A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action:Volume Three Jonathan Lear and Aristotle(A Kantian Critique)

Visits: 37742

Kant, the “all destroyer” of Metaphysics is assumed by some critics to be directing his attention to what they call the “metaphysical heritage” stretching back to, and including, the metaphysics of Aristotle. We wish to argue that Aristotelian and Kantian metaphysics are not incompatible and that Hylomorphic Philosophy and Critical Philosophy share a concern that is not manifested in the speculations of materialistic science or dualistic religion. Both forms of Philosophy rejected the metaphysical aspects of materialism and dualism.

It is true that one will not find in Aristotle reference to either the modern psychological terms of Consciousness or the Will, but the former is certainly implied in Aristotelian accounts of perception and the later is implied in Aristotelian discussions of choice and akrasia. The most important aspect of the Kantian account of the Will in moral contexts is its first principle or moral law, the categorical imperative. The question”Why?” when posed in relation to human action can be answered at three levels. At the first level if one is confronted with a puzzling action and responds with “Why did you do X?”, the response may well refer to an intention, e.g. “I took the job because I owed Jill an amount of money that I have promised to pay back next month”. This explanation in turn may prove puzzling to a child or an immoral criminal and may be countered with “Why do you want to pay the money back?” The second level response to this may take the form of ,”Because promises ought to be kept”. It is conceivable , if one is a philosopher, to ask why promises ought to be kept and this inquiry will take us back to the first principle or categorical imperative(“So act that you will that the maxim of your action(the intention) can be willed to become a universal law”). This third level categorical imperative is the first principle or moral law that we encounter in Kantian Metaphysics of Moral Action and Judgement. For Aristotle, the keeping of promises would be a virtuous activity(in accordance with areté–doing the right things at the right time in the right way) and there would be no reason why Aristotle would not accept some form of the categorical imperative( a legislator in a kingdom of ends) as an elaboration upon the meaning of the major premise “Promises ought to be kept”. Areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) is certainly a broader practical principle than the categorical imperative, embracing, as it does, the political activities of law making and rhetoric( in which one argues for the validity of political laws). These activities also belong to the Area of practical science as conceived by Aristotle in his Catalogue of Sciences. Any political law that undermined the unity of the state would, for Aristotle, be a practical contradiction, as would the failure to keep a promise one had no intention of keeping, be a practical contradiction for Kant. Laws which are unjust and did not contribute to the unity of the city would be no law at all and this is an expression of the fact that there was no principle beyond them. Such laws would be laws in name only: failed attempts to regulate the social activity of the state. Laws for Aristotle are embedded in processes that navigate between extremes: processes that obeyed the procedural rules of the golden mean.

There is no reason to believe that Kant would question any of the above Aristotelian claims. The Categorical Imperative is not a destruction of Aristotelian Metaphysics but rather a restoration of Metaphysics purified of materialistic and dualistic commitments. Such a restoration had only occurred once before in Philosophical history in the form of hylomorphic metaphysical theory. The above reflection highlights the importance of both the contexts of exploration/discovery(seeking the intention of the action) and the contexts of explanation/justification(seeking the principle that explains or justifies the intentional action). The reflection also highlights the important human aspect of the Aristotelian essence specifying definition of man(rational animal capable of discourse), namely, the way in which the human form of life responds to the complexity of the world in the interrogative and imperative modes.

Jonathan Lear in his work “Aristotle: the desire to understand”, appears to emphasise the important aspect of rationality in the form of the desire to understand. Aristotle, we have argued in this work set the stage for critical Philosophy by claiming that understanding ones own role in the attempt to comprehend the complexity of the world is part of the attempt to understand the world. Kant is focussing on this aspect when he gives us an account of the human mind in terms of the faculties or powers of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Both philosophers are attempting to provides us with a logos of the soul. The use of understanding and reason in Aesthetic judgement, and in the realms of theoretical and practical sciences as well as the use of Sensibility in relation to the powers of Perception and Imagination, create the critical matrix necessary to meet the ancient Greek challenge to “Know thyself”. “Form” is a concept Kant continually refers to in his reflections upon his matrix. For Kant, the key commitment to hylomorphic Philosophy manifests itself in a reference to those organismic elements in the world that possess the power to cause themselves to move and act. For both Aristotle and Kant this phenomenon is characterised in terms of an internal principle that energises organisms during their life but departs from them upon their death. It is this principle of self causation that demands higher levels of explanation/justification than that which is provided in terms of material/efficient causation. As Socrates so wisely pointed out, reference to his bones and muscles carrying him to the prison does not and could never explain why he chooses to stay(when he is offered the possibility of escaping). Saying that his bones and muscles are at rest may be true but it is irrelevant in the face of the question “Why does Socrates stay in prison?”. The answer to this question is obviously that Socrates has chosen to accept his fate. The answer to the follow up question “Why?” would refer to his respect for the laws of the city-state of Athens. The latter “explanation/justification is obviously a more relevant answer. The former “explanation” seems to be more of the order of a “description” of the state of the body of Socrates than an explanation or justification of what is going on in the mind of Socrates. The principle of self causation precludes, in the name of the principle of sufficient reason, appealing solely to material and efficient causation. Even in the case of Socrates being taken to his cell, reference to what his muscles and bones are doing could, if we stretch the meaning of the words involved, “explain” the walking action(the change), but it is perhaps more appropriate to regard this characterisation as a description of the walking action. Both Aristotle and Kant would accept the distinction between external causation and internal self-causation. The latter form of causation, for Aristotle, is related to the choice involved in all forms of self initiated activity but especially virtuous activity. In this latter form of activity, asking the question why, in moral contexts, is an important aspect of knowing oneself in the course of leading a contemplative life. For Kant, self causation is involved in the exercise of freedom and practical reasoning. When the telos of the action is connected to duty and the responsibility associated with freedom, the issue is a normative issue in two senses: firstly knowing oneself is importantly focused upon the end-in itself of ones self worth, secondly the focus is on the normative end in itself of the cosmopolitan Kingdom of ends. Processes of actualisation (development) are obviously involved in the bringing about of all stages on the way to final ends: whether they be hylomorphic principles that organise the formation of tissue, organs and limbs into a human body or hylomorphic principles of justice organising collectivities of people into a state run by the rule of law. These principles are inherent in the bodies and the minds of the citizens. This is in contrast to the Platonic account in which “forms” or principles are not located anywhere in space whether that be actual space or the metaphorical space of the mind. These “forms” or principles, prior to being actualised are potentialities, potential powers. Powers are teleological. The “forms” or principles involved in powers of perception, imagination, judgement, understanding, reason, and language are not properties of the man but rather constitutive of mans “Being-in-the-world”. Phenomenology prefers to focus on the powers or perception, imagination, and a non abstract form of understanding that does not acknowledge the role of Aristotelian or Kantian Categories, or the role of Aristotelian-Kantian practical and theoretical reasoning. To acknowledge these forms of cognition obviously requires a conception of Science that does not correspond with the self-conception of Modern Scientific Psychologists. More seriously, Phenomenology fails to generate a sustainable practical view of Politics and Ethics. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, and even Arendt, early on in her career, fixated upon Marxism as the Political Philosophy most in accord with their world view. Arendt’s later realisation that Marxism respects neither freedom nor justice is an interesting confessional moment and it moves us toward the world views embodied in hylomorphic and critical theory. Paul Ricoeur’s political commitment to Socialism does not quite fit into the category of Marxist dialectical materialism, but it does share with dialectical reasoning an anti-rationalistic spirit that prevents both a scientific world view, and an ethical world view that is synchronised with hylomorphic or critical thought. Ricoeur retains a Greek orientation to his investigation by declaring an interest in achieving an ontological understanding of Being(similar to that of Heidegger), but his route to this understanding is distinctly Heraclitean or Hegelian, via the discipline of hermeneutics and the conflict of interpretations of Being. Each interpretation, of course, claims to situate itself in the context of explanation/justification but opposing one interpretation(e.g. the Freudian so called archeological explanation) against another teleological explanation(Hegelian) places the whole investigation once again into a context of exploration/discovery. Aristotle might regard this activity as an attempt to navigate between extremes, especially if we are speaking about early Freudian theorising. Such an exercise for him might be a valid attempt to establish what he regarded as the basic terms of the science of hermeneutics. The model for this speculative judgement is, of course, derived from practical reasoning and the striving of agents to acquire the virtue of courage after experimenting with the extremes of wildly rushing into battle and running away from battle. Plucking up the courage to enter battle, deliberately and prudently, is in accordance with the essence specifying definition of virtue( doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Areté is the categorical imperative of Aristotelian politics and ethics. This will include judging within the privacy of ones own mind as well as publicly saying what one is going to do in the agora. What is interesting in the above reflection is the dialectical activity that is involved in the journey toward a final context of justification for ones actions or ones beliefs. There is, in modern hylomorphic and critical reflections, a refusal to ally oneself with Ricoeur’s belief in the role of the conflict of Interpretations in processes leading up to final contexts of explanation/justification. We need to insist in the light of the above reflections that such conflicts are confined to contexts of exploration/discovery: and realise activities of this kind do not call into question the telos of aletheia (truth). One can, that is, despite dialectical objections, continue to be committed to the Aristotelian and Kantian view of Knowledge as Justified True Belief.

