Reduction of Causality to Material Causation. To begin with, Aristo-
tle’s word for “cause,” aition, comes from aitia, which means “responsibility”:
it means “guilt, blame, charge, fault” in a bad sense, and in a good sense
“credit” or even “reputation.”12 Pretty much like the term pragma mentioned
in the previous chapters, aitia is also used in the sense of “case in dispute,”
and in the dative it means “for the sake of something.” e word aitia itself
comes from the verb aitiaomai, which again highlights the pejorative: “to
accuse.” In light of this partial semantic field, all our mechanical cause- effect
relationships appear faceless, impersonal, and irresponsible. Aition in Ancient
Greek has clear ethical- political connotations and brings to mind the idea of
a definite agent who has committed a certain act, an agent who had an inten-
tion and who now has a certain face and a name.
e reason why aition in Ancient Greek appears much more human, ethi-
cal, legal, conscious, or responsible than what we understand by the word
“cause” is that early modern philosophy has precisely criticized, reduced, and
66
finally rejected this anthropomorphism. It is precisely by making the concept
of “cause” less personal, less idiosyncratic, less capricious, less singular, and
less interested, and more impersonal, more “objective,” formal, universal, and
quantitative, that early modern philosophers hoped to make causality a realm
of better prediction and higher precision. Schematically speaking, there are
four kinds of causes in Aristotle: firstly “matter” (hylê), secondly “the first
beginning of motion” (protê arkhê kinêseôs), thirdly “form” (eidos), and fourthly
the “end” (telos) (Ph. II, 3; Metaph. V, 2). Again schematically speaking, mod-
ern science seems to have rejected the latter two. us, by reducing causality
to a relationship of matter in motion, early modern physics deprived causality
of the face it had, of the name it bore, and of the intention that subtended it.
B. e Reduction of Hylê to “Matter.” Deprived of “form” and “end,” both
“matter” and “source of motion” come to be fundamentally modified. For
instance, in Homer (Odyssey V, 257), hylê meant less mere “stuff” than “the
stuff of which a thing is made,” that is, a material for a chair, of a spear, in a bird
nest.13 Hence hylê often meant a definite kind of material: “wood,” “timber,”
or “forest trees” in distinction from dendra, “fruit trees,” as can be seen in the
English word “xylophone.”14 But hylê also came to mean something in direct
opposition to timber trees prepared for the carpenter: “copse,” “brushwood,”
“undergrowth.” Finally, already in Homer again, hylê meant “forest” (Iliad XI,
115; Odyssey XVII, 316).
Just as the meaning of aitia grounds our conception of cause, but is sig-
nificantly larger, more concrete, and more personal, hylê too offers a wider
range of senses than our concept of “matter.” For Aristotle “even hylê is a
source” (Metaph. IX, 1, 1046a24). Even hylê generates and governs beings,
and is responsible for some beings. It is their source just like nature is. Just as
nature is responsible for something, hylê is material for something. As “under-
growth,” hylê is not indeterminate stuff, a pure res extensa, but is determined
as falling short of an inherent standard of growth because it is thought in
terms of growth. Hylê means undergrowth, but also undergrowth.15
In short, early modern philosophy understood matter as deprived of form
and end, and thus as homogenous. For Descartes, matter is res extensa. e
substantia of his famous piece of wax is not an undergrowth at all; it does
not quite have a name, it does not grow and is not to have any face itself,
but rather, being receptive to all possible faces and conventional names, is
exposed to the inspection of the mind alone. Once reduced to matter and
deprived of form and end, hylê is no longer seen or even imagined, but simply
inspected without having any look to offer itself. To use the terminology of
Hobbes, who literally follows the basic meaning of the Ancient Greek eidos
and the Latin species, once reduced to matter, hylê offers no “visible shew.”16
67
C. e Reduction of Motion to Locomotion. It is but reasonable that
early modern physics understands motion as motion of this matter deprived
of form (eidos) and end (telos). Schematically speaking, we find four kinds of
motion in Aristotle: change with respect to being, change of quality, change
of quantity, and change with respect to place (Ph. III, 1, 200b33– 34).17 In
early modern science, however, we see that the reduction of causality and
matter entails a reduction of these four kinds of motion. Let us touch upon
each of the four.
First, deprived of form and end, matter can no longer change with respect
to its being. For matter as the eternal underlying thing is neither generated
nor perishable.18 Although this idea had a history before Aristotle, going
back to the Atomists and perhaps to Parmenides, its posterity has proven
even more fecund: the Democritean idea of the permanence of matter was
extremely influential, via Lucretius, on early modern rationalism and mate-
rialism as well as on early modern physics, and even on the tenets of nascent
thermodynamics and chemistry.19
Secondly, this matter, ungenerated and imperishable, deprived of form
and end, can no longer change with respect to quality either. For it is not and
cannot be informed, but only shaped, and this shape can have no intrinsic
unity because, being homogenous, the “parts” of matter are indifferent to one
another. ere is no intrinsic difference between one cubical body and many
bodies happening to form together a cube.
irdly, the motion of a piece of matter cannot be a change with respect
to quantity for the same reason. For again there is no intrinsic difference
between a body of a certain magnitude and a certain number of different
bodies adding up to the same magnitude. e only thing that counts for this
body is its mass, but even so, there is no intrinsic difference between one body
weighing three kilos and three bodies weighing one kilo each. e difference
that counts for early modern physics is, say, between one body weighing one
kilo and one weighing three kilos. But what does “one” mean here, if not
an arbitrary imposition of the subject?20 Qualitatively and quantitatively, the
whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts— except our own externally
imposed arbitrary conceptions.
us, finally, no longer being generated or destroyed, no longer really
changing with respect to quality or quantity, homogenous matter can only
undergo a change with respect to place. And indeed, together with mass,
typical Newtonian physics is solely concerned with distance, that is, dis-
tance between “places,” topoi. But although Aristotle himself proclaims that
change with respect to place is the most prominent kind of motion (Ph. IV,
14, 223b21– 22; VII, 2, 243a11; VIII, 7), the early modern notion of “place”
68
looks extremely different than Aristotelian topos.21 For it is not “measured”
according to itself, but with respect to its distance to other “places” which are
in fact no more “measured” according to themselves.
D. e Reduction of Kosmos to Infinite Space. en we must turn to the
reduction of topos. Early modern physics, and especially the Cartesian coor-
dinate system, replace the Aristotelian concept of “place”22 with “position”
or “location,” because here “places” are no longer contained within a finite
universe (to pan) having a certain order (kosmos).23 All “places” are instead
distributed throughout an “infinite” environment and thus are determined
only relatively, that is, with respect to other positions.24 Position and location
are truly adequate terms to be contrasted with the Ancient Greek topos and
the Latin locus in so far as the former two emphasize the subjective activity of
locating, positing according to its own relative locatedness or positedness.
us, as motion is reduced to locomotion in early modern science, the
loci of this locomotion are also made strictly homogenous. Hence, according
to what will be known as the “law of inertia,” a moving body would move
indefinitely in the same direction simply because it is already moving in that
direction. Matter has no intrinsic “inclination” (hormê, as in Ph. II, 1, 192b18)
with respect to its position, location, or direction.25 Just as a body is not
intrinsically related to its own parts in early modern mechanistic physics, it is
also indifferent to its environment. Homogenous matter moves in a homog-
enous environment with no “center,” no “periphery,” no “up,” no “down,” no
“limit,” and no “threshold.” is infinite environment of matter in motion is
indeed not a universe or an “all” (to pan) in the sense of a finite and ordered
whole (kosmos),26 but is something that is by definition never an “all.”27 us
such an environment is altogether foreign to Aristotelian physics and is des-
ignated with a term that has no equivalent there: “space.”28
So if we are to understand motion in Aristotle and thereby find an answer
to our question, that is, the inherence of logos in natural motion, we must
recall a sense of aition as a “responsible” having a certain look (eidos) and
being motivated by an “intention” (telos), we must think of hylê as having a
certain “directionality” as undergrowth. us we must see motion and change
not as the transitory external modifications of an intrinsically homogenous
eternal underlying matter, but as something happening to something, some-
thing suffering under something, and even something done by something to
itself.29 We must reinstate matter, mortality, earthliness, and finitude in the
Aristotelian sublunar nature. Finally, we must somehow picture a differenti-
ated, multiple, and heterogeneous universe where bodies are in places not
simply because they are actually there, where bodies are not absent from places
simply because they actually are not there. As prefigured in our two previous
69
discussions, we shall see a sense of “stretch” and “tension” become more and
more concrete in this chapter of the book, and more and more diverse in the
following ones.
For Aristotle, nature as aition or arkhê is then not an initial push or stimu-
lation; it is comparable to a stretch that from the end (telos) of a process
reaches back to its beginning and permeates and informs the whole change;
matter is stretched out toward the mature, multiple, and settled life of a forest,
as fire is stretched away from the center of the universe towards its place. In
short, while elaborating Aristotle’s concept of nature, we must keep in mind
that an inherent back- turning stretch pervades nature, and that, according to
him, “place has some power” (Ph. IV, 1, 208b10– 11).30
Everyday “Physics”
If we are to employ Aristotle’s typical procedure from what is clear to us,
we may ask what is clear to us in the context of causality, matter, motion,
and spatiality.31 Perhaps dismantling the early modern reductions brings
us less to an even more remote era of history than to what is already clear
to us as living beings and involved human agents. Perhaps as theôroi who
have left our town, each and every day we are in touch with an experiential
sense of motion that lies beneath the way motion is taught in high school,
measured and calculated from a third- person perspective. Indeed, scientific
technical concepts such as cause, motion, matter, mass, and space have been
historically derived from more concrete human experiences, as can be seen
sometimes from their etymology, and yet this means that becoming aware of
these formalizations and abstractions does not simply lead us further away
from our time back to the primitive and prescientific, but also that such an
awareness brings us critically back to our concrete human experience.32
What then is our experiential sense of causality, matter, motion, and spa-
tiality? We are beings who cause change in the world and who move all our
life or who assume to be doing so. When we move around or cause changes
in the world, we very often do so with a certain purpose in mind. When we
ask a question such as “Why is the coffee maker in the bathroom?” the kind
of explanation we expect is not: “Because that is exactly where it is located”
or “Because it has been put there.” Such answers are uninformative, if not
redundant, and hence would be immediately followed by another question:
“Who put it there? Why?” In this process of asking, we are seeking neither an
account of the beginning of motion in the universe as a whole, nor the very
last proximate force that finally pushed or pulled the coffee maker to where it
is now. Rather, we are after the “whole point” or the “overarching story” that
we assume to be subtending the situation, we are trying to see the face of the
70
disfigured state of affairs, we are trying to recognize what is going on. We are
familiar with both the bathroom and the coffee maker, but the meaning of
their relationship is riddlesome. Something seems out of place.
us, we can keep asking questions, and as long as the answers we get
give us more proximate causes of motion, we will be unsatisfied, for “it must
stop somewhere” (Metaph. XII, 3, 1070a4). If our interlocutor is expounding
on the respective positions of the coffee maker in space, we are getting some
answers, but no account, explanation, or justification—no logos in the sense
of the relation holding together the formerly disparate terms. We are lacking
a middle term between the bathroom and the coffee maker. When asking
about the cause of the coffee maker’s being in the bathroom, we are not seek-
ing information, we are trying to understand. We are looking not for another
“cause” than the ones we are getting, but for another kind of cause.
What we seek in our question is the final or formal cause (telos or eidos),
while our reticent interlocutor keeps giving an impoverished version of the
Aristotelian efficient cause.33 If one is asking “Why is the coffee maker in the
bathroom?” then one clearly already knows what a coffee maker and a bath-
room are, and thus sees the coffee maker in the bathroom as out of place. is is
evident from the words we are using: a word like “bathroom” does not supply
us spatial coordinates, it does not designate an indefinite anonymous Raum
or space, nor is it a certain space plus certain objects such as a faucet, a tub,
towels... A bathroom is rather precisely a room for something, obviously for
taking a bath. It is the activity of taking a bath that first gives all the previous
details a unified aspect or look, because it supplies the connections between
them, it provides the lines of force between them, it connects the points that
turn out not to be points, it sheds light on them no longer as loose objects that
have happened to fall together instantly, but as stretched toward one another
all along. Perhaps it is in this sense that place has, for Aristotle, “a certain
power.” us, the eidos or telos is not “news.” While “out of place,” we notice
the coffee maker almost caught red- handed in the bathroom; there it does not
have a show, it is not part of that show, but of another: to “make coffee.”
is “experiential logic” of everyday life not only brings us closer to Aris-
totle’s Physics, but even foreshadows, perhaps, the most formal parts of the
corpus, namely his syllogistic. For the connection between the disparate ele-
ments of our everyday understanding of a bathroom, the “stretch” between
the objects, corresponds to the Aristotelian “middle term” (to meson): it is
the connection that makes us understand the two other terms.34 And while
an unacquainted view of the bathroom may be seen to correspond to the
dogmatic universal statement “All towels stay in the bathroom,” our everyday
implicit understanding is mediated: “Towels are used for taking a bath, and
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we take baths in the bathroom, so that’s why they stay in the bathroom.” Of
course, houses and objects are organized in different ways in different cul-
tures and according to different people’s taste. Yet, the point here is not that
human places are organized specifically in this or that way and by means of
this or that object, but precisely that human places are organized. And it is only
as organized places that different spatialities in different cultures and in dif-
ferent experiences come to be apparent in their very difference.
Nature at Work
So Aristotle attempts to view causality and motion, as it were, “from
within.”35 Here cause looks less like an external stimulus or a push than like
something “responsible” or “accountable.” Places here look less like locations
with definable coordinates, than like homes, hives, nests, territories, rooms,
hideouts, yards, roads, detours, and resting points. Motion looks less like
happenings, incidences, or occurrences than activities, undergoings, or even
undertakings. is is exactly reflected in the way we would ask in English:
“What is the coffee maker doing in the bathroom?” To draw from the senses
of pragmateuesthai mentioned earlier in chapter 2, motion takes the form of
concern, labor, and care. Hence, for Aristotle, motion is grounded on the idea
of work (ergon) and of an end of that work (telos): “Motion is the actuality
[entelekheia] of that which is potentially just as such” (Ph. III, 1, 201a11– 12).
If Aristotle defines nature in terms of motion, he defines motion in terms of
actuality: “being- at- work” (en- ergeia) or “being- at- the- point- of- completion”
(en- telekheia).
We are not unaware that natural beings fundamentally differ from artifacts
like coffee makers, and that natural places differ from human space. How-
ever, one must not exaggerate this difference; in fact, Aristotle emphasizes
more the parallelism between nature and art than their mutual exclusiveness:
Each being comes to be from a synonym— natural beings as well as
the others; for a being is generated either by art, by nature, by for-
tune or by chance. en art is a source in another whereas nature is
a source in [the being] itself. (Metaph. XII, 3, 1070a4– 8)
As we have seen in chapter 2, the source of motion in natural beings is inher-
ent to them, unlike that of the coffee maker and other artifacts. Natural
beings move not only because of something they may happen to become, but
because of something they already are. If we clarify the meaning of the verb
“being” here, we may get a hold of what is “spectacular” about natural beings,
and of its relation to logos.
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What are composite natural beings? Form and matter. Which one gives us
a better grip on their nature, according to Aristotle? After defining nature as
a source or cause of motion and rest in that to which it belongs primarily in
Physics II, 1, 192b21– 24, Aristotle first takes up the view of nature as the “first
underlying hylê” (193a28– 29). According to this view, nature is that which a
being boils down to. Aristotle presents Antiphon’s argument: the nature of a
bed is wood, for, if it is buried under the earth for some time, wood remains
even after it loses its shape as a bed. Note how similar this argument is to Des-
cartes’s wax example: just as the substantia of the wax was some indeterminate
eternal stuff underlying transient sensory aspects, Antiphon takes nature to
be an unarranged (arrythmiston) underlying being that remains continuous
(diamenei... synekhôs) and eternal (aidion) beneath momentary attributes or
affections, states, and dispositions (pathê... kai hexeis kai diatheseis). What
Antiphon and Descartes abstract is one aspect of their own interest in the
thought experiment: wood cannot be the nature of bed for a viewer who is
about to sleep, and extension cannot be the essence of the piece of wax for
bees. Both experiment and both displace things in their experiment and thus
fail to watch what nature may show. Whereas Descartes famously claims that
man is “maître et possesseur de la nature,”36 Aristotle claims:
If human being is the best of all animals, this makes no difference,
for there are many other things that are more divine than human
being, for instance, the most apparent one, those out of which the
kosmos is composed. (NE VI, 7, 1141b1– 1141b3)37
us if “logos of being” is a standard inherent to the being at hand, if it truly
is what it is for that being to be, proof of this will be provided by motion, by
natural motion, that is, by motions whose motive force lies within the mov-
ing being.
Logos and Nature
Hence, Aristotle responds to Antiphon’s “downward” account of nature as
hylê in the following way: “What is potentially flesh or bone does not yet
have its own nature...” (Ph. II, 1, 193b1– 2). Before we read the rest of
the passage, note that Aristotle is here reversing Antiphon’s and Descartes’s
perspective: that which can be anything is something that is not according
to nature. Seen “downwardly” as something unarranged that can be arranged
in any way, the buried bed indeed has no nature. Aristotle seems to invite
Antiphon to watch the spectacle a bit longer: in fact, when the bed is buried,
it turns not into indeterminate stuff; having lost its “shape,” it does not return
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to unarranged (arrythmiston) disorder, but precisely to another order, its own
order, its own “rhythm,” its inherent determination, its “form according to
logos” (eidos to kata ton logon).
Now we can read the whole sentence we partly quoted above:
What is potentially flesh or bone does not yet have its own nature,
until it takes the eidos kata ton logon— that by means of which, in
defining, we say what flesh or bone is; and [what is potentially flesh
or bone] is not according to nature. (Ph. 193b1– 4)
When the bed is buried and the wood starts to sprout, it takes up its own true
face, it shows its look (eidos), it puts up its own show instead of that imposed
by the carpenter. Buried, the wood is destroyed only in the aspect which inter-
ests one who needs a bed. Seen from the perspective of its inherent logos, it is
not destroyed, but rather allowed to be on its own, to put on its own show. As
quickly as Socrates’s body returned to its elements, the piece of wood sprouts
and stretches out toward the look of an oak tree. Even further, it is less the wood
that now reaches ahead to the look of an oak, than it is the show of the oak that
is at last allowed to stretch back toward hylê and take hold of the undergrowth.
e awkwardness of our terms may also be found in Aristotle’s central state-
ment in Physics II, 1: “What, then, is it that grows? Not the from- which, but
the to- which” (193b18– 19).38 is tension or backward stretch starting from
the to- which back to the from- which is indeed the link that keeps apart and
holds together potentiality and actuality. “Just as teachers think they deliver up
the end when they have exhibited a student at work, so too is nature” (Metaph.
IX, 8, 1050a18– 19). Instead of burying the bed like Antiphon or burning the
piece of wax like Descartes, instead of first stripping beings down or displacing
them, Aristotle in a way makes himself a theôros by displacing himself in order
to consult nature, to ask for a logos, to watch the spectacle of nature.
To recapitulate, for Aristotle nature is primarily an inherent source of
motion— inherent not in the Anaximandrean way the unarranged (arryth-
miston) lies beneath rhythmos, or in the way the faceless disorder lies deep
beneath superficial order.39 Rather, nature is inherent as a face waiting to
be allowed to appear, as a show waiting for patience, interest, attention, and
silence from the audience. We add “...and some silence” because just as
natural beings are spectacular, their show is not a pantomime, but the articu-
lation of their proper logic, the expression of what it is for them to be. eir
face is “the logos of what it is for [them] to be” (Ph. II, 3, 194b27– 28). It is in
this sense that the inherently motivated motions of natural beings, most nota-
bly growth, attest that which we have been looking for since the beginning of
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this book: the “logos of being,” an intrinsic relation between potentiality and
actuality, a genuine claim coming from the very being at hand about its own
being, a true standard of being, that is, an inherent standard.
Out of the four basic meanings of logos, namely “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,”
and “speech,” we have now come to understand the first one and accounted
for its inherence: logos as standard.
2. e Organic
Nature then does not exclude logos at all, at least in the sense of inherent stan-
dard, essence, or form: natural beings are characterized by being stretched
between mere being and their logos as what it is for them to be. If it is true that
logos is inherent and that it is the expression of what it is for natural beings
to be, then the meaning of logos would not be restricted to reason, speech,
or ratio as strictly “subjective.” Would this natural logos be derivative of the
logos in reason, language, and logic? Would the show of natural beings be a
ventriloquism, an imposition of our structures of thinking and of living onto
nature? In short, how is this first, natural meaning of logos related to the oth-
ers which seem to be “subjective”?
But, as we suggested, Aristotle’s “logic,” and even the most formal part of
it, his syllogistic, may be seen to be inspired by and derived from the forms
according to logos in nature. After exploring the valid syllogisms in his logic,
Aristotle makes the general observation that all valid inferences require one
affirmative premise and one universal premise (APr. I, 24, 41b7–8). And a
universal premise requires a universal term (On Int. 7). ese requirements
may be considered as following from the theôria of the positive regularities in
nature: not instantaneous miracles one after the other, but the ongoing spec-
tacle of the revolution of stars, the periodical changes of seasons and weather,
the cycles of migration, wind, rain, and snow, the growth and reproduction of
plants and animals, and the show of the oak that spouts from the buried bed
and thus returns to its origin.
And yet there is another sense of logos that does not apply to the whole
range of nature as “standard.” Some natural beings put up a show in a dif-
ferent way and they are stretched in a different way than natural beings as
a whole. For instance, fire is certainly a natural being, it is inherently moti-
vated upward or in centrifugal motion and has its “place” in the first from
last sphere of the universe.40 And yet, although it has its own logos as holding
onto the hot and the dry without letting one yield to or overtake the other,
fire is exemplary of beings that are deprived of logos in another, second sense
that we must illuminate in this section:
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But to some the nature of fire seems simply to be the cause of
nutrition and growth, for it alone of all bodies and elements appears
to be nourished and grow; hence one may suppose that this is that
which works in plants and animals; yet it is somehow a concomi-
tant cause, but the cause is not simply [fire]... for the growth of
fire is limitless [apeiron] as long as there is something to be burned,
whereas of all things composed by nature there is a limit [peras] and
logos of magnitude and growth. (DA II, 4, 416a10– 18)41
Fire served us previously as a good example for showing how the Aristote-
lian concept of locomotion and place differs from early modern notions. But
something else is going on here. As logos is said in many ways, fire has logos in
one sense, as inherent standard, but not in another. True, it is “stretched” away
from the center of the universe, its topos, unlike the early modern concept of
matter, and it is “stretched” between the hot and the dry. But it simply keeps
on “stretching out” however big or small it is. Although, unlike stuff, fire is
not indifferent to its place in the universe, it is indifferent to its magnitude.
e Soul as Form
Nature in general or fire in particular then do not necessarily illustrate logos
in the sense of a limit of magnitude and growth. What is it that has a “logos
of magnitude and growth”? Right after the passage quoted above, Aristotle’s
answer is the ensouled, living being: “But these [limit and logos] belong to the
soul, and not to fire; [they belong] to logos more than to matter” (DA II, 4,
416a19).42 What then does Aristotle mean by soul such that it exhibits a new
sense of logos? Aristotle elaborates his own definition of the soul in several
steps in the first chapter of DA II. Let us offer a running commentary to his
first sketch:
One class of those that are, we call being; but of [being], one as
matter (which in its own right is not a ‘this’ [tode ti]), another as
shape [morphê] and form [eidos] (directly as a result of which some-
thing is called a ‘this’), and third that [which comes to be] out of
them. (DA II, 1, 412a6– 9)43
is is not new to us who have seen that, insofar as each is tode ti, that is, an
individual being that lends itself to direct perception, even natural beings are
“compound”; in the context of natural beings, this “composition” (ek toutôn),
as we also have seen, should be understood not as a “com- position” or “syn-
thesis” in the etymological sense of putting matter and form side by side,
76
because such juxtaposition would be precisely missing the close interconnec-
tion between the two. Aristotle continues:
Now matter is potentiality and form is actuality, and this [i.e., form
or actuality] in two ways: as knowledge [epistêmê] or as contemplat-
ing [theôrein]. (DA II, 1, 412a9– 11)
is sentence introduces a distinction within actuality itself: form or actual-
ity is either like knowledge is or like contemplating. Conceptually Aristotle
here makes room for an actuality that is unlike the full- fledged actuality of
contemplation. So far, Aristotle’s elaboration of the concept of the soul goes
like this: if the soul is, and if one way of being is ousia, and if ousia refers to
either matter or form or the composite, and if form is said in two ways, as
knowledge or as contemplating, then the soul may be either matter or form
(as knowledge or as contemplating), or the composite. But which one?
Bodies seem to be beings preeminently, and among them natural
ones. For these are the sources of the others. But some natural beings
have life, some do not. We are calling life self- nourishing as well as
growth and wasting away. So that every natural body having a share
in life would be a being, but being as composite. Since [a living natu-
ral body] is such and such a body, the soul would not be body. For
the body is not among the things said of an underlying thing, but
rather as an underlying thing and a matter. (DA II, 1, 412a11– 20)44
If beings are mostly bodies and natural bodies, and if some natural bodies
share in life, and if sharing life refers to both self- nourishing and growth
and wasting away, then self- nourishing and growing bodies cannot simply be
bodies, but composite bodies.45 So if the living character is of the body, then
body would correspond to the matter of the composite, and soul to its form.
“erefore it is necessary that the soul be being as form of a natural body
having life potentially” (DA II, 1, 412a20– 22).
At first glance, this convoluted reasoning seems less to give us informa-
tion about the soul than to impose a meaning on the word: the soul is the life
principle, and this life principle is of a body and not the other way around.
Bodies having life potentially look a certain way, perform a certain work, put
up a certain show. And the soul or living is that show: “self- nourishing as
well as growth and wasting away.” To say the least, this “most comprehen-
sive” (DA II, 1, 412a6) definition of the soul is so worldly and bodily that
it immediately disappoints any reader assuming the soul to be something
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aloof, disincarnated, and otherworldly. Eating here seems to be a sufficient
condition for having a soul and a sufficient enactment of it.46 If we are at first
disappointed by this, it is perhaps because we overestimate the value of the
soul and/or we underestimate the significance of nutrition.
Importantly, even as an unwarranted assumption, the claim that the soul
is said of a body and not the other way around implies the impossibility of
transmigration of the soul. If souls could transmigrate, then there would be
absolutely no sense in observing the bodies of living beings in order to under-
stand their life, since their soul would have no inherent relation to their body,
and we could not do biology and any inquiry on the soul unless as some form
of “psychics.”
is “definition” of the soul, however, does not help us distinguish the
natural beings that have a share in life from those that do not. Soul is defined
as form, but so was nature.47 Self- nutrition, the work minimally required
for having life, may well be interpreted as a change with respect to quantity
originating from the being itself. Since we saw that, for Aristotle, fire grows
as much as trees and animals do, how are the latter ensouled bodies distinct
from the soulless former? Despite the fact that elements can turn into one
another, as stated in GC II, 1, 329b1, why cannot we say that, when rain falls,
water is growing in puddles, just as we say that a watered plant does? Don’t
we feed fire as we feed our pets? How are the shows of nature as a whole and
those of living nature any different? Doesn’t each exhibit its inherent logic?
Why did Aristotle suggest that the growth of fire has no limit and logos?
e Soul as Actuality
Aristotle does not call the account of the soul we read above a “definition”
(horos, horismos, or logos). Despite the presence of the “therefore” (ara), it does
not finish anything. It is rather the first step of his dialectical reasoning in
this first chapter of DA II. In this first step, what we learned is that soul and
life and self- nourishing are coextensive. Aristotle continues:
erefore it is necessary that the soul be being as form of a natural
body having life potentially. But being is actuality; therefore [the
soul is] the actuality of such a body. But actuality is said in two
ways: first as knowledge, and then as contemplating. us it is clear
that [the actuality characterizing the soul] is as knowledge. (DA II,
1, 412a20– 24)
Let us elaborate the crucial distinction between actuality “as knowledge” and
actuality “as contemplation.” To say that one knows Latin does not require
78
that one constantly speak, write, read, study, and think about Latin. In fact,
on the contrary, a sign that one knows Latin is that one is able to stop put-
ting to use one’s acquisition, to have internalized or “digested” it. But note
that in fact Latin is an odd example for soul and life, precisely because Latin
is a dead language. But characterizing Latin as a dead language is itself tell-
ing. at a language is dead does not mean that no one in the world ever
actually writes, reads, speaks, understands, and studies it; what it means is
that nobody is able to stop putting their knowledge of Latin to use without
immediately starting to lose it. Learning dead languages is often compa-
rable to Sisyphus’s endless struggle against the natural motion of the rock
that each time rolls down the hill: however much one puts it to use, it does
not quite stick. People quite often have to learn dead languages over and
over again, to resuscitate them, so to speak. Generating a sentence in a dead
language is like building a castle out of dry sand, and its maintenance is
like the constant anxiety of keeping a house of cards straight. On the other
hand, learning a living language leaves one enough room, energy, and time
for playing with it, distorting it, being creative with it, or even forgetting
about it. Knowing a living language is thus similar to life: if it slumbers, if
it is inactive, this does not mean that it is dead, it rather means it is alive.
Hence, in explaining the kind of actuality that characterizes the soul, Aris-
totle interestingly explains his example of knowledge and contemplation
with yet another example he takes precisely from the realm of the soul:
sleep and waking.48 Waking is to sleep what contemplating is to “dormant”
knowledge.
So, in determining the soul, Aristotle is not simply using his classical dis-
tinction between potentiality and actuality, he is refining it. It is not true
that the possession of a language and sleep are states of mere potentiality
and privation, because the requirements for sleep or the possession of some
knowledge are results of prior preparation, the end- products of previous
work. Only knowing beings contemplate, only sleeping beings wake up, only
immature beings can ripen. Or else we are meaning something different by
these words: if fire or a rock contemplates at all, it contemplates without ever
having known; its awakenness does not emerge out of, and ever fall back into,
sleep; it is ever complete without having matured at all. Speaking metaphori-
cally and thus inexactly (Top. VI, 2, 139b34), fire is a narcoleptic fixated in
contemplation, it is a grown- up who has not lived through childhood.49
is is why Aristotle suggested that the growth and magnitude of fire has
no limit or logos. Being a natural body, the locomotion of fire has a definite
inherent directionality, away from the center of the universe. But if fire has a
regularly recognizable “form” or “look” (eidos), its pointy shape is determined
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not by its growth into a telos, but by its inherent locomotion. For the shape
of fire is rather a byproduct of its natural upward impulse. Hence, once it
reaches its natural place, it no longer has the same shape.50 e ensouled
being, on the other hand, presents a growth and completion we do not find
in nonliving nature, an instantiation of logos beyond the stretch between fac-
tual being and inherent standard. Not that the soul is more complete than
fire. In fact, fire is too complete to be ensouled, or too alive to be living.
is completion that distinguishes the soul from nature in general is the
achievement of a state for an activity. ere is an important sense in which
ensouled beings are complete and, in a sense, “incomplete.” Beyond the
fire’s stretch out toward the completion of what it is for it to be, the soul
is stretched between the completion of its past development and its future
exercise of vital functions. e show of the soul is the show both of a “look”
toward the past (its preparedness) and a “look” toward the future (perfor-
mance). In a word, the soul is characterized by being ready.
is is perhaps why, while nature in general was akin to logos as “form
according to logos” (Ph. II, 1, 193a31, 193b3), the soul is also “a being accord-
ing to logos” (DA II, 1, 412b11). e actuality that characterizes the soul then
requires a state of growth between potentiality and actuality as such. e soul
is either a second potentiality, or, as Aristotle puts it immediately after his
example of knowledge and contemplation, “the first actuality of a physical
body having life potentially” (DA II, 1, 412a28– 29).
Organicity
By being the “first actuality of a natural body having life potentially,” the soul
is a detour between mere potentiality and actuality; what distinguishes the
show of the soul from that of natural beings is that ensouled bodies precisely
display this very detour. Ensouled bodies exhibit their soul by the way they
have life potentially: while the immediacy between the potentiality and actu-
ality of fire is reflected in the indifferent identity of its parts, the intermediate
state of the soul is reflected in the interrelated differences of bodily parts.
e logos as soul is such that its parts are neither fused with one another nor
indifferent to one another, but exhibit at once an achievement taken one by
one, and a project of cooperation. ey are not fully actual, not fully at work,
but as yet for a work. While fire does its work, the soul has work. Hence soul
needs tools whereas fire needs none.
is is why, on the one hand, watching the spectacle of fire is somewhat
similar to watching a chess game: one can start watching it from the mid-
dle. e show of living beings, however, is comparable to a thriller: missing
the first scene where the murder is committed or the last scene where the
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murderer is revealed, or misunderstanding the development that leads to the
revelation— this is not to have really seen the movie. e parts of the life of
the ensouled being are spectacularly complete and “incomplete.”51
As the soul is thus determined by a work (ergon) as much as by actu-
ally being at work (energeia) pure and simple, the parts of the body of the
ensouled being are characterized by having a work (ekhein ergon), and the
Ancient Greek adjective for having a work is organikon: “e soul is the first
actuality of a physical body having life potentially— but such will be any body
that is organic” (DA II, 1, 412a29– 412b1).52 e wholeness of fire does not
come out of its working parts; its pointy top, its bright body, its sparkles, its
flames are not qualitatively and mutually differentiated for a work, they are
equally and indifferently determined by the upward motion of fire as such.
It is no coincidence that the word “pyramid” comes from the Ancient Greek
pyr, “fire,” for a pyramid is precisely a shape determined by its gradually weak-
ening upward orientation. e natural determination of fire does not offer a
stage of relative indetermination such that it may then determine itself.
Let us emphasize this remarkable and surprising claim: for Aristotle, the
soul of animals does not show itself beyond the body. e soul does not show
itself simply in every part of the animal body taken in isolation. It rather
shows itself in the body as a whole: “e parts of the plants are organs too,
though altogether simple ones; for instance, the leaf is the covering for the
peel, and the peel for the fruit, while the roots are similar to the mouth, for
both take in food” (DA II, I, 412b1– 4). To find the soul of living beings, Aris-
totle looks at their parts. e stretch that characterizes the soul in its “look”
toward the past (preparedness) and the future (performance) is seen in the
way the parts of a living body are at once developed and purposeful. us, to
see the soul is, once again, to “understand how that which is disrupted has
the same logos as itself: a back- stretching harmony as in the bow and the
lyre.”
at Aristotle considers the parts of an organic body as developed wholes
can be seen from the fact that he takes the parts to be exemplary of the
things that exist by nature as much as whole animals (Ph. II, 1, 192b9). at
he deems the parts of animals as prepared together in order to put up a show
or to exhibit a logos may be why precisely his work Parts of Animals contains
so many fundamental insights into his understanding of nature and life. For
instance, the following:
One should not recoil childishly from the examination of the
humbler animals. For in every realm of natural beings there is
something wonderful. And as Heraclitus, when strangers who
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wanted to meet him saw him warming himself at the furnace and
stopped, is said to have demanded them not to be afraid to come in
as even there the divine was present, so should one go on to study
each animal without distaste as in every being there is something
natural and beautiful. (PA I, 5, 645a14– 22)
en, as distinct from merely natural beings, living beings will exhibit a
meaning of logos other than “inherent standard.” ey will do so by the way
in which their parts have work, that is, are organized.
Nutrition
What is this work of the soul? If the soul is indeed “preparation,” what is it
“preparation” for? What is that in view of which organs are arranged? What
is logos here logos of— since it is not “logos of being” pure and simple? Just as
the magnitude and growth of fire lack limit and logos, the “logic” of the soul
will first show itself in an inherently motivated motion and rest with respect
to quantity— that is, in growth. “e soul has a logos that increases itself.”53
Since the organic being is determined not by a percentage of raw ele-
ments, but by its irreducibility to any lumping together of elements, its
self- nourishing and growth are not reducible to the reception and accumula-
tion of one or several elements:
Empedocles has not spoken in a beautiful way in adding to this
that growth happens to plants when they take root downward
because earth moves that way by nature, and when [they spread]
upward because fire moves that way... what is it that holds the fire
and earth together as they move in opposite directions? For, if there
is nothing to prevent this, they will be torn apart; and if there is
[something to prevent this], it is the soul and it is the cause of
growth and feeding. (DA II, 4, 415b28– 416a9; emphasis is ours)54
is is Aristotle’s crucial reservation for understanding logos as “ratio” in the
context of living beings. e growth of organic bodies cannot be reduced to
an accumulation of elements according to any percentage, since a percentage,
although an account of the respective amounts of the ingredients, cannot
account for the very fact of their togetherness, that is, for the very stretch that
characterizes a vigorous body: “for [plants] do not grow up and not down,
but equally in both directions, and in every direction” (DA II, 1, 413a28–
29).55 Within a living body, this inclusiveness of contrary directions (up and
down) comes from the inclusiveness of different elements (fire and earth).
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Plants fall not as plants but precisely as earthy; plants sprout not as fire, but
as plants. Nutrition then is a processing and informing as much as an under-
going or receiving. If eating involves the disintegration of a being’s form into
its elements, it also requires the subsequent reintegration of the elements in
the self- nourishing being’s form. It is not sufficient to say that nutrition is a
reception of a being’s matter without its form. Nutrition is digestion as much
as reception. It is less a process of indifferent accumulation than the reforma-
tive process of bringing and holding together the formerly contrary elements
within the new form.56
It may be necessary to illustrate Aristotle’s conception of nutrition by
stating what would not count as nutrition, since us humans, having other
powers of the soul, necessarily modify nutrition according to those other
powers (hunting, tasting, gastronomy, fasting, feasting, diets...) and are
thus susceptible of concealing it. What then would not count as nutrition?
For instance, in English “emptiness” and “fullness” are precisely inadequate
concepts for expressing nutrition, because the absence of matter in the body
is by itself insufficient for explaining hunger and thirst, just as its mere intro-
duction is for nutrition. e growth of no plant ever requires water as such,
precisely because a plant is not water as such. Watering a plant rather takes
a certain form precisely because a plant is a certain form. Similarly, taking a
medicine involves a specific mode of delivery of chemicals, an exact amount,
a certain diet, a certain timing, a rhythm of sleep, and ultimately a certain
form of life. Adding water to water, flesh to flesh, blood to blood, hair to hair,
is precisely failure to nourish. Similarly, merely mixing water to earth, blood
to flesh, or olive oil to hair is the same failure to nourish as long as solely
the quantities in the mixture are considered. Nutrition is neither a transition
from emptiness to fullness, nor a delivery of matter, but a specific answer to a
specific question. Put in terms of Aristotelian ethics, proper diet is not solely
a matter of deduction from pre- given rules, but always a matter of employing
prudence or practical wisdom (phronêsis). Digestion is not becoming full, but
preparing matter, integrating it: “cooking” or “concocting” (pepsis).57
A new logic, a new logos, and a new kind of “stretch” thus emerges with
nutrition: whereas natural beings are inherently motivated to hold on to
what they are and what it is for them to be (logos as “standard”), here a living
being does so by holding on to contrary elements according to what it is to
be for itself, without simply letting one element take over or remain isolated
and idle (logos as “ratio”). It is precisely because living beings hold together
the elements according to their own form that contrary elements coexist
within living bodies instead of one knocking down the other. is is the basic
insight behind the second sense of logos: proportion, ratio, percentage.58
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But this is not enough for capturing this second sense of logos. For Aristo-
tle himself objects to Empedocles’s theory that the soul is a logos or harmony
in On the Soul I:59
ey say that harmony is a blend [krasis] or composition [synthesis]
of contraries and that the body is composed of contraries. How-
ever, harmony is some logos of those that have been mixed [tôn
mikhthentôn] or a composition [synthesis], and the soul cannot be of
these. (DA I, 4, 407b30– 34)60
When Aristotle articulates this criticism, his object is clear: for him the soul
cannot be a harmony understood as blend or composition— a “logos of those
that have been mixed,” or a “logos of those that are mixed” (DA I, 4, 408a9).
And in the following paragraph he insists that the soul cannot be the “logos
of the mixture” (logos tês mixeôs) (DA I, 4, 408a14– 28). If the soul were a har-
mony or logos of mixture, in short, a percentage, then there would be many
souls each time there is a new percentage of elements in the body, for “the
mixture of elements for flesh and for bone do not have the same logos” (DA
I, 4, 408a15– 16)61 Just as a percentage cannot account for what holds its
ingredients together, offering various percentages avoids the same question
of what holds these percentages together. If soul has to do with logos, this will
not be merely a matter of number or percentage because, however precise
and many, the percentage of ingredients will not account for their unity, for
the “stretch” between them, for what makes them parts of one show.62
e logos of growth then is not the percentage of ingredients: “e logoi
of mixtures are in the relation [prosthesei] of numbers, and not in numbers,
for instance three in relation to two and not three times two” (Metaph. XIV,
6, 1092b32– 33).63 is explains how Aristotle can explicitly agree with
Empedocles elsewhere: “Even Empedocles says that the bone is by virtue of
logos— which is ‘what it is to be’ and the being of the thing” (Metaph. I, 10,
993a17– 19). If life and nutrition stretch out to exhibit a logos, this show is
understandable neither by means of its elements nor by their percentages. So,
if logos here means “ratio” or “proportion,” we must keep in mind the fact that
it is so not as a number, but as a relation between numbers, that is, as holding
on to its different constituents and their magnitude without letting one take
over the other or lie indifferent to them.“For a tragedy and a comedy come
into being out of the same letters” (GC I, 2, 315b14– 15).64
Reproduction
In reproduction as well as in nutrition, an ensouled being strives for the
perpetuation of itself and/or of its form by integrating contraries. What
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reproduction teaches us is that, just as an adequate understanding of nutrition
requires that we consider the parts of animals not as starting points, but as
products,65 we can be spectators of the show of living beings only when we
take account not of one arbitrarily chosen segment of their life, but of their
life as a whole. For instance, a squirrel exhibits its “inherent standard,” its logos
of being, its own logic, that is, what it is for a squirrel to be, not in its tail or
claws taken as ends in themselves, but as incomplete completions, as organs. In
the same way, a squirrel shows off what it is to be for a squirrel along a lapse
of time and through events that stretch beyond its maturity, even before its
birth and after its death. e form of a squirrel comes to appearance neither
in the parts of its body, nor in the slices of its life span taken by themselves,
nor in the percentage of its chemical makeup. Just as its front claws relate
back to its spine, its climbing a tree refers back to its birth and nutrition, and
forward to its project of reproduction. e life form called “squirrel” is noth-
ing but an ongoing and everlasting success story. us we must dishabituate
ourselves from viewing nature and life forms in snapshots. If they are funda-
mentally spectacular, they are not photogenic, and their movement is not still
motion. Life forms are not photographical, but “biographical.”
Natural beings exhibit their show and logic not in the way objects around
us seem to be constantly available to our gaze, but in the way a war or an art-
work comes into existence: the date of the birth and death of a squirrel, and
even everything in between, can be recorded and documented by a camera; yet
its soul as livingness extends even beyond its life and death— not as immortal,
but, on the contrary, as mortal. Reproduction in nature indeed acquires its full
significance in the context of mortal beings, of their life and death, and of
their only afterlife in offspring. A livingness that extends beyond our momen-
tary mental images demands thus a “theoretical” spectator equipped, not with
“theory,” but with a wonder, patience, and scientific passivity that lets the
spectacle unfold through improbable influences and fortuitous circumstances.
But On the Soul, which does not expound on nutrition, seems to leave the
topic of reproduction to Generation of Animals— except in this most crucial
passage for the corpus as a whole:
We must talk about food and reproduction; for the nutritive soul
belongs to the others as well, and is the first and most common
potentiality of the soul by virtue of which living belongs to them
all. e works [of the soul] are reproduction and the use of food,
for the most natural work for living beings, if it is full- grown and
not defective or does not have spontaneous generation, is to make
another like itself: an animal making an animal, a plant a plant, so
that they may partake in the eternal and divine in the way they can.
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For all things desire [oregetai] that, and do everything they do by
nature for the sake of it. (DA II, 4, 415a23– 415b2)66
us, reproduction as the integration of the living being’s form into the
material of another body, and nutrition as the integration of the material
of another body into one’s own form, are two facets of the same most nat-
ural work: oregesthai for partaking in the eternal and the divine. Aristotle
is quite explicit that the most natural appearance of life takes the form of
oregesthai— whose first meaning is “to reach out for grasping” and “to stretch
out for.” Until now we used “stretch” as a metaphor. Here oregesthai literally
means “to stretch,” and only metaphorically “to yearn for” or “to desire.”67
In an informative passage of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle likens the
love of the benefactor toward the beneficiary, and of the artist toward his
work, to the love of animals toward their young:
Every artist loves his own work more than he would be loved by the
work if it were ensouled. Perhaps this happens especially in the case
of poets [poiêtas], for they love their own poems [poiêmata] exces-
sively, being fond of them as of their children [tekna]... e reason
for this is that all things choose and love to be; and it is in actuality,
in living and acting, that we are; and, being actually at work, the
maker [ho poiêsas] is in a way the work; so he is fond of the work
and thereby he is fond of being. (NE IX, 7, 1167b34– 1168a8)
In line with our previous quotation from On the Soul, here Aristotle adds:
“But this is natural.”
We tried to show that the spectacular character of natural beings and the
spectatorship of the natural scientist are textually grounded in Aristotle’s work.
Here we see that On the Soul supports our claim that natural beings are not
simply “programmed,” in the passive voice, to exhibit their logic, but that they
stretch out themselves for this, in the middle voice. As to the natural scientist
or the theôros, the explicit textual confirmation of his own natural yearning for
watching the show of natural beings is found not in On the Soul, but in the
first sentence of the Metaphysics: “All human beings by nature stretch them-
selves out toward knowing” (Metaph. I, 1, 980a21; Joe Sachs’s translation).
3. Recapitulation and Reorientation
So far as this chapter of the book is concerned, we have seen how Aristo-
tle’s understanding of nature demands a conception of motion that may be
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intellectually remote from us because of the early modern rejection of the
Aristotelian physics, but also that it is quite familiar to us on an experiential
level. His concepts of motion and, consequently, of nature are fundamentally
“spectacular,” oriented toward the appearance of a form or look (eidos) and
the articulation of a logos. As a counterpart to this “spectacular” character of
nature, the natural scientist for Aristotle is a spectator, an explorer, a traveler,
a theôros with a question, with an openness for the improbable show of natu-
ral beings. is pervasiveness of watching, of exhibition, and of expression of
logos may suggest that it is because natural beings stretch out toward showing
themselves that in Heraclitus’s famous fragment 123, “nature loves to hide
itself,” while Aristotle insists that “it is ridiculous to try to prove that nature
exists” (Ph. II, 1, 193a2– 3).
As to our overall project, in section 1 of this chapter, we have seen that the
inherence of the logos as “standard” may be warranted by the inherently moti-
vated motions in nature. In section 2, we have seen that two among these
motions, namely nutrition and reproduction, are made according to logos as
“ratio.” ese two senses of logos, “standard” and “ratio,” are not unrelated.
ey both refer to a relation that holds on to its terms without letting one
take over or lay indifferent to the other. As “standard,” logos is the relation
between potentiality and actuality in natural motion; as “ratio,” logos func-
tions as holding onto previously exclusive elements within the body in the
case of nutrition, and within another body in the case of reproduction.
Living beings are then minimally determined by two natural motions exhibit-
ing that their “logos of being” is inherent to them: reproduction and nutrition.
Of Aristotle’s four kinds of motion, the latter are, respectively, change with
respect to being and change with respect to quantity.68 What about the other
two kinds of motion: change with respect to quality and place? Although we
claimed that plants, as ensouled bodies, integrate contrary elements, Aris-
totle seems to differ when he says that plants are of earth (gês) and have no
mean condition (mesotêta).69 In fact, the plants’ accomplishment of integrat-
ing and reforming matter is also their limitation: plants have “no source of
such a kind as to receive the forms of sensibles— they absorb them together
with their matter” (DA II, 12, 424b2– 3). So, in our next chapter, we must
turn our attention to living beings that are capable of also changing with-
out integrating matter, of changing with respect to quality and also to place:
sensation and locomotion. ese beings change and move in new ways, and
meanwhile exhibit a show and a logos that are even more explicit than that of
elements and plants. ese beings are animals.
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CHAPTER 4
Animal Motion
Logos in On the Soul
We are trying to understand logos as it appears in the Categories in the phrase
“logos of being” as standard, and then in On Interpretation as an intrinsic rela-
tion between potentiality and actuality. In chapter 3, we saw how inorganic
nature exhibits the inherence of logos as a “form according to logos,” and how
organic nature does so in nutrition and reproduction, a process of holding
together formerly exclusive elements by “limit” and “logos.” Besides “stan-
dard,” a second meaning of logos turned out to be operative in the context
of organic nature: “ratio.” Yet, this second meaning also seems to refer to the
fundamental meaning of logos: a relation holding on to its terms in such a
way that it neither collapses them nor leaves them indifferent to one another.
us, the overarching sense of logos can be compared to what Aristotle calls
a “stretching out [oregesthai] toward the eternal and the divine” (DA II, 4,
415a23– 415b2). Neither inorganic nor organic nature simply exist— the for-
mer is “stretched” between its potentiality and actuality, the latter is “tended”
between the developed state of the parts it is constituted from, and the func-
tions they are developed for. e stretch of fire away from the center of the
universe, the reproductive urge to integrate form into the material of another
body, or the nutritive impulse to integrate material into a being’s own form
are facets of the same desire.
But there is more. Not all natural motion involves the integration of mat-
ter. Some natural beings interact with beings without imposing their own
forms onto others’ bodies. ese beings are receptive not only to others’
material, but also to their form. Although, unlike fire, plants integrate bodies
with contrary natural impulses, they are also limited to nutrition and repro-
duction.1 As such, they are precisely impermeable to any form other than
their own, since the complete destruction of others’ forms is precisely the
mark of successful nutrition and reproduction. is chapter of the book then
deals with more than natural motion and the motion of living beings. It deals
with specifically animal motion: sensation and locomotion.
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e nutritive power must by necessity be in all that grow and decay.
But sensation is not necessarily in all that live. For those whose
body is simple do not have touch, nor can those that are not recep-
tive to the forms without the material. (DA III, 12, 434a26– 30)
In section 1 of this chapter, “Sensation,” we shall present the “paradox” of
sensation, show that its solution depends on the distinction between affec-
tion, alteration, and completion, and conclude that, for Aristotle, sensation
cannot be explained without considering it as a specific kind of logos, namely
a “ratio” or a “proportion” between the state of the sense organ and the state
of the sensible (DA III, 2, 426a8, 426a28ff.; De Sensu 7, 448a9– 13). Section
2, “Locomotion,” will introduce distant perception and locomotion as “syl-
logisms” necessarily joining the premise of the receptive part of the soul and
that of the desiring part without letting one premise cancel out the other. In
section 3, this discussion of the “practical” syllogism shall exemplify another
use of logos as “ratio,” while also gesturing toward the “unpractical” syllogisms
that are the hallmark of our next chapter: human action.
1. Sensation
What can we learn from animals?
e elemental and the inorganic exert a certain charm on us: the height
of mountains, the constancy of stars, the roar of the ocean, even the look of
a campfire or a snowflake may seem to us as models to covet, and as inspira-
tions of the sublime. Everybody now and then admires the solidity of rocks,
the immensity of icebergs, the raw power of storms, or the transparency of
still water. Inorganic nature aside, plants also contribute to this fantasy with
the fertility or size of trees, the tickle of grass, and the blossoming of flowers:
a peaceful life confined to nutrition and reproduction alone.
Nevertheless, we are more likely to indulge in this nostalgia while contem-
plating a view from a balcony in safe remove, or while looking at a landscape
by Turner or Caspar Friedrich in a quiet museum, than while steering a ship in
a storm. is nostalgia for the elemental and the vegetative seems to reflect an
aspiration for opaqueness and determination, excluding hesitation and neces-
sary care. Hence all these elemental or vegetal fantasies remain aspirations.
To epitomize nutrition and reproduction for a human being is and always
remains an endless task to fulfill, an abstraction, a pleasant imagination, a neg-
ative plan of not having to do things that is fulfilled, perhaps, only in death.2
Insofar as elemental and vegetal fantasies express a denial of aspects of
human life beyond nutrition and reproduction, our investigation of animality
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may be expected to conceptualize how nutrition and reproduction are only
“parts” of our soul as conceived by Aristotle. When Aristotle invites us not
to refrain from studying the most humble animals, quoting Heraclitus who,
warming up at the stove, calls his guests to “come in, be brave, for there are
gods even here,”3 perhaps this exhortation is made less against human con-
tempt for “lowly” animals than against our unwillingness to leave elemental
and vegetal fantasies for the hesitations, cares, and toils of all animal life. It is
from animals, perhaps, that we may learn the life of sensation and motility.
e “Paradox” of Sensation
With sensation, we enter the animal world. “Although plants live, they do
not have sensation, and the animal is distinguished from that which is not
animal by sensation” (De Sensu 1, 436b11– 12).4 Yet sensation seems to imme-
diately resist any conceptualization that starts from a distinction between
subject and object.
Let us first open up what may be called, following Merleau- Ponty, the
“paradox” of sensation. e experience of sensation requires both distance
and penetration. I am the one over here sensing objects, and yet sensation
seems to take place over there. For Aristotle, sensation is a kind of motion,
namely a change with respect to quality, and thus seems much more remote
and superficial than nutrition and reproduction. So, on the one hand, sensa-
tion seems to be even weaker than a qualitative change proper because the
sentient is not really changed by its object, but rather seems to gather a faint
and fleeting echo of it. Yet, on the other hand, Aristotle also defines sensation
first as a kind of “alteration,” a kind of becoming other5 (DA II, 5, 416b35).
So much so that it is with sensation that the animal soul becomes open to
the world, instead of simply imposing itself upon it. In this spirit, Aristotle
famously says: “In a way the soul is all beings” (DA III, 8, 431b21– 22). us,
while it seemed superficial and distant before, now sensation appears to be a
penetration and access into the world incomparably deeper than reproduc-
tion, and a receptivity incomparably wider than digestion.
Aristotle begins his discussion of this paradox in On the Soul (II, 5,
416b35– 417a1) with an implicit reference to a discussion of “affection” in On
Generation and Corruption, which puts the paradox of sensation in the form
of a dilemma borrowed by his predecessors: is like affected by like, or unlike
by unlike? According to Aristotle, the two views form a false opposition: “the
cause of their opposition is that, while one must watch [theôrêsai] a whole,
they happened to say a part” (GC I, 7, 323b3– 19).
What is this comprehensive view that solves the paradox of sensation, that
abolishes the apparent opposition between activity and passivity, between
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a “subjective” perspective on sensation and an “objective” one? What is the
middle way that was excluded or overlooked by Aristotle’s predecessors on
both sides of the discussion?
According to his typical strategy of dialectical synthesis of his predeces-
sors’ views by sorting out the multivocity of words, Aristotle states: “It is
necessary that the agent and the patient be somehow the same, and some-
how different and unlike one another” (GC I, 7, 324a3– 5). On the one hand,
a being cannot be affected by a being that is altogether similar and indistinct
from it, since the same being would also be constantly affected by itself and
there would be no distinction away from which the affection would happen
to begin with. But, on the other hand, a being cannot be affected by a being
altogether different from it, since then there would be no common ground
upon which it could be affected by the other.
Aristotle attempts to solve the dilemma by stating that “it is necessary
that the agent and the patient be similar and same in kind, but unlike and
contrary in form” (GC I, 7, 323b32– 34). So, this body can affect another body,
and this color can affect another color. us, if sensation is an affection, it will
happen between two beings similar on an overall level, and dissimilar on a
relatively lower level.
But is sensation an affection to begin with? How does this idea of affection
apply specifically to sensation, if at all? Concerning one horn of the dilemma,
the identity of agent and patient in sensation would imply the self- affection
of both on their own. is identity would destroy the active character of the
agent as well as the passive character of the patient. us, if earth is perceived
by earth, why doesn’t the “earth” in my palm always sense the “earth” in my
fingers, wrist, and knuckles? Assuming that my body is constituted from a
finite number of elements, why doesn’t one part of my body sense my other
parts? Why don’t I constantly feel that my blood is wet and warm, that my
heart is elastic? Why don’t I distinctly feel my inner organs, the curves of my
brain, and my veins?6 If I did feel my organs in the same way and to the same
extent that I feel external objects, the distinction of external and internal
would be abolished and my body would lose its integrity.
is loss of bodily integrity is not just a hypothetical scenario. Sometimes
I do feel my own eyes or my own liver. But this happens precisely when I
am feeling bad. A liver is sick when it is an object of sensation. Ache is self-
affection. And disease is literally dis- ease: the diseased senses are unable to
not feel themselves, they fall short of the ease, the relative potentiality, and
the readiness that characterize the ensouled body as we saw in chapter 3.
A healthy living body is a body whose parts are both developed and open.
One can here see how Aristotle’s conception of sensation is already both
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exemplifying his “definition” of the soul and sketching out an opposition to
the nostalgia for the elemental we mentioned in the beginning of this chap-
ter. For to feel well is to be altogether ready for and open to the world, to
be perfectly “ec- static.”7 To feel well is not to feel well, but to feel well. More
explicitly, to feel well is not to jealously hold on to an inner state of well-
being. To feel well is to do well the work of feeling the world.8
So one horn of the dilemma, the horn of “like being affected by like,” can-
not be the whole story of sensation. As to the other horn of the dilemma,
that “unlike is affected by unlike,” Aristotle claims that sensation cannot be
simply a transition from a state into its contrary under the influence of that
contrary, because strictly and merely contrary things cannot get into con-
tact to begin with. If they did, sensation would be mere transformation, the
sensing animal would become its object, and it would be eaten and digested
by its object, and there would be no sensation proper, but either nutrition or
reproduction.
