Aristotelian Interpretations
Fran O'Rourke
Irish Academic Press, 2016

"It is characteristic of wonder that with increased insight, there follows pari passu an ever-increasing sense of mystery; understanding and wonder feed and fortify one another in an ever-intesifying cycle of contemplation and admiration. As well as captivating the intellect, wonder also engages the will. What is awesome or marvellous is pleasing; it arouses wonder and incites a desire to learn. Learning is the movement towards the actuality of knowledge, insofar as this is possible. [fn44: Perfect knowledge is the privilege of the gods (Metaphysics I.2 982b28-983a10). Human nature, according to Aristotle, is in many ways servile. It is because he does not enjoy perfect sophia that man engages in philosophia.]" (O'ROURKE, p. 34)

"Through discovery (anagnorisis) the intellect is brought to its proper state, bringing pleasure and happiness in accordance with the natural, fulfilled, state of the human intellect.... Knowledge is an end in itself, hence wisdom causes happiness: man is happy through the simple act (toi energein) of contemplating. [EN VI.12 1144a4-6]" (O'ROURKE, pp. 35-36)

"He defines pleasure as the sensation experienced with the awareness of achieving our proper nature. It is the conscious movement (kinesin aistheten) by which the soul as a whole attains natural fulfilment. [Rhetoric I.10 1369b33-35] Central to Aristotle's definition is the perceptible quality of pleasure: one is *aware* of one's experience as pleasant. [Rhetoric I.11 1370a27-28]" (O'ROURKE, pp. 36)

"Seeking the substance (ousia) of things in Metaphysics 7, Aristotle identifies it primarily with eidos. And in the Physics he identifies phusis or nature as the distinctive 'shape and form' (he morphe kai to eidos) of things which have within themselves their own source (arche) of movement and change. Nature (phusis), he elaborates, determines each living thing in its shape and form as the kind of thing which it is by definition. Phusis and eidos are virtually identical." (O'ROURKE, p. 52)

"Nature attains her final cause in the maturity of each living substance." (O'ROURKE, p. 52)

Commenting on PA 687a15-24 on the role of the hands in human life, O'Rourke notes: "There is an obvious parallel between this passage and DA III.8, where Aristotle compares intellect (nous), paramount among the powers of soul, with the hand as the principle organ of the body. The hand is the tool of tools, as nous is the form of forms." (O'ROURKE, p. 63)

"The soul is the most elusive of targets and cannot be fastened upon by reason. The difficulties arise from its excellence. Aristotle begins his treatise On the Soul with the declaration: 'We regard all knowledge as beautiful and valuable, either in virtue of its accuracy, or because it relates to higher and more wonderful things. On both of these counts it is reasonable to put an inquiry into the soul among subjects of the foremost rank. Moreover this investigation seems likely to make a substantial contribution to the whole body of truth, and particularly to the study of nature; for the soul is in a sense the principle (arche) of animal life'. [DA I.1 402a1-7]" (O'ROURKE, p. 65)

"The soul gives to the body its unity, existence, and life. While unity and existence are used in many senses, their primary sense is that of actuality. He explains: 'In living beings life is their existence, and of these the soul is the cause and first principle'. [DA II.4 415b13-14] Aristotle was obliged to coin a new term to formulate his definition: 'Soul is the first actuality (entelecheia, i.e. completeness, perfection) of a natural body with organs'. [DA II.1 412b5-6] The soul is the primary perfection which completes the body, determining it as the kind of essence it is. The soul is said to be the 'cause and first principle of the living body' and 'the essence of a particular body'. [DA II.4 415b7-8, also II.1 412b11]" (O'ROURKE, p. 66)

"Aristotle emphasizes the unity of actions performed by the soul-body composite. Thinking, remembering, loving and hating, for example, belong not to the mind, but to the individual. [DA I.4 408b25-27] It is more accurate to say, not that the soul pities, learns or thinks, but that the individual man does these things by means of the soul. [DA I.4 408b13-15]" (O'ROURKE, p. 66)

"To explain the process whereby the forms of all things cognitively enter into the soul, he distinguishes between two functions of mind: a passive element, which 'becomes' everything, and an active element, which 'makes' everything. [DA III.5 430a14-15] The latter is a positive state or 'habit' [hexis], resembling that of light, which illuminates the potential meanings latent in sense images, and transforms them into actually intelligible concepts to be received by the passive intellect. In this role, Aristotle states, the mind is separable, impassible, and unmixed, since its essence is activity. [DA III.5, 430a17-18" (O'ROURKE, p. 72) [PSA: Note that awareness is energeia.]

