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CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

In the Introduction we tried to make more precise the type of issues we were going to be dealing with concerning the fundamental problems of Western metaphysics. We were saying that the Eastern part of Europe —namely, Greece— is subjacent in one way or another as first possibility and the earliest historically, to the whole of Western philosophy, to all the philosophy of Europe. Since it is a part of this philosophy it will be necessary to discuss the Greek, at least quickly and briefly, to see how this philosophy is subjacent in the depth of all of our philosophy. A philosophy that has produced in our own a unique adventure that we shall be trying to define with more accuracy at the end of this chapter.

Greek philosophy is eminently concrete, including Aristotle. It is necessary to underline this because by virtue of this adventure we shall be discussing, Greek philosophy has been turned into abstract concepts that probably were quite remote from the mind of the Greek or at least were not formally part of their thought. Greek philosophy is quite concrete. And it is necessary to mention this precisely concerning Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger often mentions that it is the case of trying to find {40} “what is happening at the bottom of that philosophy” (Was im Grunde geshieht). But these interpretations of what happens “at the bottom” of a philosophy are always quite perilous, because it generally seems as if they dispense us from saying what the Greek really and actually thought.

It is necessary for us to directly address Greek thought in order to see in all its concretion what these philosophers thought. There is a text in Aristotle where after expounding what we shall be dealing with below he says, “from ancient times to the present, what we have always and will always search for, remaining always perplexed and bothered (aporía) about, is the question “what is being?” (tí tò ón)¹ (this is the way it is usually translated, we shall return to it presently). Aristotle has the impression here that from always, from ancient times, now and always something is being searched for. We must ask, then, in what is Aristotle thinking when he says we have always been searching for something, what is that something? In the second place, in what does that difficulty, that aporía consist, that great difficulty the Greek handled so brilliantly. And in the third place, how does Aristotle —himself, personally— handle the difficulty? These are the three steps we are going to follow.


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§ 1

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SEARCH BEFORE ARISTOTLE.
SEARCH FOR THE ón

Let us consider, in the first place, the problem that since their earliest time they have been searching for. Of course, this refers to a very relative antiquity, for us two centuries seem like a very small antiquity. However, for the Greek, who had a very poor memory of their own history it seemed like a long time. Then, what is it they had been searching for since their own antiquity?

It is true we do not have to limit ourselves to the Greek world. It will be sufficient to consider the East —Far and Near— and the cultures of this East and Egypt itself to become aware that the thinkers, regardless of the type, attempted in one way or another to find out the origin of the things we have surrounding us. Of course, this presupposed the fact that things are born at some time, last for a while, and finally, disappear or become corrupt. Perhaps some of them even resist this process. Nevertheless, a Greek philosopher would say, this is mýthos, which here does not necessarily mean “myth”, but that it is a “story”. They tell us, actually, how things are born. What a Greek searches for is something totally different, it is theoría, to see and understand, precisely to contemplate that which is occurring at the origin. For the Greek, the origination of things is not a question of history; it is a question of theoría.

This origin is always a motion, taking that term in the Greek sense; a kínesis, a motion in which some things are being produced and in this motion {42} they acquire something fundamental, that which properly belongs to them when we contemplate them and talk about them.

The first one who posed the question this way —at least from the best accounts we have— was Anaximander. In the only fragment from him that has been preserved, Anaximander tells us that “the beginning of all things is the ápeiron” ². The important point here is that Anaximander faces a problem of arché, a problem of the “beginning” of things, beginning that surely still preserved in the mouth of Anaximander the multiple resonances the term arché had in the Greek world.

Arché means, on the one hand, precisely the start, the beginning. On the other hand, it meant the archon, i.e., the one that commands. Still, it also means the very domination with which this beginning is dominating the whole universe.

Putting aside these historical resonances, what is important for Anaximander is that things proceed from an arché, from a beginning. Of course, we shall limit ourselves to extract the concepts relevant to the problem we are now interested in, and therefore, it falls beyond our scope to expose all the details of pre-Socratic philosophy.