Negatively, then, sensation is neither a mere reversal of properties, nor a
transmission of matter. Sensation must allow for a difference between the
agent and the patient, but also for the possibility for the sentient to some-
how hold onto the sensible. In this sense, just like the fundamental meaning
of logos, the “paradox” of sensation is that it must hold on to the integrity
both of the sentient and the sensible without letting one take over or remain
indifferent to the other.
e Example of Fire
What distinguishes sensation from any kind of affection then? How is feel-
ing warmth different from merely becoming warm, seeing from reflecting
light, or hearing from reverberating? How are animals touched such that
it is irreducible to the way inanimate objects or plants are? In response to
this question, Aristotle makes what looks like a trivial remark: “at which
can sense is not actually at work, but only potentially” (DA II, 5, 417a7– 8;
emphasis ours).
Follows the example of fire: “So it is like the combustible which does not
burn by itself without something setting fire to it; for otherwise it would
burn itself and would not need any fire in actuality” (DA II, 5, 417a8– 10).
Although Aristotle’s recourse to potentiality and his example help us clar-
ify what sensation cannot be by avoiding the dilemma’s first horn, they do
not help us understand what sensation is positively. What is the difference
between the power of the eye for sight and the potentiality of a combustible
to burn? e structure of assimilation can be applied to any change or affec-
tion, and although it helps Aristotle criticize and synthesize his predecessors’
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views, it does not tell us what sensation is. us, the fire example is helpful
in understanding the specific way the agent and the patient are related in a
change, but it does not shed light on the specific form this relation takes in
sensation. e combustible is affected by fire, its potential is actualized by
fire, it becomes fire, but it does not feel the fire.
e Example of Knowledge
And yet the concept of potentiality is central. In the rest of his analysis of
sensation, Aristotle simply refines the kind of potentiality at stake. Just as the
growth of plants was distinguished from the growth of fire by its developed
organic character, that is, its being a first actuality, sensation is distinguished
from change or affection in general by its being a first actuality, a developed
power. An animal’s power of sensation is a result of a prior development just
as a plant’s power of nutrition was. us, the key to understanding sensation
is found back in the definition of the soul.
But since we speak of perceiving in two ways (we say for that which
hears and sees potentially that it hears and sees— even if it happens
to be asleep— as well as for that which is actually so), so sensation
would be said in two ways: on the one hand as in potentiality, and
on the other as in actuality. (DA II, 5, 417a10– 14)
When Aristotle offers his positive account of sensation, he no longer uses
the example of the inorganic growth of fire. He rather takes up the exam-
ple of knowing and distinguishes three stages divided by two transitions:
(a) a human being has a potentiality to know, just by belonging to a genus
that has the potentiality to know (DA II, 5, 417a23– 25); (b) a human being
may have a first actuality for knowing by having acquired some knowledge
(say the knowledge of grammar) and is in position to contemplate or use
this knowledge (DA II, 5, 417a25– 28); (c) a human being may then actually
contemplate or use her knowledge in a state of second actuality (DA II, 5,
417a29– 30).
Having distinguished these three stages, let us turn to the two transitions
between the first and second, and between the second and the third. e tran-
sition from potentiality to first actuality is a process of “changes by means of
learning and frequent change from contrary conditions” (DA II, 5, 417a31–
33). In the case of sensation, this process is that of the development of the
sense organs themselves. But the transition from first to second actuality is
not a change: it is a transition from this inoperative possession of sensation or
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grammar to being operational, being at work, being actual (DA II, 5, 417a33-
b2). e second transition is not a change as the first one is. e first is a
reversal, such as the transition from not- fire to fire, the wall’s color turning
from dark to bright, the turn of illiteracy into literacy, becoming other by
no longer being itself. But the second transition, Aristotle says, “is rather the
actual being’s preserving [sôtêria, literally the “saving”] the potential being”
(DA II, 5, 417b3– 5).9 A hand on a warm radiator touches it precisely in so
far as it has already integrated the elements into a settled equilibrium so that
it can then accomplish the second transition: it can now refrain from merely
turning from cold to warm.10 A dog hearing a bell hears it precisely in so far
as it is not merely moved by the vibrations in his ear and does not simply reflect
or transmit them as vibrations, however sophisticated this process may be.11
Sensation is “paradoxical” or riddlesome in at least two respects. First, sen-
sation defies the false dilemma of either remaining the same or becoming
other. A warm hand is different from a cold hand, but an actually feeling
hand is not different in the same sense from a hand that is not actually
feeling. Secondly, sensation defies the false dilemma between activity and
passivity. Unlike inorganic bodies standing apart from one another in their
natural places or moving in contrary directions toward them, and unlike
plants striving to replenish their form by perfectly destroying other forms,
animals are ready to become that which is unlike them, without ceasing to
be what they are. ey are not only ec- statically tended between their actual
being and their inherent standard, they not only hold the contrary tendencies
of the elements within their organism together under their own form, but
they preserve themselves by being altered.
Another Wax Example
So is sensation between like and like, or between unlike and unlike? e
solution of the “paradox” of sensation must take into account this second
transition, the transition from the developed sense organ (first actuality) to
its fully operational state (second actuality). “e sentient is potentially like
what the sense object is in actuality. us, it is affected while being unlike, but,
once affected, it is like its object” (DA II, 5, 418a3– 6). An account of sensation
must indeed allow for the distinction between potentiality and actuality, but,
most crucially, for a concept of first actuality as distinct from both potential-
ity and second actuality. An account of sensation must acknowledge this level
of preparedness, readiness, expectation, intermittence, sleep. An account of
sensation must be able to distinguish between the mere lack of capacity and
inoperativeness. Just as the growth of a plant was fundamentally different
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from the growth of fire, sensation cannot be reduced to a mere actuality—
sensation must allow for preparation as well as for performance.12
In all the respects in which the inanimate is altered, the ensouled
is also altered; but all inanimate beings are not altered in all the
respects in which the ensouled are, for [the inanimate] are not
altered with respect to sensations, and while that which is under-
gone is unnoticed [lanthanei] by the latter, it does not go unnoticed
[ou lanthanei] by the former. (Ph. VII, 2, 244b12– 15)
e difference between the animal and the plant can be seen in that the
former can fail to perceive in a way the latter cannot. Sensation is a realm
of the possibility of distinction and relation between lanthesthai and ou
lanthanesthai— perhaps quite akin to the etymological sense of alêtheia.
Again it is the sense of stretch that governs Aristotle’s account of life and
animality: opposites are maintained as opposites without one being collapsed
to the other. For the animal, to perceive is neither to massively remain what
it is, nor to surrender to what it is not. It is in this sense that sensation is a
quite special kind of becoming other: a becoming other without ceasing to
be itself, a becoming other that is the preservation (sôteria) and completion
of what it is for an animal to be. As Aristotle says elsewhere, a house is not
changed when its roof is put on top of it (Ph. VII, 3, 246a17– b3). e solution
of the “paradox” of sensation lies in the definition of the soul, that is, in the
concept of a first actuality, in a sense of “stretch” that defines animality.
At the end of book II of On the Soul, Aristotle recapitulates his previous
account of various senses and media, and illustrates his conclusion by means
of another familiar example:
But concerning sensation as a whole, one must grasp that sensation
is that which is receptive to the forms of sensibles without their
material, just as the wax receives the sign of a ring without the iron
or the gold, and takes up the golden or bronze sign but not as gold
or bronze; similarly sensation of each thing is also affected by that
which has a color or a flavor or a sound, although not as that which
is said of each... (DA II, 12, 424a17– 24)13
Like the fire example, this famous wax example is no less problematic than
suggestive, again because the impressed wax is no more sensitive to the
impression than the combustible is to fire. Aristotle’s point seems to be that
sensation is precisely irreducible to a transfer of matter, yet the example very
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misleadingly suggests that sensation is an external impression of a shape.
For, as “being” is said in many ways, the eye is stretched out toward sight in
a fundamentally different way than a piece of wax is receptive to any shape.
e piece of wax, in Descartes as well as here in Aristotle, is precisely not
stretched toward this or that sign on a ring, and for this reason it is an inade-
quate example for nature and life. In Aristotelian terms, as we emphasized in
chapter 1, wax is rather a substance produced by bees, and whose consistency
is between that of earth and water: it yields like water, yet it stays put like
earth. For this reason wax is precisely chosen by humans for inscribing letters
or impressing signets. But the wax is not completed at all by being inscribed
or impressed. In fact, just like the fire example, terms like “inscription” and
“impression” are among the inorganic or elemental, and thus inadequate,
metaphors used for natural or animal processes.
Just as the fire example helped us solve the dilemma of affection while
remaining fundamentally inadequate for illustrating the whole phenom-
enon of sensation, here the wax example, while helpfully suggesting that the
potentiality of the sentient is not any potentiality but a specific one, con-
stitutes only another step toward a well- founded conception of sensation
that explains it without reducing it. And yet there is one last concept in the
account of sensation in On the Soul, followed by one last example.
Sensation as Logos
is last concept is logos. Aristotle continues: “...the sensation of each thing
is also affected by that which has a color, flavor or sound, although not as
that which is said of each of these, but as being such and such [hê toiondi]
and according to logos” (DA II, 12, 424a25). is complex sentence makes a
surprising or most counterintuitive claim: that we do not sense color, sound,
smell, and so on. e sentient is not affected by a color as color or by a sound
as sound. An animal neither senses color as the genus of white, red, and green,
nor does it sense redness. It rather senses red “as being such and such,” that
is, this red of something, a red that is subtended by pleasure and pain, in a
word, something red. If the agent and the patient of sensation share the same
genus, this means that animals sense things, and not neutral anonymous dis-
interested stimuli or abstracted notions. In other words, sensation is to get a
reply to a prior expectancy, an answer to a prior question, namely the ques-
tion of desire. Sensation is not of universals, it is of particulars.14 Sensation is
not like deduction, but like induction. It is the universal that emerges out of
repeated sensations.15
But how is the sentient affected by the sensible according to logos? Aristotle
continues:
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e sense organ is first of all that in which such a potentiality is;
thus in one way they [the organ and the potentiality] are the same,
in another way they are different; for that which senses would be a
magnitude, but indeed neither the being of the sensitive nor sen-
sation are magnitudes, but rather some logos and a potentiality of
[that which senses]. (DA II, 12, 424a25– 28)
A sense organ is necessarily extended, because necessarily composite as we
saw while discussing organicity in chapter 3; but what makes it a sense organ
is “some logos,” which is not extended. is logos is the configuration of the
sense organ, the relationship between extended things, and “hence it is clear
why excesses in the sensibles sometimes destroy the sense organs; for if the
motion of the sense organ is too strong, the logos (which is sensation) is
destroyed” (DA II, 12, 424a29– 32). If the sense organ exists according to logos,
and if the power of sensation is precisely this logos, sensation requires that the
sense organ hold on to a certain equilibrium between contrary qualities. It is
the logos that preserves the sense organ: while feeling warmth, it also holds
on to its prior equilibrium.16 Logos once again names a limit of inclusivity—
which, once violated, entails the destruction of that of which it is a logos.
us sensation must involve something like a minimal act of “remember-
ing” or “comparing,” a maintained equilibrium, since too strong a stimulus
makes the animal “forget” its prior condition and simply yield to the new
one. It is the holding together of both states that explains why sensation is
logos. An eye is fundamentally incomparable to fire, to a piece of wax, and
even to a final product of the animal’s growth: the physiological develop-
ment of the eye has indeed a logos of growth, but this is only a transition
from potentiality to the first actuality, it is a reversal (metabolê): food “forgets”
what it was to be for itself, food is transformed; but this perspective misses the
“transition” from the first actuality to full (second) actuality: the sense organ
is made ready— not for yet another transformation, but for a performance.
e last example of Aristotle’s account of sensation is a lyre:
[Excess destroys the logos that characterizes sensation] just as the
symphônia and tone of a lyre is destroyed when the strings are
struck hard. And [it is also clear] why plants do not sense although
they have one part of the soul and are affected to a certain extent by
tangibles— for they become warm and cold. e reason is that they
have no mean [mesotêta], neither any such principle such as to be
receptive to the forms of sensibles, but rather are affected with the
material. (DA II, 12, 424a32– 424b3)
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is example can support our recurrent use of the idea of stretch, crucial to
logos, as well as our quotation of Heraclitus’s fragment 51 at the very begin-
ning of this book: “ey do not understand how that which is disrupted
has the same logos as itself: a back- stretched harmony as in the bow and the
lyre.” But how does the lyre or the bow illustrate the first actuality, which is
crucial for solving the “paradox” of sensation? e strings of lyres and bows
are indeed stretched, and this stretch is determined neither by the string
itself nor by its being attached to one extremity. e stretch is a function
of the nature of the string and of the relatively fixed distance between its
extremities. While objects seem to us to be massive or subtle, hard or soft,
hot or cold, wet or dry, the lyre and the bow are good examples of objects
irreducible to opaque materiality. And this idea of harmony being a result
of opposition was indeed not alien to Aristotle’s contemporaries, since the
relational character of harmony was a great source of inspiration for the
Pythagoreans as well as for Plato. Both Heraclitus and Aristotle seem to
develop this intuition: logos as ratio is not an independent value on its own,
but a relation between two numbers which can be instantiated indefinitely
by other things. Logos as a note is not only this note played on this string of
this lyre, but a result that can be attained, mutatis mutandis, on other strings
of other lyres or even other instruments such that it is possible to play them
together. Finally, logos as sensation is a relation between the sense organ and
the sense object such that one may sense the same heat as long as the ratio
between the heat of the organ and that of the object remains the same. Sen-
sation is of that which is “hotter” than my hand, “stronger” than the air in my
ear, “sweeter” than the state of my mouth. Sensation is not relativistic, but
fundamentally relative or relational, that is, differential. Logos as sensation
must preserve different terms, not only in their self- sameness, but also in
their difference from one another.
Developed organs are already stretched between contraries: this sense of
logos is familiar to us from our discussion of growth in chapter 3. But, here in
our discussion of sensation, this stretch is no longer an end for sense organs:
they also stretch out to the world for being completed. And this is what is
new here. For animals, being in the world is reception as much as confronta-
tion or assimilation. is certainly does not mean that sensation is added on
to nutrition and reproduction. It simply means that nutrition and reproduc-
tion for animals are sensitive nutrition and sensitive reproduction.17 From the
point of view of growth, plants are indeed internally differentiated: they have
organs; but from the perspective of sensation, they are indifferent, since they
simply become hot or cold. ey do not exhibit the sense of stretch embodied
in sensation: they do not possess a range, a mean (mesotêta), in which they
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hold themselves and the forms of their object. at is why every stimulus is
“excessive” for plants such that none really is, whereas “sensation is a logos,
but excess hurts or destroys” (DA III, 2, 426b7– 8). Sensation always implies
compositeness, and this compositeness always implies the plurality of ele-
ments held together within the body of the animal. Yet what is specific to
sensation is also the plurality of its objects: “Touch is like a mean of all tan-
gibles, and its sense organ is receptive not only of all the differences of earth
[diaphorai gês], but also of hot and cold and all other tangibles” (DA III, 13,
435a22– 24). With sensation, we are dealing with a phenomenon that is no
longer reducible to a form of integration, but one that constitutes a mutual
contact with the world. e immense fabric of all the physical- mechanical
interactions in the universe is subtended here and there by oases of sensation:
“in a way the soul is all beings” (DA III, 8, 431b21– 22). Having sensation by
definition, this is what animals are: “in a way” all beings. And they are “saved”
by being “in a way” all beings.
To conclude then, sensation is a logos in its second sense, “ratio,” but in an
even more subtle way than that of growth and reproduction. For sensation
as logos no longer holds on to the formerly exclusive elements within its own
form, it rather holds on to the state of the sense organ and the state of its
object.18 Whereas the awareness of difference was a sign of a failure in the
assimilation process of nutrition and reproduction, every successful sensation
is necessarily awareness of difference. Sensation is discrimination or krisis:
To sense is some kind of being affected such that that which an
object makes like itself is such already potentially. is is why we
sense not what is as hot, cold, hard or soft as ourselves, but what is
more so; thus, sensation is like a mean between contraries of sensa-
tion. For this reason the mean distinguishes [krinei] the sensibles.
(DA II, 5, 418a14– 16)19
Our elemental and vegetal fantasies are disrupted by this krisis that only ani-
mals are capable of.
So animal life is marked by sensation, and all sensation is not mere intake,
but discrimination (krisis). However, we humans are somehow capable of
denying our power of discrimination entailed by our animality. is sheds
light on a very famous passage in the Metaphysics, IV, where Aristotle claims
that a skeptic who objects to the principle of non- contradiction thereby
claims to become “similar to a plant” (Metaph. IV, 4, 1006a15). I think Aris-
totle here is not sarcastic, but serious. For if the essential character of animal
life is sensation, and if all sensation is distinction or discrimination (krisis),
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then the objector who rejects the principle of non- contradiction thereby
refuses to propose anything whatsoever, to engage himself to one meaning at
the exclusion of its opposite, and thus to distinguish affirmation from nega-
tion, pursuit from flight. According to Aristotle, by refusing the principle
of non- contradiction, the skeptic is in fact gesturing toward vegetal and
inorganic fantasies, mimicking a vegetative, anesthetic state, and claiming
to disengage himself from commitment which lies, as we saw, at the heart of
animal life.20
2. Locomotion
After nutrition, reproduction, and sensation, the last kind of natural motion
is locomotion. Our analysis of it shall bring to conclusion the inquiry into
the ways in which natural motion exhibits “logos of being” as an inherent
standard. We shall see that an ox exhibits what it is for it to be, its inherent
standard of being, by means of locomotion as much as by its reproduction,
nutrition, and sensation. Yet Aristotle analyzes animal locomotion also as a
logos, but in the sense of a “proportioning,” a “rationing,” or a “syllogism.” is
shall set up the stage for the specifically human senses of logos as “reason” and
“speech” in chapters 5 and 6.
Distant Perception
Natural beings have an inherent source of motion and rest. Among natural
beings, organic bodies further integrate the material of contrary bodies into
their own form in reproduction and nutrition. And finally, among organic
bodies, animals are receptive to the forms of bodies without their material
in sensation. For Aristotle, however, some animals do more than receive the
form of contiguous bodies (which happens with touch, and its subspecies
taste);21 they receive form through something else by means of smell, vision,
and/or hearing (DA III, 12, 434b15– 16).
Here we are on a higher level of complexity. e animal is not only hold-
ing together the logos of its sense organ and the logos of its object without
letting one yield to the other, it is also doing so while holding the medium as
medium. Not only is the animal holding together and yet distinguishing the
material and form of a contiguous object, it is holding together and yet dis-
tinguishing the material object from the medium. For, although Aristotle’s
concept of the medium of sensation is quite complicated, this much is clear:
as long as the medium itself is sensed, it is no longer a medium. e animal
not only perceives an object, but perceives it through something else. en if an
animal is capable of distant perception, it should somehow read the object off
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of the medium. Instructive in this respect is Aristotle’s account of memory,
since just as distant perception is the sensation of an object but also of its
distance, “whenever both the motion of the thing and that of time happen at
the same time, then [the animal] is at work with respect to its memory” (On
Memory and Recollection 2, 452b23– 24).22
Just as the animal feels the warmth of water without simply becoming
warm, in distant perception the animal must hear the bell beyond the vibrating
air that carries the sound and strikes the ear. But as distinct from contiguous
sensation, in distant perception the animal senses and holds its real object
(“the bell”) not only as distinct from itself, but also as beyond itself, apart and
away from itself, at a distance, separated by the medium which is next to it.
By using the medium as a medium, by sensing something through something
else precisely as something else, the animal gains a sense of the over there. To
follow Aristotle who explicitly compares distant perception and memory:
All internal [objects of sensation] are smaller, and as it were analo-
gous to the external ones. Perhaps just as another [being] takes
something in itself analogically with forms [in sensation], some-
thing similar happens with distances. (On Memory and Recollection
2, 452b15– 17)
For an animal that has only immediate touch and taste, it may seem that
beings are revealed as something else. Only for an animal having sight, hear-
ing, and/or smell may beings be revealed as elsewhere. A similar argument
can be made with respect to memory: for an animal to have a sense of now in
distinction from then, it must be able to sense something without collapsing
the time elapsed, without excluding the middle.
As memory requires a “sensation” of time, distant perception indeed
requires a sensation of distance:23
It is necessary to become acquainted with magnitude and motion by
means of that by which one is also aware of time, so it is clear that
the image is an affection of the common perceiving power. us it
is clear that the acquaintance of these is by means of the primary
power of perception. (On Memory and Recollection 1, 450a9– 13)
Aristotle defends at length that there is a primary perceiving power for com-
mon attributes and even claims that there is a “sensation of time” (DA III, 1,
2; III, 10, 433b8). ese sensations present the form of krisis, mesotês, or logos,
but in a more complex way than would contiguous perception. For the form
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sensed here must be held together and distinguished by a spatial or temporal
distance. Aristotle explicitly compares recollection to a “syllogism”:
Recollecting is like a kind of syllogism; for one who recollects
reasons out [syllogizetai] that one saw or heard or had some such
experience before, and this is a sort of inquiry. And by nature this
belongs only to those beings that are capable of deliberation, since
deliberating is also a certain sort of syllogism. (On Memory and Rec-
ollection 1, 453a10– 14)
Deliberation, search, memory, and distant sensation all seem to exhibit the
same structure: a holding together of something actual (a goal, an object
sought for, a present sensation, or a past sensation) together with an aware-
ness of the medium (the way to reach the goal, the very absence of the object
sought for, spatial or temporal distance). us, the animal capable of memory
and distant perception is no longer merely a sensitive living being, but an
animal capable of explicit proportioning.
Animal Locomotion
Distant perception as access to here and there most crucially brings locomotion
into play (DA III, 12, 434a34– 434b9; 434b25– 30). When we talk about sight
or hearing, we are necessarily dealing with bodies that can move. is is not
as straightforward as it may at first seem to be, since we mostly conceive of
sensation as apart from locomotion, taking place in the eyes, the ears, or in the
head. Apart from touch, sensation is for us humans an almost cerebral activity
taking place at the upper extreme of the body, whereas for Aristotle the seat
of sensation is in the center of the body, in the heart.24 Further, the relation
between sensation and locomotion is somewhat loose for us. Having potenti-
alities with logos, as shown in chapter 2, we humans seem to think that indeed
sensation and locomotion may go together, but it is not immediately clear why
they would implicate one another. Here we may see why they would: distant
perception requires the use of a medium, which itself requires a comparison
or proportioning, an awareness of the elsewhere beyond the medium. But for a
moving animal, the elsewhere is nothing but a potential here that would actually
become here by pursuit or pull, and the here is a potential elsewhere that would
become elsewhere by flight or push (DA III, 10, 433b26; MA 10, 703a19– 20).
But why would an animal pursue or flee something contiguous or distant?
Because “that which has sensation also has pleasure and pain, and the pleas-
ant and painful, and that which has these has appetite; for appetite is desire
for the pleasant” (DA II, 3, 414b4– 7).25 at sensation and locomotion are
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subtended by desire should not surprise us, first because, as we quoted in
chapter 3, “all things desire [the eternal and the divine], and do everything
they do by nature for the sake of it” (DA II, 4, 415b1– 3). us just as we
should primarily think of sensation not as a mental process but as funda-
mentally bodily, not as simply representational but as fundamentally moving,
similarly we must conceive of animal locomotion as fundamentally inter-
ested. One can see in each step of our argumentation (embodiment, motility,
desire) a factor that is abstracted in Descartes’s wax example: for him, just as
depth in space and time is not an integral part of sensation, the sensation of
the wax is precisely a disinterested activity that does not move the subject—
which ends up being nothing but the mind.26
For Aristotle, sensation and locomotion are not only subtended by desire
like all faculties, in fact they are joined or articulated by it. For, abstracted
from appetite, sensation does not entail locomotion in the form of imagina-
tion: “Imagination too, whenever it moves, does not move without appetite”
(DA III, 10, 433a20– 21). Nor does it move in the form of knowledge: “As a
whole we see that the human being that has the healing art does not heal,
so that there is something else that governs the making according to knowl-
edge, but it is not knowledge itself” (DA III, 9, 433a3– 6). Nor does it move
as nous: “Now, nous does not appear to move without appetite” (DA III, 10,
433a23– 24). Neither the sensation nor the imagination of a fact, nor the
knowledge of a fact and its cause go any further than stating a fact or cause:
“this is such and such,” “this is water,” “this is this big,” “the moon is eclipsed
because of the interference of the earth”... None of these have any mov-
ing force or practical implication without desire or interest, a way out of
the animal returning to it. Hence, involvements with disinterested facts are
abstractions within the context of the interested beings animals are.
In short, Aristotle analyzes locomotion as distant perception fused and
fueled with desire. For him, the cause of locomotion is thus both universal
desire and some form of receptivity to particulars, be it perception, thinking,
or imagination (DA III, 10, 433a10– 13).27
e “Practical Syllogism”28
We are not abusing the terms “premise,” “rationing,” or “proportioning” here,
since Aristotle analyzes locomotion as if it were the result of a reasoning, a
certain relating of two terms without prioritizing one over the other, a certain
logismos (DA III, 10, 433a14– 15). What kind of logismos are we dealing with?
Any predication like “this is such and such a thing,” “this is such and such
an action,” or even “I am such and such” is in itself insufficient for explain-
ing animal locomotion without desire.29 Aristotle construes locomotion as a
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result of a logismos that takes the form of an inner “speaking” (legein) between
appetite and sensation: “My appetite says [legei] ‘I must drink’; ‘this is drink’
says sensation or imagination or intellect, and one immediately drinks” (MA
7, 701a32– 33; DA III, 11, 434a17– 22). More emphatically, Aristotle’s con-
ceptual reconstruction of locomotion in On the Soul takes the form of what is
later to be known as the “practical syllogism”:
(1) If such a human being must do such and such a thing, (the universal);
(2) and if this is such and such a thing and I am such a human being,
(the particular);
(3) then I must do this. (DA III, 11, 434a18– 20)
But, in On the Soul, Aristotle offers this logismos in parentheses, and does not
dwell on its character as a syllogism or even as a logismos. Such a parallelism
between the scientific and the practical syllogisms, however, is explicit in On
the Movement of Animals. And there it is followed by a wealth of examples.
Aristotle’s major question is as follows:
But how is it that nous sometimes acts sometimes not, sometimes
moves and sometimes does not?30 What happens seems parallel to
the thinking- through [dianoêsis] and making a syllogismos about the
immovable. But there the end is the thing contemplated (for when
one thinks two premises, one thinks and puts together the conclu-
sion), but here out of the two premises comes to be a conclusion
which is an action. (MA 7, 701a7– 13)
First example: Whenever one thinks that all humans must walk (the
universal), and that he himself is a human being (the particular), then he
immediately (euthus) walks (MA 7, 701a13– 19).
Aristotle’s second example is of the stopping: whenever one thinks that no
human must walk (the universal), and that he himself is a human being (the
particular), then he immediately (euthus) stops.
e third example is taken from art and therefore the minor is no longer
the agent, but the object envisaged (NE VI, 4, 1140b3– 5): [Whenever one
thinks] “I ought to produce some good” (the universal), [and that] “a house
is a good” (the particular), then he immediately (euthus) produces a house.
Aristotle’s fourth example conjoins two syllogisms: [Whenever one
thinks] “I need some covering” (the universal), [and that] “a coat is a cov-
ering” (the particular), then [one thinks] “I need a coat”; [Whenever one
thinks] “I must make what I need” (the universal), [and that] “I need a coat”
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(the particular), then “I must make a coat.” Aristotle thus suggests that these
syllogisms can be concatenated at length so as to compose more and more
complex sets of locomotion involving more and more sophisticated and
extended spatiotemporal patterns. e minor premises of all the above syl-
logisms exemplify ways in which locomotion entails the use of the “common
perceptive power” in the forms of distant perception, memory, imagination,
a sensation of time, and the use of a medium as a medium. e various com-
binations of the minor premises provided by this “set” of powers give rise to
diverse kinds of animal locomotion such as migration, hunt, escape, search,
and so on, all reducible to pushing and pulling, or fleeing and pursuing.31
Despite Aristotle’s wording and examples, what is at stake here is not
an intellectual conception of animal motion, but rather a reminder that the
disjunction between sensation and desire is derivative of their necessary
cooperation in locomotion. For now, what is emphasized is the immediacy
between universal desire and the perception of particulars. is immediacy
is expressed in the recurrent adverb “euthus” in the conclusions of the syl-
logisms. In short, coupled with desire, all sensation involves pushing and
pulling, and all distant perception involves flight or pursuit.
A Middle Term
e middle term of the practical syllogism in animal locomotion is precisely
the relevance of the object sensed or imagined to desire: “is is it!” Since
sensation does not by itself provide a universal,32 the minor premise is bound
to be particular, and that is why animal locomotion is particular as opposed
to the “universal” locomotion of the elements.
It is the middle term that answers Aristotle’s initial question: “How is
it that nous sometimes acts and sometimes does not, sometimes moves and
sometimes does not?” (MA 7, 701a6– 8). For, disregarding the fact that all
sensation is particular, the lack of action or motion can be inferred from the
results of the Prior Analytics, I, 24. If, as Aristotle says there, in every syl-
logism at least one premise must be affirmative, and if no two affirmative
premises result in a negative conclusion, then all negative conclusions must
have one, and only one, negative premise. If the major premise is negative
then the “syllogism” takes a form comparable to a Cesare. If the minor is
negative then it takes the form of a Camestres. In both cases, the conclusion
is negative, therefore there is no action or motion, because either the univer-
sal premise of desire or the particular premise of sensation is negative.
As can be seen, we are not totally against the comparison between the
“practical syllogism” and the syllogismos in the strict sense, precisely because
Aristotle is not against it. is being said, we should indeed emphasize that
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this comparison is heuristic, and should not be taken literally to envisage
animal locomotion as a result of cognitive faculties. In fact, Aristotle too is
aware of this misunderstanding and emphasizes the “immediate” character of
the conclusion by repeating the adverb “euthus.”33 e comparison, if taken as
a comparison, is instructive not only in terms of animal locomotion, but also
in the context of syllogismos in the strict sense. A comparison already excludes
mere difference, but also the identity of the terms compared, and thereby
informs both. In the following section, we will dwell on the very difference
between the “syllogism” that results in animal locomotion and the syllogismos
in the strict sense it assumes in the Prior Analytics. Most specifically we shall
see how the premises in syllogismoi involve a level of generality that all “prac-
tical syllogism” necessarily lacks, and which faculties come into play beyond
memory, habit, desire, perception, and even beyond distant perception and
experience. For the time being, we see that mediated sensation (distant per-
ception or memory or imagination) spills into an immediate locomotion by
means of the particularity introduced by the middle term in conjunction
with the universal premise of desire.
We saw that, according to Aristotle, sensation is logos in the sense of a
ratio that holds on to its constituents without letting one yield to the other.
Here we see that a similar proportioning is at work, although in the more
complex form of a syllogismos: Aristotle insistently uses syllogismos, sylleges-
thai, and logizesthai for the “argument” abstracted from locomotion.34 And
in fact what explains animal locomotion is neither the universal premise of
desire (common to all nature, as we have seen in chapter 3), nor a disinter-
ested perception (which we have yet to see in chapters 5 and 6), but precisely
a middle term, a particular provided by receptivity, that “matches” desire and
receptivity, holds them together without letting one yield or remain different
to the other.
Put negatively, rocks simply fall, that is, tend toward the center of the
universe regardless of where they are. Fire is pulled outward regardless of
whether it is in Alexandria or Athens, in daytime or at night, in winter or in
summer. It is in this sense that elements move “universally,” without regard
for particularity. Animal locomotion, on the other hand, holds this “univer-
sal” impulse together with particulars perceived, remembered, imagined, or
anticipated. Unlike the burning of fire or the falling of rocks, a bird in flight
attends to the difference of heat, season, hour, wind, or humidity that its
perception “tells.”An animal never falls as an animal; as capable of discrimi-
nation, an animal lays down here, but “here” in a strong sense, in the sense of
“this place rather than that other,” and “now” in a strong sense reminiscent of
the sense of kairos.
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Hence both sensation and locomotion are instances of logos in the sense
of “ratio.” But, in the context of locomotion, Aristotle often uses verbs like
legein, eipein, and phanai for the way the premises are supplied.35 And he uses
the word logos itself for the premises.36 Perhaps the animal soul prefigures
an environment of logos neither in the sense of “standard” nor “ratio” but in
the sense of “speech.” is prefiguration of logos as speech in animal locomo-
tion should not be exaggerated, but neither underestimated nor ruled out:
logos and legein in animal locomotion are precisely that which will link our
ongoing survey of the word to the human world in chapters 5 and 6. In the
animal world, universal desire is no longer neatly matched with, and fulfilled
by, motion. Desire needs to engage all sorts of powers of receptivity for par-
ticulars: it must move in a certain way through a certain medium toward a
certain object, and hence it must minimally “listen” to what perception or
imagination have to say.
Beyond Locomotion
is necessary particularity of the sensed object negatively sheds light on the
theoretical, apodictic, or scientific syllogism. e latter will involve not simply
sensation nor even memory and habit, but the emergence of an eidos (“this
kind of thing”) out of particular experiences, thereby making possible syllogis-
mos in the strict sense, and experience in a wider sense that we must clarify:
While, then, other [animals] live by impressions and memories,
they have a small share in experience; on the other hand, the
human race also lives by art and reasonings [logismoi]. In humans,
experience comes out of memory, for many memories of the same
thing bring to completion [apotelousin] a potentiality for one
experience... But art comes to be whenever out of many concep-
tions [ennoêmatôn] from experience arises one universal judgment
[katholou hypolêpsis] about similar things. For, to have a judgment
that this thing was beneficial to Callias when he was sick with this
disease, and to Socrates, and one by one in this way to many people,
belongs to experience. But the judgment that it was beneficial to
all such and such people marked out as being of one form [eidos],
when they were sick with this disease (such as sluggish or irritable
people when they were feverish with heat), belongs to art. (Metaph.
I, 1, 980b26– 981a13)
Just as sensation involves a kind of form and a certain logos, and then, when
coupled with universal desire, forms a certain syllogism, this famous passage
108
also suggests that human phenomena entail a yet different kind of form and
logos.37 Animal locomotion differs from mere desire and sensation in that it
forms a syllogism by means of a middle term that provides the relevance of
sensation to desire; but animal locomotion also differs from art, logismos, and
scientific syllogism because it lacks the emergence of a form beyond percep-
tions, memories, imaginations, and habituation. is is the “small share in
experience” they are confined to. As can be seen from the quotation above,
this “form” accessible to human agents falls between the particular and the
universal such that the particular sensation is no longer simply subsumed
under the universal premise of desire.
is explains exactly why, in the examples of the practical syllogism,
Aristotle insistently uses the structure: “whenever x, then immediately y.” As
involving distant sensation and the sensation of time, animal locomotion is
predicated on temporal relations: this, then immediately (euthus) that... One
can understand the limits of these relations since, taken exclusively, these
relations are precisely conducive to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. ink
of the impossibility of understanding a lunar eclipse by means of merely
temporal relations of succession. Sensation may well provide perfect infor-
mation concerning the dark portion of the Moon and the rays of sunlight,
but it cannot account for the role of the middle term, the interference of the
Earth itself.
en not all relations are spatial or temporal and not all logismoi take the
form: “whenever x, then immediately y.” According to the rest of the quota-
tion from the Metaphysics above, it is the possession of logos, this time in its
specifically human form, that gives humans access to causal relationships of
“if x, then y,” and this, not immediately (euthus), but according to a delibera-
tion over conflicting interpretations of the relevance of the object sensed or
imagined: “Is heat good in this particular situation?,” “Is marble good for this
particular statue to be erected for this particular purpose?,” “Is defying an enemy
good in the context of this particular front of a battle in this particular political
context?,” “Is it better to not give back my friend’s weapon to him, now that
he has gone mad?” Human action is irreducible to animal locomotion in that it
not only searches by means of sensation and indeed subordinated locomotions,
but also interprets the sensible from the get- go and searches by interpreting.
Human logos is certainly not a superpower at all, it does not guarantee
any success in practical affairs.38 If logos is a key, it locks as many doors as
it opens. With human beings, the practical syllogism will result in action
(praxis) instead of mere locomotion (phora). It will become “practical” in the
literal sense, but it will also prove to be unimaginably impractical. is is the
topic of the next chapter.
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3. Recapitulation and Reorientation
In chapter 1, we started out with an investigation of the sense of logos as “stan-
dard” in the Categories, and, in chapter 2, we concluded that its inherence is to
be found in inherently motivated motions, that is, natural motions: nutrition,
reproduction, sensation, and locomotion. ese four exhibit this inherence by
differing, respectively, from mere increase of bulk, from mere coming to be,
from mere alteration, and from mere change of place. We have tried to show
how a second sense of logos, namely a certain kind of “ratio,” explains nutrition
and reproduction in chapter 3, and sensation and locomotion here in chapter
4. us, nutrition “rations” or “proportions” in the sense that it consists of
holding on to formerly exclusive elements according to its own logos within
the living being’s body. Reproduction does the same thing this time inside the
body of another. As to sensation, it “rations” or “proportions” in the sense that
it requires that the state of organ and that of the object be both held together
and discriminated in their relative differences. Finally, locomotion “rations”
or “proportions” universal desire with the particulars of the sensible world.
It uses “middle terms” that ration, proportion, match, or correlate receptivity
with desire. By means of sensation and locomotion, animal life exhibits that
which our elemental and vegetative fantasies may attempt to repress: care, the
sense of something making a difference, the responsiveness of the soul to all
things. For “in a way the soul is all beings” (DA III, 8, 431b21– 22).
us, within our discussion of logos as “standard” or “essence” or “form,” we
have seen another sense of logos at work: logos as “ratio.” Note that “standard”
and “ratio” both refer to the fundamental meaning of logos: whether between
“being” and “what it is for the being to be,” or between potentiality and actu-
ality, between contrary elements, contrary states, between particular sensibles
and the universal premise of desire, these uses of logos refer to a preservation
of difference as difference, that is, a relating of terms without one term yield-
ing to or remaining indifferent to the other.
And what about the other two senses of logos: “reason” and “speech”? e last
chapters of this book, chapters 5 and 6, are devoted to these two meanings
respectively. As we have seen in On Interpretation, motion is “the actuality of
a potentiality as such” (Ph. III, 1, 201a11– 12, 200b27– 28), but some poten-
tialities differ from others as potentialities with logos. (On Int. 9, 13; Metaph.
IX, 2, 5). We shall see that the beings that have these potentialities with
logos are “slow deliberators” because their desire is problematic. For instance,
they can wish for impossible things; they are “sophisticated communicators”
because they communicate more than they experience, have experienced, or
110
may experience firsthand. ey are “great hesitators” because they are not
only sensitive bodies in krisis, they also move according to the interpretation
they had, have, or may have, regarding their sensations.
Hence these motions are more strictly called actions, praxeis. And indeed
these beings are humans. Now it is time to investigate how humans exhibit
their “logos of being” literally in action. Now it is time to approach the human,
and to start to understand better the way in which “the human being alone
among animals has logos” (Pol. I, 1, 1253a10– 11). As we shall see, this is
best done, not by immediately singling out logos as “reason” and “speech,”
but by understanding how human logos holds on to desire and thought
without letting one take over the other term, how humans are a source—
“either thought infused with desire or desire fused with thinking” (NE VI, 2,
1139a36– 1139b7).
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CHAPTER 5
Action
Logos in the Nicomachean Ethics
So far in our argumentative survey of the meanings of logos in Aristotle’s
philosophy, we inquired, in chapter 1, into the meaning of “logos of being”
as “standard” in the Categories, then, in chapter 2, put forward the question
of its inherence in the context of On Interpretation, and finally tried to show
how Aristotle’s Physics and On the Soul answer this question by exhibiting
this inherence in the form of internally motivated motions in natural life
(nutrition and reproduction) in chapter 3, and in animal life (sensation and
locomotion) in chapter 4. We noted that these four motions brought into play
a second sense of logos: “ratio,” and we tried to show concretely how the two
major senses of logos in these contexts, namely “standard” and “ratio,” refer
back to the basic meaning of logos: a relation between terms that until then
were exclusive of, or indifferent to, one another. Now we shall move on to the
human world in order to see how, after natural motion, human action exem-
plifies the inherence of humans’ “standard of being” in the specifically human
sense of “reason” here in chapter 5, and of “speech” in chapter 6.
Accordingly this chapter shall deal with ethics, êthikê, and will be struc-
tured around three interrelated concepts: habit (ethos), positive state (hexis),
and character (êthos). In section 1, “Habit,” we shall present Aristotle’s analy-
sis of the human soul as tripartite, and draw its implications with regard to
habituation and imitation. In section 2, “Positive State,” we shall show that,
beyond habit, Aristotle is in need of the concept of “positive state” to account
for human virtue, especially intellectual virtue which is a “positive state with
logos.” Finally, in section 3, “Character,” we shall see how moral virtue, a “pos-
itive state according to logos,”exhibits itself in human action.
“e human being alone among animals has logos.” What exactly does the
verb for “to have” (ekhein) mean in this sentence? In what sense is logos some-
thing humans have? And how does logos interact with the rest of the human
soul, especially desire? e following passage from the Nicomachean Ethics on
human desire gives us the clue:
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e appetitive part or the desiring part in general somehow par-
takes [in logos] insofar as it listens to and can obey it in the sense in
which we say “taking account [ekhein logon] of both one’s father and
one’s friends.” (NE I, 13, 1102b29– 1102b32)1
e specifically human way in which we are able to take account of our
friends as well as our father will lead us into the specifics of human discourse
and communication in the following and last chapter of this book, chapter 6.
1. Habit
We already saw, above in chapter 3, that living nature, according to Aristotle,
is governed by desire, the desire for reproduction:
e most natural work for living beings... is to make another like
itself: an animal making an animal, a plant a plant, so that they may
partake in the eternal and divine in the way they can. For all things
desire that, and do everything they do by nature for the sake of it.
(DA II, 4, 415a23– 415b2)2
In compensation for the limitations and mortality in the sublunar region,
the most profound natural impulse is to reproduce and thus to be in another
being having the same form.
e same holds true in humans, except that humans manage to be in
another not only by giving birth to an offspring, but by continuously acting,
making, and doing things to their offspring long time after they are born.3 For
humans, giving birth is only the beginning of giving life, and “reproduction”
is coupled with a subsequent and lengthy “production” of the self- sufficient
and mature human individual.
Every artist loves his own work more than he would be loved
by the work if it were ensouled... e reason for this is that all
things desire and love to be; and it is in actuality, in living and act-
ing, that we are; and, being actually at work, the maker is in a way
the work; so he loves the work and thereby loves to be. (NE IX, 7,
1167b34– 1168a9)
Hence humans’ attachment to their children is an attachment not only to
something they simply are at work in, not only to their humble chance for
eternity, but also to a product and a project they work at.
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As to the perspective of children, on the other hand, being “objects” of
such attachment, “products” of such long effort, and “projects” involving such
continuous care, they take on not only the look of their species and of their
parents, but also their invisible aspects: their values, their emotions, their
behavior, their accents, their fears, and even their unrealized potentials. Par-
ents then may well succeed in being in their offspring and speak from within
their children the words they were looking for all their life. is inheritance
is so immediate that it can be recognized by children neither as an inheri-
tance, nor as an inheritance among possible others.
But there is a twist, at least for Aristotle. Paradoxically, it is precisely when
parents finally are in their offspring, precisely when they speak and act from
within their children, that the latter start being what they were supposed to
be all along: self- sufficient and independent mature beings; not only bundles
of natural traits and environmental effects and internalized habits (ethos), but
characters (êthos) with balanced ways (hexis) of bearing themselves in relation to
different situations— not only the heirs of their parents, but friends to others
in much larger contexts and projects than those of the household, and some-
times in brutal conflict with it.4 e children’s desire fulfills itself not simply
by keeping on being what they already are, namely products of the desire of
their parents, but by no longer being with them, by being with others, by being
exposed to a realm of experiences and perspectives they never had firsthand,
by listening to others and by earning recognition from them. e project of
human parents is fulfilled when the child becomes a subject among non-
parents. It is this development of human desire through her familial circle into
a necessarily open environment that we shall explore here.
An Unpractical Syllogism
Somehow, human desire can “listen” in the sense of “taking account” (logon
ekhein). For now let us make a textual remark concerning the way this listen-
ing and taking account takes place in our focal passage from the Nicomachean
Ethics: houtô dê kai tou patros kai tôn philôn phamen ekhein logon (NE I, 13,
1102b31– 33). We translated this ambiguous clause as “[the desiring part of
the human soul listens to logos and can obey it] in the sense in which we say
‘taking account [ekhein logon]5 of both one’s father and one’s friends.’ ” We
did so in order to emphasize what appears to be an emphatic conjunction
(kai... kai...).6 Some translators, however, generally leave the conjunction
unemphatic.7 Some even translate it as a disjunction.8 As arguing for a fun-
damental meaning of logos characterized by inclusiveness, we shall show that
this ambiguous conjunction has significant implications insofar as it allows
us to negotiate between an uncritically “rationalistic” definition of human
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beings by logos, and an understanding of humans as “either thought infused
with desire [orektikos nous] or desire infused with thinking through [orexis
dianoêtikê]” (NE VI, 2, 1139b5– 7).9
Insofar as it can “listen,” instead of merely saying, obeying, or dictating,
human desire is infused with thinking through, or conversely, human sen-
sation, imagination, memory, or thinking in general is infused with desire.
Either way, the human soul is defined as an improbable inclusion, as an
infusion, and even perhaps a certain confusion. Hence, whereas the “prac-
tical syllogism” applied to animal locomotion involved the subsumption of
the particular premise of sensation under the universal premise of desire by
means of a middle term, in the case of the human soul the particular sensuous
premise is fundamentally complicated in that humans are capable of a certain
hearing, that they are in a position both to interpret and to have interpreted
the particular situations in contrary ways. Instead of being a univocal object
of pleasure and pain, one and the same particular may well be conducive to
good as well as to bad in the eyes of human beings, and conversely the human
good is such that it may well lie in this particular action or in its contrary.
In chapter 2, we saw that Aristotle specifies these two-sided potentialities
as “potentialities with logos” (On Int. 9, 13; Metaph., IX, 2, 5). Regardless of
whether we here translate and interpret logos as “reason,” it is no coincidence
that these potentialities instantiate the central meaning of logos: the human
soul not only holds together the universal and the particular in order to lit-
erally spill immediately (euthus) into locomotion, but it also holds possible
contrary interpretations of the particular sensible or imagined object, and
thus exhibits not only a motion or change, but action. “We see that the source
of that which will be is also something relying on deliberation and action”
(On Int. 9, 19a7– 8). e practical syllogism of animal locomotion takes the
“unpractical” form of praxis in the human realm. To understand human
action, we indeed must first take a look at the specificity of the human soul
it originates from.10
A Tripartite Soul
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s criterion for dividing the human soul is
logos: “one part is alogos, while the other has [ekhon] logos” (NE I, 13, 1102a29–
30). Logos not only distinguishes the human being from all other animals, it
also differentiates the human soul within itself. For the time being, it seems
as if both the world and the human soul are somehow infused with logos, but
neither is so through and through.
Yet the analysis of the human soul necessitates a further distinction beyond
the distinction between the alogos part and the part having logos. Nutrition
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and growth are simply alogos (NE I, 13, 1102a33– 1102b1). ey are activi-
ties of sleep at least as much as of waking, digestion being the cause of sleep
(On Sleep and Waking 3, 456b17– 18; 458a27– 28). But there is another part of
the human soul besides this alogos part as well as the one that has logos. is
third part is somehow intermediary between the two:11 “some other nature
that, while being alogos, in a way partakes [metekhousa] in logos” (NE I, 13,
1102b13– 14).
is intermediary part is said to sometimes “fight against and resist logos”
in a way the purely alogos part does not (NE I, 13, 1102b17– 18). If there is
an intermediary part of the human soul such that it “has” logos but can resist
and fight it, this “having” (ekhein) cannot take the form of syn- ekheia, mere
continuity or adherence. But further, if this ekhein takes the form of met-
ekhein, of “partaking” (metekhousa), as in the quotation above, Aristotle insists
that this is not exact or clear enough by adding: “in a way,” “somehow” (NE I,
13, 1102b13– 14; NE I, 13, 1102b29– 1102b32). How then does this interme-
diary part have logos such that this relation is neither a mere fusion (syn- ekheia)
nor exactly an external and intermittent participation (met- hexis)?12
Although Aristotle explicitly leaves open the nature of the distinction
between the “parts” of the soul, it is clear that the human soul, for him, can
be neither monolithic nor simply heteroclite.13 In other words, given that
one part of the human soul can resist another part, the human soul cannot
be a Cartesian res cogitans, since in that case there would be nothing in the
human soul to resist logos. Indeed, it cannot be a res extensa either, since then
there would be no logos to resist to begin with. Finally, the human soul can-
not be some conjunction of a res extensa and a res cogitans either, since the
two parts, although somehow adjacent, would have nothing to do with one
another. e Cartesian mind and body are “metaphysical neighbors,” so to
speak, in comparison to the Aristotelian tripartite model of the human soul:
they are born so far from one another that they are certainly not relatives,
and they live infinitely far from one another so that they never come across
one another and become friends or enemies except by means of an external
occasionalism. To put it in another way while using this time a Hobbesian
terminology, if human action is the result of a process involving resistance
or listening in the soul, then action can be reduced neither to involuntary
motion, nor to a voluntary motion which is, as it were, the “psychic servant”
of the former.14 Unlike the Cartesian model, the human being has one regime
for Aristotle. Unlike the Hobbesian model, this regime cannot be merely a
despotism according to these passages in Aristotle.
In Aristotle, if the human soul has parts, they are three in number. And
two of these parts are not put side by side, but set in tension against one
117
another: “while we see the erratic member [in a spasm] in bodies, we do
not in the case of the soul” (NE, I, 13, 1102b22– 23). is tripartite structure
makes it such that the human soul is capable of a special kind of spasm, an
erratic but “invisible” stretch, reminiscent of the kinds of stretch we noted in
the previous parts of this book. Yet here the stretch can take the form not only
of tension, but of explicit resistance, obstinacy, and fight, or explicit adher-
ence and consonance. And even these latter terms are inadequate because
they are supposed to explain human phenomena by means of physical phe-
nomena, suggesting that the intermediary part sticks to (Latin adhaerare)
or echoes logos (Latin consonantia). Aristotle insists that the intermediary
part can “obey” (peitharkhein) logos.15 is “obedience” may take the form of
simply executing a command, but the capacity for resistance here suggests
rather the etymological sense of “hearing out”: the intermediary part is not
simply determined by logos, but rather gives ear to it, listens to logos “in the
sense in which we say ‘taking account of both one’s father and one’s friends,’ ”
precisely because it is able to resist it. is is not fricrion, but resistance
(antiteinein). It is fight (makhein), and not clash. My sweet tooth disobeys
logos in a fundamentally different way from the consistency of my bones and
sinews. Conversely, my eating habits are obedient to logos in a way funda-
mentally distinct from the way the furniture in my apartment yield to my
arrangement. is “tension” results from the intermediary part’s “attention”
to logos.
If then the intermediary part somehow can “obey” logos, it is not because it
immediately yields to it, but because it has “given ear” to it, it has taken it into
account (logon ekhein). e relation between obedience and audience is not
only etymologically found in Latin, but emphasized in many Aristotelian
texts as well as our focus text:
At least the [intermediary part] of the self- restrained person obeys
[peitharkhei] logos, and then that of the temperate and brave is best-
hearing [euêkoôteron], for all harmonize [homophônei] with logos. It
appears that the alogos [part in the human soul] is twofold. For the
vegetative part does not share in logos at all, whereas the appetitive
part or the desiring part in general somehow partakes [in logos]
insofar as it listens to [katêkoon] and can obey it [peitharkhikon] in
the sense in which we say “taking account [ekhein logon] of both
one’s father and one’s friends.” (NE I, 13, 1102b27– 33)16
Our translation tries to render the strong emphasis on the argumentative,
almost forensic and political, environment of the human soul, because we
118
are trying to highlight the fact that, for Aristotle, the human soul is dis-
tinguished neither by being simply rational, nor by having a rational and an
irrational part that lay side by side or are mixed indifferently, but by its inclu-
sion of an explicit relation between its parts, of a realm where they confront
one another, where they may well explicitly resist and fight one another,
make compromises or come to a consensus. As distinct from dualistic or
monistic conceptions of the human soul, Aristotle’s tripartite human soul
resembles an agora.
Whereas animal sensation is subtended by intermediary degrees of pleasure
and pain, the human soul then has an intermediary part. Human receptivity
of particulars entails an act of questioning, a task of interpretation, and thus
an environment of negotiation. A knife, a retreat in battle, a glass of wine, a
payment, lumber, hemlock: the sensation, memory, or imagination of these
particulars does not necessarily spill into an immediate evaluation as to the
degree of pain and pleasure they may entail and a consequent motion; they
also trigger what Aristotle compared to the attention one lends both to one’s
father or friends. Hindering the smooth and immediate functioning of the
“practical syllogism” of animal locomotion, it is this possibility of attention of
the intermediary part that will assume a central function in the emergence
of human action.
A Kind of Learning
What then is “in” the intermediary part? Potentialities? No. In chapter 3, we
saw how the soul is an already developed state of a body having life potentially,
and how it is indeed by nature that the human soul has these potentialities
ready to work:
Whatever grows by nature in us is bestowed on us first as potenti-
alities, we display their actuality later. is is clear with the senses:
we did not acquire the senses by repeatedly seeing or hearing, but
the other way around: having them, we used them; we did not get
them by using them. (NE II, 1, 1103a27– 31)
Besides the vegetative part, human action and life are characterized by the
two other parts, and as Aristotle continues we see that their development
involves an almost opposite process:
[ese] perfections, we acquire by first putting them to work, just
as we do other arts. For the things that one who has learned them
needs to do, we learn by doing, just as house- builders become
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so by building houses or harpists by playing the harp. (NE II, 1,
1103a31– 1103b1)
Whereas one becomes capable of sight through an embryonic development
of not seeing at all, one becomes a harpist by playing the harp.
What then does the intermediary part of the human soul have, if not
potentialities? Habits. How do habits come to be? Instead of the word
“habituation,” Aristotle typically uses the verb manthanesthai, or the noun
mathêsis, “learning,” as in the following famous passage:
By nature, then, all animals have sensation; from this, some acquire
memory, some do not. Accordingly the former are more intelligent
and more capable of learning [mathêtikôtera] than those that can-
not remember. e [animals] that cannot hear sounds [tôn psophôn
akouein] are intelligent but cannot learn [aneu tou manthanein], such
as a bee or any other kind of animal that might be such. Whatever
animal has this sense besides memory learns [manthanei]. (Metaph.
I, 1, 980a28– 980b26)
e capacity to learn, unlike intelligence, requires what Aristotle calls the
“hearing of sounds” besides memory.17 Which animals are capable of “hear-
ing sounds” and thus of being taught and of learning, and thereby of being
formed by habits? One answer is found in the Parts of Animals: “all [birds]
use their tongues also as a means of interpretation [pros hermêneian] with one
another, and some to a larger degree than other, so that there even seems to
be learning among some” (PA II, 17, 660a35– 660b2). A more specific answer
is found in the History of Animals:
Among small birds, while singing some utter a different voice than
their parents if they have been reared away from the nest and have
heard [akousôsin] other birds sing. A hen nightingale has before
now been seen to teach [prodidaxousa] her chick to sing, suggesting
that song does not come by nature as dialektos18 and voice does, but
is capable of being shaped [plattesthai]. (HA IV, 9, 536b14– 18)19
Aristotle emphasizes that learning here, as a process of acquiring habit, stems
from the animal’s environment, and not necessarily from its natural parents.
e intermediary part of the human soul then includes habits, and these lat-
ter are generated not as natural potentialities are, but they are literally shaped
120
by the environment. And “hearing sounds” is precisely hearing them for the
sake of not only remembering them, but repeating them.
A Kind of Imitation
One can see the extent of learning in the sense of acquiring habits: it is
imitation.20
Generally there seems to be two causes of the poetics, both natu-
ral: for imitation is innate to human beings from childhood (and
they are distinguished from other animals in that they are the most
imitative and do their first learning through imitation), so also is
it natural that they all take pleasure in imitations. A sign of this is
what happens in the way we act: for we take pleasure in contem-
plating the most precise images of things which we would look at
with pain, such as the forms of most ignoble beasts and corpses.
e reason for this is that learning [manthanein] is most pleasant
not only for the philosopher, but also for everyone else— although
not much is common between them. us humans take pleasure in
seeing images because while watching they happen to learn [man-
thanein] and to infer [syllogizesthai] what each thing is, such as “this
is that.” (Po. 4, 1448b4– 17)
So humans have two natural inclinations toward imitation, both of which
involve some “learning.” In the second kind of inclination, humans take
pleasure in perceiving imitations— a more or less disinterested perception
of a representation which, as disinterested, requires the awareness that it is
indeed a representation, in order to provide the middle term of the above-
mentioned syllogism: it is the commonness of shapes of the noses, and not
its identity, that implies that the image is not literally (univocally or synony-
mously) Socrates himself, but an image of Socrates. e “learning” involved
in the second case is clearly not immediate, it is “inferential” or “syllogistic.”
