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God's Transcendent Activity: Ontotheology in "Metaphysics"
12Author(s): Markus GabrielSource: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol.
63, No. 2 (Dec., 2009), pp. 385-414Published by: Philosophy
Education Society Inc.Stable URL:
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY: ONTOTHEOLOGY IN METAPHYSICS 12
MARKUS GABRIEL
Heidegger criticized Aristotle's first philosophy for being a
logging path which leads to the identification of being and
objective representation, that is, the identification of being with
an object of thought or perception. Heidegger argues that
Aristotle's theologik is both ontology as a metaphysica generalis
and theology in the sense of a theory of God's essence. Being and
God are identified by showing that the sense of being in its purest
form is represented by God who is, thus, himself understood as
being or substance. Any theory with these broadly Aristotelian
outlines he calls "ontotheology."1
Contemporary Aristotelian scholarship, however, tends to isolate
Metaphysics 12 and, hence, to sever Aristotle's most explicit
theological account from his ontology - the theory of being qua
being as it is defined in Metaphysics 4. Michael Frede, for
example, has argued that Metaphysics 12 can be read as a
self-standing treatise and should be read in this way in order to
avoid misleading questions about the relation between ontology and
theology which he believes to be absent from 12. 2 This seems to
contradict a traditional interpretation prominent at least from
Plotinus to Hegel, the later
Correspondence to: Markus Gabriel, Universitt Bonn, Institut fr
Philosophie, Lehrstuhl fr Erkenntnistheorie, Lennstr. 39, 53115
Bonn, DE.
Martin Heidegger, "Die onto-theologische Verfassung der
Metaphysik," Identitt und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957),
35-73.
Michael Frede Introduction, in Aristotle s Metaphysics Lamba:
Symposium Aristotelicum, eds. Michael Frede and David Charles
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 1-52. Frede argues that we cannot
readily identify the sense in which Metaphysics A is part of the
metaphysical enterprise of first philosophy which Aristotle defines
both as ontology and as theology (50). Recently Christoph Horn
defended the view that is primarily concerned with theology. See
Horn, "In welchem Sinn enthlt Metaphysik Lambda eine Theologie?"
Jahrbuch fr Religionsphilosophie 1 (2002): 28-49. Contrary to Frede
and Horn I roughly agree with Helen Lang that the treatise's focus
is which, in my view, leads Aristotle to the identification of
being and God. See Lang, "The Structure and Subject of Metaphysics
," Phronesis 33 (1993): 257-80.
The Review of Metaphysics 250 (December 2009): 385-414.
Copyright 2009 by The Review of Metaphysics.
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386 MARKUS GABRIEL
Schelling, Brentano, and Heidegger. All of them had a
metaphysical interest in Aristotle precisely because they thought
he offered an understanding of how being as being and divine
thought relate to each other.3
In what follows, I shall sketch a different ontotheological
reading of Metaphysics 12, which both establishes new ties to the
traditional ontotheological interpretation and shows its
shortcomings. My interpretation departs from an explanation of pure
energeia as transcending the intellect and intentional thought
altogether, as recently proposed by Aryeh Kosman.4 This explanation
partly bases itself on the famous fragment from On Prayer where
Aristotle considers the possibility that God might be "something
beyond intellect ( )"* In Metaphysics 12 and in the Eudemian
Ethics6 Aristotle seems to have precisely this latter possibility
in mind when, for example, asserting that God is "superior to
intellect (' )"1 or that his activity is "more ()"8 and "more
astonishing (-)"9 than human intellect even at its best.10
3 1 already tried to defend the traditional view in Markus
Gabriel, "Gottes transzendenter Seinsvollzug. Zur aristotelischen
Ontotheologie im der Metaphysik," Jahrbuch fr Religionsphilosophie
5 (2006): 97-119. However, in the present article I have cleary
changed an important part of my view because I stopped believing
that Aristotle's identifies God with any sort of intellection or
self-awareness.
Aryeh Kosman, "Metaphysics A 9: Divine Thought," in Aristotle's
Metaphysics Lamba, 307-26; see also "Aristotle's Prime Mover," in
Selfmotion. From Aristotle to Newton, eds. Mary Louise Gill and
James G. Lennox (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 19941
135-54. 5 Aristotelis qui ferebantur librorum fragmenta, ed.
Valentinus Rose (Leipzig: Teubner, 1886), fr. 49: b $ . Eudemian
Ethics 7.14.1248al6-b3. For the Greek text, I use the standard
Oxford editions: De anima, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford Press,
1956), Ethica Eudemia, ed. R.R. Walzer et J.M. Mingay (Oxford:
Oxford Press, 1991), Ethica Nicomachea, ed. I. Bywater (Oxford:
Oxford Press: 1894), Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford
Press, 1957). In this paper, I use Jonathan Barnes' translation of
Aristotle. See The Complete Works of Aristotle, revised Oxford
translation, ed. by Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols., (Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1984). 7 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a32.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b25. Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.7.1072b26. An interpretation, which is based on the fragment
trom Un Frayer, and
which argues for the identification of the and the insofar as
divine thought thinking itself can be argued to transcend human
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 387
Aristotle clearly points out that everything depends on a
"principle, whose very substance is activity (
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388 MARKUS GABRIEL
status of this Oneness from dynamis to pure energeia. And yet,
he sticks to a Platonic strategy which he integrates into his more
immanentist framework. In my view, Aristotle succeeds in explaining
both God's immanence in the world order and his transcendence
without postulating a realm of ideas, which he shows to be made
superfluous by the introduction of an unmoved mover into his
cosmology. He does so by rejecting the metaphysics of participation
or imitation and replacing it with his concept of a teleology based
on the pros hen relation, as I shall argue.
I shall proceed in three steps. First (Part I), I shall argue
that Aristotle's theology in Metaphysics 12.7 presents God as an
activity which even transcends intentional thought and, therefore,
intellect altogether. Second (Part II), I sketch my interpretation
of teleology on the basis of the pros hen relation, as it appears
in Metaphysics 12.10. Despite obvious similarities, I shall finally
(Part III) point out some differences between Aristotle's God and
the neoplatonic One.
Aristotle seems to offer a way out of the problem of how thought
can relate to itself without always already essentially being of
itself, thereby anticipating the idea of an immediate pure
self-awareness of the One later introduced by Plotinus. This
similarity should however not mask the fundamental differences
between Aristotle and Plotinus, partly pointed out by Plotinus.
Nevertheless, I believe it is illuminating for both Aristotelian
and Plotinean scholarship to be aware of the degree to which
Plotinus' concept of the One builds on Aristotelian assumptions
about life and activity transcending intentional thought even at
its best.
As far as my methodology is concerned, I shall not mask my own
metaphysical interest in Aristotle. This means that I shall avoid
what are in my view unanswerable philological questions about the
date or composition of the text. Moreover, I shall not try to
answer the questions: whether the God of Metaphysics is the Prime
Mover of the Physics and what exact causal role he plays in the
mechanical transmission of energy through the whole of nature. In
what follows, I shall consequently obviate any substantial comment
about the role of Metaphysics 12.8 because it is the least
interesting chapter of that book for someone with particularly
metaphysical interests in Aristotle. Besides, I agree with Kosman
that even if none of the details of his astronomical theory could
seriously be defended nowadays, Aristotle's
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 389
insight into the divinity of the human intellect and its
relation to a pure self-awareness which it can never fully grasp
except "by the way ( )" might still be considered a relevant
contribution to the metaphysics of intentionality.15 In contrast to
his metaphysics of intentionality, his astronomical theory of the
unmoved mover as an efficient cause moving the first heaven has not
seriously been defended by any reader for some hundreds of years.
