Abstract
Perception, knowledge, and abstraction have the general structure of relations. Such abstract nouns as ‘perception’ have the ambiguity that they can name both the relation and relata , as in ‘perception is the perception of something perceptible’. Two paronymous relata can be derived from the abstract paronym : ‘perceiving as a state of movement of soul ’ and ‘what is being perceived’ from ‘perception’. When given in the same mode, like first actuality , these relata are simultaneous , although one may have causal priority over the other. There is a single relational complex, which can be described from the standpoint of either relata . These points hold for abstraction too.
Like other relata , abstractions can be taken as subjects in their own right, despite depending on their substances for their existence. Aristotle treats the objects of science in the same way: they may be taken as if they are independent even though they are not. By treating universals and essences in this way, Aristotle can have a science of universals and still avoid Platonism .
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Notes
- 1.
See Alexander of Aphrodisias , On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5; translated & comm. Dooley SJ 1993: 165, n. 382, on Alexander , in Metaph. 409, 14–18.
- 2.
Indeed, Avicenna , following Al-Fārābī (Kitāb al-Ḥurūf §35, 80, 7–81, 6; §42, 87, 1) does exactly that: Al-Maqūlāt, Part One, Volume Two of Aš-Šhifā, ed. Anawati et al. 1959: 144, 5–145, 4.
- 3.
At Topics 125b15–27 Aristotle calls perception and memory states and not capacities.
- 4.
See the “Relata as Paronyms” section for an explanation of this numbering.
- 5.
Morales (1994: 256) says that Aristotle uses “concrete” terms for relata : thus not ‘slavery’ but ‘slave’, except for ‘equality’ etc.1021b6-8. (Cf. Ackrill 1963: 98.) But as ‘knowledge’ figures prominently in his discussion he must not mean ‘concrete noun’ grammatically, but, as he suggests murkily “concrete” in the sense of signifying an underlying thing (Morales 1994: 261). This seems to mean that the father presupposes a substance who is that father; the equal presupposes things that are equal etc. In my scheme, Morales is saying that relata must be said paronymously from the relation .
- 6.
Especially in ordinary language many mixtures of abstract and concrete terms are possible. To take Aristotle’s own example: mastery is mastery of a slave, not of slavery, and, conversely, slavery is slavery [enslavement] by a master, not by mastery. Aristotle may not end up endorsing all the vagaries of ordinary language. Still, he does start with them.
- 7.
Later on the usual term for ‘relation ’ seems to have come to be the
, which generally means ‘condition’—here the condition holding between the relata
, and ultimately the state of the substance for taking on the relation
. Neoplatonists like Plotinus
and Simplicius
tended to give more reality to the relation
than to the relatum
, and so treat the relation
as a hypostasis
, as opposed to the relatum
serving as a subject. Cf. nn. 36 and 37; Simplicius, in Cat. 169, 1–6; 169, 22–3; 171, 19–21; in Phys. 835, 23–4; Enneads VI.1.6.1–3 & 31–2; VI.1.7.23–7; VI.1.9.28–32; Menn 1999: 224, n.14. (I have modified my account in Bäck 2003.) - 8.
Simplicius (in Cat. 163, 31–164, 4) says that the state is relative to the one having the state or to the statable (
).I am using double quotes to indicate that I am not talking about the expressions but about the things, the paronyms . Also “the knower” seems to be said from “knowledge”, sc., “what has the knowledge”. Cf. Avicenna , Al-Maqūlāt, 144, 5–145, 4 & n.268. However, as Aristotle does not make knowers one of the relata for knowledge, I postpone such discussion until later.
- 9.
I am tempted to say that the first constitutes a use of the middle voice and the latter a use of the passive voice (the thing being known versus the thing being known by someone), but I don’t find sufficient evidence to do this. Cf. Plato , Euthyphro 10a5–c12.
- 10.
See too Metaphysics 1021a14–19; Topics 125b20–125b28.
- 11.
Caston does make some dubious claims though, that at 425b20–1, when Aristotle says that even when we are not seeing we can discriminate darkness by sight, ‘sight’ must refer to the capacity and not to the act. In pitch black I can have my eyes open and actually see nothing, i.e., receive no forms of the visible objects; this is an act of seeing in another way. Again, Aristotle’s using the plural ‘perceptions’ at 425b25 does not suffice by itself for claiming that Aristotle must mean acts of perception; cf. the plural ‘knowledges’ at Cat. 8b29 (although Caston ’s conclusion might be correct; cf. Caston 2002: 772).
- 12.
On why Aristotle does not use ‘perceiver’ as a relatum , see (ps.) Alexander of Aphrodisias 407, 35–408, 17, trans. Dooley 1993.
- 13.
Cf. (ps.) Simplicius , in de An. 128, 10–1.
- 14.
Then the distinctions between the three types at 1021a26–b3 disappear; remember that the lexicon is partly endoxic as it codifies current usage, ordinary and philosophical. I discuss this text below. The difference noted at Topics 125a33–b14 between those relata that must have a relation to their correlatives and those that need not comes from the difference of the terms being used to signify the relata and not from a difference in the relations being signified. After all, Aristotle there is concerned with constructing arguments against and adversary and with the selection of terms.