Seeing a picture of Socrates, we seem to “infer”: this two- dimensional image
has a snub nose and such and such a forehead and beard, but Socrates has the
same features, so this is an image of Socrates, homonymously speaking this is
Socrates.21
In the first kind of inclination, however, humans themselves imitate and
do their first learnings in this way. is kind of imitation is not described
as requiring an “inference” or “figuring out” (syllogizesthai). Here imitation
seems to be mere immersion, and to always start out so for Aristotle. e bird
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that imitates a song does not do so as an imitation. She mirrors rather than
she represents; she repeats rather than she forms an analogy or syllogism;
she echoes rather than she infers. is natural inclination to imitate brings it
about that humans, but also small birds, are naturally inclined to acquire and
reproduce behavior that are not innate to them. Here is prefigured a natu-
ral tendency to precisely transform the “innate.” So, where then do habits
come from, unlike the innate potentialities of the vegetative part? From the
environment.
e Limitation of Ethos
us, the acquisition of habits takes the form of a learning through mere
imitation. While the vegetative part of the soul at birth is ready to do its own
work, the intermediary part is naturally ready to do what others do. While
nature takes care of the reproduction of the life form and the correspond-
ing development of the vegetative faculties, after that, nature leaves the care
of the “reproduction” of the rest to the living being’s environment. “And in
all the other skills people do not generally know their tools and their most
accurate reasonings by taking them from primary things; they take them
from what is secondhand or thirdhand or at a distant remove, and get their
reasonings from experience.”22 Indeed, “a human being generates a human
being” by nature, but it is by learning that a certain song survives across
generations.
In a way the tendency to imitate is the reverse of sensation: instead of
receiving the form of external objects as in sensation, the imitating animal is
impregnated by them, she “reproduces” them in her body, and she “becomes”
them, so to speak. Imitation is almost a regression from sensation back into
nutrition and reproduction. In fact, children’s surprising capacity for remem-
bering is often likened to the capacity for absorption of a sponge, or to a
fertile soil. Perhaps this is why, for Aristotle, “whether one is habituated from
childhood this way or that way makes no small difference, but rather a great
difference, or rather all the difference” (NE II, 1, 1103b23– 25). Between
nature and logos, then, the intermediary part acquires habits by means of
learning, which takes the form of imitation or immediate repetition.
Yet how does this fit our guiding passage? Does habit match the kind of
“taking account” (ekhein logon) of both one’s father and one’s friends? As we
saw, the bird can learn the songs she hears from other birds no less than from
her natural parents. Yet if humans took account of others merely in the sense
of imitating them, Aristotle would not insist that the desiring part “gives ear”
to logos. And if humans took account of anybody, regardless of whether they
are our fathers or friends, then he would not mention the latter two, but say
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“others” as in the end of On the Soul (DA III, 13, 435b24– 26). Is it exact to
say that, to return to Aristotle’s examples, house building and harp playing
are habits?
e kind of “having” (ekhein) which characterizes our having logos as
humans and our taking account of our fathers and friends then does not
seem to be fully captured by “habit,” ethos. Habit takes us beyond the fulfill-
ment of innate potentialities into the realm of the intermediary part of the
human soul, and yet it does not appear to be the form of having that lends
insight into the way humans have logos. Precisely because “taking account,”
logon ekhein, does not mean here reproduction or imitation, but “esteem,”
“consideration,” “value,” “regard.”23 e intermediary part of the human soul
has the ability to resist logos and therefore has the ability to obey logos because
it “respects” logos— again, not as blindly following it, but in the meaningful
etymological sense of “respect” as “looking back” at it. In animal life, we saw
sight as a kind of distant perception; here we see another kind of looking,
a looking back, reminiscent of the “back- turning stretch,” oriented toward
“both one’s father and one’s friends.”
Habit is indeed a crucial part of the human life and education, and yet
it cannot account for the relationship between the intermediary part of the
human soul and logos.
2. Positive State
A New Kind of Listening
If not habit, what does the intermediary part of the human soul “have” such
that it can listen to logos? Besides the above- quoted passage from the Meta-
physics that enables us to distinguish human beings and some animals from,
say, bees, by the criterion of “hearing sounds,” and consequently of habitua-
tion, learning, and imitation, we now need to make a further step in order to
gain insight into specifically and essentially human growth. We shall do so
by introducing here a helpful passage from the Politics, VII, which is unfor-
tunately much less quoted than the famous logos passage from book I:
ere are three things by which human beings are made good and
serious; these three are nature, habit and logos. For first one must be
born a human and not any other animal, thus must have a certain
body and soul. But there are some qualities that are of no use to
be born with, for our habits make us revert them; in fact by nature
some are liable to become for the worse or for the better by hab-
its. So other animals mostly live by nature, some do so to a small
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extent by habits too; but the human being lives by logos as well,
for only the human being has logos. So that these [three] must be
harmonized [symphônein]. For human beings often act contrary
to habituation and nature because of logos, if they are persuaded
[peisthôsin] that some other way of acting is better. Now, we have
already delimited the natural property of those who are to be ame-
nable to the hand of the legislator. e work left to do is education
[paideia], for humans learn some things by being habituated, others
by listening [akouontes]. (Pol. VII, 12, 1332a38– 1332b11)24
What is this latter and specifically human kind of listening or hearing distinct
not only from hearing as mere sensation (akoê), but also from the “hearing
of sounds” (tôn psophôn akouein) required for a “learning” in the sense of mere
habituation and imitation? Is this the kind of listening that the intermediary
part is capable of with respect to logos “in the sense in which we say ‘taking
account of both one’s father and one’s friends’ ”?
Let us start out by negative results that may narrow down the field.
Aristotle’s tripartite analysis of the human soul here defies many classi-
cal dichotomies such as rational and irrational, nature and nurture, activity
and passivity. For the intermediary part here is neither a reservoir of natural
potentialities nor a receptacle of habits. e human soul is no more divided
between desire and thought, between active parts and passive parts, between
innate motions and environmental stimuli. It is no more split between nature
and nurture than between the rational and the irrational.25 Just as the lat-
ter dichotomy lacks the intermediary part, the former seems to eliminate
and reduce logos altogether. e latter dichotomy omits “childhood” while the
former omits “maturity.” us, these classical dichotomies disable us from
understanding the human soul according to Aristotle.
It is exactly here that we shall see the function of logos: “For human beings
often act contrary to habituation and nature because of logos, if they are per-
suaded that some other way of acting is better” (Pol. VII, 12, 1332b6– 8). If
there is to be both a childhood and a maturity, both the development of the
intermediary part and that of the part having logos, the human soul must not
be analyzed into acquired habits and/or natural impulses all the way down.
Here logos, presumably in the sense of “reason,” precisely is a third factor or
an “included middle” that defies seemingly exclusive dichotomies. Accord-
ingly, habits cannot remain quantifiable atomic stimuli and thus be simply
contrasted to innate “faculties.” Habits cannot be simply accumulated in the
way fire can grow without limit or logos. ere must be something formed out
of habits.
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What then does human action involve that is irreducible both to natural
motion and to passively undergoing and repeating? On the one hand, natural
potentialities of the soul are reserved to the vegetative part. And, as we have
seen in chapter 3, these are developed organs ready for work. On the other
hand, habits as passive exposure (paskhein) to, and immediate repetition
of, environmental influences (pathê) cannot resist or obey logos, they repeat
without listening or taking account (logon ekhein). What then does emerge in
the intermediary part? What does human education involve that is neither
a potentiality actualized at birth, nor internalized firsthand experience?26 If
it is neither syn- ekheia, nor met- hexis, then what is the substantive form of
ekhein in relation to logos that makes sense of being compared to one’s taking
account of “both one’s father and one’s friends”?
Positive State
e answer is hexis, which we shall translate as “positive state” for lack of a
better rendering.27
In a word, from similar actualities [energeiôn] positive states [hex-
eis] come to be. Hence it is necessary to make out actualities to be
of certain sorts, for the positive states follow from the differences
among these. (NE, II, 1, 1103b22– 24)
Positive states are the basic constituents of the intermediary part of the
human soul. Beyond mere habit (ethos), positive states build up human char-
acter (êthos). Neither nature, nor environment, but positive states make up
human êthos, the real daimôn of human life according to Heraclitus’s frag-
ment 119.
ere are three things that come to be in the soul: feelings [pathê],
potentialities and positive states... By feelings, I mean desire,
anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, affection, hatred, yearning, jealousy,
pity, and generally those things which are accompanied by pleasure
or pain. By potentialities, [I mean] those things in accordance with
which we are said to be apt to undergo [pathêtikoi] these, such as
those by which we can feel anger or be annoyed or feel pity. By pos-
itive states, [I mean] those things in accordance with which we bear
ourselves well or badly toward feelings; for instance, in relation to
being angry, if we are that way violently or slackly, we bear ourselves
badly, but if in a measured way, we bear ourselves well, and similarly
in relation to other feelings. (NE II, 5, 1105b20– 28)
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is crucial passage gives us a clue as to why Aristotle defines humans as ani-
mals that neither are of a certain kind, nor do certain things, but have (ekhei)
something, because this passage introduces a sense of ekhein and hexis that is
deemphasized in other analyses of these terms in the Aristotelian corpus.28
Aristotle here explains hexeis as “those things in accordance with which we
bear ourselves well or badly toward feelings” (kath’ has pros ta pathê exomen eu
ê kakôs). Human beings do not simply undergo (paskhein) fear or confidence,
they are not only influenced under (hypo) their impact, they maintain a rela-
tion to (pros) them. Human beings neither simply act (prattein) in fear or
confidence, nor even are they (einai) simply afraid or confident, they bear
themselves (ekhein) well or badly in relation to these feelings. If humans
are defined neither by something they are nor by something they do, but by
something they have, this may well be because hexis designates a kind of hav-
ing that is irreducible to something humans simply are or do.
Human beings feel anger in a way fundamentally different from the
way a combustible is set on fire. Humans never literally burst in anger, fear
never literally consumes their hearts, the human soul is never literally set on
fire by love.29 Certainly, humans undergo pleasure or pain. In fact, all sensa-
tion entails pleasure or pain.30 But the human soul also has an aspect out of
which it bears itself (ekhein) toward these feelings. is is why positive states
can neither be substituted by or to habits, feelings, and natural potentialities;
they “grow” out of them. Human growth is such that it involves this other
growth. For Aristotle, hexis is the proper subject matter of ethics. is is why
the Nicomachean Ethics is far more deeply related to the Politics than to On
the Soul.
Freedom
Let us flesh out this concept of “positive state” by distinguishing it from
“habit” in our previous examples. Is there a strong sense in which harp play-
ing (a positive state) is distinct from the singing of a bird (a habit)? Both are
indeed examples of those apparently paradoxical activities that we become
capable of by precisely exercising. ey both illustrate the way habits stick by
means of repetition in distinction from natural potentialities: “Being carried
down by nature, a stone cannot be habituated to be carried upwards even if
one were to habituate it by throwing it upwards ten thousand times; nor can
fire be habituated to be carried downwards” (NE II, 1, 1103a21– 23). How
then does harp playing differ not only from the falling of a stone or the
burning of fire, but also from the singing of a bird?
How does one become not only someone who plays the harp, but a harp-
ist? Perhaps we should ask: when does one become a harpist? When she
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happens to pick up a harp and pluck its strings? Or when she is capable of
perfectly repeating what the teacher plays? Or is it rather when the student
no longer needs to imitate the teacher, when the student no longer needs to
immediately remember all the particular instructions and all the past experi-
ences? Just as we noted in chapter 3 that one learns a language when one
“forgets” the rules, similarly one becomes a harpist when one no longer needs
to follow one’s master or to be pushed by him, but “walks her own walk.”
is is when one is a harpist even while not playing a harp. Similarly a house
builder is someone who does not have to imitate his master, but who in fact
must be able to go beyond his master in order to improvise on the particular
means, materials, workers, budget, and geography, and so on in order to build
each time the particular, therefore unique, house.
e settling of a positive state then is an emergence of freedom. Not a
freedom from playing certain notes, but the freedom to play others instead. It
is the freedom of differing without falling into contradiction, that is, without
ceasing to have the exact same logos. A positive state is a result of the actuali-
ties that we become capable of by exercise. And this result at least partially
transcends the preparation such that, as Aristotle says, the good shoemaker
or the good general makes the best even out of bad circumstances (NE I,
10, 1101a1– 5). Indeed, no harpist is only a harpist. But being a harpist does
involve the human soul as a whole. For, when one is a harpist, this colors
one’s eating and sleeping habits, one’s respiration and concentration, one’s
daily schedule, one’s furniture and one’s house, one’s relation to one’s body
and to other people, one’s career decisions, one’s way of raising children, one’s
political views, and ultimately, depending on how serious the person is, one’s
life as a whole. us it is not true that some people are more harpist than
others.
Medicine, Architecture, and Music
Most instructive, in this context, is a famous but lengthy passage from the
Metaphysics that subtly defends a claim that at first may seem counterintui-
tive: while positive states such as art or science31 emerge out of experience
and habit, the latter two remain more general than positive states:
While, then, other [animals] live by impressions and memories,
they have a small share in experience; on the other hand, the
human race also lives by art and logismos. In humans, experience
comes out of memory, for many memories of the same thing bring
to completion a potentiality for one experience... But art comes
to be whenever out of many conceptions from experience arises
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one universal judgment [hypolêpsis] about similar things. For to
have a judgment that this thing was beneficial to Callias when he
was sick with this disease, and to Socrates, and one by one in this
way to many people, belongs to experience. But the judgment that
it was beneficial to all such and such people marked out as being
of one form [tois toiosde kat’ eidos hen aphoristheisi], when they
were sick with this disease (such as sluggish or irritable people
when they were feverish with heat), belongs to art. (Metaph. I, 1,
980b26– 981a13)
e crucial factor is the nature of the “judgment,” whether it is a judgment
of mere fact or of the cause. Indeed animals often take care of themselves
quite well, and human beings may manage quite well to live just by following
their feeling and the familiar judgments of traditional medicine that they
have been exposed to: “Such and such a potion is good for this disease,”
“Such and such a plant is poisonous,” and so on. Similarly, one may well have
memorized perfectly the traditional “judgments” concerning the “appropri-
ate” music to play at weddings, sacrifices, funerals, and so on. An experienced
manual laborer may well mechanically build up such and such walls for tem-
ples and other kinds for residences, and yet
the experienced person knows the what, and not the why, whereas
the artisan is familiar with the why and the cause. is is why we
think master craftsmen in each kind of work are more honored
and know more than manual laborers, and are also wiser because
they know the causes of the things they do (just some inanimate
things, the others do what they do without knowing, as fire burns;
the inanimate things doing each of these things by nature, but the
manual laborers by habit). (Metaph. I, 1, 981a27– 981b5)
Earlier in this chapter, habit was opposed to the motion of fire. In compari-
son to positive states, they seem quite similar.
So positive states differ equally from habit and from mere nature by their
openness to the particularity of the situation: this is good for Socrates nei-
ther because it is good in general, nor simply because it worked in the past,
nor even because it worked on Socrates in the past, but because now Socrates
is such and such in this particular situation. In fact, in this particular, unique
and unprecedented situation, Socrates may well be right in thinking that
drinking poison is the right thing to do for him. is wall is to be built this
way, not because that is the way walls have always been built, not because I
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am told to build it that way, but because of the material, the geography, the
purpose of the building, and the political significance of the building. is
song is to be played this way, not because that is the way it is played by the
masters, but because of the particular acoustics of the environment, the time
of the day, the season of the year, but also because of the way of life it serves,
the way it forms or affects the listeners of a certain kind and on a certain,
unique, occasion.
In short, positive states make it possible and even necessary to go beyond
the dichotomy of natural potentialities and acquired habits. us, human life
exhibits the inherent character of its own logos, “standard of being,” by means
of these positive states. It is here, at the level of positive states, that the third
sense of logos shows itself: reason.
Hexis Meta Logou
It is not anachronistic to associate artistic perfection and virtue in the word
“virtuoso.” And it certainly is not out of place to dwell on the example of
music. Music is always a fundamental factor of education, and especially of
the emotional education of children, in Aristotle as well as in Plato.32 Just as
the building of a house or the making of a movie involves many people having
different shares in the overall purpose, similarly singing to a playback or to a
karaoke, conducting an orchestra, DJing in a club, involuntarily repeating an
annoying tune one has heard on the radio, whistling in the street, and playing
in a military band or a jazz quartet offer a variety of distributions of “knowl-
edge” of the causes. is wide spectrum is spread between, on the one hand,
a level of mechanical repetition (imitation, mere habituation, or association),
and on the other hand, a level of knowledge (art or science), of the awareness
of the particular, that is of the awareness that universal “recipes” do not have
univocal effects on all particulars. Here we thus find a level of holding together
two possible contrary ways to go in a particular situation, and a state of delib-
erating well about them— a positive state with logos (hexis meta logou).33
e settling of a positive state is then an emergence of freedom in the
sense of overcoming the exclusiveness of what presents itself initially as con-
trary options. As a form of human freedom from top- down applications
of universal rules as well as from the sheer particularity of perceptions, our
analysis of positive states with logos such as medicine, architecture and music
here foreshadows what will turn out to be the essence of human logos in our
next chapter: human involvement not only with one’s past firsthand experi-
ences, or with one’s mechanical training, but with non- firsthand experience.
e intermediary part of the human soul, then, is not an aggregate of hab-
its. Habits, feelings, experiences, memories become positive states, settled and
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free ways of the human soul’s bearing itself toward the latter. For the time
being, this seems to be the clue toward interpreting meaningfully and ade-
quately our focal passage from the Nicomachean Ethics where the intermediary
part of the human soul listens to logos the way “we say ‘taking account [ekhein
logon] of one’s father and one’s friends’ ” (NE I, 13, 1102b30– 1102b32). It is
this bearing oneself, ekhein, that is “crystallized” in the concept of positive
state (hexis). Positive states are formed not by natural growth or habituation,
but by education, the other growth required by human growth: one’s listening
not only to one’s immediate surrounding, that is, to one’s “father,” whether
natural or not, but also to those beyond, to one’s “friends”— the human soul’s
having both of these tendencies at once. “Taking account” here means not
only remembering and being habituated by means of firsthand experiences
in the “household,” but also attending to that which one precisely has not or
cannot have experienced and even may never experience firsthand. For the
time being, it seems as if the human being has logos in the sense a guitarist
owns a guitar: not the possession of an object, indeed, neither a mastery over
a memorized repertoire and over general instructions, but rather an ability to
bear oneself without them and beyond them.
3. Character
Clearly this is not enough. e concept of positive state takes us further than
nature and habit in accurately describing the human soul by introducing a
kind of freedom. Yet while technical and theoretical positive states may color
all human experience, they certainly do not exhaust it. e intermediary part
of the human soul attends both to one’s father and to one’s friends in a non-
technical and nontheoretical way as well. We saw that harp playing and house
building are instances of assuming a master’s or teacher’s general guidance,
and then of overcoming it for the sake of freely and maturely engaging in new
particular situations. And yet, while art is a positive state with logos (meta logou,
NE VI, 3, 1140a11), the positive states of the intermediary part are not with
logos, but rather according to logos (kata ton logon, NE VI, 1, 1138b25– 29), or
against it (para ton logon, NE I, 13, 1102b24). One’s relation to one’s master
or teacher is much less intricate and profound than one’s relation to one’s
father, and much less freely chosen and sustained than one’s relation to one’s
friends.
Hexis Kata Ton Logon
We said that some people are harpists, while some are not. Yet we cannot
say, in the same way, that some people are courageous while others are not.
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When non- harpist adults happen to pick up a harp, they play it the way a
child would, whereas cowards feel fear in a fundamentally different way than
children do (NE III, 5, 1114a3ff.): in the latter case something is lacking, but
in the former case something is destroyed or out of place. People do not take
up their feelings and needs the way one may pick up a harp; people do not
relate to one another the way they choose a harp teacher or are handed over
to a master craftsman. When human beings produce, humans do things to
objects. When they act, they also do things to themselves. Art and science
are indeed positive states, and they were helpful in securing an aspect of the
human soul distinct from both natural potentialities and acquired habits. Yet
the basic constituent of human character is positive states that relate to feel-
ings and desires that are as old as we are, and probably older than our very
sense of who we are.
Hence perfection in art or production is not a perfection of the interme-
diary part of the soul, of human desire (NE III, 10, 1117b23– 25). Art and
science require that the human bear oneself in relation to objects, memories,
trainings, and habits. ey both do have a part in the human soul. But they
are precisely too akin to logos and too detached from desire, they are “with
logos” (meta logou). In art, “taking account” means not only remembering and
being habituated by means of firsthand experiences in the “household,” but
also attending to that which one precisely has not experienced; but the other
person involved remains distant, detachable, somebody who is more or less
chosen, and therefore exchangeable. e father and friends we take account
of in our relation to desires and fears, on the other hand, are not simply
expendable or exchangeable. ere is a much stronger sense in which they
are unique, noninstrumental, nonexpendable. We are so deeply implicated in
them that we cannot discharge them, but rather resist them. We do not simply
deliberately follow their instructions, we take account of them in a stronger
or more precise sense.
Shame
ere is a phenomenon that exhibits the way a hexis kata ton logon takes
account of others, the kind of listening and access beyond one’s firsthand
experiences: shame. “Shame is an impression concerning dishonor, and that
for its own sake and not for its results” (Rh. II, 6, 1384a22– 26). It is exactly
here that the expression “logon ekhein” reappears: “[people] necessarily feel
shame before those whom they take account of [hôn logon ekhei]” (Rh. II, 6,
1384a28– 30). is sheds light on the kind of positive state of character that
is more profound than one’s relation to a harp teacher or a master architect: a
fault in playing the harp in itself is a fault and nothing more; but if one feels
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ashamed of making that mistake before one’s teacher or an audience, it is
necessarily because one takes account of them beyond and regardless of their
status, one listens not to their particular instructions, but to their evaluation
of oneself. e kind of listening to one’s father and friends involved in logon
ekhein is then the necessary attendance to both as speakers and evaluators.
Indeed this presence of others is not more audible than visible: “[People]
feel more ashamed before those who will be always with them [paresom-
enous] and who keep watch on them [prosekhontas], because in both cases
they are under the eyes of others” (Rh. II, 6, 1384a35– 38). e phenomenon
of shame seems to suggest that “respect,” the sense of logos that prefig-
ures rationality and speech, is a looking back, a gaze turned at the gaze of
another.
After habit, and positive states as such, this is finally the correct sense
of ekhein for understanding logon ekhein both in the way the desiring part
“takes account of” both one’s father and friends, and in the way the human
being alone “has logos”: it is not hexis alone, it is not hexis meta logou, not a
met- hexis, but a hexis kata ton logon. Human character and its positive states,
whether virtues or vices, will involve the gaze of others, their “presence,” but
also the sense that these others “will always be with” oneself. is is why
human character is fundamentally interpersonal and necessarily involves a
project of living together. Ultimately this is why human beings are “political
animals.” To have logos means to take account of the evaluation of others with
which one has a life project, to somehow look at oneself and the world from
the eyes of others, that is, from a non- firsthand point of view.
But what is this presence of others really like such that they remain with
us? Because, although we do not feel to have failed a master’s teaching while
making a mistake as such on our own, we do feel shame even when others
are not there attending our behavior. ere must be a sense in which we see
others look at us without them looking at us, in which they speak to us from
within without giving any orders, in which they “move us” without constantly
pushing or pulling us. Just as shame does not need the physical presence of
others looking at us and giving us instructions, a hexis kata ton logon is not a
state constantly generated by others, but presents a self- sustaining structure.
In a way we must specify, we carry on these others in us— and not in the
sense of imitating them, but in the sense of “taking account” of their evalua-
tion of us and thereby respecting or disrespecting them.
Bodily Hexis
Aristotle argues that a positive state is not an alteration. In alteration the
mover is continuous with the moved, whereas in positive states it is not:
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Among positive states, some are virtues, some are vices. Yet nei-
ther virtue nor vice is an alteration [alloiôsis], but virtue is a certain
completion [teleiôsis tis] (for when something attains its virtue, then
it is said to be complete, for then it most conforms to its nature, as
a circle is complete when a circle comes to be and in the best way),
and vice is its corruption and displacement [extasis]. (Ph. VII, 3,
246a11– 17)
As we saw in our previous section, hexis as such is a self- sustaining structure,
it is freed from being moved each time. Just as a harpist does not become
one each time she picks up a harp, our character is not an agglomeration
of atomic spontaneous choices or responses to atomic stimuli. “Neither the
positive states of the body, nor those of the soul are alterations” (Ph. VII, 3,
246a10– 11).
Bodily hexis may help us shed light on the peculiar way in which our
father and friends are with us, as attested by the phenomenon of shame. “For
instance, we place health and vigor in the krasis and symmetria of the hot and
the cold, either in relation to themselves or in relation to their surroundings;
and similarly with beauty and strength and the other virtues and vices” (Ph.
VII, 3, 246b5– 8). Now, in chapters 3 and 4, where we dealt with nutrition and
sensation, we already thematized this “blending” (krasis) and “proportional-
ity ” (symmetria); but on this occasion, we can briefly touch upon some aspects
of the specificity of human corporeality. Even at the level of merely bodily
functions, virtues and vices are self- sustaining positive states. For Aristotle,
“beauty,” “ugliness,” “health,” and “sickness” are not simply “properties” such
that they may be simply manipulated externally, that is, altered; nor are they
simply natural in the sense of innate, in which case they would be constantly
“moved” or “generated” by nature as such.
Note the remarkable characterization of the body here: although a body
has matter and matter can be changed, a body cannot be made beautiful or
ugly by merely external manipulations. e Aristotelian body has at once a
special kind of “thickness” and a “historicality.” Its beauty and ugliness has a
special depth of its own, a “logic” unto itself, beyond simply the way it looks.
us virtues and vices are not simply a matter of sensitivity or insensitivity
even at the level of merely bodily functions: “virtue makes one be insensitive
[apathes] or sensitive [pathêtikon] in a certain way, while vice makes one con-
trarily sensitive or insensitive” (Ph. VII, 3, 246b18– 20). In chapter 3 we saw
how bodily health is not simply a matter of preestablished substances. e
cause of health is a regime. Health depends on a diet which configures cer-
tain substances with corresponding amounts and timing, but also, precisely,
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on all sorts of habits, on work conditions, on familial traits, on laws, and
so on. Aristotle’s understanding of bodily excellence is at once substantive
enough to avoid relativity, and particular enough to defy empty universal
prescriptions. Experiential testimony for this can be found in the fundamen-
tal difficulty of generalizing medical issues, and often the need for family
physicians, that is, physicians who not only deduce diagnoses and treatments
from a first consultation, but who have a long- lasting acquaintance with us
and our life, and even with our grandparents, that is, with us as a new emer-
gent life within a long tradition. Physicians do not always calculate, they
do not always deduce diagnoses from overarching principles, for the simple
reason that they are unable to do so successfully or to do so as such.34 Physi-
cians do not manipulate or “alter” our body, because they cannot always do
so successfully, or because they cannot do so at all. Hence, the Hippocratic
phrase, primum non nocere.
Pellegrin nicely contrasts the relative stability of Aristotelian virtue with
Christian virtue:
Aristotelian virtue has nothing to do with, say, Christian virtue.
e Christian saint is in no way at safety against the return of evil,
and is always open to temptation. e Aristotelian wise person—
just like the Platonic, Stoic and Epicurean— finds his happiness in
virtue, even if happiness secondarily depends on external condi-
tions. A person who represses his bad desires with more or less
pain, the “restrained” person in Aristotle’s terms, may well look
virtuous externally, yet he is not so. Hence two Aristotelian claims,
among others, which set his ethics apart from Christian or Kan-
tian morality: first, the sense of modesty (aidôs) is not a virtue, for
the accompanying shame is foreign to the virtuous. And secondly,
pleasure is the genuine criterion of a virtuous act and enables us to
distinguish it from forgeries.35
us, being neither a temporary affection, nor an ingrained habit, a positive
state exhibits a relative stability that makes it meaningful to talk about virtue
and character in ethics.
Moral Virtue
Aristotle extends his analysis of virtue and vice from the context of the body
to that of the intermediary part of the soul, the seat of pleasures and pains.
ere we see the same irreducibility of positive states to habits and altera-
tions in an even richer form:
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Similarly with the positive states of the [intermediary part of the]
soul, since all of them consist in holding oneself in relation to
something in a certain way [pros ti pôs ekhein], and while virtues are
completions [teleiôseis], vices are displacements [extaseis]. (Ph. VII,
3, 246b21– 247a2)
Positive states are neither feelings such as pleasure or pain, nor sensations
which are always accompanied by the latter:
All moral virtue concerns bodily pleasures and pains... while plea-
sures and pains are alterations of the perceptive part, it is clear that
something must be altered both for these to be cast off and for them
to be taken on. erefore, the generation of them [of virtues and vices]
is with alteration, but they are not alterations. (Ph. VII, 3, 247a7– 19)
Just as excesses destroy the sense organs, and ultimately health as such,
the same thing holds true for the temperance and courage and
other virtues; for the man who runs away from everything in fear
and never endures anything becomes a coward; the man who fears
nothing whatsoever but encounters everything becomes rash...
Temperance and courage are destroyed by excess and deficiency, and
are preserved by the mean. (NE II, 2, 1104a18– 27)
What is universal about courage is that it will involve confrontation and
avoidance thereof. Because, in each case, courage will involve one’s fear. But
the object of the fear confronted and the specific way in which confrontation
might happen is not universal at all; on the contrary, it is always particular,
and therefore always requires a creative act, that is, an act originating from
the subject in the uniqueness of his being, situation, and history.
is parallelism between bodily virtues and moral virtues may remind the
reader of our discussion of sensation in chapter 4: if it is true that excess in
sensation destroys the organ, sensation is a logos and requires a mean; simi-
larly, excess in feelings destroy something in the human soul. We must clarify
what is meant by “mean” or “excess” in this context, just as the same problem
showed up in our discussion of sensation. e destruction of a sense organ is
the destruction of its logos, of its ability to hold together contrary sensuous
qualities (hot and cold, wet and dry); in other words, while the excess of heat
in iron simply moves it further and further away from the cold toward more
and more heat, excess of heat in a hand makes it insensitive to both cold and
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heat. e meaning of logos as “ratio,” in the context of sensation as well as in
that of the moral virtues, is not simply a matter of percentage, of quantity, of
fine- tuning, but a matter of holding contraries together. But while growth
holds on to actual contrary elements, and sensation holds on to actual con-
trary states, the human agent holds contrary possibilities. Virtue stems from
the fact that the human agent is open to possible contrary interpretations of
particular sensations. is seems to be the key point that so crucially distin-
guishes virtue from apathy or insensitivity:
Humans become corrupted through pleasures and pains, either by
pursuing or avoiding them at the wrong time or in the wrong man-
ner or in as many ways as such things are delimited by logos. is is
also why some define the virtues as certain kinds of apathy or calmness,
but they do not define them well because they say this simply but
do not add “as one ought” and “as one ought not” and “when” and
the rest. (NE II, 3, 1104b21– 28; emphasis ours)
Both the virtuous and the vicious person act in relation to pleasures and pains,
both feel them.36 Both the courageous and the coward feel fear, and what
distinguishes the soul of the former is that it is not only occupied by fear,
that it takes account of the particularity of the situation, and not only of its
own emotional state or habits, of its history or present situation. e virtu-
ous person then “listens to logos” by holding its emotional state together with
contrary interpretations of the situation. In a sense, the virtuous person is
defined not by less, but by more sensitivity— not perhaps to the pleasure and
pain, but to the various and more comprehensive ways of interpreting them.
is holding together of contrary interpretations can be seen indirectly
by its result: proairesis, “choice,” literally “a taking out [hairesis] of one of the
interpretations in favor [pro].” In fact, this holding together typical to all
the senses of logos we have seen so far here goes back to the oldest sense of
logos and legein: collecting, laying down one beside another.37 And proairesis
as a “taking out” or “picking” is precisely the result of this laying down. It is
because logos holds together differences in their difference that proairesis as
picking is not simply taking what it given, but taking out, taking from out of
what is given, a choosing one option for the exact same reason (logos) one
refuses the other option(s). Choice happens only out of a simultaneous open-
ness to a manifold of options, and thus only for a reason for choosing this
rather than that, that is, only because of an interpretative deliberation between
this and that. Hence these options are not different amounts of desire or fear,
but different interpretations of the same particular object.38
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us we come to finally make sense of the meaning of logos in the expres-
sion “rational potentiality” (dynamis meta logou) we encountered in On
Interpretation in our chapter 2: humans are exposed to contrary options
because they hold on to contrary interpretations of situations or objects or
projects. If Socrates can both walk and not walk out of jail, this is because
Socrates has devoted his life to cultivate the ability to interpret the situ-
ation of walking away from prison in contrary ways, unlike Crito urging
him to run out of jail.39 is “motion” is what is called action (praxis) in the
strict sense. “Logos goes both ways [amphoin esti], but not in the same man-
ner; it is in the soul which has a source of motion, and will therefore, by the
same source, set both in motion linking them [synapsasa] to the same logos”
(Metaph. IX, 2, 1046b21– 23).
Deliberation
As we said, this holding together of contrary interpretations can be seen
indirectly by its result: proairesis, “choice,” but also more directly by the very
process of interpretation. Aristotle does not use the usual term for “inter-
pretation” in Ancient Greek, namely, hermeneia, but that of “deliberation,”
bouleusis.
Because of its openness to the particularity of human situations, Aris-
totle’s ethics is fundamentally irreducible to universal prescriptions and to
quantitative measurements. Just as virtue is irreducible to apathy because of
the latter’s indifference to the particularity of the situation, defining virtue as
an arithmetical mean (such as 6 being the mean of 10 and 2) is a fundamen-
tally distorted way of looking at the human soul:
But the mean in relation to us is not something one needs to take
in this way, for it is not the case, if ten pounds is a lot for someone
to eat and two pounds a little, that the gymnastic trainer will pre-
scribe six pounds, for perhaps even this is a lot for the one who is
going to take it, or a little. (NE II, 6, 1106a36– 1106b5)
e mean, or the logos, is not measured, but deliberated according to the par-
ticular person and her situation. What is measured, according to Aristotle, is
vice, precisely because vice is an excess away from virtue, which is a standard
in itself. Bringing together “choice,” “mean in relation to us,” and indeed logos,
moral virtue is finally defined as follows: “a positive state that makes one apt
at choosing, consisting in a mean condition in relation to us, which is deter-
mined by logos and by the means by which a person with practical judgment
[phronimos] would determine it” (NE II, 6, 1106b36– 1107a2). Both desire and
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intellect are in fact without logos.40 And neither as such characterize human
beings. It is their togetherness, their interpenetration that characterizes logos
and defines human beings. It must be recognized that even if Aristotelian
ethics epitomizes divine theôria or the contemplative life, nevertheless his
account of moral, that is, strictly human, virtue gives utmost importance to
the particularities of human life. For Aristotle, this is intrinsic to ethics:
But let this be granted in advance— that all logos concerning actions
is obliged to speak in outline and not precisely, just as we said at the
beginning that one ought to demand that logoi be in accord with
their material, whereas matters that are involved in actions and are
advantageous have nothing static about them, any more than do
matters of health. And the general logos being like this, still more
does the logos concerning particulars lack precision; for it falls under
no art nor under any skill that has been handed down, but it is nec-
essary for those who are acting to always look at the circumstances
surrounding the occasion, just as is the case with the medical art or
the art of steering a ship. (NE II, 2, 1103b36– 1104a11)
Both “gut feelings” and general prescriptions fail to circumscribe the ori-
gin of moral virtue, the former being stuck with an unaccountable particular
emotional or bodily state, the latter with an empty rule to apply. e former
leave no room for listening and thus resemble habit, whereas the latter are
unable to listen to the particularity of the situation human life is always con-
fronted with. e former repeats, and the latter dictates, whereas moral virtue
for Aristotle must take the form of taking account of others. If the human
soul holds together contrary interpretations of one situation, it is because the
human being is able to see another as herself (for “a friend is another self,”
NE IX, 4, 1166a32), but also because the human being can see herself as
another, and thus can be a friend to herself (NE IX, 8, 1169a12). As the indi-
vidual human being is a “political animal” according to Aristotle, friendship
turns out to be a virtue in a special sense. (NE IX, 4, 1166a1ff.) In the next
chapter, we shall see better how human logos is precisely this perceptiveness
in regard to others’ experiences.
Logos in the context of positive states and human character then blurs
the apparent exclusivity of contrary actions, the externality of others, and a
monolithic view of the integrity of the human individual. As the prudent per-
son interprets apparently similar situations in contrary ways and apparently
different ones as the same, the intermediary part of the virtuous person takes
account of both one’s father and one’s friends not only in the sense of seeing
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them see oneself, but in the sense of being able to intimately assume their
point of view and “listen to them” while making decisions and deliberating in
situations of which one has no firsthand experience.
Circles Vicious and Virtuous
e necessarily imprecise character of ethics thus makes it impossible to
draw inferences from particular actions to the “completions” and “displace-
ments” that constitute virtue and vice. For instance, someone writing a Ph.D.
dissertation knows the variety of the forms distraction can assume. Despite
appearances, writing a dissertation well is fortunately not about being a good
ascetic, about being a person who sharply compartmentalizes sectors of her
life. e inability to concentrate does not simply mean to be unable to refrain
from doing many things, from undergoing many sensations, from being con-
stantly stimulated and excited about multifarious things. Distraction rather
means to do and undergo many things as many, and not as one. It means
to do and undergo many things while resetting the process with each action
or passion. Vice as “displacement” refers to this necessity of resetting the
process, and thus has very little to do with “evil.” Vice as “displacement” is
“replacement.”
On the other hand, the term “concentration” also refers to the “circle” anal-
ogy, but this time not because it suggests routine, but because it incorporates
all different points equidistant from the center. To be virtuous is to be able to
go on a trip, to incorporate difference while remaining the same, whereas vice
is to remain at the same place while constantly moving around. Paradoxically,
a “vicious” trip is to move around, a “virtuous” trip is change and understand-
ing. Hence being concentrated on a dissertation in philosophy in no way
entails lack of interest and excitement in front of the multiplicity of actions
and passions precisely because it is not an application of a rule or a report
on various experiments, but, at least at first, a risk, a trip, the answering of a
riddle, a question— an engagement into something that one knows that one
does not know. Being concentrated here is rather being constantly interested
and necessarily open without having to reset one’s interest, being excited with-
out having to refuel one’s curiosity, doing and undergoing without having to end
and restart. Distraction and concentration are examples of human phenom-
ena that are environmental, that is, irreducible to motion and lack of motion,
activity and passivity.41 For one who is distracted may well be standing still,
but in fact he is constantly stopping and restarting.
is is why it is not enough to stand still in order to step out of the
“environment” of distraction. In order to get out of this process of constant
change, one cannot simply make a change. In order to unify this multiplicity,
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one cannot simply add something. A child that is constantly distracted while
sitting in a classroom may well become extremely concentrated while playing
soccer: playing soccer creates an environment that absorbs and intensifies the
soul more and more so that in the end the players are disturbed by distrac-
tions. is is why a soccer field is not a certain space in which things happen,
it is the environment of those things, imbued with interpretation.
Similarly, fear is not simply an atomic feeling. For fear can “color” actions
and objects, it can create environments, especially in the case of human beings
which, as we shall see better in chapter 6, having logos, are able to understand
and relay non- firsthand experiences as much as firsthand experiences. Fear is a
perfect case for seeing the implications of the human capacity for understand-
ing and relaying non-firsthand experiences. For, in an environment of fear in
which I fear someone who fears me, I will be ready to express my fear in such
a way as to set the other to do the same. But since I know that my violence
will provoke his, I will be ready to do violence harsh enough to intimidate
him definitively. Yet he knows this too and must feel pretty much the same
way as I do. So he will be prepared to preempt my plans of definitively harsh-
ening my violence by even greater violence, and so on. It is precisely because
the reign of fear is more than the sum of the individual motions or atomic
feelings it contains, that it blurs the distinction between action and passion,
between my feelings and those of my enemy. Consequently, sometimes, if not
often, it unfortunately becomes very difficult to pinpoint any beginning of a
long- lasting enmity, and also to foresee any short- term resolution.
e Dilemma of Character Painting
Just as the photographic approach to the spectacle of natural beings turned
out to be fundamentally flawed above in chapter 3, here we may see why all
representations of human character become fundamentally problematic. In
his discussion of the aesthetic education of children, Aristotle argues that
visual representations reflect character only to a small extent:
ese [visual representations] are not the likenesses of characters,
the forms and colors produced are rather signs of characters and
these are in the bodily modifications. But so far as there is a dif-
ference concerning the contemplation of these, the young should
not contemplate the works of Pauson but of Polygnotus and of any
other moral [êthikos] painter or sculptor. (Pol. VIII, 5, 1340a32– 38)
It is exactly these two artists that Aristotle compares in the discussion of
character representation in the Poetics: “[ose who imitate] do so either as
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better or as worse than us or as similar to us just like painters do: Polygno-
tus paints those better than us, Pauson those worse than us, while Dionysus
those similar to us” (Po. 2, 1448a4– 7). So, if character (êthos) defies momen-
tary appearances, particular acts and general prescriptions, how can a painter
produce a “likeness,” and not a “sign,” of a just person? How does one rep-
resent visually not an act or a feeling, but a positive state such as a virtue or
vice? How does one illustrate not only a human body, but her êthos— her true
daimôn according to Heraclitus?
Unlike a composer of music who, according to Aristotle, more directly
speaks to our feelings and shapes our soul, painters of êthos, the “peintres de
mœurs,” as it is said in French, are in a dilemma: if a painter, naively speaking,
has to convey on the canvas the depth of a three- dimensional body in space,
a portrait painter has to somehow project on the canvas the depth of the soul
in time and history. If one’s goal is to represent a person as a character, one
can limit oneself neither to a naturalistic representation of the model’s nose,
eyes, mouth, and hair as an “exact” photograph would, nor to a parable or an
allegory in which the figure would be subsumed under a universal virtue or
sin as can be seen in, say, Brueghel’s paintings of the seven deadly sins. e
representation of character should be neither merely representative nor, in
this particular sense, “moralizing.”42
Hence it may be easier to produce a conventional representation of Justice
and to graphically reproduce the outer appearance of a just human being’s
body, than to represent a just person as such. Again this is because impreci-
sion is inherent to ethics, because human character is irreducible to universal
formulas and particular acts, because there is an impossibility to represent
human deliberation and interpretation, because there is an “invisibility” of
the father and friends of whom the virtuous human being takes account, and
in front of whom she feels ashamed, because there is a “lack of content” in
their words.
Rembrandt teaches one much about how developmental and even heredi-
tary characteristics can be paradoxically represented in a moment and
two- dimensionally. One example may be his 1653 painting of Aristotle Con-
templating the Bust of Homer. According to our interpretation of character,
there is no wonder that there is still controversy as to what the painting
means, but also whether or not Aristotle is looking at the bust at all, and even
whether the figure is Aristotle to begin with.43 Although he has recourse
to “signs,” allegoric objects (in this case the bust, the golden chain with the
medallion of Alexander the Great), biblical scenes and references, exotic
clothes, and real- life situations and actions, Rembrandt’s real tool in con-
veying positive states is light and darkness. His contrasts attempt to find a
141
middle way between simply asserting the particular person in her particu-
lar time and place— say, Solon in sixth-century Athens— and making her
a conventional sign of universal virtue— say, a blindfolded woman holding
a balance in one hand and a sword in the other. His contrasts rather seem
to be oriented towards conveying the effect that the brightness is not fully
detached from the possibility of sinking back into darkness and that obscurity
is pregnant. is contrast does not simply create a dramatic impression or
the appearance of the depth of the soul, it allows the appearance of a status
between presence and disappearance, in Aristotelian terms, between actual-
ity and potentiality. And this is why it is able to convey the sense of a person
having not only a face and an identity but also a history and a character.
So Rembrandt’s contrasts convey two contradictory impressions. On the
one hand, one feels that, apart from the presence of the figure that is repre-
sented, the figure could have been somewhere else, in different clothes, in a
different situation and committing a different act, and yet that it would be
the same thing, that she would adapt herself and still hold the same relation
to the world and to her emotions. is means that she is not confined by this
particularity. On the other hand, the portrait of a magnanimous person by
Rembrandt, insofar as it represents this character trait of the person, gives
the impression that if somebody else were in the same situation, doing the
same thing or standing in the exact same posture, it would not be the same
thing. is means that she is not merely a universal idea, but a person.
us, at least as much as people are sources of actions, characters are con-
stitutive of people for Aristotle. Just as an environment is more than the sum
of the objects in that environment, a virtue is the environment of a soul irre-
ducible to particular acts or general rules. e transcendence of virtue over
the particular situations and general rules is at once stable and vulnerable as
the transcendence of the environment over its components. e courageous
person neither spontaneously repeats courage in his soul, nor does he apply a
preexistent formula to his particular situation. Hexis names the very fact that
there are neither virtuous acts per se, nor recipes for virtue other than that it
involves an unforeseeable free relation to contrary extremes. e contrasts in
Rembrandt’s portraits reflect the necessarily deliberative character of human
logos, its very êthos, its holding contrary interpretations without letting one
yield to or take over the other.
4. Recapitulation and Reorientation
In chapter 1, we saw that the first sense of logos is “standard of being.”
In chapter 2, we saw that this standard must be inherent to the being in
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question. In chapters 3 and 4, we saw that natural beings exhibit the inher-
ence of their “standard of being” in natural motion: nutrition, reproduction,
sensation and locomotion— all of which instantiate a second sense of logos:
“ratio.” Here in chapter 5, we began seeing that human beings exhibit the
inherence of their “standard of being” in human action— thus introducing
the third sense of logos: “reason.”
Our elaboration of the source of action required an analysis of the tri-
partite structure of the human soul, and especially of its intermediary part.
Beyond dualistic as well as monistic accounts of the human soul, Aristotle
holds that this intermediary part, the “desiring part,” “somehow partakes [in
logos] insofar as it listens to and can obey it in the sense in which we say ‘tak-
ing account [ekhein logon] of both one’s father and one’s friends’ ” (NE I, 13,
1102b31– 1103a3). As capable of listening to logos, of obeying or resisting it,
this intermediary part has been shown to include not only habits (ethos) (sec-
tion 1), but, more crucially, positive states (hexis) (section 2), and especially
ones according to logos (section 3). us we tried to show that Aristotle con-
strues virtue, especially moral virtue, neither merely as a natural potentiality
nor as an acquired habit, but as a settled and free positive state of deliberat-
ing according to logos, that is, of interpreting particular situations beyond the
mutually exclusive options of mere adherence and indifference. Our discus-
sion of freedom, shame, deliberation, and character painting demonstrated
the inadequacy of the exclusive options of past and present, of passivity and
activity, of nature and nurture, and of self and other. Once again we came
across the fundamental meaning of logos: a relation holding on to its terms
without letting one yield, or remain indifferent, to the other.
Desire has logos in the sense in which we say “taking account” of both one’s
father and one’s friends. Having logos, the human being takes account of oth-
ers as herself and of herself as others— especially as “those who will always be
with them” (Rh. II, 6, 1384a35– 38). But who are they? One does not choose
one’s family, and especially one’s parents, one’s “father.” But one can become
a person who chooses one’s friends in the polis precisely beyond the family
circle. In so far as the question of ethics depends not only on one’s father but
also on one’s friends, we must move beyond the framework of the household
and make our way into the horizon of the polis.
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CHAPTER 6
Speech
Logos in the Politics
So far we have seen three major senses of logos in Aristotle: “standard” in
chapters 1 and 2, “ratio” in chapters 3 and 4, and “reason” in chapter 5. In
each of these senses, I have argued, logos refers to a relation holding its terms
together in their difference instead of collapsing one to the other or keep-
ing them in indifference. In this last chapter, I turn to the fourth and last
major meaning of logos, namely “speech.” It is in this sense that Aristotle
famously says: “the human being alone among animals has logos”1 (Pol. I,
1, 1253a10– 11). Yet, in the Aristotelian corpus, we do not find a unitary
account of speech, any more than a unitary account of logos; instead we find
scattered remarks that remain to be gathered and unified. It is this Aristote-
lian account of speech that I shall try to bring together here.
To do this, in section 1, I shall turn to animal communication, especially
the modes of animal hearing directed at three different objects: noise, voice,
and buzz. is will allow me, in section 2, to propose three fundamental
features of speech as specifically human communication: mediation, articu-
lation, ambiguity. By means of these three features, I shall analyze the first
articulation of human speech,2 that is, very roughly speaking, the articulation
of “letters” into “words.” en, in section 3, I shall analyze the second articu-
lation of human speech, that is, again very roughly speaking, the articulation
of “words” into “sentences.” is analysis will show that, while the moods of
animal communication are comparable to the imperative and subjunctive,
there are two moods of specifically human communication: the indicative
and the optative. Here I will draw the conclusion that logos as speech is the
specifically human capacity for both understanding and relaying non- firsthand
experience as well as firsthand experience. In section 4, I shall test this interpre-
tation of logos, and draw its implications, by confronting it with three major
Aristotelian texts: Categories, 1, Metaphysics, I, 1, and indeed the famous
opening of the Politics.
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Such an interpretation of logos is indispensable for accounting for human
predication, human experience, human community, and major aspects of
the specifically human condition such as mythology, history, science, uto-
pian fiction, philosophy, and sophistry. Even further, this final sense of logos
as “speech” also refers to the fundamental meaning of logos we encountered
throughout this book: specifically human communication involves appar-
ently contradictory terms (experiences that are made firsthand, and ones that
are not, will not, or even cannot be made firsthand) without reducing one
to the other, or letting them remain indifferent to one another. Only then
will we see that the very question of the “logos of being” that initiated this
book (e.g., “What is it for an ox to be?”) can actually only be asked by a
being equipped with logos as the capacity of understanding and relaying non-
firsthand experience as well as firsthand experience. e question of the “logos
of being” presents itself only to a being having logos.
1. Animal Communication
Are bees capable of hearing according to Aristotle? is is a seemingly inno-
cent question concerning quite a local phenomenon in “second philosophy.”
But, in fact, it already calls for witness the famous opening of Aristotle’s “first
philosophy,” the Metaphysics, according to which the answer seems no:
e [animals] that cannot hear psophoi are intelligent but cannot
learn, such as a bee or any other kind of animal that might be such.
(Metaph. I, 1, 980b23)
Yet at least two passages in the History of Animals, IX, suggest otherwise. e
first one implies that bees do hear:
When a swarm is about to take flight, a monotonous and peculiar
voice happens [phônê monôtis kai idios]3 for some days, and two or
three days beforehand some fly around the hive; whether the king
is among these has not yet been observed because it is not easy. (HA
IX, 40, 625b9– 10; Balme’s translation slightly modified)
A couple of pages later, another passage is more straightforwardly affirmative:
At daybreak [bees] are silent until one bee arouses them by buzz-
ing [bombêsasa] two or three times. en they all fly out together
to work, and on returning they are noisy [thorybousi] at first but
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gradually become less so until a single bee flies around buzzing
[bombêsêi] as though making a sign [hôsper sêmainousa] for sleep;
then suddenly they are silent. (HA IX, 40, 627a24– 28; Balme’s
translation)4
Here we seem to face an inconsistency between Aristotle’s negative
position on the subject of bee hearing in the Metaphysics and his affirma-
tive stance in the History of Animals, IX. As the so- called principle of the
“excluded middle,”5 famously first formulated by Aristotle besides the “prin-
ciple of non- contradiction,”6 forbids bees from being neither deaf nor not
deaf, Balme attempted to settle the problem by assigning the two conflicting
texts to different periods of Aristotle’s career, claiming that he changed his
mind between them.7 is philological solution as such brings about three
problems: first, generally, anyone’s conflicting views can be reconciled once
we assign them to different times; secondly, this solution does not answer
why the author changed his mind and in what direction; and finally, in this
context, such an isolation of the two conflicting claims does not help anyway,
since skepticism about bees’ ability to hear shows up in the following passage
from the very HA, IX, 40, which seemed to defend it:
Bees seem to like the rattle,8 and so people say they collect them
into the hive by rattling pots and counters.9 It is not clear, however,
if they hear it at all,10 and whether they act thus through pleasure or
through fear.11 (HA IX, 40, 627a15– 19; Balme’s translation slightly
modified)
So, assigning the Metaphysics and the History of Animals passages to two
different periods does not help us know whether or not Aristotle believed
bees to be capable of hearing. en, without venturing to philologically date
conflicting claims to different periods of Aristotle’s career, let us attempt to
philosophically interpret his seemingly ambiguous remarks in a way that
makes them compatible, even mutually supportive and philosophically
interesting.
Noise
For perhaps the ambiguity does not lie in Aristotle’s position to begin with.
Besides being the first to formulate the two “principles” mentioned above,
he also famously and typically appeals to a disambiguation of our appar-
ently univocal everyday words.12 So in this case, the ambiguity may lie in
the Ancient Greek verb akouein, “to hear,” itself. Grammatically, this verb is
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often followed either by a genitive or by an accusative, mostly meaning “to
listen to, to learn from”13 or “to hear something, not listen to” respectively.14
More interesting, perhaps, is the variation of the verb’s meaning according to
what the object is heard as. ese distinctions may help us solve the apparent
contradiction about Aristotle’s position on bee hearing, not by appealing to
chronological or philological emendations, but by recognizing the ambiguity
of the verb as such and disentangling it.
Let us start with the Metaphysics passage. Here the verb takes the genitive
and its object is psophoi, and almost all English and French translations of the
Metaphysics translate psophos as “sound”:15 “e [animals] that cannot hear
sounds [hosa mê dynatai tôn psophôn akouein] are intelligent but cannot learn,
such as a bee or any other kind of animal that might be such” (Metaph. I, 1,
980b23). According to the distinctions above, Aristotle is claiming not that
bees are simply deaf, but that they cannot listen to, or learn from, psophoi.
What does psophos mean? What is the process of its production and recep-
tion? What does it mean to say that bees are unable to listen to or learn from
it, as opposed to other unnamed species? And how does this align with the
two passages from the History of Animals?
In Aristotle as well as in Ancient Greek, psophos is defined generically as
the acoustic effect of one thing striking another. “Sound [psophos] comes to
be in actuality always from something against something and in something,
for it is the striking that produces it. erefore if there is one [thing only],
sound is impossible” (DA II, 8, 419b9– 12). Sound results from the shock of
a body against another unable to yield immediately, “for the motion of the
thing striking must outrun the yielding of the air” (DA II, 8, 419b22– 24).16
Solid, smooth, and hollow things sound best, “because they produce many
blows after the first one by bouncing back and forth, while what is moved is
unable to get out” and sound expands as long as the medium is continuous
and one (DA II, 8, 419b16– 18, 34– 35).17
One way of reacting to sound would be to reverberate or reflect it. If
reverberation and reflection are not emissions of sound, they certainly are
transmissions. However, as we know from chapter 4, to perceive a sound is a
phenomenon fundamentally different from transmitting it. is is trivially
clear from the fact that the lyre or the bell, when struck, does not hear, any
more than a loudspeaker or a recorder, whereas the ear of an animal does
hear. As we saw, “sensation is logos” (DA III, 2, 426b7; II, 12), but in a dif-
ferent way than the strings of lyre stand in a certain ratio or proportion in
the eyes of the lyrist. Sensation requires the simultaneous grasp of the state
of the sense organ and of the state of the object without letting one yield
to the other. To let the organ yield to the medium would not be sensation,
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but reverberation; and, as we saw, to have the organ overpower the medium
would amount not to sensation either, but to sound production.
In hearing, “when the [air] outside is moved, the [air] inside is moved
too” (DA II, 8, 420a5– 6; PA II, 10, 656b16). But the actually hearing ear does
not simply yield to or overpower the motion of the incoming air: “the [air]
in the ear has been walled in so as to be unmoved in order that there might
be an accurate sensation of all differences of motion” (DA II, 8, 420a9– 12).18
To say that sensation is logos means nothing other than that all sensation
is sensation of difference and thus requires a way of holding together the
terms that are being differentiated. All sensation is sensation of a between,
a stretch between: “Hearing is of the differences of sound.”19 For Aristotle,
sensation is not only an undergoing or doing, but a kind of “discrimination,”
krisis.20
By simultaneously holding together and discriminating the motions of air
inside and outside the sense organ,21 hearing reveals to the animal the vast
realm of relatively smooth, solid, hollow, and relatively quick- moving objects.
But since we saw that hearing as a kind of distant perception implies loco-
motion for Aristotle in chapter 4, we may also infer that the animal that is
the subject of hearing also becomes its probable object precisely because of its
ability to move. eoretically, all that can hear can also be heard, but indeed
not the other way around. As more unimpeded and less oriented than the
eyes in most animals, hearing is less restricted by the distinction between the
back and the front, the left and the right, the up and down. Hearing in this
sense is less focused than circumspective, opens less a point of view or a per-
spective than a surrounding, an environment, a horizon of hearing and being
heard. To return to bees, if the Metaphysics is claiming that bees are incapable
of hearing psophos in this generic sense of “sound,” any acoustic phenomenon,
then they should be simply deaf, and in that case the text conflicts with the
passages from the History of Animals.
But, in fact, Liddell, Scott, and Jones’s Ancient Greek Lexicon renders
psophos not generically with “sound,” but specifically with “noise.”22 It even
opposes this specific sense to other acoustic phenomena exemplified in Aris-
totle’s biology.23 at Aristotle doubts that bees hear noise is corroborated by
his skepticism about their hearing the rattling pots and counters in a passage
quoted above. If psophos means not “sound” in its generic sense, but specifi-
cally “noise,” then the Metaphysics passage might be claiming that bees are
somehow deaf to noise only, and this passage might be brought in line with
the passages in HA, IX, 40, that assume that bees are capable of hearing.
