The Relevance of Philosophy

I sometimes have to remind myself of the relevance of my studies in philosophy. This does not mean, as it so often does for progressives, adapting philosophy itself to the tastes, concerns, and ideologies of the times. Certainly, specific times contribute specific points of view, unique perspectives, distinct emphases, to the ongoing and perennial philosophical conversation; but the perennial ideas and truths of philosophy remain the same, they are timeless and eternal. (Recall the metaphysics of tradition, here and here... I will hopefully write something soon on the advantages of the history of philosophy, as immersion in tradition.) Naturally, then, speech about the historical relevance of philosophy is necessarily somewhat limited. Progressivists seek to make philosophy relevant by the rejection of everything traditional as "old" and "outdated" as irrelevant - or of interest only to the curious. We live in new times; therefore we must have new ideas. Thought becomes subsequent and consequent to will and appetite, rather than the other way around; culture is no longer the expression of ideas, but ideas are the product of an arbitrarily "progressing" culture.

This has two results: 1) Philosophy as a discipline becomes no more than a job, a research project, the collection of the museum-pieces of the history of philosophy; it is a shallow and self-deceived effort to make philosophy into a money-making business of thought-museum curation. Need I mention that one ought to despair of making philosophy into a very money-making business of any sort? 2) Philosophy becomes no more than the sophisticated formulation of extremely ideologically motivated forms of extremist activism, the slave of "movements" in identity-politics. I have noticed that this second  perversion of philosophy is a strong motivation among many students of philosophy in my own generation, although it is not lacking among the refined liberals of older generations. Feminists, gender-activists, millennial Marxists, and radical anti-Trumpists (don't get me wrong, I am not a fan of Trump either... I just don't care as much...) love to use philosophy merely as the support of their ideological agendas and ulterior motives. There is no more concern for philosophy as an end in itself.

In an earlier age, philosophy was not the slave, but the ruler, of all other concerns, political, economic, or otherwise. Philosophy was good for its own sake; the philosophic act of contemplation, for Aristotle, is the noblest human activity, the end and goal of all other forms of human activity. Politics and ethics, for example, could only be worthily discussed with this end in view. Modern politics is not motivated by the contemplative teleology of traditional politics, but by unjustified agendas, in which each partisan-group's will determines the end; thought, i.e. philosophy, is nothing but a slave of the will, and thus a slave of activism. That is the only possible "relevance" of philosophy; otherwise, it is the historical-historicist study of irrelevancies.

Being a traditionalist, I must constantly remind myself of the true relevance of philosophy: that it is the end of all other activity. I cannot fall into the habit which most academic philosophers embrace, that of treating my studies as mere historical research - the curation of irrelevancies. It is rather a matter of truth; and the truth is the goal and object of the most human of human faculties. All men desire to know; and all men, indeed, desire to know philosophically, in some way and in some degree. My current studies concern the relationship of Aristotle to Plato - a rather historical question, to be sure. But it is also important in itself, because the ideas of which these two great men spoke are central to the formation of my own understanding of the world as the immanence of the transcendent; and this understanding is important for me as a human being, ordained among all creatures to the contemplation and worship of transcendent being. It is crucial to the human destiny that such questions not be reduced to mere history; yet it is important to study these questions historically, because they are not only relevant, indeed, for me; truth is a common good, after all, and it is common not only here and now, but through time. This is another reason why true tradition is important: not because it is the past - that is the error of historicism, which really cares nothing for tradition, but only for history - but because it is the truth, which is timeless; because it is always and to everyone relevant in the extreme.  

Metaphysics of Tradition (2)

The reflections on traditionalist nostalgia in the previous post were partially inspired by a passage in philosopher William Desmond's work, Philosophy and Its Others, in which he describes the virtues of a healthy nostalgia for the mindfulness of festive being (an ancient religious attitude). There he did not explicitly mention tradition, but he opposed this virtuous nostalgia - the memory of a fullness of being incarnated in a past now gone - to the attitude of certain "avant-garde intellectuals," for whom the nostalgic philosopher is one not to be taken seriously. Desmond makes a metaphysical case for the seriousness of true nostalgia, from which I concluded that tradition is not merely monotony, and not merely a return to the past; rather, it is the perpetuation in time of something that in itself transcends the categories of time. 