However, I do not mean to suggest that Aristotle does not believe
in a mechanical transmission of energy through the spheres down to
the sublunar. But the details of his astronomical views might be
reasonably neglected, if our purpose is to understand his
ontotheology. My reading fosters Aristotle's naturalism in that it
denies that he conceives of the principle, on which everything
depends, as of a mind or an intellect. Life and being are primary
to thought even though thought is the best human beings can hope to
achieve because it comes closest to a pure, that is, fully
self-sufficient activity.
I
In Metaphysics 12.6 Aristotle argues for the necessity of a
"principle, whose very substance is its activity { )'1.16 Such a
principle is supposed to explain how the first heaven and, hence,
everything else can be in eternal movement. This principle must not
be identified with a mechanistic and, thus, materially instantiated
cause which causes the first heaven's movement by somehow literally
being in touch with it. Nevertheless, it has to fulfill the
function of an efficient cause in the Aristotelian sense, as that
from which movement comes ($ ). However, this by no means excludes
the possibility that the supposed principle is also a final cause.
On the contrary, it has to be a final and an efficient cause
15 "The philosophical arguments that might lead an Aristotelian
to embrace the theory of an unmoved mover would be seen as
unaffected by his conversion to a new scientific theory. For there
is no story to be told about philosophical theory analogous to that
which we have told about astrophysics." Kosman, "Aristotle's Prime
Mover", 151. I also agree with Kosman when he compares the with
Sartre's cogito prrflexiv (323 and following). See Gabriel, "Gottes
transzendenter Seinsvollzug," 113. 10 Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.9.1071b20.
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390 MARKUS GABRIEL
at the same time. Otherwise it could not be both transcendent
and moving. In order to be transcendent it must not be contiguous
with the first heaven and in order to be moving there must be a
sense in which it is an efficient cause.17 Without approaching the
delicate question of how exactly the prime mover can be both an
efficient and a final cause, it is necessary to further specify
what the principle, whose substance is activity, is in itself.
The activity of the principle, "on which the universe and nature
depend {hi xa )"
18 is something familiar to us. Aristotle reminds us that the
best way of being which is possible for us resembles the
principle's activity.19 As one might expect from Nicomachean Ethics
10, he does not immediately say that our best way of being is
abstract philosophical thought. Otherwise he could not claim that
"[the principle's] activity" was "pleasure"20 and that the pleasure
of the principle's activity was known to us in the forms of
"waking, perception and thinking ( , ^, -)"21 Waking, perception,
and thinking are obviously introduced as manifestations of the
principle's activity. Even if abstract philosophical thought might
be the closest we can get to a principle whose substance is
activity, it should not be ignored that its activity is also
present in other forms of conscious activity that display at least
a minimal self-awareness without being reducible to some
self-conscious or reflective activity. Animals are as awake as
human beings, but are not capable of theoretical science.
Given the list in Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl7 and Aristotle's
explicit statement that waking, perception, and thinking are
altogether of "the most pleasant ()" I think Elders is wrong when
he argues that Aristotle has the kind of pleasure in mind which
derives from contemplation. Elders quotes two instructive fragments
from the Protrepticus which can easily be used against his reading.
In the Protrepticus Aristotle says: "but further, perfect and
unimpeded
17 1 opt with Berti (pace Broadie) for the thesis that there
must be a "coincidence of efficient and final causality" in the
case of the Prime Mover (PM). See Enrico Berti, "Metaphysics 6," in
Aristotle's Metaphysics Lamba, 181-206. 0 Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.7.1072bl3-14.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl4-16. Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.7.1072bl6. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl7.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 391
activity contains in itself delight, so that the activity of
contemplation must be the most pleasant of all."22 Since the
fragment is taken from an introductory work that recommends
philosophy as a form of life, it is clear that Aristotle is here
speaking of the most pleasant activity for a human being (in
particular the philosopher) and not for God. Given the list in
Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl7 I think (contra Elders) it is obvious that
Aristotle actually refers to the pleasure that "seems to flow forth
from one's very existence and life."23
In the famous text on transcendence () in the De Celo Aristotle
nowhere says that eternity thinks, but only ascribes the best life
( ' ) to it.24 That refers to the principle on which everything
depends is obvious from the whole passage and particularly follows
from De Celo 1.9.279a28-30: "from this [the ] depends () the being
and life (t eha'i ) which other things, some more or less
articulately but others feebly, enjoy." The way everything depends
on the principle can, thus, not only be related to its being a
thinking activity. What is crucial is activity and not thinking. In
order to see this and to approach my general thesis that the
Aristotelian God is an active oneness beyond intellect, it is
important to emphasize the fact that the whole passage at
Metaphysics 12.7.1072bl8-24 does not concern God's thought but
describes a way to achieve an insight into what a pure activity
might possibly be like.25
It has rightly been stressed by most commentators that the
passage describes the process of the intellect becoming identical
with its thoughts, a process that is also characterized in On the
Soul 3.4. In both texts, Aristotle gives an account of how our
intellect grasps itself
22 This quote is from the Ross translation. See The Works of
Aristotle, tr. and ed. Bym David Ross. vol. 12, (London: Oxford
University Press, 1952), 51. The Greek reads: . 23 Leo Elders,
Aristotle's Theology. A Commentary on Book A of the Metaphysics
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), 183. Compare with Nicomachean Ethics
9.9.1170al8 where Aristotle claims that life in a more intensive
sense is represented by perception and thought, that is, as
awareness of something: %% . ~ Aristotle, De Celo, 1.9.279a21.
The assignment of Metaphysics, 12.7.1072bl8-24 to human
intellect has correctly been made by many commentators. See for
example Jacques , "Metaphysics 9: A Short-Lived
Thought-Experiment?," in Aristotle's Metaphysics Lamba, 275-326,
especially 302-3.
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392 MARKUS GABRIEL
by grasping thoughts. However, even if we grasp the best and
even if our active thinking is thinking as such and of the best, it
can only be thinking by "grasping an intelligible { )"2* This also
accounts for the parergon thesis, according to which it is a
necessary condition of our intellect's self-awareness that it grasp
some intelligible which is potentially distinct from itself,
insofar as it is that which is grasped. However, the intelligible
is at the same time identical with our intellect, insofar as it
does not exist outside of the intellect in the same way it exists
inside of the intellect, namely "without matter { )"27 Therefore,
our intellect only becomes {) active thinking by touching {^) an
intelligible, that is by actually thinking it.28
Evidently, this whole set of assertions cannot characterize the
principle we are still looking for. Otherwise, it would have to
become an activity, but this is exactly what Aristotle has to rule
out in order to guarantee the eternal movement of the first heaven.
It would have a beginning if its moving principle had a starting
point, or if it had to activate itself in order to become
actual.
It is obvious that our intellect is not always already an active
thinking because it only thinks when it has thoughts whose contents
it does not produce in the act of thinking them. Our intellect is,
therefore, only potential, a "receptacle of thoughts { )."29 Hence,
the divine principle that the intellect seems {) to have, insofar
as it is divine, is more or better than the intellect even at its
best, as I read Metaphysics 12.7.1072b23: "the latter rather than
the former is the divine element which thought seems to contain { $
)" In my view refers to the which is our intellect. The divine
(namely activity), which the intellect
26 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b20; see Eudemian Ethics,
7.12.1245a6. Aristotle, De Anima, 3.4.430a3-5; 3.8.432alO.
"Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b20-21. With Elders (see
Aristotle's Theology, 261) I believe that the same doctrine
underlies the discussion in De Anima, 3.4-5. See De Anima,
3.4.429b5-9: ' 1 ( di* ) f , $ . The passage is also paralleled by
the famous non- propositional 3- in Metaphysics, 9.10.1051b24.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b22; see Aristotle, De Anima,
3.4.429al5: .
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 393
seems to have, is even better than the intellect, which is only
a receptacle.30 This is why the contemplation (namely of the
principle, the substance of which is its activity) is the most
pleasant and the best (for us).31 Contrary to the possible readings
of the sentence listed by Elders, I believe that what is being
compared in this difficult sentence is pure activity and our
activity of thinking.32 Pure activity is distinguished from the
activity of thinking because it is not restricted to thought and
therefore to intentionality. Otherwise it would have to be
activated by some intelligible, that is by a thought. The very
intentional structure of intellect makes it potential, dependent
upon some intelligible or other.
If there is a principle, the substance of which is its activity,
then it must be more than the passive intellect whose essence
consists in nothing but its potentiality and which is merely a
receptacle for given forms.33 If there is to be anything divine in
the intellect it cannot be its passivity and, therefore, its
potentiality. However, its receiving forms
30 Compare with Hans Joachim Kramer's reconstruction of the
sentence in: Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik. Untersuchungen zur
Geschichte des Piatonismus zwischen Piaton und Plotin (Amsterdam:
Schippers, 1967), 166, n. 134: "Sinn: Die Aktualitt ( in der
Subjekt-Objekt-Einheit = se. ) ist in hherem Grade als die
Potentialitt ( = ) dasjenige, was der Nus Gttliches zu haben
scheint." It is amazing that Krmer says in the main text that the
passage (Metaphysics, 12.18.1072bl8sq.) undisputedly characterizes
divine thinking (166), but in a footnote (n. 135) concedes that the
whole set of assertions "gilt genauer fr das gttliche und
menschliche Denken gemeinsam." 31 Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.7.1072b24.
"One could think of the following things being compared: (a)
nous and its object; (b) nous in actuality with nous in
potentiality; (c) the object and reality, (d) the divine mind and
the not-divine mind." Elders, Aristotle's Theology, 192. I
completely endorse Elders' statement that: "If our interpretation
is correct, Aristotle here formulates the primacy of being over
knowledge." Ibid., 194. Elders even quotes the crucial passage from
Eudemian Ethics 7.14.1248a27 which is equally important for my
interpretation: 0s' . oh $. Elders himself however adopts (a). One
of the passages in the Corpus which seem to contradict my reading
is Nicomachean Ethics 10.8.1178b20-32 where Aristotle says that
"God's activity . . . most probably is theoretical ( 3- . . . /)"
10.8.1178b21- 22. He continues, however, to mark a difference
between our theoretical form of life and God's life, in as far as
our life "is somehow something similar to an activity of that
[divine] sort (sV - ) 10.8.1178b26-27.
Aristotle, De Anima, 3.4.
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394 MARKUS GABRIEL
is its potentiality as opposed to the activity of thinking
forms. Thus, what is divine about intellect is its activity and not
the fact that thinking that is identical to its thinking thoughts
and, therefore, forms. Nevertheless, the only way its activity is
realized is by its thinking forms and thereby becoming identical to
them in theoretical science and cognition in general.
Up to this point, Aristotle has not affirmed anything about the
principle's essence except that it must be activity. The analogy
with the intellect does not show that the principle is thinking in
the sense of an intellect which has thoughts and actualizes itself
by thinking them. On the contrary, the whole section, Metaphysics
12.7.1072b23-30, seems to avoid characterizing the principle, which
is identified with the God, by intellectual attributes. If it
turned out at this stage of the argument that the principle is
thinking or even thought thinking itself, we simply could not
explain how its activity could manifest itself in waking or in
perception, both of which are states not exclusively attributed to
human beings or to the heavenly unmoved movers, but are also
actualized by nonintellectual animals. Moreover, Aristotle does not
exclude the animal realm from participation in the divine. On the
contrary, he even claims that "all things have by nature something
divine in them ( )"34 Hence, he does not restrict the claim to the
human being qua intelligent agent or to the divine in every animal,
but explicitly quantifies over everything.
However, it is clear from many passages of the Corpus that the
best way to approach the principle, the substance of which is its
activity, is through theoretical thought precisely because it is
the "most pleasant and the best ( )" phenomenon known to us. Even
so, three conclusions that are traditionally derived from
Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24 in fact do not follow from that
passage:36
34 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 7.13.1153b32. Elders explains
this as follows: "According to Aristotle all beings strive for
pleasure. The basis for this striving is a divine element in their
nature, that is, a certain likeness with God, who is in a state of
uninterrupted pleasure, - his activity being characterized by
immobility. ... All things imitate the first; when striving for
pleasure they imitate a supreme pleasure in the First Principle,
whose very activity is pleasure." Elders, Aristotle's Theology,
184.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b24. "He now turns to an
examination of its [the principle's] activity. The
inquiry is inspired by the principle that the noblest human acts
will show
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 395
(1) Aristotle does not (yet) identify the principle, on which
everything depends, either with the intellect or with thought
thinking itself. (2) He does not (yet) identify the ultimate
principle with God. (3) He does not identify God with the
intellect.
For my understanding of the Aristotelian God as a transcendent
active oneness, the section immediately following at Metaphysics
12.7.1072b24-30 is crucial. There, Aristotle does not only claim
that sometimes, namely whenever we engage in theoretical science,
we reach out to God, who practises theoretical science all the
time. He explicitly asserts that God's well being, his , is even
better and even more astonishing than the activity we actualize
when we engage in theoretical science. It is remarkable that he
uses the hi, which might even be interpreted as a slight hint at
Plato's hi , 37 because it points towards an ultimate principle,
whose substance is its activity, which transcends even our
intellect.38
Contrary to a principle whose substance is its activity, our
intellect is passively actualized by thinking thoughts, that is by
standing in relation to intelligibles that it does not produce. It
only thinks itself by grasping an intelligible, , whereas the
principle we are looking for must be beyond this dichotomy of
subject and object because in thinking thoughts there is always
something potential, even material (in the sense of On the Soul
3.5.430al0-14) involved. Thinking is not essentially thinking of
itself and even the supposedly divine has to actualize itself by
thinking thoughts (and thus must be distinguished from the
principle
some similarity with the activity of unchangeable entity.
Aristotle furthermore argues that this first being, since it is the
object of desire, must be supreme pleasure; hence it has a
cognitive activity, because this activity involves pleasure. . . .
The assertion that man's noblest pass-time or activity is that of
God, is apparently based upon the assumption of an analogy between
man and God, that is, on the conviction that man shares in the
Nous." Elders, Aristotle's Theology, 181; see also 186-92. Elders
rightly reads 1072b22 as a statement about the human intellect
(190-1). 37 Plato, Republic, 6.509b9.
This similarity is also affirmed by Elders: Yet the very use ot
the terms and indicates that God's activity (and thus God's being)
is something which man cannot fully understand." Elders, ,
Aristotle's Theology, 197. Elsewhere he writes: "the being of the
first principle must be different from the things man knows."
Ibid., 262. See also Brunschwig, ''Metaphysics 9: A Short-Lived
Thought-Experiment," 310-12.
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396 MARKUS GABRIEL
that is always already activity). Therefore, Aristotle does not
claim that God is the intellect whose self-reference is analyzed at
Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24. Aristotle does not assert that God
is intellect but that the intellect's activity is God and that this
activity is life: "for the actuality of thought is life, and God is
that actuality ( , S )."