- 15.
This point becomes important below in the next two chapters when I discuss per se and per accidens perception , and extend the doctrine to per se and per accidens knowledge.
- 16.
—and solve the puzzles raised by Everson (1997: 116–25).
- 17.
Cf. (ps.) Simplicius , in de An. 192, 2–3, who says that the perception and the perceptible are simultaneous in act but not in potency, and that the thing that is the perceptible in potency can exist beforehand in act. Also Bodéüs (2001: 125), who cites An. 431a1–2. Plotinus (Enneads VI.1.7.39–41; 8.15) argues against the simultaneity of relatives.
- 18.
Then the distinction made at 1021a26–b3 disappears.
- 19.
Everson (1997: 122–5) takes the
, the things making the perception, at 1010b34 to be the colors etc., the things perceived by the senses, while Ross
(1953: ad locum) takes them to be the substances. In light of the Categories doctrine, I favor Ross
. We might also think of a quasi-modern example to convince us: suppose it is pitch dark at night and you are facing an (unpainted) marble statue. At “the rosy fingers of dawn” you see the statue as pink. Now it is hard to say (especially without modern knowledge about the finite speed of light) that the pink of the statue existed prior to your perceiving the statue as pink. Rather the individual substance
, the statue, with the capacity of coming to be pink, did. - 20.
(Ps.) Simplicius (in de An. 193, 24–7) says that the perceptible and the perception are simultaneous [in actuality ], while the perceptible in potency exists before. I shall suggest this condition of modality already to explain Aristotle’s views on the parts of animals . Cf. Ammonius , in Cat. 76, 23–30.
- 21.
Or, at any rate, in the same mode of actuality etc. as the interpretation about the criterion of determinacy suggests.
- 22.
Simplicius (in Cat. 79, 9) may be suggesting this. Also see Chap. 3.
- 23.
This conversion does work, rather tortuously, also for perception: perception is the perception of [something] perceived; the perceived is perceived in perception. Thus (ps.) Simplicius , in de An. 169, 25–6: “…the perceptible being perceptive of the perceptible, and the perceptible being perceptible to the perceptive.” (Cf. We might also consider a more exact parallel using abstract terms: motion is the motion of the movable. Cf.: “That of a being in potency, when what is in actuality acts not qua itself but qua movable, is motion .” [Phys. 20la27–9]
- 24.
Aristotle seems to construe these cases as relations too: the road from a to b, and the ascent/descent from a to b. For there is something like the conversion typical of relata here, obviously with ‘the ascent is an ascent of a descent’ or perhaps ‘the ascent is an ascent from a to be; the descent is a descent from b to a; more tortuously with ‘this starting point (Athens) is a starting point for the ending point (Thebes); this ending point is an ending point for this starting point.
- 25.
(Ps.) Alexander (in Metaph. 792, 1) calls knowledge in actuality a motion and knowledge in potentiality a state.
- 26.
On perception being a motion , see Granger 1993: 166.
- 27.
Simplicius (in Cat. 22, 22–30) says that heteronyms share neither account nor name, and that this is the strictest type of heteronomy . He then admits this special sort, which however Ammonius (in Cat. 16, 26–9) takes as basic while calling the wholly ‘heteronymous’ simply ‘different’. Cf. Clement of Alexandria , Stromateis VIII.8.24.2-9, ed. Stählin: 95, 5–26; Ammonius, in Cat. 16, 24–17, 3; Alexander , in Top. 398, 1–4; Luna 1987: 52.
- 28.
For knowledge is of the universal and so for Aristotle its relata would not be singulars. The relation of perception can have singular and perhaps universal relata . See the next Chapter. On grammar being a relatum because its genus is, cf. Top. 146b7–9; Metaph. 1021b4–6.
- 29.
Aristotle is rather coy in his phrasing, as to whether the second ‘wing’ is indefinite or definite. Given his theory, it should be taken to indicate something general. We however might think that grammar is of something: e.g., the grammar of the Greek language. If so, then just take ‘the grammar of the Greek language’ to signify the infima species.
- 30.
Actually, Aristotle could have said this, along the lines of what Plato suggests at Parmenides 134a–e, that the Form of knowledge has nothing to do with the individuals of our acquaintance but with Forms. Yet Aristotle seems not to take this line, as he takes the relata for knowledge to be individual things.
- 31.
The same would have to hold for true statements about qualities etc.: ‘redness is a color’ means that to be red is to be a color. Just as Aristotle does not want the essence of a dog, being a dog or what it is to be a dog, to exist apart from the dog, the same might be said for the essence of the red thing.
- 32.
Simplicius (in Phys. 401, 32–3) gives the correlates for vision and knowledge as their paronyms . Alexander of Aphrodisias , On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5; translated & comm. Dooley SJ 1994: 165 n. 382, on 409, 14–18: “If Aristotle’s position must be justified, it is because Alexander ’s interpretation of Metaphysics 1021a32—that sc. thought is not referred to the thinker in whom it exists to the thing cognised—seems to conflict with the text from the Topics he has quoted, according to which relatives are referred to that in which they exist. But that text provides for relatives such as knowledge that are not necessarily referred to things in which they exist (although such reference is possible), but that can also exist in other things. When therefore (Alexander argues) Aristotle refers thought not to the knower but to the object, he is invoking this principle.”