Another author, whom I have mentioned in connection to symbolism, is the Catholic "traditionalist" Jean Borella - whom I am coming to consider the philosophical defender par excellence of the ideas of symbol and tradition (not to mention the idea of true Christian gnosis, of which I shall have something to say some day). As far as I can tell, there is much affinity between the thoughts of Borella and Desmond, though Borella is the more explicit defender of tradition. In his own book, The Sense of the Supernatural, Borella includes a chapter on "Spirit and Resistance," in which he puts forward a remarkable defense of the notion of tradition (and even, in a sense, "traditionalism"), with a properly philosophical rigor - while also maintaining a balanced and insightful criticism of the abuses of "traditionalism" that one does in fact find in the modern Catholic Church. (A version of this essay can be found here, in French - though Google Translate actually renders it quite intelligible.)

Borella argues that true tradition is rooted in the resistance of spirit in the realm of culture - in a manner analogous to, though distinct from, the resistance of form in the realm of nature. Form and spirit are the principles of nature and culture which are resistant to change - not that therefore change does not take place, but that it is limited and checked by the influence of form or spirit. In nature, form is the abiding permanence of things, whereas matter is the indeterminate and fluctuating condition in which form makes itself manifest. Form manifests itself in a variety of ways - so it allows itself to appear in change and variety; but this variety is in turn resisted enough by form to be unified by it, and thus made intelligible. Likewise, in the realm of culture, it is spirit - e.g. ideas, themes, intentions, meanings, etc. - which resists the change and fluctuation of forms which it is able to assume by the mediation of human free will. Thus, political, ritual, and artistic forms, etc., are the many determinations of the spirit, by which it expresses its unity and eternity in a variety of ways. Change in culture is unified and limited - resisted - by the original spirit of which cultural forms are the external manifestations.

Although we speak of the spirit as if it were a resisting agent, Borella is quick to clarify that, in the realm of culture, this resistance is in fact almost entirely dependent upon human free will: the maintenance of spirit throughout the successive actualization of its various possibilities is only due to a human attitude of fidelity to the spirit in the first place, a fidelity which every person - and indeed, a whole society - may either choose or reject. It is this fidelity - really nothing other than a gift of self unto the transcendent - which ensures the factual permanence of the spirit in its particular cultural instantiations. Accordingly, precisely in virtue of man's metaphysical ordination to transcendence, tradition is a moral obligation incumbent upon the human being. 

Now, resistance to change does not immediately imply that change is something undesirable per se; rather, what is undesirable, from the primordial viewpoint of the spirit, is a change or variation that departs from the scope of expressive possibilities contained within that spirit itself, as the archetype of its possible instantiations. The spirit resists change so as to protect itself from such a departure, exercising a kind of friction and restraint upon the changing forms, so that they may not be allowed to "go too far." But as long as they remain within the scope of expressive possibilities, they are not only permitted, but indeed they are good and necessary, being so many signs or symbols of the intense richness of the spirit itself.

But when there is a movement to introduce a change that does in fact depart from the boundaries set by the spirit, a certain aggression of spiritual resistance becomes manifest, insofar as the new change is indeed metaphysically opposed to the spirit as an errant novelty. There is a certain antagonism in the very nature of the relation between the abiding original spirit, and any errant novelty which sets itself up against the spirit. Tradition is a historical thing, to be sure; one observes in history that the expression of the primordial spirit gradually takes a shape much like that of a great tree, which grows from a seedling into a magnificent and harmonious unity of parts, in continuity with itself. One observes change, development, variety - but in uniformity and continuity. Throughout the succession of variations that take place in the process of growth, there is yet a single principle, a single essence, a single form, that is "handed down" from each stage of generation to the next. The tree is unity of multiplicity, a multi-faceted and multi-branched incarnation of a single principle. Borella notes that tradition is like the tree of history. There has been change, and there is great variety, a multiplicity of vines and branches, each with its own character - yet there is a continuity, a unity of principle, a commonality of the spirit in all of its individual incarnations. A change that departs from this unity is something foreign, something that does not belong, something that does not share the same principle. Or worse, a change that effectively seeks, by revolution, to fell the great tree of history, is nothing but an act of violence towards the incarnations of transcendence. As every living nature abhors its own destruction, so does tradition abhor novelty - and so should the traditionalist, ever faithful to the transcendent spirit, abhor everything that threatens its expressive unity-in-variety.