God is obviously identified with the activity which also
manifests itself in the activity that the intellect exerts by
thinking the thought that God is activity. However, this does not
entail that God himself is an intellect. That God is intellect's
activity does not entail that he is nothing other than an
intellect's activity. In my view, he is intellect's activity among
other things, for example the activity of the heavenly unmoved
movers, of animals, of the elements, and so forth. Everything
relates to God as the standard model of activity insofar as it
aspires to remain in its best form. Given that this is also the
case with intellect and given that intellect can investigate into
its own nature, the analysis of intellect leads to an insight into
the very nature of the principle we are searching for.
Fortunately, there is further textual evidence for the reading I
am proposing: it is Aristotle's explicit thesis in Eudemian Ethics
7.14.1248a20-29 that God is the activity in intellect without
thereby being himself an intellect. The passage reads:
there is some starting-point [in thought and deliberation]; nor
does one think after thinking previously to thinking and so on ad
infinitum. Thought, then, is not the starting-point of thinking nor
deliberation of deliberation. What, then, can be the starting-point
except chance? Thus [according to that argument] everything would
come from chance. Perhaps there is a starting-point with none other
outside it, and this can act in this sort of way by being such as
it is. The object of our search is this - what is the commencement
of movement in the soul? The answer is clear: as in the universe,
so in the soul, it is god. For in a sense the divine element in us
moves everything. The starting-point of reasoning is not reasoning,
but something greater. What, then, could be greater even than
knowledge and intellect but God?39
39 Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a20-29. Barnes'
translation. The text reads: ' , ' () ,
, , / ^ , ; ' . ',
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 397
The principle we are looking for is the cause of everything's
being what it is, insofar as everything is what is by its . But the
of all things is activity, as we learn from Metaphysics 9.8. The
is, therefore, the principle of matter in all things insofar as it
ensures that they are something rather than nothing. That is why
the is famously referred to as the "cause of being { )"40 at the
end of Metaphysics 7, not because it creates something out of
nothing but because it accounts for everything's being something
determinate, distinguishable from everything else. Thanks to the
active nature of our intellect we are capable of understanding
activity, which becomes explicitly known to us in theoretical
science. This does not entail that the activity we discover in
every has to be intellectual. "Being" in Aristotle means
"determinacy." Therefore, Aristotelian ontology is best understood
as a tinology, that is, as a theory of determinacy. Like the
neoplatonists (and maybe already Plato) Aristotle believes that all
determinate being (, ) owes itself to an unifying activity, which
imposes an intelligible structure on everything. That which is
thereby determined is matter, understood as a passive receptacle of
forms.
Returning to Metaphysics 12.7, it should by now be clear that
Metaphysics 12.7. 1072b 18-24 does not describe the internal
structure of God's thinking or his activity but merely gives an
account of our intellect which ensures that we can have some
understanding of a pure activity. Contrary to God's pleasant
activity, our theoretical well being is necessarily limited by
having to actualize its own potential to think determinate
thoughts. These thoughts appear to be something different from
thinking because of the very intentionality of the act of thinking,
although the act of thinking can, in some special sense, be said to
become identical to its thoughts.
Aristotle closes Metaphysics 12.7 by telling us that he has now
reached the goal of proving that "there is an eternal substance
which is
; ' , . ' 3-, . $ ' , ( ) $; It is important to note that this
passage is textual evidence for the reading I am defending whereas
there is, to my knowledge, no further passage where Aristotle
asserts that God is an intellect. w Aristotle, Metaphysics,
7.17.1041b25.
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398 MARKUS GABRIEL
unmoved and separated from all perceptibles ( )."*1 This proves
the necessity of metaphysics as a theory of such a substance (in
the sense of Metaphysics 6.1; 11.2, 7). Nevertheless, we are not
told that this substance is an intellect but only that it is an
activity which is, among other things, the activity of our
intellect. We only learn that God is life, not that such a life
must be the life of an intellect analogous to our intellect
although differing from it by being able to continue its activity
of thinking indefinitely, as the traditional reading has it.
As far as Metaphysics 12.7 is concerned, Aristotle does not
identify his God with any intellect. In that chapter, it might well
be the case that God is "something beyond intellect (- )" a
possibility Aristotle entertains in the short fragment On Prayer,
There is even positive evidence for such a view in Metaphysics
12.7.1072b24- 26, where we are told that God is even more
astonishing than our intellectual activity. Moreover, Aristotle
does not say that the principle on which everything depends is an
act of thinking but rather asserts that it is activity and that,
therefore, pleasure is not limited to thinking: "because of that
[the fact that pleasure is the principle's activity] being awake,
perception, thinking are the most pleasant." Hence, he does not
imply that thinking alone is the most pleasant but that all three
states of at least minimal intentional awareness are instances of
the most pleasant, namely of activity.
If it is true that in Metaphysics 12.7 Aristotle describes our
intellect and its actualization and characterizes God only by
eternal life, without thereby committing himself to thinking of God
as an active intellect thinking thoughts, one should also be able
to carefully distinguish between all the passages in Metaphysics
12.9 where Aristotle talks about our intellect in opposition to the
passages where he talks about God. More precisely, I now wish to
show that he does not even talk about God in Metaphysics 12.9 at
all. He only explicitly refers to the most divine of all phenomena
(at Metaphysics 12.9.1074bl6), the august (18), the valuable (21),
the most divine and most valuable (26), the most powerful (34), and
so on. There is no explicit reference to God, despite the
theological undertone of the chapter.
41 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.7.1073a3-5.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 399
There are three overall ways to interpret the general argument
in Metaphysics 12.9, only two of which are compatible with my
presentation of God's transcendence in Aristotle.
(1) The traditional interpretation. Aristotle continues his
discussion of God from Metaphysics 12.7, who is himself the
intellect. This gives rise to several aporias. According to the
traditional interpretation, Aristotle continues by telling us that
God himself is active thinking that thinks itself ( ). Furthermore,
he either goes on to tell us that God either thinks determinate
thoughts (or even all determinate thoughts like the middle platonic
intellect- God) or at least contemplates himself as the perfect
object.
(2) Kosman's interpretation. Aristotle continues his discussion
of God and tells us that he is active thinking that thinks itself (
). This is distinguished from our intellect, which only
participates in the pure activity of God's thinking and thinks
itself only in a concomitant way. God is understood as a pure
self-awareness beyond the subject object dichotomy.
(3) Aristotle continues to hint at God's pure activity without
ever describing its internal structure because he believes that God
transcends our intellect in such a way that we can only extrapolate
through analogy what God might be like by engaging in the purest
activity possible for us, namely theoretical science, whose telos
is the thought that there is a principle whose essence is its
activity.42
Since (2) and (3) are both compatible with my account of
Metaphysics 12.7, I shall briefly list my arguments against (1),
which comprises two apparently contrary readings.
According to (1), God is active thinking that has an object. In
my view, it does not really matter whether this object is something
other than God or whether he contemplates himself as the best
object "in the vicinity." For, both the middle and neoplatonic
intellect-God, who thinks the totality of determinate beings by
thinking the totality of intelligibles, and the Narcissus-God, who
contemplates himself, are
42 For an elaborate description of Aristotle's method of
analogical extrapolation, see Charles Kahn, "The Place of the Prime
Mover in Aristotle's Teleology," Aristotle on Nature and Living
Things, ed. Allan Gotthelf, (Cambridge: Mathesis Publications,
Inc., 1985), 183-205, especially 201-2.
