The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

Richard A. Lee, Jr.

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

Also by Richard A. Lee, Jr SCIENCE, THE SINGULAR AND THE QUESTION OF THEOLOGY

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

Richard A. Lee, Jr Department of Philosophy De Paul University Chicago, USA

© Richard A. Lee, Jr 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–3366–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lee, Richard A., Jr. The force of reason and the logic of force / Richard A. Lee, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3366–9 1. Violence—History. 2. Power (Philosophy)—History. 3. Violence—History—To 1500. 4. Power (Philosphy)—History—To 1500. 5. Philosphy, Medieval. I. Title. B105.V5L44 2004 118—dc22 2004044361 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

For Johannes Fritsche If there is something like an eidos, You are the eidos of a philosopher, and of a friend

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Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

Overview of the argument Methodology

1 6

1 The Trouble with Force

9

A first origin A second origin A third origin

11 20

27

2 Tracing the Logic of Force: Roger Bacon’s De Multiplicatione specierum Bacon’s logic of force The metaphysics of species Tracing the logic of force

35 37 41 47

3 Creation, Order and Violence in Thomas Aquinas Aquinas on violent causation Divine power, divine violence The order of the universe and the overcoming of force Conclusion

4 Albertus Magnus and Nicole Oresme on Force and Nature Albertus Magnus on place and force Oresme and the primacy of force The force of nature

5 Knowledge and Power in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly Knowing what we can Sensation and evidence

53 55 60 66

70 73 74 78 82

85 86 88

vii

viii Contents

The power of God Conclusion

6 Hobbes’ Logic of Force: The Phenomenon of Motion and the Capacities of Ratiocination Introduction Hobbes and phenomena The task of reason Reason, phenomenality, politics

92 97

99 99 103 109 113

Notes

115

Bibliography

135

Index

147

Acknowledgements An earlier version of Chapter 2 was published as ‘Tracing the Logic of Force Royer Bacon’s De Multiplicatione specierum’, Epoche 8(1), Fall 2003, pp. 103–20. Another version of Chapter 3 was published as ‘Mana and Logos: Violence and Order in Thomas Aquinas’, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 22(2), 2001, pp. 29–48. I thank the editors of these journals for their kind permission to reprint revised versions of those papers. My heartfelt thanks and appreciation goes to Molly Sturdevant and Cecelia Stobbe for their help with the index and the proof-reading. Their work has gone to make this text more ‘reader friendly’. RICHARD A. LEE, JR

ix

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Introduction

Overview of the argument It is one of the well-known features of Hegel’s system that he brings together – or at least attempts to bring together – the being of an object with its mode of being known. While in modernity one could speak of this as the dialectical unity of subject and object such that ontology and epistemology come to be one and the same, such terms do not and cannot apply to premodern philosophy.1 Hegel’s achievement, however, is not new. For Plato and Aristotle, each in his own way, achieved precisely the same goal: the principle of being and the principle of knowing are identical for each. Such an achievement is possible only on the basis of a reduction of existing singulars to some universal concept that functions at one and the same time as the being of the singular and its mode of being known. For both Plato and Aristotle, as well as for a number of medieval philosophers, that universal concept is called ‘form’.2 Philosophers in the twentieth century have called this procedure into question on many fronts. Most significantly, the question has concerned the element of difference that, on the one hand, makes an individual an individual and not a universal, and, on the other, that makes an individual the individual it is as against all other individuals.3 Critiques of ‘essentialism’ from a variety of feminisms also call this procedure into question. Indeed, it seems that any grasp of an individual that is mediated in any way through a universal is, for that reason alone, suspect.

