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Godās Life-Generating Power and Its Transmission in Aristotleās Biology and Cosmology
Is it possible that Aristotle presented three very different phases in his philosophy and that only one of these was scientifically important? Such was Werner Jaegerās claim in 1923, and still there is no alternative theory.
Is it likely that, during his lectures in the Peripatos, Aristotle talked about a vital pneuma connected with the soul as the principle of life, but that pneuma plays no role in his seminal work On the Soul?
Is it conceivable that he called God the āGreat Leaderā of the cosmos, but saw no divine governance in Nature?
These critical questions about the standard theory on Aristotle have spurred the author of this book to develop a perspective on Aristotleās philosophy that breaks with the accepted view.
A crucial part is assigned to pneuma as the vital principle in all that lives. Pneuma is the fine-material carrier of all psychic functions and is governed by the soul as entelechy. The soul is the principle that controls the activity of pneuma in a goal-oriented way (oriented, that is, to the form of the living being). The entelechy is a cognitive principle that acts on the vital pneuma and is active from the very beginning of life, as a kind of automatic pilot. In human beings, however, the entelechy can also be āawakenedā to intellectuality. All entelechies of living beings, including those of the stars and planets, are actuated by the Power that proceeds inexhaustibly from the divine, transcendent Intellect.
This book also defends the authenticity of On the Cosmos (De Mundo), because this work does not present God as āMakerā but as āBegetterā of the cosmos. The same case is put for Aristotleās authorship of On Pneuma (De Spiritu), because Aristotle had to explain how there could be vital processes in plants and trees and in embryos and eggs, which do not possess respiration. Hence, he introduced pneuma as principle of vital heat, which is already present and active before the formation of lungs that enable breathing.
Many experts on Aristotleās work are in no doubt that he attributed a preeminent role to God in his philosophy of nature and cosmology. On the other hand there are authors who find it difficult to formulate the importance of God in Aristotleās analysis of everyday natural phenomena. My intention is to describe how Aristotle held that nothing in the cosmos can exist independently of God, its ultimate Cause, whereas the existence of God depends on nothing external to him.
In this study I will first list some particulars about Godās role in the Aristotelian system (in chapters 2ā5). I will deal there with texts in which Aristotle talks about the dependence of the visible world on God and the degrees involved in this dependence. I will also discuss the structural desire for immortality and the condition of God in everything forming part of the cosmos, and the āloveā (erĆ“s) for God, which is a way in which this desire may also manifest itself.
I then explore how these particulars are related to one another and to other elements of Aristotleās philosophy, especially to his theory of reproduction, which I discuss in chapters 6 and 7. In these chapters I consider how Aristotle came to see the life of plants and trees and the vegetative, nutritive or reproductive function of animals and humans as the most general function of life in the sublunary sphere, and the first in the development of all living creatures. This function is essential to all mortal living entities, but does not depend on respiration or breath. It is already active before the birth of living creatures, from the moment of fertilization or conception. Focusing on this subject, Aristotle started to wonder how specific identity (the eidos) is determined for a new living being from the moment of fertilization, and what agency is responsible for producing the new being, since that agency cannot be an immaterial soul that enters a previously formed embryo from outside. This led Aristotle to draw up his entirely new theory of the soul as carrier of specific form and as entelechy of a pneumatic instrumental body. His radical new outlook on the genesis of life also led Aristotle to describe Godās relationship with the cosmos caused by him in a very different way from his predecessors Plato and the Presocratics (chapter 9). For Aristotle, God is not an entity that produces the world as a Creator or Demiurge. He is, however, the cause of all things, such that Aristotle is convinced of a divine design of the cosmos. Aristotleās view of the cosmos is āteleological,ā because everything functions in the best possible way, not through an external entity that creates something as a producer, but through an internal power, in the same way that this works in a grain of wheat or in an embryo. God is the cause of the cosmos as the source of all order, structure and governance, which manifests itself in a material reality that is subservient to this order and structure.