So, on this account Ricoeur endorses Aristotelian dialectical activity in the fields of all the sciences(theoretical, practical and productive) but suspends judgement on the status of explanations and justifications in the field of Aristotelian and Kantian theoretical and practical sciences. We do not, however, find in Ricoeur the extreme political commitments we normally find in existential and phenomenological positions(e.g. Sartre, Merelau-Ponty, Arendt, Heidegger’s mistaken commitment to German National Socialism). We encounter rather justifications of Socialism that appear to be in compatible with Aristotelian and Kantian ideas and knowledge of the Good

In Ricoeur’s hermeneutics there is a clear reference to a dialectical play of archeological and teleological theories in relation to the topic of the symbolic structure of language. Ricoeur claims in his work “Freud:an Essay in Interpretation” that the dialectical interplay of archeological explanations and teleological “explanations” is a necessary preliminary to a General Theory of Hermeneutics:

“As I said in the “Problematic” a general hermeneutic does not lie within our scope: this book is no more than a propaedeutic to that extensive work. The task we set ourselves was to integrate into reflection the opposition between conflicting hermeneutics. Now that we have made such a long detour we are simply at the threshold of our enterprise.”(P 494)

The aporetic question to pose here is: “What lies on the other side of this threshold?”–Heiddegger’s view of Being? Aristotelian or Kantian views of Being? Or a variation of these positions? The archeological meaning of symbolic language involves the restoration of ancient meanings of language. The teleological meaning of symbolic language ,for Ricoeur, on the other hand, is more Hegelian than Aristotelian, and has to do with the emergence of Concepts in a historical adventure that anticipates the telos of our culture. Both remembrance and prophecy are intertwined in a reflective process that is clearly embedded in the context of exploration/discovery. The dialectical route to aletheia is manifested in the density of a symbolism that both conceals and reveals.

Instincts are concealed when vicissitudes are revealed in a journey of Consciousness toward self-consciousness(self knowledge). This process of exploration centres around the key signifiers of the instincts and Consciousness in a journey from the images of the imagination to the concepts of the understanding. Reason appears in the course of this journey but only at the level of the relation of concepts to each other in propositions and more complexly in the relation of propositions to each other, especially in the corpus of a science.

Jonathan Lears work is involved on many levels of the above reflections. His work on “Freud” supports Ricoeur’s analysis of the role of sublimation in the above journey toward a final context of explanation/justification:

“sublimation is not a supplementary procedure that could be accounted for by an economics of desire. It is not a mechanism that could be put on the same plane as the other instinctual vicissitudes, alongside reversal, turning around upon the self, and repression. Insofar as revealing and disguising coincide in it, we might say that sublimation is the symbolic function itself.”(,Freud an essay in interpretationP.497)

Sublimation is a mechanism of exploration/discovery and it certainly might be involved in conceptual activity as a form of substitute satisfaction. Such activity occurs in relation to the pleasure-pain principle at levels of Consciousness lower than that of the rational thinking in contexts of explanation/justification (when it operates in accordance with the Reality Principle). Such thinking requires real rather than substitute satisfactions. The symbolic function is, of course, a linguistic phenomenon, a power intimately connected to an Ego whose primary functions are to protect the body, and the capacity to love and to work in accordance with areté. The strong ego, according to Freud, is well aware of the ways of the world and it is also aware of the fate of men who are unaware of the role of Ananke in the affairs of men. Ricoeur suggests that Freud reduces the symbolism of work to the symbolism related to sexuality, but this may be a problematic interpretation of Freud’s later work which suggests that both the activities of work and sex stem from the Life instinct. There may be, that, is a “language of life” that sexual symbols and symbols of work emerge from. The language of myth then may be better characterisable in terms of the language of life.

Ricoeur points to a hierarchy of Desire, Spirit, and Reason in his work on Freud. Spirit is divided as it is in the work of Plato, sometimes cooperating with emotional Desire in the form of anger and aggression, and sometimes cooperating with Reason in the form of virtues of courage and courageous indignation. Desire is, of course, represented at all levels of mind and this is a position that would be maintained by both Aristotle and Kantian Critical Philosophy. At the level of Reason, pleasure or satisfaction changes its form and becomes part of the contentment of the telos of a flourishing life rather than part of a transitional process aiming at the homeostasis of the body.

