Aristotle famously declared in his
Metaphysics – All men by nature desire to know. But this raises the following
questions:
a) What is knowledge?
b) Why do we desire it?
c) Why should we
consider this desire to be natural to human beings?
Regarding the first question Aristotle
believed that we know only when we know the reason why something is the way it
is. Hence knowledge is always of the universal or the principle because
particular things come to be and pass away but their principle is eternal.
Coming to the second question – why do
we desire knowledge. Aristotle’s answer is knowledge is valuable not for the
sake of something else but for its own sake i.e. it is an end in itself. But
this theory is threatened by the consideration that we do not value knowledge
for its own sake but for the sake of something else, some practical benefit
that it may confer on us. Our modern value system regards something as valuable
proportionate to the practical advantage that it leads to but in Aristotle’s
taxonomy of values the most valuable thing is with the least utility value i.e.
even though it may be useful, it is not sought for practical benefit but for
its own sake or it is an end in itself. So in essence Aristotle’s answer to this
objection is that man is a rational animal i.e. his essence consists in his
desire and ability to know and understand. This desire does not have an
external cause but is intrinsic to man. Any practical benefit that may accrue
due to knowledge is accidental and is sought not for its own sake but for the
sake of something else which confers a greater good on us and the highest good
for man is what is the most in tandem with his nature. Aristotle gives the
example of our preferring sight to other senses, because sight is more vivid
and able to grasp more variety of things than other senses, it is preferred
more than them and not simply for the fact that it enables us certain practical
advantages but rather for its own sake. In what follows Aristotle will argue
that knowledge is valued by us for its own sake even though we are not
consciously aware of it.
Aristotle begins by referring to the
difference between animals and human beings, the former are born with the
faculty of sensation and memory and those animals that have a more robust
memory are able to learn better and faster than others because memory if a
faculty for organizing experience. Yet despite memory animals do not have much
of a rationally organized experience like human beings who have in addition the
ability to reason and show a greater capacity to connect diverse experiences
than animals. The difference between man and animals lies in this that the
former has in addition the faculty of reason which allows him to grasp more
universal features of experience and connect particular experiences on the
basis of it to convert them into a single experience.
It is through experience then that
science and arts arise in human culture which is lacking in the animal kingdom
and experience itself depends on the rational faculty to grasp universal
features implicit in sensory experience. Aristotle further adds to this thought
through comparison of a doctor who treats diseases by symptoms and one who
understands the cause of the disease; out of the two even though the former may
be expedient in curing diseases, the one who understands the disease is
regarded as far more wiser than the latter and is also capable of being more
effective in curing a disease. This reminds me of an old story that is told in
the Taoist tradition of Ancient China. It is about three brothers, all of whom
were doctors but the youngest one was the most famous and it was said there was
no disease he could not cure. A Chinese Emperor once asked him why amongst the
three brothers he was the most skilled. To this he replied he wasn’t. His
eldest brother he told the emperor is able to see the ‘spirit of sickness and
removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house’
(Thomas Cleary’s translation) and his elder brother ‘cures the sickness when it
is extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood’, while
he himself ‘punctures veins, prescribes potions and massages the skin’ and so
his name gets out from time to time around and past the neighborhood. And yet
it is the eldest one Aristotle would add who is regarded as the wiser one
because he is able to connect through his reason his current experience with
possible future experiences. The ability to connect different experiences
together under a single principle does not obliterate the knowledge of
particulars but as a matter of fact enhances it since such a person can
classify for instance the diseases into different kinds like phlegmatic or
bilious, he is able to note both the universal features that allows him to
group together apparently different diseases together and so also to note the
differences of diseases that are similar but only apparently so and this
eventually leads to a better classification or tabulation of different diseases
which enables a person to think through its cause and cure more effectively. So
at this stage Aristotle has shown that reason belongs to the essential nature
of man and is what distinguishes him from animals. It is also what is the best
in man since it allows him to rationally organize his experience and
contemplate the universal and explain the particular, thereby man is able to
probe into the causes or the reason of things and cultivate higher forms of
sciences. The more our experience is rationally organized, the better use can
it be put too and hence knowledge is more valuable than any practical advantage
that may follow from it.
