Excellence as Completion in Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics
2013; Philosophy Education Society Inc.; Volume: 66; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2154-1302
Autores Tópico(s)Classical Philosophy and Thought
ResumoARISTOTLE TWICE STATES, as a general truth, that being is better than nonbeing. (1) Throughout his works, moreover, goodness of beings frequently depends on their completeness. This is not surprising, given prominence of complete in Aristotelian ethics, where the best appears to be something and in particular the human good is activity of soul according to excellence; and if there are several excellences, according to best and most complete; and further, in a complete life. (2) Now crucial term in this last statement is activity, not for both inside and outside his ethics Aristotle associates good with being in primary sense of activity ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) or fulfillment [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. (3) Yet he seems to think that frequently, genera] concepts of potency and act are neither necessary nor particularly appropriate for ethics or for natural science. As highly general terms of art, they tend to obscure specific contours of subject at hand. The complete ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) has a similar generality and flexibility--indeed, it is closely related to Aristotle's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]--but even in translation it is somewhat less opaque. An ordinary, unpretentious notion, it can be applied helpfully to a variety of subjects without calling attention to itself. It is one of three central concepts--the determinate, complete, and self-sufficient--in terms of which he explores goodness of things that are. (4) Whether we wish to understand Aristotle's ethics, therefore, or to explore idea of good that animates his accounts of nature or of being as such, we may wish to have a synoptic view of what he means by complete, and of what sorts of things qualify as complete and why. This would require: (1) surveying completeness attained by natural substances--especially but not only living substances--in normal course of their coming to be; (2) examining contention that certain kinds of animal, and most likely of natural substance more generally, are more complete than others; (3) exploring his description of virtue or excellence as a completion; (4) investigating claim that certain excellences are more complete than others; (5) understanding completeness and incompleteness of various activities and motions. (5) Among these various tasks, third has advantage that it can be approached through study of two key texts: chapter on complete in Metaphysics 5, Aristotle's philosophical lexicon, and a discussion of ontology of excellence in Physics 7. In these texts Aristotle explores conceptual and ontological issues germane to a general concept of excellence; in both cases, key premise is that excellence is best thought of as a completion. (6) His development of this claim draws on two larger themes. In Metaphysics 5, concept of excellence as a completion belongs to a broad conceptual realm--explored in chapters 16-17 and 25-27--in which intelligible realities are presented metaphorically in terms of shape and size. Within this realm, excellence grows toward a limit set by powers that make a substance what it is. (7) In Physics, excellence belongs to a world structured by contraries and therefore also by coming to be and destruction. What it completes is a substance's power to negotiate such a world while maintaining and developing its own identity. (8) Having grown to full stature through its proper excellence, substance can keep itself from being affected or altered in ways that would undermine its being; in so doing, it approximates self-sufficient impassivity that Aristotle attributes to thought ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). The themes of alteration and identity are also pursued in On Soul 2.5, which provides an important complement to Physics 7.3. That excellences of body and certain excellences of soul merely imitate a kind of being that [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] exemplifies--namely, self-sufficient freedom from conditions of bodily existence, and so also from alteration and from change in general--suggests that there will be an asymmetry between excellence of soul's thinking part and other sorts of excellence. …
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