Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

98November 27, 2023

Major elements of Aristotle’s work were significant for Whitehead and remain so for Whitehead scholarship. These include aspects of Aristotle’s method as reflecting both empiricist and rationalist tendencies and his general faith in a world conforming to logical forms as well as his central ontology – the theory of substance – which is an important object of Whitehead’s criticism while bearing also important affinities to Whitehead’s ontology of process. Below are summaries of Aristotle’s method and ontology followed in each case by reflections on their significance in Whitehead’s thought.

1. Brief Vita

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE to Nicomachus (father) and Phaestis (mother) in Stagira, Macedonia. Nicomachus was a court physician to Amyntus II, King of Macedonia; both he and Phaestis died while Aristotle was still young. At the age of 17, Aristotle travelled to Athens where he entered Plato’s Academy and remained there as student and teacher until 347, the year of Plato’s death. Perhaps because of his opposition to core Platonic doctrines, Aristotle was not made head of the Academy. He then traveled to Assos in Mysia – what is now northwest Turkey – at the invitation of his friend Hermias, who was king of Atarneus and Assos. Aristotle lived also during this time on Lesbos, and during this period he married Pythias who bore their daughter, also named Pythias.

In 343, King Philip of Macedon summoned Aristotle to his court to tutor the 13-year old Alexander who would become Alexander the Great. Little is known of Aristotle’s influence on Alexander, and the period of the tutelage is also unclear, with estimates ranging from 2-8 years. In 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and established a school at Lyceum. It is unclear whether the Lyceum was named for Apollo Lykeios, a representation of Apollo in a pose of rest, or the bronze representation was named for the grounds on which it stood. While the Lyceum comprised multiple structures serving a number of civic purposes, Aristotle’s school there became an important center of learning lasting centuries and included an important library of the ancient world’s knowledge. It is here that Aristotle earned his epithet peripatetic, owing perhaps to a habit of lecturing during strolls through the Lyceum’s grounds.

After the death of his wife Pythias, Aristotle developed a relationship with Herpyllis who is thought also to have been a native of Stagira. Possibly a freed slave, she bore them a son, Nicomachus; notes attributed to an adult Nicomachus provide us the Nicomachean Ethics. The life of a Macedonian in Athens grew more fraught after the death of Alexander in 323. Aristotle left Athens for the estates of his mother’s family in Chalcis where he died in 322, leaving an intellectual legacy of astonishing breadth and depth.

2. Method

2.1 Aristotle on Method

Philosophy arose in ancient Greece not only as the pursuit of truth but as the pursuit of the means to truth. Parmenides discovered the epistemological crisis that remains with us today and by the time of Aristotle, we find his treatises on method making up a substantial portion of his corpus – not to mention countless references to method throughout his works.

Aristotle was of course Plato’s greatest pupil and successor, and Whitehead often considers Aristotle in the context of his response to Plato. Plato’s rationalist method employed tools of logical analysis to reveal an ultimate realm of perfect forms of which the physical world was but an imperfect image.
And while in his middle period Plato is confident of human access to formal knowledge, the later Plato raises questions about his ontology of forms (Parmenides) and depicts the battle of the formal gods and physical giants as effectively an impasse (Sophist; Beere 6; see also Dombrowski 1995). In important part, Aristotle’s metaphysics and epistemology are intended to resolve this impasse, demonstrating just how human knowledge of the world around us is possible even as he seeks to advance that knowledge. He seeks to demonstrate, that is, a unity of the physical and formal worlds, thus retaining Plato’s speculative tools while tethering their product to material being.[1]

Aristotle is generally regarded as employing both empiricist and rationalist methods. It is clear for Aristotle that “All men desire to know” as revealed by “the delight we take in our senses” (Met. 980a22-23); it is equally clear for Aristotle that “we do not think we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary causes or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its elements” (Phys. 184a12). Aristotle’s empiricist practices include assembly of available information followed by either classification or, where a puzzle (aporia) emerges, theoretical efforts towards resolution. Assemblage includes for Aristotle investigation of phainomena and endoxa: our common experiences of the world and our beliefs – including more developed theories – about it (NE 1145b1-7). Classification proceeds with the identification of differentiae and the taxonomies that they determine. The locus classicus here is the Categories in which Aristotle places the items of the universe in ten exhaustive classes and builds his foundational subject-predicate ontology on the “said in” vs. “said of” distinction. Where consultation of experience and belief lead us to aporia (puzzlement and impasse), a locus classicus is Aristotle’s treatment in Physics of Parmenides’ argument against the possibility of change (discussed below).

While for Aristotle the forms are located only in their physical instantiations, they remain for him – as they were for Plato – the proper objects of knowledge. “When the objects of an inquiry, in any department, have principles, causes, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge and understanding is attained.” (Phys. 184a10-12) Principles are for Aristotle logical in form, so that where there is a form there will be a definition; thus for instance,“[i]t is necessary for the student of the forms of soul first to find a definition of each, expressive of what it is, and then to investigate its derivative properties, etc.” (DA 415a15-16).

Given the essential logical form of the material order, the methods of logical analysis are thus appropriate to its investigation, and Aristotle’s examination of logic defined the field well into the 19th century. In an Organon comprising Categories, De Interpretatione, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, and Sophistical Refutations, he develops the syllogistic logic appropriate to rational inquiry generally and distinguishes the many forms and products that rational inference may take or issue in. For Aristotle, a paradigm of rational thought is mathematics, and he regularly offers mathematical illustrations in his discussions of logic and its applications. See for example Met. 1051a22-28, which offers a series of geometrical truths as illustration of his thesis that actuality is prior to potentiality. More applied forms of reasoning constitute epistēmē, often translated as ‘science’, in which “demonstration” is the logical process leading from generalized empirical observation to the principles of physical being. Aristotle’s examination of logic includes also attention to the premises or grounds of argumentation, to definition, to dialectic and the rhetorical arts, to principles of truth such as the laws of non-contradiction and of excluded middle, and to the construction of a taxonomy of being.