1

2

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

In what follows, I am interested in what happens when existing singulars are removed from their rational ground – that is, are freed from being held within the identity of the principle of knowing and being. My main focus here is on medieval thinkers, though I begin with a brief look at Ancient thought (Hesiod, Plato, Aristotle) and end by pointing to post-medieval thought (Hobbes and Kant). My argument has three entwined aspects. First, once existing singulars threaten to break through their conceptualization through a rational ground, their mode of existence and their mode of operation appears as something like force. I use the term ‘force’ to indicate a conceptual region that delineates not only force but also concepts such as power and violence. In Latin, this conceptual region includes not only vis, but also potentia, potestas, violentia and virtus. I want to show how it is that whenever something cannot be reduced to a universal concept that also functions as its mode of being, its existence and operation is labeled as force, power or violence. Second, and inseparable from the first, I want to turn the very notions of force and violence back onto universal conceptualization itself. That is to say, once the concept of force has been given definition, it becomes clear that reason – the capacity to engage in universal conceptualization – operates as something like force or violence. Most often this occurs in the form of a reduction of force, of the existence of singulars, to some universal – a universal that is frequently unchanging. We could call this move of reason ‘demystification’, following Horkheimer and Adorno.4 Third, I will return to force, and look at the ways in which force might be grasped by reason without thereby being forced into something other than force. In other words, and this is my main task, I want to show that there is something like a ‘logic of force’ that allows us to trace the workings of force without reducing it to something that might be more ontologically or epistemologically basic.5 This last aspect allows us to return to the operations of reason to see that it can trace the various lines through which force operates without at the same time enforcing the elimination of force. Hegel is instructive in the philosophical discussion of force. In his Phenomenology, the concept of force arises on the basis of the claims to immediacy made by consciousness in relation to the appearance of objects. The immediacy of sense certainty, which claims to grasp this object here now before it, turns out to be mediated through

Introduction 3

some kind of universality. This universality, then, becomes the basis of a new claim by consciousness to grasp an object, the claim of perception. Perception brings sensation to the level of thought.6 What is perceived, then, by such a consciousness? ‘If [what is the object of perception] is taken as an inert, basic essence, it would be itself nothing other than the extreme of being-for-itself taken from one side’.7 Perception posits its object as an essence, and the question now is what characterizes that essence. If it is static and without effects, then consciousness posits it as a being that is merely for itself; that is a being that is not constituted by relations to anything other than itself. Obviously, however, such a claim is impossible, for it is the very relatedness to consciousness that makes an object perceivable at all. So the being-for-itself of the object of perception turns out to be such a being only because it is conditioned by the perceiving intellect or consciousness. It turns out, therefore, that the object of perception cannot be this static essence, but must be an object that performs some work, particularly on consciousness. It is here where the concept of force arises. For perception requires not only an essence of the thing perceived – otherwise there can be no claim to know it – but also a medium through which it is perceived. So we have a medium thought to be constituted by ‘many subsistent “matters” ’ and the unity of the thing perceived. In other words, what is posited in perception is not static, but the flow of things moving and changing into one another on the backdrop of a medium. Now that the medium has entered the picture of perception, the very essence of the thing grasped by perception is put aside because now it is dissolved into the universal medium of perception. The need for the medium shows that what perception grasps is not a selfcontained, self-identical, independent essence, but the plurality of all these diverse ‘matters’ that also constitute the medium. The relationship of the individual to the universal medium means ‘that these “matters” are each where the other is; they mutually interpenetrate, but without coming into contact with one another because, conversely, the many diverse “matters” are equally independent’ (Phenomenology 109–110/81). In this way, Hegel argues that perception, which emerges from consciousness’s attentiveness to the appearance of things insofar as they appear, ushers in the notion of mutual movement and

4

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

interpenetration. This, for him, is what is called force (Kraft). For Hegel, then, force is found to belong to the sphere of appearances as such when consciousness attempts to give an account of the mode of appearing of phenomena. In other words, what accounts for the appearing of things, in this mode of consciousness, is nothing other than force, because the thing perceived must express its effects on and through a medium. In short, force is constitutive of appearing, as such, constitutive of phenomenality. Force, however, is twofold. For on the one hand it is nothing if it is not expressed outside of itself on something else. So externalization belongs to force. On the other hand, force is taken in by something upon which it has effects, that is it disappears into the thing that it effects and affects and it is driven back into itself from this externalization. This latter, is what Hegel calls ‘authentic’ or ‘proper’ force.8 Now this difference between force identified as belonging to something and force as externalized and working on other things is a distinction that belongs not to force itself, but to the understanding. That is, conceptualization differentiates between two moments that in themselves are not different. If we think of the ability of fire to heat our skin so that we perceive the skin, we actually posit two kinds of force or two forces. First, we say that it is the fire that affects our skin, so that fire has the power to heat. That is, we give to the fire itself as a self-identical thing, this power. However, that power is nothing if it is not externalized so that it can affect and effect other things. So we think of these two forces separately from one another, even though if force is to mean anything at all, it must mean both as a unity. Hegel’s argument, in fact, mimics a movement that we will see through several episodes in the history of philosophy. Hegel argues that a dualization of force belongs to its very concept, as long as there is a dualization posited between perceived object and knowing subject. In this attempt to account for phenomenality, the true being of things is no longer immediate, as was first assumed or posited. Rather, the understanding, whose task is conceptualization, ‘looks through this mediating play of forces into the true background of things’ (Phenomenology 116/86). The separation of the force that remains ‘hidden’ in the thing and the one that is externalized in the play of forces brings about the traditional dualization of appearance and reality: ‘This is called appearance; for we call that being appearance that is immediately and in itself a non-being’ (Phenomenology