Aristotle continues, it is found that
sometimes people with experience are way more skillful than the wise. A child
for instance playing a video game is able to navigate his way through the game
without understanding the connection between his gadgets and the video game,
yet may play the game better than the man who designed the game. The wise man
sometimes understands the universal but not the particular and so is not able
to subsume the latter in the former i.e. relate the two and hence is not able
to fructify his knowledge. Yet a person who does understand the universal is
regarded wiser than the man of experience. And the reason this is so is because
knowledge and understanding are found in the man of art who is superior to the
man of experience, since an artist’s skill is the result of knowledge and is
more than just habit ingrained through experience (Aristotle gives the example
of a master craftsman and a manual laborer). So we see our skills increase as
and when our knowledge and understanding increases. Fire burns because it has
to and there is no choice there and habitual activities are similarly lifeless
and mechanical; this mechanical pattern is broken as and when we exercise our
reason and the highest exercise of reason lies in knowing the causes and the
principles. A mind that inquires, that probes into the reason of things is
moving more than a person whose physical activity is coupled with mentally
laziness and hence is comparatively more mechanical in his actions. A mind that
inquires and probes is motivated solely by the desire to know and hence is more
active than the mind of a man who works for something but for the sake of something
else, his actions are limited by the limited ends he works for but which he
does not seek for their own sake and hence does not love. And so we can see
that the most active being according to Aristotle is the actus prius, the first
cause of the world, his activity is ceaseless because it is not moved by
another but by his own nature and his movement is of the highest kind because
it is universal detached from particulars and so purely contemplative. Note
that Aristotle is not propagating physical laziness and he does believe that
knowledge could and should be put to good use especially in politics, however
he is determining a taxonomy of values to determine the highest kind of
activity for man, since he cannot perfectly imitate God and the highest kind of
activity is contemplative because it is least mechanical and it is seen that in
the skillful artist knowledge and understanding lead to greater form of
activity than someone who acts only by the force of habit. The highest activity
is of the man who inquires and probes into the causes and principles of things
because while every other activity depends on some external stimulus, which
being satisfied the action ceases, the desire of knowledge produces ceaseless
activity because it is intrinsic to human beings, not depending on external
stimulus and hence for the sake of itself. Such activity since it leads to
greater exercise of reason confers greater good on the person. This takes the
argument one step further since Aristotle is here arguing that even when the
wise man is unable to put his knowledge to effective us still he is valued more
than the man of experience because it is a higher form of activity.
Aristotle tells us that in Ancient
Egypt once the basic necessities of life were over, the people were able to use
the leisure to aim for something higher and were able to develop the
mathematical sciences before others. The point here is that there are branches
of knowledge like a higher form of mathematics, theoretical astrophysics etc.
that lack any useful application to everyday life yet the person who pursues
these branches of learning is still regarded as the most skilled in his field.
A person able to solve complex algebraic equations when compared to someone who
is able to do only regular arithmetic is regarded as the more skilled
mathematician even though his knowledge is lacking in practical application and
this is because his activity is a of a higher kind being done for its own sake.
The point can also be made with respect to morality. The one who acts morally
but only for the sake of a benefit is less than the person who acts morally for
its own sake i.e. because he regards the action as good, as intrinsically
worthy of being done and as what should be done. The spirit with which an
action is performed is more important than the action itself because it is what
makes the action worthy or noble. We can consider an action either intensively
or extensively i.e. instead of determining the worth of an action on the basis
of its outcome, we should rather determine it on the basis of its inner worth
which comes from the manner or the spirit with which it is performed. Further
the Ancient Egyptians would have sat idle if in satisfying their basic needs of
food, clothing and shelter they would have exhausted their natural aspirations.
But rather they used that leisure to gain more knowledge because by nature they
we compelled to seek more. We always want to know the reason why but are never
satisfied with it and seek more reasons propelled by our natural desire to
know. So the dissatisfaction that we find in our pursuit of our basic needs
implies that by our very nature we are compelled to seek more, something that
is commensurate with it. This shows that the constraint of satisfying our basic
needs is not due to any intrinsic value in them but is due to our desire for
greater freedom that it would afford us allowing us to pursue something more in
tandem with our intrinsic nature, we want to satisfy these basic needs because
we want to get rid of being concerned with them which would actually give us
greater freedom in our lives. This is the final strand in the argument, that
knowledge is preferred for it own sake and all other practical benefits are
sought for the sake of it rather than vica-versa.