Aristotle’s method is often depicted as a precursor to modern science. Included in this approach are broad principles of adequacy and applicability. For Aristotle, all material beings in their features and interactions fall under some category of being, and every being has an essence and every essence a definition (Met. 1030a6). His rejection of independent forms, further, ensures that  such logical forms as exist are instantiated in some material being (Met. VI.1).

This is Aristotle’s standard outlook and our standard understanding of him. Aristotle regularly asserts the general conformity of the material order to logical forms, particularly at the outset of his treatises on nature. See for instance Phys. I.1 and again, I.5: “We must first of all grasp the fact that nothing that exists is naturally such as to act or to be affected in just any old way by the agency of just any old thing; nor does something come to be just any old thing from just any old thing …” (188a32-35 Fine and Irwin, trans.). But Aristotle is well aware of the possibility that our universe is not a complete kosmos. Like Plato, Aristotle has reservations about the mathematical exactness of the material order (Met. 995a14-15). And it may be that there are strict indeterminacies, as his reservations about the outcome of tomorrow’s sea battle make clear (DI 19b1-3). Aristotle is also willing to accept luck and chance as real if epiphenomenal forms of causation (Phys. II.4-6). And ultimately Aristotle is fully aware of the great epistemological uncertainty that we face in respect of logical form: the “most difficult” challenge philosophers face is the question whether any entity or event conforms to any general form (Met. 1003a8-16).

In sum, Aristotle believes that there is a single science that subsumes all other sciences – the study of being qua being (Met. IV.1-2). And he believes that the principles governing the kinds and behaviors of beings are consistent with one another, so that the variety and activity of being constitutes an internally consistent whole (cf. Barnes 1969, 148). But Aristotle is aware that these are assumptions (themena 1002b30, e.g.) and that the very notion of a form as a logos common to many is equally an assumption, as is the integrity of our concepts of matter, unity, being, etc. (see Met. III.1). Such ultimate concepts and principles of knowledge must be examined, Aristotle asserts, but “[w]ith regard to all these matters not only is it hard to get possession of the truth, but it is not easy even to think out the difficulties as well” (996a16-17). Aristotle’s mature metaphysics presents us with a unified, logical cosmos; but it is clear that crucial questions of method remain for him unresolved.

2.2 Whitehead on Method

In Whitehead’s philosophical method, one finds the echoes of Aristotle’s correctives to the Platonic tradition. To be sure, both Aristotle and Whitehead hold Platonism in high esteem and, in the rational phase of their work, acknowledge the speculative tasks of Plato’s dialectical method to be an essential component of philosophical construction. The consonance of these three philosophers bears further scrutiny; however, the departure from strict Platonism in Aristotle’s work has its parallel in Whitehead’s method.

Whitehead defines speculative philosophy as “the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (PR 3). Framing such a general system of ideas is an act of the free imagination, but it must be bounded by both rational and empirical requirements. The rational requirements are coherence and logic; the empirical requirements, as discussed below, are applicability and adequacy. The neglect of either rational requirement is tantamount to the abandonment of philosophical interpretation itself. In the history of philosophical system-building, Whitehead observes that “a system of philosophy is never refuted; it is only abandoned” (PR 6). Many systems have eventually been abandoned, though rarely for simple failures in logic. Whitehead criticizes philosophies that have adopted the method of mathematics, which is primarily logical deduction, as the standard method of philosophical system-building. Instead, logical deduction should remain an “essential auxiliary mode of verification whereby to test the scope of generalities” (PR 10). When deployed in this way, logical imperfections seldom arise as the reason for refuting a philosophical system.

By contrast to the method of mathematics, Whitehead claims that the primary method of philosophy is “descriptive generalization,” which produces the system of ideas in terms of which every element of experience can be interpreted. Historically, systems commonly fail in rationality due to a form of irrationality that he terms “incoherence.” By “coherence,” Whitehead refers to the way that each general idea within the system is capable of being interpreted with respect to other ideas in the system. Incoherence, then, is the “arbitrary disconnection of first principles” (PR 6) within the system of general ideas. Whitehead uses Descartes’ two kinds of substances, corporeal and mental, to illustrate such an incoherence. For an imaginative construction of a system of ideas to succeed, the philosophical method must persist in its “unflinching pursuit of the two rationalistic ideals, coherence and logical perfection.” The value of philosophical construction is to frame such a scheme of ideas so that we might better interpret our experience. This philosophical work is essential to understanding the most mundane elements of experience and the most complex phenomena studied in the various sciences because

all constructive thought, on the various special topics of scientific interest, is dominated by some such scheme, unacknowledged, but no less influential in guiding the imagination. The importance of philosophy lies in its sustained effort to make such schemes explicit, and thereby capable of criticism and improvement. (PR xiv)

The goal of coherence is intrinsic to the philosophical method because every proposition proposes, or is “dominated by,” some assumed scheme of ideas into which the purported fact fits and thereby exhibits the general character of the universe. Thus, there are “no self-sustained facts, floating in nonentity” (PR 11). When a proposition appears to be isolated and “floating in nonentity,” that is an indication that the assumed scheme of ideas has failed to achieve the rationalistic ideal of coherence, and, thus, further revision of the scheme is needed. The metaphysical categories comprising such a scheme are, after all, “tentative formulations of the ultimate generalities” (PR 8). Addressing the incoherence among various metaphysical categories is the endeavor of philosophy, and the prospect of success in doing so is the hope of rationalism.

