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Aristotle's Cross Examination of Nature (aka the Four Causes), Master Metaphor #2

1/27/2016

3 Comments

 
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Aristotle has dome some particularly helpful work on how to sort out what a thing is, or perhaps, why a thing is. Aristotle would teach us to ask four questions about a thing: 
  1. Out of what has this type of thing come? (The Material Cause)
  2. What type of thing is it? (The Formal Cause)
  3. By means of what is it the type of thing it is? (The Efficient Cause)
  4. For the sake of what is it the type of thing what it is? (Final Cause)
To understand the four causes is to understand a major part of the thinking of the Western World for centuries. The four causes are lurking behind some many things, including Luther's works and the Lutheran Fathers, and even, as Dr. Schulz suspects, St. Paul himself. 

Here is the audio of the interview with me and Dr. Schulz, as well as the text from Aristotle: 

Here are Dr. Schulz's suggestions for approaching this metaphor: 

​1. Aristotle’s Cross Examination of Nature
a) Read Aristotle’s Physics, Section 3 on causes. Aristotle’s text is a must-read! Read it twice, please. The Loeb edition has facing pages of Greek and English. Online you will find an English text with Greek options at http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-greece/aristotle/physics.asp 

b) A diagram for the so-called Four Causes can be seen at the beginning of this post.

c) Now, Aristotle’s term, the Greek term translated “cause” is misleading to us in modernity. For an example of the wild concepts, illustrations and odd un-Aristotelian notions that stem from this misunderstanding, have a look at the Wikipedia article on the four causes (but not until we’ve looked at Aristotle’s Greek first! (Curmudgeonly philosophy professor’s observation: Fruitful and evocative Greek terms inevitably get reductive-ized when rendered in Latin, horribile di!)

d) Aristotle’s term is in fact aitia, which I render as “cross examination”. Here is support for my rendering from Liddell and Scott.

αἴτιος αἰτέω 
I.to blame, blameworthy, culpable, Il., etc.: comp., αἰτιώτερος more culpable, Thuc.; Sup., τοὺς αἰτιωτάτους the most guilty, Hdt.; τινος for a thing, id=Hdt.
2.as Subst., αἴτιος, ὁ, the accused, culprit, Lat. reus, Aesch., etc.; οἱ αἴτιοι τοῦ πατρός they who have sinned against my father, id=Aesch.:—c. gen. rei, οἱ αἴτ. τοῦ φόνου those guilty of murder, id=Aesch.
II.being the cause, responsible for, c. gen. rei, Hdt., etc.; c. inf., Soph.: Sup., αἰτιώτατος ναυμαχῆσαι mainly instrumental in causing the seafight, Thuc.
2.αἴτιον, τό, a cause, Plat., etc.
Liddell and Scott. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1889. 
accessed Jan 2015 at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0058%3Aentry%3Dai%29%2Ftios

Taking aitia as a cross-examining we see that Aristotle is in effect insisting on a more complete account of things than we usually settle for.

Why makes this thing the type of thing it is? (Aristotle’s Cross-Examination)
 
Q1. Out of what has this type of thing come?

Via Latin the answer obtained by identifying: The Material Cause:

The material cause points to "that from which, as a constituent, an object comes into being." (For instance, the bronze of a statue.)

Q2. What type of thing is it?
    
Via Latin the answer obtained by identifying: The Formal Cause:

The formal cause embodies the essential nature (all essential attributes) and represents the model or archetype of the outcome; conceptually it is expressed in the definition (logos). (It is the idea of the statue as present in artist's head.)

Q3. By means of what is it the type of thing it is?
    
Via Latin the answer obtained by identifying: The Efficient Cause:

The efficient cause is "the source of the change or rest"; it is the moving cause: "what makes of what is made and what changes of what is changed" (the sculptor who makes the statue).

Q4. For the sake of what is it the type of thing what it is?