This is the basis for Borella's critique of the liturgical novelties following the Second Vatican Council (though I would extend this critique to some of the reforms before then, as well). These novelties are not condemned merely because they are changes; there are resisted because they represent a certain degree of infidelity to the original principle, the original spirit of the liturgy, which is incarnated in the great tree of history. The novelties of the 20th century involved the attempt to cut down that tree; the historical continuity and the great accumulative unity of the liturgical tradition was threatened with extinction, as the reformers quite relentlessly applied themselves to root-and-branch reform - a revolution. It was clear to everyone at the time - younger generations today have no personal memory of it - that the changes were an utter novelty; Pope Paul VI openly admitted to the world that what once seemed untouchable and settled was now being replaced with something completely new. On the grounds of simple historical evidence, there is much to be feared, suspected, and indeed resisted in such a novelty - simply by the very nature of tradition itself. These suspicions are indeed confirmed by an examination of the content of the new liturgy, in comparison to the rich and various body of symbolic and ritual content of the traditional rites. If the ordination to transcendence is directive of human action, the jettisoning of tradition is, to state it mildly, a most regrettable loss; and resistance is even, in some form, a duty. A true sense of transcendence - a sense of the sacred - rightly mourns the loss of the tradition of the spirit, and rightly seeks to recover it. "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.  It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place." (Pope Benedict XVI.)

But there is a danger for traditionalists - a danger which one sees exemplified by many modern traditionalists. It is a danger rooted in the inherent risk bound up with the opposition of tradition and novelty. Borella calls this danger "fortress-resistance," by which the traditionalist isolates himself and locks himself away from the world, thinking that he is thereby protecting the tradition from novelty - when in fact he is engaging in "prison-resistance," locking the spirit within, preventing the tree of tradition from growing as a tree naturally does, effectively freezing the natural potential of the spirit for a rich multiplicity of expression. The temptation of "traditionalists" is to view the last incarnation of the spirit as its sole and only permissible incarnation - as if the last stage, before revolution, were itself what constituted tradition. Borella insightfully observes that this makes a corpse out of the tree of history - not a tradition, which is a dynamic, growing, and organic being. Thus, he asks rhetorically: "Is the true monarchy that of Louis XIV or St Louis; the true eucharistic liturgy that of 1962, St Ambrose or St Hippolytus?" In other words, tradition as such cannot be identified with any one of the concrete forms which it assumes at any particular point in history; thus, for example, to freeze the development of the liturgy in the books of 1962, as took place within "traditionalist" circles after the Second Vatican Council, is not tradition, but paranoia. A true traditionalism rather remains open to the ways in which the spirit may naturally continue to express itself in new ways, ever in continuity with itself. Certainly, there is sometimes necessity for a prudential pause in the motion of reform and development - one could argue that such a pause rightly took place by the directive of Pope Pius V, in his promulgation of the Tridentine missal; but certain brands of "traditionalism" have wrongly exalted this prudence to the status of a dogma or a principle. (See this post, at my former blog.)

I think it is important for modern Catholics - traditionalists and progressives alike - to recover a philosophical grounding for traditionalism. Without such a grounding, novelty and paranoia are the easiest of temptations. 

A Metaphysics of Tradition

The Elevation of the Host, by Jean Béraud

Change would mean chaos and unintelligibility if there were no unity and sameness underlying it all - or transcending it all. In the cosmic hierarchy, creatures are more or less spiritual, and thus more or less do they desire and need the stability and changelessness that is beyond mere matter and contingency. The more enmeshed in matter things are, the more, likewise, they are enmeshed in change; but they participate in sameness to the degree that spirit holds its influence over them. The more spiritual things are, and the more do they approach the angelic, the more are they able to escape from change - or rather, the more they are able to bestow a character of sameness and the unchanging upon change itself. Creatures desire eternity; and all the more do creatures of intellect desire eternity. They tend towards a mode of activity that is one, simple - not merely static and inert, but dynamic in a way that is infinitely concentrated in a single unending moment. Divine activity is motionless in a sense - but also the archetype of motion inasmuch as it not merely a lack, but the fullness of everything that motion is, present all at once without succession, as if infinite space were to be contained in a single partless point. 

Creatures cannot, of course, reach the point; they merely tend towards it. Tending towards the changelessness of eternity, and in that measure tending to escape from change, they nonetheless cannot escape change and contingency in any absolute sense. Their lot is participation; it is given them, therefore, to participate as secondary causes in the eternal causality of perfect, changeless activity, in bestowing determination upon the indeterminate, unity upon the various, even sameness upon that which moves and changes. The temporal is elevated by such activity to a greater participation by likeness to eternity itself.

