Averroës
on Aristotle’s Criticism of his Predecessors:
An annotated translation of the long commentary on
Aristotle’s Metaphysics A
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At 987a2, toward the end of Chapter
5 of Metaphysics A, Aristotle begins his summary of the detailed
statements of the doctrines of the pre-Platonic philosophers that he has
specified earlier (983b6-987a2), and Averroës picks up the treatment a few
lines later, where the philosopher says that both those who posited a single
material cause and those who posited more “put them in material form.” To be sure, the Arabic translator
misunderstands or ignores the citation of people who spoke of more than
one. However, the commentator’s treatment of the material monists as
such is worthy of discussion. At the end
of C1a he acknowledges Aristotle’s own principal criticism of them, expressed
here and elsewhere, that they noted only one type of cause, but the most
interesting point is his statement that true matter is “potential,” not some
definite entity like fire or air, thus implying that they were insufficiently
abstract in their treatment of matter.
Aristotle himself generally views matter as a “substrate” (hupokeimenon) in a perhaps abstract sense.[1]
Yet when speaking of the material “cause” (aition)
he is content simply to give examples, like bronze causing a statue (Metaph.
Ä 2, 1013a24; Phys. II 3, 194b23).
He does imply that the monists did not have a very sophisticated
concept, in saying that they “(only) touched
on” (hēpsanto) the material cause (988a32),[2]
and that his predecessors who spoke of this or other causes and principles did
so “indistinctly” (amudrōs, 985a13, 988a23, 993a13).[3] Still, while the specific idea that matter is
“potential” is still traditionally attributed to Aristotle himself, there have
always been dissenters among Aristotle scholars.[4] The basic fact is that, while in a number of
places in the Metaphysics and the physical works he says that the matter
substrate is the potential for an object to be realized in a specific
context, it is at best unclear whether he ever means this of the matter
substrate as such.[5] We do find the idea that “matter is
potential” in a metaphysical context with Aristotle’s most faithful ancient
commentator, Alexander of Aphrodisias.[6] Among the Arabs, the doctrine is cited by
al-Fārābī,[7]
and is actually argued in detail by Avicenna (Ilāhīyāt
2.3.72-79). Averroës himself
subscribes to it in a number of places.[8]
In any case, the
commentator here articulates the specific idea that the monists themselves in
effect took a particular form of matter to be matter in the abstract. Alexander (23.24-24.7) had perhaps
anticipated him in commenting on Aristotle’s first mention of the monists in
the Metaphysics (A 3, 983b12), where the philosopher says that for them
nothing ever arose or perished, and the ancient commentator says that this is
because they had made matter actual rather than potential. Still,
Averroës shows no knowledge of Alexander’s commentary on the particular
Book A.[9] In any case, he gives a specific phrasing of
the point that their philosophy was naive.
In this he perhaps anticipates the modern dissent from the traditional
view that the early Ionians were “the first philosophers.”[10]
Otherwise,
Averroës’s cryptic remark about earth being a principle if it accompanies
laws may refer to Aristotle’s citation of Hesiod at 989a10, upon which
Averroës comments at C14b
(cf. below, on 14b).
For C1b, Aristotle has
brought in the moving cause. Although
the translation is not really clear that those who added it were later in time
(“then” in my translation might only be the logical sense of fa),
Averroës makes the point explicit in his paraphrase. Although he seems to have no idea of
specifically who the earlier monists had been,[11]
he is aware that Aristotle means to include at least Empedocles and Anaxagoras
in the category of those who posited one or more moving causes (two and one,
respectively), since he will cite them shortly.
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#2 (to commentary on 987a9-13)
Aristotle next gives a
criticism of all the materialists. For
C2a, neither the translator nor Averroës is aware that some of these
people only arose after the Pythagorean order was initiated, as Aristotle has
indicated earlier (at A 5, 985b23, before the part they
treat). These in fact included Empedocles and Anaxagoras.[12]
For C2b there is a
textual debate (still with us today) over whether Aristotle’s precise criticism
is that the materialists spoke about the causes “too obscurely” or “too
monistically” or “too weakly.” The
latter seems specified by our translator, as “insignificant” (yasīr)
speech; and Averroës in turn, at least here, specifies that as meaning
omission of the formal cause. This may
be compared with Alexander (46.15-23) before him, who in commenting on this
passage says that most philosophers before the Pythagoreans just cited the
material cause, i.e., neglected the efficient cause, or with Aquinas (43 ¶146)
after him, who simply complains that the pre-Pythagorean thinkers were vague on
the type of cause.