In the first place, the first relevant concept is the concept of arché, beginning. Inasmuch as from this beginning all things in the universe are produced and born that beginning is phýsis, precisely nature.

In the second place, and as we have just seen, Anaximander tells us that this arché is ápeiron. This term has been translated in many ways, actually it means the “indefinite” and in the hands of Western philosophy sometimes ápeiron has been understood {43} as an infinite, which is absurd since this never crossed the mind of Anaximander. The beginning is an ápeiron, an indefinite. In what sense? In the sense that this, from which all things proceed, is a kind of formless matter, inexhaustible, never exhausted? It is possible. Perhaps because this first arché, from which all things proceed, precisely because all things proceed from it, is not any one of the things that proceed, but something different, something that remains indefinite? Surely this was also part of the thought of Anaximander. Be that as it may, that arché is ápeiron, something in-definite.

From this indefinite something, Anaximander tells us, are born the things that are (génesis toîs ousi), the things that actually are. However, by contraposition to this ápeiron, to this indefinite, there now appears a notion that is going to play a role in the whole of Greek philosophy. Things are péras, peperasménon, they are something finished and delimited. The Greek never thought that the beginning of reality and of things insofar as real consists in a reference to something, which is beyond them. Things are in themselves such as they are, for a Greek they are precisely péras, something perfectly delimited facing the indefinite, which is their arché, their beginning³. It is evident the problem of this delimitation is the great question being posed since Anaximander because, in the end, motion —here appears the horizon of motion— seems to be opposed in some way for this to be something determined and delimited. Motion struggles with that kind of constitutive delimitation present in each thing⁴.

{44} Be that as it may, Anaximander regards the characteristics of limited and delimited of things as falling within the horizon of motion. In conformity to it these things are engendered by an arché, by a beginning⁵.

This, which may have seemed to Anaximander, if not clear at least easy to say, was not so simple. Not too long afterwards the great Heraclitus of Ephesus will completely deny the existence of an arché, a beginning of things.

What for Anaximander was an arché, that from which things proceed, for Heraclitus it is something much simpler; some things proceed from others. And what we call the totality of reality is, as he put it, armonía, assembly, the assembly of all things some coming to be from others and perishing to give place to others. Here is where the term péras appears, not as a delimitation of things with respect to the indefinite beginning from which they proceed, but as a delimitation of some things with respect to others. The assembly of all of them would precisely constitute the very structure of the real world.

This idea of the delimited is going to have a different fate in Parmenides. Parmenides sees with his own eyes the problem that others have seen. After all, the Greek gave the poem of Parmenides the title Perí phýseos, “On Nature”, the same thing they did with previous works. Now it matters very little whether the title belongs to Parmenides or not because the point is that the Greek felt the problem Parmenides was dealing with was the problem of phýsis. However, Parmenides {45} takes a stand against Heraclitus and Anaximander. Why and in what way?

Indeed, he would tell us that the expression of Anaximander is true, that there is a beginning, which makes things to be. But that is the question, that this way of being, that things “be”, does it precisely admit a beginning? Because things are or are not and there are no other ways to reach the truth. If we take real things, precisely inasmuch as they are, as the result of a beginning, we embark on a false way. It is the third way of the ones he enumerates, of which the last two are false. One, to declare that actually things are not —this is unthinkable, Parmenides says. And the other, to say that at certain times things are one way and at other times another. Let us be perfectly clear —and this is the key question— as far as I can tell, it never occurred to Parmenides to deny that things change in the world.

How does Parmenides manage to reach a unitary conception of the universe?

Parmenides tells us, “There are two ways, the way of being and the way of not being. And it is necessary for being to be, and for not being to be not”. It seems as if some tremendous concepts are being elaborated, but the truth is that no Greek, historically speaking, had this impression. We shall immediately see what Parmenides means when he declares for things “to be”.