- 33.
Cf. Metaph. 1028a11–3. On the nature of the categories, see Bäck 2000: 136–9.
- 34.
So Christopher Kirwan (1993: 164) sees little connection.
- 35.
The variant text at 1021a28 amounts to the same. Cf. Kirwan ’s translation for 1021a28–9: “…from being called just what they are of something else, not from the other thing, being relative to them.”
- 36.
He has missed the point that the items being related are not properly the substances but relata of those substances. A relatum like the thinkable is and not merely can be thought, although its substance need only able to be thought. Also see (ps.) Alexander , in Metaph. 407, 10–1; 409, 32.
- 37.
The remarks of Dooley (On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 5 [= 406, 35–407, 4], nn. 368; 382) then are off-target, when he asserts that the third sort differs from the first two by one of the relata being able to exist without the other: first, because this remark would hold also for the second sort, as with the father and the son, and, second, because, as discussed, this result holds only from the substances that are relata , and not for the relata when named strictly. On his reference to Top. 125a33–b14 see n. 14. Kiefer (2007: 28–9) claims that the second sort “does not imply the presence of its opposing counterpart, unlike the other two kinds” and such relata are not simultaneous .
- 38.
Compare the phrasing of 1021a28–9 with 6a35 and the use of
and 
. This is also how ancient commentators like (ps.) Alexander
(in Metaph. 409, 32–6) interpret it. - 39.
Cf. (ps.) Alexander of Aphrodisias , in Metaph. 406, 35–407, 4. On what Aristotle means by ‘saying the same thing twice’, see Int. 21a16–7; 20b40 and Metaph. 1003b26–9.
There are problems with the text of 1021b3: one definite article added and another deleted by the editors: if not thus then: ‘it is sight of that of which the sight is [it is the sight]’. Not making the two suggested corrections would yield a text following the pattern in the Categories exactly, as opposed to what the editors (Jaeger and somewhat Bonitz) give. See Ross 1953: 331, n. 3.
- 40.
Alternatively, ‘abstraction’ can be taken to signify an action done upon something. Yet action too has relational features.
- 41.
“There is, for Aristotle, no such thing as a number, for example, except insofar as is a particular number. And there is no such thing as a particular number except insofar as that particular number is an odd number or, if it is not an odd number, an even number. Each particular member of the kind, number, must be determined as to being odd or, if not odd, even, if it is to be a member of that kind” (Tierney 2004: 15).
- 42.
- 43.
‘Being qua being’ is the obvious exception; perhaps also embryology and astronomy as well as psychology, as the soul is the essence of animate substances. Cf. Metaphysics 1037a5–8.
- 44.
Cf. Ross 1949: 577.
- 45.
‘Abstracts from’ does not appear in the Greek!—only “without magnitude”.
- 46.
As discussed in Chap. 10, Sorabji seems wrong to claim that these Cambridge changes are distinctive to relata . Rather they would hold for the concrete paronym of an item of any category when the motion or change is per accidens.
- 47.
There are some problems with the text: if we excise Ross ’ addition, we get for 225b11–3: “For, when one of them changes, it is possible that it is true that the other changes [in] nothing, so that their motion be per accidens.”
- 48.
Still, Aristotle does say that “the musical walks because that to which the musical is accidental walks” [224a22–3]—and that thing certainly seems to be an individual substance . Simplicius (in Phys. 802, 18–21) takes this to mean that the individual substances walk, but goes on to observe, 802, 27–803, 2, that Aristotle is not speaking of motion but of change in general. We may say also that Aristotle just has not yet given his finer analysis, that an individual substance walks qua being in a place but not per se (some individual substances , the immaterial ones, can’t walk).
- 49.
Perhaps this is what Sorabji and Fleet mean, although they do not say so strictly speaking.
- 50.
Thus Simplicius , in Phys. 811, 13, 812, 2.
, which generally means ‘condition’—here the condition holding between the relata
, and ultimately the state of the substance for taking on the relation
. Neoplatonists like Plotinus
and Simplicius
tended to give more reality to the relation
than to the relatum
, and so treat the relation
as a hypostasis
, as opposed to the relatum
serving as a subject. Cf. nn. 36 and 37; Simplicius, in Cat. 169, 1–6; 169, 22–3; 171, 19–21; in Phys. 835, 23–4; Enneads VI.1.6.1–3 & 31–2; VI.1.7.23–7; VI.1.9.28–32; Menn 
).
, the things making the perception, at 1010b34 to be the colors etc., the things perceived by the senses, while Ross
(
and 
. This is also how ancient commentators like (ps.) Alexander
(in Metaph. 409, 32–6) interpret it.
) at Topics I.5 applying to all the categories; so Ammonius
, in Cat. 20, 27; Frede References
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Bäck, A. (2014). The Relation of Abstraction. In: Aristotle's Theory of Abstraction. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 73. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04759-1_4
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