Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good
[Pages:71]Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good Author(s): Stephen Menn Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Mar., 1992), pp. 543-573 Published by: Philosophy Education Society Inc. Stable URL: . Accessed: 24/07/2011 00:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . . . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@.
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ARISTOTLEAND PLATO ON GOD AS NOUS AND AS THE GOOD1
STEPHEN MENN
I
-Aristotle
presents
his doctrine
of god as the first unmoved
mover as the crown of his metaphysics,
and thus of his entire theo
retical philosophy.
He obviously considers it an important achieve
ment.
Yet the doctrine has been peculiarly
resistant
to interpre
tation. It is difficult to know where to break in to Aristotle's
theology: unmoved. conclusion
certainly not with his The proof has clearly and not vice versa.
proof been How
that the first mover must be developed for the sake of the did this conclusion occur to
Aristotle, and why did he want it to be true?
The most promising
approach has been to compare Aristotle's
theology with the doctrines of his predecessors,
and especially with
Plato. There is a rough scholarly consensus that there is something
Platonic about Aristotle's doctrine of God: not that Plato himself
believed that some divine being is the first unmoved source of motion,
but that Aristotle,
in constructing
this doctrine and the arguments
for it, was deliberately
taking Plato's position and modifying
it, to
present a reformed Platonism
as an alternative
to Plato's position.
Werner Jaeger thought that Aristotle's
doctrine of God as unmoved
mover belonged
to an early semi-Platonist
stage in Aristotle's
thought, and that this doctrine emerged from discussions
in the
Academy.
Hans von Arnim thought, to the contrary, that the doc
trine belonged to a later period of Aristotle's
life, when he was set
ting up a school in competition with the Academy.
They both agree,
1The present paper is a sequel to my monograph,
"Plato on God as
Nous" (forthcoming in the Journal of theHistory of Philosophy Monograph
Series), but is intended to stand on its own. Iwould like to thank Charles
Brittain and Joseph di Filippo for helpful comments on the present paper.
All translations from Greek are my own.
Review of Metaphysics Metaphysics
45 (March 1992): 543-573. Copyright ? 1992 by the Review of
544
STEPHEN MENN
however, ification alternative
that Aristotle's
doctrine
of Plato's position, and to a Platonic theology
emerged from a process of mod
that Aristotle
presented
it as his
which his own and others' criti
cisms had undermined.2
It is not obvious, however, which "Platonic theology" Aristotle's
theology God was
should be compared to. Jaeger suggested that Aristotle's
in some way a replacement
for the Platonic Forms as su
prasensible
objects of knowledge; but the usual comparison has been
with Plato's discussion
of soul in Laws 10. Plato argues there that
every motion proceeds from a mover, and that if (as he assumes)
an infinite regress of movers
is impossible,
the first mover must be
moved by itself rather than by something
else. This self-moving
source of motion Plato identifies with soul, and he thinks that, be
yond human and brute souls, some one or more divine souls supply
the motions
of the heavenly bodies, and thus govern the universe.
As Friedrich
Solmsen and others have seen, Aristotle
is starting
with this argument in Physics 8, but is modifying it: as Aristotle
points out, the first mover need not be self-moved,
because it need
not be moved at all in order to move something
else.3 Aristotle
actually agrees with Plato that every object which is moved by an
other must ultimately
be moved by a self-mover,
but he argues that
every self-mover
decomposes
into a first unmoved component
that
moves the other, and a second component
that is moved by the first.
Thus Aristotle
transforms
Plato's argument
for a self-moved
first
mover into an argument
for an unmoved first mover.
Plato's one
or-several
divine souls are thus replaced by the one-or-several
un
moved movers of the heavenly bodies.
Although the argument
this approach obviously of Physics 8, and although
says something it has yielded
right about some results,
2Werner Jaeger, Aristotle: Fundamentals
of the History of his Devel
opment, trans. Richard Robinson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), chs. 6
and 8; Hans von Arnim, Die Entstehung der Gotteslehre des Aristoteles
(Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften
inWien, Vienna, 1931).