With respect to the six
entities of Empedocles that Averroës notes here (the four elements and the
two agents of love and strife), and to his reference to another work, Aristotle
details these principles earlier in Book A (985a21-b3 [= 31A37 D-K], in the
portion Averroës does not treat).
However, that does not mention bone or flesh, and it may be that the
reference is to the lines just before De gen. et corr. 334a26 (= 31A43
D-K), since they speak of flesh and “marrow” coming from the elements, before
asking how Empedocles would explain the process.[13] Still, Aristotle mentions Empedocles in
several other places apart from elsewhere in the Metaphysics, such as
the Physics (see in particular 252a7 = 31A38 D-K). As to the “principle” that Averroës here
claims is not any of the six of Empedocles, one supposes the formal cause is
meant even if he does not say so.
Aristotle’s explicit
identifications of the positions of Anaxagoras and Empedocles, cited by
Averroës in C2c, were made in the uncovered part of the work (at 984b18
and 985a5, respectively), so that the commentator is utilizing his general
knowledge here. However, he does not
note that Aristotle also assigns a single motive cause to Hermotimus of
Clazomenae (984b20), and, perhaps more importantly, two to Parmenides insofar
as he spoke of what he called the “way of seeming” as opposed to the way of
reality (984b3).
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#3 (to commentary on 987a13-21)
In C3a Averroës reverts to a
common practice in his commentaries: beginning his commentary on a segment with
a paraphrase rather than an actual quotation.
Here in particular he comments on Aristotle’s beginning his summary of
the Pythagorean doctrine.[14] Averroës takes the similarity Aristotle
states between them and the materialists to have been merely that both groups
spoke of two principles, as does Alexander (47.2-3). But on the point that they were actually
different, Averroës simply paraphrases the point, while Alexander
(48.9-10) elaborates, to say in parallel with this comment and the next that
the Pythagoreans made number the substrate and hence the substance of all
things, whereas the physicists had made something like fire the substrate and
substance.
The point that the
Pythagoreans identified the limited with the one is not immediately obvious
from Aristotle’s text here, either in our edition or in the Arabic translation.[15] Yet Averroës draws that conclusion in
C3b, perhaps again showing some awareness of the content of the part of Book A
ignored in his commentary proper and in (what he gives us of) its Arabic
translation. To be sure, already before
him Avicenna (Ilāhīyāt 3.6.8) was at least indirectly
aware of the Pythagorean table of opposites (986a22-26, containing the
correlation of one and limit among other things), and there is reason to
believe that all of the material earlier in A was actually known to the Arabs,
as was noted in the Introduction (see n. 9
there). But as to the Pythagorean
doctrine actually referenced, Averroës says on the one hand that they made
the principles twofold as one/limited and unlimited, but on the other as matter
and form. I suppose he means that form
corresponds to one/limited and matter to unlimited. Yet from another point of view this is a
curious claim, since the Pythagoreans surely erased the matter-form
distinction by saying that “things are numbers.” Finally, “the oldest physicists” were of
course people who did not posit the motive cause in addition to the material
one, not those who recognized both as he says here, and this again shows a
certain haziness in his knowledge of the historical development of these
theories.
In C3c Averroës
accounts for what he sees as Aristotle’s major problem with the Pythagoreans,
that they effectively negated matter as having some causal influence on matter;
namely, the commentator speaks of their “failure” (taqṣīr, تقصير) to do so. He well be more emphatic later (in C4e, C19a,
and C21d).
For C3d the translator
merges Aristotle’s thoughts contained in “the unlimited, etc., are the essence,
wherefore number is also the essence” into the simple “the unlimited, etc., are
substance (i.e., essence).” Averroës nonetheless shows his
knowledge that the Pythagoreans made number per se the principle of
things. He further concludes that “the
principle of substance is substance” for them, because one and unlimited underlie
everything, i.e., are “substance” (Greek ousia, Arabic ǧawhar, جوهر) and are themselves
underlain by number, which is itself a substance. One could imagine proceeding from there
either to claim an infinite regress or to say there must be different types of
substance, but he does not pursue the issue.
