Aristotle
is very probably included the Platonic Parmenides itself,
distinguished as it is for extreme subtlety. (See Stallbaum's
Prolegg. pp. 249, 277, 337, who says, "In uno ferè Parmenide idearum
doctrina subtilius investigatur.") I see no reason why it should not
be included within the fair and reasonable meaning of the words. And
such being the case, I cannot go along with Ueberweg (and other
critics) who say that Aristotle has not even made an indirect
allusion to the Parmenides.
But why did not Aristotle specify the Parmenides directly and by
name? I do not know what was his reason. We may feel surprise (as
Stallbaum feels, p. 337) that he does not; but, when critics infer
from the omission that he did not know the dialogue as a work of
Plato, I contest the inference. We see that Alexander, in his
elaborate commentary (p. 566, Schol. Brand.) makes no allusion to the
Parmenides, though he alludes to Eudêmus, to Diodôrus, Kronus, and to
the manner in which the objection called [Greek: o( tri/tos
a)/nthrôpos] was handled by various Sophists. Now we are fully
assured that the Parmenides was acknowledged as a work of Plato, long
before the time of Alexander (since it is included in the catalogue
of Thrasyllus); yet he, the most instructed of all the commentators,
makes no allusion to it. Why he did not, I cannot say, but his
omission affords no ground for concluding that he did not know it, or
did not trust its authenticity.]
4. The supporters of these Self-existent Universals trace them to two
_principia_--The One, and the Indeterminate Dyad; which they affirm
to be prior in existence even to the Universals themselves. But this
cannot be granted; for the Idea of Number must be logically prior to
the Idea of the Dyad; but the Idea of Number is relative, and the
Relative can never be prior to the Absolute or Self-existent.
5. If we grant that, wherever there is one constant predicate
belonging to many particulars, or wherever there is stable and
trustworthy cognition, in all such cases a Self-existent Universal
Correlate _extra rem_ is to be assumed, we shall find that this
applies not merely to Substances or Essences, but also to the other
Categories--Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c. But hereby we exclude
the possibility of participation in them by Particulars; since from
such participation the Particular derives its Substance or Essence
alone, not its accidental predicates. Thus the Self-existent
Universal Dyad is eternal: but a particular pair, which derives its
essential property of doubleness from partaking in this Universal
Dyad, does not at the same time partake of eternity, unless by
accident. Accordingly, there are no Universal Ideas, except of
Substances or Essences: the common name, when applied to the world of
sense and to that of cogitation, signifies the same thing--Substance
or Essence. It is unmeaning to talk of anything else as
signified--any other predicate common to many. Well then, if the Form
of the Universals and the Form of those Particulars that participate
in the Universals be the same, we shall have something common to both
the one and the other, so that the objection called "The Third Man"
will become applicable, and a higher Form must be postulated. But, if
the Form of the Universals and the Form of the participating
Particulars, be not identical, then the same name, as signifying both,
will be used equivocally; just as if you applied the same denomination
man to Kallias and to a piece of wood, without any common property to
warrant it.
6. But the greatest difficulty of all is to understand how these
Cogitable Universals, not being causes of any change or movement,
contribute in any way to the objects of sense, either to the eternal
or to the perishable; or how they assist us towards the knowledge
thereof, being not in them, and therefore not their substance or
essence; or how they stand in any real relation to their
participants, being not immanent therein. Particulars certainly do
not proceed from these Universals, in any intelligible sense. To say
that the Universals are archetypes, and that Particulars partake in
them, is unmeaning, and mere poetic metaphor. For where is the
working force to mould them in conformity with the Universals? Any
one thing may _be_ like, or may _become_ like, to any other
particular thing, by accident, or without any regular antecedent
cause to produce such assimilation. The same particular substance,
moreover, will have not one universal archetype only, but several.
Thus, the same individual man will have not only the Self-animal and
the Self-biped, but also the Self-man, as archetype. Then again,
there will be universal archetypes, not merely for particular
sensible objects, but also for Universals themselves; thus the genus
will be an archetype for its various species; so that the same which
is now archetype will, under other circumstances, be copy.
7. Furthermore, it seems impossible that what is Substance or Essence
can be separate from that whereof it is the substance or essence. How
then can the Universals, if they be the essences of sensible things,
have any existence apart from those sensible things? Plato tells us
in the Phædon, that the Forms or Universals are the causes why
particulars both exist at all, and come into such or such modes of
existence. But even if we assume Universals as existing, still the
Particulars participant therein will not come into being, unless
there be some efficient cause to produce movement; moreover, many
other things come into being, though there be no Universals
correlating therewith, _e.g._ a house, or a ring. The same causes
that were sufficient to bring these last into being, will be
sufficient to bring all particulars into being, without assuming any
Universals _extra rem_ at all.