Whitehead regards the endeavor of philosophy as a continuation of the revisionary and dialectical project initiated by Plato. However, Whitehead follows the lead of Aristotle in adjusting the mathematical paradigm for the philosophical method. The entry requirement to Plato’s academy—“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter”—reflects this paradigm of logical deduction as the primary method for attaining and testing the truth of a philosophical system of ideas. In his Harvard Lectures, Whitehead mentions that Aristotle represented the revolt of a biologist against a mathematician (HL2 183). Of course, Aristotle also recognizes the usefulness of logical deduction as a tool for every intellectual endeavor, but his Metaphysics emphasizes that the beginning of philosophical thinking arises from experience: “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses” (Met. I.1). He acknowledges that “we do not regard any of the senses as wisdom” since they alone do not reveal to us the causes and principles that explain the particulars of experience. Nevertheless, the senses provide the “most authoritative knowledge of particulars” (Met. I.1-2). In his Harvard Lectures, Whitehead underscores his approval of Aristotle’s use of “classificatory logic” with its emphasis on detailed facts, and he supports Aristotle’s decision to delimit the use of mathematics as the paradigm of the philosophical method, noting that Plato’s use of the mathematical method tended to reduce the focus of philosophy to numerical relationships that became devoid of specific characteristics (HL2 86). In mediating this debate, Whitehead notes that it is the combination of Plato’s mathematical method and Aristotle’s classificatory method that eventually gives rise to modern science. For this reason, Whitehead praises Aristotle as an early exemplar of the “scientific state of mind” through his complementary interests in “stubborn facts” as well as “general theory” (HL2 3-4).

Whitehead’s philosophical method reflects these same complementary interests, likening the method to the flight of an “aeroplane”: “It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation” (PR 5). Thus, the beginning and the end of the philosophical method involve empirical observation. He notes that the chief error in philosophy often stems from overstatement or the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” wherein the notions generated in the thin air of imaginative generalization are not brought back down to the ground of sense experience and subsequently put to the test by its authoritative knowledge of particulars.

To guard against such empirical failures, Whitehead contends that a general system of ideas, in addition to being coherent and logical, should also be (1) “applicable” such that some items of experience are interpretable by it and (2) “adequate” so that there are no remaining items incapable of being interpreted by it. These two characteristics of speculative metaphysics—applicability and adequacy—reflect the empiricist dimension of Whitehead’s method, and together they mirror a similar tendency in Aristotle’s method of understanding the concrete particulars in the world. The task of speculative philosophy is to generate a scheme of ideas that can be useful for interpreting the particulars of experience. If the activity of imaginative generalization generates notions that do not apply in any useful way to objects of experience, then these ideas may simply be fatuous and worthy of abandonment. Furthermore, it is the ambition of speculative to philosophy to generate a scheme of general ideas and principles with which any object of experience could be interpreted. If the activity of imaginative generalization generates a set of notions that fail to offer any interpretive leverage on some object of experience, then the scheme is incomplete and requires further augmentation or restructuring. After all, there can be no “self-sustained facts, floating in nonentity” (PR 11).

In combining the empirical and rational elements of the philosophical method, Whitehead summarizes the task of philosophy as the two-fold activity of assemblage and systematization. The act of assemblage gathers experiences from the “ground of particular observation,” and systematization occurs in the “thin air of imaginative generalization.” As Whitehead describes the method in Modes of Thought,

Philosophy can exclude nothing. Thus, it should never start from systematization. Its primary stage can be termed assemblage. Such a process is, of course, unending. (MT 2)

Whitehead praises Aristotle for abiding by this advice to combine the two tasks: “Aristotle systematized as he assembled” (MT 3). In his constant work of assemblage, Aristotle continually checks the applicability and adequacy of his ever-developing scheme of ideas; in his work of systematization, Aristotle continually revises his metaphysical principles to ensure their logic and coherence. Whitehead notes that the “brilliant and deserved success of [the] Aristotelian system of classification”—that is, the work of assemblage—sometimes obscured his followers’ attention to the “togetherness of things”—that is, their systematization (HL1 5). In Whitehead’s estimation, Aristotle deserves credit for both endeavors, though some medieval backsliding occurred which displaced the mathematical character of systematization (HL1 392). With some modern correctives to this intervening problem, Aristotle earns Whitehead’s commendation as an early exemplar of the scientific state of mind (HL2 3-4).

There are two further features of Aristotle’s philosophical method that receive specific attention from Whitehead as he sets out his own method: the use of language and the incorporation of final causes into his scheme of ideas.

In his Harvard Lectures, Whitehead frequently laments the fact that Plato and Aristotle only spoke and wrote Greek and did not know a language like Chinese (HL2 114, 146). This claim, which merits some further explanation, points to a key element involved in any philosophical method: the use of language. All sciences have a set of tools; in philosophy, the tool is language (PR 13). When Whitehead thinks about the legacy of the Greek philosophers, he often focuses on their naïve overconfidence in the Greek language to capture the propositions of a completed scheme of metaphysical ideas. Because philosophy works from natural languages like Greek, its procedure is to start from verbal expressions which, when deployed in their current usage within the culture, are “ill-defined and ambiguous” (PR 13). Whitehead cautions that “no language can be anything but elliptical, requiring a leap of the imagination to understand its meaning in its relevance to immediate experience” (PR 13). In Religion in the Making, Whitehead claims:  

A language is not a universal mode of expressing all ideas whatsoever. It is a limited mode of expressing such ideas as have been frequently entertained, and urgently needed, by the group of human beings who developed that mode of speech. (RM 34)

Ultimately, the philosopher must remember that “no verbal statement is the adequate expression of a proposition” (PR 13). Furthermore, the structure and assumptions of a natural language are bound to imply metaphysical assumptions, and it is incumbent on the philosopher to recognize how the natural language may do so. For this reason, Whitehead asserts:

Language cloaks the most profound ideas under its simplest words. For example, in “two and two make four,” the words “and” and “make” entirely depend for their meaning upon the application which you are giving to the statement. Analogously, in expressing our conception of God, words such as “personal” and “impersonal,” “entity,” “individuality,” “actual,” require the closest careful watching.… But it is impossible to fix the sense of fundamental termsexcept by reference to some definite metaphysical way of conceiving the most penetrating description of the universe. (RM 78-9)

Had Plato and Aristotle known another language such as Chinese, they may not have assumed so naively the subject-predicate linguistic formulation as foundational to their scheme of general ideas.

