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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Metaphysics Z.ll has in recent years received considerable attention, because of its importance for the exposition of Aristotle's psychology, which for some time now has been an immensely popular topic among Aristotelian scholars. Z.ll has proved contentious, however, especially over its statement of Aristotle's criticism of Socrates the Younger, who was wont to make a certain ‘comparison’ in the case of animals. Virtually nothing is known about this Socrates the Younger, nor is it known exactly what ‘comparison’ he made with animals. But, as most interpreters suppose from the context of Z. 11, his comparison certainly had much in common with that made by ‘some', who argue that natural objects, like man, are comparable to geometrical figures, like the circle, with respect to their relationship to their matter (1036b7–12). Just as the physical matter of circles, such as bronze, stone, and the like, are no part of the essence of the circle, so too the physical matter of man—flesh and bones—is no part of the essence of man. This comparison may hold true, even if, unlike circles, man is in fact found only in a single sort of matter, because the case of man may be like the counterfactual case in which all circles happen to be made of bronze. The bronze would still not belong to the essence of the circle; it would just be difficult psychologically to separate circularity from bronze (1036a31-b7).
1 Aside from what Aristotle says in Z.1 1, all we know about Socrates the Younger with any certainty is what we learn from Plato, who puts him in some of his dialogues, where he is mostly an auditor, and who may mention him, if the letter may be credited to Plato, in Letter XI 358d. Plato treats Socrates the Younger as a fellow student and friend of the mathematician Theaetetus in Theaetetus 147d and Sophist 218b, and in the Statesman Plato makes him one of the interlocutors. It is reasonable to presume that Socrates the Younger was a mathematician, who was at least associated with the Academy, and may have been under the influence of the Pythagoreans, just as Plato was, and presumably just as Theodoras was, whom Plato presents in the Theaetetus as a teacher of Socrates the Younger, and whom Iamblichus says is a Pythagorean, Vit. Pyth. c.36. The only extended piece of speculation I know of on Socrates the Younger is E. Kapp, ‘Sokrates der Jungere’, Philologus 33 (1924), 225–33.
2 The Greek for (1)–(6):
(1)αΐσθητόν γάρ τι τό ζῷον
(2)κί άνευ κινήσεως οΰκ έστιν όρίσαθαι,
(3)διό ούδ᾽ ᾂνευ τν έχόντων πώς
(4)οὐ γᾰρ πάντως τοῡ νθρώπου μέρος ή χείρ
(5)λλ᾽ ᾓ δυναμένη τ ἒργον ποτελεῖν
(6)ὣστε ἒμψυχος
3 Frede, M. and Patzig, G., Aristoteles ‘Metaphysik’, vol. 2 (Munich, 1988), 203.Google Scholar
4 Ross, W. D., Aristotle's Metaphysics, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1924), 202–5.Google Scholar
5 Burnyeat, M. F. and Others (‘Londinenses’), Notes on Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford: Sub-Faculty of Philosophy, 1979), 88–93.Google Scholar
6 Prominent among those friendly to functionalist interpretations would be Hartman, E., Substance, Body and Soul: Aristotelian Investigations (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, M. C. in her more orthodox functionalist days: Aristotle's De Motu Animalium (Princeton, 1978)Google Scholar; Cohen, S. M., ‘The Credibility of Aristotle's Philosophy of Mind’, in Matthen, M. (ed.), Aristotle Today: Essays on Aristotle's Ideal of Science (Edmonton, 1987), 103–25Google Scholar, reprinted with revisions under the title, ‘Hylomorphism and Functionalism’, in Nussbaum, M. and Rorty, A. (edd.), Essays on Aristotle's De Anima (Oxford, 1992), 57–73Google Scholar; Wedin, M., Mind and Imagination in Aristotle (Yale, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 For example, when Nussbaum takes up Aristotle's criticism of Socrates the Younger, she understands the ‘parts’ of animal to be referred to in its definition, but she takes these parts to be specified in purely functional terms, without any reference to any specific sort of matter, such as flesh and bones (n. 6, 72–3).
8 Frede and Patzig (n. 3), vol. 2, 212–13.
9 Indeed the difference is even narrower, since the ‘Londinenses’ express doubts over the exact nature of the tight connection between form and matter, when they grant that motion is ‘if not mentioned, at least involved in’ the definition of animal (n. 5, 93).
10 Whiting, J., ‘Metasubstance: critical notice of Frede-Patzig and Furth’, Philosophical Review 100 (1991), 607–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Irwin, T., Aristotle's First Principles (Oxford, 1988), 569Google Scholar, n. 39.Bostock, D. finds Frede and Patzig's emendation ‘tempting’, but does not succumb to it, Aristotle, Metaphysics, Books Z and H (Oxford, 1994), 164Google Scholar; for more on Bostock seen. 15 and 17.
11 The English conforms to the alternative translations Frede offers for this passage in his additional study of the argument for dissimilarity in his ‘The definition of sensible substances in Met. Z.’, in Devereux, D. and Pellegrin, P. (edd.), Biologie, Logique et Metaphysique chez Aristote (Paris, 1990), 113–129, specifically 117 and 121.Google Scholar
12 Frede and Patzig (n. 3), vol. 2, 210–11.
13 ‘Londinenses’ (n. 5), 92.
14 Both the ‘Londinenses’ (n. 5, 92) and Wedin appreciate the attraction of the replacement as a way of uniting the argument against the comparison, and Wedin admits that he would willingly follow Frede and Patzig in their emendation if his own efforts should fail, ‘Keeping the matter in mind: Aristotle on the passions and the soul’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76 (1995), 219, n. 57.