Human action inspired by areté (knowledge of the good) does not, however, accord with the Hegelian emphasis upon dialectical reasoning given the obvious commitment of both Greek Philosophy and Kantian Critical Philosophy to the form of Logical Rationalism. Such a commitment involves appeal to principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in a context of explanation/justification. Desire in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory is explained partly in terms of its role in the actualisation of the potentiality of rationality in the development of the powers of a human being. In Kant’s “Anthropology” desire is structured around three modes of manifestation; possession(having), power, and worth. These are also hierarchically organised modes of Consciousness that reveal themselves in the culture in various institutional forms: economical, political and ethical. These institutions then become objective manifestations of a human desire guided by areté and principles of organisation. The Platonic Eros appears to bind all these institutions together into a totality or unity against the background of the shadow of Thanatos and Ananke–a state of affairs indicating that there is no rest for desire, that mans work must continue unhindered if it is to maintain the levels of organisation necessary for a whole culture to flourish.Freud’s commentary on this state of affairs, during the late twenties of the last century, asks us to reflect upon whether all the work we put into civilisation, in the final analysis is worth the effort. This testifies to the clairvoyance of the Ancient greek prophesy that “All things created by men are destined for ruin and destruction”. Hannah Arendt’s work on the “Origins of Totalitarianism” is also testimony in favour of this warning by Freud and the Ancient Greeks: a testimony to the power of Thanatos and Ananke in the actualising process of economic and political institutions. Arendt refers to the 20th century as “This terrible century” but it is only after a flirtation with Marxism and a rejection of the rationalism of Kant that we find Arendt moving toward the political writings of rationalists in general and the Greeks in particular. The form of desire related to understanding and reason in both the work of Ricoeur and Arendt is related to power and the mechanism of recognition. It is through a dialectical relation of master to slave that ones worth is established. Self knowledge in the twentieth century may be more complicated than Hegel imagined and at least in the case of Ricoeur, cultural texts play an important role in this context of exploration/discovery. The dignity and worth of man will certainly be partly constituted by what is contained in the texts of art, law, literature and Philosophy.The ability to interpret these works obviously rests upon the power of educational institutions to create, preserve, and communicate such works. Ricoeur points to a kerygma embedded in cultural works–a kerygma related to arché or principles of interpretation. This kerygma also contains reference to a promise of salvation–that all manner of things will be well at the end of the cultural actualisation process. Here we return to the power of the Platonic Eros to hold things together in a totality of conditions.

There is a difference between a rational desire to hold things that belong together in one irreducible totality, and the scientific desire to analyse totalities into causes and effects. This process is well illustrated in Jonathan Lear’s discussion (in his work “Aristotle”) of the cultural activities of building a house, students learning, and doctors doctoring. All 4 “causes” or “forms of explanation” are necessary if one is to give complete hylomorphic accounts of these activities.

The CartesianCoordinate system provided science with a matrix of possible logical/mathematical points situated in the continuity of space. This system conceives of what is occurring in space in terms of “events” that are capable of being identified by separable acts of observation stretched over the continuum of time: a continuum of before-now-after. This coordinate system also provides science with a powerful tool to divide the world up into divisibles–logically independent indivisibles subsumable under the idea of event and the category of causation. The causation Cartesian scientists appeal to in this context of exploration/discovery, is not, however the notion we encounter in Aristotelian or Kantian Philosophy. It resembles rather a Humean concept where the hypothetical division of reality into an event of type cause and an event of type effect suffices to provide the elements for an explanation/justification of what is happening in this region of reality. Aristotles notion of causation (aitia) is very different, and does not in any way presuppose a matrix of the above kind, but rather presupposes everyday assumptions about the categorical nature of the 4 different kinds of explanation that act as a framework for all kinds of human activity including building, learning and doctoring. For Aristotle the “scientific” knowledge of the principles of these different activities are operating throughout these activities. We can observe the role of the material, the role of the principles, and the role of the final product, as well as the role of the agent. In so doing we do not observe “two” events connected by a mysterious unobservable mechanism but rather unified activities occurring in accordance with the knowledge the various agents possess of what they are doing.This is a hylomorphic account that Kant would not contest in its essentials, and indeed endorses in his account of the logic of instrumental and technological imperatives. The key concept in Kant’s account of the operation of practical reasoning is not that of the event, but rather that of action. In action contexts the intention with which the agent performs the action explains “Why” the action was done, describes the goal of the action in terms of a future state of affairs to be brought about(rather than a past “event”). There is, in other words, a kind of logical or conceptual relation between the intention and the action that is not present in the relation postulated between an event of type cause and an event of type effect. Understanding the why that constitutes the above context of explanation/justification in the realm of action is not an archeological matter that takes us back to the biological instincts of the agent. It is, if anything a teleological matter that looks forward prospectively to a flourishing life.

Instinct does, however, play a role in hylomorphic theory. The psychological aspect of instinct will be a kind of vicissitude of the biological material, and it will in later Kantian theory, be the origin of the will that is in its turn being organised by a maxim or intention in accordance with a higher level rational principle. This rational or reality principle will organise lower level principles such as the pleasure-pain principle(controlling the stability of Consciousness) and the energy regulating principle(controlling the homeostasis of the body). The energy regulation principle, for example will have its own telos in which pleasure is basically the absence of pain : organ relations and the relation of organ systems to one another will provide the conditions necessary for the use of the limbs in particular and the body in general. This is only one aim of the instincts. More complex aims obviously produce more complex objects and as the level of complexity increases more areas of the brain are involved.

Jonathan Lear invokes the Kantian categories of agent and patient in his analysis of Aristotelian activities. He points to three kinds of forms or principles that are communicated in human activity. Firstly, sexual reproduction, which is primarily a biological activity, communicates a human essence( a bundle of potentialities) to a patient . This activity occurs in accordance with a biological imperative that we share with the animals. Immerse sexual reproduction in Consciousness, and in an environment of human higher mental processes, and it is transformed into a psychological and social necessity. Secondly, building a house may on the surface be comparable to the activity of bees or beavers, but these latter activities cannot be said to be driven by “maxims” which only language-users can be said to possess. The biological/instrumental imperatives governing bee and beaver activity are clearly less complex than the human forms of activity driven by instrumental imperatives: building a house obviously meets a set of needs that are far more complex than the building of a hive or a dam. Thirdly, we come to the communication of forms or principles that cannot be found anywhere in the animal kingdom, that of learning and teaching: an activity that communicates knowledge. Students minds are “formed” by this activity in institutions of learning and they end up becoming geometers, politicians, and philosophers.

