[This one's for Jeff. Hope you like, bro.]
I am, as a graduate lecturer in philosophy, often in the to me surprising position of justifying to my students my decision to teach a particular Aristotelian text (normally the Ethics, though recently the De Anima) in my introductory philosophy class. I say surprising because to me the importance of Aristotle and his philosophy is so self-evident.
I am even more surprised when put in this defensive posture by Christians who object (though largely unreflectively) to Aristotle and his philosophical paradigms. In some cases this is just ignorance of Christian history. Some just do not know (though they should) how Aristotelian thought dominated the Western Church through the labors of the Angelic Doctor, St Thomas Aquinas. In other cases, certain presupposed commitments to relativism and/or skepticism, or just blinkered devotion to the present, lead to a largely irrational opposition to Aristotle and his thought.
My present taks is to highlight points at which Christian concepts of knowing and Aristotelian concpetions both converge and diverge.
In the De Anima 3.4-8, but especially 3.5, distinguishes between the potential intellect (the intellect of potency [dynamis]) and the active intellect (the being-at-work [energeia] intellect). The latter, the active intellect, is that capacity of the intellect to, as it were, grasp the essential nature (form [eidos, morphe]) of an object of the senses (material [hule]). Since the essence (or thinghood [ousia]) of a thing, its being-at-work, is its form, and since form actualizes the material which is a potency, the active knowledge of a thing is identical with its object. This claim, in its exact wording, is made twice (at 430a19-21 and 431a1-2): "Knowledge, in its being-at-work is the same as the thing it knows." (Literally: And the same thing it is, the according-to-being-at-work knowledge, as the thing.) Clearly this is important. But Aristotle repeats this claim, with variant phraseology at 430a3-5 ("and it [the intellect] is intelligible in the same way its intelligible objects are"), 430a5-6 ("for in the case of things without material what thinks and what is thought are the same thing"), 431b18-19 ("But in all cases the intellect, in its being-at-work, is the things it thinks"), and 431b21-22 ("let us say again that the soul is in a certain way all beings . . . While knowledge in a certain way is the things it knows"). The soul is all beings, because it apprehends all forms. It is a place of all forms. We might say, then, that our knowing of a thing participates directly in that thing.
This is an all-too-brief recapitulation of Aristotle's epistemology (and it does not even touch on the relationship of the divine knower to the human knower), and admittedly does ignores contemplation (theoria) so as to focus on knowledge (episteme). Nor is it the case that Aristotelian epistemology translates completely (or even mostly) into a Christian worldview. But there are some important points of convergence which I find interesting and illumining.
It would be appropriate here to provide a tantalizingly brief sketch of the foundations of a Christian epistemology by way of comparison to Aristotle. In sum we can say that an epistemology that is distinctly Christian is one which founds Truth in and on a Person and in and on a Body. That is to say, Christian knowing is both personal and corporate. Christ says of himself that he is the Truth (John 14.6). St Paul says that in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2.3)--and significantly our knowing and understanding are predicated on our incorporation in him (Colossians 2.1-2). And St Paul also says that in the Church is the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 1.22). Since this is the case, the Church is the pillar and ground of the Truth (1 Timothy 3.15). Because Truth is anchored in the Christ, the Truth is absolute; it does not change from time period to time period, for Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13.8). On the other hand, because Truth is a Person, Truth is relational (one wants to say "relative," but this would be misleading), or perhaps existential or communal. That is to say, in human terms, it cannot be individual. (See Addendum.)
I now want to reflect on where these two admittedly different epistemologies both converge and diverge. That is to say, I want to show how Aristotle is useful, though not exhaustively so. Or to say it another way, in what way does Christ fill up that in Aristotle which though true is yet partial?