Ascending the scale of beings, creatures are more and more creatures of habit. At the bottom of the scale, there is no habit: there is either inertia or a motion that is induced by purely exterior causes, and thus the possibility of chance. Creatures are more and more capable of self-motion - always capable of motion, but this motion is more and more from within, as one ascends the ladder of beings. The more interior is the source of motion, the more does the motion itself tend away from mere chance, and more towards the determination of meaning and intellect. Only in man, in whom intellect is finally reached, does this tendency towards habit actually terminate in what is proper habitual, and thus either virtuous or vicious. In man, there is a proper participation in intelligibility; human activity - change or self-motion - is naturally and properly capable of a spiritual unity. This is not inborn in man, necessarily, though spirit is itself inborn in man; there is unitive potential from the beginning. But there must necessarily be progress in virtue, growth, training, which takes time. Man begins dispersed and easily induced to motion by external stimulants; the spiritual life is a process of gathering himself together into a unity, bringing all his variations under one ratio, so to speak - inducing an order amidst all his activities to his final end. The end itself is always best reflected by a unity of life-activity.

The modern exaltation of progress overlooks the tendency to sameness or unity. Modernistic progress is merely a cult of novelty: we progress only because what is old belongs to yesterday, and it has no bearing whatsoever on today, except for the merely curious or the merely nostalgic. One thing is necessary: revolution always, changing the world. On the individual level, this takes the form of disdain for virtue: the monotony of a life lived with a single, unified, and determinate purpose besides oneself. Hedonism produces a constant thirst for the novelty of bizarre experiences. Of course, this only results in making the hedonist into a lesser kind of being, static and inert like a stone, utterly passive and induced to motion only by things outside himself. He is in this way far from free - a slave. On the cultural level, it takes the form of disdain for tradition, which is likewise considered monotonous and also primitive. The traditional man has condemned himself, says the modernist, to an age that could belong only to men who had not evolved. Evolution produces ever new desires and needs for each era of history; we must be progressive, and seek no more than to meet these new desires and needs as they appear. There is no sameness even of human desire; there are no timeless values. 

Traditionalism, on the contrary, is precisely the affirmation of timeless values, which transcend historical evolution, but also transform it. True traditionalism does not neglect the motion of history - as might a blind and indiscriminate conservatism, which desires no more than a return to the past. Traditionalism upholds the changeless unity of meaning which is incarnated in changing, moving things, such that the latter begin to move according to an order, a rule, indeed a form, for the sake of an end. Traditionalism affirms the inexhaustible applicability of timeless values, of the rich intelligible meanings which are directly accessible only to the spirit, and indirectly to those things governed by the spirit. The apprehension of the value of such timeless and spiritual things is what induces in the traditionalist a desire for constancy of activity. Tradition is the only way to secure true fidelity in time to what is in itself timeless, a reflection of eternity. It is no wonder that it is also the traditionalists who, in opposition to progressive hedonism, affirm the value of human virtue, the constancy of individual human behavior ordered to a final good. Tradition is to the human race as virtue is to the human individual. 

The nostalgia of the traditionalist differs, accordingly, from that of the mere sentimentalist. There are times when the present moment fails to offer a view of timeless things, because whatever circumstances one might find oneself in might not adequately appear as incarnations of meaning. Moments of chaos are moments of meaninglessness; there is a hollow emptiness induced by a human failure to actualize the intelligible, the universal, the timeless, within the particular. Indeed, oftentimes one finds oneself face to face, not merely with a failure of meaning, but a straightforward rejection of meaning - a rejection of truth. In such moments, a fuller encounter with timeless truth cannot be simply conjured up from within; it is perhaps remembered, from a time past when things were different. But the encounter is not relived unless there is a renewal of things lost - which does, perhaps, have the appearance of a return to the past; but to see only this is to be superficial. Traditionalism does not blindly return to the past; it merely affirms that certain things - and not all things -  once held meaningful and, indeed, sacred, retain their relevance even in the present. Things of meaning - symbolism, ritual, art, music, ideas, etc. - do not lose their meaning with every new era. Such things are the instantiations, incarnations, of truth; not mere conventions. Even this latter category becomes difficult to define; not all conventions are merely that. If there is an element of humanity in convention, there may also be an element of spirituality, and thus of timelessness. Traditionalism essentially looks for this quality; it does not look merely for the past. The traditional mind recognizes that, lacking a fulfillment of truth in the present moment, it is not at home; it can only be at home with truth. Hence, the nostalgia of the traditionalist.

