Did We Get it Wrong?
1 Interestingly, Aristotle held that any thing which contained motion also contained a soul. With the knowledge we have concerning molecular and subatomic particles, this would suggest all pots have souls.
2 Aristotle. Metaphysics, edited by Jonathan Barnett in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation (Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1984).
3 Arendt, Hannah. “The Concept of History: Ancient and Modern,” Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1985), p. 41.
4 Ibid, pp.42-43.
5 Ibid, p. 43.
6 Ibid, p. 46.
7 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind (Vols. 1 & 2) (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1978), p. 137.
8 Ibid.
9 Jaynes, Julian. The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976).
10 Arendt, Hannah. The Life of the Mind (Vols. 1 & 2) (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1978).
11 Wanker, William. Nous and Logos: The Philosophical Foundations of Hannah Arendt’s Political Theory (New York: Garland Press, 1991).
12 Strauss, Leo. The City and Man (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964).
13 In Allan Bloom’s translation of The Republic, the idea is described by Plato in two ways, the first as a traditional notion of forms and second as a means (the latter not recognized by Bloom). As a means, they do not stand hierarchically equal to the Good. This second use of forms shifts our analysis of the dialectic. Forms, as means or platforms or springboards, thought-things or concepts, assist us in reaching the Good intuitively. Note:
“Well, then, go on to understand that by the other segment of the intelligible I mean that which the argument grasps with the power of the dialectic, making hypotheses that is, stepping stones and springboards (my emphasis)–in order to reach what is free from hypotheses at the beginning of the whole When it has grasped this, argument now depends upon that which depends on this beginning and in such fashion goes back down to an end; making no use of anything sensed in any way, but using forms themselves, going through forms to forms, it ends in forms too.”
“I understand,” he said, “although not adequately–for in my opinion it’s an enormous task you speak of–that you wish to distinguish that part of what is and is intelligible contemplated by knowledge of the dialectic as being clearer than that part contemplated by what are called the arts. The beginnings in the arts are hypotheses; and although those who behold their objects are compelled to do so with the thought and not the senses, these men –because they don’t consider them by going up to a beginning, but rather on the basis of hypotheses–these men in my opinion don’t possess intelligence with respect to the objects, even though they are, given a beginning, intelligible, and you seem to me to call the habit of geometer’s and their likes thought and not intelligence, indicating that thought is something between opinion and intelligence.”
“You have made a most adequate exposition,” I said. “And, along with me, take these four affections arising in the soul in relation to the four segments: intellection in relation to the highest one, and thought in relation to the second; to the third assign trust, and to the last imagination. Arrange them in a proportion, an believe that these segments to which they correspond participate in truth, so they participate in clarity.” Plato. The Republic, Book VI, 511b-511e; translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968, pp. 191 – 192.
14 Aristotle. Categories
It might be an interesting exercise to learn what pots might have meant to Alexander, as he was Aristotle’s protégé. Alexander was a ruler after all, during a time when talk of Forms and Beauty had pretty much had their day. So, though I cannot say for sure, I would think as a ruler he would regard a pot as being but a thing relative to another. Having seen and possessed
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