Having noted this naivety about the natural language of Greek, Whitehead acknowledges a sophistication about language in Aristotle’s philosophical method. Aristotle recognizes some of the limitations of his language. In his “flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization,” Aristotle chooses words from the “ground of particular observation,” but treats them as metaphors needing to be stretched beyond their common usage in order to accomplish the systematization of a rational scheme of general ideas. For example, Whitehead notes how Aristotle uses the term “wood” (ὕλη or hylē) in a stretched way to name the more general concept of “matter” (MT 40). This term deserves further scrutiny in connection with Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme and the role that “primary substance” plays within it: how “matter” plays the role of the realization of value in the superject in Whitehead’s scheme (see HL1 42-49, 86, 89, 437-443). For the moment, the point is that philosophy must devise its set of tools from the existing “toolbox” of natural language, extending those tools to new uses while remaining mindful of “the struggle of novel thought with the obtuseness of language” (Adventures of Ideas 120). 

One final point deserves attention in a discussion of Whitehead’s philosophical method as it relates to the legacy of Aristotle: teleology. Aristotle, of course, is well-known for his inclusion of final causes within his scheme of causality. For many modern thinkers of the Enlightenment who reject the attribution of purpose to objects in nature, this aspect of his metaphysical scheme of ultimate principles reflects the vestiges of an archaic mentality and should be discarded. In his Harvard Lectures, Whitehead notes the way “Galileo and the whole of modern scientists of the 16th and 17th centuries extruded final ends from physics,” and then philosophy “was made to conform to the methodology of physics” (HL2 397). In this lecture, he describes the difficulties that arise in moral theory as a result of this “extrusion,” but he notes further that the effort to design philosophical explanation on the model of this methodology in physics creates broader problems in metaphysics. As a matter of philosophical and scientific explanation, Whitehead’s “ontological principle” is a category of explanation whereby “every condition to which the process of becoming conforms … has its reason either in the character of some actual entity in the actual world of that concrescence [i.e., an efficient cause], or in the character of the subject which is in process of concrescence [i.e., a final cause]” (PR 24). In this way, Whitehead frequently refers to his philosophy as the “philosophy of organism,” and he often cites Aristotle affirmatively as a source of this scheme of ideas. Whitehead acknowledges that the influence of Aristotle “led to a wild overstressing of ‘final causes’ during the Christian middle ages; and thence, by  a reaction, to the correlative overstressing of the notion of ‘efficient causes’ during the scientific period.” Thus, “one task of a sound metaphysics is to exhibit final and efficient causes in their proper relation to each other” (PR 84). This task extends from the categories of explanation for all actual entities to the “lure for feeling” that God creates, which parallels Aristotle’s thoughts in his Metaphysics (1072a23-32) as cited by Whitehead (PR 344).

3. Ontology

3.1 Aristotle’s Ontology

Aristotle famously remarks that being is “spoken of in many ways” – indeed in as many as there are “figures of predication” (Met. 1017a23). Nevertheless, there is a single sense of ‘being’ common to all such discussion, a single archē (principle) of being and thus a single epistēmē (“science”) of all being per se (Met. 1003b12). Aristotle’s term for a primary unit of being is ousia, literally “being,” which has come via Latin to be rendered in English as ‘substance’. His remarks on substance are developed primarily in three texts, the Categories, the Physics, and the Metaphysics, which we focus on here, though important remarks occur also throughout his corpus, including in Posterior Analytics, Generation of Animals, Meteorology, De Anima, and Nicomachean Ethics. In Categories, Aristotle draws on linguistic forms to identify substances as ontologically prior to other classes of being and to reveal the subject-predicate structure as metaphysically central. In Physics, Aristotle draws on the logic of change to elaborate substance further in terms of form and matter. In Metaphysics, Aristotle appeals to further logical, linguistic, and teleological considerations to advance a modal account of substance and to postulate an ultimate principle of motion explaining the ongoing existence of all beings.

In Categories, Aristotle analyzes basic patterns in language to reveal ten categories of being and their interrelations. This account establishes a class of physical individuals – the substances – as the fundamental units of being and the subject-predicate relationship as their primary ontological structure. Aristotle distinguishes single terms – ‘man’, ‘runs’, ‘ox’, ‘pale’, etc. – from combinations of terms forming subject-predicate pairings – i.e., propositions such as ‘man runs’. Predication itself entails two forms that Aristotle identifies as “said of” and “said in”: man is said of the individual man and animal is said of man as well as of the individual man; pale is said in the individual man, as is knowledge, etc. Notably, there is a class of term that is neither said of nor said in anything while all other predicative terms are either said of or said in something.

From these linguistic patterns Aristotle draws a powerful ontology. The ultimate subjects said neither of nor in anything else are the “primary substances” (prōtai ousiai) of being: individual men, individual horses, individual artefacts such as a bronze statue, etc. (Cat. 2a35-b6). Those terms said of primary substances directly – man, horse, etc. – identify species of individuals and genera of the species, such as animal, and are dubbed “secondary substances.” The qualities differentiating the species/genera classes are on this account essential to the individuals thus distinguished. Reason distinguishes the class of man from that of horse and is thus essential to the individual human. Terms said in a subject, by contrast, indicate accidental features or states of substances: pale might be predicated of an individual man, though the man could become tan. Aristotle identifies nine categories beyond the substance category: quantity, quality, relation, location in space, location in time, arrangement, deportment, activity, and affect. Because all terms are either said of or said in the individual men, horses, etc., Aristotle notes as contrary to Plato that nothing would exist if these did not.