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400 MARKUS GABRIEL
excluded by the text.43 In general, the concept of the middle
and neoplatonic intellect-God presupposes that the description of
the intellect becoming identical with its object in Metaphysics
12.7 (1072bl8-24) as well as the whole of Metaphysics 12.9 somehow
describe God's activity as an activity of thinking. Yet, God is
nowhere in the text explicitly equated with intentional thought or
thought thinking some determinate object(s). The traditional
reading relies on the unquestioned assumption that Metaphysics 12.7
contains a theory of God's intellect. Contrary to that assumption,
I have argued the description of the unifying act of becoming ()
identical with its object only applies to human thought, which is
an exercise of an intellect with the twofold structure
characterized in On the Soul 3.4-5, a structure situated "within
the soul {iv %)"" Furthermore, as we shall see in detail, there is
no additional reason to suppose that Metaphysics 12.9 talks about
God or the prime mover (whatever their relation might be) at all.
The chapter starts with the observation that "there are some
aporias concerning the intellect ( is )" and it continues to refer
to this intellect as "the most divine of phenomena ( $)"4 Yet, God
cannot be referred to as the most divine of all phenomena, not so
much because he is not a phenomenon (which he might well be in the
widest sense of the term). Rather, the reason why Aristotle cannot
be referring to God here is the impossibility of asking the
immediately following question about God, namely if he might be a
phenomenon that behaves like a sleeper ( $)& : given the whole
argument of Metaphysics 12.6-7, there can be no legitimate question
as to whether God is active or in some sense sleeping, a question
which might, however, be an issue with regard to our intellect.
This question is posed after the introductory remark that the
intellect gives rise to several aporias. I therefore conclude that
the intellect which gives rise to aporias is neither God nor the
prime mover. Aristotle could not seriously be asking what is august
() about God if we could not
43 The best overview about the internal development of middle
platonism is still John Dillon, The Middle Platonists. A Study of
Platonism 80 B.C. to A.D. 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977).
Aristotle, De Anima, 3.5.430al3. Aristotle, Metaphysics,
12.9.1074bl5-6. 46 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1074bl8.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 401
rule out the possibility that he might be sleeping.47 It is
rather a question of why the intellect in general is considered to
be the most divine of phenomena if there is something about the
intellect that is not divine at all. And there is, namely its
possibility to be asleep, that is to be passive, along with its
possibility to take anything whatsoever as an object of its
contemplative activity.
In the light of the discovery of a principle, the substance of
which is its activity, the reason why intellect in general counts
as the most divine of phenomena is that it stands for the
possibility of being purely active in the act of thinking itself,
that is by becoming a . Intellect becomes a by thinking determinate
thoughts. And it only becomes the most divine by thinking the "most
divine and the most venerable ( $ )"48 thought, namely the thought
that there must be a principle, the substance of which is its
activity.
If my interpretation is right, then our intellect is divine by
thinking the thought that there must be a principle, the substance
of which is its activity. In this manner, at the peak of its
activity, it touches () God who is nothing but a transcendent pure
activity of being, an actus punis. It does so by engaging in the
active thought that God is a pure activity. Thus, it achieves the
state of a pure self-awareness, reflecting upon its very activity
of thinking. As a consequence, it has no other object than itself
without thereby ever becoming itself a transcendent pure activity.
Our intellect's pure self-awareness comes as close to the
47 Elders, (Aristotle's Theology, 250) believes that Aristotle
is referring to Sophist 249a2. Even if it is, as a matter of fact,
highly probable that Aristotle's whole discussion of draws on the
Sophist, in this particular case one must not forget that Plato
uses the in a pejorative sense. In Sophist 249a2, Plato links the
august with lifeless being in the context of an obvious reductio:
Ti ; % , avr , , , ; Elders somehow seems to repeat Plotinus'
misreading of the passage in Enneads 6.7.29-34, 6.6.3.8, and
elsewhere. All citations from Plotinus are from the following
edition: Plotini opera. Ed. P. Henry et H.R. Schwyzer, 3 vols.,
Paris/Brussels: Descle de Brouwer, 1951-1973). Plotinus suggests
that the eleatic stranger is referring to the One beyond intellect
as the august, thereby mitigating the obviously pejorative tone of
the passage.
Aristotle, Metphysics, 12.9.1074b26.
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402 MARKUS GABRIEL
divine as possible by achieving a state of thinking the thought
that God is a principle, the substance of which is its activity and
nothing else.
My reconstruction is capable of solving the ancient quarrel
about the content of the intellect in Metaphysics 12.9. Since the
intellect is not God we can say that both of the following are
true:
(a) the intellect thinks determinate thoughts; and (b) the
intellect is thinking of thinking.
Both are true about different aspects of our intellect. Since we
can only become aware of our thinking activity by thinking
thoughts, the most divine of all thoughts, the thought the content
of which is God, is a vehicle of referring to the activity of our
thought. We thereby become aware of the divine nature of thought
which lies in the activity of thinking. This very thought is
self-referential, but it can only be attained as the result of
thinking determinate thoughts, (a) and (b) thus describe two
different aspects of human thought qua activity of intellect in our
soul. In terms of On the Soul we can say that the so called active
and the passive intellect are "within the soul (kv rjj )"49 which
is an unsurprising result in the conext of a treatise On the Soul.
Now we understand better in what sense the intellect can be said to
be "the most divine in us {
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 403
terminology. Aristotle only asserts that the intellect he is
talking about thinks itself because it is the most divine of all
phenomena and, therefore, is the best object of thought. He neither
confirms that the intellect is itself God nor that it engages in
pure self-awareness all the time. One of the putative hints that
Aristotle might be talking of God is his mention of the impossible
"uneasiness ()"61 of the best in a context where he seems to be
denying that the intellect changes in any sense by thinking the
best. By contrast with finite being, the divine is clearly "at ease
(ara>zW)."52 However, Aristotle does not explicitly say that the
intellect would change if it did not think the best. He only says
that when the intellect is active thinking () and not mere
potentiality (), it thinks the best, which is its own activity. He
does not say that the intellect is never uneasy, but only tells us
that its activity is exercised with ease. From this it follows that
the intellect would change if it did not think the best. Hence, the
intellect is always threatened by the existence of something worse
than its own activity which is already there to be an object of the
intellect's activity. If Aristotle were referring to God as an
intellect, this would imply that God's pure activity might be
threatened by the very existence of something worse than himself
because it might become an object of his thought. Aristotle would
need an argument to the effect that God is not even able to think
anything worse than himself. However, he does not give such an
argument.
Another objection to (1) and (2), which both take Aristotle to
be referring to God in Metaphysics 12.9, lies in the very
construction of the text.53 In line with the famous thesis that the
activity of thinking is in some sense or other self-referential,
Aristotle immediately introduces another aporia without marking any
change of subject. The aporia begins with the observation that all
ordinary knowledge based
51 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.9.1074b29. w Aristotle, De Celo,
2.1.284al4. CO _____ _ _ - . - . .-.-a* .r . -_ -_. T_r For a
similar observation on the beginning ot me chapter see Lang
"The Structure and Subject," 268. Lang rightly states that the
very beginning of the chapter and the whole "argument concerning
mind and its object is out of place", because it poses a question
which has already been solved by suddenly invoking the possibility
that God might not be active. Since it has already been shown that
he is a principle, whose substance is its activity, it would be
completely absurd to expect another treatment of the question how
God can be an actus puras if he is intentional thought.