Yet what, if anything, would it mean to say that bees are deaf to noise, but
not to all sound? What are the animal species capable of hearing noise that
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remained unnamed in the Metaphysics?24 And further, why does the passage
associate the hearing of noises with the capacity for learning (manthanein)?
We may gather an answer from Aristotle’s description of animal species that
are capable of hearing psophoi:
Among the small birds, some when singing send forth a different
voice [phônên aphiasin] from their parents, if they have been reared
away from the nest and have listened to other birds singing [allôn
akousôsin ornithôn aidontôn]. A hen nightingale has before now been
observed teaching [prodidaskousa] her chick to sing, which suggests
that the “song” does not come naturally in the same way as dialek-
tos25 and voice [phônês], but is capable of being shaped [plattesthai].
(HA IV, 9, 536b14– 18; Peck’s translation modified)
So some small bird species, for example, nightingales, do hear “noise,” that is
acoustic phenomena regardless of its origin and meaning. e kind of learn-
ing they are capable of, unlike bees, results from akouein followed by the
genitive, that is, from the listening to and learning from an external acoustic
stimulus, with the consequence that the animal reproduces it mimetically.26
“Song” does not “come naturally,” but rather can be “shaped.” en, accord-
ing to the Metaphysics passage, bees are not deaf of sound as such, but to
noise, unlike some small bird species; more specifically, they are incapable
of receiving the acoustic effect or a shock as such, and of relaying it without
understanding it.
Voice
But deaf as they are to noise according to the Metaphysics, what are bees
capable of hearing in the passages of the History of Animals? We saw that
“when a swarm is about to take flight, a monotonous and peculiar voice
[phônê monôtis kai idios] happens for some days” (HA IX, 40, 625b9– 10). is
suggests that bees are capable of hearing voice: phônê.27 If so, our apparent
contradiction may be solved by stating that bees are sensitive to voice only,
and not to noise, as some imitating bird species are.
Yet this is impossible. Aristotle insistently and clearly denies that insects
can utter “voice” in the strict sense of the word. “Now the only part of the
body with which an animal can utter a voice [phônei] is the pharynx” (HA IV,
9, 535a29– 31; DA II, 8, 420b10). In general voice is a sound produced by an
animal, “but not by any random part” (DA II, 8, 420b14); technically speak-
ing, it is “the striking of inhaled air against the part called the ‘windpipe’ by
the action of the soul in these parts” (DA II, 8, 420b27– 29, 14– 17). So the
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production of voice requires that the animal neither inhale nor exhale, but
withhold air, “for the one who withholds [air] moves it” (DA II, 8, 421a2–
4).28 Unlike the continuous alteration of inhaling and exhaling in respiration,
voice has a discontinuous character. And unlike the immediate mimetic relay
of sound by some bird species, voice presents a certain reflexivity or middle
state in the animal body. Furthermore, in voice production, the respiratory
functions of the lungs, the windpipe, the tongue, and of the air within and
without are all reorganized.29 us, voice production entails reorganization
in the organic body as well as in the animal’s relation to its environment.
is reorganization is made in such a way that voice is reducible neither to
the effect of a motion against another motion where the striking object is
external to the object struck, nor simply to a sound coming from within the
animal body.30
Buzz
Bees match none of these physiological requirements for uttering voice.
Since the “monotonous and peculiar voice” mentioned above is nevertheless
uttered by a bee, could bees be capable of producing a counterpart (analogon)
of voice?31
is counterpart to voice is bombos, the “buzz.” e parallelism between
voice and buzz can be found in their respective physiology. e “striking of
inhaled air against the ‘windpipe’ ” in breathing animals is clearly paralleled
in the “friction of the internal pneuma” in some insects, such that the buzz-
ing bee presents a reflexivity and reorganization analogous to the ones with
which we previously characterized the uttering of voice:32
us insects produce neither voice nor speech [oute phônei oute
dialegetai], though they produce a sound [psophei] by their internal
pneuma (not externally emitted pneuma, for none of them breathes),
but some of them buzz [bombei], for instance the bee and other
winged insects, and some ‘sing’ as the saying is, e.g., the cicada. All
these insects produce a sound [psophei] by means of the membrane
which is under the hypozoma [the division between thorax and
abdomen] (this of course refers to those whose bodies are divided
at this point), e.g., a certain kind of cicada, which makes the sound
by friction of the pneuma [against the membrane]; and so do flies
and bees and all the others, as by their flying they produce the
lifting and contracting movement: the noise [psophos] is actually
the friction of the internal pneuma. (HA IV, 9, 535b3– 12; Peck’s
translation)
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So Aristotle has an account of buzzing, although unfortunately he has pretty
much nothing to tell us about the physiology of bees’ hearing.33 ere are two
texts that support the parallelism between breathing animals and insects such
as bees: On Sleep and Waking 2, 456a11ff., and On Respiration 9, 474b31ff. In
these, the external pneuma inhaled by breathing animals is correlated with
the internal pneuma of insects; the second text correlates the lung motion of
breathing animals, the movement of fishes’ gills, and the friction against the
membrane in insects.
However, the parallel drawn here is not between voice and buzz, but
between the motion of respiration in breathing animals and the motion of
buzzing in some insects. In other words, if there is a kind of buzzing among
bees that is a counterpart to voice production, it must be not a constant
sound (psophos) comparable to the heartbeat,34 but a different buzz that is
discontinuous and occasional. is character of the buzzing becomes mani-
fest when we mark the temporal qualifications in our second passage from
the HA IX, 40:
At daybreak they are silent until one bee arouses them by buzzing
[bombêsasa] two or three times. en they all fly out together to work,
and on returning they are noisy [thorybousi] at first but gradually
become less so until a single bee flies around buzzing [bombêsêi] as
though making a sign [hôsper sêmainousa] for sleep; then suddenly
they are silent. (HA IX, 40, 627a24– 28; Balme’s translation, our
emphases)
It is clear that Aristotle distinguishes the “making noise” (in this case, tho-
rybein) and the “buzzing” (bombein). Hence, this passage brings us to the most
crucial aspect of the parallelism between voice and the buzz, and to what dis-
tinguishes both from noise. Whereas it was unclear above whether bees acted
“through pleasure or through fear” upon hearing the rattle, here the buzz is
explicitly said to be heard as though meaningful (hôsper sêmainousa). In voice,
unlike noise, “the striking object must be ensouled and have some imagina-
tion [with it], for in fact voice is a signifying sound, but not [signifying] the
inhaled air as a cough” (DA II, 8, 420b31– 421a1). While sound as such is
simply of something against something, “voice is a sound of an ensouled being”
(DA II, 8, 420b6).35 Even further, “voice is a sound of an animal” (DA II, 8,
420b13– 14). Voice production is always coupled with the animal’s capacity
for sensation and, probably, for locomotion. us, a voice is a quite explicit
demand for “attention” coming from, and addressed to, an animal. Whereas
sound means friction or excess of touch, voice is of an animal making contact.
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e primary phenomenon of voice, and of the discontinuous buzz in bees, is
thus a demand for attention, a call, even a kind of claim.
For, most importantly, “voice is a sign [sêmeion] of the painful and pleas-
ant” (Pol. I, 1, 1253a11– 14). Regardless of whether it is reflex or deliberately
encoded, an “effect” or a “message” of pleasure and pain, voice seems thus
infused with desire just as locomotion.36 Like voice, locomotion is an
embodiment of pleasure and pain in the forms of flight from, and pursuit
of, particular objects. And yet, the structure of voice cannot be reduced to
the “practical syllogism” of locomotion, because voice is precisely not flight
or pursuit, but rather a “sign.” In light of this, the animal making such a
“sign” may be doing so precisely because the object of interest is not attain-
able by the motion of the individual animal. One obvious example of this
is reproduction which mostly necessitates a cooperation between male and
female (Pol. I, 1, 1252a).37 is also ties in with the animals’ use of voice for
calling their lost babies.38 Voice conveys a “particular premise” (“this is pleas-
ant” or “this is painful”) to another animal in order that they move together.
Subjoining a “particular premise” to desire for a possible cooperation, voice
is inherently “tactical,” assuming the mood of a subjunctive or hypotaktikê in
later Greek grammar.
If so, whereas the mechanical reproduction of a sound or noise never
becomes a premise, being meaningless and disinterested in itself, the “practi-
cal syllogism” of voice and buzzing operates in an environment of common
interest and desire, in a minimal possible community through which indi-
viduals are not only formed out of organs, but themselves become part of
a possible “organization” or taxis for fleeing danger and pursuing common
pleasure. An animal that emits a voice in order to mark its territory, to mate,
to threat, to find its babies, or to warn another animal is in each case an ani-
mal that perceives the means of its desire beyond its own immediate motion
or rest and thus convokes another for cooperation. Uttering voice or buzz-
ing implies the significance of others animals and, to some degree, of their
perspective, their interests, their evaluation. Voice and the buzz thus are not
marked by the immediacy of the individual animal’s flight or pursuit that
resulted in the “practical syllogism,” since they demand immediate coop-
eration from another. ey constitute a motion withheld in the individual
animal’s body in order to be translated into the language of common interest,
an outer organ used to reorder the world with and also for others. For Aris-
totle, it is precisely this common work that characterizes political animals
such as human beings, wasps, ants, and bees (HA I, 1, 488a7– 10).
So, we are back to bees. Now that we have seen that voice, or its counter-
part “buzz,” is essentially infused with a meaningful and interested project
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of cooperation, we can accept Aristotle’s position in the Metaphysics while
also making more sense of our two passages from the History of Animals: in
the first passage in the History of Animals, the bees’ hearing the “monoto-
nous and peculiar voice” was immediately followed by their preparation to
take flight; in the second passage, they clearly go to sleep and wake up upon
hearing the buzz. In both cases, the bees seem to immediately move coopera-
tively in reaction to the buzz of another bee, and probably not to the sound
of the rattle. While, as the Metaphysics suggests, some bird species are able
to perceive and relay noise regardless of its meaning, of its source, or of the
interests involved by the sender, the passages in the History of Animals show
that bees immediately receive voice, or more specifically,buzz, as a meaningful
and interested call to cooperation or synergy.39
is brings us to the third meaning of the verb akouein, again typically
followed by the genitive: “to obey.”40 e Homeric examples denote obedi-
ence to a king (Iliad, XIX, 256) or a people’s hearkening to a king as to a
god (Odyssey, VII, 11). is converges with the idea that bees have a “king”41
whose voice they “listen” to, not in order to imitate and thus relay the sound
heard, but in order to execute his orders. In fact Aristotle says that “it is com-
monly agreed that [bees] follow [epakolouthein] the kings because their birth
depends on these bees (for if there were no such dependence, the facts con-
cerning their hegemony [ta symbainonta peri tên hêgemonian autôn] would
have no reason)” (GA III, 10, 760b15– 18).42 is detail may explain why, in
an earlier passage, we saw Aristotle expecting the “king” to be among the bees
that alert the others for the approaching flight, saying “whether the king is
among these has not yet been observed because it is not easy” (HA IX, 40,
625b9– 10). Unlike noise hearing, immediately relayed by imitation regardless
of its content or source without any particular mood, the cooperation implied
in voice is injunctive and imperial (“hegemonic”) in character, and its mood is
the imperative (prostaktikê). In hearing noise, some bird species relay without
understanding; in hearing voice, bees do not relay, but understand and obey.43
So are bees capable of hearing according to Aristotle after all? We saw
that the answer is yes. But more importantly, we saw that this question was
flawed, for it assumes a false dilemma that may lead one to “solve” it by dat-
ing the “contradictory” texts to different periods of Aristotle’s career. A better
formulation of the question is the following: what exactly, if anything, are
bees capable of hearing according to Aristotle? e exact answer is the fol-
lowing: not psophos in the generic sense of “sound,” nor psophos in the specific
sense of “noise,” nor voice as such, but a counterpart of voice, namely the buzz,
or to be as exact as possible, not the continuous buzz, but the discontinuous
and occasional buzz. is disambiguation solves the apparent contradiction
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between the texts:44 the Metaphysics passage emphasizes that bees are inca-
pable of hearing noises in the sense of meaningless acoustic objects to be
relayed, and hence of learning in the sense of imitating, reproducing, and
relaying them; whereas the two HA passages point out that they are capable
of hearing, if not voice per se, at least its counterpart, the discontinuous and
occasional buzz, acoustic objects as meaningful and interested calls for coop-
eration.45 Some bird species are capable of relaying without understanding,
while bees understand but do not relay.46
2. Human Speech: From “Letters” to “Words”
As we just saw, some bird species are capable of relaying non- firsthand expe-
riences without understanding their content. Honeybees, on the other hand,
show themselves able to understand the content of non- firsthand experi-
ences, but they do not relay them to yet another honeybee. In this section
and in the following one, I shall propose and develop the following claim:
the ability to both understand and relay non- firsthand experience as well as
firsthand experience is precisely what Aristotle means by logos in the exclu-
sively human sense of “speech.” As in the other three major senses of logos,
namely “standard,” “ratio,” and “reason,” the meaning of logos as “speech” is
thus again a kind of relation, of gathering, of inclusiveness between terms
that previously may have seemed mutually exclusive or indifferent: contents
of firsthand experience, and contents that are not, may not be, or even cannot
be, experienced firsthand.
Previously, we distinguished three senses of the Ancient Greek verb akouein:
sound hearing, voice hearing, and listening in the sense of obeying. Yet there
is a fourth sense of akouein: “understand, [to] take in a certain sense.”47 is
definition suggests that what is heard here may be taken in another sense. en
what is heard is somehow not straightforward, but fundamentally opaque,
unlike voice which, as we saw, “comes naturally” and cannot be “shaped” (HA
IV, 9, 536b14– 18). e message here is not just taken in naturally and entirely,
but remains open to interpretation and indeed misinterpretation, leaving a
gap between sound and meaning. In this kind of akouein, we then move from
the fact of having sense to the task of making sense. In short, according to the
definition, the object of this kind of hearing is characterized by three features:
mediation, articulation, and ambiguity.
Mediation
So indeed is logos in the sense of “speech,” as I shall now try to demonstrate
by bringing together Aristotle’s scattered remarks on the matter.
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Mediation is clearly found in Aristotelian remarks concerning human
speech. As speech, logos is never immediate, just as it never is in any sense
in Aristotle. More specifically, even the material of speech is not immediate
as voice is. ere are passages in Aristotle which suggest that the material of
speech is voice.48 And yet other passages stress that the voices to be used as
material of speech are modified: “Now speech is signifying not with voice,
but with its modifications [pathê], and not because [the one who utters
speech] takes pleasure or suffers” (Prob. 10, 895a4– 14).49 e rest of this pas-
sage names the unit through which logos is articulated out of voices: “Letters
[grammata] are modifications of voice.” en the specific material of logos is
“letters”:50 “Speech is composed of letters through voice” (PA II, 16, 660a3–
4). e mediation that makes logos possible and distinguishes it from other
acoustic phenomena involves the production of letters, and this production
differs from voice production both physiologically and semantically.
First, the physiology of the production of letters differs from that of voice
production. We saw that the production of voice involves the pharynx and
lungs, and also a special use of the windpipe.51 Speech, however, is produced
by means of the mouth, the teeth, the larynx, the pitch of the voice, tongue,
and the lips.52 “e voice and the larynx send forth the vowels, and the tongue
and the lips the consonants, of which language [dialektos] is constituted” (HA
IV, 9, 535a29– b1). us letters are not only a selection of voices, they are
distinguished among themselves into two interrelated groups. While vowels
have an audible voice, some letters have a voice only in conjunction with
vowels: “A consonant is that which has no voice by itself with prosbolê, but
becomes audible with one that has voice” (Po. 20, 1456b28– 29). e produc-
tion of consonants involves a new physiological aspect, prosbolê and symbolê:
“Speech is composed of letters through voice; but if the tongue was not this
way, or if the lips were not wet, most of the letters could not be uttered; for
some are impacts [prosbolê] of the tongue, some are closings [symbolê] of the
lips” (PA II, 16, 660a4– 7). us, just as the production of vowels brought into
play the larynx, now consonants engage the lips and the tongue:
Voice and sound are different, and language [dialektos] is a third. No
part ever emits voice apart from the pharynx; thus, those that have
no lungs, never utter; but language is the articulation [diarthrôsis] of
voice by means of the tongue: the voice and the larynx send forth
the vowels, the tongue and the lips [send forth] the consonants, of
which language is constituted. erefore those that have no tongue
or no loose tongue do not use language [dialegetai]. But sounding
belongs to other parts as well. us, insects neither emit voice, nor
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use language, but emit sound to the interior of their lungs, not out-
side. (HA IV, 9, 535a27- b5; 536a32– 536b4)
us Aristotle distinguishes a letter from sounds, from voices, from vowels if
the letter is a consonant, or from consonants if it is a vowel, and finally from
other vowels if it is a vowel, and from other consonants if it is a consonant.
For instance, the “letter” /u/ heard or produced as a letter is determined in a
fourfold way: it is not a wuthering (not only a sound); it is not a howl (not
only a voice); it is neither /b/ nor /t/ nor /s/, and so on (not a consonant); it
is neither /a/ nor /e/ nor /i/, and so on (not any vowel).
Hence, learning a new language requires not only that one widens the
range of one’s phonatory equipment quantitatively, but also that one modifies
it qualitatively. For uttering new letters requires a new cooperation between
the larynx, the lungs, or the lips and tongue. Even at the apparently rudimen-
tary level of sound production, the acquisition of a new language demands an
extensive rehabituation of the body. us the mediated character of speech
can be seen in the physiological aspect of its production through letters.
Just as the basic material of speech involves a meticulous process of
production, the reception of a letter as a letter also involves a quite sharp
perception or intricate discrimination of acoustic differences. is is reminis-
cent of Aristotle’s wonder in front of the distinct perception (diaisthanesthai)
that some bird species are capable of (HA IX, 1, 608a17– 21). One may claim
that, for Aristotle, languages differ from one another not only in their syntax,
grammar, and vocabulary, but all the way down to their letters.53 us, the ear
tended toward letters is tended toward something that is not simply a sound,
because letters are not reducible to physical shocks and strokes; not simply
voice, because letters are not any voice, but a selection of voices; not simply
a voice from within a selection, because letters are also modified physiologi-
cally and acoustically by the distinction between consonants and vowels; and
not simply a preselected acoustic unit that has a voice either independently
or dependently, because consonants are finally differentiated from the other
consonants, and vowels from the other vowels.54
Yet the crucial aspect of the mediated character of speech is not physi-
ological, but semantic. Because letters are meaningless.55 While voice is itself
meaningful and composed out of meaningful parts, logos is meaningful, but
composed out of meaningless parts. Beyond a merely physiological modifica-
tion of voice, letters involves a fundamental semantic modification of voice,
of one’s relation to desire, to meaning, and to others. To learn to speak is
not to add cries and shouts in various combinations, it is to recharge voice
at its natural roots. Even to supply the material which speech will further
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articulate, one must not only learn to reorchestrate one’s respiration, larynx,
tongue, and lips, but, most importantly, one must be able to “redefine,” as
it were, one’s most elemental pleasures and pains. Just as animal voice was
possible only by refraining from both inhalation and exhalation, from both
flight and pursuit, here the basic material of speech requires that one not emit
a voice, that one go beyond the dilemma of invoking or threatening others.
To learn letters is to fundamentally modify one’s behavior in order to learn to
commit the voice and silence of one’s body to others.
ere is textual evidence in Aristotle for the psychological significance
and ethical exemplariness of learning letters. e Nicomachean Ethics uses
grammatikê, “literacy,”as a paradigmatic kind of knowledge, and as an exam-
ple of a positive state: it is by performing literacy that one becomes literate
(NE II, 3, 1105a20). Yet literacy is not merely a matter of imitation:
One may in fact write letters by chance or with the support of
another. One will then become literate only when, while writing
letters, one does in a literate way, that is, according to the literacy in
oneself. (NE II, 3, 1105a22– 24)
Hence literacy is defined not only by knowing how to write, but also by
knowing how to read (Topics VI, 5, 142b31). It is this crucial aspect of lit-
eracy, its being “in oneself,” that distinguishes it from all kinds of imitation,
however perfect, as the ones we saw some bird species to be capable of. Hence
language for Aristotle is psychological, ethical, and political all the way down
to its material. No wonder listening to speech, or reading, contributes most
to learning and prudence:
Hearing conveys the differences of sounds, but in some animals it
also conveys the differences of voice. Incidentally hearing makes the
largest contribution to prudence, for speech is the cause of learning
by being audible, but it is audible not in itself but incidentally, for
speech is composed of nouns and each noun is a symbol. (De Sensu
1, 437a10– 15)
As we saw, voice is meaningful through and through. It is a natural outer
“organ” intended to “organize” others by means of orders (the imperative
mood) and threats or promises (the subjunctive mood). Letters, however, pre-
cisely evacuate meaning from voice, revert the natural reorganization of voice,
and stop invoking others for the sake of its desire. It is on the foundation of
such negation that speech can be mediated in a strong sense by means of
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“letters,” that speech can be “taken in a certain sense,” and that a letter can have
a function without having a meaning.
Articulation
My use of the word “articulation” here may remind the reader of a concept
introduced in twentieth- century linguistics: “double articulation” (Martinet)
or “duality of patterning” (Hockett)— the articulation of meaningless units
(“phonemes”) into meaningful units (“morphemes”), and the articulation of
these meaningful units into syntactic wholes. is is not a coincidence. For,
when talking about the formation of words, Aristotle explicitly and insis-
tently uses a word that means the process of organic differentiation in the
embryo, diarthrôsis, “articulation”:56
Voice and sound are different, and language [dialektos] is a third.
No part ever emits voice apart from the pharynx; thus, those that
have no lungs, never utter; but language is the diarthrôsis of voice by
means of the tongue. (HA IV, 9, 535a27– b1; 536a32– b4)
So is there a parallel between the articulation of speech and the formation of
the embryo?57
On a lower level, voice is comparable to elements constitutive of organic
bodies: both voice and elements lack logos. We saw in chapter 3 that fire
was ever too complete to be proportioned into the growth of an organism
(“fire grows without any limit or logos”);58 similarly, the voice of a crying baby
is already too meaningful to be integrated into a meaningful whole. On the
higher level too, logos is comparable to the organic body: just as the organic
body is not reducible to an agglomerate of elements, but rather needs an
intermediate level of articulation into nonuniform parts, similarly logos is
irreducible to a series of natural “uniform voices” and requires the intermedi-
ate level of articulation into highly determined, “modified,” and meaningless
units, namely letters.59 So, just as elements cannot account for diarthrôsis in
the sense of organic formation, voice cannot account for diarthrôsis in the
sense of the articulation of speech. In both cases, diarthrôsis names a process
which goes beyond mere uniform units.
e word Aristotle uses for “uniform unit” in these contexts is stoikheion,
meaning alternatively “natural element” or “uniform voice.” Aristotle’s uses of
this word support the parallelism above. Stoikheia account for voice, as it is
“like water is part of water”:60 “e elements of a voice are that out of which
voice is composed, and that into which it is ultimately divided, and these are
not divided into other voices different from them with respect to their form”
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(Metaph. V, 3, 1014a27– 32).61 Yet, unlike voice, speech, even a syllable, is not
an agglomerate of elemental sounds, but rather an articulation of letters:
e syllable is not its elements [stoikheia], nor is BA the same as B
and A, nor is flesh fire and earth; because after dissolution they no
longer exist, neither flesh nor the syllable, whereas the elements and
both fire and earth do exist. us the syllable is something, yet not
only its elements, vowels and consonants, but something else; and
the flesh is not only fire and earth, or hot and cold, but something
else. (Metaph. VII, 17, 1041b11– 19)
us, the parallelism between organ formation and the formation of logos
can be established: neither body parts nor speech parts are agglomerations of
raw elements or stoikheia, since both require the articulation of a preformed
material that has no meaning or life on its own, but only a function.
What is this function? What are letters articulated into? “Logos is a signi-
fying voice, one of whose parts is signifying separately, not as an affirmation
[kataphasis], but as an expression [phasis]” (On Int. 4, 16b26– 28). en let-
ters, meaningless as such, are articulated into an expression that is separately
meaningful.62 Whatever the vague word phasis exactly means,63 Aristotle
says: “Let noun and verb be the only expressions” (On Int. 5, 17a17– 18). So
letters are ultimately articulated into nouns and verbs, the result of the first
level of the articulation of logos.64
Nouns, the products of the first articulation of speech, introduce three
aspects that define speech: its conventional (kata synthêkên),65 composite
(synthetê),66 and symbolic character (symbolê).67 So firstly, with regard to the
conventional character of nouns, we saw that speech is irreducible to a series
of natural voices.68 Since letters were already conventional, it is not surpris-
ing to see that a noun, and a fortiori full- fledged speech, signify “according
to a convention” and not as an “organ” (On Int. 2, 16a20– 21; 4, 16b33–
17a2). Aristotle explains: “According to a convention, because no noun is
by nature, but when a symbol comes to be; letterless [agrammatoi] sounds,
for instance those of wild beasts, do make something manifest, but none of
them is a noun” (On Int. 2, 16a26– 29). In Ancient Greek, synthêkê means “a
compound,” but also “convention,” especially in Aristotle and Plato, and it is
usually contrasted to the “natural.” A voice as such is never a noun any more
than it is a letter, because voice does not signify by means of a convention.
One never hears a voice as voice in a noun, nor a noun as noun in a voice.
Secondly, as to the composite character of nouns, this should not be sur-
prising to us either. For we already saw that a noun uses a certain kind of
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voice as material. e sound /u/ may well happen to correspond to the Eng-
lish second- person pronoun (“you”), or the name of the letter u, or a voice
(an expression of surprise), or even a sound (the wuthering of the wind). Yet
such an ambiguity does not disprove the existence of differences, but proves
it: /u/ may be one of all four because there is a fourfold distinction to begin
with. To take the wuthering of the wind for a dog howling, or a dog howl-
ing for the pronoun “you,” is precisely a case of confusion between distinct
registers. Because languages are conventionally determined all the way down
to their basic constituents, we can hear nouns or verbs as mere voices or
sounds only by forcefully abstracting their meaning, particular situation, or
context.69
e third characteristic of nouns, their symbolic character, is new to us.
For, while letters are no more symbolic than voice, nouns come to be “when
a symbolon comes to be” (On Int. 2, 16a28). In fact, On Interpretation opens
with this idea: “ose in the voice are symbols of the affections in the soul”
(On Int. 1, 16a3– 4). en, the composite and conventional character of a
noun goes together with its being a symbolon. But what does symbolon mean?
Closely related to symbolê which appeared above as the “closing of lips” in our
discussion of the physiology of voice production (PA II, 16, 660a7), Aristotle
uses the word symbolon in meanings that are pretty much unrelated to the
English word “symbol”: it means a “complementary factor” in the context of
Empedocles’s understanding of the relation between male and female (GA
I, 18, 722b12); it appears in the context of air’s being composed out of the
wet and the hot “as from symbola” (Mete. II, 4, 360a26); and it is used in the
context of the generation of a constitutional government “taking a symbolon”
from both oligarchy and democracy (Pol. IV, 7, 1294a35).
Most concretely symbolon means a “tally, i.e., each of two halves or cor-
responding pieces of an astragalos or other object, which two xenoi, or any
two contracting parties, broke between them, each party keeping one piece,
in order to have proof of the identity of the presenter of the other.”70 is
last and most concrete sense of symbolon best designates the convention-
ally and compositely significant character of nouns or verbs. For, whereas
the hot and the wet, male and female, democracy and oligarchy have a cer-
tain existence apart from the other, a tally by itself means nothing at all.
If it means at all, it does so only potentially.71 For, before broken into two
tallies or symbola, the astragalos is a bone, thus a natural organ. But once
broken in two, it can no longer fulfill its natural function. When two
strangers break an astragalos among them and deprive it from its first func-
tion, they instill the two pieces with a fundamentally new interdependent
meaning: each tally designates its unique counterpart in distinction from
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all other tallies. ereby the two holders of the tallies mutually identify
themselves on the basis of the very moment of the unique breakage of the
astragalos.
is sense of symbolon also sheds light on the kind of people the tally
holders may be, and prefigures the fundamental role of speech in the found-
ing of the polis. An astragalos taken as a bone may roughly match another
bone: two relatives may have similar bone structures, and they may identify
one another just by looking at such similarities. As a bone with a certain
form (eidos), the astragalos may bring together relatives. Yet, once broken into
two tallies, an astragalos may bring together any two people. is is why even
strangers or guests can break astragaloi. Hence Aristotle uses symbolon in
this sense of a “tally” being a “friend” to its counterpart and “stretching out”
toward it to form a whole:
But in a way the friendship of the opposite is also friendship of
the good, for [opposites] stretch out [oregetai] toward one another
through the middle. For they stretch out to one another as tallies
do, because that way one middle thing results from both. (EE VII,
5, 1239b30– 33)
is “one middle thing” resulting from both seems to be exactly the sym-
bolon, an essential feature of nouns and hence of speech. Identification and
misidentification do not become an issue in a context involving no strangers
or guests, in the context of a household, a village, or an isolated city. is
is certainly not neglected by the fifth- and fourth- century ancient Greek
culture developing into cities with a background of their alliance against the
Persians. us, Oedipus misidentifies himself and his parents only because
both he is cast out of his fatherland ebes and returns there afterwards. His
mother fails to recognize his face and natural bone structure only because she
is led astray by his conventional identity as the son of the king of Corinth
or as the witty stranger that saved ebes from the Sphinx. As we shall see
better in our conclusion, the tragedy of King Oedipus pivots around human
immersion in the conventional and symbolic character of logos and the open
environment provided by the polis. For all characters, except Teiresias, are
fixated on the ambiguity of the oracles and overinterpret them. Oedipus
solves the Sphinx’s riddle thanks to his dexterity in the face of this ambigu-
ity. e tragedy is made possible because, as citizens, everybody in the play
is thinking merely in terms of the conventional symbolism and composite-
ness of logos. On the contrary, again as we shall see in our conclusion, village
life as such is fixated, not on ambiguity or homonymy, but on synonymy or
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literality. It is too closed to such conventional misidentification, because it is
closed to conventional and symbolic identification.
So how does a noun work as a tally? What are the two tallies in our con-
text? Arguably, one is the “sounds” uttered, and the other is the “affections of
the soul.” A tally is able to fulfill its function whether the bone is broken this
way or that way as long as both parties have one piece; similarly, the affections of
the soul may well be expressed by these sounds or those ones. It is precisely
this contingency that we do not find in voice or natural organs. Considered
as mere voice, a noun is as useless as a broken bone. It is precisely an incon-
sistent, unintelligible sequence of vocalized demands. But once one envisages
a noun as a noun, as a meaningful unit that is conventionally combined out
of meaningless units, then one embarks on a process of finding a matching
tally— the meaning.72
is explains why for Aristotle a noun is quite a strong threshold for
meaning. For he insists that the parts of a noun are meaningless. According
to him, even a noun such as Kallippos, which is obviously a compound of
kalos (“beautiful”) and hippos (“horse”), is not composed out of meaningful
parts (On Int. 2, 16a21– 22; Po. 20, 1457a12– 14). Hippos is indeed a noun
on its own, but not as part of Kallippos. Just as the wind does not utter the
voice /u/, and just as /a/ in “apple” is not a noun, /kalli/ is not meaningful in
Kallippos. e meaning of a noun is not to be found in the meaning of its
parts. Further, just as hippos in Kallippos does not count as a noun, neither
does “not- human” (which is an “indefinite noun”) nor “Philon’s” (which is a
declension), “because it is not true or false with ‘is,’ ‘was’ or ‘will be’ ” (On Int.
2, 16a29– 16b3). So if for Aristotle a noun is a strong threshold of meaning,
it is because a noun depends on whether it will contribute to a truth or falsity
when it is coupled with the verb “to be.” is is the first clue of the meaning
of “meaning”: the possibility of truth or falsity when coupled with the verb
“to be.” Presumably this is why the noun, and not the verb, constitutes the
first articulation of speech.
As to verbs, Aristotle has similar strong restrictions: compound verbs are
not composed out of nouns and verbs that by themselves have meaning (Po.
20, 1457a15); a form like “isn’t recovering” does not count as a verb, it is only
an “indefinite verb”; forms such as “will recover” and “recovered” do not count
as verbs either, they are declensions of verbs: “they differ from the verb in
that the verb designates [prossêmainei] the present time, whereas the others
denote that which is around [the present time]” (On Int. 3, 16b17– 18). A
verb “is always a sign of that to which it belongs, for instance, of the underly-
ing things” (On Int. 3, 16b9– 10), so much so that a logos need not contain a
verb: the definition of “human being” is a logos that does not contain a verb
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(Po.20, 1457a24– 27). “[Logos] is composed of nouns each of which is a sym-
bol” (De Sensu 1, 437a13– 15). Meaning is the possibility of truth and falsity
when coupled with the verb “to be.” “Cleon” means something because “Cleon
is” is either true or false. And further, “Cleon walks” signifies something, and
it is a logos, it contains a part that by itself signifies something: “Cleon” (Po.
20, 1457a27– 28). But “walks” or even “is” does not mean anything on their
own, that is, they are meaningful as something said of an implicit “Cleon”
(On Int. 3, 16b22– 23).73
Aristotle’s positing of the noun as the first level of articulation of logos is
implicitly an argument against infinite regress in meaning: as conventional,
composite, and symbolic, a noun, the basic meaningful unit of logos, is and
should be able to refrain from referring back to more elementary meaningful
parts, and to precisely mark the beginning of a realm of meaning to which no
voice can access. Voice, on the contrary, is composed out of meaningful parts
all the way down— a long cry may indeed be composed out of short cries that
do not mean the same thing, but do mean something, a slight emphasis in the
pain or pleasure, a minor nuance of threat or invitation.
What is entailed in hearing a noun? To my knowledge, there is only one
passage, an obscure one, where Aristotle seems to address the issue of under-
standing a noun instead of hearing mere voice:
Verbs said by themselves are nouns, and they signify something—
for the speaker puts the thought, and the hearer remained at rest
[êremêsen]— but in no way does it signify whether it is or not. For
“to be” or “not to be” are not signs of a thing, not even if you said
“the being” [to on] on its own. For it itself is nothing, but designates
some synthesis which cannot be thought without the components.74
Aristotle here spells out both the productive and receptive side of the expres-
sion of nouns: “the speaker puts the thought, and the hearer remained at
rest.” To hear and understand a noun involves rest. What kind of rest?
e nature of this “rest” in hearing a noun may become clearer if we recall
the essentially moving or motivating characteristic of voice. As we saw, voices
“move,” they “invite” or “threaten.” ey are imperatives or conditionals: they
imply order, threat, or promise. If the hearer of a voice as voice is neither
impelled nor repelled away, it is simply because it is insensitive to the threat
or invitation. Rest as a response to voice is thus contempt or indifference.
Listening and understanding a noun as a noun, however, is precisely to
“remain at rest” at least for a “moment” of understanding, that is, of receiving
the meaning by remaining open to its possibility of truth and falsity. “Rest”
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here is not at the expense of a relation to one’s interlocutor. e “rest” of
understanding is not due to insensitivity, but due to the consideration of pos-
sibilities at least momentarily considered as options. e first articulation of
speech is then received by a being capable of holding the possibility of truth
and that of falsity without letting one yield to the other.75
is structure of “momentary rest” in front of two contraries matches the
structure of the “potentialities with logos” we saw in chapter 2: understanding
a noun as a meaningful unit necessitates that the listener stay open to both of
contrary possibilities, just as the “potentiality with logos” implies a “moment”
where Socrates must “stand still” and weigh the option of fleeing together with
the possibility of not- fleeing.76 “ere must be some other dominant factor
[to kurion], I mean desire or choice” (Metaph. IX, 5, 1048a10– 11). Desire or
choice— but which one holds both possibilities open? e faculty that holds
them open may be imagination. But Aristotle argues that the imagination
combining perceptions, and therefore pleasures and pains, must be distin-
guished from an imagination involving the work of logos— a deliberative,
“logistic” imagination:
So a sensory imagination, as was said, belongs to other animals as
well, whereas the deliberative one belongs to those that are logistikê:
for, whether one shall do this or that is already a work for logismos,
has to be measured by one [criterion], since one is looking for the
better. us one is able to make one thing out of many images. is
is the reason why [other animals] do not seem to have opinion,
because they do not have opinion that comes from a syllogismos,
while others do have it. Desire does not have the power of delib-
erating, but at one time this desire wins out and knocks away that
one, and at another time that one wins out and knocks away this
one, like a ball, when there is lack of self- restraint. But by nature
the higher is more governing [arkhikôtera] and moves. (DA III, 11,
434a6– 16)
Here we see that deliberative imagination is the realm of logismos, that realm
belonging only to the logistikos, where motion is not produced by the stronger
desire’s knocking away the others, but by a “momentary rest” of the immedi-
ate provocation of desires in consideration: “desires come to be contrary to
one another, which happens whenever logos and appetite are contrary to one
another, and comes about in beings that have perception of time” (DA III,
10, 433b5– 8). In other words, the ability to foresee the future as possibili-
ties, to grasp and make a decision about one’s life as a whole, and not as an
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agglomeration of atomic moments, decisions, and motions, requires having
logos as “reason” and acting according to it. Since the motion dominated by
logismos does not conquer desire, it cannot be insensitive or repressive toward
it. is motion is action.
To return to logos as speech, to hear a noun as a noun is to be open to a
kind of meaning that is irreducible to the massive meaningfulness of voice,
to be open to a certain field of possible truth and falsity beyond the field of
immediate pleasure and pain. Sensation of proper sensibles, and the plea-
sure and pain accompanying them, are so revealing that their truth is not an
issue.77 Speech, however, is such that it always entails truth as an issue. e
“rest” that constitutes the completion of the first articulation of speech for
Aristotle then is a paradoxical rest in hesitation— not the hesitation between
two almost equal pleasures or pains, but that between the possible truth and
falsity that the noun may instantiate, a minimal patience for interpretation,
one might say “hermeneutical patience.”
In general a sign of the one who knows and the one who does not
know is being able to teach, and for this reason we regard art, more
than experience, to be knowledge, since the one can, but the others
cannot teach. (Metaph. I, 1, 981b7– 10)
Just as a sign of knowing is here the ability to reformulate the content of
knowledge to others in other particular circumstances instead of merely
repeating it, a sign of the one who has understood a noun is his ability to
reformulate the same thing with other words, to paraphrase it, to make varia-
tions on it while preserving the exact same “truth values.” A sign that one has
understood the word “Socrates” is one’s ability to paraphrase it with “a phi-
losopher,” “a meddlesome busybody,” or “a Brazilian soccer player,” without
changing the “truth values” it may have when coupled with “is” or “is not.”
A symptom of the understanding of a noun then is the listener’s readiness
to proceed from the first level of articulation of logos to the level of its full,
second, articulation. To understand the word “Socrates” is tantamount to fall
in a preliminary aporia, to assume “hermeneutical patience,” and to be pro-
voked to ask: “So what about Socrates?”
Ambiguity
Ambiguity is the third central feature of human speech, after mediation and
articulation. It follows from the symbolic character of nouns. For, precisely
because nouns necessarily open up a distance between the sounds uttered
and the meaning, the same things are said in many ways not only in different
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languages, but even within one language, and the same nouns can refer to
fundamentally different things. In a word, the first level of articulation of
speech is what opens the possibility of ambiguity, equivocation, homonymia.
It is because there is homonymy that even the hearing of the most common
noun may require a search for the exact meaning. Even the most elementary
words, such as “man,” “stone,” “bird,” or “hit” necessarily partake in ambiguity,
as we saw in the riddle at the very beginning of chapter 1.
Yet now we can see why the “flaw” of ambiguity or homonymy, inherent
to nouns, precisely goes hand in hand with their convenience. Ambiguity is
a necessary consequence of the infinite economy of language: “Nouns and
the quantity of logoi are finite, whereas things are infinite in number; thus
it is necessary that the same logos and noun signify a number of things” (SE
1, 165a11– 14). is enables Sophocles to skillfully show how erroneous
Oedipus is in promising his citizens to either kill whoever killed Laius or die
himself— without ever imagining that this is not an either- or situation, since
the two options are synonymous (King Oedipus, ll. 132– 46). Speech articu-
lates a potentially unlimited number of nouns out of a limited number of basic
conventional units, and stands for an infinite number of particular affections
of the soul, but this economy is at the price of possible tragic ambiguities.
e necessarily ambiguous character of what is “heard” in the last sense
of akouein (after hearing sound, hearing voice, and obeying) also shows up
especially in the opening lines of the Aristotelian corpus which distinguish
homonyms and synonyms (Cat. 1, 1a1– 12). e human condition, that is,
the condition of an animal having logos, situates us in an unavoidable gap
between names and beings. For synonymy entails the commonality of both
names and “logos of being,” while, as seen in chapter 1, we can always address
beings homonymously, that is, with respect to their name only, since language
is conventional. e mediation of speech through meaningless parts frees
or detaches meanings from voices, and makes synonymy not a given, but a
continual task. No wonder languages change. is is because of homonymy,
the unavoidable ambiguity of language. It is very telling that Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle are all extremely aware of ambiguity and view disambigua-
tion as a major philosophical task, while none of them seem to have ever
hoped to eradicate ambiguity from natural language. Quite in opposition
to much later aspirations and attempts for a perfect, unambiguous language
in Descartes, Leibniz, Enlightenment philosophers, and most notably John
Wilkins,78 it seems as if Aristotle, a pioneer in axiomatic science and formal
logic, believes that language is necessarily ambiguous because he seems to
think, like Wilhelm von Humboldt, that language is “the infinite use of finite
media.”79 Only a dead language can be a perfect one.
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Since specifically human hearing is understanding, that is, “taking in a
certain sense,” and since the bond between meaning and sound is detached
in human speech, it is possible to interpret the same letters (say, l, o, g, o and
s) in different meanings, as “standard,” “ratio,” “reason,” “speech,” or as my
spell- check does in interpreting logos as the plural of “logo.” For the same
reason, it is possible to rephrase one same meaning in different letters, one
same idea in other words. As we saw earlier in this chapter of the book, to
hear a voice was to be moved by its meaning, even if in the form of indif-
ference. e semantics of human speech, however, is fundamentally exposed
to paraphrase, interpretation, and translation by a mediator, a translator, an
interpreter, a Hermes, or a hermêneus.
3. Human Speech: From “Words to Sentences”
Finally, after our survey of animal communication, and our analysis of the
first articulation of speech, from “letters” to “words,” through mediation,
articulation, and ambiguity, we now come to the full articulation of speech.
In this section, we shall see that, unlike voice which was bound by imperative
or subjunctive moods, speech can be construed in two other moods as well:
the indicative and the optative. We already saw how, by means of imitation,
some bird species relay non- firsthand experiences without understanding
them, while, in their obedience and cooperation, bees understand them, but
do not relay them. e elaboration of the indicative and optative moods will
put us in a position to argue that logos in the sense of “speech” names the spe-
cifically human capacity for both understanding and relaying non- firsthand
experiences along with firsthand experiences.
e Indicative
Just as speech first articulates voiced and unvoiced units (vowels and con-
sonants) for the sake of meaning, the meaningful unit itself is determined
in terms of a second articulation: namely, the articulation of that which has
meaning on its own (a noun) and that which has meaning only when coupled
with a noun (a verb) for the sake of possible truth or falsity. e possibility of
truth and falsity appears as the central factor of speech. us, the “final cause”
of the first articulation of speech points to the second level of articulation.
“Letters,” however functional, were not meaningful in themselves; nouns, in
turn, however meaningful, are not ends in themselves.
us we come to the most common meaning of logos as speech: logos
apophantikos or “declarative sentence.” We saw Aristotle’s definition: “Logos
is a signifying voice, one of whose parts is signifying separately, not as an
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affirmation, but as an expression.”80 Logos has a meaningful part, but this
second level of articulation also relates that independently meaningful part
to that which applies and does not apply to it (hyparkhein) with temporal
specification.81 In the first case, indeed, the declarative sentence is affirma-
tion (kataphasis), in the second, it is negation (apophasis): “Affirmation is a
declaration of something concerning something [kata tinos], whereas nega-
tion is a declaration of something against something [apo tinos].”82
e duality of affirmation and negation is explained by the duality of truth
and falsity, and this latter by the truth of the principle of non- contradiction:
concerning the very same subject matter, a declarative sentence is necessarily
open to both truth and falsity. erefore any such sentence can be negated.
Here we see that truth or falsity, the radical breakthrough out of voice into
speech, puts at work that which was potential in expression: “Socrates is exe-
cuted” is not simply an expression of something (“Socrates”), but an expression
of something about it. But what? e declarative sentence enjoys a “freedom”
that is almost as unlimited, a “freedom” that extends far beyond the unique
“correct” match, and is entangled in the myriads of ways of being “incorrect.”
is is why such correctness is not a fact, but an issue. For structural and
necessary reasons, speech is certainly not a perfect means to truth as corre-
spondence.83 For humans, truth as correspondence is almost a nostalgia for
the strictly animal condition, for the full experience of sensation:84 for pres-
ence, for pure experience, for apperception, for sheer firsthand experience, for
the apodictic certainty, for seeing everything from one’s own eyes, or at least
for the self- evidence of imagining that one sees everything from one’s own
eyes. For humans, firsthand experience and direct perception are, more often
than not, a task, if not an impossible one.
ere is an Ancient Greek word that perfectly corresponds to this ideal of
apperception: autopsia, “seeing from one’s own eyes,” “firsthand experience,”
“witnessing.” Aristotle uses autoptês, “eye witness,” exactly in the sense of
firsthand knowledge as opposed to mere legein: “As we said, the largest rivers
flow indeed from the highest mountains. To those who look at maps of the
earth this is clear, for they have been drawn by means of in situ investigation
or, if not seen firsthand [autoptas], then by means of those who speak” (Mete.
I, 13, 350a14– 18).85
So having logos is particularly ill- suited to the ideal of autopsia. ere may
well be an ancient Greek epistemic ideal of autopsia.86 But if autopsia can
become a concern at all for the ancient Greeks, but also for Descartes or for
human beings in general, this is because the human condition is not con-
fined to it. e human condition, but also perhaps ancient Greek philosophy,
are understandable less by asserting the preeminence of sight or hearing or
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language as such, or by noticing the quantitative complexity of human life
and communication, than by emphasizing the irreversible human detach-
ment from, and occasional yearning for, autopsia. It is the forms of “not
seeing with one’s own eyes,” but indeed also of “not hearing with one’s own
ears,” that characterize the human condition.87
Unlike imperatives and the subjunctive conditions implied by them in ani-
mal communication, declarative speech corresponds to the indicative mood.
Not that it indicates the truth. On the contrary, because what it can indicate
drives the human condition away from autopsia toward a vast and confusing
realm where unjustified, unjustifiable, and unfalsifiable sentences proliferate.
e Optative
We have already seen how animal communication was mostly governed by
the imperative (prostaktikê) and the subjunctive (hypotaktikê) moods. Besides
these two moods, we just saw the second articulation of human speech in
the sense of “declarative sentence” in a third mood: the indicative (horistikê).
And yet there is another mood specific to logos: this is the optative mood
(euktikê).88 Aristotle is sharply aware of this mood. For, according to him, all
declarative sentences are indeed logoi, but not the other way around. Despite
what his critics claim,89 Aristotle does not reduce speech to declarative sen-
tences: “Not all logos is declarative, but the logoi to which truth or falsity
belong. For instance, a eukhê [“prayer” or “wish”] is a logos, but it is neither
true nor false.”90
In order to develop this marginalized or totally neglected aspect of human
speech, let us first trace out the Aristotelian concept of eukhê as a kind of logos
in its own right, then analyze the state of the soul that is expressed by it, and
finally differentiate the optative mood from the other three moods.
In Ancient Greek, eukhê means “prayer,” “vow,” “wish,” “aspiration,”
“curse.”91 Despite being a logos, “prayer”is not susceptible of truth or fal-
sity. Although the human being is distinguished by logos, not all logos is
declarative. Beside the declarative, propositional, or indicative mood of logos,
grounded by the principle of non- contradiction and constitutive of logic and
science, eukhê is this other kind of logos, somehow detached from truth and
falsity, a logos that is not predicative, but rather precative. Yet, as Aristotle
adds, the analysis of this kind of logos must be relegated, for its proper place
is not in On Interpretation, which is reserved to declarative logos, but in the
rhetoric and the poetics. us one would expect a satisfying account of eukhê
in the Rhetoric and in the Poetics.
In the Rhetoric, unfortunately eukhê appears only twice in the same
sentence, and this in its verbal form of eukhesthai in the discussion of the
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“depreciative metaphor.”92 According to this passage, although praying
(eukhesthai) is honorable and begging is dishonorable, both belong to the
same genus: demand (aitêsis). is point confirms that eukhê is not a declara-
tive logos, but it remains too generic since we have seen that animal voice
(phônê) was also precisely a kind of demand. How does eukhê, as a demand,
differ from the kind of demand we found in animal voice?
e promised analysis of eukhê is to be found no more in the Poetics than
in the Rhetoric. In the Poetics, eukhê is briefly mentioned as a form of expres-
sion (skhêma tês lexeôs) among others: “What is a command [entolê]? What
is a prayer [eukhê]? and a narration [diêgêsis], a threat [apeilê], a question
[erôtêsis], an answer [apokrisis], etc.?”93 en eukhê is to be distinguished from
“narration” and “answer.” But also, while probably belonging to the genus
“demand,” eukhê is distinguished from “question.” Although both are neither
true nor false, the act of questioning may still seem like a “quest,” thus a read-
iness to move and investigate, while eukhê lacks these characteristics. Finally,
this passage suggests that eukhê differs from the kind of demand we saw in
our analysis of animal voice: whereas the demand expressed in animal voice
took the form of a threat or a promise made to another animal in a “sub-
junctive” (hypotaktikê) mood, this passage clearly distinguishes eukhê from
“threat.” Whereas animal voice was “imperative” (prostaktikê), Aristotle’s list
of forms of expression implies that eukhê is semantically, if not grammatically,
also distinct from “command.”
e same distinction between command and eukhê is found in the next
lines of the Poetics. Here Aristotle objects to Protagoras’s criticism of Homer,
and while doing so underlines the semantic, if not grammatical, distinction
between the imperative and the optative:
Why would one agree with Protagoras in criticizing [Homer]
because, while supposedly praying [eukhesthai] [the Goddess], he
commands [epitattei] her by saying: “Sing goddess the wrath...”?94
Apparently Protagoras criticized Homer for addressing the Goddess in the
imperative mood instead of the precative/optative mood. Aristotle finds
this criticism irrelevant: poetic license tolerates the use of the imperative
for expressing what is clearly a prayer to the goddess. Either way, the texts
referred to in Aristotle’s remark concerning eukhê in On Interpretation were
the Rhetoric and the Poetics; we have seen that, although these two texts do
not supply the promised analysis of eukhê, the Rhetoric determines the genus
of eukhê as “demand” (aitêsis), and the Poetics distinguishes eukhê from other
kinds of demands such as “threats” and “questions.”
171
To recapitulate, then, eukhê is a logos that is not declarative or “indica-
tive” of a present, past, or future state of affairs, as a narration or an answer
may be. As a form of expression, it belongs to the genus “demand” (aitêsis).
It is distinguished from other species of demand: it differs from “question”
in that it is not a demand for a verbal response; more importantly, it is dif-
ferent from the subjunctive mood of threats and from the imperative mood
of command which both characterized animal voice. Eukhê does not sug-
gest potential harm or profit as threats and promises do; it does not expect
a verbal response as a question does. In this sense, eukhê is an unaccountable
logos, a logos exempt from truth and falsity, confirmation and falsification:
since it does not indicate or propose an actual or even potential state of affairs,
it cannot be held accountable for a commitment it does not make; but since
it is not a question, it is also unanswerable; finally, since it is not a promise, a
threat, or a command, it offers nothing to be broken, nothing to be obeyed
or disobeyed.
e optative mood of prayer is then to be strictly distinguished from the
imperative and subjunctive moods. Yet these grammatical terms may be mis-
leading, for, as we saw in Aristotle’s dismissal of Protagoras’s criticism of
Homer, a verb that is grammatically in the imperative mood may well have
an optative meaning as when one says “Help me, God!” or even “Good morn-
ing!” e semantically optative sentence “Good morning!” does not express
the desire one feels for the other’s having a good morning in the sense that
one has thus committed oneself to making the other’s morning a good one.
But what is the state of the soul that is expressed by the optative? A desire,
to be sure. But how is eukhê as an expression of desire any different from ani-
mal voice, equally an expression of desire? What are the kinds of desire and
what kind does the optative express? We may find a hint not in On Interpre-
tation, in the Rhetoric, or in the Poetics, but in the Nicomachean Ethics, III, 2
and the parallel text in Eudemian Ethics, II, 10. In this passage, Aristotle dis-
tinguishes “choice” (proairesis) from “desire” (orexis) by showing that choice
corresponds to neither of the three kinds of desire: neither to “appetite” (epi-
thymia), nor to “spiritedness” (thymos), nor to “wishing” (boulêsis):
But [choice] is surely not wishing either, even though that appears a
close approximation to it, since there can be no choice of impossible
things, and if anyone were to claim to choose something impossible,
that person would seem to be foolish; but there is wishing even for
impossible things, such as deathlessness. And there is also wishing
for things that can in no way be done by oneself, such as for a cer-
tain actor to win an award, or for an athlete to win a contest, but no
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one chooses such things, but only those things one believes could
come about by one’s own act. Also, wishing is rather for an end,
while choice is of things that are related to the end; for example, we
wish to be healthy, but we choose those things by means of which
we will become healthy, and we wish to be happy and say so, while
it would not fit the meaning to say we choose to be happy, since,
universally, choice seems to be concerned with things that are up
to us.95
Eukhê seems to express just this state of the human soul: wish, boulêsis.96
From the verbal expression, we have thus moved to the psychic state, and
from there we are led to the object of that state. What kind of desire is wish?
Wish is a kind of desire distinguished by its objects: (1) impossible objects
(such as immortality) beyond plans for any possible ones; (2) objects that
are not realizable or attainable by ourselves (like the victory of a team in a
match); (3) the ultimate objects of our decisions and choices (such as health
or happiness). Just as eukhê was reserved to human beings as an instance of
speech, here the wish expressed by it may well be an exclusively human desire.
In fact, Aristotle clearly says in On the Soul that “boulêsis comes to be in the
logistikê part [of the soul].”97 Similarly, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle
says that beings deprived of logos (alogoi) have “appetite” and “passion,” but
do not partake in “choice,”98 which is a “close approximation” to wish. Just as
eukhê was an atypical logos for not being susceptible of truth and falsity, wish
belongs to the logistikê part of the human soul in a problematic way: wish is
a peculiar kind of desire that does not move the being that expresses it. But
neither does it move the being that is addressed, as does animal voice. For the
object of wish is envisaged precisely as simply unattainable by the individual
animal as well by an alliance with others.
In order to sketch out the “wishful attitude,” let us then bring together the
main features of eukhê with wish, this atypical, nonmoving, kind of desire:
First, the difference between eukhê and declarative logos. e optative is
not the indicative. Unlike declarative sentences, eukhê is a logos that somehow
has access beyond past, present, and futures states of affairs; it opens up the
realm of impossibility that is not susceptible of truth and falsity. e desire
behind eukhê is susceptible of “extending” or “stretching” into mere unreality,
infinitely beyond the actual and even all potentials. Hence wish and prayer
are immune to the control of verification and falsification, of corroboration
and elenchus, regardless of whether they happen to come to pass. For it is not
exact to say that a wish becomes true in the sense that a bet turns out to be true,
since that which becomes true is not the wish, but a future state of affairs
173
extracted from the content of wish (namely, a bet); yet, as we saw, wish is not
reducible to its content since it belongs to a specific mood, the optative. For
instance, when one wishes the execution of Socrates and he is executed, what
becomes true is not the wish (the desire) itself, but the declarative or indica-
tive proposition: “Socrates will be executed.”99 Further, reaching beyond
the realm of truth as correspondence to reality, the fundamental dimension
of unreality in the optative mood penetrates the past as profoundly as the
future. For, having logos, being thus capable of wishing without regard to any
limit, reality, and likelihood, human beings are precisely capable of desiring
a counterfactual, saying, for instance, “If only we had not executed Socrates!”
Indeed, in English, the semantically optative “if only” here is to be distin-
guished from the subjunctive or imperative phrase “only if” of commands
and demands. While offering humans access to truth and to correspondence
with reality by means of logic and science, logos also exposes humans to the
realm of unreality. Unlike other desires that are geared toward the future, the
wishful attitude is particularly important in understanding the relationship
to the past in human experience. Having logos, human beings are exposed to
regret, guilt, and bad conscience.
Secondly, eukhê is distinct from conditionals. In other words, the opta-
tive is not the subjunctive. e object of wish is not limited by the realm of
reality, of possibility, and of conditions. e wish for Socrates to be executed
is modally different from a conditional sentence expressing that he will be
executed if he does not stop doing philosophy. In the same way, curses differ
from threats, as blessings do from promises. Phrases such as “God willing,”
“Deo volente,” or “Inshallah” cannot be literally meant as conditional clauses
if they are to take part in eukhê, in the optative mood. Literally, the sentence
“God willing, we shall succeed” is not an eukhê, unless what is meant by the
sentence is: “May God will that we succeed.” Again, wishes cannot be liter-
ally expressed with expressions like “please” or “if you will.” For eukhê must
be beyond the imperative of “pleasing” and the eventuality of one’s willing to
please. For, oxymoronically, eukhê is a disengaged promise. It is not “tactic,”
“prostactic,” or contractual. My wishing somebody a happy birthday in no
way binds me at the level of action; in no way am I thereby obligated to make
plans and predictions and to take responsibility. We have seen that animal
voice necessarily implies a threat or a promise made to the other animal; we
have come to see why wish is neither. Being unconditional, wish is not subject
to conditions, eventualities, justifications, refutations, confirmations, or deni-
als. As we just saw in our lengthy quotation from the Nicomachean Ethics, one
then may wish an impossibility, beyond actual or even possible experience.
