Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 13:32:19 +0200
Subject: Re: "metaphysical and not phenomenology"?


Cologne 12-Aug-2002

Anthony Crifasi schrieb  Mon, 12 Aug 2002 06:30:19 +0000:

> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> > > Let's say, hypothetically, Aristotle saw the first mover as an ontic
> > > substance, and he wanted to prove that this ontic substance must be
> > > without matter. One of the ways to do this (if not the ONLY way) is
> > > to argue precisely that material being per se entails something that
> > > contradicts what being a first cause entails. Even if he brings in
> > > those other concepts too, like dynamis and the being of movement, he
> > > can still argue that these entail something that contradicts what
> > > being a first cause entails, and thereby conclude that the first
> > > cause as an ontic substance must be without dynamis or movement. So
> > > my point is that all this would be demonstrative procedure even if
> > > he saw the first cause as an ontic substance, so I do not see why
> > > this procedure is evidence that Aristotle cannot be concluding
> > > something ontic here.
> >
> >Maybe I'm being thick here, but aren't you meaning by "ontic
> >substance" a being?
>
> AC: But "a being" in the specific sense which you denied Aristotle was talking
>
> about, when you kept saying that he wasn't concluding to any "substance".

I was saying that? You are naive. I was pointing out, among other things, that
"substance" is a bad, misleading rendering of _ousia_.

> AC: In
> other words, he would be concluding to the existence of a specific
> substance, and that two of the characteristics of this substance is that it
> is absolutely changeless and immaterial. My point is that the way you casted
> Aristotle's argument (arguing from what is entailed in certain ontological
> concepts) is not evidence that Aristotle's enterprise here is non-ontic,

Now you're being thick to maintain that an ontological investigation has or
should have nothing to do with beings!

>
> AC: because he would still argue precisely the same way even if
> (hypothetically)
> he did consider the immovable ousia to be a specific immovable substance.

Here you go with your hypothetical constructions again. You can get anywhere you
want to go with such constructions, but not to the phenomena.

> AC: In
> other words, why must the first cause as a specific substance be without
> motion? Because what is entailed per se in being movable contradicts
> something that is entailed in being a first cause.

That's the wrong way round, since the point of the investigation is a
consideration of whether there is such a being as a first cause. And this
involves seeing clearly the phenomenon of movement as Aristotle has
painstakingly analyzed it in the Physics.

> Therefore, the first
> cause must be a specific substance which is absolutely changeless. Again,
> why must the first cause as a specific substance be immaterial? Because what
> is entailed in materiality itself contradicts something that is entailed in
> being a first cause. Therefore, the first cause must be a specific
> immaterial substance. That is simply the old traditional reading of
> Aristotle, and it employs precisely the procedure which you gave as evidence
> against that reading.

So by hypothesis you have re-constructed the old traditional reading of
Aristotle. So what? That's not what I have been saying.

Your sophistic court-room subtlety is sometimes amazing. Not to say inane.
I point to the phenomenon of being, with Heidegger's help, and your eyes turn
blind like a statue's every time. Then you withdraw to some concocted logic, as
if arguments were the final ground.

You don't even get the point why "substance" is an inadequate translation.

Michael
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