This brings us to the third question –
why is the desire to seek knowledge natural to human beings? Now since
something natural is also invariable like the fire that burns and emits heat,
we do see people around us valuing practical utility more than knowledge. So in
what sense is the desire to seek knowledge natural? Again, does being natural
also mean being subjective, that seeking knowledge is like a craving or a
psychological urge that is wired within us that we are condemned to pursue
despite failures like the donkey pursues his carrot? Is not the pursuit of
knowledge a Sisyphean endeavor?
Having determined the order in which
knowledge comes prior to any other activity, the reason for regarding the
desire to know as natural simply is that what is sought for its own sake is
more natural than what is sought for the sake of another, because the latter
depends on an external stimulus, is lacking in intrinsic worth and so is not
self-determined. So in the absence of an external cause or reason for the
desire for knowledge, its reason must be found to be deeply rooted within human
nature. But this still does not solve our problems, I may say that Freedom is
my natural state yet actually I fall prey to every second advertisement to buy
things that I do not need. In what sense am I free then? In what sense is
freedom natural to me if it is not actual? Aristotle’s answer to this is that
what is natural is also actual. A long answer to this question would need
examination of Aristotle’s physics and seeing why Aristotle believes that no
natural explanation of change can be given and hence a metaphysical answer is
our only option. A shorter answer needs us to see the difference between the
nature of explanation in citing mechanical causes and final causes. There may
be a physical explanation of why a ball is able to move from one point to
another but that would be an incomplete explanation because it does not tell us
why the ball is moving at all. To complete the explanation I will have to
answer that I threw the ball because I am playing the game of cricket and I am
a bowler. Today this would not be counted as a bona fide answer because we are
used to making a distinction between the realm of reason and the realm of
nature that Aristotle himself did not make. As a matter of fact naturalism
seeks to complete itself by explaining human behaviour which is taken to lie
within the realm of reason by citing mechanical causes for human behaviour. Now
in ideal conditions according to law of inertia if something is moving in a
certain direction it will keep moving in that direction till something else
deters it from its path. Applying this law to human mind, it would mean that I
will keep thinking a single thought till some external cause does not obstruct
this movement thereby allowing the entry of another thought. Aristotle would
not have accepted this law of inertia, neither for the physical nor for the
mental realm. Naturalists themselves did not find this mechanical mode of
explanation congenial because human behaviour does not show such deterministic
structure. A reflex action can be explained through rules wired into us by
natural selection but more rational actions depend on considering and weighing
different options and acting on them i.e. rational activity can only be found
where I could have acted otherwise and my response is not predictable within a
stimulus response model. And further even more complex models like Game Theory
have not sufficed as an explanation. The only other option open is to cite the
final cause or my reasons for acting or that for the sake of which I act. I
initiate an inquiry because I take knowledge to be an end. The knowledge
however even though not actual still moves me (it is actual in the sense that
it does move me but as a value but not as a physical fact; the end explains why
I act in a certain way and so rationalizes the action) because it is sought in
an inquiry and so as an end is prior to an action. If there is no end, no final
cause that the movement seeks to achieve then there is no activity and if there
is there is then there is no ceasing of that activity. The law of inertia
presupposes movement but does not tell us the cause of the movement or why it
began in the very first place. Aristotle’s final causes are not ends instituted
within us by God, because then it cannot be regarded as natural, being
instituted by something external to us, whether that be evolution or God
doesn’t matter. Hence to be natural the desire for knowledge should actually
move me and it does but that I cannot consciously realize it does not deter
from the fact that it is what is moving me. For example in ethics Aristotle
believes the highest principle is happiness. Everyone strives to be happy but
yet I may act in ways that may sabotage my own happiness or I may not understand
what I really want, what would really make me happy. I can take my car and move
to a certain destination but on the way I may get lost and take a wrong
direction, but it is still my destination that is moving me. Aristotle
overcomes a fact-value dichotomy through his notion of mimesis or imitation.
What moves actus prius is knowledge but that is not an external end for him and
hence he is intrinsically active; in the actus prius the difference between
knowledge and action is overcome since in its self-knowing it moves the world.
Less perfect beings unconsciously seek or aspire to this higher level of
perfection and so imitate this movement and in this way the actus prius makes
everyone else move, not through external compulsion but through inspiration as
it were. So the values of goodness, knowledge, happiness is actualized in us by
our imitating the actus prius which is what moves us to our greater good. The
answer to the question – in what sense is freedom natural to me, is this my
nature consists in my aspiration to be moved by the most perfect movement of
actus prius and I am free to the extent I can imitate this movement in my life.