True traditionalism, understood in this way, is a certain metaphysical attunement of the soul to reality, a sense of reverence for permanent things. To the traditionalist, changing and contingent things are capable of a unity and order, even a sameness and determinacy, which is bestowed upon them by intellect - by human intellect, yes, but especially by an intellect that is receptive to the promptings of divine illumination. Everything is participation; and human activity, at its best, is a more perfect participation of God - and thus it is even capable, as an instrument of God, of bestowing a more perfect participation of God upon things beneath it - or after it. Tradition itself is fundamentally the reception and bestowal of the Divine. This is the vertical tradition that is necessary in order to uphold the horizontal march of human time, in continuity with itself. One generation receives something of value from a previous generation, and in turn passes it on to subsequent generations, because all recognize the value itself as having been received from a source which transcends time itself. This fidelity to the concretion of value in time is the sign and effect of fidelity to the universal value that is timeless.

Notes on Aristotle and Plato: Objections to the Forms

The following is a record of a few notes that I have taken, for a research project that I am working on. It is not as immediately interesting as other things I have thought about recently (e.g. metaphysics of symbols), but it is in fact quite relevant to them in the long run. Central to the question of symbolism is the tension and interplay between the transcendence and immanence of the intelligible. In symbolic knowledge, one must, so to speak, penetrate to the interior of things in order to get at what lies, indeed, beyond them. The tension of transcendence and immanence is central to the dialectic between Plato and Aristotle.

My current research project is to examine Aristotle's objections to the Forms of Plato, specifically those objections in which he questions the causal and explanatory utility of the Forms. Aristotle is observing that Plato’s Forms seem to be ambiguously straddling the line between separate and intrinsic causes, i.e. between 1) efficient/final causes on the one hand, and 2) immanent formal causes on the other hand. With respect to 1) separate/extrinsic causes (i.e. efficient and final), the Forms fall short in virtue of lacking a) an explanation of the beginning of motion, and b) an explanation of the why or that-for-the-sake-of-which of things; and it is unclear how the character of paradigm, or the description of participation, fits with either of these requirements. With respect to 2) immanent formal causes, the Forms are precisely not immanent – at least as Aristotle understands them; and thus they do not fulfill the requirement of formal causality, which is to be an immanent essence.  These objections are summarized in Metaphysics A.9, 991a8-991b9. I present the text in bold, divided in the manner proposed by Dorothy Frede (in an article from the Symposium Aristotelicum on Book A), following more or less the division of Sir W. David Ross (the great Oxonian translator and editor of Aristotle's works), with a bit of my own commentary on each paragraph. 

[991a][8]Above all we might examine the question what on earth the Forms contribute to sensible things, whether eternal or subject to generation and decay; for they are not the cause of any motion or change in them. Again, they are no help towards the knowledge of other things (for they are not the substance of things, otherwise they would be in things), nor to their existence, since they are not present in the things which partake of them. If they were, it might perhaps seem that they are causes, in the sense in which the admixture of white causes a thing to be white; but this theory, which was first stated by Anaxagoras and later by Eudoxus and others, is very readily refutable, for it is easy to adduce plenty of impossibilities against such a view. 

1. Throughout his whole corpus, Aristotle is very concerned about motion; for this reason, he may be said to have reestablished the dignity of natural philosophy after Plato rejected the rather naive attempts of the pre-Socratics. Though he shares with Plato a certain critical attitude towards the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, Aristotle is evidently even more critical (at least in the amount of attention he pays) towards Plato himself, whose doctrine he finds to be the most competitive (and thus the most promising) rival to his own system - since, indeed, they share the most in common; yet he regards Plato as having fallen short in very important ways. Whether Aristotle is correct in this judgment remains to be seen (in fact, determining whether this is so is largely the aim of my current research). In any case, one way in which Plato falls short, in Aristotle's mind, is precisely that he failed to account for the reality of motion as such, which is as much an aspect of the real world as are those things which are permanent and unchangeable. Plato sought, not to explain motion, but to escape from it, as it were. The Forms are so abstract that they do not account for motion as such - either the eternal motions of the spheres, or the generative/corruptive motion of the sublunary world. In other words, the theory of Forms does not adequately include any notion of efficient or agent causality. 

