Aristotle: The Philosopher

One of the great contributions Aristotle has made to philosophy is his distinction between means and ends. This insight gives us a key to many metaphysical problems. There are things the existence of which can be justified only by their capacity to achieve an end. This is primarily true of all tools and instruments: they are invented because they happen to be useful (or even indispensable) for the realization of a given end. A comb exists in order to groom one's hair. A pen is an instrument for writing. All machines are means. It is obvious that the end has a metaphysical superiority over the means, for the means have only a serving function. Yet, in a paradoxical fashion, the capacity of the means to serve the end is crucial for the realization of this end. For the end is dependent upon the efficacy of the means, but this dependence differs radically from the dependence of the means upon the end. For the end is sought for its own sake; the means are sought for the sake of their capacity to realize the end. Therefore, even though it comes inevitably at the end of a process, the final cause fully deserves to be called "cause"; hence its name final.

The biological sphere—to which Aristotle paid much attention—is dominated by the law of finality. Its metaphysical importance can hardly be overestimated, and this explains in part the poverty of Spinoza's philosophy, which systematically eliminated final causes. David Hume followed suit in waging war on efficient causality, which—to his myopic mind—had no fundamentum in re, but was the result of a psychological association between two things that we are used to seeing succeed one another in time. These two thinkers are responsible for many modern errors that their arbitrary rejection of two crucial causes has brought in its trail.

But to go back to Aristotle—only a fool can deny his genius. He is certainly one of the great philosophical minds of all time. But no man, even if he deserves to be called a genius, can answer all questions. Furthermore, no man—because of the imperfection of the human mind—can avoid flaws, ambiguities, and even in some cases, downright errors in his philosophical system. Christ alone is the Truth. Unus est magister vester: Christus. For this reason it is somewhat baffling that St. Thomas Aquinas calls Aristotle the Philosopher. He is so convinced of the superiority of Aristotle over all other thinkers that he does not deem it necessary to refer to him by name. But the history of philosophy teaches one that great as a thinker can be, his thought can never give us a master key opening all doors. What he discovered is a precious insight that we should respect. But he leaves many questions unanswered; his formulations, moreover, can be ambiguous, and this in turn can easily lead to misinterpretations and even downright errors.

To interpret Aristotle is not easy. This sheds light upon the fact that his main commentators disagree as to how he should be read. Avicenna, Averroes, and St. Thomas came to different conclusions. Today, great Thomists often disagree with one another. Let us recall Jonathan Swift's witty remark in Gulliver's Travels (part 3). He tells us that when Gulliver visited the country of the mathematicians who, at his request, had called Aristotle (whom Dante called "il Maestro di color che sanno" [the Master of those who know])¹ back to life, the great master was followed by a large crowd. Gulliver inquired who these people might be: he was told they were "his commentators." But then, Swift's biting irony added that to Gulliver's surprise, he knew none of them.

Apart from the difficulty of truly understanding what an author meant, the point I am trying to make is that a great discovery can easily degenerate into a false interpretation of the riches of the cosmos if it is either very narrowly interpreted or indiscriminately applied. One case in point is Aristotle's erroneous belief that exemplary causality (so crucial in...