15 Bostock holds the same view as Wedin about the force of (1). But, unlike Wedin, he perhaps thinks that (1) and (2) are linked significantly and thus may make up a unified argument, perhaps in much the same terms in which this paper takes (1) and (2) to form a unified argument (n. 10, 163–4). For more on Bostock, see n. 17.
16 Wedin (n. 14), 204–5.
17 My argument has much in common with some remarks of the ‘Londinenses’ (n. 5,92) about ‘kinetic matter’, when they hesitate over the possibility of the connection between (1) and (2). In the expression of their view, however, it remains unclear why they did not pursue the line of argumentation developed here. Bostock too may hold a position similar to mine, but this is uncertain since he does not indicate in enough detail his view of Aristotle's argument against Socrates the Younger (n. 10, 163–4). Bostock's view could be basically that of this paper, since he seems to allow for a significant connection between (1) and (2), in which the perceptibility of an animal yields its mobility. At points Bostock expresses himself in such a way that he seems to believe that the statement of an object's perceptibility forms a biconditional with the statement of its changeability, e.g. his comment on 36b32–37a5 (n. 10, 165). None the less, Bostock thinks that the emendation of Frede and Patzig is ‘tempting’, and thus he would seem to think that Aristotle's argument would be more effective if it were that proposed by Frede and Patzig.
18 Aristotle has precious little to say about ‘intelligible matter’ (ὒλη νοητή), and he only mentions it in contexts in which he contrasts it with ‘perceptible matter’. Aside from the references in Z. 10, his only other references to it are in Z. 11 (1037a4–5) and in H.6 (1045a33–6). Aristotle does explain that intelligible matter is nothing beyond the natural, perceptible domain, since he makes it clear in Z.10 that intelligible matter is ‘present in perceptible objects, but not insofar as they are perceptible’ (1036all). Aristotle may mean that intelligible matter emerges, along with the mathematical objects for which it provides the material, in the abstraction of those mathematical objects from perceptible objects. The passages from Zeta are compatible, in which intelligible matter is the matter of such mathematical objects as the mathematical circle. The passage from H.6, although it too concerns the geometrical example of the circle, seems to treat intelligible matter as the genus of the species found in the definition of the species. This would seem to extend the idea of intelligible matter well beyond mathematical examples and apply it to any genus of a speciesT Ross attempts to conciliate the passages from Z with that from H ([n. 4], vol. 2, 199–200); Frede and Patzig, however, find his effort unconvincing ([n. 3], vol. 2, pp. 195—6). See also Bostock (n. 10), 156–7, 284–5.
19 Since we know from Phys, 2.1 that artificial objects do not have their own principle of motion or change, but what motion they have is that of the natural materials that constitute them, it might be thought that ‘bronze’, an alloy of copper and tin, is the wrong choice for an example of perceptible matter that is movable matter. ‘Bronze’, however, translates χαλκός, which may signify copper, a natural kind, as well as the artificial kind, bronze. It is not impossible that Aristotle pays no attention to the difference between bronze and copper, and I know of no passage where he acknowledges the difference between them or the character of bronze as an alloy. Indeed, I know of no passage in which Aristotle addresses the nature of alloys, and he may regard them as no different from any other naturally occurring metal inasmuch as all metals are the product of the elements, air, earth, fire, and water, or their differentiae, the hot, cold, dry, and moist (e.g. Meteorologica 378a17ff.). In the Meteprologica he speaks of χαλκός and silver as each the product of the motion of cold and heat and not the product of art, unlike the saw, cup, and box (390b12–14). I remain with ‘bronze’ as the translation of χαλκός because it is traditional, although ‘copper’ would forestall any misunderstanding.
20 Bostock renders the passage, after the fashion of Ross, with ‘all changeable matter’ ([n. 10], 18).
21 Frede and Patzig (n. 3), vol. 1, 97. The ‘Londinenses’ explicitly refuse to comment on 1036a10–12 ([n. 5], 87). For comments see Ross ([n. 4], vol. 2, 199f); Frede and Patzig ([n. 3], vol. 2, 195–6); Bostock ([n. 10], 156–7,284–5). Also, see n. 18 for more on ‘intelligible matter’.
22 For example, Met. 1029a33–4, 1037a13–14, 1040b30–2,1041a7–9, 1085a35–7.
23 Despite their differences, even the functionalists are not too far from Frede and Patzig and the traditionalists, since they too must confess that there is some sort of strong connection between the form and the ‘parts’ of the organism. The functionalists simply construe the parts in functional terms to retain plasticity of form, and Wedin further distances himself by maintaining that the parts in question are formal parts in the definition, and are not material parts ([n. 14], 208ff.). Whiting, a sympathizer with functionalism, who also construes ‘parts’ in functional terms, is even willing to count the parts as ‘material’, as the material parts of the organic body, and as essential to the form and thus as in its definition. She thinks, since these ‘material parts’ are only functionally defined, that they involve no specific sort of material, such as flesh and bones, which may constitute the organic body in a specific case ([n. 10], 628, 631). The basic difference between Wedin and Whiting is over how to assess the ‘parts’: as formal or as material.
24 In Frede's (perhaps) later article, ‘The definition of sensible substances in Met. Z’ (n. 11), he addresses again the passage in Z. 11 on the dissimilarity of circle and man in much the same terms as in his commentary with Patzig, and he again adopts the emendation that replaces aiadrjrov with αἰσθητικόν. But this time he holds that ‘nothing really turns on’ the emendation for the argument he develops there for the exclusion of matter from the definition, and he maintains that a ‘parallel argument’ could be developed from the received text ([n. 11], 117). By ‘parallel argument’ Frede may merely have in mind an argument that issues solely from (2) and has no significant link with (1).
25 I am grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions for improving this paper.