Via Latin the answer obtained by identifying: The Final Cause:

The final cause states "that for the sake of which" a thing is the type of thing it is, or why a thing is done, or, in other words, it explicates something's end in terms of its species or class or type of thing that it is (the final shape or the effect on the audience which admires the statue).

Note: Although Aristotle himself holds all these four causes responsible for any real change and movement (aitia in Greek are those things that are "guilty" or responsible for something), they are rather demarcation points of change as revealed in our language […] In difference to the modern concept of causation, which always implies a sequence of two events, Aristotle envisions causation as a single event of double actualization … [that we can think of us a continuation of a thing according to its kind although he uses a scheme of recognizing a things potential to be what that kind of thing is, based on that kind of thing’s complete story, so to speak. GPS]

Heavily adapted from http://www.willamette.edu/~sbasu/poli212/AristotleonCause.htm 

e) By the way, Aristotle’s term for final cause or the cross-examination question, “What is the thing for?” is telos. While Kittel says that the New testament usage of telos has nothing in common with Greek philosophy (see the Kittel quote below) – and although I often try to re-think this when teaching Aristotle and especially when preaching John 19:30 – I think that those of us who are called to preach the Word may do a better job of preaching that pluperfect word from our suffering Savior, “It is finished!” with Aristotle as a footnote to the word telos.

τέλος. 
There are in the NT no statements about the telos of men which stand in formal analogy to Greek sayings (→ 50, 3 ff.). The NT puts the matter differently and sayings which are teleological in content do not set man in the centre, → II, 428, 12 ff.: II, 327, 16 ff.
[…] 
Fn: R. 6:21 f. can hardly have been understood thus by the author (→ 55, 5 ff.) or the readers or hearers, esp. as the sayings are always negative apart from R. 6:22, and could only be taken as definitions of telos in an ironically paradoxical sense.
Kittel, G., Bromiley, G. W., & Friedrich, G. (Eds.). (1964–). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (electronic ed., Vol. 8, p. 54). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

f) For a more detailed consideration of the traditional four-question examination of things – four dimensions of the thing’s story, if you will – please consider S. Marc Cohen’s class outline The Four Causes at http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/4causes.htm 

g) Compare and contrast what the apostle Paul says of Jesus in regard to the entire cosmos or universe (“all things visible and invisible) in Colossians 1:15-2:3. Does it sound like the apostle is both thinking in an Aristotelian manner about causes or aitiai while at the same  time demonstrating a philosophy kata Christon or based on Christ Himself (see Col 2:2:8-15)? 

h) A crucial area for our understanding of Aristotle’s four causes or aitiai is in regard to his definition of the human being (that is, our kind of being) in his Politics, Book 1 as zoon logon echon. Aristotle’s four-question thinking about what kind of thing a particular member a species follows from this Four Causes cross-examination. This is foundational for natural law theory in ethics and is something that Martin Luther takes for granted (and then surpasses) with his theological understanding of the human being’s formal and final causes in his 1536 Disputation Concerning Man. These theses may be found here.

Gregory P. Schulz, all intellectual rights reserved, January 2016
There have been many times in my reading of theology that I've thought, "I need to understand Aristotle's Four Causes!" So many Christian theologians assume these four causes that a basic understanding of them is particularly helpful, and the conversation with Dr. Schulz gave me that basic understanding. 

Aristotle's Cross Examination of Nature, as Dr. Schulz reminds us, is a better way to get at what a thing is. Our modern addiction to Scientism tempts us only to ask about the Material Cause. Aristotle reminds us, "There's more to know about a thing!" And Dr. Schulz also helpfully reminds us that this is profoundly helpful when we consider ethics, especially bio-ethics and questions about our humanity, like abortion. 