The first question that comes to mind: what about the Demiurge of the Timaeus? Can this be considered as a cause of motion - specifically of generation? Is there enough evidence in that text for such an interpretation?

2. The Forms are posited by Plato to account, not for motion as such, but for the essences of things. Essence, for both Plato and Aristotle (inasmuch as this notion is common to both of them), is a principle of both the being and the knowledge of things. Aristotle points out that the separation of the Forms cannot allow them to function in precisely the way that Plato intended: as causes of either being or knowledge - unless this were in the manner of a mixture, as Anaxagoras and Eudoxus taught. But this latter has already been refuted by Aristotle, and it is not quite the doctrine of Plato to begin with. So it seems there is no way to maintain that the Forms, if they are separate, can succeed at truly accounting for the being and the intelligibility of the world. 

It seems that Aristotle does not attend to the many texts throughout the dialogues where Plato seems to admit of a distinction between transcendent and immanent forms. The texts in which he speaks of immanent forms are indeed too many to list here, although a fairly comprehensive list has indeed been compiled by Ross, and many texts have been noted by other authors.  For example, in the Phaedo at 102d, Plato speaks of both separation and immanence:  "I think it is evident not only that greatness itself will never be great and also small, but that the greatness in us will never admit the small or allow itself to be exceeded." It is also notable that Plato anticipates, in a certain form, the very objection which Aristotle makes here, in the Parmenides 134d-e, where Parmenides puts to Socrates the objection that if the Forms are separated from this world, it would follow that we could have no communion with that realm - and, even more impiously (and Aristotle doesn't mention this!) the gods themselves would have no knowledge of our world! (This reminds me very much of the Thomistic doctrines of divine and angelic knowledge of the world.) Plato is thus acutely aware of the tension in his theory. Does he have a solution, either explicitly or implicitly?

Aristotle goes on:

Again, other things are not [20] in any accepted sense derived from the Forms. To say that the Forms are patterns, and that other things participate in them, is to use empty phrases and poetical metaphors; for what is it that fashions things on the model of the Ideas. Besides, anything may both be and become like something else without being imitated from it; thus a man may become just like Socrates whether Socrates exists or not, and even if Socrates were eternal, clearly the case would be the same. Also there will be several "patterns," and hence Forms, of the same thing; e.g. "animal" and "two-footed" will be patterns of "man," and so too will the Idea of Man. Further, the Forms will be patterns not only of sensible things but of themselves (e.g. genus in the sense of genus of species), and thus the same thing will be both pattern and copy.  

1. The first sentence of this paragraph refers, most likely, to Aristotle's own enumeration of the six senses of "from" (ἔκ) in Δ.24, 1023a26-1023b12. Those six senses are a) from matter, b) from a moving (efficient-agent) cause, c) from matter and/or form, 4) from the parts of (immanent) form, 5) from parts of an origin or principle, or 6) “from before” as in temporal succession. Aristotle's objection is that none of these six senses of "from" corresponds to the relation of particulars to their Forms, in Plato. It is a somewhat strange objection, as Plato does not tend to use the word ἔκ ("from") in describing this relation. In any case, I wonder if there might be a possible (it is not certain) avenue for reconciliation in sense c), since there Aristotle likens form to the final cause of generation: "for the shape [or form-μορφή] is an end, and that is a complete thing which has attained its end." But there is no clear solution here, as yet; and the question of final cause in Plato is itself a complex one. 

2. Aristotle's objection to the term "participation" is famous for its ridiculing tone. Earlier, in chapter 6, Aristotle explained that this term was merely as another word for "imitation," being equally inadequate to describe the kind of causality possessed by the Forms. "With regard to the "participation," it was only the term that he changed; for whereas the Pythagoreans say that things exist by imitation of numbers, Plato says that they exist by participation—merely a change of term. As to what this "participation" or "imitation" may be, they left this an open question." (A.6, 987b10-13). If participation is indeed merely imitation, Aristotle nonetheless insists that there must be some sort of efficient cause which brings into being those things which are imitations of the Forms. Again, it is surprising that he does not seem to recognize the Demiurge of Timaeus as such a cause - perhaps this should be the next text to consult carefully.