In the theory developed here, Aristotleās concept of pneuma plays an important role. In other views on Aristotle his theory of pneuma seems strangely disconnected, as if scholars are at a loss what to do with it. The divine element, ether, and pneuma (in the sublunary sphere) are instruments functioning as bearers of the divinely emanating Power that brings about order and structure. All facets of pneuma as sublunary analogue of the astral element ether will be discussed in chapter 10. A number of important questions that often are neglected will be considered there:
Can pneuma be a ānatural bodyā?
Does it have its own natural motion or its own natural place?
Is pneuma an independent, sixth natural body alongside ether and the four sublunary elements?
What does it mean that pneuma is an analogue of the astral element?
Why canāt it change into one of the sublunary elements and why doesnāt it share any common matter with these elements?
Is pneuma (infinitely) divisible?
Is pneuma imperishable or can it be affected by old age and disease?
Should pneuma be regarded as an efficient cause, or is it also the material cause of living beings?
How is it possible that pneuma pervades other natural bodies?
Is this also the reason why pneuma is invisible?
How is āvital heatā related to pneuma?
And finally, as the most important question: How is the soul as entelechy the rei(g)ning principle of pneuma? If we succeed in understanding this, it is possible to fathom Aristotleās teleological view of nature.
This requires us to consider in a new way the question: What is the meaning of Aristotleās proposition: āIn being soul there is sleep and wakingā?
In chapters 12ā17 I try to show why an entirely unhistorical outlook on Aristotleās philosophy has become dominant since Antiquity from the time of the teaching and commenting activities of Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd century CE), an outlook that cancels any connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the sublunary sphere.
Chapters 18ā19 provide a summarizing overview of the problems discussed. Chapter 19 especially can be read as a short summary of the line of argument developed in this book.
My working hypothesis in this study is that Aristotleās philosophy proposed a drastic correction of Platoās views. The most fundamental correction was his rejection of Platoās doctrine of the soul and his own sharp distinction of intellect and soul instead of it. Aristotle did not view God as a perfect Soul and Demiurge, but as a pure, transcendent Intellect.
Distinguishing the Intellect from the Soul, Aristotle could not accept the three āpartsā of the soul posited by Plato in his famous myth about the soul in the Phaedrus. Of the three parts, solely āthe driverā of the team of horses remained as First Principle and Cause of everything. But an essential connection with the āpsychicā components was maintained. To this ādriverā Aristotle attributed a guiding influence, as a āLeaderā (ĪŗĪæĪÆĻĪ±Ī½ĪæĻ, ĻĻĻĪ±ĻĪ·Ī³ĻĻ, į¼”Ī³ĪµĪ¼ĻĪ½, Īæį¼°ĪŗĻĪ½ĪæĪ¼ĪæĻ) and Chief Intelligence Officer. It was impossible that this driver could āstriveā or ādesireā or even āwill.ā Nor could this driver be the Maker of the elements of the cosmos, as Plato had posited, because this would clash with the dogma of the unchangeability of the First Principle. Only intellect-principles or guiding principles can proceed from the divine Intellect. They are the soul-principles, which Aristotle saw as representatives of Godās procreative Working Power in all that lives, as guiding principles that are active in organization and production, clothed in a fine-material body consisting of ether or (in the sublunary sphere) pneuma. In order to understand Aristotleās theology, we must recognize that the guiding Dynamis of the Great Cosmic Helmsman is active in all entelechy-principles in the cosmos with their instrumental bodies, as in the horses that draw the chariot containing the driver in Platoās famous comparison.
However, in talking about the cosmos Aristotle exchanged the metaphor of artisanal production (by a divine Demiurge) for the biotic metaphor of the transmission of life in reproduction. His radically new insights into reproduction and his different outlook on ālifeā inspired him to speak about God as āBegetterā of all forms of life in the cosmos through the Power (Dynamis) proceeding from him, as a critique of Platoās concept of the Demiurge and the World Soul. What is vitalized by that divine Power is the materies, āthe underlying,ā the female contribution to all what lives. This Working Power of God differs from Godās Essence by manifesting itself in a natural body differentiated into a multitude of divine astral beings, who in turn are productive as efficient causes of countless life forms of mortal creatures, with the results of spontaneous generation and plants and trees as last and lowest species. In this ...