But Aristotle, like Plato, falls short, especially when he applies his cross-examination to humanity. There is more to say about humanity than reason can say. Luther says this in his disputation on man: 
  1. 13. For philosophy does not know the efficient cause for certain, nor likewise the final cause,
  2. 14. Because it posits no other final cause than the peace of this life, and does not know that the efficient cause is God the creator.
  3. 15. Indeed, concerning the formal cause, which they call soul, there is not and never will be agreement among the philosophers.
  4. 16. For so far as Aristotle defines it as first driving force of the body, which has the power to live, he too wished to deceive readers and hearers.
Philosophy, especially Aristotle, helps us ask the right questions, but it is Christ, His incarnation, His death and resurrection, that gives us the answer, the truth of humanity. Man is created in God's image. And man is forgiven by Christ, justified man! Astonishing. 
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Plato's Cave, Master Metaphor # 1

1/18/2016

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Imagine being chained to a wall of a cave. Your head is shackled so that you can only look to the back of the cave where shadows cast by a fire illuminate the wall. This is what you know, it is all you know. But then you are loose. You turn around and see the fire and the things making the shadows. You leave the cave and are blinded by the light of the sun. Your eyes adjust and at last you can see the things around you and the sun itself. Now, with this new understanding of reality, your return to tell your fellow prisioners what is true. 

This is the metaphor of Plato's cave. 

Here is the text to read: 
Dr. Schulz suggests the following engagement with Plato's Cave Metaphor: 
  1. Read Plato’s Cave from Book 7 of his famous Republic. It will work to google “Plato’s Cave in Republic text”. I recommend either Thomas Sheehan’s translation or Robin Waterfield’s. Plato’s text is a must-read! Read it twice, please.
 
  1. Consider how Plato has pre-explained what he is up to with The Cave in his earlier parables of The Sun and the Line by mapping the following diagram of those two parables onto the narrative of The Cave. Notice that there are four types of progressively better types of thinking (according to Plato) by which we can think of progressively more enduring objects until we reach The Good by thinking more and more abstractly.

  1. Email a like-minded friend this hand-out and then talk or text to figure out how Plato’s Cave could be “re-baptized” to suit a biblical worldview. Hint: The Good is an idea that Plato says is “beyond being” and therefore is an eternal verity, a never-changing ultimate standard for us.
 
  1. Have a look at my chapel sermon where I recommend a major re-working of Plato’s Cave in light of Christ as God Himself incarnate. The sermon is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzEkydimmDU
 
  1. For further thought read and think through Plato’s Doctrine of Truth by the 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger at http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/WWW/Sheehan/heideggertranslationonline.html(As a bonus, this includes the Greek text of Plato’s Cave.)
 
  1. Compare and contrast what Jesus says of Himself in John 14:6 and the way He teaches us to know Him (as in Psalm 22, for a major example) with Heidegger’s use of The Cave.
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accessed January 2016 at bing.com/images
Here is our conversation about Plato's Cave:
Plato's Cave is a captivating image. The arduous and heroic trek from darkness to light, ignorance to enlightenment. 

Dr. Schulz asserts that the key point of helpfulness is Plato's fighting against post-modernism, that is the "wild and pushy relativism" that denies the existence of truth, or at least its accessibility. This is helpful, but the helpfulness of the cave metaphor fairly quickly comes up short. 

Plato was a gnostic (in fact, as Dr. Schulz identifies him in our conversation, the "patron saint of gnosticism"). Plato, therefore, overestimates the capacity of humanity to strive towards the truth. Plato has an abstract understanding of truth disconnected from the physical world. 

The Gospel is not the assent of man through reason or contemplation to some divine reality, but rather the decent of God to us and the darkness of our sin. 

I found most challenging part of our conversation to be the conflict between Relativism and Gnosticism. Gnosticism, Dr. Schulz reminded me after we recorded our discussion, still has some hope of finding the truth. It is optimistic. Relativism has abandoned even that hope. I have been in the habit of lumping gnosticism and relativism together as part of the same piece, and it will take some time for me to pull them apart. 