For Kant the decisive issue of the separation of the two forms of Metaphysics(The Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals) centres around the “Basic Terms”(Aristotle) of “event” and “action”. Given the law or category of causation which must relate particulars under the universal “Every event has a cause”, there is no logical resting point in a first cause which is a contradiction of the above universal. The Law of causation must be regulated by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason(i.e. regulated by Logic). The principle of sufficient reason is particularly relevant in the human sciences where multi-factorial causation is involved in the producing of an effect( e.g. the operation of a number of powers or capacities may be necessary for a sufficient explanation of the form a particular effect takes.). For Kant, then, Logic is involved in theoretical reasoning about events, even if the events are in fact actions. Events are divisibles that can be measured, manipulated and numerically related in a space-time matrix. Actions, on the other hand, are multifactorial effects of powers.The action of making a promise one intends to keep probably involves(if one takes into consideration the Psychological aspect only) the Energy regulation Principle, the Pleasure Pain Principle and the Reality Principle(relating to what ought to be the case). The Principle of sufficient Reason involved in motivating the the action of both making and keeping a promise will involve a variety of explanations appealing to a variety of principles. The complete explanation of these phenomena will have essence-explanation characteristics and these will include archeological and teleological elements. If we are dealing with the action of keeping a promise(the act of paying a debt back for example), the action of making the promise is part of the justification of the action: a justification that rests upon the logic of noncontradiction(it is a practical contradiction to make a promise one does not intend to keep) and the principle of sufficient reason. For Kant the major metaphysical division in his critical Philosophy runs between theoretical and practical Philosophy: the Metaphysics of Nature is categorically distinct from the Metaphysics of Morality. In the Metaphysics of Morals there is no law of universal causation(every event must have a cause) operating, because freedom is self-causing-has its source in an agent with the powers of life, discourse, and rationality. Kant, in his deduction of the categories makes reference to agents, patients, and community and points to a relation between agents and patients in judgements of community(These judgements fall under the heading “Of Relation” in the table of Categories).In such judgements the logical relations between the concepts and the judgements is very different to the relation of causal concepts and judgments to each other. These in turn differ from the logical relations involved in judgments of substance in relation to its inherents. Basic concepts apply a priori to the objects of intuition we find “constructed” in human sensibility. Such construction does not take place in a matrix of divisibles of points and times but rather in a matrix of externality and orientation in space and a matrix of a present embedded in the before and after of the past and future. Both of these aspects of intuition are quantifiable but such quantification does not , for example, affect the substantive nature or the qualitative nature of the object of intuition. The table of categories, for Kant, is a table of:

“pure concepts of synthesis that the understanding contains within itself a priori”(Kemp Smith, N., Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, London, Macmillan, 1963, P.113)

It is these categories of judgement/understanding that make Metaphysics possible. Manfred Kuehn in his biography of Kant describes Kant’s relation to metaphysics in the following terms:

“what Kant tries to answer is the question of whether the kind of knowledge sought by metaphysicians–including himself–is possible. The bulk of his work is meant to show that traditional metaphysics rests on a fundamental mistake, since it presupposes that we can make substantive knowledge claims about the world independent of experience, and Kant argues we cannot make such claims. Kant calls the claims of traditional metaphysics “synthetic a priori judgements” and he argues that it is impossible to know anything a priori about the world as it is independent of experience. But he does not simply follow the route of previous empiricist philosophers who considered all knowledge to be derived from experience alone and thus tried to trace all knowledge back to sensation and reflection. Kant thought rather that knowledge has an a priori component….we supply form to the knowable world. Indeed the formal aspects of the knowable world are constituted by the cognitive apparatus that we, and every other finite being like us, must have.” (P.242)

The above contains a clear commitment to the importance of the powers of cognition that include the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding and Reason. All these powers or faculties are necessary for the task of knowing the world. These faculties are three epistemic conditions of knowledge. The world for Kant is both empirically real and transcendentally ideal. Part of what is involved in the empirical reality of the world is the experience of particulars in Space and Time. Knowledge of these a priori forms of Sensibility, Kant argues, can also be systematised in a quantitative form via the disciplines of Geometry and Arithmetic.

Insofar as the cognitive powers of the mind are concerned it is evident that for Kant Consciousness of Self has a different form to knowledge of the self. I can be aware of my phenomenal self as it appears to me in imagination etc., but I cannot be aware of the noumenal “I” of the “I think” that is the vehicle of all concepts(A 342, B 399). It is impossible to know anything about the noumenal I, but we nevertheless Kant argues, have “before our eyes” the identity of the acts of this I: these acts manifest themselves in the unity of the act of apperception.

For Aristotle, the building of the house is techné: the learning that occurs in the interaction between the teacher and the student in the name of education is epistemé. It is epistemé that is transmitted between the soul of the teacher and the student. There is a clear separation between the knowledge of skills from the knowledge involved in the theoretical and practical sciences. The building activity of the builder in the construction of the house is, for Aristotle, a means to an end whereas the knowledge of the theoretical and practical sciences is something to be valued as an end in itself. In both techné and epistemé there are principles regulating the changes that are occurring even if the principles have different logical structures: practical/instrumental versus categorical/theoretical. Both principles involve powers of the soul and not antecedent events prior to their logically independent consequents. For Aristotle it is the builder building, the teacher teaching, or the doctor doctoring that are the source of the primary principles of the changes that are occurring. Teaching and doctoring involve a patient(a recipient of the “form”) and the matter that is undergoing change is, firstly, the students soul and, secondly, the patients body. In the former case the soul will take on an epistemic form. Teleological explanations of human activities of all forms will involve a “that for the sake of which” the action is directed at, or intending. This of course does not yet exist as an actuality until it is brought about by an actualising process of activity. Underlying this process is, of course, a potentiality of a thought process rather than a physical process. Jonathan Lear points out the inadequacies of some modern argumentation against teleological explanation. He uses the example of the claim that neuro-physiological and genetic structure is sufficient to ground all forms of teleological activity. Certainly this physical substrate can contain the principles of its functioning but this is not something detected solely by observation. Aristotle regards this physical substrate as very relevant in material and efficient forms of explanation but these are very different forms of explanation to both formal and teleological forms. The role of chance in everyday life testifies, Aristotle argues, against the deterministic picture of structures determining outcomes. If one takes a walk to the marketplace in the agora to buy a chicken, and coincidentally meets a debtor who repays the money he owes–the “that for the sake of which” which defines the ontology of the action could not be construed as “the agent went to the market to collect a debt” because, quite simply, the agent did not know that the debtor would be at the market. This absence of knowledge would make any such intention impossible to formulate. An observer observing this state of affairs might of course be ignorant of the intention of the agent(buying the chicken) and might well have concluded on the basis of observation that collecting the debt must have been the telos of the agents activity. Yet as Aristotle points out, this event occurred wholly by chance. The modern postulation that teleological explanation is a form of backward causation from an effect to a cause, rests of course upon an idea of matter that is not organised in accordance with forms or principles: this is a contradictory idea for Aristotle. The idea of pure matter is a hylomorphic nonentity( a mere hypothetical possibility), in Aristotle’s account: a result of an impossible subtraction of principle or form from the changing entities we encounter in experience. The paradigm of the principle directed actualisation of simpler life forms into more mature life forms is, Aristotle argues, the process responsible for the form the mind takes in its thinking about such forms. The human agent’s development into a mature agent with the potentiality of rationality requires powers of mind that build upon one another in similar ways to the way in which body-tissue changes shape and function as the body grows and develops–forms build upon forms. The mind is like the world and the world is like the mind. Lear expresses this as follows:

“Nor is Aristotle committed to the idea of conscious design in nature. Indeed, he explicitly denies that nature is the expression of some divine purpose or divine craftsman.We tend to think that if there really is some purpose in nature there must be come agent whose purpose it is. That is why it is so common to hear that purpose is just a projection of mind into(mindless) nature. Aristotle would disagree. Aristotle believes in the basic reality of form, and he everywhere sees natural processes as directed toward the realisation of that form. It would, however, be a mistake to conclude that his primary conception of purposefulness is mindless. Whether or not a teleological development is mindless or mindful depends upon what is meant by “mind”. If mind is simply equated with consciousness, then the growth of a natural organism is certainly mindless. In realising a developed form, a natural process achieves its goal even though no mind has directed or created the purpose. And yet Aristotle’s world is intelligible. It is a world that is so ordered, structured, saturated with purposefulness that it is meant to be understood in the sense that it is in mans nature to inquire into the world order and come to understand it.” (P.41)

The complexity of the powers of our mind obviously plays a role in the process of understanding because of the fundamental analogy of mind and world. It is the concepts of building, teaching, doctoring that produces a house or the knowledge of geometry or physical health. These concepts embody principles and it is understanding of these principles that renders the world intelligible.Principles make the world mind-like and the mind world-like. There is a teleological aspect to the connection of the parts of a building to each other and to the whole of the house. This is also the case with both the axioms and theorems of geometry and the connection of the parts(organs etc) of the body to each other and to the whole of the thinker /agent. The parts are “for the sake of” the whole. In the living organism this aspect is expressed in the body’s using every part in its striving to continue its form of existence. This aspect is also manifested in the reparative activities of the body if a part is wounded or damaged. This is a kind of hypothetical necessity which indicates that rationality is not only and merely in the mind, but is also operating in the processes of change in the world. In the context of exploration/discovery, of course observation and perhaps even experimentation is required if we have no idea of the principles operating in a form of life or in the creation of a new and unique artefact.: but in such cases what is being observed and understood is the rationality of hypothetical necessity. Such observations and experiments result in an understanding of the essence of what is being explored. In Aristotle’s speculations upon the essence of man we encounter a hierarchy of elements ordered either from the bottom-up(in terms of the biological characteristics of our animal nature) or top-down( in terms of the possession of the potentiality of rationality). In Aristotle’s biological investigations the context is one of exploration/discovery and observation and experimentation are the primary activities. In his philosophical reflections the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason are the primary determiners of the essence specifying definition of man: the rational animal capable of discourse. Observations and experiments are obviously closely related to the power of perception and its discriminative capacity. Beginning at this level ultimately leads to resting ones case on a universal generalisation or principle. The reasoning operative is inductive and dialectical. If, on the other hand, one begins at the level of conceptual based judgement, the reasoning is archeological via hypothetical necessity to the phenomenon in question.

Aristotle believes that rationality is an essential characteristic of man, even if man at a particular point in time has failed to actualise this potential(if he is for example an infant). In such an account, rationality appears as the basis of an essential potentiality man possesses. A frog obviously does not possess this potentiality in its arsenal of powers which are rather limited and even confined to a lower form of animality: there is, however, a principle explaining the behaviour of a fully-formed frog. Natural organisms possess an inner principle of change for Aristotle, and Kant characterises this in terms of self causation. This characterisation suffices to remove this principle from the orbit of reasoning in the realm of events and the law of causation(every event must have a cause). In the realm of the actualising processes of natural organisms there must, however, be a substance that persists throughout the change and which in a sense must remain the same. The cause of death of an organism can be construed as an event that happens to an organism, even in the case of human organisms that die by their own hand. Such an event however, neither in hylomorphic nor critical theory, is justifiable, because it is a contradiction to use ones life to take ones life.(There are exceptions to this “rule” in which the explanation of why one took ones own life are understandable without being justifiable). Death, then is the cause of a change that removes the essence of the human, testifying thereby to the necessary truth of the major premise in the famous syllogism, that begins with the major premise, “All men are mortal”. The conclusion “Socrates is mortal” also then becomes necessarily true on the condition of including the minor premise “Socrates is a man”.

The builder building and the house being built, then, are not two activities or events but only one activity seen under two aspects. The matrix of such activity is the matrix of change which Aristotle defines in terms of the actualisation of potential being as such. This is not a hypothetical judgement made in a context of exploration/discovery but rather a categorical judgment made in a context of explanation/justification. It is this categorical judgement that is a necessary condition of ought judgements, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”. In such contexts the role of knowledge is clear and unequivocal: if we do not know what promises are, we are not able to understand this form of change. We also need to now that in such a change there is an agent of change that actualises the form or principle of promising. The agent is a self causer of change. Within this agent are, of course, other principles operating that compete for the energy and attention of the agent. The Pleasure-Pain Principle, for example (when decoupled from the Reality Principle) occurs in the spirit of self obsession that may well weaken ones resolve to keep a promise that has been made. The pain, for example, involved in keeping a promise to pay back a debt, may be sufficient to abandon ones duty. In this universe of discourse all discussion of events described from a third person point of view(an observational point of view) will be unable to reveal the principle that is operating in either the activity of keeping a promise or the activity of failing to keep a promise. Events are value-neutral and their causes or effects are what they are, and it makes no sense to claim that they ought not to have happened or ought to have happened. The exercise of the powers of an agent occur in the kind of matrix that resists analysis into a spatial-temporal quantitative/causal network of elements. In other words, the ought system of concepts/principles is a normative or prescriptive system, to use the language of the analytical philosophers. There is more than a suggestion that this normative system is essentially psychological and connected intimately with the the subjectivity of the emotions. Rationality may be a pure potential but for both Aristotle and Kant it actually regulates the will and neutralises the narcissistic operation or principles that seek to cause the will to blindly express its emotions in a spirit of affect. Desire moves the will but different powers located in different faculties of the mind produce different kinds of actions(which are “effects” in the language of “events”) and there are conceptual rather than causal relations between certain of these powers and the actions they bring about. The exercise of a power is not normally attributed to a part of the agent but to the agent as a whole. The admission by Aristotle that there is a part of the agent that moves, and a part that is moved, is not to be taken as an invitation to divide the agent into two events, one of type cause and one of type event.