The desire to know is the compulsion of my nature and is not an external
compulsion like the compulsion to satisfy my basic needs is. My nature or
essence is not simply a fact about me, it is at once a value and a fact and
hence Aristotle is uniting rather than confounding what is and what ought to
be. So for Aristotle to say that it is natural for me to seek freedom and that
one should seek to be free, to be good is the same thing. My nature or essence
moves me to goodness but this is a different kind of movement than physical
movement which may due to lack of tandem with my nature gives the sign of
disorder. The physical movement is nor intrinsically moving but is due to
external compulsion or is moved from pressure from outside.
This also reveals to us that a finite
being is an essentially temporal being. He is always moving in a certain
direction, from past to present to future and so he is an incomplete being –
always in the making rather than an end product at any point of time and the
kind of movement is not a physical movement but a metaphysical one to be
understood in terms of a final cause. This brings us to the final question, is
the desire for knowledge a subjective urge but objectively unattainable. Now
when I seek the reason for something, I am left dissatisfied and I still seek
further reasons. But there must be a finite number of steps in every proof, it
must begin and have an end. A proof cannot go onto infinity because it is
impossible to survey an infinite number of steps. Everything that is known or
explained is explained either by itself or through another i.e. the principles.
For example the inference, ‘Socrates is mortal’ itself depends on the principle
or the major premise in this case ‘All men are mortal’, but this universal
premise itself can become subject of a scrutiny and be inferred as a conclusion
of another inference. But this process cannot go on forever because if we
understand something x through another y, then that is because y is prior to x,
prior not in the sense of being more familiar but prior in the order of
explanations which means it is better known than x but not consciously so and in
an inference moving from y to x, the latter gets explained through the former.
Now this y itself in the order of explanations may depend on another piece of
knowledge and that through another, but is there is no final principle then
there is no prior and no posterior and no order in the explanations at all and
hence there would be no knowledge and no understanding. So either there is a
finite movement terminating in knowledge of principles or else there is no
knowledge. In the sequence of thoughts or the temporal series that constitutes
man but which lacks values like knowledge, goodness etc., all states or all
members would be equal, there would be no higher or lower. If there is no
highest good, then there are no intermediate goods too because the ranking of
the preceding parts of the series depends on the highest point in the
series.
This however would itself prove to be a
contentious point and primarily because philosophers who came later disagreed
with Aristotle about the nature of infinity which in this case we can see
inextricably is bound with the nature of man itself. Aristotle did not believe
in an actual infinite but only in a potential infinite. A potential infinite is
a sequence like a mathematical sequence which has no end because it has no highest
number. To every number you can add one more and so on to infinity, being
subject to endless iterations. An actual infinite is a completed infinite and
hence is regarded by Aristotle to be a contradiction in terms. But later
philosophers did believe in an actual infinite which they regarded as God.
Spinoza for instance believed that time, space and causation are measures by
which imagination cuts off a complete whole to imagine parts that themselves
can never be completed in a finite sequence and are infinitely divisible.
Potential infinity however is not really infinite, as the Indian philosopher
Jiddu Krishnamurti points out, if something can be added then it has a limit, a
more is less relative to another more and a less is more relative to another less.
To anything that can be measured, which knows increase, there would always be
something more and hence it would always be limited. Such a mind then cannot
grasp infinity. To do so it has to cut it up into a finite number of steps
which cannot however ever be completed. The finite is thus a self-contradictory
notion since it is always incomplete, it is unreal and the temporality of man
is a sign of his limited nature that can never know the infinite which can
never occurs within a finite series. The immeasurable can never be known
through something measurable, the finite can never know the infinite.
Aristotle was aware of these problems
and he sought to reconcile his theory of potential infinity which is built on
the denial of an actual infinity with possibility of knowledge and so also of
metaphysics. This is the most difficult aspect of Aristotle’s philosophy who
likewise believed that the world is eternal and yet he also believed in a first
mover. Aristotle believed that an infinite regress of facts is not a threat but
an infinite regress of principles is a threat. The search for reasons has to
end somewhere which is only possible if there is a final terminus of reasons
where the search ends. We have seen an explanation consists of both physical
explanation and a rational explanation. Now I may take my car to reach a
certain destination, I may get lost along the way and reach there through a
circuitous route or never reach there at all. So by finite number of steps in a
proof Aristotle does not mean the steps I actually take but that there must
actually be an end which is in principle is attainable. There must actually be
an answer to a mathematical problem for instance, I may take eternity to get to
the answer i.e. this capacity is potentially infinite but what is not infinite
is the actual proof that solves the mathematical problem. Aristotle’s
philosophy is largely a Platonic reply to Eleatic Monism and it seeks to
preserve the finite in face of the infinite or really in a way regards the
finite as the infinite. The finite is an incomplete being because he is
potentially a complete being because for Aristotle the end that moves the
individual is prior and actual in relation to the movements of the individual.