8. Again, if the Universals or Forms are Numbers, how can they ever
be causes? Even if we suppose Particulars to be Numbers also, how can
one set of Numbers be causes to the others? There can be no such
causal influence, even if one set be eternal, and the other
perishable.[17]
[Footnote 17: Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 991, b. 13. Several other
objections are made by Aristotle against that variety of the Platonic
theory wherein the Ideas were commuted into Ideal Numbers. These
objections do not belong to the controversy of Realism against
Nominalism.]
Out of the many objections raised by Aristotle against Plato, we have
selected such as bear principally upon the theory of Realism; that
is, upon the theory of _Universalia ante rem_ or _extra
rem_--self-existent, archetypal, cogitable substances, in which
Particulars faintly participate. The objections are not superior in
acuteness, and they are decidedly inferior, in clearness of enunciation,
to those that Plato himself produces in the Parmenides. Moreover,
several of them are founded upon Aristotle's point of view, and would
have failed to convince Plato. The great merit of Aristotle is, that
he went beyond the negative of the Parmenides, asserted this new
point of view of his own, and formulated it into a counter-theory. He
rejected altogether the separate and exclusive reality which Plato
had claimed for his Absolutes of the cogitable world, as well as the
derivative and unreal semblance that alone Plato accorded to the
sensible world. Without denying the distinction of the two, as
conceivable and nameable, he maintained that truth and cognition
required that they should be looked at in implication with each
other. And he went even a step farther, in antithesis to Plato, by
reversing the order of the two. Instead of considering the Cogitable
Universals alone as real and complete in themselves, and the Sensible
Particulars as degenerate and confused semblances of them, he placed
complete reality in the Sensible Particulars alone,[18] and treated
the Cogitable Universals as contributory appendages thereto; some
being essential, others non-essential, but all of them relative, and
none of them independent integers. His philosophy was a complete
revolution as compared with Parmenides and Plato; a revolution, too,
the more calculated to last, because he embodied it in an elaborate
and original theory of Logic, Metaphysics, and Ontology. He was the
first philosopher that, besides recognizing the equivocal character
of those general terms whereon speculative debate chiefly turns,
endeavoured methodically to set out and compare the different
meanings of each term, and their relations to each other.
[Footnote 18: Aristotle takes pains to vindicate against both Plato
and the Herakleiteans the dignity of the Sensible World. They that
depreciate sensible objects as perpetually changing, unstable, and
unknowable, make the mistake (he observes) of confining their
attention to the sublunary interior of the Kosmos, where, indeed,
generation and destruction largely prevail. But this is only a small
portion of the entire Kosmos. In the largest portion--the visible,
celestial, superlunary regions--there is no generation or destruction
at all, nothing but permanence and uniformity. In appreciating the
sensible world (Aristotle says) philosophers ought to pardon the
shortcomings of the smaller portion on account of the excellences of
the larger; and not condemn both together on account of the smaller
(Metaphys. [Greek: G]. v. p. 1010, a. 30).]
However much the Ontology of Aristotle may fail to satisfy modern
exigencies, still, as compared with the Platonic Realism, it was a
considerable improvement. Instead of adopting Ens as a
self-explaining term, contrasted with the Generated and Perishable
(the doctrine of Plato in the Republic, Phædon, and Timæus), he
discriminates several distinct meanings of Ens; a discrimination not
always usefully pursued, but tending in the main towards a better
theory. The distinction between Ens potential, and Ens actual, does
not belong directly to the question between Realism and Nominalism,
yet it is a portion of that philosophical revolution wrought by
Aristotle against Plato--displacement of the seat of reality, and
transfer of it from the Cogitable Universal to the Sensible
Particular. The direct enunciation of this change is contained in his
distinction of Ens into Fundamental and Concomitant ([Greek:
sumbebêko/s]), and his still greater refinement on the same principle
by enumerating the ten varieties of Ens called Categories or
Predicaments.[19] He will not allow Ens (nor Unum) to be a genus,
partible into species: he recognizes it only as a word of many
analogous meanings, one of them principal and fundamental, the rest
derivative and subordinate thereto, each in its own manner. Aristotle
thus establishes a graduated scale of Entia, each having its own
value and position, and its own mode of connexion with the common
centre. That common centre Aristotle declared to be of necessity some
individual object--Hoc Aliquid, That Man, This Horse, &c. This was
the common subject, to which all the other Entia belonged as
predicates, and without which none of them had any reality. We here
fall into the language of Logic, the first theory of which we owe to
Aristotle. His ontological classification was adapted to that theory.
[Footnote 19: In enumerating the Ten Categories, Aristotle takes his
departure from the Proposition--_Homo currit_--_Homo vincit_. He
assumes a particular individual as subject; and he distributes, under
ten general heads, all the information that can be asked or given
about that subject--all the predicates that can be affirmed or denied
thereof. [See Ch. iii., especially p. 73, seq.]]
As we are here concerned only with the different ways of conceiving
the relation between the Particular and the Universal, we are not
called on to criticize the well-known decuple enumeration of