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404 MARKUS GABRIEL
on science, perception, belief, and reasoning (, -, , ) always
seems to be of something other than itself. If this is true, how
can we guarantee that this is different in the case of thinking and
being thought? He resolves the aporia by arguing that everything in
intellect which is immaterial is such that the act of thinking and
its object coincide. He lists some famously obscure examples,
namely poietic sciences without matter and theoretical sciences in
which the act of thinking and its object are one and the same.54
Whatever the details, it is obvious that all these sciences are not
activities of God, who is something .55 If the whole passage from
Metaphysics 12.9.1074b35-1075al0, which immediately follows the ,
makes explicit more aporias about the "human intellect ( )" why
should we believe that the only applies to God (even if it also
applied to God)? I think these are serious problems which arise for
(1) and (2), regardless of how their respective accounts flesh out
the details of the putatively divine thinking of thinking.
If we adopt (3), however, there is good reason for why Aristotle
caused such a sensation by connecting the divine with our
intellect's possibility of becoming a . From the discussion of
Metaphysics 12.7 we concluded that Aristotle refers to life in the
sense of a pure activity when he talks about God because God is the
principle, the substance of which is its activity. The question
posed in Metaphysics 12.9 then is why intellect is divine. The
obvious answer must be that it is like God in being capable of some
(almost) pure
54 As a matter of fact, I do not believe that the phrase fy
{Metaphysics 12.9.1075al-2) is as obscure as it seems. It is
possible to translate it as follows: "In the case of manufacturing
techniques the substance and the essence are without matter."
According to Aristotle's account of this means that the person who
produces something has an immaterial idea ofthat something that
determines what that something is. The idea of a chair that I have
determines the way the created chair will look. 55 Aristotle,
Eudemian Ethics, 7.14.1248a27. This is incompatible with any
interpretation according to which God is an omniscient being. De
Koninck is obviously wrong when he writes: "C'est tout ce qui est
potentialit - discours, changement, dpendance - qu' Alistte limine
de Dieu, nullement la connaissance." "La Pense de la Pense chez
Alistte," in La question de Dieu selon Avistte et Hegel, eds.
Thomas de Koninck and Guy Planty- Boryour (Paris: Pr. Univ. de
France, 1991), 69-151, here: 149.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 405
activity, namely thinking of itself as of an activity. Its best
thus consists in its thinking the best, that is in thinking the
thought that there must be some actus purus. This thought stands
the test in theoretical science because theoretical science,
especially metaphysics, discovers that the sense of being is
energeia. Whatever there is, whatever is something and, hence,
something determinate, distinct from something else, is determined
by its . As the whole discussion of the middle books 7, 8, and 9
proves, the is the "cause of being { )"56 by being active as
opposed to the mere potentiality of the underlying matter. This
brings me to my second topic.
II
A good part of the discussion of the in the German tradition of
Aristotelian scholarship has been determined by Hegel's
interpretation of Aristotle's notion of God. Hegel takes it for
granted that Aristotle simply must be ascribing some sort of
absolute subjectivity or absolute reflection to God because
self-reference is the ultimate goal of thought (and therefore
divine) in Hegel's own view.57 When Klaus Oehler, to name but one
example, sees "the highest peak of Greek philosophy" in Aristotle's
putative intellect-God he interprets Aristotelian theologik as a
theory of divine subjectivity.58 Given the
56 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 7.17.1041b26. See Avistte et Hegel,
eds. de Koninck & Planty-Bonjour; Klaus Dusing,
Hegel und die Geschichte der Philosophie. Ontologie und
Dialektik in Antike und Neuzeit (Darmstadt: 1983), 97-159; see also
Dsing, "Noesis Noeseos und absoluter Geist in Hegels Bestimmung der
Philosophie'," in Hegels System der Philosophie, eds.
Hans-Christian Lucas, Burkhard Tuschling, and Ulrich Vogel
(Frankfurt/Main 2004), 443-59; also Dsing, "Hegel und die
klassische griechische Philosophie (Piaton, Aristoteles)/' in Hegel
und die Geschichte der Philosophie, eds. Dietmar H.Heidemann, and
Christian Krijnen (Darmstadt: WBG, 2007), 46-69.
Klaus Oehler, "Der hchste Punkt der antiken Philosophie," in Der
unbewegte Beweger des Aristoteles (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann,
1984), 99- 116. Contrary to Oehler, Heidegger is on the right track
when he claims that the "highest peak of Aristotle's
philosophizing" lies in Metaphysics (especially 10), that is, in
the treatise on and . See Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles, Metaphysik
1-3. Vom Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft, 3rd edition,
(Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2006), here: 10.
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406 MARKUS GABRIEL
common assumption that Aristotle assumes an intellect-God in the
tradition of Xenophanes and the Academic philosopher Xenokrates,
Hans Joachim Krmer, Klaus Oehler, and Klaus Brinkmann started a
lasting discussion about the question of what, if anything, might
be the content of God's intellect.59 Hegel and his followers,
however different in detail, all establish a reading along the
lines of (1).
As is well known, the very goal of the Metaphysics is to prove
that there is some first philosophy distinct from physics by having
something as its object which is neither material nor dependent
upon something else. If there were no such thing, then there would
be no genuine discipline called "first philosophy." The only place
where Aristotle proves the necessity of first philosophy in all the
books which are handed down to us as the Metaphysics, is
Metaphysics 12. However loosely the various books of Metaphysics
might seem to be connected from a philological point of view, we
still need to make sense of the fact that they refer to each other
and that they jointly elaborate the notion of first philosophy.
And, the only answer to our questions about the content of first
philosophy is Metaphysics 12, even though Aristotle already makes
clear in Metaphysics 1.2.983a5-ll that first philosophy is divine
knowledge or knowledge of the divine. If it turned out that God was
nothing but a pure activity transcending intellect altogether, then
this very thought would be the ultimate content of first
philosophy. The object of ontology and the object of theology would
be one and the same, namely energeia. If God were intellect or
thinking of thinking this connection between ontology and theology,
and thus the unity of first philosophy itself, would be threatened.
Since it is rather implausible to look for a connection
59 The main contribution in the debate are Hans Joachim Krmer,
Der Ursprung der Geistmetaphysik) "Zur geschichtlichen Stellung der
aristotelischen Metaphysik I: Zur aristotelischen Theologie/'
Kantstudien 58 (1967), 313-354; "Grundfragen der aristotelischen
Theologie - Erster Teil: Die Noesis neoseos bei Aristoteles",
Theologie und Philosophie 44 (1969), 363-87; "Grundfragen der
aristotelischen Theologie - Zweiter Teil: Xenokrates und die Ideen
im Geiste Gottes," Theologie und Philosophie 44 (1969), 481-505;
Klaus Oehler, "Aristotle on Self-Knowledge," Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 118 (1974), 493-506; Der Unbewegte
Beweger des Aristoteles (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1984);
Subjektivitt und Selbstbewutsein in der Antike (Wrzburg:
Knigshausen & Neumann, 1997); Klaus Brinkmann, Aristoteles'
allgemeine und spezielle Metaphysik (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter,
1979).
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 407
between everything's activity and an intellect-God, ontology and
theology only seem to complement each other if their common concern
is the sense of being qua energeia.
One of the central doctrines of Aristotelian ontology is that
"being is predicated in a manifold sense, but in relation to One
and to one nature ( xa
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408 MARKUS GABRIEL
always something determinate, as Plato points out against
Parmenides in the Sophist.65 Both Plato and Aristotle fundamentally
agree in understanding being something (V) as being something
determinate, as being . Aristotle, however, introduces the
distinction between and which allows him to speak of the as an
immanent cause of being. In this context, it is important to take
seriously the fact that Aristotle defines something's telos as its
, which is perhaps best known from the Nicomachean Ethics9 s words
for the human telos: .66 In the Metaphysics Aristotle explicity
identifies something's with its and its with > ' 67 .
