I.D. Greeks 0004
8-30-02

 There is no alternative. However, this is an alternative only for honest people that at least try to find out what the truth of their situation is. It certainly does not apply to your everyday neighbor because such questions seem complete nonsense to them if not downright perverse or even criminal.

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The next Sorabji reference is DA 3.10, 433a12;

18. These two at all events appear to be sources of movement: appetite and thought (if one may venture to regard imagination as a kind of thinking; for many men follow their imaginations contrary to knowledge, and in all animals other than man there is no thinking or calculation but only imagination).

The equivocation persists: man thinks, animals don’t, have only imagination, “a kind of thinking” which, however, “many men follow their imaginations contrary to knowledge.” This reminds me of the declaration of the rights of animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal; but some animals are more equal than others.”

NEXT: DA 3.11, 434a5-11, actually ending at 434a15:

19. Sensitive imagination, as we have said, is found in all animals, deliberative imagination only in those that are calculative: for whether this or that shall be enacted is already a task requiring calculation; and there must be a single standard to measure by, for that is pursued which is greater. It follows that what acts in this way must be able to make a unity out of several images. ¶ This is the reason why imagination is held not to involve opinion, in that it does not involve opinion based on inference, though opinion involves imagination. Hence appetite contains no deliberative element.  Sometimes it overpowers wish and sets it in movement; at times wish  acts thus upon appetite, like a ball, appetite overcoming appetite, i.e. in the condition of moral weakness (though by nature the higher faculty is always more authoritative and gives rise to movement).

The phrase “for that is pursued which is greater” connects up with the statement “still others, i.e. man and possibly another order like man or superior to him” (414b18-19). Aristotle’sso-called theology is just like his ethics and politics—he takes it as he finds it. Richard  Bodéüs (Bodeus) of the University of Montreal in ARISTOTLE AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE LIVING IMMORTALS, trans. Garrett, State University of New York Press, 2000 says:

20. . . . Aristotle is not very concerned with developing a theological doctrine. He seems more preoccupied with received opinions about the gods as premises to support a whole series of philosophical claims pertaining to diverse subjects. This impression is so great that one ultimately asks if, even in the METAPHYSICS, the philosopher ever intended to confront and decide problems of speculative theology. ¶ This radical question . . . aims to understand better Aristotle’s own purpose when he occasionally identifies the separate substance mentioned in METAPHYSICS Lambda with the living being popularly called “god,” something, as we shall see, totally unheard of and paradoxical for a Greek of the time (even for a philosopher like Plato). Did Aristotle intend to use metaphysical theory to solve the thorny question of the nature and identity of the gods or did he intend instead to use an idea of the god to solve a no less thorny question about the separate substance? . . . ¶ [H]e did not mean to work out a natural theology . . . but to support properly physical or metaphysical theses with the help of elements from received beliefs about the gods . . .¶ What Aristotle himself calls “theology” is not study concerning (the idea of) the gods, but stories the poets tell about the gods, i.e., a part of mytho-logy. My understanding of this point is bound up with a rather definite view of political history that I shall try to reconstruct. In this view, the emergence of the (mythical) “theology” of the Olympians coincides with the discovery of the gods of the city, gods who are involved with justice or the good and who supplant the visible celestial gods conceived at a much earlier date. In other words, for Aristotle (as for Plato), the Olympians represent for the many the mythical face of the just, invisible gods that the wise founders of cities first conceived alongside or behind the visible celestial and whose demands our philosopher continues to respect in accord with the opinions of the wise. (pp. 1-3)

In this Aristotle is once again a thorough and committed convencialist conservative. This is a political and social move, not philosophical or theological as our contemporaries think of it. As Bodeus say, they are premises from which Aristotle starts and holds as ideals purely in common parlance that his society strives toward. Honoring the gods is connected directly with honoring one’s parents and have equal legal status in his eyes. It has nothing to do with truth statements but with pledges of political unity. Aristotle does not believe in one monotheistic god and would have been horrified, actually enraged, to see his writings used to “prove” such a thing. If I disagree with his stance, it can only be on the grounds of the value of necessarily following convention, that violating convention will wreck political unity. In modern society, such whole-hearted dedication to convention itself becomes destructive because no one holds such values seriously in themselves but only as means to an end. This was true also in Aristotle’s time to some extent, but convention was still strong enough to make rulers stay in line until the Roman emperors gained true absolute and unquestioned power in their hands and then could violate anything they wanted to. However, once again, we would be putting a modern framework upon a situation it does not really fit, because the whimsical power of the emperors could only be exercised in such fashion just in the city of Rome itself. Outside of Rome, conservative ideals of politics and society remained uncorrupted until the Christians came along.

Back to Sorabji’s references: The next comes from De Partibus Animalium (Parts of Animals), 1.1, 641b7 (actually starting at 641a35 ):

Now if it be the whole soul that [natural science] should treat, then there is no place for any other philosophy beside it. For as it belongs to one and the same science to deal with correlated subjects—one and the same science, for instance, deals with sensation and the objects of sense—and as therefore the intelligent soul and the objects of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science, it follows that natural science will have to include everything in its province. But perhaps it is not the whole soul, nor all its parts collectively, that constitutes the source of motion; but there may be one part, identical with that in plants, which is the source of growth, another, namely the sensory part, which is the source of the change in quality, while still another, and this is not the intellectual part, is the source of locomotion. For other animals than man have the power of locomotion, but in none but him is there intellect. Thus it is plain that it is not the whole soul that we have to treat. For it is not the whole soul that constitutes the animal nature, but only some parts or part of it. Moreover, it is impossible that any abstraction can form a subject of natural science, seeing that everything that nature makes is for the sake of something.

This, most obviously, seems to support Sorabji’s thesis of Aristotle’s belittlement of animals. But, once again, let us look at the context. For Aristotle plainly states it is a special exception to consider animals as without intellect. Convention drives us to read it as meaning just that. However, Aristotle conceives “natural science” as “one and the same science” where “there is no place for any other philosophy beside it” since natural science “correlates” all “sensation and the objects of sense” , i.e. “it belongs to one and the same science to deal with correlated subjects” without qualification. Therefore “natural science” as “the intelligent soul and the objects of intellect, being correlated, must belong to one and the same science” then “will have to include everything in its province.” This may be no more than De Anima’s 3.5. 430a14-15, “And in fact thought, as we described it, is what it is by becoming all things . . .” which Heidegger quotes at a significant point in BEING AND TIME (Stambaugh pg. 12, “”The ‘soul’ which constitutes the being of human being is in a certain way beings.”/M&R pg. 34, “Man’s soul is, in a certain way, entities.”). But in this passage in DA Aristotle is emphasizing its importance (“and in fact”) and in PA he is explicitly saying “perhaps” we can cut the soul in parts and therefore consider the animal without intellect. Do you think this is stretching a trial point too far, and if so, why? It is not much, maybe, but it is there.