One may wish that one had not undergone a trauma, that the Trojan War
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had not happened, that Socrates had not been executed. All kinds and senses
of eukhê (with the important exception of “vow”) are expressions of an inten-
tion without any regard for its realization and for a trial of its correspondence
with reality. So among the forms of eukhê and expressions of wish are saluta-
tions, best wishes, congratulations, prayers, blessings, swears, and curses.
irdly, eukhê differs from commands which may appear equally uncon-
ditional or categorical— the optative is not the imperative. In the Poetics, we
saw Protagoras criticizing Homer for using an imperative for addressing
the Goddess; yet, for Aristotle, this criticism was not valid since it wrongly
assumes that semantics is determined by grammatical tense. For a prayer may
well be expressed by an imperative without signifying a command. A wish
is precisely not a frustrated desire “translated” to another as a call for coop-
eration by means of animal voice. Wish differs from other kinds of desire
in that it does not “immediately” (euthus) spill into any action or even into
any call for action. “Save Socrates!” is a linguistic expression of a desire that
is intended to move its listener, a desire that would put the subject himself
in motion had he possessed or perceived the means for satisfying it. e wish to
save Socrates, however, although a desire, is a “universal premise” fundamen-
tally detached from any “particular premise” susceptible of triggering motion.
Other desires move the animal, wish does not. Voice is a call for cooperation
and project for action, eukhê is not.
is optative mood subtends not only wishful thinking and prayer, but
also regret, guilt, even certain kinds of dreams and reveries. Indeed, wishing
does not imply wishing well, and not all prayers are for the good of some-
one. Curses are eukhai as well. us, the wishful attitude is found not only
in the form of gratitude and hope, but also in the form of resentment. e
human soul, having logos, thus capable of wishing, exposes itself to passions
that would seem utterly absurd and irrelevant to other animals, since eukhê
is a desire that moves nothing. Wish gives access, or supposes access, to a
vast domain of detachment and abstraction from facts, possible alliances,
and conceivable individual or common projects. us, by definition, wish
is exempt from invoking others; it remains isolated and absolutely “verbal.”
Although situated outside the domain of logic, eukhê is in a sense logos par
excellence, for it remains strictly logikôs.100
One cannot fail to notice that the four exemplary objects of wish in the
above passage from the Nicomachean Ethics are of the utmost importance in
human life according to Aristotle: Immortality, success, health, and happi-
ness. ere even the central concept of “choice” in Aristotelian ethics is said
to be subsumed under such objects of wish. For Aristotle, then, wish seems to
be our psychological relationship to our highest aspirations which exceed our
175
knowledge and planning, and they find their expression in eukhê: faring well
(eu prattein), long life, prosperity, rejoicing (khaire!), success, good luck. In
short, eukhê is a logos that acknowledges the vulnerability of logos itself at the
face of contingency, when things are not “up to us.” In this respect, the wishful
attitude may be seen as a corrective of hubristic claims of rationality for self-
sufficiency. In this sense, the wishful attitude maintains a constant reserve for
gratitude and for the recognition of our limitations, as well as our constant
possibility for hope. So in this respect, for the wishful attitude, the world is
fundamentally open, undetermined by history, rational planning, or human
understanding.
Hence, there is a political implication of this wishful attitude. Being the
only animal capable of logos and thus of eukhê, the human political animal
is capable of transcending all realpolitik and of finding refuge in a strictly
logikos discourse: utopianism. It is not surprising that the word eukhê occurs
regularly in Plato’s Republic. ere it designates the “ideal” city, which,
although impossible, is eminently worthy of wish— a city that has no place
in reality, but can always be envisaged precisely through logos, a city consti-
tuted in logos alone.101 Similarly, the major Aristotelian text in which eukhê
most occurs is neither the logical nor the psychological works, but the Poli-
tics, where it appears in the phrase kat’ eukhên qualifying a constitution that
is most wishable.102
Let us then conclude our elaboration of the optative mood. e wishful
attitude is not only possible, it is a perpetual possibility for animals hav-
ing logos, since it is ultimately irrefutable by demonstration. As having logos,
human beings are uniquely capable of interpreting the world as mere hap-
penstance, of denying their own agency and responsibilities, and of relating
to unreality and to contradictions at the risk of claiming to become “simi-
lar to a plant.”103 Being the “precative” animals we are, human beings are
capable of desiring that which is refused even to gods themselves, according
to Aristotle’s quotation of Agathon: namely “to make undone whatever has
been done.”104 e human soul, by having logos, and by being able to simply
wish things, is exposed to hopes and fears that would indeed have seemed
odd, fantastic, or simply irrelevant in the animal realm, because the logos of
wish is the expression of some interest that does not move the subject. Most
importantly, being irreducible to voice which simply indicates the desire of
the animal’s soul, wish as logos is the expression of something one has not
experienced, may never experience, and may know well that one will never
experience. If wish is a logos, and if wish implies that one transcend all actual-
ity and even all possibility, then logos must offer an access specifically beyond
any firsthand experience.
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Logos as Access beyond Firsthand Experience
We have now come to the end of our elaboration of specifically human logos
as speech in this chapter of the book. Let us recapitulate the major steps we
made in our previous three sections.
In section 1, we explored animal communication. We noted that animal
voice was fundamentally geared to move another animal in a way comparable
to the subjunctive mood (threats, promises) and imperative mood (orders).
We saw that bees were capable of understanding a non- firsthand experi-
ence expressed to them by another bee (since they seemed to obey the order
given), but also that bees did not relay the non- firsthand experience to others;
conversely, we saw that, in imitating the sounds they hear, some bird species
were capable of relaying what they heard, but without understanding it.
In section 2, we proposed the hypothesis that logos as human speech for
Aristotle is this ability to both understand and relay non- firsthand experi-
ences as well as firsthand experiences. To substantiate this hypothesis, we
analyzed human speech in its three major features: its mediated, articu-
lated, and necessarily ambiguous character. Being mediated, articulated,
and ambiguous, logos enables and destines humans to understand and
communicate experiences neither the sender nor the receivers have had or
may ever have. is is why logos is properly received neither by a memo-
rization and repetition of its form, as we saw some bird species to be
capable of in hearing sound, nor by obedience to its content, as we saw in bee
communication.
In section 3, we moved from the level of “words” to “sentences,” and
showed that, besides the subjunctive and imperative moods governing ani-
mal communication, human speech has two other moods: the indicative
mood, and the often neglected optative mood. As an expression of pain and
pleasure, voice always signifies a firsthand experience (autopsia), and it is fun-
damentally oriented toward moving its hearer, even if the hearer ends up
remaining unmoved; the indicative mood of human speech, however, is capa-
ble of refraining from trying to move its hearer, and of indicating, of making
her “believe,” “agree,” or “understand.” is means not that logos is necessarily
indicative of the truth or of the true essence of things, but that it exposes
humans to claims to truth, to the issue of truth. As it is mediated through
meaningless units, as it is conventional and thus necessarily ambiguous, logos
removes us from any felicitous match between voices and meanings, hom-
onymy and synonymy, belief and truth. As Aristotle quotes from Euripides,
“if there are persuasive false designations among mortals, you should also
admit the contrary, that disbelieving the true befalls mortals.”105 e opta-
tive mood, specific to human speech, governs expressions of desire for things
177
beyond the realms of actual firsthand experience and even of possible firsthand
experience.106
is is then the wonder of logos: that we can even claim to understand
things we have never experienced or or may never experienced firsthand—
say, about bee communication or about the “essence” of an ox, about “what
it is to be for an ox”; and further, “even worse,” that we can relay our claims
to still others. Because logos is mediated by convention, that is, it is detached
from the immediate meaningfulness of pleasure and pain, and because logos
is articulated through letters, that is, it is detached from the natural vocal
expression of pleasure and pain, we can understand non- firsthand experi-
ences, when we hear a logos, without having to experience them firsthand,
and we can relay meaning without even having to reproduce the same words.
In comparison to sound and voice, logos as human speech is the ability to
understand non- firsthand experiences (just as voice hearing, but unlike
sound hearing) as well as to relay them along with firsthand experiences (just
as sound hearing, but unlike voice hearing). is ability to understand and
relay both firsthand experiences and contents never experienced firsthand
sheds light on the specifically human character of historiography, of oracles,
of mythology, of the necessary accumulation of information in science, of
sophistry and philosophy.107
4. Logoi: Definition, Account, and Law
In order to offer textual support for this claim concerning human logos, and
to draw its implications, let us turn to three major Aristotelian texts in which
this sense of logos is used. We shall see that Aristotle’s accounts of the role of
logos in human claims to definition, to causal accounts, and to law presuppose
exactly such an ability to understand and relay non- firsthand experience as
well as firsthand experience.
Human Predication (Categories, 1)
Human beings are capable of claiming to define beings other than them-
selves. is claim to make essential predications, to formulate “essences,”
to access “forms” or “inherent standards” of beings other than themselves,
clearly presupposes human logos as the ability to understand and relay non-
firsthand experiences. is is how humans can even claim to understand and
to formulate not only the pleasant or painful aspects of, say, an ox, but what
it is to be an ox— an idea that, by definition, no human can gather from first-
hand experience. It is in this sense that the “logos of being” only shows itself
to a “being having logos.”
178
is seems confirmed in the opening of the Categories where synonyms
are distinguished from homonyms as sharing not only a conventional name
but also the logos of their being. Aristotle is clear that “logos of being” here
refers not to what, say, an ox may be for us, but “what it is for it to be an
animal”:
ose whose names only are common, but whose logos of being
according to this name is different, are called homonyms, such as
“animal” for both the human being and the representation; for if
one supplies what is it for each of them to be animal, one will sup-
ply a particular logos for each. ose whose names are common and
whose logos of being according to this name are also common are
called synonyms, such as “animal” for both the human being and
the ox; for each of these are addressed with the common name
“animal” and their logos of being is the same. For if one supplies the
logos of what it is for each to be animal, one will supply the same
logos. (Cat. 1, 1a1– 13)108
Having logos, we are such that we are able to claim to address other beings
not only from our own perspective as determined perceptually or practi-
cally (“this is black [to me],” “this is powerful [for me],” “it is time to sleep
[for me],” “this is dangerous [to me],” etc.), but from their own perspective:
“this is a living being.” In other words, if we had no logos and thus no claim
to access the “essence” of beings from a third- person perspective, we could
not but admit that all our predications are subjective accidental, momentary
aspects and that all our addresses are homonymous, and there would be nei-
ther any sense of ousia nor any appeal to the principle of non- contradiction.
In general those who say this [those who deny the principle of non-
contradiction] do away with being and what it is for something to
be. For it is necessary for them to say that all things are incidental
[symbebêkenai] and that there is no such thing as the very thing it is
to be human or animal. (Metaph. IV, 4, 1007a20– 23)109
Even assuming that relativism was somehow the truth, which is paradoxical
in itself, we would need to explain the illusion of nonrelativistic claims, and
these would require an ability to somehow suppose an access to a “measure”
that is not ourselves. In other words, if we did not have logos, if we had no
access beyond firsthand experience at all, we all could not but be followers of
Protagoras (and thus actually his refuters).
179
Human Experience (Metaphysics, I, 1)
is brings us back to the famous passage from the Metaphysics we quoted at
the beginning of this chapter. is passage also warrants our use of the word
“experience” in claiming that logos names our ability to claim to access non-
firsthand experience. For here Aristotle claims that, unlike sound and voice,
human experience mediated through logos includes the ability to understand
and relay causal accounts beyond “impressions and memories.” Once we
read the rest of the passage with occasional paraphrases using what we have
learned so far, we see that human experience proper is distinguished by logos:
Animals are by nature born having sensation [and “that which has
sensation also has pleasure and pain”]110... e [animals] that
cannot hear noise are intelligent but cannot learn, such as a bee
or any other kind of animal that might be such. ose that have
this sensation [i.e., the capacity to hear noise] besides memory
learn [e.g., some bird species]. us the others live by impressions
and memories, and have but a small share of experience [empeirias
de metekhei mikron]. But the human kind [lives] also by art and
reasoning [logismos]... Indeed, we see people of experience suc-
ceeding more than those having a logos without experience; the
reason is that experience is familiarity [gnôsis] with the particulars,
but art, of universals.... Nevertheless we consider that knowing
and acquaintance [to ge eidenai kai to epaiein] belong to art rather
than to experience and take the artisans to be wiser than people of
experience in that wisdom rather follows knowing in all cases. For
the former know the cause while the latter do not. (Metaph. I, 1,
980a27– 981a28)
Aristotle recognizes the wonders of logos as well as its limits: while it tran-
scends the experience of particulars and looks more like wisdom to people,
logos is not necessarily more successful in practice. First, people may well be,
and often are, more successful even if they do not have a logos and do not
know causes or the universals; secondly, by giving us access beyond our first-
hand experience, human logos exposes us to the possibility of being mistaken
about causes in a way other animals do not seem susceptible. Similarly, logos
makes it possible that, of two people who lack experience and are unsuccess-
ful with particulars, one be wise and the other simply unwise. Finally, the rest
of the passage claims that, unlike mere experience of fact, logos includes both
the understanding of a causal account, which was not confined to firsthand
experience, and the ability to relay it— that is, to teach it:
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us [master craftsmen] are wiser not because they are practical,
but because they have a logos and know the causes. As a whole, a
sign of knowing and not knowing is the ability to teach [didaskein],
and hence we think that art rather than experience is scientific
knowledge; for [artists] can teach while the others cannot. Further,
we do not consider any of the senses to be wisdom. ey are indeed
our chief sources of acquaintance with particulars, but they do not
tell the reason [to dia ti] for anything, as for instance why fire is hot,
but only that it is hot. (Metaph. I, 1, 981b5– 13)
As opposed to the way some small bird species “learned” whatever sounds
they heard, in the sense of becoming capable of relaying them without
understanding them, here we see that logos enables us to both understand
and relay our accounts of non- firsthand experience. Without logos, we may
well know, remember, and even predict that fire is hot, yet logos enables us to
claim to understand why it is so, and to teach this to others. Being discon-
nected from sensation, thus from pleasure and pain, and from the particular
practical necessities of life, logos connects humans with disinterested wonder
and innovation, and with the leisurely satisfaction of their natural desire for
knowledge, that is, with philosophia.
en, just like the Categories passage, this opening chapter of the Meta-
physics seems to confirm that, for better or for worse, logos enables us to
understand and relay even that which is beyond the possibility of firsthand
experience. is ability to claim to disengage from firsthand experiences
also sheds light on Aristotle’s typical methodological procedure from what
is clear and known to us toward what is clear and known “simply or by
nature.”
Human Community (Politics, I, 1)
Finally, let us turn to the most famous Aristotelian passage on human logos:
It is clear why the human being is a political animal in a greater
degree [mallon] than any bee or any gregarious animal. For nature,
as we say, does nothing in vain, and among animals the human
being alone has logos. Voice is indeed a sign [sêmeion] of the pain-
ful and of the pleasurable, and so is possessed by other animals
as well (for their nature has developed so far as to have sensa-
tion of the painful and pleasant, and to signify [sêmainein] these
to others), yet logos is for showing [dêloun] the advantageous and
the harmful, and thus the just and the unjust; for it is peculiar to
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humans in distinction from the other animals to have the percep-
tion of the just, the unjust and other qualities, and it is community
[koinônia] in these that makes a household and a city. (Pol. I, 1,
1253a10– 18)111
Indicating the advantageous or the harmful by means of logos is then cru-
cially different from signifying pain and pleasure by means of voice— logos
is the ability to understand and relay advantages and harms never experi-
enced firsthand, to even indicate justice and injustice. us even in practical
matters, logos does not simply demand obedient cooperation by means of
a “prostactic” (imperative) order, or by a hypothetical or “hypotactic” (sub-
junctive) threat. In the “horistic” (indicative) mood, logos is able to delimit
and define an ethical- political realm. In the “euctic” or “precative” (optative)
mood, logos is able to project justice against all odds.
Human presence is shot through with logos: being able to detach them-
selves from that which is standing right in front of them, human beings
stand in front of, and interact with, things in a specific way. Since humans
are able to somehow “witness” that which they have not witnessed first-
hand, the following question is more telling in this context than its answer:
“— Yourself, were you with Socrates yourself the day he drank the poison in
prison or did you hear it from someone else?— Myself, I was there myself
Echecrates” (Plato, Phaedo, 57a). is is a paradigmatic situation that char-
acterizes human dialogues: the speaker may well be relaying his firsthand
experiences, his autopsia, but not necessarily so:
Since it is impossible to discuss by bringing in the things them-
selves, but we make use of symbols in the place of things, we think
that what happens with names also happens in the case of things,
just as people who count pebbles [psêphôn tois logizomenois]. (SE 1,
165a6– 10)
Once we are dealing with human logos, we are no longer simply dealing with
“things themselves”; the awareness of “things themselves” becomes a task to
fulfill, a goal to attain, or, as it so often happens, a target to irrevocably miss.
It is this hermeneutical task that is implicit to Aristotle’s logikê in general, but
also to the ambiguous Platonic strategy of writing dialogues. As the human
speaker is capable of relating both her experience and that which she has not
experienced, the human listener is able to consider that which she hears as
either of the two. Echecrates can believe that Phaedo is relating his firsthand
experience, but he does not have to; it is human logos that necessarily brings
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along trust and distrust as open options. We can believe what Phaedo or the
Phaedo says, but the point is that we can do so only as irredeemably exposed
to do otherwise.
Aristotle employs above the expression “counting pebbles” in its literal
sense of counting on an abacus— and precisely not with abstract symbols and
numbers. But indeed the ancient Greeks’ usage of pebbles goes far beyond
counting pebbles as pebbles. ey are also used for representing something. Most
notably pebbles are used as votes, that is, as representing people’s opinions.112
And it is true that for Aristotle there is something fundamentally inadequate
to the human condition in simply counting votes for and against a proposal
in decision- making: simply voting for and against is in fact a regression into
expressions of pleasure and pain. Hence the exclusive options of protesting
and applauding, of calling aye and no, are often expressed by the word “voice”
in English, for instance, in expressions like “to collect the voices” or “voice
vote.” On the contrary, for Aristotle, what gives life to laws, contracts, or
decisions, what establishes the very options to be subsequently voted for, is
the excellence of deliberation: “law has a compulsory force because it is a
logos emanating from some prudence and intelligence” (NE X, 9, 1180a22–
23). But again, this is the foundation of sophistry and demagogy as much
as that of genuine political participation. Sophists and demagogues are able
to manipulate their audience in ways a tyrant may not be able to, because,
exercising logos, the sophist accesses the experiences of others, and because,
having logos, the demagogue is able to view the world not only in terms of his
own agenda, but also from the standpoint of the people.
In short, as an access beyond firsthand experience, logos enables us to
assume not only a third- person perspective on nature and on ourselves,
but also to take on the point of view of other people. Hence, when Aristo-
tle distinguishes four kinds of logoi or “arguments” in discussion (“didactic
arguments, dialectical arguments, examination arguments and contentious
arguments”),113 all four are explained in a short sentence which each time
implies the assumption of somebody else’s point of view: “Didactic arguments are
those which reason from the principles appropriate to each branch of learn-
ing and not from the opinions of the answerer, for he who is learning must
take things on trust.”114 With respect to the first kind of argument, didactic
argument, this is exactly what we meant by saying that science requires an
accumulation of knowledge that is obviously impossible without the capacity
for understanding and relaying that which one has not experienced firsthand.
Secondly, Aristotle continues: “Dialectical arguments are those which, start-
ing from widespread opinions, reason concerning a contradiction.”115 We
dealt with the importance of dialectical method in our introduction, so here
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let us only note how it requires human logos as being specifically oriented
to that which is not clear to us, but is clear by nature. e starting point
of dialectic already requires that the questioner assume what is for him a
non- firsthand stance: the stance of the answerer. But further, the dialectic
refutation also necessitates that both parties come to recognize something
that exceeds both of their firsthand experiences: a contradiction. irdly, in
examination arguments, the questioner must again tune into the mindset
of the answerer.116 Finally, contentious arguments “are those which reason
or seem to reason from opinions which appear to be, but are not generally
accepted.”117 is last sense, like the previous ones, is inconceivable so long as
we interpret logos merely as “reason,” “statement,” “sentence,” “inference,” or
“argument”: logos means “argument” not in the sense of a private reasoning,
but in the sense of a reasoning from or towards somebody else.
e community that logos makes possible is not only any political commu-
nity. It is the polis. Although there are many nonhuman “political” animals,
there is no nonhuman polis according to Aristotle. We have seen that politi-
cal animals such as human beings, wasps, ants, and bees are characterized
by common work.118 e implication seems to be that, properly speaking, a
city is fundamentally irreducible to a “household,” a “family,” a “beehive,” a
“workshop,” a “corporation,” an “alliance,” or a “body politic”:
Yet it is clear that if one goes further in unifying the city, it will not
be a city at all. For in its nature, the city is a multiplicity [plêthos];
if further unified it will become a household, and further it will
become a single human being... And a city consists not only of
many people, but also of people differing in kind [eidei]. Because
a city does not come to be from similar people; for a city and an
alliance [symmakhia] are different things. An alliance is of value
by its quantity (since the alliance is naturally for the sake of mili-
tary strength [boêtheias]), just as a weight would be worth more if
it weighed more, whereas the parts which are to make up a unity
must differ in kind. (Pol. II, 1, 1261a18– 25)
is implies that the city, founded on logos, is fundamentally unexplainable by
the imperative or subjunctive moods of, say, bee cooperation, let alone by bird
imitation. en logos must be irreducible to strategic contracts for mutual aid
(boêtheia), and might even be an expression of a content that cannot or may
never be experienced firsthand. e specific form of logos in this function
may well be, not a particular command, but law or a general rule, designed
precisely to apply to an infinite number of instances: “Paternal authority does
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not have the force of necessity, neither does an individual in general, unless
he is a king or the like; law has compulsory force because it is a logos emanat-
ing from some prudence and intelligence” (NE X, 9, 1180a19– 29). Not being
confined to firsthand experience, logos is capable of defining (horistikê) a level
of generality and universality irreducible to any tactical cooperation (hypo-
taktikê or prostaktikê). Detached from firsthand experiences, in its indicative
(horistikê) mood, logos is thus able to lie at the basis of all sorts of myths,
narratives of creation, of afterlife, of apocalypse; and in its optative (euktikê)
mood, logos makes possible the human experiences of wishful thinking, of
utopian fiction, of greeting and blessing, as well as of cursing and remorse.
Recapitulation
is chapter of the book was focused on the full phenomenon of human logos
as “speech.”
In section 1 we turned to animal communication and distinguished two
kinds of hearing in animal life in the context of a discussion of bee com-
munication in Aristotle: “noise” appeared as an acoustic object stripped from
the interests and meanings invested by the transmitter, as some bird species
hear and reproduce with astonishing accuracy the sounds they hear regard-
less of its origin. On the other hand, “voice” and its counterpart in bees, the
discontinuous and occasional “buzz,” manifested themselves as coming from
an animal in the form of an essentially meaningful and interested claim for
attention and call for cooperation, as we observe bees hearing commands
to wake up, to go to sleep, and to prepare for flight. We drew two conclu-
sions from this discussion. First, bee communication suggested two moods
in animal communication: the imperative of commands, and the subjunctive
of threats and promises. Secondly, we noted that bees understand the non-
firsthand contents they “hear,” since they obey the orders given, but do not
relay it further to other bees, while some bird species, in imitating the sounds
they hear, do relay them, but without understanding their possible content.
In section 2, we formulated the hypothesis that logos as specifically human
speech names precisely the capacity for both understanding non- firsthand
experiences (like the bees, but unlike the imitating birds), and relaying them
(like the birds, but unlike bees). To unpack this hypothesis, we turned toward
the kind of hearing specifically oriented toward speech, and not to sounds,
voices, or commands. We saw that this kind of hearing meant “understand-
ing or taking in a certain sense.” We unpacked this definition by noting that it
implies speech to be mediated, articulated, and necessarily ambiguous. ese
implications enabled us to mark out the true material of speech (“letters”),
and to describe the first level of its articulation (“words”).
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en, in section 3, we moved from the level of “words” to the level of
“sentences,” that is, from the first articulation of speech to the second. We
noted that logos as “sentence” introduces two moods besides the imperative
and subjunctive moods of human communication: first, the indicative mood
whereby affirmations and negations necessarily transcend expressions of
firsthand experiences, and expose humans to understanding and conveying
non- firsthand experiences; secondly, the optative mood by which humans
understand and convey sentences that are not susceptible of truth and falsity,
that express desires beyond any actuality and even any possibility.
Finally, in section 4, we tested our hypothesis about human speech on
three major Aristotelian passages on human logos. We saw that the hypoth-
esis sheds light on the human ability to claim to access anything like the
essence of other beings in the Categories, causes in the Metaphysics, and laws
in the Politics, while also suggesting the necessary function of logos in histo-
riography, in news media, in utopian fictions, in remorse, in mythology, in
science and philosophy.
All Aristotle’s texts are indeed logoi. And if we are correct in explaining
human logos as the ability to understand and relay firsthand and non- firsthand
experiences, we must be able to illustrate this in the case of Aristotle’s works
themselves. In fact, on the one hand, Aristotle’s works contain the amazing
wealth of observation found in his philosophy of nature or “second philoso-
phy,” for example, the observation of the honeybees’ waggle,119 or his report
on the phenomenon of what would come to be named “Halley’s comet.”120
But, on the other hand, they also incorporate extremely general claims that
are not and cannot be based on firsthand experience, for example, the “prin-
ciple of non- contradiction” or the universal claim that “all humans by nature
desire to know” at the opening of his “first philosophy,” such that we can hear,
through the relay of innumerable hands of disciples and detractors, copyists,
translators, editors, companions, and commentators, the “monotonous and
peculiar voice” of Aristotle today.121
So, after the three senses of logos we elaborated in the previous chapters of
this book, namely, “standard,” “ratio,” and “reason,” this is the fourth and last
major meaning of logos in Aristotle: the specifically human ability to under-
stand and relay firsthand experience as well as non- firsthand experiences.
Although further extended into “sentence,” “discourse,” “oration,” “book,”
and so on, this last meaning still refers back to the basic meaning of logos: just
as “standard,” “ratio,” and “reason,” logos as speech is, once again, a relation
that holds on to its terms without collapsing or isolating them. Specifically,
human speech holds on to one’s own experience not at the expense of that
which extends beyond it into the “wonders” that Sophocles says humans may
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be, and even into that which a human being will never be, such as the stan-
dard of being of an ox, “what it is for it to be,” its “logos of being.”
e question of the “logos of being” shows itself only to a “being with
logos.”
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conclusion
1. Overview
e Project
us, we come full circle. In this book, we started out from the question of
the “logos of being” of, say, an ox— its “inherent standard” of being (chapters
1 and 2). After exploring how this inherent character shows itself as a kind
of “rationing” or “proportioning” in natural and animal motion (chapters 3
and 4) and as “reason” in human action (chapter 5), we have come to see in
chapter 6 what kind of being we must be to even ask the question of the
“logos of being”: a being that has logos as “speech” in the sense of the specifi-
cally human ability to understand and relay even that which is by definition
beyond her firsthand experience, in this case, what it is for an ox to be. It is
because all along we ourselves, animals having logos, were able to understand
and relay that which we never experienced firsthand that we have been able
to raise the question of the “logos of being” of an ox in the first place.
It is in this sense that the question of the logos of being presents itself only
to a being having logos. Yet, by the same token, we have completed our survey
of the four major meanings of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy: standard, ratio,
reason, and speech. ese four meanings of logos all refer to the fundamental
meaning of “gathering,” quite in conformity with the etymology of the word.
More specifically, the fundamental meaning of logos falls within the category
of “relation” (pros ti) as a relation that holds on to its terms in their difference
instead of collapsing one to the other or holding them in indifference. In this
basic sense, logos typically names a synthesis of terms otherwise thought as
mutually exclusive, without violating the “principle of non- contradiction.” It
introduces a third option, a via media, or a middle way that was unnoticed or
ruled out, and it does so not at the expense of the “principle of the excluded
middle.”
e Argument
So, in chapter 1, we started out by noting that the word logos appears at the
very beginning of the Aristotelian corpus in the phrase “logos of being” which
distinguishes synonymy from homonymy. We claimed that there “logos of
being” must mean the standard of being of a being. is was the first major
189
meaning of logos in Aristotle: standard, form, essence, or “essential formula.”
In this meaning, logos functioned as answering the question: “What is it for
this thing to be?” at a being has such a standard means that it holds on to its
aspects as well as to a certain“claim” concerning what it is for itself to be, without
letting one yield, or remain indifferent, to the other.
In chapter 2, we asked what warrants for the fact that this standard is not
arbitrarily imposed from without, but inherent to the being at hand. For a
being to have an inherent standard implies that it is neither indifferent nor
identical to it, and that its meeting the standard is neither merely necessary
nor an eventuality on a par with an infinite number of others. To have a “logos
of being” for a being, then, means for it to hold its actual state together and an
inherent potentiality together without letting one yield, or remain external, to the
other. Since the actuality of a potential as such is precisely Aristotle’s defini-
tion of “motion,” and since nature is an inherent source of motion and the
“form according to logos,” we concluded that the inherence of the standard of
being thus must be illustrated, if anywhere, in natural motion (chapters 3 and
4), and in human action (chapter 5).
Accordingly, chapter 3 dealt with natural motion. We noted how, as sim-
ply natural beings, elements are not simply located at certain coordinates in
space. Rather, while being at their actual location, they potentially have their place
that they are to rest at, that tend toward and back to. Further, we saw how living
beings instantiate the inherence of their standard of being by reproduction
and nutrition. Living beings not only hold on to their place, as elements do, but
also, in nutrition, hold together contrary elements within the “logos of growth”
in their own body without letting one take over or lay indifferent to the other; in
reproduction they do the same in another body. us, as governed by a logos of
growth, these motions introduced the second major meaning of logos: ratio.
Chapter 4 further explored specifically animal motion: sensation and loco-
motion. “Sensation is a logos” by holding together the state of the organ and that
of the object in their very difference instead of being indifferent to or overtaking
one another. Perception is an affection coming from without that completes
the body of the animal from within. As to locomotion, it is analyzed as the
result of the “practical” syllogism in which, unlike the case of elemental
motion, universal desire in nature is held together with diverse forms of receptiv-
ity to particulars— thus giving rise to various forms of motions: flight, pursuit,
hunting, and migration.
Chapter 5 introduced the third major sense of logos: reason. It is in action
that humans exhibit the inherence of their “standard of being.” e defining
trait of action is choice, and choice is defined by holding one “option” above
others, thereby requiring a prior state of the human soul (hexis) in which
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it holds on to contrary interpretations of the particular sensible. is precisely
complicates the immediacy of the “practical” syllogism beyond all forms of
natural motion and animal locomotion: the particular premise is no longer
provided by immediate sensation, but rather reelaborated by positive states
(hexeis). While intellectual virtues such as art, science, and prudence pre-
suppose “potentialities with logos,” that is, two- sided potentialities, virtues
of character hold contrary interpretations of particular sensibles in so far as
the latter are objects of desire, pleasure, or pain. As Aristotle says, “the desir-
ing part in general somehow partakes [in logos] insofar as it listens to and
can obey it in the sense in which we say ‘taking account [ekhein logon] of
both one’s father and one’s friends’ ” (NE I, 13, 1102b31– 1103a3). e Poli-
tics takes this metaphor of “taking account of father and friends” literally by
claiming that logos establishes both the household and the city.
So in chapter 6, we developed an Aristotelian account of “speech”— the
fourth major meaning of logos. We argued that speech is the human ability to
understand and relay firsthand experience as well as experience which is not
and even cannot be made firsthand. Logos as speech dissolves, or at least dilutes,
the boundary between what one has experienced and what one has not. Human
beings are able to have firsthand experience not at the expense of understanding
and relaying those they never had or may never have. In its indicative and opta-
tive moods beyond the imperatives and subjunctives of animal motion, this
ultimate meaning of logos founds both the household and the city, provides
a necessary condition for legislation, historiography, myth, politics, science,
sophistry, and philosophy. Hence this capacity is what enables us humans,
along with Aristotle, to even inquire into what it is for another being to be,
by asking: “What is it for an ox to be?”
e Results
Here are the results of the argumentative survey we have conducted.
First, logos in Aristotle never refers to anything simple, pure, or imme-
diate. It always refers to a relation, a mediation, or a synthesis, in all of its
meanings without exception. In this sense, logos must be contrasted with
nous as we shall briefly do at the very end of this book. Secondly, in its spe-
cifically human sense, logos is strictly and rigorously secular, mundane, full of
“wonders,” but never mystical. It is never associated with any other animal
nor with anything divine. is may be fruitfully contrasted with the Stoic,
Gnostic and Christian uses of the word.1 irdly and finally, it is possibly
because it refers to something so humble, prosaic, or at least lacking purity
and divinity, that this ambiguous but common word has remained unthema-
tized, riddlesome, hidden in plain sight, both in Aristotle and in his posterity.
191
Once logos is restored and brought into play in its fundamental meaning, one
can see compelling reasons for thinking Aristotle as a thinker of inclusion.2
As to the implications of our claim that logos as speech for Aristotle
means the specifically human capacity for understanding and relaying first-
hand as well as non- firsthand experiences, there are two things to note in
order to grasp its significance. First, once the communicating parties possess
this ability, the rate of information relay should increase exponentially. Since
there is no relay among bees, the scout bee who has found a resource must
inform other bees directly one by one, hence the propagation of information
follows a linear growth. Both bees and the imitating bird species are thus
sealed off from the wild proliferation of non- firsthand experiences: bees do
not relay them, while the birds do not understand their content when they
imitate them. Among humans, however, the “middle man” both understands
and relays. So, the capacity for understanding and relaying non- firsthand
experiences unavoidably boosts the speed with which the information is
propagated. Since the receiver can also relay the message without having to
undergo the experience firsthand, the propagation of information increases
exponentially.
Secondly, once the communicating parties possess this specifically human
ability, there is no preestablished control over the truthfulness of the mes-
sages. Having this capacity, a human being views her human interlocutors
as possibly conveying something they have not experienced either. Hence,
as Aristotle quotes from Euripides, “if there are persuasive false designa-
tions among mortals, you should also admit the contrary, that disbelieving
the true befalls mortals.”3 I am exercising my ability to understand and relay
non- firsthand experiences not only when I say “Socrates was executed in
399,” but also when I say “Socrates was not executed in 399.” Similarly, one is
necessarily drawing on one’s capacity to understand and relay non- firsthand
experiences when one says that Socrates’s execution was the right thing to
do, that it was not the right thing to do, that the world was created in six
days, that it will come to an end, that there are igneous rocks on the surface
of the moon, or that all lines contain an infinite number of points. In a way,
we are all “middle men.”
us, this ability is key to understanding the human condition insofar
as it is constituted by history, science, education, news media, myth, pro-
paganda, utopian fiction, sophistry, and philosophy. For, if human beings
were not receptive to experiences they have not made firsthand, informa-
tion could not be accumulated, articulated, and propagated in the complex
forms of diverse sciences in order then to be repeated and made public. Each
scientist would start over all experiences and experiments, and would have
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to be the first scientist deprived of all traditions and institutions.4 Further,
without such a human capacity, there could also be no limitless propaga-
tion, accumulation, and reception of misinformation. ere could be no
discourse about the creation of the universe, about the origin of species in
general, about “our” species, or about any community in its mythical form,
since there would be no ethnic or familial genealogy claiming to “purity” or
“nobility.” Each human being would have to be the first being on earth, the
first human being, the first ancestor of his descendants, the founder of his
city, a child of no one. ere would indeed be no true fiction, no true experi-
mentation, no true improvisation, no historiography, no prophecy, since by
definition all these require access to that which one has not experienced.
ere would be no awareness of one’s life span as a whole, which is requisite
for happiness according to Aristotle, and thereby no sense of one’s own death
other than something that did, does, and will happen to others. ere would
be no propaganda, no rumors, no deliberately impossible and yet deliber-
ate desires, that is, no utopian fiction and no nostalgia, no true remorse or
bad consciousness. ere would be no debatable principles of living, since
all principles would be immediately subjugated to the preservation of the
individual and/or of the species. us, there would be no genuine compro-
mise, no promises held or betrayed, no true sacrifice because there would
be no sense of “good” and “bad” beyond the “painful” and “pleasant.” ere
would be no possibility for pleasure and pain to assume not an immediate,
but an accompanying role. Conversely, there would be no otherworldliness, no
eschatology deferring one’s pains and pleasures to an afterlife. ere would
be no true accountability, and thus no true, unaccountable forgiveness. ere
would be no way to detach oneself, for better or for worse, from one’s own
first- person perspective, no way to be with others beyond the spectrum of
allies and enemies, of cooperators and opponents, of masters and servants. In
short, there would be no intermediary room for a xenos to remain a xenos— a
welcomed guest or a potential rival. Finally, if humans did not have logos, they
would not only be less wonderful or terrifying, they would also lack the sense
of wonder and terror. ey could not love that which they know they cannot
have. ere would be no philosophy in the Socratic sense. Philosophy is in
another’s language. Philosophia is, in a sense, xenophilia.
Doesn’t it make sense to say that one learns another’s language, reads
another’s book, listens to another’s ideas, enters another’s land, and is initi-
ated in another’s way of living precisely because one already has the feeling that
it is there, in their syntax or their words, in their customs and rituals, that wis-
dom lies?5 Don’t the monuments of unknown cities, the sinuosities of their
streets, the traces of the sedimentation of their laws and customs, the fleeting
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intonations of their sentences, and the divergent categories of their thought
appear as promises, rather than as obstacles or indifferent alternatives? Isn’t
wonder irreducible to both exoticism and fantasies of assimilation? Would
the world then seem like our only and ultimate school? What would the
world look like if it were our only and ultimate school? It would look exactly
as it is.
2. e Human Condition: e Cycloptic and the Oedipal
For better or for worse, these are the implications of logos in the specifically
human condition. To give these implications a concrete form, let us see two
limiting cases, one of which lacks logos, while the other is immersed in it
in a specifically human way. “Since those who imitate imitate acting people
which are necessarily either serious [spoudaious] or lowly [phaulous]... they
imitate them either as better than us or as worse, or as similar to us, just like
painters” (Po. 2, 1448a1– 6). e character that is “worse than us” is the figure
of the Cyclops.
e Cycloptic
Although they appear in many important passages of the Aristotelian cor-
pus,6 the Cyclopes appear in the Poetics as figures well- suited to comedy, being
“worse [kheirous]... than the people today” (Po. 2, 1448a17). In the debate
between conservatism and reform in the Politics, they appear as “earth- born”
and not to be followed since “they were just like ordinary and foolish people”
(Pol. II, 5, 1269a7– 8). e Cyclopes are representatives of ancient customs
that should be reformed with caution, even if they are written down. Most
importantly, the following discussion concerning the priority of law as logos
over paternal rule suggests that what is at stake is less a group than a way of
life qualified as “cycloptic” (kyklôptikôs):
Paternal authority does not have the force of necessity, neither does
an individual in general, unless he is a king or the like; law how-
ever has compulsory power, being a logos originating from some
prudence and thought. Now among humans, those who oppose
people’s impulses are hated, even when they do so rightly, but the
law is not hated when it orders what is decent. But in the city of
the Lacedemonians alone, or among few others, does the lawgiver
seem to have taken care for upbringing and exercises, while in
most cities they have been most careless about such things, and
each person lives the way he wants, laying down the law “for his
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children and wife” in the manner of a Cyclops [kyklôptikôs]. (NE X,
9, 1180a19– 29)
What makes the Cycloptic way of ruling and living “worse” is then simply
that it is at least second best, compared to what is best according to Aristotle:
that upbringing be a common concern.7 In the terms of the Nicomachean
Ethics, human life is impoverished by no longer “taking account of both one’s
father and one’s friends.”8
is ties in well with Aubenque’s emphasis on the role of deliberation
and necessarily of compromise as much as consensus in ethical and politi-
cal affairs according to Aristotle. Aubenque claims that in fact the middle
ground in discussion has nothing to do with mediocrity for Aristotle, just
like the middle term in logic and the mean in ethics has nothing mediocre
about them. e search for including such a middle path is not a way of
“playing it safe,” but in fact the search for “excellence between two extremes.”
In Aubenque’s words:
In the political order, this excellence is friendship which is the basis
of a genuine city in opposition to associations motivated by private
interests. e human being accomplishes herself in community, in
the coexistence and the conviviality [synousia] whose intellectual
condition of possibility is common deliberation. It is in this sense
that the “government of the middle,” which we call “constitutional
government” [“politie” in the French text] or “democracy,” is the
most “excellent” of constitutions.9
Genuine compromise is impossible without logos, without an immersive
access into another’s perspective, without at least an opening toward that in
which one does not take pleasure, without sacrifice, that is, without a proaire-
sis, a preference, an interpretation as good, of that which one does not and
may never benefit from. Genuine compromise is impossible without an eye
for the mindset of another. Other than their paternal rule and lack of care for
upbringing, what does the Cycloptic life look like?
Law
e Cyclopes lack nothing but lack itself.10 Living on an island of the blessed,
similar to the golden race in Hesiod,11 the Cyclopes “lack” concern and work,
as is made unmistakable in the Homeric text by the wealth of privative adjec-
tives and the recurrent contrasts with the human condition: they have no
plow, no sowing, no hunting, hence no carpenters and no ships... (Homer,
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Odyssey IX, 125). No wonder that Odysseus, assuming the point of view of an
entrepreneur or of a colonizer, fantasizes about the city they would have been
able to build if they had had some ships, and about the abundant agriculture
they would have had thanks to the fertile soil (Odyssey IX, 126– 41). e idyl-
lic environment of the Cyclopes is reflected by their regimen. Coming upon
one of them, Odysseus immediately contrasts his diet to human nutrition:
“[He was] not like a man that lives by bread [or grain, sitos], but rather like
a wooded [hylêenti] peak of high mountains, which stands out to view alone,
apart from the rest” (Odyssey IX, 190– 92). is inhuman diet and vegetal
(“hylic”) or elemental stature seems connected with their sporadic way of life
remarked by Aristotle in the Politics.12
Hence, they “lack” the need for deliberation and cooperation. As Aristotle
quotes, “each gives law to his children and spouses” in his own cave13 (Odyssey
IX, 107– 15). Indeed, they are “arrogant and lawless” (Odyssey IX, 106), and
yet this is not because they are wicked, but rather because they are blessed
in some way. e Cyclopes may remind one of Aristotle’s characterization
of the kind of human being that is by nature deprived of the polis. Accord-
ing to another Homeric quotation in Aristotle, this “apolitical” person by
nature is “ ‘clanless, lawless, hearthless,’ and also a lover of war. He resembles
an isolated piece at draughts.”14 To vary Aristotle’s striking metaphor, the
Cycloptic routine is that of a king on an empty chessboard, checkered in
black and white.
e Cyclopes lack neither a common location,15 nor houses, caves, or
streets, nor common goals and therefore common strategies.16 Yet a commu-
nity is not simply made out of allies, and a city is not made out of neighbors.17
What the Cyclopes “lack” is an agora. ey do not lack the mental capacity
for deliberating, but rather a sense of the human condition and situatedness
which make it necessary to deliberate:
For it is impossible to lay down a law about things people deliber-
ate over. erefore they do not deny at least this: that the human
must judge about these, although not one human being, but many.
For each ruler judges beautifully when he has been educated by the
law, and it would seem out of place if one person saw better when
judging with two eyes and two organs of hearing, and acting with
two feet and hands, than many people with many, since even today
the monarchs make many eyes and ears and hands and feet their
own, for they adopt persons that are friendly to their rule and to
themselves as their fellow- rulers. (Pol. III, 11, 1287b23– 32)18
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So if the Cyclopes seem to “lack” one eye by birth, their character is no less
formed by their environment. Hence Odysseus never seems to suggest that
they have an evil or wicked nature, but rather insists on their self- sufficient
environment (Odyssey IX, 190– 91). Of course, all this inference is made in
contrast to the human condition which has less to do with birth, say the
number of eyes one has, than with their interaction with their environ-
ment.19 And human environments are not always as blissful as the island of
the Cyclopes. Homeric, Platonic, Euripidic, and Aristotelian texts all depict
the Cyclops as having one eye because of a more fundamental political and
interpersonal shortcoming, and not the other way around. Hence the number
of “eyes” or “hands” always remains often misleadingly metaphorical. To vary
examples around this insight as we shall see Aristotle doing, what makes a
conversation is not two speakers, what makes a good one is not even more
speakers, and a friendly gathering is not enriched simply by more and more
food or more and more hosts and guests, but by their variety, that is, their
difference. e reason why a crowded jury may be better than a restricted
one is not the number of the jury members, but their diversity that does not
necessarily follow from such a number:
It is possible that the many, although not each one is serious [spou-
daios], yet when they come together, may be better [beltious] than
those who are so, just as public dinners to which many contribute
are better than those supplied at one’s cost; for where there are
many, each one may have some portion of virtue and prudence,
and when they have come together, just as the multitude becomes
one human being with many feet and hands and senses, so also it
becomes one with regard to moral and intellectual faculties. is
is why the many judge musical and poetic works, for each can
judge a different part and all of them all of the work. (Pol. III, 6,
1281a42– 1281b10)
e Cyclopes are not stupid or logically defective. ey lack a portion of
“virtue and prudence.” eir condition is apaideusia,20 a lack of education,
perhaps the condition that, according to Aristotle, makes one demand
a demonstration even for the principle of non- contradiction, or for the
very existence of nature.21 us this “shortcoming” is not simply foreign to
humans, or at least to their “past.”
Now we are in a position to read Aristotle’s famous quotation of the
Homeric story of the Cyclops:
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Formerly the cities were under kingly rule as some peoples still
are, because they came [to form a city] out of kingly rule, for every
household is under the kingly rule of its oldest member so that
the colonies were so too, given the kinship of their members. And
this is what Homer says: “and each gives law to his children and
spouses,” for they were scattered, and that is how people used to
live. (Pol. I, 1, 1252b19– 26)22
Not having any notion of law beyond his sporadic life, being the lonesome
powerful king on the empty chessboard, no wonder the Cyclops is unfamiliar
with any kind of “law of hospitality” (Odyssey IX, 259– 71), but instead seems
to embody different impoverished forms of the “law of the middle excluded”:
I am either this or that, this is either my place or not, this is either mine or
not, this is either a friend or a foe... He considers another viewpoint as con-
trary, contradictory, or confrontational. Being the son of the sea god Poseidon
and a sea nymph, Polyphemus the Cyclops in fact has no Cyclops parents,
and even no gods properly speaking (Odyssey IX, 275– 80),23 therefore no law
reaching out of the cave, no openness, because no need for openness, to a
perspective beyond his pleasure and pain.
Of course, Odysseus is depicted as a diametrically opposite character. e
Cyclopes were characterized by privative adjectives: “a- phrêtôr” (“clanless”),
“a- themistos” (“lawless”), and “a- nestios” (“hearthless”).24 On the contrary,
Odysseus’s famous epithets insist on his openness to a plurality: he is the
“poly- tropos” (“much- wandering”), the “poly- mêtis” (“man of many counsels”),
the “poly- mêkhanos” (“resourceful”), the “poly- tlêmôn” (“much- enduring”),
the man of many twists and turns, of much contriving and endurance. As
opposed to the literally autochthonic Cyclopes, Odysseus is the voyager, the
perennial xenos, the one displaced and also stretching back to his origin. For
instance, when he lands on the island of the Cyclopes, he takes the best
wine he has, and once arrived at Polyphemus’s cave, despite his famous cun-
ning, he refuses his fellow men’s proposal to run away with the goods they
found in there— not because he believes in the natural goodness of humans
and Cyclopes, but rather because he expects generosity in return (Odyssey
IX, 228– 30). To use the metaphor of chess once again, Odysseus is not a
pawn at all, he is comparable to a queen surrounded by bishops, knights, and
rooks.
So Cycloptic life “lacks” logos. e Cyclopes are not alogos as such, but
alogos precisely in the way a human may be, may have been, or may come to
be. e “lack” of the Cyclopes is only seemingly anatomical, and the Cyclop-
tic life is “worse” not because they are literally monocular, but because they
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“lack” the need of deliberation, of immersing themselves into the perspective
of others. “Lacking” logos, the Cyclopes are blissfully “confined” to their first-
hand experience, to their autopsia.
Language
is shows in the language of Polyphemus the Cyclops. He does attempt
to make Odysseus tell him where his ship was.25 Indeed, Odysseus imme-
diately deciphers Polyphemus’s malice and tells him that their ship dashed
into pieces (Odyssey IX, 279– 85). In a dramatic reversal, the very weakness of
Polyphemus’s attempt to manipulate inspires Odysseus to manipulate him in
turn, and this time successfully. It is at this moment that, calming his imme-
diate anger (Odyssey IX, 299– 305) without altogether suppressing it (Odyssey
IX, 504),26 Odysseus pays heed to logos and appeals to his openness to a life
altogether foreign to him by taking a look at the world from Polyphemus’s
round eye.
Besides his resources of art and indeed the cooperation of his fellow men
in the fabrication of the spear (Odyssey IX, 319– 35), Odysseus makes and
works out his plan by means of language. e night before he blinds him,
Odysseus has a little chat with Polyphemus while offering his good wine as
if asking for mercy (Odyssey IX, 347– 52); and when in drunkenness Poly-
phemus asks his name (Odyssey IX, 355– 59), he springs his trap by famously
telling him that his name is “Nobody” (Odyssey IX, 366).
e rest of the story is well known. When Polyphemus tells the other
Cyclopes that “Nobody is killing me” (Odyssey IX, 408) in the hope of orga-
nizing them, both Polyphemus and the other Cyclopes are responsible for
the miscommunication. For Polyphemus takes “Nobody” for a proper name,
while the other Cyclopes take it as a pronoun, unable as they are to notice
Polyphemus’s shortcoming, and immersed as they are in the literal and cor-
rect sense of this word. ey fail to become “many eyes and ears and hands,”27
regardless of how many and how well- armed they may be (Odyssey IX, 410–
12). Polyphemus then fails to attune himself not only to Odysseus’s plans,
but also to the mindset of the other Cyclopes. Otherwise he would explain
to them that the word “Nobody” is homonymous, to use Aristotelian terms,
and does not only mean “nobody,” but in this context is the name of the evil
Greek guest. But nor do the Cyclopes put themselves in Polyphemus’s shoes
and notice that clearly “Nobody is killing me” is an awkward answer to their
question in that context. Both sides take the word “Nobody” univocally, but
unfortunately in different senses, precisely as Odysseus planned in using this
ambiguous name. Cyclopes act as if words simply match beings, as if there is
only one word for one being or one kind of being.28
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is is the story Aristotle has in mind when he calls the life of the Cyclo-
pes as second best, that is, as falling short of the potential of human law and
language. We saw at the beginning of this book how Aristotle character-
izes this univocal, nonarbitrary, and essential relationship between nouns and
beings: the Cyclopes “lack” logos not because they lack language, but because
their language is immersed in synonymy.29 In a word, Cyclopes seem to lack
the sense of riddles.30
In the Homeric text, the life of Polyphemus seems to have been perfect
until the cunning and colonizing Odysseus arrived. e latter laughs at the
shortcomings of Polyphemus, and so might the reader think he is expected
to do. In fact, it is this passage that Aristotle quotes in the Rhetoric as tes-
timony that the more one is angry at somebody, the more he will want his
enemy to know who retaliated.31
Love
And yet, there is more to Polyphemus’s story.32 For there is an unsaid in
the Homeric text, a backstory that remained untold until the later tradition.
is prequel reveals to us a Polyphemus that is not merely an exemplar of
the limited capacities in matter of law and language among Cyclopes, but
a particular person with a particular past, and with a personal story about
that past— a past which was not as idyllic as a reader of Homer might have
thought. is story puts Polyphemus in a new and even more problemati-
cally human contrast with Odysseus who was famously awaited at home by
Penelope and Telemachus.
Because this story is a love story. It is told in the eleventh idyll, “e
Cyclops’ Serenade,” by eocritus, a Sicilian poet from the third century
BC.33 is text is extremely suggestive as to what it means to lack logos not
only in social organization and communication, but also in individual emo-
tional life, a life unable to access resources and assume mindsets beyond its
own firsthand experiences. It shows why, however “worse” Cyclopes may be,
their situation must at least be plausible in the eyes of the spectators for the
play to be a comedy.34 It shows how the world is not split into mythical
grotesque beings lacking logos, and cunning humans possessing it. It blurs
such a distinction in line with Aristotle who situates an alogia at the very
center of the human soul, that is as characteristically human as logos.35 It
relates a story of Polyphemus that teaches us something about the human
condition.
For Polyphemus, it turns out, was a heartbroken lover. eocritus’s idyll
opens thus in Verity’s translation (eocritus, 2002: 33, ll. 1– 18):
200
“Nicias, there is no remedy for love, no liniment,
As I believe, nor any balm, except the Muses.
eirs is a gentle, painless drug, and in men’s power
To use; but it is hard to find. You know this well,
I think; you are a doctor, and one whom the nine
Muses love above all. is at any rate was the way
My countryman the Cyclops eased his pain,
Polyphemus long ago, when he loved Galatea,
When the down was fresh about his mouth and temples.
He loved, not with apples, roses, or curls of hair,
But in an outright frenzy. For him, nothing else existed.
Often his flocks would come of their own accord
Back from green pastures to the fold, while he, alone
On the weed- strewn shore, would sing of Galatea from
Break of day, wasting away with love. Deep inside he bore
A cruel wound, which mighty Cypris’ dart had driven
Into his heart. But he found out the cure: he would sit
On some high rock, and gazing out to sea would sing.”
Polyphemus was not only madly in love with the sea nymph Galatea. He
also wrote poetry— the only remedy for a broken heart, according to the nar-
rator: sitting on a rock, gazing at the sea, and singing.
ere follows Polyphemus’s love song. Here is the opening (ll. 19– 29):
“O my white Galatea, why do you spurn your lover?
Whiter to look at than cream cheese, softer than a lamb,
More playful than a calf, sleeker than the unripe grape.
Why do you only come just as sweet sleep claims me,
Why do you leave me just as sweet sleep lets me go,
Flying like a ewe at the sight of a grey wolf?
I fell in love with you, my sweet, when first you came
With my mother to gather flowers of hyacinth
On the mountain, and I was your guide. From the day
I set eyes on you up to this moment, I’ve loved you
Without a break; but you care nothing, nothing at all.”
ere are two important aspects of this opening. First, by means of this logos,
we get to understand something we have not experienced firsthand: how
Polyphemus himself saw Galatea. More exactly, we get to understand how
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Polyphemus thought he would praise Galatea to herself in such a way that
would convince her to join him on his island. e first adjective he uses,
“white,” is pretty redundant, since the name Galatea already strongly brings
to mind “milk,” gala in Ancient Greek.36 Similarly, the metaphors he uses to
praise her seem to be chosen to reflect his limitation to his own firsthand
experience, his inability to go beyond synonymity, literality, or univocality:
for Galatea’s whiteness brings to his mind “cream cheese,” her softness a
“lamb,” her playfulness a “calf,” her sleekness an “unripe grape,” her fleeting-
ness “a ewe.”
e second important related aspect of the opening is Polyphemus’s gen-
eral tone of complaint and his avowal of not understanding her. But then he
tries to understand her by looking at himself from a non- firsthand point of
view (ll. 30– 33):
“I know, my beautiful girl, why you run from me:
A shaggy brow spreads right across my face
From ear to ear in one unbroken line. Below is a
Single eye, and above my lip is set a broad flat nose.”
All along, we seem to be called by eocritus to ridicule Polyphemus: his lin-
guistic capacities, his incapacity for assuming somebody else’s point of view,
his looks, and so on. is seemingly ridiculing tone continues as Polyphemus
tries to convince Galatea. Polyphemus interprets the situation in a clearly
self- centered way, foreshadowing his later inability to communicate with the
other Cyclopes in the Homeric episode. So he makes propositions, offerings,
and promises to Galatea that are very much irrelevant to a sea nymph (ll.
34– 49):37
“Such may be my looks, but I pasture a thousand beasts,
And I drink the best of the milk I get from them.
Cheese too I have in abundance, in summer and autumn,
And even at winter’s end; my racks are always laden.
And I can pipe better than any Cyclops here,
When I sing, my sweet pippin, deep in the night
Of you and me. For you I’m rearing eleven fawns,
All marked on their necks, and four bear cubs too.
O please, come. You will see that life is just as good
If you leave the grey- green sea behind to crash on the shore,
And at night you will find more joy in this cave with me.
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Here there are bays, and here slender cypresses,
Here is sombre ivy, and here the vine’s sweet fruit;
Here there is ice- cold water which dense- wooded Etna
Sends from its white snows— a drink fit for the gods.
Who could prefer waves and the sea to all this?”
ere follows an explicit foreshadowing of the Odyssey (ll. 50– 53):
“But if you think I’m a touch too hairy for you,
I have oak logs here, and under the ash unflagging fire.
Burn away my life with fire— I could bear even that,
And my single eye, my one dearest possession of all.”
en, instead of a “plan of action,” we read Polyphemus blaming his
mother and then nature in general (ll. 54– 59):
“I wish my mother had given me gills when I was born,
en I could have dived down and kissed your hand,
If you denied me your mouth, and brought you white
Snowdrops or delicate poppies with their scarlet petals.
One grows in summer and the other grows in winter,
So you see I could not bring you both at once.”
Can’t he build a ship? Can’t he at least learn to swim? Ironically, indeed, he
wishes for “some mariner” to visit him, in another reference to the Odyssey.