Now, according to Aristotle all causes of being, all determinate
are analogically ( ) the same insofar as they relate to one.68 This
One is the very unifying activity of determination which is
omnipresent wherever there is anything rather than nothing. Thus,
everything desires to be what it is and to resist change over time
because every change can only make it worse once it reaches its ,
which is .69 This is not only true for human beings trying to live
a human life in accordance with their nature as thinking beings.
This is even the case with the elements that strive to return to
their
65 Plato, Sophist, 237clO-dlO. 6 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
1.7.1097b24-25. See Metaphysics 5.11.1019a8: , 9.8.1050a21:
, , and most explictly Met. 9.8.1050a9-10: ' , . This accounts
for the overall primacy of activity/actuality over potentiality,
which is argued for in Metaphysics 9.8. In line with Kahn's
taxonomy, I will defend a broad view of Aristotelian teleology on
the basis of the primacy of actuality. Kahn summarizes the view in
the following way: "As supreme instance of unqualified actuality
and divine life, the PM serves as a kind of metaphysical magnet
drawing all natural potencies on to their realization in act and to
the acquisition of their specific form. On this view, everything in
nature aspires to the condition of deity; but each kind of thing
can attain this goal only in a limited, specific way." Kahn, "The
Place of the Prime Mover," 184.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.5.1071a4, 25, 33. There is an
important parallel in Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 where Aristotle
criticizes Plato's idea of the Good (which some take to be
identical to the One of the Unwritten Doctrines). In this context
he also explicitly claims that everything stands in an analogical
relation to one which serves the function of manifesting itself in
everything's telos, ' ' , ' . w Aristotle, Metaphysics,
9.8.1050a9.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 409
, thus attempting to realize the activity of their respective .
Once something realizes its it becomes what it is. Therefore, the
whole of nature is organized in relation to one, namely to pure
activity which everything realizes to some degree by simply being
in accordance with its essence or nature (understood as its norm of
being). As Sedley has it, "Aristotle's special claim for his own
prime mover is that it accounts, not just for motion in the narrow
sense, but for things' quite generally being the individual things
that they are. It does so by setting the model of actuality to
which, in realizing their potential, they are aspiring."70 In this
sense, God and being are the same because he is a substance whose
essence is nothing other than the sense of being, namely energeia,
and thereby "an overall unifying cause/'71 This does not entail
that God is an intellect or even intellectual activity. For if God
were intellect, we could not explain why everything is organized in
relation to his active oneness. In what sense could the elements be
said to be desiring to be like an intellect- God without being
endowed with intellect?
The equation of God with the sense of being and, hence, with a
causa exemplaris might also lead to another solution to the
question in what sense God moves by being desired ( ).72 But first
of all we would have to give up the widespread view that Aristotle
in his opposition to Plato became a naturalist in the modern sense
of the term. In my view, the organization of the whole of nature,
as Aristotle describes it, does not rest on the assumption that
nature takes care of itself, once we can guarantee that there is a
relevant causal connection between the spheres and the sublunary
region. If Aristotle held that everything (perhaps with the
exception of the prime mover) could be explained in purely causal
terms in a modern sense of the word, we would indeed face a big
problem in interpreting all the passages where he talks about the
divine in nature, God himself, and so forth. However, such an
interpretation neglects the fact that nature () in Aristotle as
well as in Plato also designates a norm which everything aims at
fulfilling but which is not necessarily fulfilled. The
potential
70 Sedley, "Metaphysics A 10," 348. 71 Ibid. 72 Aristotle,
Metaphysics, 12.7.1072b3.
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410 MARKUS GABRIEL
gap between everything's potentials and its norm or nature helps
Aristotle to explain everything in teleological terms.
All this is said from a metaphysical point of view. In the
context of physics, meteorology, and astrononomy, things naturally
look different. But, as Aristotle tells us right at the beginning
of On the Soul (De Anima), there are different methods for
investigating different regions or aspects of being. Whereas
physics regards being as moved or movable,73 metaphysics or first
philosophy takes being qua being as its object. The distinction
between physics and metaphysics is thus not merely a distinction
between a science about the movable and a science about the unmoved
(and, hence, about the prime mover). The difference is rather that
metaphysics does not quantify over a specific genus ( ri) of being,
that is, a certain region of being, but aims at the discovery of
what being qua being is. In this context, physics prepares the path
to ontotheology as it does in Metaphysics 12.1-6 and 8. Whatever
the details of the theory of the prime mover in On the Heaven or in
the Physics, they need not be central to our understanding of God's
transcendent activity according to Aristotle because this would
contradict his methodological remarks.
Ill
Plotinus' conception of the One that transcends all possible
determination and, in this sense, transcends being as such, is
obviously not inspired only by Plato's sparse official remarks
about the One as ultimate principle in the Parmenides, even if it
does play a crucial role in the discussion of the so called
Unwritten Doctrines and even if Plotinus reads the Parmenides as a
henological treatise.74 Plotinus was also an intensive reader of
Aristotle, particularly of Metaphysics 12, as Poryphyry tells us.75
Altough Plotinus critizes Aristotle for not transcending the
duality of the which represents, in his interpretation, the
self-awareness of the intellect which distinguishes
73 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 6.1.1025b26-28. For a comprehensive
discussion of this see Jens Halfwassen, Der
Aufstieg zum Einen. Untersuchungen ber Piaton und Plotin (2nd
edition, Mnchen/Leipzig: Saur, 2006). 75 Porphyry, Vita Plotini,
14, 4-7.
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 41 1
itself in , , and Plotinus' concept of the One owes as much to
Aristotle as to Plato. Plotinus insinuates that Aristotle does not
transcend the pure self-awareness of the intellect and, thus,
misses the pure self-awareness and life of the One that some
commentators ascribe to it.77 Nevertheless, Plotinus' repeated
explicit and implicit characterization of the Good-One as life or
true life that guarantees that everything (except matter which is
properly speaking nothing) is alive by being something determinate,
that is a form, owes as much to Aristotle's concept of as to
Plato's One.78 Plotinus uses Aristotle's fundamental distinction
between , and in order to show that the "absolute productivity ( )"
of the One is a life which transcends the intellect's life and,
hence, everything which can positively be known to be something
determinate.80
76 Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.9; Enneads, 5.3 in its entirety, in
particular 5.13.35-37; 5.4,2; 5.6 in its entirety, in particular
7.35-37; Enneads, 6.7, 37-41. 77 See John Bussanich, "On the Inner
Life of the One," Ancient Philosophy 7 (1987), 163-89; Werner
Beierwaltes, "Causa sui. Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung des
Gedankens der Selbsturschlichkeit," in Das wahre Selbst. Studien zu
Plotins Begriff des Geistes und des Einen (Frankfurt/Main:
Klostermann, 2001), 123-59; Christoph Horn, "Selbstbezglichkeit des
Geistes bei Plotin und Augustinus," Gott und sein Bild -
Augustinus' De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwrtiger Forschung, ed.
Johannes Brachtendorf (Paderborn: Schningh, 2000), 82-103; also
"Plotins Philosophie des Geistes. Ideenwissen, Selbstbewusstein,
Subjektivitt", in Zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Geistes, eds.
