Cablao, Kristian Jason L.

Bachelor in Philosophy

Aristotle’s Metaphysics

Aristotle begins the Metaphysics by bringing his readers into the inquiry about the
nature of wisdom and the ways into which such wisdom is achieved. In doing so,
Aristotle first demarcates two ways of knowing, from which man is able to know things
about the world. The first is through experience, which enables man to acquire
knowledge of individuals—a form of knowledge that is common in all men by virtue of
sensation. The second is through an art or science, born out of drawing a universal
judgment from many notions gained through experience—the form of knowledge which
is best suited to be of the nature of wisdom.
Aristotle appraises the latter form of knowledge as that which can best
characterize wisdom because through it one is able to know the “cause” of things. It is
superior to knowledge from sheer experience by virtue of its being able: (1) to know all
things, although not individually, (2) to know difficult things, which are not commonly
known by people, (3) to be more exact and capable of teaching the causes, and (4) to be
desirable on its own account, for the sake of knowing and not for the sake of utility. It is
from the above points that Aristotle supposes wisdom, the highest degree of universal
knowledge, to deal with the first causes and principles of things.
Aristotle further proceeds to discuss the kind of causes and principles, from which
knowledge of them is wisdom. The principles involved in Aristotle’s search for wisdom
are those which justify the exactness of the science that is able to reach wisdom. He calls
these principles as the “First Principles”, which invariably coincides with the above
characterization of wisdom as that which is the knowledge of all things at the universal
level, as that which is knowledge of difficult things in so far as its objects are farthest to
the senses, as that which is instructive, in a higher degree, for it tells the causes of things,
and lastly as that which exists alone for its own sake, as a free science, in so far as its
thinkers (the lovers of wisdom) wonder about things in order to escape from ignorance
and not for any utilitarian end.
As for the causes, Aristotle brought out his taxonomy of causes in the Physics.
From such, Aristotle presented the conclusions of his predecessors who have equally
dealt with the investigation of being and reality in a way which emphasizes how they
(Aristotle’s predecessors) did so in terms of the four causes that he now provides. He
spoke of the causes in four senses: (1) the substance, which is the essence of things (the
formal cause), (2) the matter or the substratum (material cause), (3) the source of change
(the efficient cause), and (4) the purpose and the good (the final cause).
In the presentation of the history of speculation before him, Aristotle claims that
all his predecessors investigated about reality only in terms of either one of the principles
and causes which are found in his work on nature, in the Physics. Some spoke only of
matter as the material cause of reality as in the case of Thales, Anaximenes and
Diogenes, Hippasus and Heraclitus, Empedocles, or Anaxagoras. Others proceeded to
talk about the cause of change and motion or the efficient cause of reality. Still others
proceeded forward to talk about a new kind of cause, dealing with the reason why things
exhibit beauty and goodness, thus proposing a purpose of things through reason as in the
case of Anaxagoras and Hermotimus of Clazomenae.
As for the substantial reality, however, (the essence) Aristotle considers Plato to
be concerned of such but in an erroneous way. Plato indeed concerned himself with the
universal knowledge of reality through its substantial cause but from an other-worldly
stance, from the point of non-existing eternal forms of reality, to which sensible things
participate with in order for them to have being.
By this presentation, Aristotle shows how his work follows from the works of his
predecessors and that the failure of those who came before him marks the starting point
from which he must succeed in the venture of investigating about reality. Aristotle’s
premise is that in order to gain knowledge about the fundamental principles and causes of
things, one must understand the primary causes of things, that is, one must know the
nature of the “cause”, the sense in which a “cause” is, the way in which it is its nature to
be a cause. Before him, thinkers plainly pointed out different causes of things but have
not satisfactory dealt with the nature of these causes, Aristotle however aims at first
distinguishing and clarifying their nature.
By cause, Aristotle means the ‘why’ of reality. Thus, to know the cause of reality
is to have satisfactory explanations on the coming-to-be, being, and passing away of
reality. Thus, the cause is the sufficient explanation of reality. Aristotle then further
provides the four causes of reality as mentioned above.
Aristotle’s pointing out of these four causes, together with his account of change,
potency, and actuality, is central for the entirety of the Metaphysics. His doctrine of
substance and the implications included in it evolve around the concerns of his ontology
in the Categories and his account of change in the Physics, from where the notions of
potency and actuality can be found. All these concerns are cohesively weaved in the
Metaphysics by the concern for finding out the fundamental substance of reality.
In this search for the fundamental substance of reality, Aristotle first distinguishes
particular things to be of composite nature—one that consists both of matter and form.
This is Aristotle’s infamous Hylemorphism that serves as the solution for the problem of
substantial generation, by showing that in the process of change, the matter remains
unchanged while the modification (the form) of the matter changes; thus, the prime
matter.
However, this presents a problem in pointing out the fundamental substance of
things, in so far as what can be legitimately pointed out as fundamental in such process
would be in effect a formless matter, an unintelligible substance. Aristotle would not
resort to positing an unintelligible fundamental substance of reality like that of Plato’s
eternal forms. Thus, he claims that the fundamental substance is the essence of things,
because it is this essence that is properly caught in the definition of it.
Aristotle’s Metaphysics is a work that captures an overwhelming scope of
concerns in the earliest days of philosophical curiosity. His ambition of pointing out the
flaws of his predecessors in order to correct them and in order to build a more satisfactory
scheme of understanding the world and all its wonders is indeed stupendous in length and
quality. It is owing to these points that his Metaphysics is fundamental for Philosophy’s
Metaphysics.