Once again, the blame is on anybody else but him (ll. 60– 66):
“It’s not too late, my sweet, for me to learn to swim;
If only some mariner would sail here in his ship,
en I could fathom why you nymphs love life in the deep.
Come out, Galatea, come out and forget your home,
Just as I sit here and forget to return to mine.
Follow the shepherd’s life with me— milking,
And setting cheese with the rennet’s pungent drops.”
Finally, the blame turns definitely toward the mother. Instead of engaging
in action to meet Galatea on her own terms, Polyphemus yields to his resent-
ment for his mother and to wishful thinking in his own terms. Polyphemus
dreams of punishing his mother by exhibiting his own suffering (ll. 67– 71):
203
“It’s my mother who does me wrong; it’s her alone I blame.
She’s not once spoken a gentle word to you about me,
Although she sees me wasting away, day by day.
I’ll see she knows how my head and feet throb with pain,
So that her torment will be equal to what I suffer.”
Despite his self- centered but passionate desire, Polyphemus’s so- called
plan of “action” involves optatives, or contrafactual conditional sentences, or
conditions depending on Galatea, on his mother, on nature, on a possible
stranger— in short, on pretty much everybody but him.
e end of Polyphemus’s love song is bitter. Quite unlike Odysseus trying
to go back to Penelope and Telemachus, Polyphemus convinces himself to
come to his senses, to stay where he is, and to distract himself from his love
for Galatea. Beyond being born in a legally and linguistically limited envi-
ronment, Polyphemus here chooses to take account of a voice in himself as
one takes account of both one’s father and one’s friends (ll. 72– 79):
“O Cyclops, Cyclops, where have your wits flown away?
Show some sense, go and weave some baskets, collect
Green shoots for your lambs. Milk the ewe
At hand; why chase the one who runs away? Maybe
You’ll find another Galatea, and a prettier one too.
I’m invited out for night- time play by lots of girls,
And they giggle together as soon as they see I’ve heard.
On land I too am clearly a man of some consequence.”
However grotesque it may appear at first, Polyphemus’s situation is by
no means one unfamiliar to human beings.38 Hence we entered this detour
beyond the Aristotelian and Homeric texts simply to make the point that
Polyphemus in fact partakes in a special modality of logos we encountered
in chapter 6: the optative mood, the mood of wishing and praying. His
self- centered interpretation of the situation and his complete lack of com-
mitment for changing it precisely fit the structure of wish, a desire that is cut
off from all action. And however comedic, it is in fact this aspect of Polyphe-
mus that is humane, and eocritus clearly ends up sympathizing with him
(ll. 80– 81):
“So by singing the Cyclops shepherded his love,
And more relief it brought him than paying a large fee.”
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For, while we can easily think how Polyphemus could have indeed joined
Galatea, we can also imagine a situation where this is simply impossible,
where Polyphemus’s “cure” or plan of “action,” namely “poetizing,” may well
have been the only resource. Galatea could have simply refused Polyphemus.
She could have been prevented from seeing Polyphemus by her family. She
could have been dead. In such a case, Polyphemus may have wishfully imag-
ined to join her in an afterlife, in a world to come, in another Ithaca. And
this is as specifically human as Odysseus’s inventiveness in remedying his
nostalgia and returning to the arms of Penelope.
What this supposedly comedic Polyphemus teaches us about logos is then
the following: since human logos is an exposure, beyond autopsia, to that which
one has not experienced firsthand, human beings are able to remain stuck in
their own perspective and experience, be it idyllic or traumatic, in a specific
way, that is, in a humane way. It is precisely because they can overcome their
own perspective that human inability to do so takes a specific form, the form
of Job’s long- repressed protest against God, the form of wish in all its frus-
trated versions: remorse, resentment, obsession, utopian fiction, nostalgia, or
melancholy. Human alogia is as wonderful or terrifying than human logos.
e Oedipal
So much then for the character who is “worse than us” according to Aristo-
tle’s Poetics. Who is the character that is “better than us” again such that it
may well shed light on the human condition from the reverse angle? Aristo-
tle suggests that characters that are “better than us” are to be found in tragedy,
not in comedy.39 More specifically, the Aristotelian paradigm of tragedy is
Sophocles’s King Oedipus.40 e paradigmatic tragic hero is Oedipus whose
action he precisely qualifies as deinon.41 Here human blindness is more tragic
than Polyphemus’s, since it results not from human confrontation with
impossibility, but comes forth through human possibilities, deliberate deci-
sions, words, and actions. As Cycloptic blindness illustrates something about
human confinement in autopsia, Oedipal blindness may have something to
teach us concerning a life altogether detached from autopsia.
ere are a great number of ways in which Oedipus can be contrasted
to Polyphemus. Unlike Polyphemus who has no god because he is the son
of one, Oedipus is the son of a human, and he is a zealous follower of god’s
oracles. Instead of having limited linguistic skills like the solitary heartbro-
ken shepherd Polyphemus, Oedipus is the very one who cunningly solves
the riddle of the Sphinx and becomes at once the savior of a city, the father
of a family, and a bold king. With all his messengers, soldiers, oracles, family
205
members, and advisors at the opening of the tragedy, Oedipus appears as a
panoptic character. At the very opening of the tragedy, he is all eyes, hands,
and feet at the throne of his city in the middle of the stage facing a new rid-
dle in the form of a wicked epidemic, something unthinkable in the blessed
island of the Cyclopes. is multiplication of the “organs” of the King of
ebes is a perfect example of human logos as our ability to understand and
relay that which we have not experienced firsthand: the messages carried by
messengers, the oracles related by soothsayers and then relayed by others,
the numerous stories handed on from generation to generation, the various
genealogies, orders, threats, inferences, curses, vows, and promises... In King
Oedipus, the whole action is speech, and speech is hyperactive. Unlike Poly-
phemus who either becomes a “lover of war” or fails to identify himself with
the desires of his loved one, Oedipus the xenos is welcomed by the ebans
and saves them, marries their widowed queen, and becomes king. And in
contrast to the frustration, rage, and resentment of Polyphemus, Oedipus is
majestic, righteous, and magnanimous.42 Compared to the Cyclopes’ xeno-
phobic island, finally, ebes is a cosmopolitan and liberal environment, the
xenophile city par excellence.
e contrast shows itself best in the context of language. Called out for
help by Polyphemus, the Cyclopes fail to understand that “nobody” does not
have a univocal sense in that context, that is, that “nobody” and “Nobody”
are homonyms. Oedipus and other characters in the tragedy do the exact
opposite: they all fail to notice that “the killer of Laius,” “the one who slept
with his mother,” “Laius and Jocasta’s son,” and “Oedipus” are all synonyms.
Whereas the Cyclopes were limited to the literal senses of words (“Nobody”
as a proper name), the ebans are so immersed in the multivocity of logos
that they precisely fail to take things literally. e oracles are always over-
interpreted, they are understood not literally, but are constantly distorted by
the assumptions of the listener.
Jocasta, for one, does not recognize the face of her own son.43 She fails
to recognize his natural identity, because she is led astray by his conven-
tional identity as the “son of the king of Corinth” or as the “witty stranger
that saved ebes from the Sphinx.” So she takes him to be a xenos. Oedi-
pus, in turn, misidentifies himself and his parents only because he is cast out
of ebes and returns there afterwards. Rural life as such is closed to such
conventional misidentification, because it is closed to conventional identi-
fication. e tragedy is made possible because, as citizens, everybody in the
play is thinking merely in terms of conventional symbolism.
e symbolic character of nouns entails a structurally determined con-
fusion: precisely because nouns necessarily open up a distance between the
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sounds uttered and the meaning, the same things are said in many ways not
only in different languages, but even within one language, and because the
same nouns can mean fundamentally different things. In a word, the first
level of articulation of logos opens the possibility of ambiguity, equivocation,
homonymy. It is because of homonymy that even nouns are subject to inter-
pretation. In chapter 6, we saw how this inherent “flaw” of nouns follows
precisely from their convenience, and why homonymy is a necessary con-
sequence of the enormous economy of language: “Nouns and the quantity
of logoi are finite, whereas things are infinite in number. us it is necessary
that the same logos and noun signify a number of things” (SE 1, 165a11– 14).
is enables Sophocles to beautifully show Oedipus tragically determined to
either kill whoever “himself” killed Laius or die “himself”— supposing these
synonymous designations to be homonymous.44
To sum up our comparison between the character who is “worse than us”
and the one who is “better”: the Cyclops lives a self- centered, closed, rural life
of synonymy where things that share names also share their “logos of being”
naturally as animal voices are signs of pleasure and pain, as bones fit into
their joints; Oedipus, on the other hand, lives a political life of homonymy, a
life open and devoted to others, a life of conventions, contracts, symbols, and
interpretations. As the Cyclops was blind to others and was exposed to being
blinded by another’s cunning or beauty, Oedipus is oblivious to himself and,
sure enough, ends up blinding himself.45
When Aristotle insists that there be nothing in the plot of the tragedy
itself that is alogos, but only in past events, his example is King Oedipus.46 It is
his disregeard for his shady natural roots that ruins Oedipus’s plans for start-
ing over and freely redefining himself. After Jocasta recognizes who Oedipus
is and condemns herself to silence, Oedipus, seeing her terror, bravely cries:
Let whatever disaster come! However lowly it may be, I want to see
my origin [sperm’ idein]. In her womanly arrogance, she is ashamed
of my ignoble roots. But I consider myself to be the child of For-
tune [paida tês Tychês] the generous, and I am not ashamed of it. It
is Fortune who was my mother, and the years of my life that made
me lowly and great. is is my origin, nothing can change it: why
would I refuse to learn who I was born from? (1076– 85)
Oedipus’s true hubris, his true misunderstanding of human limitation,
exhibits itself in this claim to be a purely rational agent, a self- transparent
individual, freely defining himself, consciously engaging with others through
contracts, the child of no real parents, but “the child of Fortune.” is is what
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makes him “bigger than nature,” “better than us,” detached from the alogia of
his past, and so terrifying. And this makes his downfall not simply realistic,
but paradigmatic. is detachment from his natural roots could make Oedi-
pus simply neglect the question of his origins. And yet, on the contrary, it
pushes him forward in the gradual unfolding of his self- recognition.47
We have thus come to the end of our elaboration of Polyphemus and
Oedipus as two figures that shed light on the human condition as having
logos, that is, as having access to that which one does not and may never
experience firsthand. Repeatedly used by Aristotle as paradigms, they both
instantiate specifically human forms of alogia. e one is immersed in his
cave, in his self- centered life, in his rural familial circle, in his natural envi-
ronment and in a language innocent of the ambiguity that is typical to logos
and always requires interpretation. e other one lives his cosmopolitan and
public life as a self- determining rational individual agent detached from his
natural origins, so wrapped up in his free interpretations and assumptions
that he is blind to his familial origins, to his irrational attachments, and to
his childhood.
So the Cycloptic and the Oedipal are two limiting- cases of human logos,
or, alternatively, two forms of specifically human alogia: a deficiency in logos
and an exclusive immersion in it that is wonderfully and terrifyingly possible
only for a being that has logos.
3. Nous
Yet not all alogia is human. Aristotle’s works present a sense of alogos that
is not a privation of logos, but is altogether foreign to logos. In contrast to
Cycloptic or Oedipal alogia, this one is positive, a positive state, a hexis.48
ereby this alogia testifies that, despite its extremely varied functions, logos
is not a key opening all doors and the single overall logic of all being. For
Aristotle there is a form of carelessness that is not vice, a kind of a lack of
prudence that is not foolish, a way of being that does not hold onto different
terms in their difference. For Aristotle there is a state that has no extremes
and thus no middle to exclude or include. It is different from science, but it is
not ignorance. Beyond compositeness and manifoldness, the world, even the
sublunar realm, has oases of positive simplicity, of pure acts.49
is is nous.50 And nous is to be distinguished from logos on all levels.51
Unlike composite beings that have a “logos of being” in the sense of “stan-
dard” (see our chapter 1), nous is everlasting transparency and purity: “ere
is a sense in which nous makes all things; this is a positive state like light: for
in a way light makes colors in potentiality into colors in actuality. is nous
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is separable, impassive, unmixed, since it is at work in its being” (DA III, 5,
430a14– 17). Unlike beings that are both potentially and actually so that what
it is for them to be is at issue (see chapters 2 and 3), nous leaves no room for
change, for decisions and choices, for deliberation, for consensus or compro-
mise, for intermittence, for not being at work, and for somehow not being
what it is for nous to be: “Nous does not think intermittently. Separated, it is
only what it truly is, and this alone is immortal and eternal... and nothing
thinks without this” (DA III, 5, 430a18– 25).52 Unlike sensation as a logos,
holding on to the form of sensibles without yielding to them or affecting
them (see our chapter 4), “nous is the form of forms” (DA, III, 8, 432a3).
Unlike locomotion which takes the form of a practical syllogism, nous is not
moved, but rather moves without itself being moved.53 Unlike prudence (see
chapter 5), “nous apprehends the terms of which there is no logos” (NE VI,
8, 1142a25– 26).54 Unlike logos as predication, affirmation, or negation, “nous
is not something in relation to something else [ti kata tinos]” (DA III, 6,
430b26– 29). Nous is thus naturally associated not with the strictly human,
but with the divine in the human.55
Since, among the intellectual positive states by which we are in
truth, some are always true (knowledge and nous), and some admit
of falsity like opinion and calculation, and since no other kind of
knowledge is more accurate than nous, and since the sources are
more knowable than demonstrations and all knowledge is with
logos, thus there would be no knowledge of the sources; and since
no knowledge admits of being more true than nous, then nous
would apprehend the sources; from this one sees also that the
source of demonstration is not demonstration, just as the source of
knowledge is not knowledge. So if we have no kind of truth other
than knowledge, then the source of knowledge would be nous; it
would be the source of the source, just as all knowledge stands to all
things. (APo. II, 19, 110b5– 17)
On a similar line of demarcation, Aristotle writes in the Politics that “logos
for us, and nous, is the telos of nature” (Pol. VII, 13, 1334b15). Reason, ratio-
nality, or intelligence may appear to us today as a superpower defining and
distinguishing human beings. We hope to have shown that for Aristotle
logos distinguishes humans from other animals in two of its senses (“reason”
and “speech”), but that these two together with the other two senses of logos
(“standard” and “ratio”) all refer back to one basic meaning shared by all liv-
ing nature and most of nature as such. Yet Aristotle does not hypostatize or
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epitomize logos in the context of beings as such (since God and the ultimate
constituents of the cosmos seem to lack it), nor in the context of ultimate
human capacities and happiness, since nous is without logos. And if logos has
been surprisingly neglected both by Aristotle and by his posterity, it may be
because logos has been eclipsed by the priority and divinity of nous, thereby
abandoning its worldly, observant, deliberating, concrete, hesitant, and
humane character in order to become the Word.
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notes
Preface
1. is claim that the specificity of human communication lies in the double ability to
understand and relay non- firsthand experiences also seems quite in line with twentieth-
century discoveries and discussions around bee communication. See Frisch, 1993: esp. 43,
55– 56; Benveniste, 1971: 53; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 77. For a detailed discussion,
see chapter 6.
Introduction
1. Chantraine explains the etymologically fundamental meaning of logos as follows: “Le
sens originel est ‘rassembler, cueillir, choisir’..., d’où ‘compter, dénombrer’... legô signifie
parfois ‘énumérer,’ etc.... ‘débiter des injures,’ au moyen ‘bavarder, discourir’... Ainsi est
né l’emploi au sens de ‘raconter, dire,’ etc.” (1984: 625). Heidegger’s interpretation is in line
with Chantraine: “[Legein] means what our similarly sounding legen means: to lay down
and lay before. In legen a ‘bringing together’ prevails, the Latin legere understood as lesen, in
the sense of collecting and bringing together. Legein properly means the laying- down and
laying- before which gathers itself and others” (Heidegger, 1984: 60; see also Heidegger,
1959: 123– 79). See also Hoffmann, 2003: 27– 53, whose claim that focal reference of the
various senses of logos is “composition/gathering” is quite cogent to ours here, although
made in a wider, mostly sophistical and rhetorical context that is very neglectful of Aris-
totle’s usage. In Book V, definition 3 of the Elements, Euclid defines logos as a “poia skhesis,”
a certain state, condition, or relation, not between but of two homogenous magnitudes of
the same kind with respect to their size (Euclid, 2007: 291).
2. Unless noted otherwise, all translations from Ancient Greek and Latin are my own.
In transcribing the Greek texts, I shall use ê for êta, ô for ômega, kh for khi, u or sometimes
y for upsilon, and i for the iota subscript. In this fragment by Heraclitus, I adopt the read-
ing of homologeein (“agreeing,” “having the same logos”) for xympheretai (“brings together”)
as in the text of Hippolytus who is “the fullest source” (KRS, 192). For homologeein, see
Heidegger, 1984.
3. While belonging to the post- Aristotelian tradition, the division of the Aristotelian
corpus into three parts (logic, physics, and ethics) is a procedure which itself is not alto-
gether foreign to Aristotle. See Top. I, 14, 105b19ff.
4. Plato, Republic, V, 479B11– C5; Euthydemus, 300D. e whole text of the riddle is
quoted in the scholiast. (Hermann, 1853: 34)
5. Po. 22, 1458a26- 27: “e idea of riddle is that one conjoins impossible things while
telling existing things.”
6. S.v. “ logos” in LSJ, 1057– 59. For the increase of frequency of its use from Homer until
the fourth century, see Hoffmann (2003: 30).
7. Here are the major headings in the LSJ:
I. computation, reckoning;
II. relation, correspondence, proportion;
211
III. explanation;
IV. inward debate of the soul;
V. continuous statement, narrative, oration;
VI. verbal expression or utterance;
VII. a particular utterance, saying;
VIII. thing spoken of, subject- matter;
IX. expression, utterance, speech regarded formally;
X. the Word or Wisdom of God.
is extensive list covers all major meanings given in Chantraine (1984: 625), and most of
those in Guthrie except perhaps Guthrie’s emphasis on “definition, essential formula” and
“worth, esteem, fame, regard” (Guthrie, 1979: 38, 419– 25).
e Anecdota Graeca compiles sixteen senses of logos, out of which we may mention the
following: temper of mind, constitution (the text’s example is of human being as having
logos), dynamis or essential native power, a complete, independent meaning (sêmainom-
enon... autoteles?), book (biblios, roll or case for holding a papyrus case), role of an actor,
voice (phônê), and standard (kanôn) (1887: 327– 28).
Cassin et al. (2014: 586) give the list of the senses of logos in a marginal scholium of
a manuscript of the Tekhnê grammatikê by Dionysius rax (Dionysius rax, Scholia in
Dionysii racis artem grammaticam, in Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1, fasc. 3). Of these twenty-
two meanings, the following may be of interest: concern (phrontis) and consideration
(logariasmos)— which are akin to “worth” in Guthrie above—justification (apologia), logos
of expenses, conclusion, natural potentiality (dynamis), and again, par excellence, God (kat’
eksokhên ho theos).
Heidegger usually reduces these senses to four: “speech,” “reason [Vernunft],” “foun-
dation [hypokeimenon],” and “proportion” (Heidegger, 2008: 50; 1984:60). His earlier
interpretations of logos determine its basic underlying meaning as “making manifest”
(Heidegger, 1996: 28– 30 (§7b); 1997: 139– 41 (§28c); 1985: 84– 85 (§9aβ)). Inspired by
Heidegger and Sallis, Hoffmann gives a similar fourfold distinction: “account,” “composi-
tion,” “speech,” and “reason” (Hoffmann, 2003: 33; see also Robinson, 2010: 24– 26; Rob-
berechts, 1993: 336).
8. For purposes of comparison between Aristotle’s strictly secular uses of logos and its
later evolutions, it may be helpful to mention some significant senses listed in Lampe’s
Patristic Greek Lexicon (1961: 807– 11): “ground [of cosmic order],” “second Person of Trin-
ity,” “unity of Godhead,” “Christ incarnate,” “source of man’s rationality and of his com-
munion with God,” the eternal and immanent (endiathêtos) Logos about which Lampe
says: “the distinction between logos endiathêtos (immanent reason) and logos prophorikos
(uttered word) used to illustrate the unity of Father and Logos and the distinction be-
tween them (from the standpoint of the finite observer) through the act of Creation and
redemption in which Logos is the expression of the infinite Father” (Lampe, 1961: 809).
e Gnostics employed the word logos for the “rational cosmic principle controlling the
fate of men” in the poems of Aratus, and associated the word with the “ogdoad,” the eight
deities of Hieropolis. See also Mortley, who claims that the distinction between immanent
(endiathêtos) logos and uttered (prophorikos) logos can be traced back to Aristotle’s use of
eksô logos in APo. I, 10, 76b25 (Mortley, 1986: 26). More generally, see Sorabji, 1993.
9. Logos occurs in the very opening of Aristotle’s corpus (Cat. I, 1a1– 13). Further in
his logical works, one reads that some potencies are with logos, some without (On Int. 13,
212
22b38– 23a1; Metaph. IX, 2, 5.), that a premise and a syllogism are somehow both logoi
(APr. I, 1, 24a15, 24b19), or else that knowledge implies the possession of the logos of the
“why?”(APo. I, 6, 74b27– 28; II, 19, 100a1– 3).
In his philosophy of nature, one reads that nature lies less in the material than in the
form according to logos (Ph. II, 1, 193a31ff.), that living beings nourish themselves and
reproduce not according to a mixture or separation, but according to a logos (GC II, 6,
333b916; DA II, 4, 416a16– 18), that sensation is not only according to logos (DA II, 12,
424a25), but that “sensation is a logos” (DA III, 2, 426a8, 426a28ff.), and that locomotion
originates from one universal and one particular logos (DA III, 11, 434a17– 22; MA 7).
As to his ethical and political works, finally, Aristotle uses logos for distinguishing the
parts of the human soul (NE I, 13, 1102a29– 1102b34). Most famously, indeed, humans are
defined as the only kind of animal that has logos (Pol. I, 1, 1253a10– 11; VII, 12, 1332b5–
6) and logos remains at the basis of their education (Pol. VII, 12, 1332a38– 1332b11; 13,
1334b7– 28) as of the household and city (Pol. I, 1, 1253a18).
10. Bonitz, 1955: 433– 37. Most lists of the meanings of logos mention not “standard,”
but “essence,” “law,” “notion,” “essential formula,” or “form.” As an exception, see “kanôn”
in the Anecdota Graeca (1887: 327– 28); for the closely related later meaning of “formative
and regulative law of being, essential disposition,” see Lampe, 1961: 808. Similarly, apart
from the senses of “capacity for reasoning” and “capacity for discourse,” Mortley mentions
the sense of “appropriate system of functioning,” most significantly in DA II, 12, 424a31,
and PA I, 1, 639b15 (Mortley, 1986: 26).
Leaving the discussion of logos as “standard” to the first chapters of this book, for now
let me say that this sense of logos is not primarily linguistic, nominal, mental, or subjective.
(Compare Winslow, 2007.) For Aristotle’s essentialism, see Barnes’s introduction to his
translation of the Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002, xiii).
A fifth sense of logos in Aristotle may be “esteem, worth, value, consideration.” Com-
pare, for instance, NE I, 13, 1102b31– 32, but also the “Logos” article I.4, in LSJ, 1057. See
also Guthrie, 1979: 419– 25, mentioned above; Herodotus, 2.85, 7.5; eon of Smyrna,
1878: 72– 74; Lampe, 1961: 808.
11. In the corpus, there is one definition of logos in the sense of “sentence”: “Logos is a
signifying voice, one of whose parts is signifying separately, not as an affirmation, but as an
expression” (On Int. 4, 16b26– 28; Po. 20, 1457a23– 24). Yet, far from mentioning the other
meanings of logos, this definition does not even cover the sense of logos as “sentence.” For
our elaboration of this topic, see below section 3 of chapter 6.
For Aristotle’s discussion of the ambiguity of words, see, for instance, Cat. I, 1a1ff. For
his insistence on disambiguating terms, see Top. II, 2, 110a22ff.; SE IV– VI; Rh. II, 24,
1401a10ff. For his own analysis of the ambiguity of fundamental philosophical terms, see,
for instance, indeed, Metaph. V.
12. Let us mention the exceptions. Besides the Anecdota Graeca mentioned above,
eon of Smyrna gives an important list of the “Peripatetic” meanings of logos. To the lists
of the meanings of logos mentioned above, eon adds the technical sense of syllogism and
epagôgê as well as the definitely non- Aristotelian, Stoic phrase logos spermatikos (eon of
Smyrna, 1878: 72– 74). Porphyry mentions the multivocity of logos in his commentary on
the Categories (64, 28), but he does not attempt to account for this multivocity and even
leaves out the sense of “ratio” (Porphyry, 1992: 44– 45). His remarks in the Commentary
on the Harmonics of Ptolemy (12, 6– 28), although very interesting, are not concerned with
Aristotle’s uses of logos. Let us also note that, according to Diogenes Laertius, Sphaerus the
– 213
Stoic, a pupil of Zeno of Citium and Cleanthes, wrote a lost book entitled Peri logou (Lives
and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, VII, 178).
13. Let me give a brief literature review and some bibliography here. To my knowledge,
the only work that deals with logos in Aristotle’s corpus as a whole and recognizes its
neglect is Barbara Cassin’s Aristote et le logos (Cassin, 1997: 9, 25, 153; see also Cassin,
1996). Siding with the Sophists, Cassin characterizes Aristotle as a thinker of exclusion,
of common sense, of doxa, of banalities, as the paradigm of the “phenomenologically cor-
rect” (1997: 4), and attempts to show the conveniently neglected incompatibilities of his
various uses of logos (1997: 151). In diametrical opposition to Cassin, I shall approach
Aristotle with the principle of charity and justify this by my preliminary openness to the
doxa in our discussion of method, and end up demonstrating that the various senses of
logos do fit together as, each time, a relation that holds on to its terms in their difference
without collapsing them or simply isolating them.
I must also mention Cassin’s Dictionary of Untranslatables in which logos occupies its
rightful place. Although this source has come to my attention only after the final draft of
this manuscript, I am pleased to see both the many points where my work is confirmed
and those on which my work will provide a new or fuller account.
According to the account by Cassin et al. 2014, the untranslatability of logos stems f rom
its polysemy. is polysemy may appear to be a mere homonymy. According to this view,
logos would have several homophonic roots, especially one denoting “saying” (as in dialogos,
mythologos) and the other denoting “gathering” (as in syllogos, lithologos). Yet, this semantic
bipartition does not map onto the morphological distinction between - lógos as making
“action nouns” (dialogos, syllogos) and - lógos as making “agent nouns” (mythologos, lithologos).
In fact, the distinction between the two main senses of logos, as “saying” and “gathering,”
becomes blurred especially in scientific terms: an astrologos, a botanêlogos, a genealogos, and
an etymologos can be viewed both as collectors of items as well as specialized speakers on
those items.
ere are even uses of legô in Greek and lego in Latin that suggest that logos has one
single root and one fundamental meaning— that of “gathering.” Expressions such as legere
oculis, lire, collecte, as well as Homeric uses (Iliad 23.239, 21.27, 2.222; Odyssey 11.374; see
also katalegein and derivatives in Iliad 24.380, 656; Odyssey 1.169, etc.) suggest the way
in which the fundamental sense of “gathering” may have been extended into the sense of
“saying,” “counting,” “speaking” and even “reading [aloud?].” Hence, Cassin et al. quite
rightly stress that logos in the register of “speech” never means a “word”; in the register
of “counting,” it never means an isolated “number”— in either register, it always refers to
something having a “syntax”: “the constitution or consideration of a series, of a notionally
complex set” (Cassin et al., 2014: 583). My work has come to the exact same conclusion;
see pp. 21–22 and 191–94 in this volume.
After a review of Ancient Greek dictionaries, Cassin et al. ask the following question:
“Was the mathematical sense primary, with relationality and proportionality serving as
a paradigm, even a matrix, of a syntagmatic structure in general, in a line that ran from
Pythagoras to Plato and then Neoplatonism? Or rather, from a structural perspective
that is no doubt more Aristotelian (Bailly, Bonitz), is mathematical technique simply
one application of the human logos?” (Cassin et al., 2014: 583). I touch upon this issue in
chapters 3 and 4.
Cassin et al. rightly remark the striking absence of a thematization of logos in Metaphys-
ics V and elsewhere. ey remark that logos can be used in different senses in one and the
214
same work and give the example of its uses in On the Soul. In On the Soul, one network
links logos with eidos, to ti ên einai, entelekheia, and horos. A second network connects it to
“voice,” “discursiveness,” and “rationality” proper to humans, a network gathering anatomy
and physiology with politics and ethics. A third network allows Aristotle to define sensa-
tion as a logos— in the sense of “relation,” “proportion,” a ratio. Finally, a fourth network
of meanings gathers logos in the sense of “statement.” But in distinction from the second
network, here the subject of legein is sensation itself— be it of humans or of another ani-
mal. Cassin et al. conclude their remarks on the multivocity of logos in Aristotle in the
following way: “is survey of the meanings of logos makes their disjunction, as well as
their systematization, apparent: so a gap remains between the mathematical logos, which
calculates sensation, and the logos proper to man, who makes statements, constructs argu-
ments, and unites and persuades citizens. It is as if the Greek language contributed to con-
fusing, and thus to foreclosing, a certain number of questions that Aristotle, ‘compelled by
truth,’ nevertheless persisted in asking” (Cassin et al., 2014: 585; here they seem to draw
on Cassin, 1996).
Cassin et al. quite rightly distinguish the Stoic use of the polysemy of logos from Ar-
istotle’s in that, for the Stoics, “throughout, logikos indissociably means both rational and
discursive” (586). eir account is also good for tracing the senses of logos beyond Aristotle,
in Latin texts in the double form of ratio and oratio, through Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca,
and then John’s Gospel and the Hebrew underpinnings of logos such as hokmah and dâvâr.
Besides Cassin’s sustained work on logos in Aristotle, there is one essay that is central to
this discussion as a whole. In his essay “Man and Language,” Gadamer argues that logos, as
it appears in Aristotle’s famous characterization of human being, should not be translated
as ratio, “reason,” or “thought,” but as “language.” (Compare Heath, 2005: 6.) He argues
that language is neither a mere tool one can pick up and put down at will, nor a conscious,
individual, and subjective act or capacity (Gadamer, 1976: 59– 68). I agree with Gadamer’s
criticisms, but I disagree with the “linguistic turn” he endorses. I equally disagree that “the
distinguishing feature of man... is his superiority over what is actually present, his sense
of the future... [that] he can make what is not present manifest through his speaking, so
that another person sees it before him.” I cannot help but think that animal signaling, for
instance in front of danger, does make manifest something that is not present. Most im-
portantly, the phrase “non- present” is ambiguous. e “present” may well be contrasted to
the “future,” or to “common concepts,” as Gadamer does; but it may well be contrasted to
the “past,” the “possible,” even the “impossible.” Gadamer’s account does not elaborate on
this. In any case, I will claim in chapter 6 that the distinguishing feature of human speech
is not its relation to what is present or non- present, but its understanding and relaying
non-firsthand experience as well as firsthand experience.
Mortley offers a survey of the various meanings of logos in Aristotle without getting into
details and without addressing the question of the relationship between these meanings.
is is understandable given Mortley’s task of offering a very large- scale picture of the
history of the uses of logos in general. is wide perspective is helpful at points, but it also
causes the author to project onto Aristotle’s philosophy some post- Aristotelian notions
such as the hypostatization of logos, and the distinction between internal (endiathêtos) logos
and outward (prophorikos) logos (Mortley, 1986: 25– 30). Winslow’s Aristotle and Rational
Discovery is not intended as a comprehensive and systematic study of the different uses of
logos in Aristotle (Winslow, 2007; see also Winslow, 2006). And yet, although the book
lacks much in terms of clarity in organization, in argumentation, in reference, and even in
215
transliteration, I enjoyed it for some of its bold insights, and for the partial corroborations
it provided me. (Winslow, 2007; see also Winslow, 2006)
Among the recent works on logos in more or less larger parts of Aristotle’s corpus are
Baracchi, 2007; Long, 2011; Rese, 2005; Weigelt, 2002. I have not been able to find and
read Irina Deretić’s “Logos, Platon, Aristotel” and “Aristotelov metafizički pojam logosa.”
For accounts of logos not restricted to Aristotle’s philosophy, see Heidegger, 1996: 28– 30
(§7b), and his various preparatory lectures, 1997: 139– 41 (§28c); 1985: 84– 85 (§9aβ);
Brague, 2005: 69– 82; Brague, 1988; Brague, 1978 which enumerates many of the mean-
ings of logos we shall analyze, and interprets them often exactly like we shall end up doing
(Brague, 1978: 171). See also Brun, 1961: 22– 27. Apart from these, we should point out
two notes that concentrate on our problem here: Hicks, 1915: 1– 2; Stocks, 1914: 9– 12.
Also, in the introduction to his translation of the Parts of Animals (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1937, 26ff.), Peck notes the variety of the meanings of logos
within one and the same work (640a32, 646b2, 678a35, 695b19, 639b15...), and consid-
ers them to be “correlated” without showing what this correlation is. e same is true of
Lear who notes that “logos is a protean word,” but does not go beyond saying that “there is
no equivocation” between logos as definition and logos as form (Lear, 1988: 28– 29).
For broader accounts of the development of the philosophical senses of logos, see Guth-
rie, 1979: 38, 419– 25 (mostly specific to Heraclitus’s fragments); Kerferd, 1981: 78– 84
(in which one paragraph, on pp. 83– 84, distinguishes the meanings of logos and specifies
its “focal reference” quite exactly as we shall do, although in the context of sophistic and
rhetoric); Chieza, 1992: 15– 30; Heath, 2005: 8ff.; Robinson, 2010: 24– 26; Fattal, 1988;
Fattal, 2001: esp. 27– 48; Robberechts, 1993: 336; Lallot, 1988, 15; and Hoffmann, 2003:
27– 53, which, although quite akin to our approach and conclusion, devotes no more than
a short paragraph to Aristotle’s use of logos and, disregarding the fact that Aristotle em-
phasizes that all logos is not declarative (apophantikos) (On Int. 4, 16b33– 17a4, see our
chapter 6, section 3), marks him as the beginning of the “logical prejudice” whereby the
sense of logos loses its focal reference to “composition/gathering.”
14. Since I shall only briefly touch upon it in what follows, let me refer the reader to
the wide range of scholarly views on the subject illustrated in Sim, 1999, especially the
introduction. See also Ward, 2008: 43– 56.
15. APo. II, 19, 100b2– 4; I, 2, 72a1– 5; Top. VI, 4, 141b5– 14. For the use of both wide-
spread opinions (endoxa) and perception (aisthêsis) see GA III, 10; APr. I, 30, 46a17– 22;
Cael. III, 7, 306a3ff.; DA I, 1, 402b21ff. See also Owen, 1975; Nussbaum, 1982; Aubenque,
2002, 83– 93; 2009: 44. See also Bolton, 1990: 190– 95; 1991: 11. It is true that Aristotle
often stresses that, when possible, one should always uphold perception over endoxa (Cael.
III, 4, 303a20– 23; III, 7, 306a3– 17; GA III, 10, 760b27– 33; APr. I, 30, 46a17ff.). Yet, for
the most part, if not always, widespread endoxa seem to overlap with perception.
16. For instance, see my article “Aristotle at Work— Method in GA, III, 10,” Epoché
(forthcoming in 2017). See also Hamlyn, 1990: 475– 76.
17. Top. I, 12, 105a13– 17; APo II, 19, 100a15– 100b4. In a certain sense, book III, the
“book of aporias,” is well placed right after the “doxography” of book I of the Metaphysics
(Nussbaum, 1982: 276).
18. See also Metaph. I, 1, 982b17; III, 1, 955a35; NE VII, 1, 1145b2– 6; MM II, 6,
1200b20– 24.
19. For an influential discussion of this point, especially but not exclusively in regard to
the Physics, see Owen, 1975; Nussbaum, 1982; Evans, 1977: 77– 80.
216 –
20. is clause seems to be an echo of, if not a clear reference to, Plato’s Parmenides,
136A and the following, and thus betrays Aristotle’s indebtedness to Zenonian dialectic
(Berti, 1978: 354– 55; see also Dumont, 1992: 178– 79). For Aristotle’s relationship to
Plato’s Parmenides, especially in the Physics, see Owen, 1975.
21. See also APo. I, 11, 77a26– 30. Compare Evans, 1977: 31– 32.
22. For the distinction between dialectic and special sciences, see Evans, 1977: 5: “But
what marks off the sciences from dialectic is that they embody a correct view of reality...
Dialectic, by contrast, should not embody any view of reality— neither a correct one...
nor an incorrect one.” See also Dumont, 1992: 178– 79; Granger, 1976: 72: “Sans doute
la dialectique ne saurait- elle avoir elle- même de principes propres (à un type d’être) pour
la guider, et son action est- elle ce tâtonnement plus ou moins systématique qu’évoque le
mot PEIRASTIKÈ.”
23. Berti, 1978: 347– 70. See his reservations on pp. 351– 52. See also Seaton’s criticism
of Berti (Seaton, 1980: 283– 89), and Berti’s reply (Berti, 1980: 290– 92).
24. Nussbaum insists that Aristotle’s concept of the “unhypothetical” is radically differ-
ent from Plato’s. Since I do not agree with her claim that Plato’s unhypothetical principle
is known “entirely independently of all conceptualization and thought,” I do not agree
with the sharp contrast she draws between Plato and Aristotle here. (Nussbaum, 1982:
288) I am sympathetic to Roochnik’s criticism of Nussbaum in Roochnik, 1990: 203. See
also Evans, 1977: 21– 25.
25. See Matthews, 1999: 125– 36. MacIntyre claims that, for Aristotle, “dialectic is no
longer the road to truth, but for the most part only a semi- formal procedure ancillary to en-
quiry.” On this issue, he contrasts Aristotle first with the tragic poets, and then with Socrates
and Plato: “Where Socrates argued dialectically with particular individuals and Plato wrote
dialogues, Aristotle therefore produces expository lectures and treatises” (MacIntyre, 2013:
184). Yet if dialectic is not the road to truth for Aristotle, how is one to explain Aristotle’s
explicit remarks on dialectic in Top. I, 2, 101a35– 101b4? Further, how are we to character-
ize Aristotle’s implicit, but typical, procedure starting from the phenomena, the endoxa, or
simply the legomena in most of his major works? How is the text of the Metaphysics or, say,
the first book of the Physics, On the Soul, or the Nicomachean Ethics an “expository” lecture
or treatise that does not take off from a critical engagement with his predecessors views or
with widespread everyday assumptions? Indeed these are not dialogues, but it is difficult
to see how they do not employ a dialogical procedure between openly conflicting views.
26. For textual evidence see APo. I 1, 71a1– 11; Top. I, 2, 101a35– b4; Ph. I, 1, 184a16–
22; DA II, 2, 413a11– 13; Metaph. I, 1; II, 1; VII, 3, 1029b3– 12; HA I, 6, 491a7– 14. Perhaps
the most famous expression of this procedure is the one at the beginning of the Nicoma-
chean Ethics where Aristotle pays tribute to Plato: “We should not overlook the distinction
between the logoi that start out from principles and those that lead to principles. For it was
well that Plato too raised this question, and inquired whether the way is from principles
or toward principles, just as in a race one may run from the judges to the boundary or
the other way” (NE I, 4, 1095a31– 1095b2. See Plato, Republic VI, 509D– 51lE. See also
Sparshott, 1994: 27– 29). In front of this dilemma, Aristotle seems to open up an obvious
safe ground: “One must begin from what is known; but this has two meanings: things
known to us and things known simply. Perhaps then we, at any rate, ought to begin from
the things that are known to us” (NE I, 4, 1095b2– 4; VII, 1, 1145b2– 7. Indeed, the major
text for this idea is APo. I, 2, 71b23– 72a5. See EE II, 1, 1220a15– 22. See also Ross, 1949:
38; Evans, 1977: 52).
– 217
27. See Metaph. IV, 2, 1004b25– 26; SE 34, 183a39ff; Top. VIII, 5, 159a33. See
Aubenque, 2009: 55; Bolton, 1990.
28. Top. I, 2, 101a35- b4. For the association between peirastikê and exetastikê in the
context of dialectic, see also Rh. I, 1, 1354a5; Top. VIII, 5, 159a25, 33. Compare Plato,
Apology 22E– 23C; Protagoras 348A.
29. SE XI, 172a18.
30. Bolton, 1990: 200– 203. Metaph. IV, 2, 1004b26; Top. I, 1, 100b23ff.; VIII, 14,
163b12– 16; SE 11. Compare Metaph. III, 1, 995b2– 4.
31. In this respect, I am in much agreement with Enrico Berti who, in an article I
will often refer to in this part of the book, follows Aubenque (1962) in defending that a
dialectical procedure is employed in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (most notably in the discus-
sion of the principle of non- contradiction in book IV) and in his classification of animals
by species and genera (Berti, 1978). I am also in agreement with Baracchi’s approach to
Aristotle’s dialectical method and to logos (Baracchi, 2007: 1– 15).
32. Evans, 1977: 5– 6.
33. For the role of homonymy in Aristotle, see Ward, 2008. Biographical sources
strongly suggest that Aristotle made a collection of proverbs early on in his career (Natali,
2013: 25). Natali also notes that this research “is also a facet of the attention given by
Aristotle to common opinion and to the phainomena, those impressions and beliefs that
seem evidently true to various people.” For a list of passages where Aristotle uses popular
sayings and proverbs, see the article “paroimai” in Bonitz, 1955: 569– 70.
34. Aristotle explicitly deals with his own assumption not in the Categories, but in SE
I, 165a6ff.
35. If we are to follow the Organon, we find him later taking up and scrutinizing gradu-
ally wider phenomena. In the Categories and On Interpretation, he shifts his focus from
words to assertions (subjects, predicates, statements, modalities, etc.), in the Prior Analytics
to syllogisms (premises, conclusions, moods and figures of syllogisms, etc.), then in the
Posterior Analytics to demonstrations and science (knowledge, proof, definition, principles,
etc.), and finally to less rigorous or simply invalid arguments in the Topics and in the On
Sophistical Refutations. e Arabic tradition included the Rhetoric and the Poetics in the
Organon, and these two can be seen as studies of large units of logos.
36. Brentano, 1975: 128.
37. See Eco, 1994: 28; Pinker, 1999: 10.
38. For a discussion of this point, see Benveniste, 1966: 64– 70. But compare Vuillemin,
1967: 76– 77; Granger, 1976: 60. For a discussion around Aristotle’s genuineness in the
face of impasses, see Aubenque, 2009: 39– 52. For a fuller account of the deep link between
Aristotle’s methodology and things said (ta legomena), see Long, 2011: 49– 70. One indica-
tion that Aristotle is not simply imposing Ancient Greek “categories” onto beings as such
may be found in his pointing to “anonymous” phenomena. (See, most typically, NE II, 7,
1107b31; III, 10, 1115b26; IV, 10, 1125b17, 26; for a list of “anonymous” virtues and vices,
see the article “anônymos” in Bonitz, 1955: 69.)
39. Later in this chapter, I shall address the claim that Aristotle “surrenders” to his na-
tive language and uncritically transposes its structures onto his logic and ontology. For the
time being, let me note that his seminal distinction between homonymy and synonymy is
precisely intended to challenge the prima facie univocality between a single noun and one
kind of thing. e later distinctions between subject and predicate, between premise and
conclusion, between different kinds of syllogism and arguments are all made for the sake
218 –
of challenging and then nuancing or often refuting an apparent sameness in language or
exposing illegitimate conflations and superfluous differences.
40. Plato, eaetetus, 148E– 151D.
41. For an influential discussion, see Owen, 1975; Nussbaum, 1982; Irwin, 1982: 250.
Compare Bolton, 1991, who argues that the method of natural science recommended
in Physics I, 1, is not dialectic, but “empirical.” According to this view, the starting point
is not the views of the many or the wise, but “experience” or perception. It is not exactly
clear to me why one should choose either one or the other; on the contrary, taking both
the widespread opinions and our experiences together as a starting point at least explains
why Aristotle so typically starts out his inquiries by relating and critically discussing the
views of his predecessors, by laying out material from his “library,” his collection of Greek
constitutions, or the secondhand accounts about different species of animals, and so on.
Bolton seems to hedge his view on dialectic by saying that dialectic “must somehow be
in aid of the general inductive procedures which constitute the proper scientific method
for reaching the first principles, since that is the way the scientist reaches them” (Bolton,
1991: 22).
42. See Balme’s introduction to his translation of HA VII– X (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1991). We shall discuss the “theoretical” character of Aristotelian
natural science in chapter 3. For now, let us simply point to a passage from On Generation
and Corruption: “e reason of the inability to see admitted facts as a whole [ta homologou-
mena synoran] is lack of experience. Hence those who have lived more closely with natural
phenomena are better able to lay down such principles as can be connected together and
cover a wide field; on the other hand, those who do not watch [atheôrêtoi] the present
things because of lengthy discussions prove to have a narrower view. One can also see from
this the difference between those who inquire by nature [physikôs] and those by discus-
sions [logikôs]” (GC I, 2, 316a5– 12).
Let us also note that Charles Darwin salutes Aristotle, in an 1879 letter, “as one of
the greatest, if not the greatest observers, that ever lived.” In his 1882 letter, he famously
wrote: “Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but
they were mere school- boys to old Aristotle.” Gotthelf argues that these expressions of
admiration are not mere gestures of politeness, but genuinely enthusiastic responses, and
that the increase in Darwin’s admiration for Aristotle was prompted by his reading of the
introduction and parts of translation of the Parts of Animals by Ogle (Gotthelf, 1999: 16).
43. See especially Lang, 1998; Roochnik, 1990: 29– 31; and Peck’s introduction to Ar-
istotle, History of Animals (Aristotle 1965: x, xi).
44. See Aubenque, 2002, 83– 93. For the influence of the Platonic dialogical form on
Aristotle, see Jaeger, 1950: 24ff.; Irwin, 1988: 7ff. “When Aristotle sits on the shore of
Lesbos taking notes on shellfish, he will be doing something that is not, if we look at it
from his point of view, so far removed from his activity when he records what we say about
akrasia. He will be describing the world as it appears to, as it is experienced by, observers
who are members of our kind” (Nussbaum, 1982: 274).
45. For an exemplary dialectical approach, see Metaph. I, 3– 10. See also Berti, 1990:
261; Irwin, 1988: 22. e discussion of akrasia in Nicomachean Ethics VII, a passage often
quoted in the discussion over the methodological role of phainomena and legomena in Ar-
istotle (see, for instance, Nussbaum, 1982), also proceeds in three steps: first the gathering
of appearances (phainomena) and of claims (legomena) about the subject matter, then the
drawing of aporiai from them, and finally the working out of these puzzles (Cooper and
– 219
Aubry, 2009: 9, 239). On Generation and Corruption I, also proceeds dialectically (Burn-
yeat, 2004: 7, 10, 16, 22; Wildberg, 2004: 230). For Aristotle’s collectorship in general, see
Natali, 2013: 96– 113.
46. If in claiming this Aristotle could have hardly avoided looking into his own soul
and his own relations, one may ask who Aristotle’s own fathers and friends were. And
who were Aristotle’s own fathers and friends? His own work gives us a good idea: among
them were indeed the Platonists, and even Plato himself, but also his predecessors such
as Empedocles, Democritus, Parmenides, Eudoxus, and Heraclitus. For an elaboration of
Aristotle’s relation to the “things said” (ta legomena), see Long, 2011: 49– 70.
47. Rorty, 1980: 2; Evans, 1977: 89– 94.
48. Evans, 1977: 5.
49. Rh. I, 2, 1356a25– 26. “And, as in Protagoras, also in Aristotle, dialectic and rhetoric
find their most natural terrain of application in political life, where democracy accepts
the free confrontation of opinions: rhetoric in fact, says Aristotle, is like an offshoot of
dialectic and of the treatment concerning peoples’ customs which is rightly called politics”
(Berti, 1978: 364).
50. See, for instance, Ross, 1949: 59. For an overview of the recent discussions of dia-
lectic in Aristotle, see Bolton, 1990: 185– 236.
51. In the introduction to his translation, Barnes views the Posterior Analytics as con-
cerned not with “methodology of research,” but with “the organization and presentation
of the results of research” (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002, xiii). is changes the relationship
one expects between the Analytics and Aristotle’s scientific work: “Since A Pst does not
describe a scientific methodology, it would be misconceived to complain that the methods
which Aristotle follows and occasionally describes in the scientific work do not fit the
prescriptions of A Pst. Again, in so far as the biological writings do not purport to present
a finished science, we should not expect them to exhibit the organization and structure
which A Pst describes” (xix).
52. Many recent scholars agree with this point of view. See Berti, 1990: 261. See also
Bolton who cites Owen, Barnes and Burnyeat (Bolton, 1990: 186). It is worthwhile to
note that Aristotle’s approach often tends toward exposition precisely when his field of
inquiry is a new one, that is, one that precisely lacks widespread opinions to proceed from.
See also SE 2, 165b1– 3: “Didactic arguments are those which reason from the principles
appropriate to each branch of learning and not from the opinions of the answerer, for he
who is learning must take things on trust.”
53. Cael. II, 12, 292a15– 17. See also Burnyeat, 2004: 15.
54. Berti, 1978: 366; Aubenque, 1963.
55. Owen, 1975: 88; Nussbaum, 1982; Irwin, 1982: 250.
56. Berti, 1990; Irwin, 1982: 250.
57. See Ross’s introduction in Aristotle, 1924: lxxvii. See also Ross, 1949: 48; Berti,
1991: 59; Babür, 2002: 7– 20; Ward, 2008: 43ff. On the relationship between apodictic and
dialectic, see especially Aubenque, 2009: 55– 60: “La science, n’étant démonstrative que
dans sa phase finale, doit être préparée par un examen critique des opinions en présence,
qui doit permettre de démasquer les points de vues erronnés parce que contradictoires,
soit intrinsèquement soit par rapport à des propositions déjà reconnues comme vraies
(par exemple, des propositions d’expérience), et de parvenir ainsi par élimination aux
prémisses ‘vraies et premières,’ sur lesquelles s’appuiera la déduction proprement scienti-
fique” (Aubenque, 2009: 90).
220 –
58. For the distinction between the sublunar and the supralunar realms in Aristotle, see
Mete. I, 2, 339a19– 20; 3, 339b5.
59. Aristotle often stresses that the kind and amount of certainty to be expected in a
discipline depends on the subject matter of the discipline itself (NE I, 3; Protrepticus in
Aristotle, 2015: 16). According to the tradition, ales not only made exact and profitable
deductions concerning heavenly motions, but also advised the Ionians to build up a central
chamber for deliberating issues that involve a modality that is fundamentally inadequate
for such exactness and predictability (KRS: 78– 79)
60. APo. I, 30, 87b20; II, 12, 96a8; APr. I, 13, 32b4– 13. See also On Int. 9, 19a18– 22;
Metaph. V, 30, 1025a14– 21; VI, 2, 1026b31– 33; Cael. I, 12, 283a32– b1; III, 2, 301a7; GC
II, 6, 333b5; 9, 336a27; Ph. II, 5, 196b10, 20; II, 5, 197a32; II, 8, 198b35; II, 8, 199b24; PA,
III, 2, 663b28– 29; GA, IV, 8, 777a17– 21; EE VIII, 2, 1247a31– 33; Rh. I, 10, 1369a32– b2.
See also Natali, 1989: 143– 45; Evans, 1977: 89– 94. For a bibliography of the more stan-
dard and traditional view that Aristotle’s method is narrowly demonstrative, and of the
recent recovery of the function of dialectic in Aristotle, see Berti, 1978: 366, n. 82.
61. We are roughly following Denver, 1991: 73– 83. See also Ross, 1949: 31.
62. Compare the case of the hermaphrodite goats in GA IV, 4, 770b35– 36. See also
Judson, 1991: 82– 89.
63. Our example is partially inspired by Carlo Natali’s seminar entitled “Le Premier
Traité d’éthique— La structure et les desseins de l’Ethique à Nicomaque” that took place
at the University of Paris I in February- March 2006. See also Sparshott, 1994: esp. 28.
64. Sparshott, 1994: 25.
65. “Especially in the Ethics, Aristotle tends to use terms critically, not simply as stand-
ing for established notions” (Sparshott, 1994: 12).
66. See also EE 13, 1215a4– 5. In this definition of happiness, only the concept of “ac-
tuality” is Aristotelian.
67. at Aristotle takes his definition of human happiness as a “principle” can be seen
from NE I, 7, 1098b2– 12. It is exactly here that Aristotle emphasizes the modality of dia-
lectic, “for the most part,” by discussing the extent to which external goods, fortune, and
even the fate of one’s descendants may impact human happiness.
68. Sparshott, 1994: 23– 25. For a similar defense of Aristotle’s dialectical approach to
practical philosophy, see Berti, 1990: 259, 262.
69. Metaph. V, 30, 1025a14, 1025a30; VI, 2, 1026b27, 1027a8; Ph. II, 8, 198b34– 199a3.
70. See also Aubenque, 1963: 37– 41; Rorty, 1980: 2– 3.
71. In fact, Aristotle may be linked further back into the emergence of dialectic in Zeno
and/or in Protagoras (Berti, 1978: 354– 55; see also Dumont, 1992: 178– 79). For the “Pla-
tonic Influence on Aristotelian Homonymy,” see Ward, 2008: 40– 42.
72. Plato, eaetetus 189E.
73. See also Plato, Sophist 263E, and Philebus 38C– E. According to Aubenque, these
may be the passages Aristotle alludes to in Top. VIII, 14,163a36– 163b3: “If we have no-
body else, we must [argue for and against] with ourselves” (Aubenque, 2002: 256, n. 3).
See also Cael. II, 13, 294b8.
74. Unlike Socrates in the Phaedrus 230D.
75. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations V, 10.
76. If it is true, as Berti says, that Socrates was the first to know “how to bring the two
requirements of dialectic,” namely the value of opinion in Protagorean dialectic, and the
principle of non- contradiction implicit in Zenonian dialectic, Aristotle puts dialectic to
– 221
work in the investigation of nature (Berti, 1978: 355). For explicit Aristotelian criticisms
of Socrates’s turn away from nature, see Metaph. I, 9, 992a24– 28, b8– 9.
77. “Dialectic also arrives at its most complete development which is at the same time
a recapitulation of the most important of the preceding stages” (Berti, 1978: 363). On
this dialectical and elenchic character of Aristotelian method, see Ross’s introduction to
Aristotle, 1924: xxxv; Morel, 2003: 82; Berti, 1991: 59; Natali, 2013: 67. For the extent and
depth of Socrates’s influence on Aristotle, see also Jaeger, 1950: 21– 22, 47ff. For Aristotle’s
more radical conception of dialectic in comparison to even Plato, see Aubenque, 2009: 64.
In light of the recognition that Aristotle’s method is for the most part dialectic, I am more
tempted to see him in continuity with Plato, than to oppose his “demonstrative” method
to the Platonic privilege of dialectic.
78. See also Metaph. I, 3, 983b3– 7.
79. From here one may also quantify the frequency of the word logos in Aristotle’s
“books” and compare it with similar statistics extrapolated from Plato, Heraclitus, or the
Gospel according to St. John. is procedure would be convincing, clear, and easily know-
able by just looking. But, as Aristotle remarks, deduction is more efficacious against objec-
tions. Hence the inductive “results” can never be bulletproof or even conclusive, since any
number of statistics can by definition be refuted by a higher number of samples to the
contrary. To take up Aristotle’s example of the skilled person above, one can discuss at
length whether a skilled killer, liar, or thief is also the best— a classical problem in ethics
in ancient Greek philosophy.
80. See Berti, 1978: 364.
81. See for instance, Brunschwig, 1991: 11– 40.
82. Frede, 1996: 157– 73; Sorabji, 1996: 331.
83. us, Sallis’s warning for logos in Plato may be repeated in Aristotle’s case: “When
we regard it as self- evidently correct to allow logos to be taken as ratio, hence, as reason,
we reaffirm, without even really considering the matter, one of the most overwhelm-
ingly decisive transitions in that movement away from the Greeks that constituted the
course of Western thought. To assume, in advance, a specific, well- defined determina-
tion of logos in this direction— to take for granted in an interpretation of Platonic writ-
ings subsequent notions of ‘rationality’ and ‘demonstrative argument’— is to be misled
by the tradition, made possible by Plato’s work, into ignoring the original struggle with
the problems of determining logos which takes place in Plato’s writings” (Sallis, 1996:
14– 15).
84. For, sure enough, there the same problem emerges because the task of understand-
ing was deferred: what does ratio mean in omas Aquinas or aql in Ibn Rushd? (For logos
as nutk, see Averroès, 2000: 141, 179; for logos as aql, see Averroès, 2000: 109.) Further,
why didn’t Aristotle use nous in the sentence from the Politics, given that nous is equally
translated and interpreted as “intelligence” by many “authorities”? If, in the context of
the Politics, logos is to be understood as “reason” in the sense of “intelligence,” so is nous in
other contexts. If logos is translated as “reason” in the sense of “cause,” so is aition. If logos is
translated as “definition,” so is horos and horismos. If logos is translated as “relation” in one
context, so is pros ti in many others. What warrants Aristotle’s use of logos in one context
and of another word in another?
85. Jaeger, 1950; Ross, 1949: 18.
86. Jaulin, 1999: 8– 11; Guthrie, 1981: 14– 15: “Jaeger took these facts, that Aristotle
started his career as a Platonist and finished it as something different, and was inclined
222 –
to conclude on no other grounds that the development of his philosophy took the form
of a steady and continuous movement away from Platonism; and to use this conclusion
as a premise for all subsequent deductions. us, when a new portion of the Aristotelian
corpus came up for discussion, he asked the question: ‘how far removed from Plato is its
philosophical position?,’ and according to the answer assigned it its place, early or late, in
the chronological series of Aristotle’s writings.” Similar remarks concerning Jaeger’s ge-
netic interpretation of the diverse uses of phronêsis in Aristotle can be found in Aubenque,
1963: 15– 31.