“There is —he says— no other way except this one for the investigation”, to say, to think, to understand intellectively that things “are”. And Parmenides adds a fragment that for many years has been considered independent from the one we have just written. However, as far as I can determine, Kranz⁶ has overwhelmingly demonstrated that it is the ending to the fragment we have just quoted, and it reads, “Because actually intelligence (noeín) and to be (eînai) are the same”.

{46} It makes one think that this is an affirmation with enormous dimensions, similar to the phrase by Hegel when he affirms that “everything rational is real and everything real is rational”. The truth is that no Greek was ever that impressed after reading the phrase of Parmenides. Aristotle and Plato, who quote the texts by Parmenides, never feel shaken by that kind of identity between intelligence and that, which is there now (Sp. el ser). Much less when Parmenides tells us at this point, “tò gár”, “because actually” to be there now and to understand intellectively is the same. This “actually” indicates it is a reason everyone is going to admit. There is no other way except the way of “is”, and the way of “is-not” cannot be undertaken because, actually, to know intellectively and “to be there now” are the same. Therefore, it is something that would have to be obvious to the reader, and the obvious for the reader is quite simple to discover. To understand a thing intellectively, is precisely to understand intellectively that it is (Sp. es). Since the equal is always known by the equal —just as the Greek thought the eyes had a luminous entity in order to see the light— likewise, Parmenides tells us here that what is proper to intelligence, its nature, is precisely to understand the “to be there now” (Sp. “ser”). It is not the case of a formal identity between intelligence and to be there now. At any rate, there is in this affirmation by Parmenides something that will be decisive and will gravitate thematically over the thought of Plato and Aristotle; nevertheless, it is always the case of a “tautón”, of a “sameness” between intelligence and that which is (Sp. es).

Here we have a completely new concept different from the previous concepts, a concept that is going to become quite important.

Because it all depends on Parmenides telling us what he is talking about when he says “that which is” (tò eón, as he says in his Ionic dialect). Parmenides adopts what Anaximander had already told us, things are a perfect delimitation. What {47} he calls being (Sp. ser) is something perfectly limited, i.e., the strict necessity; it is a moira, an implacable destiny the limited being has inside itself, in such fashion, that it cannot multiply or change from itself.

Here we have again, but from another point of view, that idea of delimitation, that being (Sp. ser) is perfectly delimited. As perfectly delimited, it is there (Sp. está) (keítai), it is subjacent in the world. Everything we see, that things are born and perish is, thus far, alien to that which constitutes the internal substance of things, which consists purely and simply in being (Sp. ser) (eînai). So much so, that this being does not admit any differentiation inside itself. How could this be? How could it have a differentiation? This would imply that inside being there is a moment of diversity, and therefore, of non-being. But that being is tautón, in itself it is always the same. It remains identical to itself with no motion at all. Precisely because of this, Parmenides considers it as a sphere (sphaíra). Reinhardt has assumed that this is a symbol⁷; for me this does not look like a symbol, but like a reality. Parmenides thought that the entire universe is a great sphere with no other characteristic except “being” (Sp. ser).

However, this being —this is the fundamental idea of Parmenides— has no beginning, it is ánarchon. Against Anaximander, Parmenides says it has no beginning, it only “is”, and does nothing except to be. It follows that this being, which has no beginning, is also not the beginning of things in the sense of Anaximander. If it were, it would have internal motion, and since every motion involves a certain moment of non-being, it could not be the full being, the one that is. Being does not have {48} beginning and also is not the beginning. Beginning of what? Beginning of what the previous philosophers were maintaining, the beginning of generation and corruption of things. In other words, the motion against which Parmenides argues is the motion of nature, nature as motion, phýsis as generation and corruption. That is what is not included in the being of Parmenides.

As I see it, this does not mean that Parmenides denied change and motion. How could he possibly deny this? He says that these are the opinions of mortals, certainly, but in what do these opinions of the mortals consist? They consist in affirming that the variations we see, which for Parmenides occur in the external surface of being without altering its identity at all, mortals believe they affect the very characteristic of being and believe being is a beginning or principle of nature. For Parmenides, being is something perfectly immutable; it is not nature in any sense whatever.