For an account of the controversy, see W. K. C. Guthrie, "The Development
of Aristotle's Theology," I and II, Classical Quarterly 27 (1933): 162-71; and
28
(1933S4e)e:
90-8. the chapter
"The Unmoved
Mover"
in Friedrich
Solmsen, Ar
istotle's System of the Physical World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1960), 222-49. Solmsen says that "the only antecedent that really matters
for his [Aristotle's] own doctrine is clearly the movement of the Platonic
world-soul" (p. 247).
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO ON GOD
545
I think it is not an adequate approach for understanding
Aristotle's
doctrine of God, and I think it is taking the wrong point of com
parison in Plato. What point of comparison
in Plato we find plau
sible depends on how we describe the being which Aristotle is dis
cussing in Metaphysics
12.7, 9, 10, and parallel passages:
if we
describe this being as the "unmoved mover," then it seems natural
enough to see it as a modification
of Plato's self-moved movers.
This
will tell us about Aristotle
on unmoved movers, but, for two reasons,
itwill not tell us anything essential about the object ofMetaphysics
12.7, 9,10. First, "unmoved mover" or "first mover" are relational
descriptions
which do not indicate the essence of the thing which
satisfies them. Second, there are just too many unmoved movers.
When Aristotle,
in Physics 8, criticizes and modifies Plato's argument
in Laws 10, he concludes that souls are unmoved movers and not
self-movers.
Thus instead of Plato's large plurality of self-moved
movers (souls divine, human, or brute), Aristotle has a large plurality
of unmoved movers, each initiating some one or many causal chains.
The argument from motion to the initiator of motion is sufficient to
get to souls, but it is not sufficient to get to a single first principle
"on which heaven and nature depend" (1072bl3-14),
which is what
Aristotle
is seeking.
Even in Physics 8, when Aristotle wishes to
discover this first principle, he turns away from the argument about
an infinite regress of movers, and uses a quite different argument
about the need for a single eternal principle regulating
the infinite
series of unmoved movers (Physics 8.6). To understand Aristotle's
doctrine of the first principle (as opposed to his general doctrine of
unmoved movers), we must identify Aristotle's
conception
of the
specific essence of this principle, not settling for general or relational
descriptions.4
Once this has been done correctly, I will argue, an
approach similar to Jaeger's or von Arnim's or Solmsen's will yield
a much deeper and more precise understanding
doing in his theology.
of what Aristotle
is
We may begin by asking what names Aristotle gives to his first
principle, names which, unlike "unmoved mover" or "first principle,"
4 In what follows Iwill be concerned only with the first principle (which
is called nous and the Good), not with other unmoved movers, that is, (a)
souls and (b) the movers of the nonequatorial
celestial motions.
These
latter are not called "soul," and they are also not called nous; their status
is a notorious problem, on which I have some views, but which Iwill scru
pulously avoid in this paper.
546
STEPHEN MENN
will be names of the essence.5
Occasionally
Aristotle
applies to this
being the name "god" (theos), or somewhat more often, the adjective "divine" (theios). These names are not relational, but they have too
little content to be really useful.
For this reason Aristotle
puts no
weight on them: the first principle is a god or something divine, but
so are the planets, the Olympians,
and Heracles.
Even if the Olym
pians do not actually exist, the fact that such beings would be called
theoi shows that theos does not convey anything precise about the
first principle.
Two names that
essence of the principle
are good
These names might seem to convey
do convey
(agathon, no more
something tagathon) about the
about the and nous.6 essence than
"god" or "unmoved mover," because these too seem to have very
wide extensions:
if nous can mean the rational soul, then there are
at least as many of them as there are human beings, and there are
even more goods. As Aristotle
says inNicomachean
Ethics 1.6 and
Eudemian
Ethics 1.8, "good" is predicated
in all of the categories.
Nonetheless,
it is easy to show that Aristotle
takes both "the Good"
and nous to be names of the essence of God. Now Plato too takes
"the Good" as the name of the highest divine principle; and Plato also uses nous to name a (different) god, the source of order to the
physical world.