Introduction 5

116/87). Force emerges as an account of how knowledge grasps appearances as such. Yet immediately when force becomes the account, the problem emerges that the concept of force is not the force that gives rise to phenomenality. Appearance thus becomes unreality because the concept of force posits an ‘inner’, a real being that is ultimately the explanation of the force that affects us and gives rise to the ability of consciousness to grasp the truth. For Hegel, this dialectic of force as both inner and external, as concept and operation, results in the understanding being thrown back on its own categories – in the vein of Kant – while also positing a supersensible realm that must be the reality of what appears in perception. The result is that perception, which posited the immediacy of phenomenality to itself, is superceded by the understanding. The understanding, then, proceeds by this very dualization of appearance and reality, phenomenality being constituted by force, while the truth is constituted by an ‘inner world’ that is the supersensible world. ‘The supersensible is therefore appearance qua appearance’ (Phenomenology 118/89). The understanding is ultimately thrown back upon itself and thus becomes self-consciousness because the play of forces is not enough to account for how phenomenality as such is constituted. What is instructive in this movement in Phenomenology is Hegel’s insistence that force and the concept of force immediately form two poles that do not quite coincide. It is this difference between being and knowing that Hegel works through so as to arrive at selfconsciousness. Yet it is this difference that causes consciousness to posit force in the first place as phenomenality as such. Hegel’s dialectic, then, works to overcome the difference between phenomenality and reality by forcing the understanding back upon itself as selfconsciousness. This will ultimately allow him to bring together phenomenality and reality. While Hegel’s way of overcoming the dualization of appearance and reality is peculiar to him, I hope to show that the constitution of the realm of appearances, of phenomenality as such, by force is not peculiar to him. In what follows, I will present episodes in the history of philosophy in which force, power and violence are at issue in precisely the ways that Hegel outlines in Phenomenology. I will argue that for these thinkers, force belongs to the sphere of appearances, or what I will call phenomenality. I present episodes that trace the attempt to reduce

6

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

force to something other than its operation, something that is uniquely available to reason. Therefore, I will show that the logic of force belongs to phenomenality while the logic of reason belongs to the sphere most often posited as reality, or what Adorno calls ‘higher level essentiality’.9 My hope is to uncover possibilities for tracing the logic of force without positing that very logic as belonging to the being of things, without taking concepts as the essence of things. This possibility is one of the central themes of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics. In that text, Adorno opens the possibility of what he calls non-identitarian thinking; that is, a thinking that does not posit that concepts grasp the essential ground of things.10 For Adorno, this non-identity of concepts and objects, however, does not entail a rejection of the conceptual side, but a recognition that ‘the potential awaits in the object’. It is this insistence-that while objects remain always non-identical to their concepts we cannot, if we are to maintain a critical theory, give up on the concepts that belong to our rational thinking-that I intend to pursue here with regard to the concept of force.