3. Perhaps Aristotle does not explicitly mention the Demiurge because he still cannot see how, even had Plato posited such an efficient cause, the Forms would indeed be necessary; for it is not necessary that a model exist in order that something come into being which is like the original model. Socrates could come into being, by the power of an agent cause, even had there not been an original and "eternal" Socrates. Aristotle seems to be here taking Forms and particulars to be synonymous kinds of beings, but with Forms possessing the added attributes of "eternal" or "intelligible," as if the Forms were merely intelligible and eternal duplications of the visible world. Indeed, Aristotle makes this precise accusation at the very beginning of chapter 9, and the famous "Third Man" argument - also acknowledged by Plato in the Parmenides - essentially hinges on this presupposition of synonymy. But it seems that this is not a necessary interpretation of the Platonic doctrine (as we have learned from Syrianus). This could be argued on the basis of Plato's texts, or even simply on the basis of the inner logic of Plato's Forms, and the functions which they fulfill as paradigms or standards. A measurement is not predicated of the thing measured in the same way that it is predicated of the standard of measurement itself; the former predication signifies a comparison to the standard, while the latter simply indicates that the standard contains that measure in itself in a primordial way. (This is argued very clearly by R.E. Allen in an article in The Philosophical Review, in 1960.) However, this being granted, it could still be asked how, as intelligible paradigms or standards, the Forms of Plato would fit within Aristotle's own fourfold framework of causes, if at all. 

4. Aristotle notes next that there would have to be many Forms of one particular, if they are taken to be paradigms or patterns; for many things can be observed and said about any given particular, which belongs not only to its proper species but also to various tiers of higher species-genera. There will have to be a hierarchy of Forms, those more universal containing or informing those more particular. I must admit that it is not quite clear to me how Aristotle sees this as a problem; although nor is it quite clear to me how Plato himself conceives of Forms of greater or lesser universality in relation to each other, as paradigmatic causes of a single particular. Certainly he does have a notion of different degrees of universality; but I will have read more carefully dialogues such as the Sophist, the Philebus, and the Statesman, in which, I am given to understand, Plato at least touches upon this problem. I am reminded again, however - though this is somewhat extraneous to my project - of the later doctrine of the angels and angelic knowledge, as put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas. The knowledge of the angels is by way of progressively greater universal species, which are unlike the intelligible species of the human intellect (according to Aristotelian epistemology) in being more real and more determinate than the things know by way of them. There is almost, in the doctrine of angelic hierarchy approaching the simplicity of God, a doctrine very closely analogous to the later polytheistic metaphysics of the Neoplatonists, though not without significant modifications. 

[991b][1] Further, it would seem impossible that the substance and the thing of which it is the substance exist in separation; hence how can the Ideas, if they are the substances of things, exist in separation from them? It is stated in the Phaedo that the Forms are the causes both of existence and of generation. Yet, assuming that the Forms exist, still the things which participate in them are not generated unless there is something to impart motion; while many other things are generated (e.g. house, ring) of which we hold that there are no Forms. Thus it is clearly possible that all other things may both exist and be generated for the same causes as the things just mentioned.

The first part of this paragraph is more or less repeated from earlier: how can the Forms ("Ideas" is probably the safer translation) exist separately from things if, indeed, they are meant to explain substances as formal causes of them? Moreover, the Forms are insufficient to account for both existence and motion, because even assuming they exist as the real paradigms or exemplars of things which come into being, nonetheless they cannot themselves bring such things into being; there must be some other cause of motion. Then Aristotle adds a third point, for contrast: not only are the Forms insufficient for motion; but they are also not even needed in some cases (according to conventional Platonism), e.g. for objects of art. The Forms thus seem not only insufficient but possibly superfluous. 

I will probably not focus too much on the question of artefacts - although that is something  fairly controversial within Platonic discourse. Rather, I would like to focus once more on the question of the moving cause. I wonder whether the Demiurge of Timaeus is not such a cause. I also wonder, however - especially since Aristotle refers here to the Phaedo - whether we should not take into consideration Socrates' discussion of Anaxagoras, when he describes the "voyages" of his intellectual journey (in this marvelous passage). There, Socrates describes how, being frustrated with the explanations of the natural philosophers, he initially hoped to find a true account of causality in Anaxagoras, who proposed Mind as the true cause of all things. (97c-99d) Socrates expected an explanation according to which Mind dis-posed and caused all things according to true conceptions of the good of all things, both particularly and universally. Alas, Anaxagoras did not fulfill Socrates' expectations; but I wonder if it is possible to take this passage as indicative of Plato's own thought: are Mind and the Good a sort of causal framework within which we should understand the Forms? Is the Mind anything other than the Demiurge? Cannot the Good be understood as the final cause, in order to which all things are arranged in harmony and hierarchy? Plato does not settle this definitively, but the mere fact that he expects Anaxagoras to give such an explanation indicates it is generally his own thought on the subject. The discussion of Mind and the Good suggests, perhaps, a new understanding of efficient and final causality. Things are caused not simply by the conditions in which they find themselves – these are like “secondary” or “instrumental” causes – but above all by the prior intelligible causes named as Mind and the Good. Things are caused more principally by causes of a higher order than by causes of their own "horizontal" order. 