Aristotle would of
course agree with Averroës saying in C3e that the one and the many are
principles for the Pythagoreans.
However, the translator has failed to understand that what Aristotle
says they began to define was not “these considerations,” but more specifically
the issue of what “what is” means. At
least in part because of this, Averroës fails to recognize either of two
possibilities modern commentators suggest for Aristotle’s intent in saying that
the Pythagoreans “began” to discuss such things: either (1) they “started” to
discuss essences but did not get far because, as the next segment tells us,
they went about it superficially; or (2) they “initiated” the philosophical
discussion of essences. The latter
interpretation, which seems the most natural,[16]
has led some modern commentators to see an implicit reference to the formal
cause.[17] To be sure, Averroës has already noted (C2b;
cf. above on
C2b) that the materialists lacked that entity.
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#4 (to commentary on 987a21-28)
Aristotle complains of
the Pythagoreans’ superficiality in several places.[18] Strictly speaking, that point as stated here
is distinct from his next point that they defined everything in a class by the
first member to come along;[19]
still, Aristotle does not spell out the superficiality per se here, and perhaps
Averroës can be forgiven for merging the two points in C4a.[20] His paraphrase, that they called the member
of a class that they knew best the worthiest of the class, is perhaps more
stolid in manner than is warranted, given a hint of exaggeration in Aristotle’s
own statement for the sake of the polemic.
For C4b Aristotle
gives the example of double and two, and Averroës grasps the main point,
that they are not the same thing, even if he does not catch the translator’s
error in claiming the former to be prior to the latter, when Aristotle in
effect had said the opposite in holding that double “belongs first” to
two. Thus in C4c that main point
supplies an occasion to make a more general point, that the identity of a mere
property of different things does not make them the same. By way of comparison, Alexander (48.17-21) is
less abstract in simply offering a different example, that “friendship” and
“equality” are not the same just because they are related.
For C4d, Aristotle
himself perhaps means by “one becoming many” that if a doubled thing is
considered the same as two things even though it is really one, then one is
two, and so on by extension.
Differently, Averroës derives this feature from the premise of
number being something that is in itself prior to existents.
In C4e Averroës
says that to say that one is many and that existents are numbers are equally
“absurd” (or “impossible,” “inconceivable,” etc.: muḥāl, محال). He is rather less restrained in speaking of
the Pythagoreans than is Aristotle himself, and so closes with an example meant
to shock, that if they were right then the opposites (which were of signal
importance to Presocratic thinking) would not be opposites.[21]
For C4f Aristotle
speaks of what can be learned “from the first (thinkers) and the others,” but
the translator misunderstands “the first (thinkers)” as if the foregoing discussion
were meant, and “the others” (tōn allōn, presumably the later
of the pre-Platonic thinkers) as “later (discussion).”[22] Averroës then compounds the error,
interpreting “first” in neither Aristotle’s actual meaning nor the
translator’s, but as the subject (evidently “substance” to him) being ontologically
prior. Moreover, assisted by the way he
himself has sectioned the text, he converts Aristotle’s simple parting remark,
that more might be learned from study of such people, into a further logical
consequence of the doctrine of the Pythagoreans alone, that their making number
prior leads to everything being prior.
His statement on that consequence may be cogent in itself, but has
nothing to do with what Aristotle says here.
Finally, Averroës says that the
point that “foregoing” can stand for something other than “first in existence,”
will be explained in later places. One
of these places, at least, is his comment on Aristotle saying that substance is
primary in all three of the rational, the known, and the temporal (Z 1,
1028a31-33), i.e., that the substance of a given entity is not just one of
these. To this the commentator appears
to agree, interpreting it as “‘the first’ is what is said to be prior in many
ways, but in all things substance is first in definition and in knowledge and
in time” (Tafsīr 754.5-6, from C4b to Z). He goes on to say on 1028.33-34 (where
Aristotle says that of all things that are predicated, only substance is
separate), that “substance is only prior in these three ways, since nothing of
accidents is separate” (754.9-10, from C4c to Z). Some commentators take Aristotle’s statement
here to refer to the priority of specifically time, but Averroës’s comment
indicates that he, at least, regards the temporal as no more nor less important
than the other two features of the priority of substance.[23]
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#5 (to commentary on 987a29-b2)
Aristotle next indicates that Plato
came after the physicists and the Pythagoreans.