In Physics, Aristotle develops a hylemorphic account of substance which specifies basic principles of change and resolves Parmenides’ influential puzzle about change. In Aristotle’s ancient Greek, ‘hulē’ (literally, wood) is employed as generic matter and morphē meant “form”, so hylemorphism is the doctrine that the basic units of being consist in enformed matter. In the case of Socrates, the form is that defining the species, man, while his embodying matter is such skin, flesh, and bone as is thereby enformed. Artifacts also illustrate hylemorphic structures: a bronze statue, for example, has some quantity of bronze for its matter and a certain shape – e.g., the Charioteer of Delphi – as its form. Substances are of course subject to change, which Aristotle here understands as the gain or loss by some matter of some form: the Charioteer of Delphi could be melted down and refashioned as a kouros, for example. In line with Categories, Aristotle distinguishes between forms constituting the essence or definition of the given substance and those constituting mere accidents to the substance. Man is the form of Socrates and pale may also be a form characterizing Socrates. But man is essential to the existence of the substance Socrates, whereas being pale is not. We thus have essential (or “substantial”) change constituting the generation or destruction of some substance, on the one hand, and accidental change, on the other, in which some substance survives the gain or loss of some property.

Aristotle’s hylemorphic theory of substance facilitates a solution to Parmenides’ problem of change. Aristotle’s account of Parmenides’ aporia may be rendered as follows (Phys. 191a25-30):

  1. If change (becoming P) is possible, then it must come either from that which is (i.e., P), or that which is not (i.e., not-P).
  2. But P cannot come from P (i.e., for that would not be a change).
  3. And P cannot come from not-P (for not-P is nothing and something cannot come from nothing).

Hence,

  1. Change is not possible.

Aristotle responds by distinguishing simple from complex conceptions of change. In the simple conception, P comes from not-P or vice versa: the non-pale becomes the pale. This conception of change is vulnerable to Parmenides’ argument. But equipped with a matter-form distinction, Aristotle may describe change as the gain or loss of some form by some subject: some non-pale man becomes a pale man. Thus, where change for Parmenides involves two “principles,” for Aristotle change involves three: a pair of contraries plus a subject bearing the contraries in turn. “[T]here must always be an underlying something, namely that which becomes, and … this, though always one numerically, in form at least is not one” (Phys. 190a14-15). On this more complete account of change, then, premise (1) is false and Parmenides’ argument for the impossibility of change is unsound.

Change in substances is understood by Aristotle by reference to four aitia or “reasons why” (Phys. 194b17-34) – commonly if anachronistically rendered in English as ‘causes’. These causes include the material (hulē) of which the substance is composed; the form or essence (eidos) defining the substance; a motion (kinēsis) prompting the material to take on the form; and an end (telos) toward which the substance thus enformed is directed. The bronze of a sculpture, for instance, is its material cause; the sculptor fashioning it is its motile (often “efficient”) cause; the form defining the sculpture’s shape, texture, color, etc., is its formal cause; and some impression in a viewer is the sculpture’s final cause. In natural substances – such as horses and humans – motion, form, and end may be understood to be one and the same aitia, on this account. The telos of a living thing is to realize a certain form of life; the eidos of a living thing defines the kinds of activity it is capable of: the form of a horse enables it to gallop, graze, and mate in characteristically horse-like ways, and in doing these things the ongoing life of a horse, its telos, is achieved. Form may then also be understood as a principle of motion of a certain kind whose activity realizes a being of a certain species over time (Phys. 198a25-29).

In Metaphysics, Aristotle conducts a modal analysis of substance, revealing further fundamental ontological structures and ultimately a very principle of being. The primary terms in this analysis are dunamis and energeia. A dunamis is a power or potential for a certain energeia, its realization or actualization. The existing substance may be defined in terms of its capacity for motions of various characteristic sorts, such as to gallop or to graze in the case of the horse. Matter also expresses a power, the power to take on the given substantial form such as that of the horse. We are not however to understand dunamis as ontologically prior to energeia: matter is not found independent of form. Consistent with Categories, ontological priority remains with the individual substances, each now understood as an actualization of matter’s potential to embody species-specific powers for species-specific activities.

An ambiguity in energeia has resulted in two distinctly different interpretations of Aristotle’s ontology. Traditionally, a “static” conception of fundamental being derives from translating energeia as actuality.[2] While actualization as such may be conceived as some kind of metaphysical process, the condition of actuality need not itself imply any motion or change. Indeed, in respect of being what it is, the horse undergoes no change over time: qua horse, it is unchanging. To be, on this understanding, is to instantiate an unchanging form. This impression is bolstered by passages in Categories implying the ontological importance of secondary substance (2b7-22) and in Metaphysics where illustrations of energeia include words as composed of syllables, houses as composed of materials, and flesh and bone as composed of fire and earth (1041b4-31). More recently, translation of energeia as “activity” has gained prominence.[3] It remains true on this account that the form of a substance as such is unchanging over time. Instantiation of a form, however, is now understood more specifically in terms of the activities in time constitutive of the given form. The actualization of potential horse form consists in ongoing activities such as galloping and grazing.

We see here, the teleological structure of being coming to the ontological fore. Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of entelecheia or completion of an activity as a being’s telos is related to the activity producing it (Met. 1048b18-34). Some activities culminate in an external product, as when house-building produces a house. In these cases, the telos is a thing distinct from the process creating it. In other activities, the telos of activity is not distinct from the activity producing it. Aristotle finds this structure in the beings of nature and in particular living things. The activity specified by the form of a horse produces precisely a horse, indeed that particular horse. Moreover, processes containing their telos are complete at every moment of occurrence, whereas processes with an external end are complete only upon completion of that external end, such as the house. Thus, being is the ongoing actualization of powers constitutive of the characteristic activities of a substance kind.