Interestingly, in this respect, Aristotle makes a similar objection to Plato’s theory of Forms to that which Plato himself directed towards Anaxagoras: an accusation of failure to really account for the true cause by which Intellect or Mind (νοῦς) operates. Aristotle makes this objection explicit at the end of chapter 9, in the midst of refuting the association of Forms with numbers. There his words are quite enlightening, aiming straight for what he perceives as the core weakness of Plato's doctrine: its neglect of efficient and final causality, and its failure to even account for essence by way of formal causality. (Note that in this text, Aristotle describes the Platonists as "we," thereby counting himself among them despite his reservations.) My brief comments in [brackets]:

In general, although Wisdom is concerned with the cause of visible things, we [the Platonists] have ignored this question (for we have no account to give of the cause from which change arises [namely the agent or efficient cause, as stated above]), and in the belief that we are accounting for their substance we assert the existence of other substances [the separation mentioned above, which prevents Forms from being the essences of things]; but as to how the latter are the substances of the former, our explanation is worthless—for "participation," as we have said before, means nothing. And as for that which we can see to be the cause in the sciences, and through which all mind and all nature works—this cause which we hold to be one of the first principles [here he is without doubt referring to the final cause, the end or goal, and the cause of all  causes]—the Forms have not the slightest bearing upon it either.

Both objections – Aristotle to Plato, and Plato to Anaxagoras – hinge around the notions of Mind and the Good, this latter under the explicit notion of final cause in Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle share the same concern: to resolve the being and becoming of things back to the causality of Mind and the Good. But they differ – or Aristotle supposes that they differ – in how they understand Mind and the Good to be causes. 

The sum of Aristotle's entire objection to Plato's doctrine might be found in this paragraph. It may be summarized thus: the Platonic Forms fit nowhere within the only causal framework of reality which Aristotle considers admissible. Earlier, in chapter 7, in the midst of recounting the various early attempts at discovering the causes, Aristotle likewise claimed that "[Plato] only employed two causes: that of the essence, and the material cause; for the Forms are the cause of the essence in everything else, and the One is the cause of it in the Forms." (A.7, 988a8-11.) Even this statement, Aristotle finds it necessary to qualify: "As for the essence or essential nature, nobody has definitely introduced it; but the inventors of the Forms express it most nearly." (988a30-988b.) We have already seen Aristotle claim that Plato neglected the moving cause, i.e. agent or efficient cause. His accusation that Plato neglects also the final cause - indeed, that the Forms have not the slightest bearing upon it - is crucial, as Aristotle regards final cause to be the first of all causes. In book 7, Aristotle had indeed admitted that Plato had perhaps seen something of the final cause, but not as such; the Good was admitted to be a cause, yet not as Good, but only accidentally to that which is most of all Form, namely the One - much as the other pre-Socratics (Anaxagoras and Empedocles) made it accidental to their notions of efficient cause. In none of them was the Good recognized under its own proper ratio, as final cause. I am curious which texts Aristotle is referring to here, and whether, even in those cases, this is an absolutely necessary interpretation - at least whether the notion of final causality is not even coherent with the notion of the Good, as Plato presents it. Aristotle's own philosophy is very congenial to a notion of the Good as something correlative to Mind: the First Cause is a cause as something intelligible and desirable. Intelligence operates with purpose - for the sake of something. This seems little different from the understanding which Plato briefly proposes in the Phaedo, in recounting the expectation of Socrates towards Anaxagoras.

...

What to make of all of this? My suspicion is that there isn't a single straightforward answer to the question of whether Plato and Aristotle are in harmony. But there are complex indications of possible harmony in certain respects, and Plato may have more to offer than Aristotle gives him credit for. In this dialectic, both the Platonist mind and the Aristotelian mind shall have to expand themselves somewhat, looking towards each other for new balance and complementarity, without necessarily changing the substance of their thought.