The Ethics of Ontology by Long Christopher P

Author:Long, Christopher P.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2012-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

7

Knowledge in Actuality and the Ethical Turn

Even with the establishment of the dynamic economy of principles, the universal /singular aporia remains only partially circumvented. In fact, the forceful argument found in VII.13 that ousia cannot be universal and Aristotle’s insistence in Book VIII that the strict meaning of tode ti is applicable only to the composite suggest that Aristotle has abandoned the attempt to establish an epistēmē of finite ousia.1 As has been seen, technically, the substantial form and the matter are neither universal nor singular, for the universal/singular dichotomy itself is ultimately parasitic upon the concrete presence of the tode ti. Further, in Metaphysics Six.8, the composite individual, whose ontological identity is praxis or energeia, takes on both an ontological and an epistemological priority, for energeia is said to be prior not only in time and ousia but also in logos, by which it was shown that knowledge of what exists in energeia is prior to the knowledge or account of what exists in dunamis. If this is the case, however, then Aristotle seems simply to have relinquished the possibility of establishing a genuine epistēmē of finite ousia, for such a science requires universal knowledge, a knowledge that it is denied in the case of matter and form, because they are not universal, and in the case of the composite, because it is singular.

Yet this conclusion is merely apparent. In the enigmatic and—as Julia Annas so aptly puts it—“tantalizing”2 tenth chapter of Metaphysics., Book XIII, Aristotle suggests a possible way to resolve the epistemological side of the universal/singular aporia. This solution is, like that of the ontological side of the problem, more a circumvention than a resolution, for it entails renouncing the legitimacy of the Platonic assumption that the epistēmē sought is universal. Further, as with the ontological side of the aporia, the epistemological side finds its ultimate solution in the equivocal meaning of the term tode ti and the conceptual distinction between energeia and dunamis. The sort of knowledge that Aristotle points to in Metaphysics XIII. 10 is explicitly directed toward that which is a “tode ti”3—that is, toward finite ousia understood no longer as singular but now as a composite individual, a unity of form and matter, energeia and dunamis, the name for which is praxis.

The parallels with the account of the middle books of the Metaphysics. are important, for they suggest that although Aristotle leaves the meaning of this sort of knowledge underdeveloped, he seems to have recognized that some way around the epistemological side of the aporia was possible based on the dynamic understanding of ousia itself. Furthermore, with these parallels, Aristotle points us in what at first glance appears to be a rather surprising direction: to the heart of the Nicomachean Ethics, and specifically to the technical discussion of phronēsis, the peculiar form of knowledge designed explicitly to address matters of praxis. On further reflection, however, this direction should not be all that surprising. First, Aristotle explicitly deploys the term praxis—the very theme of the Nicomachean Ethics—to name the dynamic identity of ousia in Metaphysics.

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