This self-realizing structure represents the ultimate feature of Aristotle’s finally developed ontology,namely the unmoved mover (to prōton kinoun akinēton, Met. 1012b31). The unmoved mover is a cause of motion that is itself unaltered in causing that motion. It is the principle (archē) of all motion and is as such a logos and non-material. It accounts for and constitutes the being of every substance, elaborated in the many forms of substance kinds and in the activity of each individual substance – both the being of the horse in general and its particular grazing and galloping. It is, thus, the principle of activity in every animating soul (psuchē; De Anima 402a4-7). Aristotle conceives further the unmoved mover as the animating soul and driving force of the whole cosmos, elaborated in the motions of the heavens and in their influences on the terrestrial, including the specific materials of the terrestrial, the flesh and bone, the metals, the earth, wind, water, and fire (Met. 1072a21-27, 1041a27-b32).

As the animator of all, the unmoved mover is ontologically and logically prior to all. It has thus the qualities of a divine progenitor. Because it is prior to every activity, no power is greater than it. Because it is prior to the temporal, it must be eternal. Because it is prior to every good and beauty, it is unsurpassed in goodness and beauty. And if it is prior to the animation of intelligent beings, then it cannot be surpassed for the qualities of nous nor for the pleasures that may be enjoyed by the noetic. “And life also belongs to God; for the activity of thought is life, and God is that activity; and God’s essential activity is life most good and eternal. We say therefore that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God” (1072b26-30).

3.2 Whitehead’s Ontology

Whitehead is known for his process ontology which posits events rather than things as the fundamental units of reality, and this foundational idea is often presented as in opposition to Aristotle’s substance metaphysics. In fact, Whitehead himself sometimes presents his metaphysical scheme in this way: “It is fundamental to the metaphysical doctrine of the philosophy of organism, that the notion of an actual entity as the unchanging subject of change is completely abandoned” (PR 29). If it is true that Aristotle posits a static conception of substance wherein the “unchanging subject of change” is wholly self-contained and changeless, then Whitehead’s ontology of actual occasions does indeed abandon Aristotle’s substance metaphysics. For Whitehead, a “primary substance” (or prōton ousia, as Aristotle terms it), when conceived as having no internal relations to other substances and thus being unable to develop internally, will ultimately prove to be a “vacuous entity” that his philosophy of organism repudiates.

Certainly, Whitehead’s motivation to create an epochal theory of becoming stemmed in large part from his repudiation of mechanistic materialism, which posits the reality of “substances” that are inert pieces of matter or vacuous entities. Such a view was on the rise in Whitehead’s time, and he was guarded against it and anything that might have been a philosophical harbinger of it. In this way, Whitehead may have harbored a motivated reading of Aristotle, seeing that ancient substance metaphysics as the seed of modern materialism.[4] As a result, Whitehead offers a reading of modern philosophy as developing from the misstep of basing a metaphysics of substance on the subject-predicate structure.

All modern philosophy hinges round the difficulty of describing the world in terms of subject and predicate, substance and quality, particular and universal. The result always does violence to that immediate experience which we express in our actions, our hopes, our sympathies, our purposes, and which we enjoy in spite of our lack of phrases for its verbal analysis. (PR 49-50)

If modern philosophy reduces the “particular” to an isolated individual with no relevance or relation to any other particular, then it does violence to us by tearing the fabric of our experiences which seem woven together by the relevance and relatedness of particulars. In this passage, Whitehead traces this mistaken notion of the particular back to Aristotle’s dictum: “A substance is not present in a subject.” The result of this dictum, Whitehead reckons, is a metaphysics of intrinsically unrelated substances that endure as “vacuous entities” devoid of change or inner development. Frequently, Whitehead calls this notion the “undifferentiated endurance of substances” and considers it to be the mistaken assumption of materialism: “The notion of undifferentiated endurance of substances with essential attributes and with accidental adventures … is the root doctrine of materialism: the substance, thus conceived, is the ultimate actual entity” (PR 78). The combination of substances as self-contained units without relations to others and as changeless bearers of attributes is, according this line of argument, the legacy of Aristotle’s notion of “primary substance” and the subject-predicate structure.

Whitehead contrasts the materialistic theory that is rooted in Aristotle’s legacy with his own principle of universal relativity which attempts to reintroduce relation or relatedness into the schemes of modern philosophy that have abandoned it:

According to this principle [of relativity], an actual entity is present in other actual entities. In fact if we allow for degrees of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity. The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear this notion of “being present in another entity.” (PR 50)

Whitehead goes on to account for this “being present in another entity” through his discussions of “prehension,” “internal relations,” “objectification,” “social immanence,” and “modes of ingression.”

A full examination of his theory will involve consideration of these notions among others. However, regarding Whitehead’s relation to Aristotle, some further questions need to be addressed: (1) Is this reading of Aristotle correct? (2) Does Whitehead truly read Aristotle in this way, or does he recognize more parallels between his theory and Aristotle’s?

To the first question, as noted above, many scholars of Aristotle consider this reading to be at best one-sided and misleading, if not simply mistaken altogether. The recent shift to translating energeia as “activity” rather than “actuality” signals this changing interpretation of Aristotle away from a “static” conception of fundamental being. Also, his notion of entelechy has two kinds: (1) the completion of an activity due to an external cause or purpose, e.g., the house-building that produces a house; (2) the completion of an activity produced by the activity itself, e.g., the self-development of an organism. These two types of teleology—external and internal—are essential to his theory, and the internal teleology (or inner purposiveness) found in organisms represents a different side of his substance metaphysics that deserves recognition. As such, Aristotle—the “biologist” philosopher (HL1 310, 312)—could be understood as, in part, the harbinger of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism rather than mechanistic materialism.[5]  