Of the former, in C5a Averroës cites some of the thinkers
specifically named in the part of Book A he covers, plus Democritus, although
none of them are material monists such as those he had acknowledged at the
outset (C1a). (As to Democritus, Averroës has not
previously cited him, but will refer anonymously to the doctrine “bodies of indivisible
parts,” i.e., atoms, and will cite him by name in a number of places later in
the Tafsīr, notably in C19t, C21i, and C21l to Book à [409.4-9,
417.9-13, and 418.5-9, respectively], where Aristotle [1009a23-b20] has tried
to convict Empedocles and Democritus as Protagorean relativists by saying they
were seduced into their respective doctrines by paying too much attention to
the appearances of sensory things.
Averroës’s paraphrase of the argument if anything makes them seem
more so.) Averroës may believe here
(as apparently Aristotle himself does) that the monists had entirely been
subsumed by Empedocles et al. He
also believes that the cited physicists had “partisans” (āl), i.e.,
founded schools, I presume on the basis of Aristotle citing the Pythagoreans as
opposed to Pythagoras.
In C5b the commentator again
displays his general knowledge of Greek philosophy insofar as it is not too
ancient, but carries the omission of the monists just mentioned to the point of
outright incorrectness in saying that (the dualists or pluralists) Anaxagoras
et al. were “the first physicists” (aṭ-ṭabī‘iyūn [اطبيعيون] al-awwal). As to the promise of later treatment, in commenting
on Z 2, 1028b19-20, where Aristotle says Plato distinguished the forms and
mathematical objects as kinds of substance, Averroës says (Tafsīr
764.16-19, within C5r to Z) that “some (i.e., Plato and his followers) used to
posit numbers and forms as of the same nature, according to what will be
related later, and they realized the particular formal cause; they wanted to
present the substances of particular things by means of general forms, meaning
that they made these the principles of sensory substances”. (It is not clear where this promise of still
later treatment is fulfilled, although in commenting on Ë 9, 1075b27-28,
Averroës speaks of forms and numbers in the same breath, with Aristotle,
as being causes of nothing, in particular not of motion, Tafsīr
1731.4-10, within C57d to Ë; cf. Genequand 207-8, Martin 290). On the reference to
In C5c Averroës is again hazy
on chronology, at least in part because the translator is (thinking that
Heraclitean opinions came “after” the person Aristotle says influenced Plato,
and mistaking that person). Cratylus was
a famous Heraclitean, who was so extreme that according to Aristotle he once
said that “one cannot step into the same river even once” (Metaph. Ã 5,
1010a14-15). He may have actually been
somewhat younger than (Socrates’s contemporary) Democritus; still, the opinions
he developed of course go back to Heraclitus himself a century or so
earlier. For all that, the commentator’s
summary of the doctrine, that everything changes so that there can be no
knowledge, is on target.
In C5d, although Aristotle himself
(and the translator) had meant by “these opinions” the Heraclitean ones just
mentioned, Averroës says by way of a summary statement that Plato took up
all the philosophical opinions cited thus far, again implying as at C5b that he
had some debt to the physicists.
In C5e Averroës does not manage
to supply the information missing in the Arabic text of Aristotle, that
Socrates introduced definition into ethics.
If he had he might not have introduced the strange notion that the reason
for citing him was his general fame, as opposed to his influence on Plato. To be sure, Aristotle and Averroës alike
ignore the point that the so-called Sophists discussed these questions before
Socrates, even if the latter was first to do so with precision. (Averroës generally paraphrases
Aristotle’s severe dismissal of these figures with approval, e.g., when the
latter claims that if you follow the supposed doctrine of Protagoras that
contrary things are both true, then if someone thinks a human is not a ship, it
is provable that that human is a ship [Metaph. Ã 4, 1007b22-25; cf. Tafsīr
383.3-17, C15d-e to Ã].) Finally, it is
perhaps interesting that Averroës refers to the philosophies before
Socrates as “scientific” (‘ilmiyya) as if that were
something counterposed to ethics.