87. But did Aristotle leave Athens after Plato’s death to begin with? Compare Diogenes
Laertius, V, 2. For a general discussion, see Natali, 2013: 31– 32.
88. Cited by Aristocles in Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica XV. See Jaeger, 1950: 106– 7.
For a similar criticism of Jaeger’s thesis in the context of Aristotle’s concept of “prudence,”
see Aubenque, 1963: 20. For a judicious account of the sources concerning Aristotle’s
biography in general, see Natali, 2013: 17– 31.
89. “While appreciating the seriousness of all these analyses, one cannot but remark
that they all stem from Jaeger’s assumption that Platonism is simply identical with the
doctrine of Ideas, and their abandonment means turning one’s back on it” (Berti, 1981: 8).
90. For “logos tou einai” see also Plato, Sophist, 78D1ff. Perhaps it is no coincidence that
one of the earliest uses of the adjective dialektikôs is found in Plato’s Meno (75D), so fa-
mous for its discussion of the paradox of inquiry.
91. Grene meaningfully compares this procedure with Heraclitean flux: “from one page
to the next one is never reading the same Aristotle, and finally there is no Aristotle left to
be read at all” (Grene, 1963: 27– 28, cited in Lang, 1998: 14).
92. Our two- sided criticism of “inductive” and “deductive” methods agrees almost point
by point with Lang’s criticisms of both “genetic” and “acontextual” methods; both start out
as looking contrary, but end up equally vacuous, arbitrary and insufficient (Lang, 1998:
13– 18).
93. e reader will notice that the use of logos in the Metaphysics (especially books VII
and VIII) is scattered throughout the book.
94. Both animals and elements are capable of locomotion. What distinguishes the two
is precisely logos: if displaced elements have an impulse for locomotion, animals hold that
impulse together with particular sensations as a result of which they move. So, elements are
not self- movers in the latter sense (Ph. VIII, 4, 255a5– 10).
95. See also Rh. II, 6, 1384a23– 25; EE II, 1, 1219b27– 1220a11. Again, NE VI, 2 states:
“us choice is either thought infused with desire or desire infused with thinking through,
and such a source is the human being.”
96. See also Pol. VII, 12, 1332b5– 6; NE IX, 9, 1169b20– 21; EE II, 8, 1224b30. But see
also NE VIII, 12, 1162a15– 25.
97. Hesiod’s uses of logos emphasize that a logos can be second or third hand, or that it
might be simply deceitful. See Hoffmann, 2003: 32, n. 12.
98. NE IX, 4, especially 1166a32– b2: “a friend is another self... It would seem that
there could be such a love [friendship toward oneself] insofar as each person is two or
more, and because the hyperbolê of friendship resembles friendship toward oneself.”
99. It is true that Aristotle himself often exaggerates the distance between him and
Heraclitus. See also Cherniss, 1935: 380– 81.
100. See Lampe, 1961: 807– 11. Compare the divine use of language in Heath, 2005:
209– 12.
– 223
Chapter 1
1. e traditional arrangement of Aristotle’s corpus indeed goes back not to Aristotle,
but to Andronicus of Rhodes who is said to have had access to original manuscripts in
Rome and arranged the Aristotelian corpus in the second half of the first century ...
See Ross, 1949: 7n.
2. On Int. 2, 16a19– 20, 16a26– 29; 4, 16b33– 17a2; Po. 20, 1456b35, 1457a2, 11, 14,
23.
3. At the rudimentary level of word count, however, logos is not a frequent word in the
Categories. It occurs there forty- six times. Even when logos does occur in the text, Aristotle
mostly employs it in its nontechnical meaning of “something said” (e.g., nine occurrences
of logos in Cat. 5, 4a23– 4b11) or of “assertion.” (e.g., Cat. 10, 12b7– 10). At first, then,
logos does not seem to be a theme or explicit focus in the Categories. In fact, the Categories
is traditionally considered as a text not on logos, but on its constituents. See, for instance,
Cat. 4, 1b25: “Each one of those that are said without combination [tôn kata mêdemian
symplokên legomenôn...] means either ousia or how- much...”
4. is point is developed only in other texts such as SE 1, 165a6– 14 and On Int. 9,
18b38– 19a1. See especially Metaph. IX, 10, 1051b7ff.
5. In Ancient Greek, onoma can mean “noun” as opposed to “verb” (rhêma) as well as
“name” and “reputation.” See the “onoma” article in LSJ, 1996: 1232.
6. Gegrammenon. Although there is indeed no word for “representation” in Ancient
Greek, especially no word that has the same strong philosophical connotations, the mean-
ing of “representation” can be compared to gegrammenon which can mean “that which has
been drawn,” but also “that which has been written down” or even “the one whose name
has been written.”
7. Dexippus explains the clause “according to this name” in the follow way: if this clause
was omitted “it would have been possible to show that the same things were homonyms
and synonyms, as for instance the Ajaxes, for if the definition had not been specified as
‘corresponding to the name,’ one and the same definition could have applied to them as
men” (Dexippus, 1990: 45).
8. For “logos tês ousias” in Aristotle’s biology, see PA IV, 13, 695b19.
9. See also PA I, 1, 640b34– 641a7; or DA II, 1, 412b20– 22: “the eye is the material of
vision, and if vision is left out there is no eye, except homonymously, as for instance the
stone or painted [gegrammenos] eye.” For the distinction between representation and the
represented, see On Memory and Recollection 1, 450b15– 451a14.
10. See Ph. VII, 4, 248b7– 249a8. For a discussion, see Ward, 2008: 17ff. e case of
homonymy between a species and its genus is especially puzzling, since calling a species
(say, “ox”) by its genus (“animal”) is precisely Aristotle’s example of synonymy. us, if
homonymy operates between a species and a genus, it seems like it is reserved to instances
where a genus is addressed as one of its species and not vice versa.
11. See also NE I, 6, 1096b25– 30. Compare Heraclitus’s play on the ambiguity of bios
in Fragment 48.
12. On Int. 2, 16a19– 20, 16a26– 29. For an explanation of synthêkê, often translated as
“convention,” see also On Int. 4, 16b33– 17a2; Po. 20, 1456b35, 1457a2, 11, 14, 23. We
shall elucidate this word in chapter 6, section 2. For a cogent discussion of the question
as to whether homonymy holds between two things or two names, see Ward, 2008: 13.
13. See also Top. VI, 10, 148a23– 25.
14. Sorabji, 1993: 62ff.
224 –
15. is version constitutes the first step away from Protagorean dialectic toward Aris-
totelian dialectic. See Berti, 1978: 355: “if Protagoras discovered the value of opinions for
dialectic and hence for freedom of speech, a thing neglected by Zeno, then Protagoras in
his turn neglected the value for dialectic of the principle of non- contradiction and hence
of refutation.”
16. See also Metaph. XI, 5, 1062a31– 35; IV, 4, 1006a4– 5, 1006b34– 1007a1; On Int. 5,
20a16– 17. For another ambiguously critical reference to Heraclitus in this context, see
Metaph. IV, 8, 1012a33.
17. See also SE 4, 165b39– 166a7.
18. Our analysis in this part of the book seems roughly in line with Kosman, 1967.
19. Ph. I, 2, 185a5.
20. Aristotle’s more central objection to the hypothesis of Parmenides and Melissus
stems from his investigation of the precise way in which “being” and “one” are meant. Ph.
I, 2, 185a22ff.
21. Ph. I, 3, 186a34– 35; 3, 186b17– 18; 4, 187a13; 4, 187a19.
22. is structure of contraries and the thing underlying them is in fact a leitmotif in
the Aristotelian corpus. See Metaph. IV, XII, or Ph. I, 6, 189b12– 22: “this opinion seems
to be the ancient one, that the one and excess and deficiency are the sources of beings...
If among four, there were two oppositions, there would need to be present some nature
in between, apart from each pair [of contraries].” Aristotle’s conclusion concerning the
number of sources in this first book of the Physics is the following: “It is impossible for
contraries to be acted upon by one another. But this is solved because the underlying thing
is something different. For it is not a contrary. So in a certain way the sources are not
more than the contraries, but two in number in this way of speaking; but neither are they
altogether two on account of there being the [underlying thing] different from them— but
three” (Ph. I, 7, 190b33– 191a2).
23. Aristotle is arguably the one who introduced the term hypokeimenon as a philo-
sophical term, perhaps taking it from its momentary but highly suggestive occurrences in
Plato’s dialogues. See especially Plato, Protagoras 349B. See also Plato, Republic IX, 581C,
and Cratylus 422D.
24. e same definition is given in Top. VI, 10, 148a23– 25.
25. e only change that beings do not undergo in the proper sense is coming- to- be
and passing- away. (See Ph. V.) We will indeed return to this crucial exception in chapter
3. See On Int. 13, 23a21– 25; Metaph. IX, 8, 1050b6– 35; XII, 1, 1069a30– 1069b2.
26. See especially its legal senses, such as “a cause, judicial process, lawsuit, the hearing
before the decision, ...a business undertaken... a concrete question, case for discussion.”
Charlton T. Lewis, An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1918), 116.
27. Just as res and causa in Latin often mean much less a “mere object” than an “issue,” a
“matter of concern,” and so on, pragma in Greek often refers to a matter of public concern.
For instance, in the Rhetoric Aristotle employs pragmata as “the main issue to be discussed”
and “the proper subject- matter of rhetoric” (Rh. I). In chapter 2, we shall return to this
issue in the context of the connection between pragma, pragmateuesthai, and praxis.
28. For a discussion of this point in connection with Metaph. IV, see Jaulin, 1999: 35.
29. For a good analysis and elaboration of this point, see also Aubenque, 2002: 83– 93.
30. For one of the many discussions of the denial of this qualification in the Aristotelian
corpus, see SE 22, 178a17– 19.
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31. Why does Aristotle omit the clause “in relation to the same” (pros to auto) that we
find in Socrates’s version? It indicates the fact that x cannot be, say, both bigger and not
bigger than y, although it may well be bigger than y and not bigger than z. Indeed, this is a
crucial theme in many dialogues such as the Parmenides and the Republic. Since Aristotle
has an extensive account of relation (pros ti) both in Categories 7, and in Metaphysics V, 15,
he cannot have been unaware of this qualification. e only possibility seems to be that
he did not deem this qualification to be crucial in that it is superfluous to indicate that
something can have properties that stand in opposite relations to different objects. us, a
statement such as “this finger is longer” or “this boy is the nephew” would be, in the eyes
of Aristotle, an inherently incomplete statement.
32. Fragment 84.
33. For an analysis of this articulation of motion and rest in living bodies, see MA 1,
698a7– 698b8.
34. In my discussion of the principle of non- contradiction and of the top example, I
have benefited much from Recco, 2007.
35. DA III, 10, 433b27.
36. Many famous examples in the history of philosophy have exploited the fact that wax
is almost pure matter without form. Plato, eaetetus, 191C– D; Aristotle, On Memory and
Recollection 450a32– b11; GA I, 21, 729b17; Ph. VII, 3, 245b11; Cael. III, 7, 305b30; DA I I,
1, 412b7, III, 12, 435a2. See also Klein, 1998: 187; emistius, 1999: 58. In chapter 4, we
shall discuss another famous use of the wax example in Aristotle from DA II.
37. Cat. 2, 1a20– 1b8; 5, 2b3– 5.
38. See also HA, V, 21; V, 22, 553b31– 554a1. According to the Meteorology, wax is com-
posed out of both water and earth, can be impressed, squeezed and melted, and is soft, mal-
leable, and more inflammable when mixed with other things than by themselves (Mete. IV, 9).
39. See also Aristotle’s refutation of the Megaric view of potentiality in Metaph. IX, 3.
40. We shall touch upon problems concerning the pictorial representation of human
character in chapter 5, section 3.
41. Nietzsche, 1962: 107. ere is indeed truth to Nietzsche’s claim. See especially Ph.
I, 2, 185b20; Metaph. XI, 5, 1062a32 and XI, 6, 1063b24. And yet Metaph. IV, 3, 1005b25
and IV, 5, 1010a13 clearly distinguish Heraclitus from what is said about him and from
his followers. Top. VIII, 5, 159b31 and Metaph. IV, 7, 1012a24 do not provide sufficient
support for simply confronting Aristotle and Heraclitus as Nietzsche does. Furthermore,
there is an explicit sentence in the Aristotelian corpus where a contradiction is said to be
“quite reasonable [mal’ eulogon]” (EE VII, 12, 1246a13).
Chapter 2
1. In fact, modern physics and metaphysics took this option quite seriously against the
Aristotelianism of their time. But it is not the case that nobody thought of such a possibil-
ity in ancient Greece; in fact, Aristotle himself defends the multivocity of being explicitly
and insistently against the tenets of a view according to which there is no such thing as
potentiality, namely the Megaric school (Metaph. IX, 3). He may also have the Atomists in
mind. For a clear exposition of Aristotle’s position with regard to the multivocity of being,
and his modern critics, see Berti, 2001: 185– 207.
2. Metaph. IX, 3, 1047a14– 15.
3. On Int. 13, 23a21– 22. Again, for the distinction between the sublunar and the supra-
lunar realms in Aristotle, see Mete. I, 2, 339a19– 20; 3, 339b5.
226 –
4. For the fragile sense of divinity in or around nature, see, most famously, PA I, 5,
645a15– 23, and Metaph. XII, 8, 1074b1– 14.
5. See the pseudo- Aristotelian Oeconomica I, 1, 1343a5– 7: “Some of the arts are divided
into two, producing [poiêsai] and using the product [khrêsasthai tôi poiêthenti] do not be-
long to the same, just as the lyre and the flute...”
6. Cat. 1, 1a3, 1a8– 12; 5, 2a16– 18ff.
7. Annick Jaulin and Hakan Yücefer objected to my interpretation of the phrase “logos
of being” as an inherent standard of being. For, they said, even an artifact can have a “logos
of being,” and, thus, “logos of being” need not be inherent to the being under question, but
can equally be imposed from without as in artifacts. is objection poses a serious threat
not only to my point here, but also to my overall argument in this book. For if artifacts
have a “logos of being” as much as natural beings, then the “logos of being” of something
may well be imposed from outside, without the being itself having a “say” on what it is,
contrary to my claim here. en there may be no necessary connection between the ques-
tion of the “logos of being” and natural beings, living beings, and humans as I shall claim
in the following chapters of this book.
is objection seems to be supported by at least three major Aristotelian texts: the logos
of the house in DA I, 1, 403b4– 8, the soul or form of the axe in DA II, 1, 412b12– 16, and
the true nature of the bed in Physics II, 1, 193a11– b19. Yet the objection seems to lose
its power once the contexts are taken into account. For all three texts try to establish the
difference between matter and form in non- artifacts. Aristotle uses artifacts as examples in
discussions about form in non- artifacts not because artifacts have form in the same way
non- artifacts do, as the objectors claim, but simply because form is much easier to dif-
ferentiate from matter in artifacts. So the distinction between form and matter is clearer
in a “house” than in an affection of the soul such as “anger” in DA I, 1, 403b4– 8; the
distinction between soul and body would be quite clear if we imagined an axe to have a
soul (“chopping”) in DA II, 1, 412b12– 16; and, as to Physics II, 1, 193a11– b19, it is easier
to see how form (or rhythmos or logos) is destroyed in a bed than in a natural being, for
artifacts ultimately dissolve into natural beings, while natural beings dissolve again into
natural beings: “Bodies seem to be beings [ousiai] to a highest extent, especially natural
ones; for, the latter are the sources [arkhai] of the former” (DA II, 1, 412a11– 13; also
see Metaph. VII and VIII generally, especially VIII, 3, 1043b21– 22; Ph. II, 1, 192b33,
where the example of house occurs precisely in distinction from beings who all “are beings
[ousiai]”).
Artifacts are convenient examples in the study of non- artifacts (ensouled beings, ani-
mals, or natural beings) not because they are beings or have form or a “logos of being” in
exactly the same way non- artifacts do, but rather because, on the contrary, their form is
precisely imposed from without, that is, because their “standard of being” or “logos of be-
ing” is not inherent to the being at hand. Hence, when the distinction between form and
matter is no longer a central issue, Aristotle clearly reverts to non- artifacts, as can be seen
by the frequency of the term “logos of being” applied to living beings in the biological texts
as in the opening of the Categories and indeed later in Cat. 5. Not only are artifacts deriva-
tive of natural beings, but art in general imitates nature for Aristotle (Ph. II, 2, 194a22;
II, 8, 199a15– 21, where again the example of “house” is used). So if artifacts are derived
ultimately from natural beings or imitate them, then the “logos of being” should apply pri-
marily to natural beings. I think this discussion and Aristotle’s examples here support my
point that, unlike the derivative or heuristic use of “logos of being” for artifacts, the “logos
– 227
of being” referred to at the opening of the Categories means an inherent standard of being.
(Compare the Idea of the Bed in Plato’s Republic X, 596A– 597D.)
8. See also Klein, 1965: 148.
9. e ambiguity of Socrates’s active and deliberate not- moving is indeed at the heart of
his protest against Anaxagorean accounts of nature in the preceding crucial discussion in
the Phaedo 98E– 99A.
10. Note that even here we have not departed from our implicit dialogue with Des-
cartes. In the Meditations, one of the things that are explicitly bracketed is the concept
of life. Similarly, the concept of soul (anima) as a principle of life is bracketed as unclear,
and yields to the concept of mind (mens) which is “distinct and clear” to itself: clear in its
immediate self- grasping, and distinct from the body.
11. For the multivocity of being for Aristotle and its implications, once again see Berti,
2001.
12. See, most famously, Metaph. XII, 3, 1070a10ff.
13. See Ph. III, 4, 203b6ff. “Un monisme serait alogos, en ce qu’il ne peut pas expliquer la
différence entre le principe et ce qui n’est pas lui... La cellule minimale est la dichotomie
qui permet d’accéder au logos” (Brague, 1978: 178).
14. Of course, this central concept of Aristotelian philosophy is used and thematized
in many parts of the corpus. See, most famously, Metaph. V, 12; Metaph. IX; Ph. III, 1– 3.
15. See Aristotle’s mention of the Megarics’ use of potentiality in Metaph. IX, 3.
16. Aristotle’s exception is affirmations or negations that are predicated of universals
but not universally. Aristotle addresses this at the end of chapter 8 of On Interpretation.
17. In some manuscripts the word “melan” (black) here appears as “mega” (big, large).
18. A similar necessitarian point of view, defended sub specie aeternitatis, and its pes-
simistic (and, according to us, vacuous) implications, can be traced in the discourse of a
character, probably “Heraclides,” in Aristotle’s Protrepticus: “for to those who behold any-
thing eternal it is silly to take seriously those things [things that seem to us great, secure,
beautiful, and honorable]. What is great or what is long- lasting in human affairs? No,
it is owing to our weakness, I think, and the shortness of our life, that even this appears
anything great” (Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 20– 21).
19. e “kinds” (genê) here are indeed the kinds of change (Ph. III, 1, 200b33– 34).
20. According to the famous manuscript E (Parisinus gr. 1853): “For nature too comes
to be in the same; for it is in the same genus as potentiality.”
21. e broad and politically oriented scope of praxai may gesture back to our emphasis
in chapter 2 on the word pragma as not simply meaning “object” or mere “thing,” but also
act, deed, work, matter, affair, duty, business, a thing of consequence or importance. e
first chapters of the Rhetoric may provide good examples for the usage of pragmata not as
“object,” but as “issue.”
22. See Ross’s “Introduction” in Aristotle, 1924: cxxvii.
Chapter 3
1. DA II, 4, 416a10ff.
2. is point is expressed, although not developed, in Sparshott, 1994: 44.
3. According to Aristotle’s Protrepticus, the origin of the comparison between a natural
philosopher gazing at the heavens and a spectator at a festival can be traced, through
Anaxagoras, to Pythagoras (Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 22– 23). In this context it is
interesting to note that, in his philosophy of nature, Aristotle might be the theôros not
228 –
exclusively of the heavenly spheres, like Pythagoras and Anaxagoras, but also of the most
humble life forms on and under the earth (PA I, 5, 645a22– 23).
4. Aristotle clearly calls physics (physikê) an epistêmê theôrêtikê (Metaph. VI, 1, 1025b27).
See EE I, 5, 1216b11ff.; and PA I, 5, 645a8– 11, which emphasizes the “theoretical” aspects
of natural science. But compare also PA I, 1, 640a1ff.
5. at physis is less determinable and yet perhaps wider than our concept of “nature”
can be seen in its uses in early Greek thinkers such as Heraclitus and Empedocles. It
is true that medieval and modern philosophy has thought in terms of dualities that set
up nature against history, production, spirit, nurture, culture, or divinity. (See Heidegger,
1998: 183– 85.) Aristotle does admit that there is, besides nature, at least one other cause
or source of coming- to- be in Ph. II, 1, 192b8– 9. He names these causes or sources in the
Metaphysics: “[A being] is generated by art [tekhnêi], by nature [physei], by fortune [tykhêi]
or by chance [automatôi]. en art is a source in another whereas nature is a source in [the
being] itself (for a human being begets a human being), and the other causes are privations
of these” (Metaph. XII, 3, 1070a4– 9).
One can see that, although art is named as a source of generation besides nature, its
opposition to nature is much less emphatic than their structural parallelism (see also PA I,
1, 639b15– 30). Aristotle’s main point remains that being is generated from a synonym—
whether the source of generation is outside of it (as in art) or inside it (as in nature). In
the Physics again, he insists that art imitates nature and that, just like it is obviously absurd
to think of the matter without any form, this is because it is equally absurd to think of
nature as mere matter (Ph. II, 2, 194a19– 28; see also Aristotle, Protrepticus in Aristotle
2015: 22).
6. “at which comes from these [morphê and eidos kata ton logon], such as a human
being, is not nature, but by nature [physei]” (Ph. II, 1, 193b6– 7).
7. “According to nature are both these and as many things as belong to these in virtue
of themselves, as being carried up belongs to fire. For this is not a nature, nor does it
have a nature, but it is by nature [physei] and according to nature [kata physin]” (Ph. II, 1,
192b35– 193a2).
8. For Aristotle’s analysis of “being- in,” see Ph. IV, 3.
9. emistius, Simplicius, and Philoponus suggest that “according to nature” is a nar-
rower specification than “by nature,” and give the example of monstrosities that are “by
nature” but not “according to nature” (cited in Aristote, Physique, trans. Pierre Pellegrin
[Paris: Flammarion, 2002], 117, n. 3. Pellegrin adds that it is difficult to find warrant for
such a distinction in Aristotle’s text).
10. Although we claim in this part that Aristotelian physics can be accessed by a dis-
mantling of modern physics, some claim that Aristotelian physics constitutes “the physics
of commonsense.” See Jean Rosmorduc, Histoire de la physique et de la chimie (Paris: Seuil,
1985), cited in Histoire des sciences, ed. Philippe de la Cotardière (Paris: Tallandier, 2004),
111, n. 5.
11. e following overview should indeed be supplemented by the works of historians
of science such as Leclerc, 1972, and Koyré, 1957.
12. See the “aitia” article in LSJ, 1996: 44.
13. See the “hylê” article in LSJ, 1996: 1847– 48.
14. One explicit example of this usage of hylê is even found in GC I, 10, 327b12.
15. “In the context of nature, [one must consider] the composite and the whole being,
and not that which never occurs apart from their being” (PA I, 5, 645a35– 37).
– 229
16. Hobbes, 1968: 86. For a similar line of demarcation between Aristotle and Hume,
see Lear, 1988: 30– 32.
17. ese four kinds of motion are in turn derived from the categories that do admit
of being otherwise (Metaph. XI, 12; Ph. V, 2). One can see here why Aristotle spends so
much time discussing whether a given category admits of contraries in the Categories (for
instance Cat. 5, 4a10– 4b19; 6, 5b11– 6a18; 7, 6b15– 26).
18. Again, the idea that matter is not generated and does not perish is found in, and
fundamental to, Aristotelian metaphysics and physics. See GC I, 4, 320a2 and Metaph. VII,
7, 1032a17. For Aristotle’s discussion of such theories, see Metaph. I, 3– 4 and Ph. II, 2– 4.
19. “A proper assessment of the rationale of Aristotle’s procedure in the analysis of the
most basic materials and the processes of their combinations explains at the same time,
however, why he was not predestined to become the ‘father of chemistry,’ as he became the
father of so many other disciplines. If his study of the elements and their properties did
not encourage the development of chemistry in antiquity, this is because of the constraints
imposed by his principles” (Frede, 2004: 313).
20. is idea of a “lump,” “bulk,” or “mass” of stuff deprived of unity is also a prevalently
but not exclusively modern one, and is often termed onkos in Ancient Greek. Aristotle
mostly uses onkos as synonymous with sôma and as opposed to kenon (void). Among its
recurrent uses in philosophical contexts (in Empedocles, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and
later Epicure), its in- depth treatment in the seventh deduction of Plato’s Parmenides (es-
pecially 165B and the following) is relevant to our discussion here.
21. See, for instance, DA III, 9– 11.
22. Ph. IV, 4.
23. Ph. IV, 5, 212b16– 17: “Besides the all and whole [pan kai holon], there is nothing
outside of the all.” We must point out here the informative etymology of kosmos which
makes the word “cosmetics” intelligible: kosmos means order in a strong sense, both physi-
cally and almost aesthetically. is sense of kosmos is by no means obsolete at the time of
Aristotle. See for instance Mete. I, 1 338a23, and other instances of kosmos, kosmopoiia,
diakosmein, diakosmêsis, kosmein, kosmêsis, and so on in Bonitz, 1955.
24. Compare Ph. IV, 5, 212b20– 24: “e earth is in the water, and the water is in the
air, and the air is in the aether, and the aether is in the heaven, but the heaven is no longer
in anything else.”
25. One can see here the early modern breakdown of the Aristotelian distinction be-
tween natural motion and forced motion. See, for instance, Cael. I, 2, 269a7.
26. Ph. IV, 5.
27. It may be helpful to contrast Aristotle’s discussion of the wholeness of the universe
in On the Heavens or Phyics IV, 5, with his definition of the “infinite” in Physics III, 6,
207a1– 2.
28. Compare the concept of koinos topos “in which all bodies are,” in Ph. IV, 2. For the
details of the long evolution which we necessarily simplify here, see Leclerc, 1972.
29. For the meanings of pathos and pathein, see Metaph. V, 21.
30. Compare the Cartesian idea that the essence of bodies is extension precisely in a
space understood as partes extra partes. If space is defined by the mutual exclusiveness of
its parts, what does it mean to say that a body is defined by its occupying various parts of
space at once? What warrants for the unity of that body stretched along mutually exclu-
sive parts? Of course, these questions are ones Descartes is prepared to face by means of
his methodological skepticism.
230 –
31. See Ph. I, 1, 184a16– 22; NE I, 4, 1095b1– 5; Metaph. VII, 3, 1029b3– 12.
32. Lang, 1998: 6– 7.
33. It is indeed an impoverished version of it, because the source of motion that is a kind
of cause for Aristotle is the first source of motion (protê arkhê kinêseôs or metabolês) and
certainly not the immediate source such as a moving hand.
34. See especially APo. II, 2, 3.
35. “It is ridiculous to judge from the outside” (On Breath 9, 485b4).
36. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, VI.
37. See also Pol. I, 1, 1253a32– 38. Compare Heraclitus, Fragment 30. Compare also
Lloyd, 1983: 27– 35.
38. Here I am following Joe Sachs’s translation in Aristotle, 1995.
39. is point converges with Aristotle’s assurance that the heavens and the order in the
cosmos are eternal, and not threatened by any apocalypse (Cael. II, 1).
40. Ph. IV, 4; IV, 5; Cael. I, 8, 277a12– 277b9; Mete. I, 3, 340b24– 341a9; I, 4, 341b13– 24.
41. See also the un- Aristotelian On Breath 9, 485b18: “Fire exhibits differences with
respect to more and less.”
42. See again On Breath, 9 485b7– 10: “e arts use [fire] as an instrument, nature
[uses it] also as matter. Indeed this is not a difficulty, [the difficulty lies] rather in the
fact that nature, which uses [the fire], itself thinks [noêsai], also providing at the same
time the rhythmos to sensible affections [hêtis hama tois aisthêtois pathesi kai ton rhythmon
apodôsei].”
43. “legomen dê genos hen ti tôn ontôn tên ousian, tautês de to men hôs hylên, ho kath’ hauto
men ouk esti tode ti, heteron de morphên kai eidos, kath’ hên êdê legetai tode ti, kai triton to ek
toutôn.”
44. “ousiai de malist’ einai dokousi ta sômata, kai toutôn ta physika. tauta gar tôn allôn
arkhai. tôn de physikôn ta men ekhei zôên, ta d’ ouk ekhei. zôên de legomen tên di’ autou trophên
te kai auxêsin kai phthisin. hôste pan sôma physikon metekhon zôês ousia an eiê, ousia d’ houtôs
hôs synthetê. epei d’ esti soma toionde, zôên gar ekhon, ouk an eiê to soma psykhê. ou gar esti tôn
kath’ hypokeimenou to soma, mallon d’ hôs hypokeimenon kai hylê.”
45. Later, Aristotle implies that there is an important exception to the requirement of
nutrition and generation for sharing in life: “is [potentiality to absorb food] can exist
apart from the others, but the others cannot [exist apart] from this in mortal beings” (DA
II, 2, 413a31– 33; emphasis mine). See also the famous passage about the immortal and
everlasting in DA III, 5, 430a23.
46. See also PA II, 10, 655b32– 33.
47. Ph. II, 1, 193a31, 193b2.
48. For the same example, see Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 26.
49. Metaph. IX, 8, 1050b28– 30. See also Lang, 1998: 10– 11.
50. For the relation between the locomotion and shape of fiery beings in the sublunar
sphere, see Mete. I, 4.
51. Metaph. VII, 16, 1040b5ff. Compare the structure of fire and that of living beings
with Aristotle’s distinction between simple plots and complex plots in the Poetics, and his
doctrines of the unity, length, and structure of tragedy (Po., 6, 7, 8, 10; esp. 8, 1451a34–36).
52. We are well aware that we have skipped one step between elements and organs: the
distinction between uniform and nonuniform parts. Yet this distinction does not contrib-
ute to our main goal of understanding the inherence of logos first in nature as such, and
now, more specifically, in living beings. So let me refer the reader to, for instance, PA II, 2ff.
– 231
53. Heraclitus, Fr. 115.
54. See also GC II, 6, 334a9– 15.
55. Even mixture in an inorganic level involves more than any percentage. e follow-
ing passage on mixture by Dorothea Frede is extremely close to the Heraclitean idea of
self- opposition (she even talks about “mutual tuning,” 2004: 305) and to our claim that
the fundamental meaning of logos is a relation between terms that preserves them together
in their difference instead of collapsing one term to the other or holding them in indif-
ference: “If one ingredient overpowers the other, there will be no mixture, but only an
increase in the bulk of the predominant element. us a drop of wine does not mix with
ten thousand pints of water but loses its form and merges entirely with water. Only if the
ingredients are somehow equal in power can there be mixture. In that case there is change
in both constituents, but neither will turn into the other. Instead, the mutual change will
result in a dominant state (kratoun) that is ‘in between and common’ (metaxu kai koinon)
to both. Given that mixables must be able to affect each other, there must be a basic op-
position (enantiôsis) between them” (Frede, 2004: 295; emphasis mine). Mixture is indeed
one of the most interesting and intriguing questions in GC, and became an intense topic
of discussion through Alexander of Aphrodisias.
56. Metaph. VII, 16, 1040b5– 16.
57. For the close affinity between concocting, digestion and growth, and even maturing,
see GA I, 1, 715b24; II, 6, 743a31ff.; I, 12, 719a34.
58. See, for instance, later in Euclid, Elements, Book V, definition 3: “Ratio [logos] is a
certain type of condition [skhesis] with respect to the size of two magnitudes of the same
kind” (Euclid, 2007: 291).
59. See also PA I, 1, 621a138– 144. For the genesis of the Aristotelian idea that the soul
is a harmony, see Jaeger, 1950: 39ff.
60. It is not entirely clear to me whether toutôn refers to “logos and synthesis” or is an ap-
position to “tôn mikhthentôn.” is will not affect our argument, since we will argue that if
the soul is a logos, it is not a logos as the quantitative percentage of ingredients.
61. Of course, Aristotle’s major text on mixture is GC, especially I, 10 and II, 6, but also
I, 5– 6. In I, 10, Aristotle resolves problems arising from explaining change by appealing to
the distinction between action and passion, and potentiality and actuality: “Neither the art
of healing nor health make health by mixing bodies” (GC I, 10, 328a22– 23).
62. I take it that this same point is made in Metaph. VII, 17 and VIII, 3.
63. For flesh as logos, see also Averroès, 1998: 91, 249.
64. In this last sentence, On Generation and Corruption may be gesturing toward the
spectacular character of nature and life in Aristotle’s philosophy. e same text also ex-
plicitly identifies the work of the natural scientist as theôrein in the sense of watching. For,
those who argue that all change happens between like beings and those who argue that it
happens between unlike beings oppose one another simply because, “while it is necessary
to watch [theôrêsai] a whole, they happened to express a part” (GC I, 7, 323b18– 19). (For a
similar methodological point, see Pol. III, 9, 1280a9; Ph. III, 6, 206a13; IV, 9, 217b20– 23;
II, 2, 194b11; I, 2, 186a1.)
65. Metaph. VII, 16, 1040b5– 10.
66. See also Metaph. XII, 7, 1072b3, 26, GC II, 10, 336b25– 337a7, and EE I, 5,
1216a11– 14: “Now they say that Anaxagoras was questioned with respect to such prob-
lems and asked why one should choose to be born rather than not; he said ‘for the sake of
theôrêsai the heaven and the order around the whole kosmos. ’ ”
232 –
67. See also Long, 2011: 18; Labarrière, 2004: 179.
68. Ph. III, 1, 200b33– 34.
69. DA III, 13, 435b2; II, 12, 424b1.
Chapter 4
1. DA II, 2, 413a26– 413b1; HA VIII, 1, 588b24– 25.
2. “You ought to remember that you are a human being— not only in living well, but
also in doing philosophy” (On the Good, Fragment 1, in Aristotle, 1955: 113). See Aris-
totle’s comparison of the skeptic aspiring to reject the principle of non- contradiction to
a “plant” (Metaph. IV, 4, 1006a15). Later in this chapter, we will have the opportunity to
interpret this characterization in a way more subtle and philosophical than as an expres-
sion of sheer meanness against the skeptic (see pp. 100–101 in this volume).
3. DK22A9 cited in Aristotle’s PA I, 5, 645a22– 23.
4. See also On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death 1, 467b23– 26; DA II, 2, 413a21ff.;
PA II, 10, 655b28ff.
5. For the sake of sheer consistency, here we shall translate alloiôsis by “alteration” and
pathos by “affection.”
6. is point is nicely put by Heidegger: “Were our hearing primarily and always only
this picking up and transmitting of sounds, conjoined by several other processes, the result
would be that the reverberation would go in one ear and out the other. at happens in
fact when we are not gathered to what is addressed” (Heidegger, 1984: 64– 65).
7. Again Heidegger puts it nicely: “We hear when we are ‘all ears’ ” (Heidegger, 1984:
65).
8. For logos as “health,” see Nussbaum, 1994: 49ff. Compare Polyphemus’s use of logos as
“remedy” in section 3 of the conclusion to this book.
9. See Burnyeat, 2002: 28– 90.
10. Brentano, 1977: 54– 55.
11. To put it in contemporary terms: “How exactly the senses acquire the appropriate
content or provide the appropriate information to the rational capacities without becom-
ing colored is the Aristotelian analogue of a problem that troubles modern researchers,
namely, how the non- representational, non- computational sensory system can provide in-
formation which the computational brain can access” (Silverman, 1989: 279).
12. For Aristotle’s classical refutation of the Megaric view that reduces all potentiality
to actuality, see again Metaph. IX, 3.
13. For another instance of wax being used as a metaphor of receptivity, see DA III,
12, 435a2–10; On Memory and Recollection I, 44931– 450b1; and also Plato, eaetetus
190E5– 196C5.
14. DA II, 5, 417b23; APo. I, 31.
15. APo. I, 31, 88a3– 5; II, 19; DA II, 5, 417a30– 417b2; perhaps also Metaph. I, 1
981a1–7.
16. For sight, see GA V, 1, 780a22– 25; for hearing see DA II, 8, 420a9– 12; for touch,
see DA III, 13, 435a21– b3.
17. See HA VIII, 1, 588b27– 31 and Balme’s note in Aristotle, 1991.
18. For the distinction between two senses of logos in order to account for Aristotle’s
understanding of sensation beyond the dilemma of a literal, purely physicalist reading
(which reduces sensation to “physical change”) and of a non- physicalist interpretation, see
Bradshaw, 1997: 143– 61.
– 233
19. See also DA II, 11, 424a3– 7; III, 2, 426b10– 23; III, 3, 427a17– 21; III, 9, 432a15– 17;
APo. II, 19, 99b35; Top. II, 4, 111a16; Mete. IV, 4, 382a16– 20; MA 6, 700b20; Protrepticus
(in Aristotle, 2015: 26). See also Narcy, 1996: 239– 56; Bradshaw, 1997: 146.
20. Barbara Cassin claims that the challenger of the principle can exempt himself from
being refuted in face of his own contradiction because he is precisely laying claim to his
right to contradiction. But, if I am understanding Cassin correctly, in his claim to his right,
the challenger cannot appeal to the principle since he must distinguish being granted this
right and being refused it. Aristotle’s point seems to be that the challenger cannot lay claim
to anything, be it the claim to contradiction. “To destroy a logos, one stays behind [hypome-
nei] a logos” (Metaph. IV, 4, 1006a26). e challenger cannot pragmatically refuse to engage
in the “dialectical game” either, because refusal is commitment. e challenger can only
imitate a vegetative state (Cassin, 1997: 13). See also Lear, 1980: 103– 14: “But Aristotle is
not arguing with a vegetable. He is arguing with someone who can present a coherent, if
fallacious, argument for the falsity of the law of non- contradiction” (194).
21. DA III, 12, 434b18.
22. See also Aristotle’s example of a shield struck by a spear in DA II, 11, 423b12– 17.
23. e terms “distant sensation” and “sensation of time” are not stretches of the Aris-
totelian terminology. He in fact names this anticipatory sensation “proaisthêsis” (De Sensu
1, 436b21), and insists, as we shall see, that some animals have a “sensation of time”— all
functions of the “common sensory power” (DA III, 10, 433b8; see also On Memory and
Recollection 2, 452b8; see Labarrière, 2004: 179– 80).
24. PA II, 10, 656a27– 28; De Sensu 2, 439a2– 5; MA 11, 703b22– 23.
25. See also DA II, 2, 413b24– 25; III, 9, 432b29– 30.
26. AT, VII, 29.11– 18; AT, IX, 23.
27. is latter is characterized in almost complete opposition to what we understand from
imagination today; far from being a capricious, disinterested, arbitrary, or creative fancy of
the mind, phantasia here is fundamentally interested; it is primarily fused with desire.
28. Let us note that this famous expression is not found in Aristotle. See Labarrière,
2004: 195ff; Morel, 2003: 80– 89.
29. For the “universal premise of desire” see also Nussbaum, 1994: 81.
30. e reason why Aristotle puts the question of motion and action in terms of the
continuity and intermittence of nous is presumably that he has in mind some opinions,
such as that of Anaxagoras, according to which nous would be the arkhê of all.
31. DA III, 10, 433b26; 9, 432b29– 31.
32. DA II, 5, 417b2022– 23; III, 11, 434a16– 21; APo. I, 31, 87b28ff; NE VII, 5,
1147a25– 26.
33. See the eight occurrences of the word or its cognates in MA 8. Cf. Sorabji, 1993: 40.
34. MA 7, 701a9; DA III, 11, 434a7– 10.
35. DA III, 11, 434a18; NE VII, 3, 1147a27, 35; MA 7, 701a32, 33.
36. DA III, 10, 433b6; III, 11, 434a17; NE VII, 3, 1147b1ff.
37. APo. II, 19, 100a1– 6. It is this disambiguation of logos that seems to be lacking in
Lee and Long, 2007: 348– 67.
38. Metaph. I, 1, 981a12– 23.
Chapter 5
1. See also Rh. II, 6, 1384a23– 25; EE II, 1, 1219b27– 1220a11.
2. See also GA II, 1, 731b18ff.
234 –
3. Pol. I, 3, 1256b10– 15; VII, 12, 1332a38ff.
4. Berti, 1990: 261– 62.
5. David Konstan translates this phrase as “it ‘is heeding of it’ ” (Aspasius, 2006: 37).
Richard Bodéüs nicely notes about this passage: “La même expression ambiguë (logon
echein) sert en grec dans les deux cas: (a) pour dire qu’une partie de l’âme ‘rend compte de’
quelque chose (et est ainsi rationnelle en elle- même) et (b) pour dire qu’une autre partie
‘tient compte’ de quelque chose (et est ainsi rationnelle par participation)” (Aristotle, 2004:
98). See also Sorabji, 1993: 69– 70.
6. But compare a few lines later, NE I, 13, 1103a2, where only the “father” appears.
7. See, for instance, H. Rackham’s translation: “in the sense in fact which we speak of
‘paying heed’ to one’s father and friends” (Aristotle, 1926: 67).
8. See, for instance, the rendering of W. D. Ross: “this is the sense in which we speak
of ‘taking account’ of one’s father or one’s friends” (Aristotle, 1966). Sachs also prefers
the disjunction: “In the same way too we call listening to one’s father or friends ‘being
rational’ ” (Aristotle, 2002: 21). In his commentary, Sparshott seems to be clearly aware
of Aristotle’s reference to the relation and possible conflicts between family and the state
(Sparshott, 1994: 28).
9. In this regard, we are quite in line with Baracchi’s approach (Baracchi, 2007: 175– 79).
10. For the complications arising from the practical syllogism in the case of humans,
see also Sparshott, 1994: 7.
11. is intermediary part brings to mind many passages from the Platonic corpus such
as Republic IV, 439E3– 441C3; Timaeus 70A5; Phaedrus 253D8.
12. For Aristotle’s analysis of ekhein, see Metaph. V, 23; Cat. 15. As we shall see, these
two analyses will prove to be insufficient for understanding ekhein in this context.
13. NE I, 13, 1102a30– 34; DA I, 5, 411a24– 411b31.
14. Dodds points out how the irrational part of the soul became gradually neglected
after Aristotle (Dodds, 1951: 239).
15. NE I, 13, 1102b26, 31, 33.
16. See also Pol. VII, 13, 1333a16– 18.
17. See also HA IV, 9, 536b3– 5; Prob. 11, 898b34– 899a4.
18. is word means “language,” “dialect,” “accent,” and even “speech” in Aristotle as
well as in Hippocrates and others. (See Zirin, 1980: 339.) Here, however, it cannot but
mean “idiom” in a very loose sense, which Aristotle mentions in the following sentence:
“Inanimate beings never utter voice, but are said only by resemblance to do so, just like a
flute, a lyre or any other inanimate being that has a musical compass, tune and dialekton”
(DA II, 8, 420b6– 8). Accordingly, Hett translates dialektos here as “modulation.”
19. For a contemporary discussion of nightingales, see Anderson, 2013: 30. For plas-
ticity, see Anderson, 2013: 19; Langues, Petri, Nespor, and Scharff, 2013: 228. For later
Greek attitudes toward bird “language,” see Sorabji, 1993: 80.
20. GA V, 2, 781a26– 30; Rh. I, 11, 1371b8– 9; III, 9, 1409b1ff.; III, 10, 1410b15ff; see
also the non- Aristotelian On ings Heard 800a29– 31.
21. For a similar connection between eikasia and syllogismos, see On Memory and Recol-
lection 1, 450b20ff.
22. Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 25. A similar remark occurs in Metaph. I, 1,
981a27– 981b5.
23. “Logos” article I.4, in LSJ, 1996: 1057. See also Guthrie, 1979: 419– 25; Herodotus,
2.85, 7.5; eon of Smyrna, 1878: 72– 74.
– 235
24. After a lengthy and sometimes quite detailed survey of human education that will
spill into book VIII, the triad “nature,” “habit,” and “logos” is taken up again in the context
of education in Pol. VII, 13, 1334b5. See also NE X, 9, 1179b21ff.
25. Berti, 1990: 261.
26. For the idea that “learning” (mathêsis) is only one part of education (paideia), see
Politics VII, VIII, and especially Pol. VII, 15, 1336a24ff.
27. I am sympathetic to Joe Sachs’s remarks on hexis. Yet his rendering of it as “active
condition” unduly associates the term with activity. I am trying to emphasize that hexis is
an “included middle” beyond the false dilemma of activity and passivity (Aristotle, 2002:
xii).
28. For ekhein, see Metaph. V, 23, and Cat. 15. e analysis of hexis in Metaph. V, 27,
is promising, but excessively cryptic and elusive. In fact, the most informative passage on
hexis we have encountered in the corpus is Ph. VII, 3, 247b1– 18. We shall discuss this
passage shortly.
29. For an example of human love, see section 2 of the conclusion to this book.
30. DA II, 3, 414b4– 7; also see II, 2, 413b24– 25; III, 9, 432b29– 30.
31. See NE VI, 3, 1139b32; VI, 4, 1140a11. For the connection between art, action, and
truth, see Roochnik, 2004: 144– 48.
32. Politics VII and VIII. Most specifically, see the extremely detailed discussion of
music in education starting at 1339a11 and that runs all the way to the end of the Politics.
See also, indeed, Plato, Republic II, VI and VII.
33. “Everybody somehow seems to divine that virtue is a certain hexis, a hexis according
to phronêsis. But this must be slightly modified: Virtue is a hexis not only according to
orthos logos, but with logos” (NE VI, 13, 1144b24– 28).
34. Metaph. I, 1.
35. Pellegrin, 2009: 107– 8; my translation.
36. For the distinction between suppression and virtue, see also Nussbaum, 1994: 82,
93.
37. Chantraine,1984: 625; Heidegger, 1984: 60; 1959: 123– 79; Hoffmann, 2003: 27– 53.
38. It is important not to confuse a two- way capacity (with logos) with two one- way
capacities (without logos). See Makin, 2000: 147– 48.
39. I grant that the function of Socrates’s daimôn must be taken into account here.
40. For the alogos character of desire as such, see again DA III, 11, 434a12– 15. For the
alogos character of nous as such, see NE VI, 8, 1142a26– 27; VI, 11, 1143a36– 1143b1; for
the superhuman character of nous, see also NE X, 7, 1177b30ff.; VI, 7, 1141b1– 3.
41. is is why the couple potentiality/actuality cannot and certainly should not be
thought as mapping on to passivity/activity. During a concert, the guitarist, the guitar,
the audience, and even, or most of all the compositor, are all at- work, in actuality— except
if one is distracted or in mere routine. For Aristotle’s analysis of passive actualities, see
Metaph. IX, 2; also see the Protrepticus: “when some one word means each of two things
[the potential sense and the actual sense], and one of the two is so called either by acting or
being acted on, we shall attribute the term as applying more to this one [the actual sense]”
(Aristotle, Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 26; emphasis mine).
42. MacIntyre is driven to ask and answer very similar questions about the problem of
portraying virtue and vice (MacIntyre, 2013: 207, 220).
43. See, for instance, Carroll, 1984: 35– 56; and Rousseau, 1962: 149– 56.
236 –
Chapter 6
1. Pol. VII, 12, 1332b5– 6; NE IX, 9, 1169b20– 21; EE II, 8, 1224b30. But see also NE
VIII, 12, 1162a15– 25. For the power of speech as a human “privilege” and foundation of
community, see also the “Hymn to Logos” in Isocrates, Nicocles or the Cyprians 3.5– 9; also
15.253, 15.273, 4.48ff.; Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.3.11ff.
2. As will be seen in this part of the book, I talk about “double articulation” (or “duality
of patterning”) because I find the idea and even the term (diarthrôsis) in Aristotle. Never-
theless I am indeed aware of its immediate connotations in twentieth- century linguistics.
See also Labarrière, 2004: 27ff.
3. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I adopt neither Balme’s translation of
“phônê” as “hum,” nor D’Arcy Wentworth ompson’s as “sound,” nor Barthélemy Saint-
Hilaire’s and Tricot’s as “son.”
4. See Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia XI, 10, (p. 432 Littré), who represents the
hive like a camp of soldiers under most severe and wise orders. Virgil also talks about an
arguably similar sound made in the evening, followed by the bees’ murmuring around the
edges and threshold of the hive (Georgics IV, 188; see also ll. 71– 72). Earlier, in HA IV, 8,
534b16– 17, Aristotle makes a more general, but less clear- cut point: “e Cephalopods,
the Crustacea and the Insects possess all the senses; all, for indeed they possess [sight and]
both smell and taste.” e bracketed words are omitted by Wimmer in Aubert and Wim-
mer’s edition, as approved by A. L. Peck.
5. On Int. 9; Metaph. III, 2, 996b26– 30; 7, 1011b26– 27; IV, 4.
6. Metaph. IV, 3, 1005b19– 20ff.
7. Balme, 1962: 91.
8. Balme translates tôi krotôi paraphrastically as “the sound of a rattle,” ompson as “a
rattling noise,” Barthélemy Saint- Hilaire and Tricot as “bruit.” Compare Pliny the Elder,
Naturalis Historia XI, 22 (p. 438 Littré).
9. With a view to our later discussion of psophos, let us remark that here psêphois, “coun-
ters,” appears in some manuscripts as psophois, “sounds” or “noises,” and this reading is
supported by some Latin translations. See Balme’s footnote on his translation of HA IX,
40, 627a18.
10. Esti mentoi adêlon holôs ei akouousin, to which Balme adds the object “it,” standing
for the “sound of a rattle.” e sentence is translated quite differently by ompson (“it
is uncertain, however, whether or not they can hear the noise at all...”), Saint- Hilaire
(“Toutefois on ne sait pas du tout si elles ont la faculté de l’ouïe, ou si elles ne l’ont pas”), and
Tricot (“On n’a pu encore déterminer toutefois d’une manière absolue si elles possèdent
ou non le sens de l’ouïe”). Balme’s footnote explains his emendation: “In the context the
question seems to be, not generally whether bees are deaf, but whether they hear this sound
at a distance...” In any case, he takes this passage to conflict with Metaph. I, 1, 980b23.
11. It is interesting to see that recent bee research seems to agree with Aristotle on the
ambiguity of bee hearing in general, but also with his skepticism about the possibility of
summoning bees by beating implements like pots: “Bees make various sounds— for ex-
ample, the piping of virgin queens as they prepare to emerge from their cells, the warbling
of the nurse- bees when they are producing more ‘bee- milk’ than can be consumed by the
larval bees, and the hissing of the workers when the wall of the hive is knocked— and
these are all produced by the exhalation of air from the spiracles (or lung valves) on the
thorax. e wing- beat frequency of the hive, if detectable, is an excellent warning system
– 237
indicating the imminence of a swarm... But bees have no known auditory equipment
beyond the ability to sense surface motion and the oscillation of air- borne particles, and
the purpose of these utterances is so far unknown. us, various extremely ancient and
persistent superstitions about ‘tanging’ the bees (calling them by beating on metal imple-
ments) are almost certainly meaningless” (Preston, 2006: 21).
12. In cases of “homonyms” in Aristotle’s terms, this ambiguity is not always philo-
sophically interesting, given that names are conventional according to him (On Int. 2,
16a26– 29; 4, 16b33– 17a2), especially if the two beings in question are mere namesakes
such as a worker “bee” and a spelling “bee.” Yet, there is a middle ground between trivial
multivocity and downright univocity: in philosophically interesting cases of ambiguity,
like that of “being,” “life,” and “good” according to Aristotle, the word in question refers
neither to one single being or kind, nor has an arbitrary manifold of meanings. is point
is nicely made in Shields, 1999. See also Ward, 2008.
13. “Akouein... meaning to hear from, learn from, take[s] the genitive of the actual
source” (Smyth, 1920: 324). But compare Cael. I, 11, 281a22.
14. “To hear a thing is usually akouein ti when the thing heard is something definite and
when the meaning is simply hear, not listen to” (Smyth, 1920: 324). A typical example of
this accusative use of akouein in Aristotle may be the following: “So, what you have hear,
you can utter [hôsth’ ho êkouse, tout’ eipein]” (GA V, 2, 781a30).
15. Jaulin and Duminil are the exception, since they translate psophos here as “bruit,”
unlike their predecessors, Cousin, Saint- Hilaire, Pierron and Zevort, and Tricot, who ren-
der it as “sons.” Similarly, Ross and Barnes translate it as “sounds,” William of Moerbeke
as “sonus.”
16. De Sensu 2, 438b20. See also the non- Aristotelian On ings Heard 800a1ff.
17. e striking object and the object struck may seem to be identical as in a bell, but
it is we who detect or rather impose such an identity through our concept of an “object.”
e ringing bell is not one undifferentiated entity any more than two clapping hands are.
A bell has a necessary internal differentiation, functionally interconnected parts, that is,
“organs,” an unmoving part and a moving one very much like articulations in the bodies
of animals capable of locomotion (MA 1, 698a15ff.). e parts of the water that stir up
one another and thereby emit the roaring of a tide, taken by themselves, are external to
one another. Even in the snapping of fingers taken as pure sound, the palm is precisely
used as something external to the fingers. In short, sound is a shock, a stroke, that is, the
effect of a motion against another motion. A human being may put these two motions in a
certain order by understanding a strictly mathematical proportion (logoi) between them in
a Pythagorean or Platonic way. We saw in chapter 4 how Aristotle himself compares the
destruction of the logos of a sense organ to the destruction of the harmony of a lyre (DA
II, 12, 424a29– 33; De Sensu VII, 448a9).
18. Compare the case of touch in DA III, 13, 435a21– b3, or the case of sight: “e sight
of the eye which is intermediate between too much and too little liquid is the best, for it
has neither too little so as to be disturbed and hinder the movement of the colors, nor too
much so as to cause difficulty of movement” (GA V, 1, 780a22– 25).
19. De Sensu I, 437a10.
20. DA III, 2, 426a8ff.; III, 3, 427a19; APo. II, 19, 99b35– 36.
21. Compare De Sensu 2, 438a13– 17, b5– 16, where Aristotle says that vision requires
that the pupil or eye- jelly be transparent.
22. See also Georgin, 1961: 871: “psophos: BRUIT; son.”
238 –
23. DA II, 8, 420b29; and HA IV, 9, 535b31. LSJ, s.v. “psophos.”
24. Warrington suggests that ants are among these unnamed species, and refers to PA
II, 4, 650b26 (Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. and trans. John Warrington [London: J. M. Dent
and Sons, 1956], 51, n. 2). Yet the mentioned PA passage suggests no more than that ants
and bees have a more intelligent [synetôteran] soul than some blooded animals. On the
other hand, Asclepius gives the following examples, none of which are Aristotelian: “e
dog, the parrot, the horse, the donkey, etc.” (Asclepius, in Brandis, Scholia Graeca in Aris-
totelis Metaphysica [Berlin: Berolini Typis Academicis, 1837], 552).
25. As mentioned before, this word means “language,” “dialect,” “accent,” and even
“speech” in Aristotle as well as in Hippocrates and others. (See Zirin, 1980: 339.) Here,
however, it cannot but mean “idiom” in a very loose sense, which Aristotle mentions in the
following sentence: “Inanimate beings never utter voice, but are said only by resemblance
to do so, just like a flute, a lyre, or any other inanimate being that has a musical compass,
tune and dialekton” (DA II, 8, 420b6– 8). Accordingly, Hett translates dialektos here as
“modulation.”
26. See also PA II, 17, 660a35– 660b2; and GA V, 2, 781a26– 28: “Learning [mathêsis]
of things said happens in such a way that one can repeat what is heard [antiphtheggesthai
to akousthen].” One of the major passages concerning the role of imitation in learning ac-
cording to Aristotle is indeed Po. 4, 48b4– 28. See chapter 5, section 1 above.
27. See also the passage just quoted, HA IV, 9, 536b14– 18: “Among small birds, some
when singing send forth a different voice [phônên] from their parents, if they have been
reared away from the nest and have listened to other birds singing.”
28. In the Pseudo- Aristotelian Problems, it is said that withholding breath sharpens
hearing as well, “this is why in hunting they recommend one not to breathe” (Prob. 11,
903b34– 36, 904b11– 14).
29. PA II, 17, 660a29– 660b2; DA III, 13, 435b25.
30. In Cael. II, 9, 290b12ff., one can see that Aristotle is sensitive to the difference
between a sound (psophos) and a voice (phônê) when he first uses the traditional term “sym-
phonia” in discussing the Pythagorean/Platonic “harmony of spheres” of stars, but then
reverts to his own perhaps corrected term: “sound” (psophos).
31. As in the case at hand, analogous features occur between genera, like feathers of
birds and scales of fish, whereas different species of the same genus exhibit features that
differ by the “more- and- less,” like birds having long feathers and birds with short feath-
ers. “In distinguishing extensive kinds from one another, this term [analogous structures]
usually refers to a relationship between structures which at a very abstract level perform a
similar function for their possessors, but do so by different means, and are not structural
variations on a common theme, i.e. are not open to more/less comparison” (Lennox, 1987:
341n). See also Balme’s introduction to his translation of History of Animals VII– X, p. 16.
32. Although Aristotle does not himself use the word analogon for the buzz and its
physiology, our usage of the word here is warranted by his canonical account of analogon
in PA I, 5, 645b8– 21, where counterparts of lung are associated with the lung in terms of
their functions (praxeis... koinas).