Methodology The above brief overview of the argument may lead to questions about why I have chosen to investigate the issue of force through a reading of medieval philosophers. Such questions lead almost immediately to the charge of anachronism. Am I not guilty of a kind of violence myself, the violence of forcing medieval texts to speak to an issue that obviously arises out of contemporary concerns? Is the concept of force something that is discovered in these texts? Or is it posited in them by my reading? Such questions are serious enough to demand a brief explanation of the manner by which I will proceed. First, it will be almost immediately evident that what is presented here is not a history of the concept of force – not even in the form of an archaeology or a genealogy. That is to say, there is no tracing here of the effects that one conceptualization of force has on subsequent conceptualizations. This is not to deny that concepts do not have effects – indeed they each have a Wirkungsgeschichte11 – but rather that this very way of conceiving history is analogous to, if not identical with, force itself. The way in which these lines of effects are traced is from the point of view of the ‘victors’; that is, from the effects that

Introduction 7

have, at the moment the history is written, held sway.12 In this way, history most often includes within it a notion of progress, even if only in the form of development. But development itself requires a telos, an end, although only a provisional one. Without developing a full-blown theory of history, it can simply be noted that, viewed in this way, history is the history of actuality and not possibility. Without presenting my argument as a history of the concept of force, I leave open the possibilities of thinking force that seem to have been closed down precisely by its history. Second, it might appear from the structure of the text that I mean to present an ‘originary’ grasp of force in Greek mythology that then is lost and covered over by the subsequent history of philosophy.13 I begin with Hesiod not because he presents us with a prephilosophical grasp of the notion of force, but because he is a preeminent example of a non-philosophical grasp of the concept and operation of force. Horkheimer and Adorno are surely right that mythology is not a ‘stage’ that we have surpassed, but it is a constant reality into which even Enlightenment thinking runs.14 My juxtaposition of Hesiod with Plato and Aristotle, therefore, arises because they, more than many other philosophers, engaged in a philosophy of philosophy15 – often in direct opposition to mythology. In a way, the rest of the text is a playing out of the operation of force as this concept is given to medieval thinkers by Aristotle. This playing out, however, does not happen historically, in the usual sense of that term. Rather than presenting a history, I have presented the three aspects outlined above as they occur in each of the thinkers investigated. My guiding idea was to present the various ways in which force or violence is thought. These ways include both attempts at reduction as well as attempts to think force without any reduction. I have chosen thinkers who to my mind best exemplify the attempt to think through the concept of force. I have presented thinkers that carry out a thinking of force on the basis of Aristotle’s attempts to deny force’s operation as force. Therefore, what is presented here is not a narrative of the history of the concept of force, but rather episodes in that history that in no way pretend to show the linear development in the concept.

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1 The Trouble with Force

It is one of the ‘crowning achievements’ of western rationality that appearance has been severed from reality. One can even say that rationality itself rests on this dualization. Without separating nature from what merely stands on the face of it, rationality is left without a task. If we are faced with mere phenomena, then they simply appear as such. Indeed, we would not even call them phenomena, for there would be nothing other than their manifestation. Unless there is some other to the manifestation of things, then we do not have a way to explain that manifestation. Reason relies on, if it does not in fact posit, that dualization. But the dualization already presupposes that something is suspect with regard to what manifests itself to us outside of reason. Or, to speak from the other side, and with Adorno, the separation of the face of nature from itself is the first step to overcoming nature, to mastering nature, a step that finds its culmination in our mastery of ourselves.1 When Hobbes tells us that the end of philosophy comes in the application of bodies to bodies and effects to effects for the well-being of human industry, he stands in a long line of thinkers that constitute the western tradition’s attempt to overcome the force of nature through reason.2 Hobbes’ notion of the goal of philosophy exposes most clearly that the cosmos in which force is constitutive and irreducible is one in which our existence as humans is always threatened. Such a cosmos does not appear to be one that is designed for us as our home. Perhaps it is this feature that tempts us toward dualization. The cosmos appears to be constituted by forces greater than our own, but reason can be the very means to overcoming those forces. Hobbes, therefore, 9