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#6 (to commentary on 987b4-19)
Here and in the following three
segments (7-9) Aristotle summarizes Plato’s theory of forms,[24]
prior to actually criticizing it in Chapter 9 (while to be sure subtly hinting
at its problems already with the language he uses here). In C6a Averroës seems to take the
translator’s error of reading “the rest of things” for Aristotle’s “(some)
other things” as his point of departure for a general discussion of genus and
species. Still, his point is
interesting. He feels that whatever Plato got from Socrates (where
Averroës seems ignorant as just noted), he must have been struck by the
similarity of the individuals of what we conventionally call a genus or
species, thinking that this feature could not be accidental, and that Plato
combined this with neo-Heraclitean skepticism of sensory things to reach the
conclusion that the latter can only exist by “having in view” (tanẓuru ilā, تنظر
الى) the
forms. This speculation on why Plato
thought the way he did is rather more sophisticated than, say, Alexander’s
(50.19-53.11) straightforward if lengthy paraphrase of Aristotle’s text. To be sure, both show their knowledge of
Plato, up to the point of citing a favorite comparison of his: human and horse.[25] There
and in C6b, Averroës employs a craft analogy for the forms generating
individuals, as indeed will Aristotle himself shortly.
Modern commentators differ on
whether or not Aristotle speaks with justice in saying that Plato’s
“participation” (methexis) is merely comparable to the Pythagorean
“imitation” (mimēsis).[26] But for C6c-d Averroës’s translator
has somehow converted “(merely changed) the name (to) ‘participation’” (tēn
methexin tounoma) to “(added) participation in the name” (ištirāku
l-ism), and one would think this does not allow the comparability of the
doctrines Aristotle intends. Still, in C6c the commentator
nonetheless manages to reduce Plato’s stature by saying it is all only a matter
of names. In contrast, Alexander
(51.10-15) feels that Plato did not actually attribute essence to the
convention of things having the same name, Aristotle notwithstanding.
In
C6d Averroës essentially goes back to the Pythagoreans, to claim that they
did not need common names, again stressing that for them existents were
numbers.
In an aside, C6e, the allusion
Averroës thinks he sees to the beliefs of the ancients gives him an excuse
to relay an interpretation of one of Aristotle’s criticisms of Parmenides, in
effect that the latter failed to recognize that the term “one” is used in
several different senses.[27] This criticism is stated in particular in the
Physics, using the example that there are many kinds of white things
even if “white” has one meaning.[28]
Today we tend to think that, in
saying that Pythagoras and Plato alike did not investigate participation or
imitation sufficiently, what Aristotle means is that they failed to describe
the mechanism of the one or the other.
So Alexander (52.3-6) already interprets the clause.[29] However, in C6f Averroës follows the
translator’s misconstrual in saying that Aristotle is speaking of the
participation or imitation “among” species (i.e., forms), not “of” them, and is
thereby led to say that the problem was lack of reflection on the general idea:
if Plato had thought about it, he would have seen in particular that there are
forms of forms, and then there must be forms of the forms of forms, and so on
to infinity. This is a version of a
famous argument which has become entrenched in philosophical discourse as the
“third man” (although the Greek is actually “third human”), which Aristotle
himself will cite later (at Metaph. A 9, 990b17).[30]
For C6g, the translator misconstrues
the intermediacy of mathematics between sensory things and forms or species as
being between mathematics and (presumably sensory) “things,” but Averroës
is not fooled. Nor is he deterred by the
translator’s use of the third person plural, “they say,” yaqūlūna,
conveying the impression that both the Pythagoreans and Plato believe
mathematics is intermediate; he simply interprets the plural as meaning
hypothetical followers of Plato. His
statement on the intermediacy of mathematics (and his initial remark in C6h
that the opposition was “unsound,” fāsid) suggests that Plato’s
opposition to Heracliteanism was a knee-jerk reaction rather than the result of
a thoughtful study, if tempered by a desire to incorporate the Pythagorean
insights into his more general schema.