So knowledge is prior as a value that moves the individual whether he may
realize it or not and knowledge is actual because there are a finite number of
steps through which it can be attained even though attaining it may take us an
eternity. This is opposed to Spinoza’s sub specie aeternitatis vision of the
world where the finite is the imagination’s breaking up the infinite into parts
which is not possible and so no synthesis of parts with parts can ever lead us
to knowledge of infinite. The finite can never know the infinite; it has to
cease for the infinite to be. For the finite is bound by temporality
essentially and time is what makes a finite being finite because to be finite
is to move and all movement takes place in space and in time. But Aristotle’s
preserves the finite standpoint by denying an actual infinite as a
contradiction and takes time to be potentially infinite. Spinoza on the other
hand takes time to be imaginary and an aberration. The real is the actual
infinite and the finite is the contradiction. For one the desire to know is
objectively attainable and for the other the finite being is the obstacle to
knowledge of the infinite. The significance of finiteness for Aristotle lies in
his desire to know, to perfect himself which is premised on the reality of a
value but for Spinozism finiteness is the denial of infinite and his desire to
know the infinite is a sign of his loss of infinity which he cannot stitch back
by adding parts to parts. The urge to reach the infinite forces him to
accumulate knowledge but the infinite can never be known through addition
because it is immeasurable and number is a unit opposed to another. For
Aristotle the very fact that we desire knowledge is a sign that we can achieve
knowledge while for Spinoza our desire for knowledge is a sign of a subjective
impulse for self-preservation that he calls conatus. In Euthphyro Plato made a
distinction between God’s regarding something as good because of its being good
and something being good because God regards it as being good. Aristotle gives
an account of knowledge’s being good while Spinoza gives an account of it being
regarded as good by reducing it to the drive for self-preservation. The bone of
contention between the two lies in this that for Aristotle the temporal series
that is man will on Spinozist grounds be purely mechanical lacking any
gradations and so would be meaningless or devoid of values. Finiteness is the
very condition for the existence of values like knowledge and goodness and this
fact is not hidden to the Spinozist but he does not find it uncongenial. The
difference lies is the manner of explanation, man is a mechanical series of
movements if in explaining this series final causes are not cited. For
Aristotle there is something for the sake of which man moves and moves due to
his essence and this itself implies the goal is real otherwise the movement
goes unexplained because the goal or the value is what moves us actually but
for the Spinozist the movement can be explained merely through mechanical
causes and we can grade and measure a sequence but the standard of measurement
would not be something real. By essence man is moved by self-preservation and
this movement is not a movement due to final causes and so self-preservation is
the measure of man’s actions and this measure is created by man and is or
constitutes the man but through this measure he cannot get to what is by nature
immeasurable. This is the difference in the two philosophies and it marks the
human predicament that he cannot escape; his reality as a finite being
threatened by a vision sub specie aeternitatis. For Aristotle human values and
the finite standpoint are essentially linked because there is a reason why
something moves from one place to another which reason when taken away the
movement becomes meaningless or comes to lack an intrinsic meaning and becomes
mechanical subject to external impulses. But from an infinite point of view
there is no gap between what is and what should be because an actual infinite
is perfect and what is perfect does not move because there is no goal for the
movement and so it does not need to and so man’s movements become meanderings
to seek something which in a way is already attained but lost because of the
seeking itself which seeking is what man is. For Aristotle the desire to know
is objective because even when we are moved because of our very nature or
essence, the final cause of the movement is something beyond us and is real
i.e. it is the object of desire that leads to the desire itself and it is to
this highest end or the highest good which lies in the contemplation of truth,
all other activities are to be subordinated. But when there is no final cause
of the desire that constitutes man, no object of desire which explains the
desire itself then there is no possibility of objective satisfaction either. One
can now see in contrast two radically different ways of understanding what a
finite being or what subjectivity is.
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