Aristotle’s reflections on the soul begin with an essence specifying definition:

“The form of a natural body having life potentially within it”. (Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle, Edited by Jonathan Barnes(Princetown, Princetown University Press, 1984), (P.656)

Soul is a principle of living organisms(psuche): a principle that explains the changes initiated by that organism: changes such as movement, rest, and the forms of change such as perception, action and thought. The soul is not an event or a constellation of events but rather a principle that explains a number of the properties of life as well as different life-forms. Lear connects the hylomorphic account of psuche to the powers of the organism:

“But how can we investigate a power? There is no substitute, Aristotle thinks for investigating as carefully as possible the various exercises of the power and seeing how they occur.From Aristotle’s point of view the problem with the characterising of the soul given so far is that they are all too abstract. One can say that the soul is the form of a living body, but if we do not understand how to distinguish clearly the form from the matter of living organisms, this characterisation will be of minimal help….His strategy is…to engage in a detailed investigation of the soul–the power of living things to lead their lives..”(P.99)

This ensures that the context of exploration/discovery involves interrogating the power of different forms of life: their power to both continue in existence and in the case of the human psuche, to strive for a principle-guided quality of life that other forms of psuche are not capable of. Such investigation ought to result in an understanding or internalisation of principles that are epistemic. The powers of psuche form a hierarchy in human psuche which also can be found in simpler organisms. At the lowest level we find the powers of nutrition, growth, and reproduction: plant life manifests these forms. Such powers operate almost exclusively on the energy regulation principle and relatively simple forms of physical energy.The next level up in this chain of life or being, is the animal psuche that possesses sufficiently complex nervous systems to produce sensations and movements that express the state of the body to the consciousness of the animal. At this level both the energy regulation principle and the pleasure pain principle are operating to move the organism toward positive life enhancing stimuli and away from negative life threatening stimuli. When we reach the level of human psuche, we encounter these principles in more complex form because the distinguishing characteristics of the human species are the power of speech(thought) and the power of rationality, which together constitute what Freud referred to as the Reality Principle: a principle that embraces knowledge and desire in all their complex forms. Rationality itself takes three forms outlined by its use in the three sciences of theoretical science(metaphysics, theology, physics, biology), practical science(ethics, politics, rhetoric) and the productive sciences of techné(crafts, the arts). These sciences manifest so much more than the mere desire to continue in existence(to survive). They testify to an attempt to create a form of existence that can meet a manifold of needs including those needs for knowledge which have become an end in themselves because they are an integral part of the contemplative and examined life that defines the realm of the divine. In such a form of existence all human potential is actualised in accordance with the essence specifying definition: rational animal capable of discourse. We moderns can interpret Aristotle in terms of levels of consciousness. Aristotle distinguishes between perceiving the sensible form of a tree and the thinking of the reality of a tree that is manifested in the judgement”This is an oak”. Here he invokes the apparatus of potentiality and actuality, and their relation, and claims that the tree and the eye are two potentialities interacting in order to produce the actual perception of the tree: two potentialities are thus transformed into an actuality. It is in this interaction that the form of the tree actualises in the consciousness of the perceiver and becomes epistemologically the “form-of-the-tree-in-the-mind-of-the-perceiver”. Perception is thus an activity or a power that results in a form of knowledge that for Kant forms part of the faculty of Sensibility. If this faculty awakens in one or “quickens” in one the activity of the understanding, the manifold of representations experienced is thought and organised into a concept. A concept that can in turn Be expressed in the medium of language by the judgement “This is an oak”. At this level of complexity the self is organising the conscious state into a unity of apperception that Kant calls “I think”.

Lear in his chapter on Perception refers interestingly to the meaning of the Greek words psofos and psofesis. His discussion reminds one of Aristotles account of perception. The term psofesis is used in a way that testifies to the Aristotelian claim that the location of the activity of perception is in the “patient” (the perceiver). The English equivalent of this word would be “sounding” which we distinguish from the English word for “sound”. The Greek word for “sound” is psofos and it designates both the sound in the world and the sound in the hearer or patient. Such hearing is a more passive activity than the active listening that is implied by the term psofesis(sounding). Such an active listening would be expressed in the judgement “The sounding of x”. In this active process the experience is both a sound, and the experience of a sound, reflecting the analogical complexity of veritative perception. It would indeed be difficult to do justice to such subtle perceptual distinctions using the Philosophy of materialism or dualism. One more move needs to be made, however, if we are to fully understand the essence or ultimate reality of the entities we perceive. Mans understanding takes a conceptual form which includes principles. Man not only understands these principles but he also understands how these principles play a role in organising his own human form of psuche: a form which itself understands essences or ultimate reality. Lear refers to this part of the human psuche as “nous” and he believes that this Greek term is the closest analogue to the English term “mind”. “Nous” is the contemplating part of the mind to be distinguished from the calculating part which is involved in inductive explorations or excursions into the world. Mind or “nous” is pure potential and only becomes itself or actualises itself when thinking occurs. The thinking of this contemplative part of the mind is conceptual in nature: concepts are the intelligible objects of nous. Concepts are not material entities. We see in this discussion something analogous to the concept of sounding: the contemplating mind uses concepts which are identical with the object being contemplated. The role of language is absent from this account. The Greeks believed that thought was in fact a form of talking to oneself. This is surely a power. Or is it merely a medium for our conceptual power? Who is talking to whom? For Julian Jaynes it appears that there is an analogue I discussing matters with a metaphorical “me” in the “space” of consciousness. It is not entirely clear how to “parse” these claims using either the Aristotelian or Kantian accounts of thinking.