For his part, Alexander (52.10-25) is more analytical in discussing how
mathematical entities differ from forms.[31]
For C6h the translator gets what
Aristotle says is motionless completely wrong, saying that this is some part of
sense impressions rather than mathematical entities. Averroës takes the point as occasion to
make a statement which is no longer about mathematical entities, but about the
general relation between sensory things and forms.
For C6i the translation has by now
lost track of the fact that mathematics is the subject,[32]
and Averroës takes the resulting text in isolation. He states
that the point that a species is the same for all individuals partaking of it
is something that Plato as well as the Heracliteans would somehow oppose,
rather than Aristotle’s meaning that Plato means to contrast this idea with
that of a mathematical entity. His
argument appears to be that a multitude is defined by a number or by a form,
but not both. Then his last sentence
straightforwardly opposes the Heraclitean view that it is a mere matter of
names.
For C6k, rather than admit that
Aristotle’s “since” (epei) indicates that the statement that Plato saw
forms as causes is the protasis to an upcoming clause within the lacuna in his
text, the translator renders it as a self-contained
sentence. Averroës then appears to assert that Aristotle means
that knowledge of given things rather than knowledge of their causes is the
result of Plato’s theory, I suppose meaning that he left out the material and
agent causes.
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#7 (to commentary on 987b21-25)
For C7a the combination of the
lacuna in the Arabic access to Aristotle and of Averroës’s decision to
make the division between texts #6 and #7 in the particular place he puts it
breaks up a natural paragraph in Aristotle’s report. Averroës
is thereby unable to comment here on the central point; i.e., Aristotle claims
that Plato says it is interaction between great and small, on the one hand, and
the one, on the other, that generates both the forms and numbers -- a point
which is not obvious.[33] Instead,
Averroës can only speak of what the translated text “probably means” (yaḥtamilu [يحتمل] an yurīda), presuming that it is
about the relation between individual and species. He then elaborates what many would say is a
straightforward and simple statement, that the species concept arises from the
unity of the individuals to which it applies (claiming in particular that one
must first find a unity in each individual, and only then see what is common to
these unities).
In C7b Averroës says that the
Platonists deny that there is a one “in any way other than substance,” and
allows that this is not quite Pythagoreanism, because for the Platonists the
numbers are the substantial one only insofar as they are “the undivided part” (al-ǧuz’u -llaḏī lā
yataǧazzā,الجز
ُ الذى لا
يتجزى ),
presumably meaning not differentiated into specific numbers. Then he speaks of
the inability of the Pythagoreans and Plato alike to explain “contiguity” (muttaṣil, متصل), evidently meaning the
contiguity between their theoretical constructs and the observed world, or how
“the one” gives rise to many in practice.
Indeed, their lack of attention to the interface between theory and practice
is a central point in Aristotle’s criticism of their doctrines, as is seen
later in Book A where he moves beyond simply describing them[34]
(quite apart from explaining this and other points in the locations in the
physical works to which Averroës alludes, which are numerous).
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#8 (to commentary on 987b25-988a2)
Although Aristotle intends this
segment as part of his summary of Plato’s doctrine, the translator’s construal
mixes his (or rather, his followers’) opinions anonymously with those of the
Pythagoreans. Worse, although the
natural construal of 987b25-27 is that the Platonist makes the infinite two
instead of one, namely great and small, in the Arabic version this appears as
some faction somehow making two into one, separately from a possibly different
faction making the infinite the great and small. Thus in C8a Averroës is forced to
believe that there was a faction that embraced the absurdity that two is one,
although fortunately we will hear no more of it. For him the faction that did not do so is
presumably the Platonists.
In C8b, Aristotle’s intended
comparison of Plato with the Pythagoreans is made into a comparison of people
(presumably Platonists) who proposed three principles with anonymous
“ancients,” who supposedly counterposed the great and small to the substratum
as opposites. It is not clear who is
meant by the latter, unless “great and small” simply means the observable
world, in which case the Ionian monists would qualify. To be sure, the original three principles
that the Pythagoreans in particular merged into two were the limited, the one,
and the unlimited, respectively (see C3b). In any case, the point that the people under
discussion here (the Platonists) did not make the one and unlimited a
“substratum” (mawḍū‘ , مزضع = hupokeimenon)[35]
may be compared with Alexander’s (54.13-14), that Plato did not make numbers
“underlie” (hupoballōn) things.