First it can be said that Aristotle's epistemology seems to converge with Christian knowing in the point of incarnationality. For Aristotle, however, the term would not be incarnational but hylomorphic--or, "enformed matter." There are no mere things--in Enlightenment terms--but all things have form (eidos, morphe). These various forms, which give the many things their particular being, or their individual "whatness," in their particularity yet participate in the general modes of all being. (Aristotle gives eight modes in Metaphysic and ten modes in Categories .) In Christianity, we are each persons, and so reveal a particularity founded in the fecundity of life which is Christ and originates in him. Yet our personhood is a particular participation in Christ--we share a general being in that life of which we are his image and likeness.
But Aristotle is no Christian, and thoug his epistemology is a precursor to the fullness of the Truth that is Christ, yet in its partiality it diverges. That is to say, the Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between form and matter, when followed to its logical conclusion, leads to a being (a whatness) that is impersonal. Aristotle's unmoved mover is not the Christian God but an impersonal motive cause necessitated to avoid a logical conundrum.
Secondly, Aristotelian epistemology may converge with Christian knowing at the point of participation. For Aristotle, this concept is contained in the sentence, "Knowledge, it its being-at-work [energeia] is the same [thing] as its object." Knowledge becomes, or better is, what it knows. (Thus for Hegel, Spirit is all Reality.) In Christianity this understanding is fulfilled in the doctrine of theosis (or deification). Contra some Protestant teachings, Christian salvation is not merely about a juridical fiat declaring us righteous, but is rather the partaking of the divine nature (2 Peter 1.4). We become, by God's grace (and to the degree or in the way he has determined) gods ourselves. Or, in the more traditional formulation, we are by grace what God is by nature. We participate in God's being through and in his gracious uncreated energies. This participation, however, takes place through the union of the divine and human that has been achieved in the Person of Christ through the means of his Body, the Church.
But where Aristotle, in his incompleteness, diverges from Christian knowing is his identification (one could argue confusion) of knowing with the thing known. Though Christians know Christ and by participation become like Christ through his Body, the one who knows Christ does not become Christ. We partake of God's energies, not his essence. Knowing, in Christian terms, is communion, but it is not identification.
Finally, Aristotelian epistemology may converge with Christian knowing at the point of absolutivity. That is to say, both Aristotle and Christianity posit an absolute point of reference, an unvarying standard, by which to measure and to conform our rational explorations. In our radically relative century, the self is seen as the measure and confirmation of truth. But both Aristotle and Christ (though in different ways) reject his standard. Aristotle's criterion is the divine knower; that of Christ is himself, or more accurately, the Godhead, the Trinity. The absolute nature of Truth, grounded as it is (for the Christian) in God, does not admit of contraries. Similarly, Aristotle's divine knower, though not a person per se, grounds the uniformity of the being of actual things in a constant standard which it itself is.
However, there are certain problems, from a Christian viewpoint, with Aristotle's conception of absolute Truth. First, as already alluded to, Aristotle's divine knower is impersonal, whereas for Christians the Truth is a Person and a community hypostatized in that Person. And if this ground for the absolute is some impersonal intellective capacity or force, then it is difficult to discern how it is that human freedom (even the freedom to know) can be guaranteed, or even made real. Indeed, it seems that only because in the Christian worldview the absolute bedrock of Truth is a Person, that human freedom can be real.
It has famously been said that all truths are God's truth. And if Christ is the Truth, and if all humans are created in the image of the Trinity, then it would seem reasonable to conclude that wherever Truth is found, it ought to be celebrated. Aristotle is a uniquely useful all to Christians, as St Thoms himself found. But apart from Christ and his Body, the Church, all human philosophies are subject to revision.
Addendum:
It is interesting to note--though I will not develop this thought here--that for Plato intellect (nous) if left to itself gets lost in mere speculation. Rather, the intellect needs love (eros) to provide intellect with both a disposition toward the good and the beautiful and the motive force to induce its journey after knowledge (of the good and the beautiful--incidentally both translations of the same Greek word). One is right, then, to say that apart from love, the possibility of real knowledge is ever more remote.
Posted by Clifton at October 22, 2003 05:00 AM | TrackBack