Plato's Cave, in the end, is most helpful as a contrast to the Gospel. the humiliation and death of God. "The Good", it turns out, does not scorch our eyes like the shining of the sun, but assaults our reason with the picture of Jesus, God and man, hanging dead on the cross. 

Lord's Blessings, 
Pr Bryan Wolfmueller
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Master Metaphors of Philosophy, An Introduction

1/18/2016

2 Comments

 


What is the "Great Conversation", and how do we engage in it? 

Philosophy is the cousin of theology. It is, or at least it should be, the pursuit of truth. I've spent some time reading and studying theology, but not much time with Philosophy at all. During a recent Doxology event I crossed paths with Rev. Dr. Gregory Schulz who, among other things, teaches Philosophy at Concordia University, Mequon, WI. In the course of the conversation he mentioned a list of "Master Metaphors of Philosophy," ten images brought to us from philosophy which, if considered and meditated on, cracked the door open to engaging in the Great Conversation of the West.

I couldn't stop thinking about that list. 

Here are the Ten "Master Metaphors." 

Greek and Medieval Metaphors   
  • Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Republic, Book 7)
  • Aristotle’s Cross Examination of Nature (Physics, Book 2, section 3)
  • Augustine’s Story of the Pears (Confessions, Book 2)
  • Aquinas’s Phoenix (On Being and Essence, Chapter 4)
Modern and Contemporary Metaphors
  • Descartes’ Evil Demon (Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation 3)
  • Berkeley’s Table (Principles of Human Knowledge, 1, 3).
  • Kant’s Ultimate Principle for Relationships (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 222)
  • Nietzsche’s Madman (The Joyful Science)
  • Wittgenstein’s Rule for When to Speak and When to Be Silent (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 7)
  • Searle’s Chinese Room (Minds, Brains and Programs in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1980, Vol 3, 417–57)

I was familiar with a few of these (okay, two of them), and I was filled with hope at the idea of getting my mind around these pictures, and sorting out how they would be helpful. In conversation with Dr. Schulz, the "Master Metaphors Project" was born. 

Our hope is to present an introduct_ion to each metaphor, the text of each, an audio conversation about the metaphor, and a few reflections on the conversation. You will find all of this gathered here on this blog, as well as on Dr. Schulz's website, http://www.lutheranphilosopher.com/.

Here is Dr. Schulz's introduction to the project: 
Philosophy and The Metaphors

Very early in the century of the Reformation, just a few years before 1517 when Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses for Debate on Wittenberg’s church door, Raphael created two adjacent paintings in the Vatican Art Museum: On the viewers’ right, his work The School of Athens showing all the philosophers of the West as if they were doing philosophy together at one place and in one time. To the viewers’ left, The Disputation Concerning the Sacrament. These frescoes have a common theme: the revealed truth of the origin of all things, in other words the Trinity. This truth cannot be apprehended by intellect alone (philosophy), but is made manifest in the Eucharist (the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper). Is there a relationship between reason and biblical faith? If so, how does it work in our lives and in our shared existence as human beings?
​
In Tertullian’s phrase from a millennium before the Reformation, “What does Jerusalem (the Lord’s church with its means of grace) have to do with Athens (philosophy)?” Well, one way to explore this relationship – in which we Lutheran thinkers distinguish between two uses of reason, namely a ministerial use of reasoning that submits to God’s Word over and against a magisterial use of reasoning by which we presume to employ our reasoning as if it could be God’s teacher and override His own words of Scripture – is to explore these modes of seeking wisdom by means of an extended reading and study of Ten Master Metaphors of Western Philosophy. We will first read them as philosophical texts and only then by compare and contrasting them to Christ and His Word. Can we do philosophy, can we be true to the best aspirations of philosophy from the view of the Lord who gives us His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Let’s see if we can practice a philosophy kata Christon or based on Christ Himself (Colossians 2:8ff) as participants in this great conversation.
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We start with Plato's Cave. Stay tuned...

Pr Bryan Wolfmueller
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