10

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

recognizes most clearly that force, as a condition of phenomenality, can be overcome by reason, but only when reason is effective as a force.3 This dualization of nature and appearance is the necessary condition of rationality because, without it, being itself appears as nothing other than force. It is the overcoming of force, then, that is at stake in this dualization. Yet how can reason overcome force if it, itself, is not also a force? Kant knew this quite well: In the immeasurableness of nature and the incompetence of our faculty for adopting a standard proportionate to the aesthetic contemplation of the magnitude of its realm, we found our own limitation. But with this we also found in our rational faculty another non-sensuous standard, one which has that infinity itself under it as unity, and in comparison with which everything in nature is so small, and so found in our minds a pre-eminence over nature even in its immeasurability. Now in just the same way the irresistibility of the power of nature forces on us the recognition of our physical helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time reveals a faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature, and discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is the foundation of quite another kind from that which may be assailed and brought into danger by external nature.4 Yet Kant also realized in the third Critique that this estimation of ourselves as being above nature will also lead us to posit rationality as the very cause and origin of nature. This is what gives unity to the two parts of the third Critique. The subjective judgment that allows us to issue the aesthetic judgment of the sublime also has an objective side – the teleological judgment. We are reflectively moved to posit reason as cause and origin of nature precisely because it stands outside our capacities to make determinative judgments concerning it. If the victory of reason over force is to be lasting, reason has to pursue force back to its very origins, to the origin of the cosmos itself. Here I would like to pursue three accounts of the origin of the cosmos. The first account is mythic, and it is the mythic account that philosophy will attempt to overcome. What is at stake in these accounts is not what force is, but rather what are the conditions

The Trouble with Force 11

under which something like force can be named at all such that one can distinguish between force and reason or force and nature.

A first origin Greek accounts of the origin of the cosmos are striking in that the stories, at the point of narrating the origin, have almost no plot. Indeed, in telling of the origin, Greek myths can hardly be said to be stories at all. Hesiod, for example, has only this to say: In truth at first Chaos came to be, but next wide-bosomed Earth, the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, and dim Tartarus in the depth of the wide-pathed Earth, and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them. From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Night; but of Night were born Aether and Day.5 Even if we grant that the origin must begin somewhere, and thus grant Hesiod the positing of Chaos, the story still lacks a plot – there is, literally, no action. At the origin, Hesiod can only posit. He cannot tell a story of how, for example, from out of Chaos come Erebus and Night. Hesiod seems to have no need to say more, or perhaps there is no way for him to say more. How can such a story, a story of how divine power posits itself at the origin, be told at all? Hesiod is telling the story of what, at the time of the telling, has already been under way, has already begun. So Hesiod actually must begin somewhere subsequent to the beginning. At the origin of the self-positing of divine power, there is no other site from which to tell the story of that self-positing. Hesiod must, therefore, begin at some stable reference point from which he can look back. The lack of plot at the origin indicates that Hesiod’s moment of beginning actually lies elsewhere. This can be seen in Aristophanes telling of the origin of the cosmos. He clearly indicates that for him the real beginning lies with the birds: Let [humans] be humble and learn from us The truth of Being, the essential germ

12

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

The Bird, first cause of Gods and Rivers Of Erebos, and of the great void Chaos.6 So Aristophanes’ theogony begins with the birds and works backward to show the origin of the birds as the first cause: Chaos and Night: that was the start of it And black Erebos, and the long nothing of Tartaros No Earth as yet, no air, no Heaven. There, In the untired lap of Erebos, sombre Night Laid a wind-egg, whence, with the circling year Eros was hatched, golden Eros, wind-swift Love, the world’s longing. His was the sleight Joined night and winged Chaos in that first Tartarean marriage and brought the race of Birds To the shores of light. It was Eros Created the line of the Gods, also, mixing The urgent elements in adorable ways To make the Sky and Sea and Earth and all The Blessed Ones.7 Aristophanes can offer a more robust plot of the origin because he begins closer to it. He begins with the Birds and this means he wants to show that the Birds are present already at the beginning. His plot shows precisely this beginning. That Aristophanes would begin with the Birds seems preposterous. This does not arise just from the myth, but rather the work to which he puts the myth. Aristophanes’ myth will help him construct his ideal city: ‘Cloudcuckooland’. The comedic appeal to myth exposes the general character of myth. The starting point, always subsequent to the origin that the myth relates, must be posited in advance. From the point of view of the starting point, the positing of a mythic origin (Night, Chaos, Earth, the Birds, and so on) makes sense. The lack of plot at the origin is made up for by the over-determination of the real starting point of the telling of the myth. For Hesiod, the story of the origin clearly begins with Zeus and his rise to the top of the divine hierarchy. Thus Hesiod’s theogony is a myth of sovereignty;8 that is, a myth designed to show how Zeus rose to power and established sovereignty over the universe, thereby

