"And what about this? Who would do a finer job, one man practicing many arts, or one man one art?"
"One man, one art," he said.
"And, further, it's also plain, I suppose, that if a man lets the crucial moment (kairos) in any work pass, it is completely ruined."
"Yes, it is plain."
It is this neglect of the crucial moment, due to the interruption of a work, which I would like to put forward as a Platonic cousin of the 'Aristotelian' cousin of the deviance from a terminus ad quem. (Aristotelian is in scare quotes here not because I am aware of any divergence from Aristotle's doctrine on this point in the late Aristotelians, but simply because I am not yet aware of Aristotle's doctrine on this point, if he has one. I suspect it is not too different from Plato's in any case.)
I don't have a great quote for terminus ad quem but "J" proposes a squirrel eating an acorn, preventing its arrival at becoming an oak. The squirrel is of course only fulfilling its own being--nothing "devilish" about that.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOK, then make it rats, disease, crop blights, or...say locusts. Same point--the "final cause" of the locusts (locust-form?) doesn't quite jibe with that of the wheat or barley...(or the farmers, for that matter). I'm not suggesting Aristotle's system to be superior to the more mathematical, platonic models, AJ (and not sure whether you meant a mathematical series, or natural/biological).
ReplyDeleteAri. however does attempt a sort of Design argument (tho' not specifically judeo-christian)--which the catholics develop, obviously. It's not quite the same as the Paley Watchmaker classic, but in a sense raises the same issues (tho' was Ari. ...monotheist?? I doubt it). The Aristotelian system becomes a type of spinoza-istic determinism, arguably, once the empiricists' dispensed with "teleos".
I don't see what you're after here, J. I'm just wondering whether the idea of a conflict of works within a human life is analogous to the idea of a conflict of completions within the world. I see this as a potentially fruitful analogy but as usual I can't say why yet.
ReplyDeleteAristotle discussed humans of course, and even a human essence of sorts, but his metaphysics included Nature as a whole, really Reality as a whole. A final cause (and the rest of Ari.'s causality) applied not only to humans (or human activity), but to plants and animals, etc. The catholic church still affirms those views for the most part (via Aquinas). Also see Edvard Feser's blog/writings for examples of the neo-scholasticism.
ReplyDeleteI'm not defending Ari's metaphysics, anyway, but pointing out what seem to be the odd if not pagan aspects...Even if we grant a few of Aristotle's chestnuts--really they seem to reduce to continuity of a type (ie the rose bushes will sprout rose-blooms, not daisies, or rattlesnakes--)--they seem analogical , if not metaphorical...not really necessary arguments...