33. Aristotle does not have more than one line to talk about antennae or “horns” (HA
IV, 7, 532a26– 27).
34. It is this sound that has been metaphorically named a “song,” “hum,” or “murmur,”
and imitated musically. “But whether ‘bee dance’ is a charming misnomer or not, bees re-
ally do seem to sing. e variations in pitch produced by the irregular flight of a foraging
– 239
worker bee— the ‘slender sound’ and ‘faint utterance’ which Wordsworth remembered had
accompanied ‘ages coming, ages gone,’ the sound of summer days which William Cullen
Bryant imagined as a murmuring wind, and Emerson as a ‘mellow breezy bass’— is re-
produced by Rimsky- Korsakov’s famous ‘e Flight of the Bumble Bee’ ” (Preston, 2006:
110– 11).
35. See also Po. 1, 1447a20– 1447b2.
36. For a discussion, see Labarrière, 2004: 23– 26.
37. Pol. I, 1, 1252a. For information on the behavioral function of tympanal hearing
in insects, without, unfortunately, any mention of honeybees, see Hoy and Robert, 1996:
439– 41; Hoy, 1998: 1– 17.
38. See chapter 4 of Darwin, 1998.
39. Note that all we are claiming is that bees do not hear “noise” while they are capable
of hearing a counterpart of voice. We are indeed not claiming, and do not need to claim,
that birds are incapable of hearing voice according to Aristotle (which is not true). Just to
mention a striking example: “all [birds] use their tongues also as a means of interpretation
[pros hermêneian] with one another, and some to a larger degree than other, so that there
even seems to be learning [mathêsin] among some” (PA II, 17, 660a35– 660b2). Compare
HA IX, 40, 626b4, which states that the young bees make combs roughly “out of igno-
rance” (anepistêmosynên). See also Labarrière, 2004.
40. LSJ, s.v. akouein, A.II.2. Many other languages, including Turkish, English, Latin,
and Arabic, associate the idea of “listening” directly to that of “obeying.” One striking
example of this kind of “voice” is found in Aristotle’s remark that, when an elephant is
subdued in fight, he “really becomes a slave [douloutai iskhyrôs] and is won over by the
voice” (tên tou nikêsantos phônên) of the winner (HA IX, 1, 610a17).
41. at the head bee is female was not suggested until 1586 (Preston, 2006: 169).
Despite its some questionnable inferences, see also Byl, 1978: 17.
42. See also Plato, Statesman 301E. For more information, see my article “Aristotle at
Work: Method in Generation of Animals, III, 10,” Epoché, especially footnote 52 (forth-
coming in 2017).
43. Contrast the lazy, irascible, annoying, and careless attitude of drones in HA V, 22,
553b12; IX, 40, 624b16, 28; 625a15– 33; 625b1– 6; 626a14– 15.
44. We should note that, to our knowledge, there is only one Aristotelian passage that
threatens our interpretation: “Hearing is of the differences between sounds only, [it is] of
the differences between voices for a few” (De Sensu 1, 437a10– 11).
45. Similarly, a note by Daniel J. Castellano interprets the Metaphysics passage as indi-
cating not that bees are deaf as such, but that they are “unable to understand the sound
they hear”— which is John McMahon’s translation that Castellano quotes and supports
albeit not without reservations (http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/aristotlebees.
htm). Yet Castellano’s argument does not provide much textual evidence and does not
distinguish, for that matter, between “sound,” “noise,” “voice,” and “buzz.”
46. Before moving on to the next chapter, it may be of some interest to compare our
conclusions about Aristotle’s remarks concerning bee communication with twentieth-
century research on bees, especially Karl von Frisch’s following notes: “Sound waves borne
by the air are not perceived by bees, and... hence they cannot hear in the customary sense.
In this respect bees differ from grasshoppers, cicadas, and many other insects that, by
means of drumlike structures, are able to perceive sounds... Kröning (1925) tried in vain
to train bees to tones. Hansson (1945) conducted training experiments too, with better
240 –
technique but with no better results” (Frisch, 1993: 285). Yet, Frisch also notes a positive
outcome: the “piping” and “quacking” of the queens are heard. “According to Simpson
(1964) the tones— like those in the workers’ tail- wagging dance— are produced by the
flight musculature and conveyed to the substrate by pressing the thorax against it” (Frisch,
1993: 287). Frisch concludes: “us the ancient concepts of a ‘language of sounds’ among
bees belong in the realm of fantasy. ere is indeed communication by means of sounds,
but it is a most primitive kind.” Most importantly, in the concluding retrospective section
of his book, Frisch states that the famous “bee dance” is accompanied or emphasized by
buzz: “[e tail- wagging dance] is emphasized sharply by the tail- wagging movements
and by a buzzing noise— the greater the distance the longer the duration of the tail wag-
ging and the accompanying sound during each run” (Frisch, 1993: 524). In more recent re-
search, James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould state that the forager’s buzzing at a 280Hz
frequency, along its famous waggle- dance, indicates the distance to resources. ey also
add that, unlike the case in human language, local characteristics are genetic in honeybees.
If German bee larvae are carried to hives in Italy, they will grow up to “speak German”
and cause confusion in their new hives. (See chapter 5 of Gould and Gould, 1994. For
more recent work, see http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/bee_dance_2.htm; W. H.
Kirchner, “Acoustical Communication in Honeybees,” Apidologie, no. 24 [1993]: 297– 307;
Eileen Crist, “Can an Insect Speak? e Case of the Honeybee Dance Language,” Social
Studies of Science 34, no. 1 [February 2004]: 7– 43.) Compare Sorabji’s discussion of the
idea that Polish horses may not learn English (Sorabji, 1993: 82).
More relevant to our purposes, bees’ inability to relay messages is suggested by Karl von
Frisch (Frisch, 1993: 43, 55– 56). is has been underlined by Benveniste: “ere is no
indication, for example, that a bee goes off to another hive with the message it has received
in its own hive. is would constitute a kind of transmission or relay” (Benveniste, 1971:
53). Finally, Deleuze and Guattari have noticed the significance of this feature: “Ben-
veniste denies that the bee has language, even though it has an organic coding process and
even uses tropes. It has no language because it can communicate what it has seen but not
transmit what has been communicated to it” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 77).
47. LSJ, s.v. akouein, A.II.3 and A.IV.
48. GA V, 7, 786b22; Prob. 11, 898b31. See also Cat. 4b34– 35.
49. See also Prob. 11, 905a30– 34; and HA IV, 9, 535a27– b5; 536a32– 536b4.
50. On Int. 2, 16a19– 21; Po. 20, 1457a10– 12; Prob. 10, 895a4– 14. Most significantly,
the sounds of “beasts” are characterized as agrammatoi in On Int. 2, 16a27.
51. DA II, 8, 420b27– 29; HA IV, 9, 535a27– 29.
52. For the role of the mouth, see PA III, 1, 662a17– 27; for that of teeth, see GA V, 8,
788b3– 6; PA III, 1, 661b1– 17; for that of the larynx, see HA IV, 9, 535a27– b2; for the
role of the pitch of voice, see GA V, 7, 786b19– 22; finally, for the function of the tongue
and lips, see PA II, 16, 659b27– 660a8; DA II, 8, 420b18– 23; III, 13, 435b25– 26; On Res-
piration 11, 476a19– 20. For a general critical discussion of “Man as Model in Aristotle’s
Zoology,” see Lloyd, 1983: 27– 35.
53. On Int. 1, 16a5– 6. See also Prob. 10, 895a4– 14. In this sense, even birds have differ-
ent “languages” (dialektoi): “Both voices and languages [hai phônai kai hai dialektoi] differ
according to locality. us, voice clearly differs according to its high or low pitch, but
its form [eidos] does not differ within one kind; on the other hand, articulated [en tois
arthrois] voice, which one might describe as a language [dialekton], differs in different
animals, and also within one and the same kind of animal according to locality: thus, some
– 241
partridges cackle, others make a shrill noise. Among small birds, while singing some utter
a different voice than their parents if they have been reared away from the nest and have
heard other birds sing” (HA IV, 9, 536b8– 17).
54. e situation becomes even more complex if one takes the semivowels into account,
as Aristotle does in Po. 20, 1456b24– 34. is lengthy argument concerning the crucial dif-
ference between logos and animal communication may be best contrasted with Porphyry’s
arguments in On Abstinence from Animal Food 3.3– 6. See Sorabji, 1993: 82ff.
55. On Int. 2, 16a19– 21; Po. 20, 1457a10– 12; Prob. 10, 895a4– 14.
56. GA II, 6, 744b11; HA VII, 3, 583b23. For “adiarthôtos,” see also HA VI, 30, 579a24.
Already Socrates denies articulation to animals (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.4.12). I do not
agree with Sorabji’s rendering of diarthrôsis as “segmentation of utterance” and his associa-
tion of this with dialektos (Sorabji, 1993: 81).
57. Even though not as extensively as stoikheia, the grammata are often used as basic
components of more complex structures, including organic ones, for instance in the Pro-
trepticus: “For whether it is fire or air or number or any other natures that are causes and
first principles of other things, it would be impossible to be ignorant of these things and
to recognize any of the other things; for how could anyone either be familiar with speech
[logos] who was ignorant of syllables, or have knowledge of these who understand nothing
of the letter?” (Protrepticus in Aristotle, 2015: 12). e parallelism between the organic
body and linguistic units is a fascinating question that has tempted many, including, most
prominently, Plato, Darwin, and Saussure.
58. DA II, 4, 416a10– 18. See also On Breath 9, 485b18: “Fire exhibits differences with
respect to more and less.”
59. e material of logos is not as “raw” as one might think, just as the uniform parts of
the animal body are not mere elements. See particularly PA II, 2ff.
60. Compare Plato, eaetetus 202B. See Brague, 1978: 174.
61. Metaph. III, 2, 998a24– 26; I, 9, 993a4– 10.
62. For the sake of convenience, we are leaving aside the level of syllables. “e syllable
is a meaningless voice, composed out of an unvoiced letter and a voiced one” (Po. 20,
1456b34– 35). us, before being meaningful, letters are put into cooperation by center-
periphery relations between vowels and consonants. Indeed, a syllable (“ah”) may well
correspond to a meaningful unit on its own as a sigh, but not as a syllable— any more than
a letter as such would be meaningful.
63. Compare Bonitz, 1955: 813, which does not seem be of much help. See also Ross,
1949: 24 n.
64. Plato, Sophist 261D– 262D.
65. Besides the passages from On Interpretation referred to below, see “synthêkê” in LSJ,
1996: 1717. See APr. I, 44, 50a19; Rh. I, 15, 1376a33. See also Pol. III, 5, 1280b11; NE V,
5, 1133a30, and V, 7, 1134b33, where synthêkê is used respectively for “law,” “money,” and
“rules of justice.”
66. Compare Po. 20, 1456b35, 1457a2, 11, 14, 23.
67. See On Int. 2, 16a28; On Int. 1, 16a3– 4; even PA II, 16, 660a7; GA I, 18, 722b12;
Mete. II, 4, 360a26; Pol. IV, 7, 1294a35.
68. Compare Antisthenes’s idea, in Plato’s eaetetus 206E7– 208E6, that complex enti-
ties could be defined only by enumerating their elements. “Antisthène ne fait qu’aligner
bout à bout les mots sans pouvoir par là recouvrir l’espace à définer” (Brague, 1978: 174;
see also Metaph. VIII, 3, 1043b23– 8).
242 –
69. Of course, this foreshadows the question of writing, which is much more susceptible
of being taken out of context.
70. LSJ, 1996: 1676– 77. See Roochnik, 2004: 142– 44.
71. See again Metaph. VII, 17, 1041b11– 19.
72. is idea is at the foundation of Socrates’s interpretation of the oracle (Plato, Apology,
21A1 and the following). Brague express the same idea concerning logos in Plato’s Meno:
“L’irrationnel devient rationnel quand il est multiplié par soi- même. La raison provient de
l’élévation au carré de l’irrationnel. [La ‘clôture du discours’] est d’abord, au niveau du sens,
la constitution du sens par la courbure sur soi du non- sens” (Brague, 1978: 171).
73. How are we to understand the priority of the positive over the negative (such as
“nonhuman” or “does not walk”), and of the present over the future and the past (such as
“will walk” and “walked”)? e reason may be similar to that of the priority of the noun
over the verb. Just as the meaningfulness of “walks” implies a subject, the meaningfulness
of “not- human” depends on “human,” that of “will walk” or “walked” on “walks”: Aristotle
prioritizes the tode ti, and the actual. e negative, the future, and the past are again deriv-
atively meaningful. is is certainly in line with his understanding of beings: in the termi-
nology of the Categories, primary beings (particular tode ti) and secondary beings (species
and genus) are prior to their predicates (Cat. 5); the future and the past are derivative of
the present, and most fundamentally actuality is prior to potentiality (Metaph. IX, 8).
74. On Int. 3, 16b19– 25.
75. For Aristotle’s extremely interesting, but often very difficult, interpretations of rest
(êrêmia), see his interpretation of noêsis and syllogismos as rest in DA I, 3, 407a33– 35. For
his further analyses of positive states and virtues and vices as rest, see Ph. VII, 3, 246a10ff.
76. On Int. 9, 13; Metaph. IX, 2, 5.
77. DA III, 3, 427b13.
78. Pinker, 1999: 10; Eco, 1994: 28.
79. Cited in Pinker, 1999: 10.
80. On Int. 4, 16b26– 28.
81. On Int. 6, 17a23– 24. us, it is clear that the infinitive is not a verbal form.
82. On Int. 6, 17a25– 26.
83. SE 1, 165a6– 14.
84. DA III, 3, 427b13.
85. For the other three occurences of autoptês, see HA VIII, 29, 618a18; 37, 620b23;
41, 628b8.
86. Brague, 2005: 72– 74.
87. For a contemporary account of the importance of the social aspect of specifically
human communication, see Burling, 2007: 181– 209, especially 184, 208– 9.
88. Indeed, the enklisis euktikê according to Alexandrian grammar. Smyth, 1920:107,
406; Dionysius rax, Art of Grammar 13, 638b8; Apollonius Dyscolus, Syntax 245.27. Di-
onysius rax adds also the infinitive mood (enklisis aparemphatos) (13, 638b7; Apollonius
Dyscolus, 226.20). Compare Dionysius’s fourfold distinction with Farabi, Commentary and
Short Treatise on Aristotle’s “De Interpretatione.” For a comparison between Greek and Latin,
which is instructive in that Latin does not have an optative, see Buck, Comparative Gram-
mar of Greek and Latin, 299– 301; Moore, Comparative Greek and Latin Syntax, 98– 101.
89. is is where we depart fundamentally from Heidegger’s analysis of logos in Aris-
totle which puts exclusive emphasis on logos apophantikos. See Heidegger, 1992: 39; 1996:
28– 30 (§7b), 196– 211 (§44); 1984: 64; Weigelt, 2002: 61; Sheehan, 1988: 75.
– 243
90. On Int. 4, 16b33– 17a4.
91. Aeschylus, Seven Against ebes 819– 820; Euripides, Phoenician Women 70. See also
Bailly, 2000: 863– 64; LSJ, 739.
92. Rhetoric III, 2, 1405a16-18. In order to compare the Aristotelian conception of
eukhê with its posterity, let us point out that the Definitions of Aquilius put prayer (eukhê)
under the same genus (namely, aitêsis) and define it as a “demand of goods from the Gods”
(aitêsis agathôn para theôn). Yet, probably dating from the Roman imperial period accord-
ing to Marwan Rashed, this definition bears obviously post- Aristotelian (pseudo- Platonic
and Stoic) influences. Most importantly, eukhê here is reserved to an address to God or
to Gods, whereas it is not in the Aristotelian corpus (compare the mention of eukhê as a
more honorable kind of demand than begging). Further, in contrast to the Classical Greek
usages of the word as in Aeschylus and Euripides, eukhê in Aquilius does not contain
the sense of imprecation (ara) which is defined by Aquilius as another kind of demand,
namely a “demand of punishment from the Gods” (timôrias aitêsis para theôn). See Rashed,
2012: 149– 50. See also Rashed’s analyses of “vow” (orkos) as a “speech act” (150– 153). Our
analysis of eukhê in the following pages are in line with Rashed’s remarks. I would like to
thank M. Rashed for sharing his erudition and his article with me.
93. Po. 19, 1456b8– 13.
94. Po. 19, 1456b15– 17.
95. NE III, 2, 1111b20– 31 (trans. Joe Sachs).
96. No wonder the word for the optative mood comes from the Latin verb optare, which
means “to wish.” Compare the verb precare (“to pray”), the root of the adjective “precative.”
97. DA III, 9, 432b5– 6.
98. NE III, 2, 1111b12– 113.
99. Again, this is why the semantics of eukhê is a fundamentally different question than
the famous problem of future contingents in On Int. 9.
100. See, for instance, EE I, 8, 1217b21.
101. See Plato, Republic VI, 499D, but also V, 450D; VII, 540D. All three highlight the
impossibility of the city described. Plato employs the same word, eukhê, for a child’s wish
in the Sophist 249D. For a more extensive discussion of the relationship between logos and
“prayer,” see Nussbaum, 1994: 50.
102. Pol. IV, 1, 1288b23; IV, 9, 1295a29– 30; II, 1, 1260b28– 29; see also the verbal forms
of eukhê in Pol. VII, 13, 1334b22; VII, 12, 1332a30; VII, 10, 1330a37.
103. We are referring to our discussion earlier (100–101 in this volume) concerning
Aristotle’s characterization of the skeptic as “similar to a plant” in Metaph. IV, 4, 1006a15.
Let us add some further questions to be answered: What is the role of imagination in the
wishful attitude? Does one imagine an impossibility wished for? Similarly, does this non-
practical attitude relate to hope, to infinity, and to contemplation? Further, even though
prayers and wishes cannot be refuted in the sense in which declarative sentences can be,
how can one account for the fact that prayers and wishes can contradict one another?
104. NE VI, 2, 1139b10– 11 (trans. Joe Sachs).
105. Euripides, yestes (Fr. 396, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta), quoted in Rh. II,
23, 1397a.
106. While contemporary linguistic theories of “displacement” specify human language
as having access beyond the “present” or the “here and now” (an idea shared by Gadamer
[1976: 59–68]), we think that this might not be exact. For animal signals in case of dan-
ger, for instance, must have some content involving the future, the non- present. (See, for
244 –
instance, Burling, 2007: 36– 37; Anderson, 2013: 19; Gärdenfors, 2013: 140, 145, 156– 57;
Gibson, 2013: 217, 218, 221; Langus et al., 2013: 230. For a good discussion of the ancient
Greeks on this topic, see Sorabji, 1993, especially 79ff.) According to our account, then,
human communication is specified not by spatiotemporal displacement, but by modal re-
moteness. While contemporary theories of “displacement” seem to miss the point, accord-
ing to our account, contemporary theories concerning the “theory of mind” are welcome
to our account as crucial, although not exhaustive, examples of the capacity for under-
standing and relaying non- firsthand experience. For my ability to think that you have a
mind and are thinking of x requires a preliminary access that I must have to something
that is not and cannot be my firsthand experience.
107. Compare Gibson, 2013: 209: “many species of vertebrates, including some fish,
some birds, and many mammals socially transmit information and habits (Box and Gib-
son 1999; Fragaszy and Perry 2003).”
108. For “logos tês ousias” in Aristotle’s biology, see PA IV, 13, 695b19.
109. See also Aristotle’s cogent refutation of the Megaric view of potentiality in Metaph.
IX, 3.
110. DA II, 3, 414b4– 7; also see II, 2, 413b24– 25; III, 9, 432b29– 30.
111. See also Pol. VII, 12, 1332b5– 6.
112. Pseudo- Aristotle, Rhetoric to Alexander, 1433a23; 1424b2; Aristotle, e Athenian
Constitution 69.1.
113. SE 2, 165a38– 165b1.
114. SE 2, 165b1– 3.
115. SE 2, 165b3– 4.
116. SE 2, 165b4– 6.
117. SE 2, 165b6– 9.
118. HA I, 1, 488a7– 10.
119. HA IX, 40, 624b6– 8. For a discussion of this passage, see my article “After Au-
topsy: An Introduction to Logos in Aristotle,” forthcoming in A Companion to Ancient
Greek Philosophy, ed. Sean Kirkland and Eric Sanday (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, forthcoming).
120. Recent studies suggest that the first record of Halley’s comet was due not to the
observation by Chinese astronomers in its orbit in 240 BC, but to a report of its appear-
ance in its 466 BC orbit by Aristotle a century later in Mete. I, 7, 344b31– 34 (http://
journalofcosmology.com/AncientAstronomy106.html).
121. HA IX, 40, 625b9– 10.
Conclusion
1. See Lampe, 1961: 807– 11; Sorabji, 1993.
2. Fattal’s characterization of Aristotle’s uses of logos as mostly critical and analytic,
and not as synthetic as we claim here, may be due to the fact that he seems to be more
interested in Aristotle’s posterity, especially in the later interpretation of nous in DA III,
6, than with Aristotle’s own use of logos (Fattal, 1988; Fattal, 2001: 15, 20– 21, 197– 212).
3. Euripides, yestes (Fr. 396, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta), quoted in Rh. II, 23,
1397a.
4. Metaph. II, 1, 993b12– 19.
5. Loose and perhaps subjective as they are, these suggestions are not altogether unfa-
miliar to Aristotle: “Humans are the same in relation to xenoi and to their own citizens
– 245
as they are in relation to style: thus [in poetry] one should make one’s language foreign,
for things that are remote are wondrous [thaumastai], and wondrous things are pleasant”
(Rh. III, 1, 1404b8– 11; along the same lines, see the use of the adjective xenikos against
barbarismos in Po. 22).
6. Po. 2, 1448a15; Pol. I, 1, 1252b22– 23. But see NE X, 9, 1180a29; Rh. II, 3, 1380b. For
an implicit but clear reference, see also Pol. I, 1, 1253a5– 7, and the intriguing parallel in
Pol. III, 11, 1287b25ff. e figure of the Cyclops is the one we encounter in Homer’s Od-
yssey IX, 114ff., and in this sense Aristotle develops a figure already present in Plato, Laws
680B, 682A. But the earth- born beings in Pol. II, 5, 1269a6– 7 refer to the other figure of
Cyclops we find in Herodotus, IV, 27; Hesiod, Works and Days 108, Pindar, Nemean 6.1.
7. See Pol. VIII, 1, 1337a22ff.
8. NE I, 13, 1102b31– 34. Emphasis is ours for reasons exhibited in chapter 5.
9. Aubenque, 1988: 38.
10. eocritus, 1999: 221.
11. Hesiod, Works and Days l. 108. See Pol. II, 5, 1269a7.
12. Pol. I, 1, 1252b24.
13. Pol. I, 1, 1252b19– 26.
14. Pol. I, 1, 1253a5– 8. e quotation from Homer is from the Iliad IX, 63. For a bril-
liant discussion of the apolitical man in Aristotle’s Politics, see J.- L. Labarrière, “L’Homme
apolitique: Pessia, polis et apolis” (forthcoming). For references to the Cyclops as amousos,
see eocritus, 1999: 221.
15. Pol. III, 1, 1274b39– 1275a24ff.
16. Pol. III, 5, 1280b24ff.
17. ere is a specific term for the prepolitical agglomeration of households in Aristo-
tle: kômê. (See Pol. I, 1, 1252b16ff.)
18. e same idea appears in Pol. III, 6, 1282a16– 23. For the association between logos
and synopsia, see also Pol. VII, 1, 1323b6– 7.
19. Pol. III, 1, 1275b22ff.
20. Euripides, Cyclops 493. Although I have reservations for her argument as a whole,
Nussbaum makes this exact same point and refers to this exact same passage (1982: 284).
21. See 100–101 in this volume. Metaph. IV, 3, 1006a5; Ph. II, 1, 193a1. See Nussbaum,
1982: 284, 289.
22. See Aristotle, fr. 172 Rose.
23. See also Homer, Odyssey IX, 275– 78.
24. Pol. I, 1, 1253a5– 8. See note 14 above.
25. It is unclear to me what someone like Polyphemus exactly wants to do with the
ship here. Perhaps it might have some relevance as we shall see him needing a ship below.
26. Rh. II, 3, 1380b.
27. Pol. III, 11, 1287b23– 32.
28. SE 1, 165a11– 14.
29. Cat. 1.
30. For the significance of the “linguistic defects” of the Other in Greek culture, see
Heath, 2005: 174: “Linking all marginal groups in Greece was the lack or deprivation of
authoritative speech. All except animals of course could speak, but they were each thought
to have a language disability of some sort.” Heath also nicely points out the circularity
between Greek imputation of linguistic defects to the “Other” and their exclusion from
public speech. “Women, for example, were politically silent because they were not allowed
246 –
to speak publicly; they were publicly silent because they had no political role” (174, 190).
But see also Heath’s conclusion: “I am suggesting, then— without irony— that the very
nature of Greek Otherness has helped, indeed has been and will continue to be required to
mitigate the evil consequences of dogmatism. e Hellenic foundation of difference was
such that it is bringing about the collapse of the hierarchical structure it helped to build”
(176– 77). For a judicious account of the Cyclops, or Polyphemus, as fitting the Greek
stereotype of a barbarian, see again Heath, 2005: 193– 95.
31. Rh. II, 3, 1380b.
32. Already in the Homeric text, because Odysseus somewhat hubristically announces
to Polyphemus who he really is, Odysseus exposes himself to the wrath of Polyphemus’s
father, Poseidon. e end of Odysseus’s encounter with the Cyclops is thus not simply a
victory of the former over the latter.
33. Not to be confused with eocritus of Chios (eocritus, 2002: 33– 35). I must
thank Eric Sanday for pointing out this text to me.
34. For the subtle relationship between plausibility and possibility in tragedy and com-
edy, indeed see Po. 24, 1460a26ff.
35. NE I, 13, 1102a28ff.
36. But compare eocritus, 1999: 230.
37. Compare Ovid’s Galatea telling her story (Ovid, Metamorphoses 13.738– 897).
38. As Hunter remarks, “Desperate desire is the negation of self- sufficiency, the painful
acknowledgement of ‘otherness,’ and so the Cyclops is a limit- case of general experience”
(eocritus, 1999: 222).
39. Po. 2, 1445a17– 19.
40. Po. 11, 1452a25, 33; 13, 1453a11, 20; 14, 1453b7, 31; 24, 1460a30; 16, 1455a20; 26,
1462b2.
41. Po. 14, 1453b31.
42. e passage we have in mind is Pol. VII, 6, 1327b23– 33. See also the more famous
passage in Pol. I, 1, 1252b5– 9. See also Pol. VII, 6, 1328a8– 13: “Spiritedness [thymos] is
something dominant and indomitable; but it is not beautiful to say that [the guardians]
are cruel to strangers; for one must not be this way to anybody, and men of great- souled
nature are not fierce except toward wrongdoers, and even more so against their compan-
ions if they think these are wronging them, as said before.”
43. Most dramatically, when she describes Laius to Oedipus, Jocasta says: “His look was
not very different from yours” (743). It is exactly upon this phrase that Oedipus realizes
that he is Laius’s killer.
44. Sophocles, King Oedipus, ll. 132– 46.
45. “King Oedipus might have had one eye too many” (Hölderlin, 1984: 251). Aristotle
also uses this metaphor and he may have Oedipus in mind in NE VI, 13, 1144b8– 12.
46. Po. 15, 1454b6– 8; 24, 1460a26– 32.
47. It is a pity that Aristotle’s insightful emphasis on “recognition” (anagnôrisis) seems
to have been understood as a momentary outburst due to an extraordinary incident (as in
a poor science- fiction movie), or due to the outstanding skill of one protagonist (as many
mystery novels appeal to a keen detective for solving the mystery, or as the scenes in many
comedy movies pivot around one central factor of funniness, the withdrawal of which ren-
ders the situation back to its “commonness”). See Po. 16, 1455a16– 18: “e best kind of
recognition is the one that comes out of the things themselves [hê ex autôn tôn pragmatôn],
of the unfolding [ekplêxeôs] that happens by means of plausible events, like Sophocles’
– 247
Oedipus...” e all too well known Aristotelian precept that in tragedy “one should prefer
a likely impossibility to an unpersuasive possibility” in fact grants events the power to be
likely and persuasive without appealing to strict logic (Po. 24, 1460a26– 27). But this is
precisely granted to events in a tragedy. e designed unfolding of events is such that it
makes even the impossible likely. is means that a good intrigue, the heart of tragedy for
Aristotle, is capable of making the impossible likely, and that a bad plot fails even to make
a possibility even persuasive.
48. NE VI, 6ff.; see also below, DA III, 5, 430a14– 17.
49. Despite his many points converging with my argument here, I disagree with Long’s
claim that “God is relationality” (2011: 237). All levels of relationality involve logos accord-
ing to my central thesis, and God or any divinity is never ascribed logos in the Aristotelian
corpus. erefore, God cannot be relationality. As we shall see below, this discussion boils
down to the interpretation of the relationship between logos and nous. “All knowledge is
with logos, but there is no knowledge of the principles” (APo. II, 19, 100b10– 17; see also
Aubenque, 2009: 66). Further, for Aristotle’s prioritization of sensation over logoi, see GA
III, 10, 760b27– 33; APr. I, 30, 46a17ff.
50. Arendt, 1972: 65; Rorty, 1992: 9. See also Simplicius, in de An. 40. 20– 2; 102. 11–
12; Simplicius (?), in de An. 3, 217. 28– 32; 281. 29– 32; 220. 21– 26, 28– 34; 221. 24– 28.
Compare the use of nous in HA IX, 610b22. See Sorabji, 1993: 13.
51. Lee and Long try to establish a close relationship between nous and logos (Lee and
Long, 2007: 348– 67). is seems to require not only a disambiguation of the term nous,
which the authors provide (e.g., from NE VI, 9, 1143a35– b5), but also a disambiguation
of the term logos, which is supplied neither by Aristotle nor by the authors. It is the same
problem of disambiguating logos which is underlined in Gonzalez’s review of Long’s 2011
book (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, August 13, 2011). I have similar reservations for using
logos and nous interchangeably as “reason.” See, for instance Frede, 1996: 157– 73; Sorabji,
1996: 331; Sorabji, 1993: 69; Baracchi, 2007: 175.
Besides, in light of Aristotle’s sharp distinction between nous and logos (see below), I am
not convinced that logos is intrinsically related to nous beyond perhaps being the “condi-
tion of possibility for noetic insight” (Lee and Long, 2007: 366). Aristotle’s God must be
beyond any logos, and a fortiori beyond dialogue. Again, I agree with Gonzalez’s review
where he says: “In short, the unmoved mover’s eternal ‘thinking of thinking’ appears to be
the very antithesis of a dialogical conception of truth.”
52. See also GA II, 3, 736b28.
53. Metaph. XII, 7, 1072a24– 1072b4.
54. NE VI, 5, 1141a5– 8; VI, 9, 1143b1.
55. NE X, 7,1177b30– 1178a2; X, 8, 1179a23– 31.
248 –
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general index
action, 20, 58–60, 111, 116–17, 119, 125,
138, 143
actuality, 43–44, 48, 51–57, 59, 74, 75,
119; form and, 77; motion and, 72;
sensation and, 94–96, 98; soul as,
78–80
affection, 91–95, 97
aition, 66, 69–70
akouein, 120, 124, 147–48, 150, 154, 155,
167, 238nn13–14
alteration, 132–33
ambiguity, 145, 162, 166–68, 238n12
anagkê, 59
Anaxagoras, 228n3, 232n66, 234n30
Anaximander, 32, 74
animals: learning and, 120; logos and, 64,
123–24; locomotion and, 101–9, 116,
119, 149, 152, 223n94; perception
and, 101–3; sensation and, 90–102,
119, 120, 152, 169; study of, 81–82,
91. See also communication; motion
Antiphon, 73, 74
appetite. See desire
arguments, four kinds of, 183–84
Aristotle: ambiguity in, 5–6; dialectical
method of, 6–14, 183–84,
217nn25–26, 219n41, 220n49, 221–
22n76–77; exposition vs. research
in, 11, 217n25, 220nn51–52; on the
“fictitious,” 33–34; Halley’s comet
and, 186, 245n120; on multivocity
of being, 43–44, 49, 226n1; Plato’s
influence on, 14, 17, 34, 217n20,
217n24, 217n26, 222n77, 222n86;
predecessors of, 220n46; Rembrandt’s
painting of, 141–42; supralunar vs.
sublunar realms in, 12, 44, 69
arkhê, 70; nous and, 234n30
art and artisans, 72, 86, 105, 108, 114,
127–28, 131, 229n5; imitation and,
121, 140–41, 229n5; as knowledge,
166; poetic style, 246n5
articulation, 145, 159–66, 168
artifacts, 10, 62, 72, 227n7
“aspects,” 26–28, 33, 37, 41, 45–46, 49–50;
Descartes on, 28–30
Atomism, 68, 226n1
Aubenque, Pierre, 195, 220n57
autopsia, 169–70, 177, 205
Balme, D. M., 147
bees, xiii, 38, 41, 44–45, 48, 56–57, 73, 97,
123, 168, 177, 184–86, 192, 237n4,
239n24; aesthetic responses to,
240n34; buzz of, 151–55, 239n34;
hearing and, 146–50, 152, 154–55,
240n39; recent research on, 237n11,
240n46
being. See “logos of being”; ousia
Benveniste, Émile, 211n1, 218n38,
241n46
Berti, Enrico, 218n31, 221–22nn76–77,
223n89, 225n15
Bodéüs, Richard, 235n5
bodily virtues, 133–35
Bolton, Robert, 219n41
Bonitz, Hermann, 5
buzzing. See voice production
Cassin, Barbara, 214n13, 234n20
causa, 28, 32, 37, 225nn26–27
causality and causation, 66–67, 68, 70–72
character, 113, 115, 125, 130–32, 134, 138,
140–42
children, 64, 86, 114–15, 122, 129, 140
choice, 136–37, 165, 172–73, 175
communication: animal, 145–55, 170, 177,
244–45nn106–7; human, 145–46,
155–77, 211n1, 244n106. See also
sound; voice production
261
courage vs. cowardice, 20, 130–31, 135,
136, 142
Cyclopes and Cycloptic living, 194–206,
208
Darwin, Charles, 219n42
deduction. See induction and deduction
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari,
211n1, 241n46
deliberation, 137–39, 165, 183, 196, 199
Democritus, 68
Descartes, René, 51, 69, 167, 169,
228n10, 230n30; matter in, 67;
nature in, 73; res cogitans and res
extensa in, 45–46, 51, 56, 67, 117;
“somnolence” in, 38; wax example in,
28–30, 37–40, 44–46, 47–49, 57, 67,
73, 74, 97, 104. See also substance
desire, 86, 103–6, 107–9, 111, 113–16,
131, 165; eukhê and, 172; kinds of,
172–73, 175; logos and, 137–38, 143;
voice and, 153
dialektos. See language
discrimination (krisis), 100, 102, 107;
sensation and, 149
education, 11, 123, 124–25, 140; music
and, 127, 129, 236n32
ekhein, 15, 20, 81, 113–14, 115, 117,
122–23, 126, 131–32
elenchus, 6, 7, 10, 14
Empedocles, 82, 84, 161
endoxa, 6, 8, 61–62, 216n15
ethics, 11, 113, 134, 137–39, 175; positive
state and, 126
eukhê, 170–76, 185, 244n92; in Plato, 176
Euripides, 177, 192
excluded middle, principle of the, 3, 14,
21, 27, 54, 92, 147, 198; “included
middles,” 124, 236n27
firsthand vs. non-firsthand experiences,
xiii–xiv, 4, 11, 21, 54, 59, 110–11,
125, 129–30, 139, 178–86, 192, 199;
animals and, xiii, 155, 168, 177, 181;
in art, 131; speech and, 145–46, 155,
169
form: logos and, 74, 80, 109; the soul as,
76–78
Frede, Dorothea, 230n19, 232n55
freedom, 127, 129–30
friendship, 138, 162, 223n98
Frisch, Karl von, 211n1, 240n46
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 215n13
Gonzalez, Francisco J.,248n51
Gould, John L. and Carol Grant, 241n46
grammatical moods: imperative, 145, 154,
158, 164, 168, 170, 171–72, 174,
175, 182; indicative, 145, 168–70,
182, 185; optative, 145, 170–78, 182,
185, 244n96; subjunctive, 145, 153,
158, 168, 170, 171–72, 174, 182
habit, 113, 115, 118, 120–29, 138
happiness, 13, 175, 221n67
having. See ekhein
hearing, 115–16, 118, 120–21, 123–24,
130, 138, 149, 158, 168, 191, 235n5,
240n40, 240n44; ambiguity of term,
147–48; by animals, 95, 102, 120,
145, 146–55; breathing and, 151,
239n28; evaluations from others,
132, 139; Heidegger on, 233nn6–7;
in Homer, 154; “rest” and, 164–65,
166. See also akouein
Heidegger, Martin, 211nn1–2, 212n7,
216n13, 229n5, 233nn6–7, 236n37,
243n89
Heraclitus, 27, 81–82, 91, 125, 223n99,
226n41; on daimôn, 125, 141; on
logos, 3, 21, 35, 37–38, 40–41, 45–46,
48, 99; on nature, 63, 65, 87
Hesiod, 195, 223n97
hexis. See positive state
Hobbes, omas, 67, 117
Homer, 67, 154; on Cyclopes, 195–200,
203–5; Protagoras’ criticism of,
171–72, 175
homonymy and synonymy, 9, 15–16, 18,
23–33, 36–41, 44, 162, 167, 179,
200, 207, 218n39, 224n10
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 167
hylê and matter, 66, 67, 69, 73
262
hypokeimenon. See underlying thing
imagination, 104, 108, 165, 234n27,
244n103
imitation, 121–22, 127, 140–41, 194,
239n26
induction and deduction, 6, 13, 15, 17, 97,
222n79, 223n92
inherency, 43, 44, 48, 50–51, 56, 57–58,
62, 73, 75, 227n7
Jaeger, Werner, 222n86, 223n89
judgment, 29–30, 108, 128, 137
knowledge, 11, 15, 77, 78–79, 94, 127,
129, 166; sensation and, 104
kosmos and infinite space, 66, 69, 230n23
language, 8–9, 23, 157, 166–67, 215n13;
dead languages, 79, 167; dialektos,
120, 150, 156, 159, 235n18,
239n25, 241n53; “linguistic defects”
in the Other, 246n30. See also
communication
laws and legislation, 64, 183–85, 194,
196–98
Lear, Jonathan, 216n13
learning, 120–22, 150, 181
letters, 156–61, 168
listening. See hearing
literacy, 158
locomotion, 19–20, 79–80, 101, 103–9,
116, 153; and motion, 66, 69
logic, 8–9, 24, 64, 75
logismos, 104–5, 109, 127, 165
logos: alogos vs., 61, 64, 116, 118, 198, 200,
207–8; claims enabled by, 178–85;
destruction of, 234n20; etymology
of, 3, 136, 211n1, 214n13; as health,
233n8; growth and, 64, 84, 98, 100,
190; in Hesiod, 223n97; human
form of, 109; law and, 183; nature
and, 64, 73–76, 213n10; non-human
animals’ lack of, 64, 111, 113, 124,
209; in Plato, 17, 222n83, 223n90,
243n72; nouns and verbs and,
163–64, 167; positive state and, 113,
129, 138; “potentialities with,” 20,
60–63, 103, 110, 116, 165; as prayer
(wish), 170–73, 175–76; range of
meanings of, 5–6, 15–16, 21, 191,
211–16nn7–13, 224n3; as ratio
(proportion), 5, 19–20, 63, 75, 82–
84, 87, 89, 90, 99, 100, 107–8, 136,
209, 222n83; “rational potentiality”
and, 137; as reason, 4–5, 20, 75, 116,
124, 165–66, 190, 209, 222nn83–84;
as relation (inclusiveness), 3, 71,
89, 155, 191–92, 232n55, 248n49;
sensation as, 97–100, 107, 108, 148–
49, 190, 209; sophistry and, 183; soul
and, 80, 82, 84, 123, 176; as speech,
4, 21, 75, 108, 145–46, 155–56, 166,
168–69, 177–78, 185–86, 190–91,
209; as standard, 5, 19, 20, 23, 34,
36, 40–41, 43, 46, 50, 51–52, 58,
59–60, 61–62, 73, 75, 83, 85, 87, 101,
129, 208, 209; Stoic, Gnostic, and
Christian uses of term, 22, 191, 210,
212n8, 215n13; unreality and, 174;
voice and, 159–60, 168–69
“logos of being,” 16, 18, 19–21, 23, 24–26,
31–32, 34, 36–41, 44–46, 48, 50, 52,
73, 87, 101, 167, 178–79; artifacts
and, 227n7; and being having logos,
187, 189–90, 208
Long, Christopher P., 248n49, 248n51
Lucretius, 68
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 217n25
maieutics, 7, 9, 10, 14
mean (middle path) vs. excess, 98, 100,
135–37, 195
mediation, 145, 156–59, 167
memory, 102–3, 108, 120, 127
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 91
motion, 19–20, 34, 36–37, 47, 65–68, 72,
86–87, 110, 137, 165; animal, 89–91;
four kinds of, 68, 230n17; nature and,
65–66, 73–74, 86–87, 213n10; post-
and anti-Aristotelian conceptions of,
66–70; potentiality and, 55–58, 62;
sensation and, 91. See also locomotion
music, 45, 98–99, 129, 141, 235n18
263
Natali, Carlo, 218n33
natural scientist as “theorist,” 64–65, 74,
86–87, 228n3
nature and natural phenomena, 9–10,
14, 63–66, 70, 72–76, 78, 86–87;
Antiphon on, 73; art and, 72; logos
and, 64, 73–76; motion and, 57–58;
physis and, 229n5
necessitarianism, 53–55, 58–59, 228n18
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 40, 226n41
noise. See sound
non-contradiction, principle of, 3, 14, 21,
27, 30, 35–37, 40, 47, 49, 100–101,
147, 179; inclusion and, 34–35, 47,
169; rejection of, 101, 234n20
nouns, 158, 160–61, 163–68, 206–7
nous: desire and, 104–6; logos vs., 21,
138, 191, 208–10, 222n84, 248n49,
248n51
Nussbaum, Martha Craven, 217n24,
219n44
nutrition, 19–20, 63, 76, 78, 82–86,
90–91, 99, 100, 116–17, 122
organicity, 80–82
ousia, 28, 30, 65, 77, 179
Parmenides, 30, 68, 225n20
pebbles (for counting), 182–83
Pellegrin, Pierre, 134
perception, 101–4, 106, 107–8, 123, 148,
157, 216n15
physics, Aristotelian vs. modern, 66,
229n10, 230n19
place (topos), 68–69
Plato: ambiguity and, 167, 182; dialectic
in, 7, 14, 99, 222n77, 223n90;
hypokeimenon in, 225n23; influence
on Aristotle, 14, 17, 34, 217n24,
217n26, 222n86; logos in, 17,
222n83, 223n90, 243n72; music
and, 129; Socratic dialogue in, 6–7,
182–83
: Apology, 58, 59; Crito, 47,
58; Meno, 223n90, 243n72;
Parmenides, 217n20, 226n31;
Phaedo, 14, 46–47, 58, 182–83,
228n9; Phaedrus, 221n74,
235n11; Republic, 7, 17, 34–35,
36, 45–46, 176, 226n31, 244n101;
Sophist, 223n90; Symposium, 46;
eaetetus, 242n68; Timaeus,
235n11
pleasure and pain, 134–36, 165–66,
193, 198; voice and, 153, 158, 164,
181–82, 183
polis, 143, 162, 184, 196
politics, 11, 161, 176, 183, 195, 220n49;
“political animals,” 132, 138, 153,
176, 184
positive state (hexis), 113, 125–35, 137,
138, 141–43, 208, 236nn27–28
possibility. See potentiality
potentiality, 43–44, 51–62, 74, 75, 77,
79, 110–11, 119–20; Aristotle’s
definitions of, 56, 57; sensation and,
93–95
pragma, 65, 66, 225n27, 228n21
prayer. See eukhê
Protagoras, 171–72, 175, 179; dialectic
and, 220n49, 221n71, 221n76,
225n15
prudence, 20, 83, 138–39, 158, 183, 185,
191, 194, 197, 208–9
Pythagoras, 99, 228n3
recognition, 49, 208, 247n47
Rembrandt, 141–42
representation, 24, 31, 40, 104, 121–22,
140–42, 179, 183, 224n6
reproduction, 19–20, 63, 84–86, 90–91,
99, 100, 114, 122, 153
respect, 123, 132
rhetoric, 58, 220n49
Sachs, Joe, 236n27
Sallis, John, 222n83
sensation, 4, 19–20, 29, 90–111,
126, 135–36; imitation vs., 122;
locomotion and, 103; as logos,
97–100, 107, 108, 148–49, 190,
209; paradox of, 91–93, 95–96;
proaisthêsis and, 234n23
shame, 131–32, 134
264
“simple bodies,” 50–51
social knowledge, 10–11
Socrates, 6, 7, 14, 108, 121, 128, 228n9,
243n72; ambiguity and, 167; death
of, 46–48, 50, 58–59, 61, 137, 165,
174–75, 182; dialectic and, 221n76.
See also Plato
somnolence, 27–28, 30, 32–33, 38
Sophocles, 162, 167, 205–8, 247n47
soul, 11, 80–82, 84, 91, 116, 123; as
actuality, 78–80; Descartes on, 47;
as form, 76–78; three constituents
of, 125–26; tripartite structure of,
116–19, 124, 143
sound (psophos), 148–50, 238n15, 238n17,
239n30; as noise, 147–50, 154. See
also akouein; voice production
“spectacular” characteristic, 63, 64–65, 72,
74, 75, 85, 86–87, 232n64
speech. See communication; logos: as
speech
stoikheia, 159–60
stretch (and stretching out), 34, 37, 40,
48, 64, 70, 71, 74–76, 80, 81–87,
89, 96–97, 99, 192; “back-stretched
harmony,” 3, 21, 35, 41, 48, 81, 99,
123; sensation and, 149; soul and,
118
sub specie aeternitatis viewpoint, 54–55,
59, 228n18
substance, 23, 28, 65; Cartesian substantia,
30, 37, 48, 50, 67, 73. See also ousia
syllables, 242n57, 242n62
syllogism, 6–7, 20, 71, 75, 104–9;
locomotion as, 90, 109; memory as,
103; middle term in, 50, 71, 106–7,
116, 121; “practical,” 104–7, 109,
116; syllogismos, 105, 106–7, 108, 165
symbolon, 161–62
synonymy. See homonymy and synonymy
synthêkê, 160, 224n12
temperance, 135
ales, 221n59
eocritus, 200–205
“underlying thing” (hypokeimenon), 25,
27–31, 36, 65, 225nn22–23
utopianism, 146, 176, 185
verbs, 160, 161, 163–64, 243n73
virtues and vices, 113, 133–39, 141; moral
virtue defined, 137
voice production, 150–53, 156–58, 161,
164; buzzing and, 151–55
Wilkins, John, 167
wish. See eukhê
Zeno, 217n20, 221n71, 225n15
265
index locorum
APo.
I, 24: 106
I, 30
87b19–21: 13
II, 19
110b5–17: 209, 248n49
APr.
I, 1
24b19–21: 6
I, 24
41b7–8: 75
Cael.
II, 9
290b12ff.: 239n30
IV, 1
308a14ff.: 50
Cat.
11a1–13: 16, 18–19, 24, 31, 167, 179
21a20–b5: 25
41b25: 224n3
52b5–6: 28, 32
4a10–13: 28
4a23–4b11: 224n3
1012b7–10: 224n3
1214b15–20: 24
DA
I, 1
403b4–8: 227n7
I, 4
407b30–34: 84
408a9: 84
408a14–28: 84
II, 1
412a6–9: 76, 77
412a9–11: 77
412a11–20: 77
412a20–24: 77, 78
412a28–29: 80
412a29–412b1: 81
412b1–4: 81
412b11: 80
412b12–16: 227n7
412b20–22: 224n9
413a28–29: 82
II, 3
414b4–7: 103
II, 4
415a23–415b2: 85–86, 114
415b1–3: 104
415b28–416a9: 82
416a10–18: 19, 64, 76
416a19: 76
II, 5
416b35–417a1: 91
417a7–8: 93
417a8–10: 93
417a10–14: 94
417a23–25: 94
417a25–28: 94
417a29–30: 94
417a31–33: 94
417a33–b2: 94
417b3–5: 95
418a3–6: 95
418a14–16: 100
II, 8
419b9–12: 148
419b16–18: 148
419b22–24: 148
419b34–35: 148
420a5–6: 149
420a9–12: 149
420b6-8: 152m 235n18, 239n25
420b10: 150
267
DA, II, 8, continued
420b13–14: 152
420b14–17: 150
420b27–29: 150
420b31–421a1: 152
421a2–4: 151
II, 12
424a17–24: 96
424a25–28: 20, 97–98
424a29–32: 98
424a32–424b3: 98
424b2–3: 87
III, 2
426a8: 90
426a28ff.: 90
426b7–8: 20, 100
III, 5
430a14–17: 208–9
430a18–25: 209
III, 6
430b26–29: 209
III, 8
431b21–22: 91, 100, 110
432a3: 209
III, 9
432b5–6: 173
433a3–6: 104
III, 10
433a14–15: 104
433a20–21: 104
433a23–24: 104
433b26: 103
III, 11
434a6–16: 165
434a17–22: 20, 105
III, 12
434a26–30: 90
434a34–434b9: 103
434b15–16: 101
434b25–30: 103
III, 13
435a22–24: 100
435b24–26: 123
De Sensu
1436b11–12: 91
437a10–11: 240n44
437a13–15: 164
7448a9–13: 90
EE
1, 5
1216a11–14: 232n66
GA
I, 18
722b12: 161
II, 1
734b31–34: 51
III, 10
760b15–18: 154
V, 1
780a22–25: 238n18
V, 2
781a26–28: 239n26
GC
I, 2
315b14–15: 84, 232n64
316a5–12: 219n42
I, 4
319b6ff.: 48
I, 7
323b3–19: 91
323b32–34: 92
324a3–5: 92
II, 1
329b1: 78
II, 2
329b7ff.: 49
330a25–29: 50
330b3–8: 50
II, 3
330b31–33: 50
331a2–4: 51
HA
I, 1
488a7–10: 153
IV, 9
535a27–b5: 156–57, 159
535a29–31: 150
536a32–536b4: 156–57
535b3–12: 151
536a32–b4: 159
536b14–18: 120, 150, 155,
239n27
IX, 1
608a17–21: 157
268
IX, 40
623b27–34ff.: 38, 45, 56
625b9–10: 146, 150, 154
627a15–19: 147, 237n10
627a24–28: 146–47, 152
MA
1: 36
2: 36
7701a6–13: 105, 106
701a13–19: 105
701a32–33: 20, 105
10703a19–20: 103
Metaph.
I, 1
980a21: 86
980a27–981a28: 180
980a28–980b26: 120
980b23: 146, 148
980b26–981a13: 108–9,
127–28
981a27–981b5: 128
981b5–13: 166, 181
I, 10
993a17–19: 84
III, 1
995a29: 7
996b26–30: 27
IV, 3
1005b10, 13: 27
1005b19–20: 35, 226n31
1005b23–25: 27
1005b30–32: 27
IV, 4
1006a15: 100
1006a26: 234n20
1007a20–23: 39, 179
IV, 5
1009a32–35: 35
IV, 7
1011b26–27: 27
V, 2: 67
V, 3
1014a27–32: 159–60
V, 12: 56
VII, 10
1035b1–2: 24–25
VII, 17
1041b11–19: 160
VIII, 6
1045a14ff: 36
IX, 1
1046a11: 56
1046a24: 67
IX, 2: 110, 116
1046a36–1046b3: 61
1046b5–6: 61
1046b21–23: 137
IX, 5: 110, 116
1048a10–11: 165
IX, 8
1049b5–10: 57
1050a18–19: 74
XII, 3
1070a4–9: 71, 229n5
XIII, 7
1082b3: 34
XIV, 6
1092b32–33: 84
Mete.
I, 7
344b31–34: 245n120
I, 13
350a14–18: 169
II, 4
360a26: 161
IV, 9: 226n38
NE
I, 3
1094b28–1095a8: 11
I, 4
1095a14–21: 13
I, 7
1098a3–5: 13
1098a17–19: 13
1098a21–1098b8: 13
I, 10
1101a1–5: 127
I, 13
1102a33–1102b1: 117
1102b13–14: 117
1102b22–23: 118
1102b24: 130
1102b27–33: 118
269
NE, I, 13, continued
1102b29–1103a4: 11, 20, 114, 115,
116, 117, 130, 143, 191
II, 1
1103a21–23: 126
1103a27–31: 119
1103a31–1103b1: 120
1103b22–25: 122, 125
II, 2
1103b36–1104a11: 138
1104a18–27: 135
II, 3
1104b21–28: 136
1105a22–24: 158
II, 4
1105b9–18: 11
II, 5: 20
1105b20–28: 125
II, 6
1106a36–1106b5: 137
1106b36–1107a2: 137
III, 2
1111b12–13: 173
1111b20–31: 172–73
III, 5
1114a3ff.: 131
III, 10
1117b23–25: 131
V, 1
1129a29–31: 25
VI: 20
VI, 1
1138b25–29: 130
VI, 2
1139a36–1139b7: 111, 116, 223n95
VI, 3
1140a11: 130
VI, 4
1140b3–5: 105
VI, 8
1142a25–26: 209
VI, 7
1141b1–1141b3: 73
IX, 4
1166a32–b2: 138, 223n98
IX, 7
1167b34–1168a9: 86, 114
IX, 8
1169a12: 138
X, 9
1180a19–29: 183, 185, 194–95
1181b116ff.: 11
On Breath
9485b7–10: 231n42
485b18: 19
On Int.
116qa3–4: 161
216a20–21: 160
16a21–22: 163
16a26–29: 160, 161
16a29–16b3: 163
316b9–10: 163
16b17–18: 163
16b19–25: 164
16b22–23: 164
416b26–28: 160, 168–69
16b33–17a2: 160
517a17–18: 160
617a25–26: 169
7: 75
9, 13: 110, 116
9: 19: 27
18b17–20: 54
18b20–25: 54
18b31–33: 58
19a7–11: 60, 116
19b1–4: 55
13: 19
22b18–23: 60
22b36–23a6: 60
23a1: 19
23a21–26: 52
23b7–13: 52
On Memory and Recollection
1450a9–13: 102
453a10–14: 103
270
2452b23–24: 102
On Respiration
9474b31ff.: 152
On Sleep and Waking
2456a11ff.: 152
3456b17–18: 117
458a27–28: 117
PAI, 1
641a1: 25
I, 5
645a14–22: 81–82
II, 1
647b18: 25
II, 10
656b16: 149
II, 16
660a3–4: 156
660a4–7: 156
II, 17
660a35–660b2: 120, 240n39
Ph.
I, 2
184b15ff.: 30
184b27–185a1: 30
185a5: 30
I, 4
187a12: 30
I, 5: 30
I, 6
189b12–22: 225n22
I, 7
190b33–191a2: 225n22
I, 8
191b27–29: 55–56
II, 1
192b8–23: 19, 36, 66, 69, 81
192b21–24: 57, 65, 73
192b33–34: 65
192b35–193a2: 65
193a2–3: 87
193a11–b19: 227n7
193a28–29: 73
193a30–31: 19, 64, 80
193b1–4: 73–74, 80
193b3: 64
193b18–19: 74
II, 3: 67
194b27–28: 74
III, 1
200b27–28: 110
200b33–34: 68
201a11–12: 72, 110
IV, 1
208b10–11: 70
IV, 14
223b21–22: 68
VII, 2
243a11: 68
244b12–15: 96
VII, 3
246a10–11: 133
246a11–17: 133
246a17–b3: 96
246b5–8: 133
246b21–247a2: 135
247a7–19: 135
246b18–20: 133
VIII, 4
255a5–10: 223n94
VIII, 7: 68
Po.21448a1–7: 141, 194
1448a17: 194
41448b4–17: 121
161455a16–18: 247n47
191456b8–13: 171
1456b15–17: 171
201456b28–29: 156
1457a12–14: 163
1457a15: 163
1457a24–28: 163–64
241460a26–27: 248n47
271
Pol.
I, 1
1252b19–26: 198
1253a8–18: 15, 21, 64, 111, 145,
181–82
II, 1
1261a18–25: 184
II, 5
1269a7–8: 194
III, 6
1281a42–1281b10: 197
III, 11
1287b23–32: 196
IV, 7
1294a35: 161
VII, 6
1327b23–33: 247n42
1328a8–13: 247n42
VII, 12
1332a38–1132b11: 123–24
1332b6–8: 124
VII, 13
1334b15: 209
VII, 15
1336a34–39: 64
VIII, 5
1340a32–38: 140
Prob.
10895a4–14: 156
11903b34–36: 239n28
904b11–14: 239n28
Protrep.
12: 242n57
20–21: 228n18
22–23: 228n3
25: 122
26: 236n41
Rh.
I, 3
1357a: 58
1358b: 58
II, 6
1384a22–26: 131
1384a28–30: 131
1384a35–38: 132, 143
III, 1
1404b8–11: 245n5
III, 2
1405a16–18: 170–171
SE1165a6–10: 182
165a11–14: 167, 207
Top.
I, 1
100a25–27: 6
100a30–b21: 6
I, 2
101a35–101b4: 7
I, 12
105a13–19: 15
I, 15
106b6–10: 24
IV, 3
123a27: 25
VI, 2
139b34: 79
VI, 5
142b31: 158
VIII, 14
163a36–163b3: 221
272