Uwe Meixner and Albert Newen (Berlin/New York 2003), 57-89. For
Plotinus and Aristotle see John Rist, "The One of Plotinus and the
God of Aristotle," The Review of Metaphysics 27 (1973), 75-87. That
the One is endowed with some "intensive thinking of itself, as if
it were aware of itself, this thinking being in eternal rest and in
a different thinking than the intellect's thinking ( ^ )" (Enneads
5.4.2.17-19), is at least affirmed in one place of the Enneads. In
the same chapter, Plotinus alludes to On Prayer using it against
Aristotle's putative identification of the self-intellection with
the absolute. He explicitly says that the One is beyond intellect
and then quotes Aristotle: (Enneads 5.4.2.42-3). It is obvious that
Plotinus believes that Aristotle only holds the first possibility
of On Prayer, that God is intellect, and probably believes that the
other half is a presentation of Plato's doctrine. However, Plato
nowhere explicitly says that the One is beyond intellect. The
transcendence of the One is, thus, highly influenced by Aristotle
even if Plotinus would not agree that Aristotle accepts anything
superior to intellect. 78 See also Plotinus, Enneads, 1.4, 3-4;
3.2.1.30-31; 6.8.7.51; 15.24-25. 79 Plotinus, Enneads 6.8.20.6. 80
For an elaboration of this see my Skeptizismus und Idealismus in
der Antike (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 11.
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412 MARKUS GABRIEL
Otherwise we could not explain why everything which is alive can
participate in happiness deriving from the One-Good.81 Similar to
Aristotle's thought in Metaphysics 12.7, as I understand it,
Plotinus argues in his treatise On Happiness (Enneads 1.4) that
even animals and plants are happy, because they are alive. Being
alive means being active, that is being something determinate in
the sense of an . In the wake of Platonic and Aristotelian
hylemorphism, Plotinus defines the One by its activity which is
"everywhere and nowhere ( )"82 precisely because it is nothing but
activity, pure life. Therefore, the One is "nothing of all things
(ovUv )"83 as it acts in everything by being its unifying cause of
being: "all beings are beings due to the One ( evi )."84
If I am right, Plotinus owes this idea as much to Plato's
negative henology (which may or may not be "disclosed" in the first
hypothesis of the Parmenides) as to Aristotle's laconic remarks
about the actus purus. However, Plotinus would not agree that
Aristotle's God transcends intellect in the very sense in which I
have tried to show because this would relate Plotinus more closely
to Aristotle than to Plato.85 Be that as it may, one of the
consequences of my interpretation of the Aristotelian God as actus
purus, which even transcends thought altogether, is that it defends
Aristotle against Plotinus' objection according to which
Aristotle's God is caught up in the subject object dichotomy. For
this would raise the well known problems with the object of God's
intellect such that we would necessarily oscillate between an
omniscient middle-platonic intellect-God contemplating the totality
of forms and the Narcissus-God who contemplates himself because he
is the best. The middle-platonic option reintroduces some
81 Plotinus, Enneads, 1.4. " Plotinus, Enneads, 3.9.4. 83
Plotinus, Enneads, 3.8.9.53. 84 Plotinus, Enneads, 6.9.1.1. That
Plotinus is more neo-Aristotelean than neo-Platonic because
Plotinus puts the activity of a center stage is precisely
Hegel's view: he explicitly says that Plotinus reached the highest
region of thought by entering "in das aristotelische Denken des
Denkens; er hat viel mehr von diesem als vom Piaton." TWA, 19, 462.
De Koninck agrees with Hegel that Plotinus' concept of the One is
inspired by Aristotle's concept of God being beyond the
subject-object-dichotomy. "La Pense de la Pense chez Alistte",
131-5. On this question see also Rist, "The One of Plotinus and the
God of Aristotle" and Ppin, "De la Prire."
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GOD'S TRANSCENDENT ACTIVITY 41 3
version of the realm of forms qua content of divine thought,
while the Narcissus-God generates the problem of why God is the
best. Since it would be question begging to answer that he must be
the best because he contemplates himself, we need additional
reasons for believing that he is the best. But, what should be good
in the Narcissus-God except for himself?
Because of the dilemma of omniscience and question begging
narcissicism, I do not believe that Aristotle identifies God and
thought thinking itself. Fortunately, Aristotle nowhere in
Metaphysics 12 explicitly says anything to the effect that he
believes God to be an intellect. He does not claim to be engaged in
philosophical theology when he is talking of and . Thus, there is a
reading which allows him to avoid the dilemma and make sense of
ontotheology, the theory that God is the paradigmatic instance of
the sense of being, that is activity.
This leads me to the conclusion that Heidegger's critique of
Aristotle's ontotheology is not fully justified because Aristotle
does not conceive of God and the sense of being as representation.
God transcends the subject object dichotomy by being nothing but a
principle, the substance of which is its activity. At the same
time, Aristotelian transcendence avoids the trap of the Platonic
theory of forms, which is one of Aristotle's clear cut
philosophical goals. God's life, that is his active oneness,
transcends everything while at the same time being present in
everything as the model for everything's respective cause of being.
This does not mean that he creates the world out of nothing,
especially because according to Aristotle there can be no initial
nothingness as in the systems of "the theologians who generate the
world from night (- )" The kosmos is always already there, and we
can understand why this is so by thinking the thought that the
eternity of time and, therefore, of movement, can only be
adequately accounted for by postulating an actus purus. By
analyzing the structure of our intellectual self- awareness we come
close to its active oneness, although there is an unbridgeable gap
between us and God. This is the reason why Aristotle recommends
that we "make ourselves immortal as far as it
86 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.6.1071b27. Barnes inadequately
translates with "mythologists" instead of "theologians."
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414 MARKUS GABRIEL
is possible (' )1 echoing the Platonic S- .88 Whatever finite
beings endowed with reason and intellect may do, they will never
become God, allthough they will continue to aim at an actus
purus.
New School for Social Research
87 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 10.7.1177b33. "Plato,
Theaetetus 176bl. See David Sedley, "The Ideal of Godlikeness,"
in Plato 2: Ethics, Politics, Religion, and the Soul, ed. Gail
Fine (Oxford: 1999), 309-28; also '"Becoming Like God' in the
Timaeus and Aristotle", in Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias, eds.
Toms Calvo Martnez and Luc Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia-Veri.,
1997), 327-39.
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Article Contentsp. [385]p. 386p. 387p. 388p. 389p. 390p. 391p.
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Issue Table of ContentsThe Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 63, No. 2
(Dec., 2009), pp. 307-526Front MatterMetaphysics and the Origin of
Culture [pp. 307-328]Dummett and the Origins of Analytical
Philosophy [pp. 329-347]Is There an "Arch Kakou" in Plato? [pp.
349-384]God's Transcendent Activity: Ontotheology in "Metaphysics"
12 [pp. 385-414]Beyond Nature: Karol Wojtyla's Development of the
Traditional Definition of Personhood [pp. 415-454]Book Reviews:
Summaries and CommentsReview: untitled [pp. 455-457]Review:
untitled [pp. 457-458]Review: untitled [pp. 459-460]Review:
untitled [pp. 460-463]Review: untitled [pp. 463-465]Review:
untitled [pp. 465-467]Review: untitled [pp. 467-468]Review:
untitled [pp. 468-472]Review: untitled [pp. 472-473]Review:
untitled [pp. 473-475]Review: untitled [pp. 475-477]Review:
untitled [pp. 478-479]Review: untitled [pp. 479-481]Review:
untitled [pp. 481-483]Review: untitled [pp. 483-485]Review:
untitled [pp. 485-486]Review: untitled [pp. 486-488]Review:
untitled [pp. 488-489]Review: untitled [pp. 489-491]Review:
untitled [pp. 491-493]Review: untitled [pp. 493-494]Review:
untitled [pp. 495-496]Review: untitled [pp. 496-498]Review:
untitled [pp. 498-500]
Current Periodical Articles [pp. 503-523]Back Matter