To the second question, there is evidence in Whitehead’s works and lectures that his own view was more subtle. In discussing the contrast between metaphysics of substance and metaphysics of flux, Whitehead recognizes the valuable contribution made by Aristotle. Whitehead commends Aristotle for his “masterly analysis of the notion of ‘generation,’” through which he expresses a “useful protest against the Platonic tendency to separate a static spiritual world from a fluent world of superficial experience” (PR 209). In the Harvard Lectures, Whitehead discusses the relation of “enduring things” and “process,” and he notes that Aristotle “plays with both points of view”—permanence and flux—striving to find a mediating path between the metaphysics of static substance and the metaphysics of all-pervasive flux. However, according to Whitehead, later philosophers overemphasized endurance and lost sight of this interplay (HL2 54; see also HL1 310). Whitehead frequently alludes to this sort of backsliding in medieval Aristotelian thought into a one-sided approach that unfortunately “allowed the static notions of Aristotle’s logic to formulate some of the main metaphysical problems in terms that have lasted till today” (PR 209). [6]

This theme of “blaming the medievals” gets voiced in numerous other places in Whitehead’s work, e.g., their “wild overstressing of the notion of ‘final causes’ during the Christian middle ages” (PR 84). In his Harvard Lectures, Whitehead opines that Aristotle was not a typical “Aristotelian,” as defined in these later centuries, and did not himself misuse the subject-predicate structure. Rather, that error arose among the scholastics of the medieval era (HL1 6, 52; HL2 203). In another lecture, Whitehead discusses Aristotle as a thinker of process and substance, but that later thinkers (and ultimately Descartes) dropped process and retained only substance in their scheme of ideas. However, Aristotle, according to Whitehead, tried to reconcile both process and substance (HL2 86). Finally, another lecture of his explains that Aristotle recognizes the category of relation, but that other figures marginalized it in favor of the subject-attribute distinction (HL2 146; see also HL1 162, 165). To be sure, Aristotle himself (and not just his medieval epigones) receives some criticism from Whitehead on various issues, e.g., the mathematical notions of points and continuity (HL1 252-4), the view of “eternal objects” or universals being “in” the particular which creates a “muddle” for understanding potentiality (HL1 102, 108, 111, 340-8), and the bias he gave toward his own logic (HL1 204, 340). Nevertheless, Whitehead stresses the need for a balance between reverence for the great thinkers of the past and a “sturdiness of criticism” when it is deserved (HL1 272). In the end, Whitehead acknowledges that the true Aristotle—though imperfect—merits credit for developing two of the key elements of Whitehead’s philosophy of organism: process and relation. Donald Sherburne bolsters this point: “Whereas Descartes continues and deepens Aristotle’s systematic commitment to the primacy of the category of substance, Whitehead reaches down to Aristotle’s category of relation and promotes it to the position of honor—to be is to be in relation.”[7] For a member of the Aristotelian Society who participated fully in its frequent activities, as Whitehead did in his London years, this positive retrieval of Aristotle’s philosophy should not seem surprising.

Notes

[1] Cf. PR 209 where Whitehead quotes an Anglican hymn as apt to the opposition of flux and permanence: “Abide with me; / Fast falls the eventide.” He observes that much of philosophy concerns “a wavering balance” between the two sentiments, and he cites specifically Plato as representative of permanence  and Aristotle as pursuing the “balance”.

[2] See for example Ross’s widely used 1908 translation in Barnes 1984 and more recently Furth 1985.

[3] For an argument in favor of this interpretation, see Jonathan Beere, Doing and Being: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta. Oxford University Press, 2009; for an application, see Ariah Kosman, The Activity of Being, Harvard University Press, 2013; C. D. C. Reeve illustrates this interpretation in his translation of Metaphysics, Hackett Publishing Co., 2016 – see note 901, p. 449.

[4] See Leonard J. Eslick, “Substance, Change, and Causality in Whitehead,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 18 (June, 1958), 503–13 for further discussion of this motivated reading of Aristotle.

[5] For further analysis of Aristotle’s thought as it is referenced in Whitehead’s work, see James Felt, “Whitehead’s Misconception of ‘Substance’ in Aristotle,” Process Studies 14 (1985), 224–236 and Coming to Be: Toward a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000). Felt argues that Whitehead mistakenly imports Cartesian and Lockean ideas of substance back into Aristotle’s work. See also the debate on this subject between Leonard J. Eslick and Charles Hartshorne: Leonard J. Eslick, “Substance, Change, and Causality in Whitehead,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 18 (June, 1958), 503–13; and Charles Hartshorne, “Whitehead on Process: A Reply to Professor Eslick,” ibid., 514–20.

[6] For further defense of Whitehead’s approach to the dynamic of permanence and flux, see Daniel A. Dombrowski, “Coming to Be: On Process-Enriched Thomism,” Philosophy and Theology 24, no. 2 (2012): 255–273. Dombrowski takes up the problem of identity over time (e.g., how the unmusical man becomes musical; see Aristotle’s Physics 188b), and he reads Whitehead (with Charles Hartshorne) as claiming that the becoming or changing individual relates to the past internally and is so constituted in some measure by those relations, but relates to the future externally and so allows the future occasions to be open.

[7] Donald W. Sherburne, “Whitehead, Descartes, and Terminology,” in Whitehead’s Philosophy: Points of Connection, ed. by Janusz A. Polanowski and Donald W. Sherburne (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), p. 6.

Works Cited and Further Readings

Primary Aristotle Works

Citations in the text are to Barnes unless otherwise indicated.

Abbreviations of Aristotle works cited:

Cat.: Categories
DA: De Anima
Met.: Metaphysics
NE: Nicomachean Ethics
Phys.: Physics

1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, Princeton University Press)

1985. Metaphysics: Books Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota (VII-X), translated by Montgomery Furth (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co.)

2016. Metaphysics, translated by C.D.C. Reeve (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co.)

1995. Physics in Aristotle: Selections, translated by Gail Fine and Terence Irwin (Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Co.)

Secondary Sources on Aristotle

Ackrill, J.L. 1965, “Aristotle’s Distinction between Energeia and Kinesis,” in R. Bambrough (ed.), 1965, New Essays on Plato and Aristotle (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul), pp. 121–141.

