Aristotle
Here we see that, in the theory of Realism as conceived by Sokrates,
the Self-Existent Universals are not Genera and Species as such, but
Attributes--not Second Substances or Essences, but Accidents or
Attributes, _e.g._ Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c., to use the
language afterwards introduced in the Aristotelian Categories; that
no Genera or Species are admitted except with hesitation; and that
the mean and undignified among them are scarcely admissible at all.
This sentiment of dignity, associated with the _Universalia ante
rem_, and emotional necessity for tracing back particulars to an
august and respected origin, is to be noted as a marked and lasting
feature of the Realistic creed; and it even passed on to the
_Universalia in re_, as afterwards affirmed by Aristotle. Parmenides
here takes exception to it (and so does Plato elsewhere[13]) as
inconsistent with faithful adherence to scientific analogy.
[Footnote 13: Plato, Sophist. p. 227, A. Politikus, p. 266, D.]
Parmenides then proceeds (interrogating Sokrates) first to state what
the Realistic theory is (Universals apart from
Particulars--Particulars apart from Universals, yet having some
participation in them, and named after them), next to bring out the
difficulties attaching to it. The Universal or Form (he argues) cannot
be entire in each of its many separate particulars; nor yet is it
divisible, so that a part can be in one particular, and a part in
another. For take the Forms Great, Equal, Small; Equal magnitudes are
equal because they partake in the Form of Equality. But how can a part
of the Form Equality, less than the whole Form, cause the magnitudes
to be equal? How can the Form Smallness have any parts less than
itself, or how can it be greater than anything?
The Form cannot be divided, nor can it co-exist undivided in each
separate particular; accordingly, particulars can have no
participation in it at all.
Again, you assume a Form of Greatness, because you see many
particular objects, each of which appears to you great; this being
the point of resemblance between them. But if you compare the Form of
Greatness with any or all of the particular great objects, you will
perceive a resemblance between them; this will require you to assume
a higher Form, and so on upward without limit.
Sokrates, thus embarrassed, starts the hypothesis that perhaps each
of these Forms may be a cogitation, and nothing more, existing only
within the mind. How? rejoins Parmenides. Can there be a cogitation
of nothing at all? Must not each cogitation have a real _cogitatum_
correlating with it,--in this case, the one Form that is identical
throughout many particulars? If you say that particulars partake in
the Form, and that each Form is nothing but a cogitation, does not
this imply that each particular is itself cogitant?
Again Sokrates urges that the Forms are constant, unalterable,
stationary in nature; that particulars resemble them, and participate
in them only so far as to resemble them. But (rejoins Parmenides), if
particulars resemble the Form, the Form must resemble them;
accordingly, you must admit another and higher Form, as the point of
resemblance between the Form and its particulars; and so on, upwards.
And farther (continues Parmenides), even when admitting these
Universal Forms as self-existent, how can we know anything about
them? Forms can correlate only with Forms, Particulars only with
Particulars. Thus, if I, an individual man, am master, I correlate
with another individual man, who is my servant, and he on his side
with me. But the Form of mastership, the Universal self-existent
Master, must correlate with the Form of servantship, the Universal
Servant. The correlation does not subsist between members of the two
different worlds, but between different members of the same world
respectively. Thus the Form of Cognition correlates with the Form of
Truth; and the Form of each variety of Cognition, with the Form of
the corresponding variety of Truth. But we, as individual subjects,
do not possess in ourselves the Form of Cognition; our cognition is
our own, correlating with such truth as belongs to it and to
ourselves. Our cognition cannot reach to the Form of Truth, nor
therefore to any other Form; we can know nothing of the Self-good,
Self-beautiful, Self-just, &c., even supposing such Forms to exist.
These acute and subtle arguments are nowhere answered by Plato. They
remain as unsolved difficulties, embarrassing the Realistic theory;
they are reinforced by farther difficulties no less grave, included
in the dialectical antinomies of Parmenides at the close of the
dialogue, and by an unknown number of others indicated as producible,
though not actually produced. Yet still Plato, with full
consciousness of these difficulties, asserts unequivocally that,
unless the Realistic theory can be sustained, philosophical research
is fruitless, and truth cannot be reached. We see thus that the
author of the theory has also left on record some of the most
forcible arguments against it. It appears from Aristotle (though we
do not learn the fact from the Platonic dialogues), that Plato, in
his later years, symbolized the Ideas or Forms under the denomination
of Ideal Numbers, generated by implication of The One with what he
called The Great and Little, or the Indeterminate Dyad. This last,
however, is not the programme wherein the Realistic theory stands
opposed to Nominalism.
But the dialogue Parmenides, though full of acuteness on the negative
side, not only furnishes no counter-theory, but asserts continued
allegiance to the Realistic theory, which passes as Plato's doctrine
to his successors. To impugn, forcibly and even unanswerably, a
theory at once so sweeping and so little fortified by positive
reasons, was what many dialecticians of the age could do. But to do
this, and at the same time to construct a counter-theory, was a task
requiring higher powers of mind. One, however, of Plato's disciples
and successors was found adequate to the task--Aristotle.