For C8c Aristotle’s Greek makes the
relation between numbers and sense perceptions according to Plato governed by
the nuanced preposition para, whose sense ranges from “apart from” to
“along side of,”[36]
but the translator has quite gone beyond this ambiguity in rendering it as min,
to erroneously interpret Aristotle as saying Plato made numbers “of” (meaning
“from”)[37]
sensory things. Nonetheless, to some
extent Averroës is able to salvage the matter by construing “from” as “a
component of” (ǧuz’an [جثءا] min), and
interpreting that as a form. He then
notes that this is different from the Pythagoreans simply identifying the two,
and thus ends with a straightforward paraphrase after all.
In C8d, after noting the familiar
difference between the Platonists and the Pythagoreans before the lemma, he
divides the former into two factions, Platonists proper who advanced the
“mediate” doctrine and those who said numbers and forms were of the same
nature. Aristotle will indeed mention
the latter (specifically Xenocrates), aside from in Book M, in Book Z
(1028b25-27), which Averroës will paraphrase straightforwardly (Tafsīr
765.11-16, C5u to Z). But as to Book M,
if the construal “thirteenth” is correct at the end of C8d (for which see n. 58 to
comments 1-8), it shows Averroës recognizing the existence of this
book. It indeed details the gradations of thought on the relations
of forms and numbers according to various parties,[38]
and an Arabic translation of it indeed existed according to the Fihrist
index. It seems likely to me that
Avicenna was aware of it,[39]
and it is curious that Averroës did not include it in the Tafsīr.
For C8e, unlike for C8c, the
translator gets the sense of para reasonably well (ġayr, “other than”), only to have Averroës himself misread it as min,
“from,” in the lemma. Thus he
consolidates the interpretation of Platonic doctrine begun in C8c as singling
out the “formal component” of things.
Otherwise, he takes note of Aristotle’s claim that Plato differed from
Pythagoras by conducting actual investigation (albeit he shows no interest in
the aside about the ancients’ lack of dialectic). Here the translator’s construal of “reason” (logos)
as “definitions” (al-ḥudūd, الحدود), taken up by Averroës, may be compared
with Alexander (54.23-55.16) speaking of Plato employing “definition” (horisma)
as well as “division” (diaresis), to note the difference between species
and genus, on the one hand, and underlying principles and sensory things, on
the other, thereby arriving at the forms.
Averroës, rather, speaks of the need for what is not “outside the
mind,” since what is defined in this external realm is nonetheless
“variable.” This finally leads him to
attribute a belief to Plato that if the forms did not have an abstract[40]
relation to matter they would be unlike number, whereas they must be like
number.
For C8f-g the translator, assisted
by reading the protasis of a sentence to be finished in the next segment as
rather part of this segment, construes Aristotle’s denial that it is reasonable
to generate numbers from the dyad as an affirmation that they should instead be
generated from matter. Averroës
modifies this idea by saying that it is the dyad that generates numbers, not
numbers themselves, which is material, as indeed Aristotle himself will say a
bit later (988a11-14, corresponding to C9f-g).
Averroës’s defense of this proposition is to answer an objection
which it is not clear anyone would actually make: that such generation could be
accidental.
(back to top)
(back to comment)
#9 (to commentary on 988a4-16)
For C9a the translator omits A.’s
explanation of the male doing much, i.e., in relation to the female, and skips
to the statement that all this amounts to exemplification. Lacking the knowledge that we are speaking
specifically about tables (within the lacuna), he also reduces the carrier of the
form (meaning the mind that conceives it, specifically the form of a table), to
which Aristotle assigns the doing of much, to the form (or “species”) itself.[41] As for the commentary, Averroës notes the lacuna
in the Greek text and speculates on the missing content. He does get the essential point, that the
male makes many as does the form, only missing the contrast within the lacuna
of the (bringer of) the form doing much with a craftsman making only one
artifact at a time. Probably he
understands the translator to mean by “those people” the Platonists of all
subgroups, although we cannot be certain.