Someone could say, how can we conceive a motion that preserves these characteristics of being? A century later Democritus would tell us how.

Let us take the atoms of Democritus. These atoms, each one of them, has the characteristics of the sphere of Parmenides, it is born that way, it is indestructible and if it changes place, to change place does not mean to change being. Be that as it may, against what has been said many times, Parmenides had the brilliant thought that there can be a knowledge of motion that may not necessarily be the idea of an ens mobile, i.e., of an entity or a being that in itself is mobile. That is the crucial step. The step that consists in saying, Parmenides is right, but that does not mean there may not be many spheres (as he assumed), provided each one has the characteristics of his sphere; there is no multiplicity in being, but there can be a multiplicity of beings. This is what {49} the atoms of Democritus addressed and also the root of all things qualitatively thought out by Empedocles.

The philosophy of Parmenides has led on a straight line to the idea of the ultimate elements that constitute all things, the idea of stoicheîon. In this problem of the elements it seems Democritus had an idea that remained in philosophy up to Aristotle and had a decisive importance at the hands of Plato, the idea that non-being has as much reality as being. Let us understand that Democritus is not talking about non-being in the abstract, but in a very concrete way. He understands by non-being the vacuum, the space in which the atoms move and in this sense the function of space is to distinguish, to make motion possible, but also to distinguish the atoms from each other. It seems curious that Plato never mentioned this idea of Democritus, practically his contemporary. If we had only had the Dialogues of Plato we would have never known about the existence of Democritus.

We now have a new step, the idea of being (Sp. ser) composed of elements, of stoicheîa.

Plato represents another step. For him over the elements and over the sphere of Parmenides there is something else, precisely what he calls the eidos, the “idea”, not in the sense of ideas of the human mind, but of the ultimate, radical and essential configurations of reality. The atoms are infinite, but the idea of atom, the eidos of the atom is only one. The being of Parmenides is a sphere, but this entity of Parmenides corresponds to one idea, the very idea of being. Motion corresponds to an idea, the idea of motion, which does not move, but is an idea of motion, which is in intimate relation with the idea of being.

{50} We now find ourselves here with a kind of escape from the world of reality in which we had been thinking up to now from Anaximander to Democritus, to enter a kind of duplicate of reality, which is the world of ideas. Naturally, Plato resisted this simple dualism and said the ideas are present in things, they are parónta. They are present in reality although he never explained in what that presence (parousía) consisted except referring to the metaphor of light.

As we can see, here we have some fundamental concepts upon which the philosophy of Aristotle rests. The idea of beginning or principle, the idea of limitation, the idea of the harmonic assembly Aristotle called táxis, the idea of the sameness of being, that being is something subjacent (keísthai), the idea that what is essential to things is a form or figure (eidos). With this we have given some form of brief explanation of what Aristotle must have had in mind when he said “from ancient times, now and always we have always searched for...” what? Precisely for what may be the reality of what there is, what is being, the reality of things. All its beginning or principle, all its limitation (péras), the one, the same, etc. The ideas of Plato are characteristics of the ón. This is what had been searched for always, tí tò ón, what is “that which is”.

_________________
¹ Met Z 1028b 2-4.
² Diels-Kranz B 1.
³ Zubiri note on the margin: “Later the Pythagoreans gave a clearer conceptiveness of this delimitation. For them, numbers and figures constitute ‘the’ delimited”.
⁴ Zubiri note on the margin: “That is the idea of táxis”.
⁵ Zubiri note on the margin:
“Insert the idea of kósmos here Hep.”
“táxis greater than kósmos (infinite kósmoi)”.
“The first one who called kósmos to that which involves the whole was Pythagoras, because of the táxis in it (Diels I 105, 25)”.
⁶ [Tr. note: Cf. Diels, H. and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Zürich/Hildesheim, 1964.]
⁷ Zubiri refers here to the classic work of K. Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griegischen Philosophie, Bonn, Friedrich Cohen, 1916, p. 24.