The Realistic Ontology of Plato is founded (as Aristotle himself
remarks) upon mistrust and contempt of perception of sense, as
bearing entirely on the flux of particulars, which never stand still
so as to become objects of knowledge. All reality, and all
cognoscibility, were supposed to reside in the separate world of
Cogitable Universals (_extra rem_ or _ante rem_), of which, in some
confused manner, particulars were supposed to partake. The Universal,
apart from its particulars, was clearly and fully knowable,
furnishing propositions constantly and infallibly true: the Universal
as manifested in its particulars was never fully knowable, nor could
ever become the subject of propositions, except such as were
sometimes true and sometimes false.
Against this separation of the Universal from its Particulars,
Aristotle entered a strong protest; as well as against the subsidiary
hypothesis of a participation of the latter in the former; which
participation, when the two had been declared separate, appeared to
him not only untenable and uncertified, but unintelligible. His
arguments are interesting, as being among the earliest objections
known to us against Realism.
1. Realism is a useless multiplication of existences, serving no
purpose. Wherever a number of particulars--be they substances,
eternal or perishable, or be they qualities, or relations--bear the
same name, and thus have a Universal _in re_ predicable of them in
common, in every such case Plato assumes a Universal _extra rem_, or
a separate self-existent Form; which explains nothing, and merely
doubles the total to be summed up.[14]
[Footnote 14: Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, a. 34; M. iv. p. 1079,
a. 2. Here we have the first appearance of the argument that William
of Ockham, the Nominalist, put in the foreground of his case against
Realism: "Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem."]
2. Plato's arguments in support of Realism are either inconclusive,
or prove too much. Wherever there is cognition (he argues), there
must exist an eternal and unchangeable object of cognition, apart
from particulars, which are changeable and perishable. No, replies
Aristotle: cognition does not require the _Universale extra rem_; for
the _Universale in re_, the constant predicate of all the
particulars, is sufficient as an object of cognition. Moreover, if
the argument were admitted, it would prove that there existed
separate Forms or Universals of mere negations; for many of the
constant predicates are altogether negative. Again, if Self-existent
Universals are to be assumed corresponding to all our cogitations, we
must assume Universals of extinct particulars, and even of fictitious
particulars, such as hippocentaurs or chimeras; for of these, too, we
have phantasms or concepts in our minds.[15]
[Footnote 15: Aristot. Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 14; Scholia, p.
565, b. 9, Br.]
3. The most subtle disputants on this matter include Relata, among
the Universal Ideas or Forms. This is absurd, because these do not
constitute any Genus by themselves. These disputants have also urged
against the Realistic theory that powerful and unsolved objection,
entitled "The Third Man."[16]
[Footnote 16: Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15: [Greek: oi(
a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]. Both the points here noticed appear in
the Parmenides of Plato.
The objection called "The Third Man" is expressed by saying that, if
there be a Form of man, resembling individual men, you must farther
postulate some higher Form, marking the point of resemblance between
the two; and so on higher, without end.
The authenticity of the Platonic Parmenides is disputed by Ueberweg
(Untersuchungen über die Echtheit und Zeitfolge der Platonischen
Schriften, pp. 176-181), upon the ground (among others) that, while
Aristotle never cites the dialogue by its title, nor ever makes
probable allusion to it, the Parmenides advances against the theory
of the Platonic Ideas this objection of Aristotle's, known under the
name of "The Third Man." Aristotle (says Ueberweg), if he had known
the Parmenides, would not have advanced this objection as his own. We
must therefore suppose that the Parmenides was composed later than
Aristotle, and borrowed this objection from Aristotle.
In reply to this argument I transcribe the passage of Aristotle
(Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15) to which Ueberweg himself refers:
[Greek: e)/ti de\ oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn oi( me\n tô=n pro/s
ti poiou=sin i)de/as, ô(=n ou)/ phamen ei)=nai kath' au(to\ ge/nos,
oi( de\ to\n tri/ton a)/nthrôpon le/gousin.] The same words (with the
exception of [Greek: phasi/n] in place of [Greek: phame/n]) are
repeated in M. p. 1079, a. 11.
Now these words plainly indicate that Aristotle does not profess to
advance the objection, called [Greek: o( tri/tos a)/nthrôpos], as his
own, or as broached by himself. He derives it from what he calls
[Greek: oi( a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]. The charge against
Aristotle, therefore, of advancing as his own an objection which had
already been suggested by Plato himself in the Parmenides, is
unfounded. And it is the more unfounded, because Aristotle, in the
first book of the Metaphysica, speaks in the language of a Platonist,
and considers himself as partly responsible for the doctrine of
Ideas: [Greek: dei/knumen, phame/n, oi)o/metha], &c. (Alexand. in
Schol. p. 563, b. 27, Brand.)
But what are we to understand by these words--[Greek: oi(
a)kribe/steroi tô=n lo/gôn]--from which Aristotle derives the
objection? The words refer to certain expositions or arguments (oral,
or written, or both) which were within the knowledge of Aristotle,
and were of a peculiarly subtle and analytical character. Among them