For C9b, as Martini points out, the
translator’s “examples and similes” (amṯalatun wa-tašbīhāt, امثلة
وتشبيهات) is a hendiadys for Aristotle’s “images” (mimēmata).[42] Here Averroës implies that the process
by which they (presumably meaning the various types of Platonist) arrived at
the concept of forms was induction from examples.
For C9c-e, Aristotle accuses Plato
of using “only two causes,” i.e., that he neglected the efficient cause,[43]
and it has been said that the criticism is unjust.[44] For his part, Averroës at first asserts
that the species concept operates both as form and as “agent” (al-fā‘il),
but then agrees that matter and form were all that Plato used, and finally
allows that “species” (naw‘, the translator’s standard term for
Aristotle’s “form,” eidos),[45]
in fact is “form” (sūra) itself.
This seems rather muddled. Yet
his statement in C9d, that Plato held matter to be (merely) that whose
quiddities and definitions are forms, is interesting. This might be
thought to imply a contrast with Aristotle’s theory as interpreted by
Averroës, wherein matter is the (seemingly important) substrate or
potentiality (see the annotation on C1a
above).
For C9f the translation
misunderstands Plato’s view as Aristotle reports it, that “the one is (the
cause of the ‘what is’) of the forms,” as that, rather, the forms simply “are
one.” Then for the combination of C9f
and C9g Aristotle himself says that the identity of the matter substratum is
the duality of great and small, “according to what is said” about two things,
the forms and the one (kath’ hēs … legetai), i.e., as an aspect of
what Plato believed about these entities.
The Arabic version, rather, only applies that phrase to the second thing
(for which see the next paragraph). As to the first thing, the
translator says that the matter substrate or its environs is the entity “in
which (species) are found” (allatī fī-hā tūǧadu, توجد), i.e., perhaps, as what
one who examines Plato’s doctrine would “find.”
In any event, Averroës interprets this statement together with “the
one is the forms” as what Aristotle himself finds in it, that is, as a
criticism of one aspect of it, rather than the statement Aristotle actually
intends, on what Plato would say of it.
According to modern
interpreters as well as to Alexander (59.20-21), it is the previously mentioned matter substrate to which Aristotle
refers in saying (988a13) that “this” (hautē) is the duality of the
great and the small according to Plato.
However, for C9g the Arabic version loses this reference and instead
focuses on the property of the duality, that it is the great and small. Then it is interpreted by Averroës, as
referring not to matter but to species (i.e., forms) and to that which governs
them (the one or the form of forms), respectively. The commentator then considers that Aristotle
tacitly implies that this shows why Plato is wrong, because in fact great and
small are “other than the twofold,” meaning the particular two-fold entity that
would be relevant,[46]
I suppose matter and form.
For C9h, after
Aristotle has referred the “elements” (stoicheia) which are the cause of
positive and negative ethical qualities for Plato to the one and the dyad,
respectively (or so the sentence is generally construed), the translator
possibly refers them to the (presumably standard four) elements (al-usṭuqusāt, الاسطقسات), and speaks only of
positive qualities. Averroës somehow ignores the fact that the
translator’s term for elements is in the plural, not the dual, and gets “matter
and form” (al-māddatu wa-ṣ-ṣūra, والصر). Still, he understands “good and praiseworthy”
as actually standing for both them and their opposite, thus restoring
Aristotle’s original sense of both good and bad despite the translation;
however, as will become even clearer in his next comment, he construes two principles
as the source of them generally, not via Aristotle’s own correspondence of one
entity to good and another to bad. Indeed, given the translator’s
construal of the elements as plural rather than dual he cannot make the
one-to-one identification of two ethical qualities to two entities respectively
as Aristotle intends, and thus for C9i thinks of “the remaining (things)” (al-bāqiyya),
perhaps meaning the rest of the universe. For whatever it is worth,
in C9i Averroës interprets this distorted text straightforwardly, albeit
after again ignoring the translator’s plural and this time forgetting the
opposite of the good and praiseworthy.
For C9k one can grant the possibility that the recension of the Greek text our translator used omitted the specific mention of Empedocles and Anaxagoras giving causes of good and evil, as it appears in our text of Aristotle (where he means to refer to his discussion at A 3, 984b15-22 for Anaxagoras and at A 4, 985a4-10 for Empedocles, both in the portion n