Plato says in the Philebus
that "all the wise agree
that nous is king for us of heaven and earth" (28c6-8), and this nous
is identical with the demiurge of the Timaeus.1 I will try in this
paper to show how Aristotle
takes over, criticizes, and modifies Pla
to's doctrines of the Good as the first divine principle, and of nous
5 I am using a common theological
idiom: some names of God are
names of his essence, while others are names of his attributes or of his
acts directed to other things. In Islam (the tradition I am most familiar
with) it is most often thought that "God," "Truth," and "necessary being"
are names of the essence; that "Living," "Knowing," "Powerful," and
"Willing" are names of the attributes; and that "Creator," "Lord," "Life
giver," and so on are names of the acts. It is more difficult and more
valuable to know what God is like than to know what He does, and it is
yet more difficult and valuable to know what He is (simply learning the
names, of course, does not automatically
convey knowledge of what they
signify).
61 will leave the word nous untranslated;
I discuss further on what
its
En7glIishhave
equivalent written
might be. at length on this
subject
in "Plato on God as Nous,"
from which I will draw in some of what follows. As I argue there, Plato
intends the demiurge of the Timaeus as a real being, identical with the
nous of the Philebus and of Laws 12; some things may be said about him
mythically, but this does not make him a "mythical character."
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO ON GOD
547
as an inferior divine principle, and how he presents as his alternative
to Plato's theology his own doctrine of a divine principle which is
both nous and the Good. After some initial remarks on the Good,
I will turn to nous, since this name allows an easier approach; but
in discussing
nous, I will try to show how Aristotle
connects nous
with the Good.
II
"The Good" is claimed as a name for God at the beginning
of
Metaphysics
12.10:
We must investigate in which way the universe possesses the good
and the best, whether as something separate and itself-by-itself
[ke
ch?rismenon ti kai auto kath' hauto], or as [the universe's own] order.
Or rather, in both ways, like an army? For the good [to eu: whatever
is responsible for the army's being as it should be] is in the order and
is also the general, and more so [mallon] the latter: for he is not good
on account of the order, but the order is good on account of him.
(1075all-15)
That is, although
the order of the universe
(like the order of an
army) is good, the good in a stronger sense (mallon) is something
separate existing by itself (like the general of the army). The uni
verse is good because it possesses the good, and this means primarily
that it possesses
the good as a separately
existing first principle,
and secondarily,
as a consequence,
that it is ordered well. When
Aristotle
asks whether
the good is "something
separate and itself
by-itself," he is obviously and self-consciously
using Plato's terms,
to ask whether
there is some one first separate Good-itself
through
which other things are, in a weaker sense, good; and he is saying
that Plato was right. The phrase in which this affirmation
is ini
tially made looks tentative, but this is typical of Aristotle and implies
no real hesitation.
As the rest of the chapter bears out, Aristotle
is firmly committed to identifying the first principle as the Good
itself, and is especially
eager to defend this identification
against
Speusippus,
who "does not even make good and evil [to be] princi
ples," whereas in fact "in all things the good ismost of all a principle"
(1075a36-7).
Aristotle
is here only carrying out the program of
Metaphysics
1.2, which had said that wisdom should be the science
treating the for-the-sake-of-which,
and that "this is the good of
each thing, and universally,
the best in all nature" (982b6-7).
548
STEPHEN MENN
At this point it is important to avert a misunderstanding.
One
might think that when Aristotle, inMetaphysics 12.10, endorses the
Platonic
separation
of the Good, he is going against his own usual
doctrine.
Does he not elsewhere
criticize Plato in general terms
for positing separate entities existing themselves-by-themselves,
and
does he not (inNicomachean Ethics 1.6 and Eudemian Ethics 1.8)
apply this critique specifically to Plato's positing of a Good-itself?
The answer is no on both counts. Aristotle
criticizes Plato for sep
arating things (for example, animals and numbers) which Aristotle
thinks cannot exist apart from the conditions of matter; but he does
not think this applies to the good.8 InNicomachean Ethics 1.6 and
Eudemian
Ethics 1.8 Aristotle
criticizes Plato's positing of an "Idea
of the good," but this phrase is not necessarily
equivalent
to "Good
itself."
In the Eudemian Ethics passage, at least, Aristotle
sharply
distinguishes
between these two expressions.