Politis in his work on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, argues that Philosophy is a series of difficult to answer aporetic questions, and whilst it is difficult to fathom how these questions could even be framed without language, it is also difficult to envisage asking oneself questions which are so difficult to answer, without the aid of language, if this is what is occurring in philosophical thinking. There is, in Aristotle an important distinction to be observed between the ideas of passive and active nous. Are these the “partners ” involved in talking to oneself. Active nous, for Aristotle is divine, it is the primary principle or form that lies at the source of all other principles or forms. It is the first principle of the Universe:the unmoved mover. When human nous contemplates, it contemplates essences or ultimate reality, and thereby glimpses briefly what God steadfastly and timelessly beholds. It is this activity that best illustrates or manifests the human desire to understand. Otherwise human desire is manifested in action: in the desire for an object or state of affairs that appear at the end of an agents “deliberation”(the practical form of contemplation). Actions can occur as a result of being “caused” by impulse or affect but they can also be motivated at a higher level by a potentiality for rationality: deliberation refers to the latter type of action where the desire for understanding is also playing a significant role, as is the knowledge the agent possesses of the task he is engaging in. Deliberation is a process of reasoning that is teleological, beginning with a wish for a state of affairs, and ending with the performance of the action that is to bring the desired state of affairs about. Aristotle uses the example of a doctor doctoring to illustrate the process of deliberation. Doctoring combines both science(epistemé) and art(techné) marshalled for the telos of “Health”, a basic term of medicine. The Energy Regulation Principle obviously plays a role in the health of the body and is clearly operative in the doctors attempts to restore the homeostasis of the patients body. If suffering is involved, it is part of the Hippocratic oath to relieve the patient of the condition causing the suffering, by relieving physical pain(pleasure-pain principle). If the suffering or pain is caused by the lack of heat in the body(a cold) the doctor attempts to restore the heat of the body by wrapping the patient in blankets. This is part of the techné of doctoring and it occurs against the background of the doctors knowledge(epistemé) of the functioning of the body. There is clearly a process of deliberation in this chain of knowledge-symptom-treatment. Lear claims that in deliberation, desire is transmitted from premisses to a conclusion(P.147). It is important, however, to emphasise that deliberation is a form of instrumental reasoning following instrumental imperatives. In this sphere of action we clearly see the self conscious organising effect of practical reason upon desire. Lear criticises Kant with the familiar Hegelian claim that Kant’s moral philosophy detaches the agent from his desires. This is the reason Lear invokes for discarding Kant in Favour of Aristotle. The claim that Kant’s categorical imperative somehow detaches the transmission of the agents desire from firstly, the understanding of The Good and secondly from the imperative of the action, is a criticism that is not in our opinion motivated, and rests upon a misunderstanding of firstly, the categorical nature of the understanding and secondly, the categorical nature of rationality. The claim that this criticism is widely accepted is also questionable. It is not widely accepted amongst Aristotelian and Kantian scholars.Lear also interestingly points out in the context of this discussion that no competing account of freedom has emerged. This in itself might be good reason for remaining sceptical about the Hegelian detachment thesis.

Stanley Cavell in his work argues along similar lines to Lear when it is claimed that the formal respect for the moral law somehow mysteriously implies that this respect is detached from the people involved in the context of this respect. Cavell further claims, in the spirit of Hegel, that this respect for the moral law entails less respect for the moral position of people who disagree. It is not clear what is being claimed here. If it is, as Kant says, a breach of the moral law to make promises that one has no intention of keeping, and further that doing so is a practical contradiction with the very practical consequences of the destruction of the human institution of promising in all its forms, it is indeed a peculiar criticism to suggest that Kant does not respect positions of antagonists whose ultimate aim is to destroy human institutions of promising. What is there to respect?

One of the major criticisms of the moral law made by antagonists, is that it is not universally necessary, as Kant claims, because if one agent makes a promise and fails to keep it, this suffices to falsify the universal generalisation that Promises ought to be kept. This criticism may be a prelude to insisting that we ought to respect this kind of antagonistic position. The position of course is an illustration of the naturalistic fallacy , reducing as it does “Promises ought to be kept” to actual concrete instances of promise making and promise keeping. That one ought to keep a promise does not of course imply that everyone who promises something always means to deliver upon that promise. Whether or not one is persuaded to embrace this norm, of course, is going to depend upon whether in general one is persuaded by the logic of practical reasoning, that in turn involves appeal to , for example, the categorical imperative, which as a matter of fact in its second formulation refers to respecting people as ends-in-themselves. It is difficult to see how such a formulation can be thought to embrace the above detachment thesis. Lear and Cavell appear both to be arguing(on Hegelian grounds) for a pragmatic form of naturalism, a position not shared by Aristotle.

In a chapter entitled “Ethics and the Organisation of Desire”, Lear claims paradoxically that we find it difficult to justify and explain our moral beliefs, and he ties this to the diminishing relevance of religion and diminishing influence of the Judea-Christian tradition. The Enlightenment of course had a role in the loss of confidence in the divine and all forms of authority and brought with it an increasing confidence in the powers of the agent to decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong. Lear again here is relying on pragmatic and naturalistic arguments that found moral positions upon an array of facts based on the observation of what people are doing, rather than on judgements relating to what people ought to do. The love for Hegelian dialectical reasoning is clearly taking precedence over Aristotelian and Kantian Logic which we use to the formulate the counterargument to the naturalistic fallacy. Reference to the Ancient Greeks and their emphasis upon action rather than intention, is ignoring Aristotle’s commitment to teleological rationality. This teleological kind of explanation/justification is exactly what we moderns call “intentional”. Lear also claims that Kant severed the connection between morality and the very natural and pragmatic “pursuit of happiness”. Kant takes up the problem of happiness in his discussion of the concept of the “summum bonum”. In this idea Kant places happiness in brackets and claims that happiness will only supervene in an agents life if that agent consistently does their duty. For Kant, the force of the understanding of the good was revealed in the desire for the Good that was present in all moral reasoning, judgement and action. There is no detachment of that desire from moral judgement, understanding, or action. One is not innately moral insofar as Kant is concerned, one becomes moral in an actualising process that involves becoming more rational about ones life, and, incidentally, this involves becoming more focussed on the telos of a future Cosmopolitan world in which all agents aim at becoming more rational about their lives. Lear rightly says that Kant would frown on focussing on happiness per se, but he fails to mention the way in which Kant argues for its role in striving for the summum bonum. Kant’s discussion in this context resembles Aristotle’s, and we also see here distinctions drawn between transitional forms of pleasure and Happiness that dawn and fade away unless this pleasure or happiness is connected conceptually with virtue: with the agents deserving to be happy. There is no fundamental difference between the ethical positions of Aristotle and Kant in this respect. There is, admittedly, a difficulty with translating the key term of eudaimonia which is often translated barely as happiness but is often better translated as “good spirited” or “flourishing”. Areté only persuades against the background of the knowledge of the good.