Angioni, Lucas, 2014, “Definition and Essence in Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’ vii 4,” Ancient Philosophy, 34: 75–100.

Barnes, Jonathan. 1969. “Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration,” Phronesis 14, 123–152.

Beere, Jonathan. 2009. Doing and Being: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

Brook, Angus. 2015. “Substance and the Primary Sense of Being in Aristotle,” The Review of Metaphysics 68, 521–544.

Cohen, S. Marc and C.D.C. Reeve. 2021. “Aristotle’s Metaphysics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/.

Frede, Michael and David Charles (eds.). 2000. Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

Gill, Mary Louise and James G. Lennox (eds.). 1994. Self-Motion from Aristotle to Newton (Princeton, Princeton University Press).

Hartman, Edwin. 1976. “Aristotle on the Identity of Substance and Essence,” Philosophical Review, 85, 545–561.

Irwin, Terrence. 1987. “Ways to first Principles: Aristotle’s Methods of Discovery,” Philosophical Topics, 15:2, 109–134.

Kosman, Aryeh. 2013. The Activity of Being (Cambridge, Harvard University Press).

Owen, G.E.L. 1986. “Tithenai ta Phainomena” in Owen, G.E.L. and Martha C. Nussbaum, eds., Logic, Science, and Dialectic : Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy (Ithaca, Cornell University Press), 239–251.

Shields, Christopher. 2022. “Aristotle,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aristotle/.

Thorp, John. 2010. “Intelligible Matter in Aristotle,” The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter 385, 1–6.

Vassallo, Philip. 2004. “Notes on the Methods of Inquiry of Plato and Aristotle,” ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 61, 373–380.

Primary Whitehead Works

Abbreviations of the Whitehead works cited:

HL1: The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924-1925
HL2: The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1925-1927
MT: Modes of Thought
PR: Process and Reality
RM: Religion in the Making

1967/1933. Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press)

1968/1938. Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press)

1978/1929. Process and Reality, edited by D. R. Griffin and D. W. Sherburne (New York: The Free Press)

1996/1926. Religion in the Making (New York: Fordham University Press)

2017. Paul A. Bogaard and Jason Bell (eds.). The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1924–1925: Philosophical Presuppositions of Science. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474401852

2021. Brian G. Henning, Joseph Petek, and George R. Lucas (eds.). The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, 1925–1927: General Metaphysical Problems of Science. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474416948

Secondary Sources on Whitehead and Aristotle

Bargeliotes, Leonidas C. “Whitehead’s Double Debt to the Greeks.” Diotima 12 (1984): 33–40.

Brennan, Sheilah O’Flynn. “Perception and Causality: Whitehead and Aristotle.” Process Studies 3, no. 4 (Winter 1973): 273–­84.

Cataldo, Peter J. “Whitehead and Aristotle on Propositions.” Process Studies 12, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 15–­22.

Dombrowski, Daniel A. “Being Is Power.” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 16, no. 3 (September, 1995): 299–314.

—–. “Coming to Be: On Process-Enriched Thomism.” Philosophy and Theology 24, no. 2 (2012): 255–273.

Eslick, Leonard J. “Substance, Change, and Causality in Whitehead.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 18 (June, 1958): 503–13.

Etzwiler, James P. “Being as Activity in Aristotle: A Process Interpretation.” International Philosophical Quarterly 18, no.3 (September 1978): 311­–34.

Felt, James W. Coming to Be: Toward a Thomistic-Whiteheadian Metaphysics of Becoming (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000).

—–. “Whitehead’s Misconception of ‘Substance’ in Aristotle.” Process Studies 14 (1985): 224–236.

Fetz, Reto Luzius, and James W. Felt, trans. “Aristotelian and Whiteheadian Conceptions of Actuality: I.” Process Studies 19, no. 1 (Spring 1990): 15­–27.

—–, and James W. Felt, trans. “Aristotelian and Whiteheadian Conceptions of Actuality: II.” Process Studies 19, no. 3 (Fall 1990): 145–­55.

Ford, Lewis S. (1977). “Whitehead’s Transformation of Pure Act.” The Thomist: a Speculative Quarterly Review 41 (1977): 381–399.

Hartshorne, Charles, “Whitehead on Process: A Reply to Professor Eslick.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 18 (June, 1958): 514–20.

Kuntz, Marion Leathers and Paul G. Kuntz. “Naming the Categories: Back to Aristotle by Way of Whitehead.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy II, no. I (1988): 30–­47.

Ozaki, Makoto. “The Essence of Substance as the Individual: Aristotle, Tanabe, and Whitehead.” Values and Culture. Ed. Zang, Yanyang. (Hebie, China: Hebie University Press, 2003).

Sherburne, Donald W. “Whitehead, Descartes, and Terminology,” in Whitehead’s Philosophy: Points of Connection, ed. By Janusz A. Polanowski and Donald W. Sherburne (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).

Welten, W.  “The Human Being as Substance and as Actual Entity.” Gregorianum 73, no. 2 (1992): 317–328.

Zycinski, Joseph M. “The Doctrine of Substance and Whitehead’s Metaphysics.” The Review of Metaphysics 42 (1989): 765–781.

Author Information

M. Gregory Oakes
Professor of Philosophy, Associate Dean for the College of Arts & Sciences
Winthrop University
701 Oakland Avenue, Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA
oakesm@winthrop.edu

William P. Kiblinger
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Director of the Master of Liberal Arts
Winthrop University
701 Oakland Avenue, Rock Hill, South Carolina, USA
kiblingerw@winthrop.edu

How to Cite this Article

Oakes, M. Gregory, and William P. Kiblinger, “Aristotle (384–322 BCE)”, last modified November 2023, The Whitehead Encyclopedia, Brian G. Henning and Joseph Petek (eds.), <http://encyclopedia.whiteheadresearch.org/entries/bios/historico-speculative-context/aristotle/>.