"Self-consciousness for Aristotle is always an attendant awareness of the self as acting." (O'ROURKE, p. 76)

"Aristotle's definition of a friend as 'another self' is deservedly well known: intuitively it offers immediate evidence in its own right. Less explicit is the deeper metaphysical basis for his definition and the insight it provides for Aristotle's understanding of selfhood. His examplar is the 'good man' (ho spoudaios), whose virtue is the moral measure of all things. The virtuous man is well-centred and self-rooted in all respects. Aristotle makes repeated use of the reflexive personal pronoun (heauton/heatou/heatoi): the spoudaios 'is of one mind with himself (homognomonei heatoi), and desires the same things with all his soul (kata pasan ten psuchen)'. [EN IX.4 1166a13-14] The good man wishes for himself his own good (heautoi tagatha), striving actively to attain it for his own benefit. 'He does it for the sake of the intellectual element in him, which is thought to be the man himself'. [EN IX.4 1166a16-17] The good man, moreover, desires his own life, seeking especially to preserve his rational part (malista touto hoi phronei). There follows a powerfully personalist statement, which conveys a clear sense both of the fundamental character of existence, and the inalienable and intimate nature of the thinking and acting individual: 'For existence is good for the virtuous man; and everyone wishes his own good: no one would choose to possess every good in the world on condition of becoming somebody else ... but only while remaining himself, whatever he may be; and it would appear that the thinking part is the real self, or is so more than anything else'. [EN IX.4 1166a19-23]" (O'ROURKE, pp. 77-78)

"The sense of self-being, and the ineradicable link between existence and action, are likewise conveyed in a passage where Aristotle explains why the artist loves his work, the poet his poems, parents their children, and benefactors the fruits of their generosity: 'The reason of this is that all things desire and love existence; but we exist in activity, since we exist by living and doing; and in a sense one who has made something exists actively, and so he loves his handiwork because he loves existence'. [EN IX.7 1168a5-8] Through praxis and poiesis new potencies are actualized and actualities perfected. Aristotle states as a fundamental principle of nature: 'What a thing is potentially, its work reveals in actuality'. [EN IX.7 1168a8-9]" (O'ROURKE, pp. 78-79)

"Beyond the incomplete action of motion (kinesis), which involves potency, there is the perfect action of self-complete activity whose exercise is its own fulfilment. Expressed by the term energeia, this is the primary goal of human desire: 'While the actuality of the present (tou parontos he energeia), the hope of the future, and the memory of the past are all pleasant, actuality is the most pleasant of the three, and the most loved'. [EN IX.7 1168a13-15]" (O'ROURKE, p. 79)

"Aristotle provides a deeper metaphysical dimension for his definition of happiness, viewing it as an actuality to be attained as final fulfilment. It is an unenunciated principle for Aristotle that action is the natural consequence of being. Each thing will actualize itself precisely in the measure that it is actual: if it is perfect, its actuality is already complete and will not cease; if it is imperfect, it will be actualized through the imperfect actuality of chance as it moves from potency to ever more perfect actuality. Life is a form of activity (he de zoe energeia tis esti), [EN X.4 1175a12] and happiness is activity in accordance with virtue (he eudaimonia kat' areten energeia). [EN X.7 1177a12] Such activity must be self-sufficient (autarkes); lacking nothing, it is an end in itself (telos gar haute). [EN X.6 1176b5-6; EN X.6 1176b31] We exist in our activities, and it is in the optimal exercise of these activities that happiness is to be found." (O'ROURKE, pp. 79-80)

"It is personal being that is desired - vital and intellective - not just the brute fact of being there; for living things, existence is their life itself (to de zen tois zosi to einai estin). [DA II.4 415b13] Since happiness consists in activity, it is not something that we possess but something we must continually actualize. It consists of living and acting (en toi zen kai energein) [EN IX.9 1169b30-31] in accordance with the excellences proper to the highest capacities of the soul; such activity, Aristotle has emphasized, is pleasant in itself. [EN IX.9 1169b32-33] And since, for living things, to exist is to live, existence is naturally desirable; to be happy is to actualize human existence in the best possible manner." (O'ROURKE, p. 80)