Aristotle
begins Eu
demian Ethics 1.8 by asking about "the best" (to arist?n), which he
immediately identifies with "the Good-itself" (auto to agathon) (just
as inMetaphysics
12.10 he asks about to agathon kai to arist?n, kai
being epexegetic:
"the good, that is, the best"). He explains that
"the Good-itself" means "that to which it belongs both to be first
among goods, and to be by its presence the cause to the others of
their being good" (Eudemian Ethics 1217b4-5).9
There are, however,
Aristotle
says, three different opinions about what this Good-itself
is, of which he rejects two and accepts the third: "It is clear that
neither (i) the Idea of the good, nor (ii) the common character
[i.e.,
8Aristotle does say at Eudemian Ethics 1218a34 that the arguments
he has given against a Form of the Good constitute aporiai against a Good
itself, and so they do; but Aristotle can solve these aporiai if he can exhibit
some other Good-itself which is not the Form of the Good, and which is
immune to the arguments against the Form of the Good. As far as I know,
there are no other passages where Aristotle expresses doubts about a Good
itself. Metaphysics 9.9, strikingly, denies that evil exists para ta pragmata
(1051a9lT7-h1e8s)e,
while making no such judgment about good. criteria for the auto to agathon are reminiscent
of Plato's cri
teria for the auto to kalon at Hippias Major 289d7-8 (and 289d2-4): We
must give in answer "what is the kalon thing, through which also all other
things are adorned and appear kala when it becomes present to them."
Hippias's candidates for the auto to kalon are rejected either because they
are not perfectly kala (and so are aischra in some respect), or because they
fail to make kalon something in which they are present. In Plato, it seems,
something might be auto toX without being an abstracted universal X
ness; so it should not be surprising that Aristotle makes use of this pos
sibility.
ARISTOTLE AND PLATO ON GOD
549
the goodness immanent equally in all good things] is the Good-itself
we are seeking.
. . rather, (iii) the for-the-sake-of-which
is the best
and the cause of the [goods] below it and the first of all [goods], so
that this would be the Good-itself" (1218b7-12). Plato's mistake
was not in positing a good-itself,
nor in making this separate, but
in identifying it with the Idea of the good and not with the final
cause.
Aristotle assumes (doubtless unfairly) that an Idea of the good,
if there were one, would be simply the result "if someone were to
make the common character
separate"
(1218a9) by positing
an
"eternal and separate"
instantiation
of the common character
(1218al2-13). Aristotle objects that there is no Idea of the good,
both because "good" is equivocal, and because even univocal uni
versal terms do not have corresponding
Ideas. Even if there were
an Idea of the good, Aristotle claims that this would not be the
Good-itself,
because it would be merely one more good thing, and
"it will be no more good for being eternal."10 Thus it will not satisfy
the criteria of being the best of all things and the source of dimin
ished goodness to everything else. Aristotle justifies this claim by
noting that "that which is white for many days is no more white
than that which is white for one day" (Eudemian Ethics 1218al3
14; cf.Nicomachean Ethics 1096b4-5). This is a deliberate parody
of Plato's remark in the Philebus that "a small pure white is whiter
than a great mixed white"
(53b4-5).
As Plato recognizes
that we
cannot discover the most good (or the most white) by making the
familiar good (or white) more spatially extended, so also Plato cannot
discover the most good by making the familiar good more temporally
extended or even eternal.
Aristotle's
proposal is to discover the
most good, not by separating and eternalizing
the common character,
but by finding that for the sake of which the other goods are valued,
as exercise is valued for the sake of health.
If there is some one
ultimate final cause, itwill satisfy the criteria of being the best and
the cause of goodness to the other goods.
At this stage, I do not want to investigate
there is some one final cause satisfying
these
simply that Aristotle distinguishes between
more deeply whether
criteria. My point is
what a "Good-itself"
1N0 icomachean
Ethics 1096b3-4. A parallel passage has apparently
dropped out of the manuscripts
of Eudemian Ethics 1.8; rather than try
to reconstruct it, I just cite the Nicomachean Ethics parallel.
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