[BNP/E3, 113I – 26-30]

Aristotle: “Metaphysics.”

Notes.

Book I. –

I.

“Many “recuerdos” of one same thing constitute an experience.” p. 52

- Nature of Science – difference between Science and Experience – Men of experience know that A exists, but not its cause; men of art know its cause. Foreman of works and his workmen.

Principal characteristics of science: capable of being communicated thought. No one teaches experience.

Definition of Philosophy (p.54): “science of the first causes and of 1^st principles” 

III. Materialistic philosophy. Thales. Water.

Anaxagoras: almost all things formed of like parts are subject to no other production or destruction – they aggregate or separate; in other words, they are not born nor die but subsist eternally.

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Problem of motion: all production, all destruction are by some principle, one or multiple. Since the subject cannot be Cause of its own changes, what is this? Search for the principle of change {…}

(That is, first inquiring was as to the basis, as to that where change produced the modifications; secondly to the Cause of such a change.)

Alexander Search

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Eleatics. They hold nature to be immutable. No concept of cause except on Parmenides (2^nd part of the poem Alexander Search) who conceives 2 principles besides. That order and beauty of things have been caused by the earth, or air or any other element is impossible, by Chance is not rational.

Anaxagoras proclaimed the νοῦς. Before him Hermotimus of Clazomenes, (whose disciple Anaxagoras probably was.)

Note in book.

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VI.

This opinion seems to have been held yet before by Parmenides and Hesiod who admit Love as principle of the Universe.

Seeing the ill that exists in the world and prove greater it than the good, Empedocles (his equivocal expression disregarded (says Aristotle) and having in mind the essence of his thought) holds 2 principles Love (Friendship) principle of Good and Discord principle of evil; good-in-se (Friendship) cause of all good things bad-in-se (Disorder) cause of all things which are evil.

These are, says Aristotle, Material, Efficient causes.

Philosophers not at one with themselves.

Anaxagoras uses the νοῦς very little and only at last coherently and Empedocles contradicts himself.

As the partisans of the unity of substance make all things proceed from modification of that, so Democritus and Leucippus make differences causes, giving the rare and the dense as principles of all changes. These

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differences are 3: configuration (in form) as A differs from N; coordination (in order) as NA differs from AN, situation (place) as N differs from Z. As to the “whence” of motion, and as to how it exists in being, they have omitted (says Aristotle) all enumeration of this, as all the other philosophers.

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V.

Pythagoreans.

- exposed -

From these 2 systems it is seen that the contraries are the principles of things and further that 1 of the systems tells us how many the contraries are. (10 lots)

It seems they consider the elements in a material point of view since they hold other elements are in all things and constitute and compose the universe.

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Those also have considered the All as One, but who differ among themselves.

1^st. Ionian (φισιόλογοι) take all things from the bosom of nature considered as matter (a distant doctrine). They add motion to produce the universe.

 “The unity of Parmenides seems to be the rational unity; that of Melissus, on the contrary, the material unity, for which reason the 1^st (re-)presents Unity as finite, and the 2^nd as infinite.” (p.68) Xenophanes “casting his eyes on the whole of the subject, he said that unity is God”: (p.69) Xenophanes and Melissus “whose conceptions are of a truth sufficiently coarse.” p. 69.

Parmenides, more profound, looking to explain appearance, had to resort to 2 principles, hot and cold – one of which is attributed to Being, the other to Not-Being.

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Pythagoreans differ from all in that in their system, the infinite, the finite and Unity have no existence apart from things: they are the substance of all things.// see note to p. 70.

According to the Pythagoreans, the finite, the infinite and unity have no existence apart from the subject in which they are formed. While the Ionians, even while they admit that earth and fire are infinite, distinguish the subject itself, the material principle, fire, air, or water, and the quality that they admit, a saber: infinity or immensity. In the System of the Pythagoreans there are no 2 things: subject and attribute; according to them, the alteration of the Ionian is the subject itself.

VI follows, on Plato.

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1. Thales: Aristotle: Metaphysics. I.3.
2. Anaximander: Aristotle: Metaphysics XII.2. Physics III.4

Simplicius “On Physics” p. 6, 32. Plutarch in Eusebius

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In Aristotle (“Metaphysics” p 316) – time is a movement or a mode of motion.

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321. 321. Motion in quality, in quantity, in place. No movement in essence because there is no contrary of essence, nor any contrary of relation. See S. Thomas note.

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Nothing, says Cousin, on his note to Aristotle are: the false, the néant, the “potential.”

Metaphysics p. 327.

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Metaphysics

Book II.

(1)     Study of truth easy and difficult. No one attains complete truth. Each philosopher explains ought in Nature. Perhaps cause of things is in us and not in them.

(2)     We must be thankful not only for those with whom we agree, but also for those who have been more superficial. For some to have been, the others must have been before.

(3)     Philosophy rightly called “the theoretical science of truth.” Practical men when they search for the why? of a thing do so not in itself, but in relation to a particular practical end. A thing is true, par excellence, when all things take from it what they have of true. The principles of eternal beings are of necessity eternal truth. “The definition of each thing in the order of existence is as its object in the order of the truth.”

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II. (1) Evidence of a 1^st principle. There is no infinite series of causes, nor infinity of kinds of causes. In matter we cannot say earth proceeds from air, air from fire and so on without end etc; nor, in considering motion, that man is moved by the air, nor by sun; sun by discord and so on ad infinitum. Also in the final cause we cannot postulate infinity. Of 3 things the cause cannot be the 3^rd because it is at the end. Nor the middle one for it can be cause but of 1 thing. No matter that this middle one is finite or infinite. If there be no 1^st there is no real cause. We cannot pass from air to water and so ad Infinitum. To say one thing comes after another {…}