"Self-awareness is a certainty; it is the concomitant self-awareness of ourselves in our activity of knowing the world, and as agents within the world: 'If one who sees is conscious that he sees, one who hears that he hears, one who walks that he walks, and similarly for all the other human activities there is a faculty that is conscious of their exercise, so that whenever we perceive, we are conscious that we perceive, and whenever we think, we are conscious that we think and to be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious that we exist.' [EN IX.9 1170a29-33] Because he identifies existence with perception and thought, to exist is to be self-aware as perceiving and thinking. This passage is a remarkable expression of selfhood and of the experience of personal existence, not usually associated with Aristotle. He concludes that 'to be conscious that one is alive is a pleasant thing in itself (to d' aisthanesthai oti zaitown hedeon kath' hauto)'. [EN IX.9 1170b1] For good men, existence is good and pleasant (to einai agathon kai hedu), [EN IX.9 1170b4] because they are aware that their activities, which constitute their existence, are directed toward their final goal and happiness. Their entire existence is an actualization of their prospective happiness." (O'ROURKE, pp. 80-81)

"A person's phusis or nature is his or her psuche, soul, which, as well as defining their biology, opens them through the intellectual capacity of nous or reasoning upon the totality of the real (psuche pos panta), [DA III.8 431b21] which they are drawn through wonder to explore." (O'ROURKE, p. 129)

"Phusis is the paradigm for ousia - a living entity with an intrinsic principle of identity, growth and activity, and is also the exemplar of eidos, which profoundly determine the individual in its entirety as it unfolds from within." (O'ROURKE, p. 136)

"We may ask how we should span the divide between man as active and contemplative. We find a hint in a cryptic remark in the History of Animals where, having distinguished between gregarious and solitary animals, he notes that man partakes of both characters. Man is the only animal that 'dualizes' between solitary and social existence." (O'ROURKE, p. 142)

"Aristotle explains that the notion of actuality properly belongs first to motion or movement (kinesis), and is then extended. [Metaphysics IX.3 1047a30-32] The deeper meaning of actuality is expressed in the words 'energeia', to be at work, that is, to be active; and 'entelecheia', to have completed one's action and so in some respect to be perfect. Entelecheia is thus the completed reality of substance or 'ousia'." (O'ROURKE, p. 149)

"Since phusis derives from phuein ('to grow'), the cognate concept of genesis opens up another dimensino of eidos and phusis. 'Nature as genesis is the path to nature ... That which is born starts as something and advances or grows toward something. Toward what, then, does it grow? Not toward that from which it came, but toward that to which it advances. It is form (morphe), therefore, which is nature'. [Physics II.1 193b12-18] It is form as entelecheia which is the telos of genesis, that is, of the coming-to-be of phusis. In its state of completion, phusis is synonymous with entelecheia, the fulfilment of eidos. These various terms reveal distinct nuances of the same reality, substantial form in its various stages of potency and actualization, development and completion. 'Whatever each thing is when its coming-to-be (genesis) is completed, is what we call its phusis, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficient is the end and the best.' [Politics I.1 1252b32-1253a1]" (O'ROURKE, p. 152)

"Nature, in its original sense of phusis, denotes the growth and development of a living being from its beginnings to the fullness of maturity. A living body acts according to its natural form; of itself form 'actualizes' (energei). [Cf Physics VIII.4 255a1-b24] It exists to exercise its powers, first within itself as it tends toward self-completion, but overflows also into outward action." (O'ROURKE, p. 153)

"In an exhaustive and well-grounded study, the German scholar Johannes Hübner compellingly argues that soul is to be understood as *activity*. [Johannes Hübner, 'Die Aristotelische Konzeption der Seele als Aktivität in de Anima II.1', Archiv für Geschischte der Philosophie 81 (1999), pp. 1-32] He takes this suggestion from Aristotle's illustration in De Anima II.1, of the two senses of entelecheia by the analogous distinction between episteme and theorein, knowledge as possession or disposition, and knowledge as the very act of knowing itself. Going beyond the standard interpretation of soul as prerequisite of action, he suggests that the very essence of soul is activity.... In the example employed by Hamlyn, it is not enough to say that while something is asleep, it is not '*doing* anything'; quite to the contrary, it is very active indeed: it is alive. To be alive is its manner of being. In a significant phrase (not invoked by Hübner), Aristotle declares that 'to be alive' is itself the very being of living things: to de zen tois zosi to einai estin, aitia de kai arche toutou he psuche. [DA II.4 415b13-14] .... It is easier in this context to understand why Aristotle, having distinguished in the Metaphysics between motions (kineseis) which are incomplete (ateleis), and activities (energeiai) which contain within themselves their own completion and fulfilment (entelecheiai), declares: 'It is therefore evident that substance and form are actuality (energeia)'. [Metaphysics IX.8 1050b2-3]" (O'ROURKE, pp. 179-180) 

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