The virtues, for Aristotle are dispositions that are formed on the ground of potentialities that exist in the human psuche. The acquisition of these virtues is in the form of habits that help to form our character(the virtuous state of our soul). Virtue is defined as doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. In the Nichomachean Ethics(ii,i,1103a 31-62). Aristotle claims in the context of this discussion that the acquisition of the virtues is a process resembling the learning of the arts. Practical knowledge is involved in both processes. The man who has achieved a state of mind that we can describe as virtuous, manifests wisdom(sophia) in the form of phronesis. Such a man is named a Phronomos by Aristotle. A phronomos is a great souled man who possesses epistemé in his soul: this knowledge is combined with nous(insight) into the way in which nature works and the truth of judgments about nature. Aristotle philosophically defends the theoretical state of mind, claiming it is the highest form of thought and an important part of the contemplative life. The phronomos is not only a man of good character, he is also a knower of what is good. Absence of this knowledge on the part of our rulers leads to the ruin and destruction predicted by the oracles and leads to the divided society predicted by Plato. Aristotle’s Politics begins with an epistemological account of the types of state that are good and the types of state that are flawed. Monarchy, aristocracy and constitutional rule are the forms of state we ought to strive to create, but there are also perversions of these three forms: tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. These perversions occur because rulers and citizens do not understand the importance of areté and diké in social life. There is a suggestion of a devolutionary process operating in these perversions that determine the descent of oligarchy into democracy and the descent of democracy into tyranny as suggested in Plato’s Republic. There is also a suggestion of an evolutionary process beginning with one good man, a monarch, extending to a group of merited rulers, aristocrats, and finally actualising into constitutional rule by a mass of enlightened citizens. The enlightened body of citizens demand a different form of freedom to the disgruntled sons of oligarchic fathers, who sit in the agora and plot in the name of democracy to become rulers and tyrants. The best form of government, according to Aristotle, is the constitutional form, and during the time of Aristotle this must have appeared a utopian solution, yearning for a state of affairs that lacked the conditions for actualisation. One of these conditions is the existence of a universal education of sufficient quality to create great souled men en masse in a middle class that shared the virtues of the oligarchs and democrats without sharing their vices. Constitutional rule is no longer a utopian conception, but it still appears to lie beyond our reach in the near future. Kant’s equivalent of constitutional rule is the kingdom of ends which, according to him, is not an idle wish but rather a possible state of affairs that lies one hundred thousand years in the future. The key to achieving this state must lie in the achievement of the political golden mean of a middle class that possesses the virtues as defined by both Aristotle and Kant. Constitutional rule was necessary if man was to fully actualise the potential to be rational. Kant’s contribution to Aristotle’s Political Philosophy was to formulate more fully an account of the conditions necessary for constitutional rule, e.g. the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative for Kant is the foundation for his Theory of Right and peace that does not confine itself behind the borders and walls of nationalism and assumes a law of equality and freedom that we moderns recognise to be the foundation for International Human Rights. One of the more neglected works of Kant is his Metaphysics of Morals which contains a Doctrine of Right. This together with other political writings that suggest the need for a trans-national organisational body similar to the United Nations we have today, form the foundation of a Political Philosophy which is Aristotelian in its inspiration but fell victim to Hegelian criticism:a criticism that sought to promote the idea that ought judgements are “impotent”. The Kantian argument “Promises ought to be kept”, “X made a promise to do A to Y”, Therefore “X ought to do A”, is an argument that forms the foundation of many institutions including but not confined to The Law. Hegel’s position that arguments of the above form are impotent, points to one reason why the prophecy that all things created by men are doomed to ruin and destruction is a modern rather than an ancient threat to our civilisations. The threat of Hegel was both metaphysical and existential. In a work entitled “Kant´s Cosmopolitan Theory of Law and Peace”, Otfried Höffe points out that naturalism and the appeal to natural law ignores the fundamental basic term of ethics and politics, namely obligation:

“It is widely understood today that Kant advocates a cognitivist ethics of right and law and of peace that does not concern facts(“Is”: “it is not the case that P”) but rather obligations(“Ought”: “it is right/wrong that one should do/refrain from a”). But even the latter do not comprise subjective attitudes or convictions to the extent that they imply contingent approval or disapproval, but rather demand rigorous objectivity. Within the large family of cognitivists(legal)ethics, Kant explicitly rejects the family of meta-ethical naturalists prominent today( e.g. Brink 1989 and Schaber 1997). He does not agree that the capacity for truth in moral assertions can be taken in an empirical or general descriptive sense. For Kant, moral principles cannot be traced back to assertions about the world alone, neither to those concerning the external world nor to those about the “inner world”. The latter describes needs, interests and their optimal fulfilment, happiness, along with their minimal fulfilment, self preservation….The plausibility of “anti-naturalistic cognitivism” is immediately apparent if one considers the Is/Ought fallacy, a component of theories of argumentation according to which a natural Ought does not follow from a mere descriptive.”(P.5-6)

The above reference to the Metaphysics of Morals and treating people as ends in themselves also requires elaborating upon the role of knowledge as an end in itself in the civilising process of education. Theoretical Knowledge and Truth rely on basic terms, principles, and essence specifying definitions in contexts of explanation and justification. The context of exploration/discovery searches for basic terms at the beginning of a science, builds upon these to create conceptual systems and attempts to discover the principles operating in the realm under investigation. At the later stages of a theoretical science, essence specifying definitions emerge. Principles and essence specifying definitions are the matrix out of which a possible totality of facts emerge. Essence specifying definitions such as:

“A star is a gravitationally bound ball of hydrogen and helium made self luminous by internal nuclear fusion.”(Shields, C., Aristotle(London, Routledge, 2007, P 98)

The above definition is related to the laws of gravitation and thermodynamics and motion in general. Here we encounter a complex relation of concepts, principles, and laws requiring metaphysical theories for their interpretation and support. Lear wishes to contrast the activity of theoretical understanding with the kind of practical understanding involved in political life. This does not have support from hylomorphic or critical philosophy. Aristotle’s account does not separate the theoretical and the practical in the above way. Kant would point to an ontological difference between what is being justified in these two domains, namely belief and action, and he would attribute putative different kinds of knowledge to the different “objects” or “subjects” of theoretical and political discourse. Logic, for both Aristotle and Kant governs both domains of discourse in the form of the laws/principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.

Lear points out correctly that Logic reveals both the rationality of our beliefs and the inherent intelligibility of the world. For Aristotle, the “logical form” of arguments in general and syllogisms in particular are deductive and the truths generated are necessary truths in virtue of the matrix of explanation/justification they presuppose: this matrix is essentially metaphysical. The major premise of an ought based syllogism is the universal generalisation that justifies the derivation of the minor premise and the conclusion(given the metaphysical matrix). Lear, in the name of naturalism and pragmatism, appears to have doubts about this matrix, but he correctly claims that both Logic and Mathematics are important theoretical tools for the investigation of what he calls “the broad structure of reality”(Aristotle…P.231)

All forms of explanation relate to the changes occurring in the world and mathematics is no different in that respect. The Mathematician studies the same world as the Physicist. Mathematics abstracts for example the substance/quality of bronze from the bronze globe on my desk and characterises it in terms of a a sphere with merely quantitative properties. In this activity there are laws governing mathematical calculations and operations. This act of abstraction is necessary for the calculation of the quantities of surfaces and objects in the world as well as for objects in motion. Thought about the sphere at rest or in motion from a mathematical point of view lies outside the metaphysical matrix.

The divine too has its own metaphysical matrix in which there is no separation of the thinker from the objects of his thought. The study of being qua being, is a study that is composed of a series of aporetic questions relating to Primary Form or Primary Being, relating that is to a First Principle that is not to be confused with the more problematical explanatory principle of a First Cause. If the law of causation is defined in terms of the major premise “Every event must have a cause”, then the conception of a first cause must be a contradiction in relation to Aristotles principles of Logic. A First cause argument, then, aims at explaining everything, but ends up explaining nothing. A first Principle, if such there be in metaphysics must indeed explain and justify everything.