The Trouble with Force 13

establishing the order under which we still live. ‘The Theogony gives an account of the births, spheres of influence and conflicts of many divine powers and of the balance that emerged between them up to the time when, under the rule of Zeus, the definitive order of the universe was established’.9 This order includes the multiple spheres of human life: nature, society, polis, religion. Hesiod’s myth of sovereignty, therefore, does not begin at the origin, but begins with Zeus’ contested claim to sovereignty and the order that results. The fact that Zeus’ claim might be contested, even from within myth itself, is seen clearly in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. The Chorus laments the passing of the old order and calls into question the new: ‘For there are new rulers in heaven, and Zeus governs with lawless customs; that which was mighty before he now brings to nothing’.10 From the point of view of the old order, the power of Zeus allows him to issue ‘self-appointed laws’ and ‘display towards the gods of old an overweening spirit’ (Aeschylus 403ff). Whereas Aeschylus’ chorus accuses Zeus of a violent overthrow of the old order, Hesiod’s myth puts Zeus in the role of the giver of justice. In a sense, Hesiod’s myth already prevents the Chorus’ accusation because it is only with the ascent of Zeus that there is justice at all. For when Zeus overcomes Chronos, he distributes equally to the gods their powers and spheres of operation. Hesiod does not deny, however, that force and violence were used by Zeus to establish that order. While for Aeschylus that Kratos and Bia enforce the punishment of Prometheus shows clearly the lawlessness of Zeus, for Hesiod force and domination are the necessary tools of sovereignty. The origin he relates, therefore, allows us to understand precisely this fact about sovereignty. Hesiod, therefore, begins with the positing of mythic force. First is Chaos, the undifferentiated. Chaos here cannot be understood as a receptacle for the cosmos, and Chaos is certainly not passive. We shall see that at a crucial point in Hesiod’s account, Chaos comes back with awesome consequences to threaten the order with a return to an undifferentiated lack of order. Chaos can be understood in the contrast Hesiod implies with Gaia, ‘the ever-sure foundation of all the deathless ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus’ (ibid., 116). Chaos does not stand directly in the line that will establish the order of the cosmos. Chaos is other-than-order that makes order possible. This is clearly indicated by the nature of the offspring that come

14

The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force

from Chaos: Erebus and Night. Like Tartarus, Erebus and Night constitute a kind of shadow of the order of the cosmos, not quite its opposite, but its edges. Chaos, Night, Erebus and Tartarus give the cosmos a boundary by constituting an outside that lacks everything that makes the cosmos what it is. This is their awesome and terrible power. Even the gods come to fear their powers. In the Iliad, Zeus backs down in the face of the awesome power of Night. Chaos is first because Chaos is nothing other than the self-positing of divine power. Anything else would require differentiation. From Chaos and Earth follow a generation of ancient and mysterious powers: Night, Pontus and Ouranos. These gods come to be also in a mysterious way – there is no sexual union to account for their coming into being. Chaos and Earth are themselves self-positing – the foundation and the other than foundation. There is, strictly speaking, no reason for their coming into being. Power here seems not only to be self-positing, but also self-multiplying. The story cannot yet have a ‘logic’, for there is not yet sufficient opposition and differentiation to initiate a play among these powers. This lack of differentiation ends when Gaia bears Ouranos to ‘cover her on every side’ (ibid., 123). From this point, she and Ouranos begin to bear children through sexual union. This ‘introduces a new type of procreation through union between principles which, even when united, remain distinct and opposed to each other’.11 Here we see the first element of the logic of force. These divine principles, strictly speaking, do nothing. The manifestation of their power arises only when there is opposition. Force, therefore, requires resistance; that is, an opposing force. This is not to say that there is a division between force and its manifestation. Rather, the manifestation of force, of these divine powers, is its polemos against something that is distinct and opposed to it. There is, at this stage, no cosmos at all, and consequently the divine powers of Chaos, Earth, Night, Erebus, Ouranos, Aether, Eros and Day have no effects.12 The context of polemos is supplied, in Hesiod’s account, in the very mode of relation of Gaia and Ouranos. For Ouranous is immediately filled with hatred for his offspring, just as Cronos is filled with hatred for his father. By way of sexual union, Gaia and Ouranos produce Oceanus, Coeus, Cirius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe and Tethys. The opposition between Ouranos and his offspring is most apparent with the birth of Cronos, who

The Trouble with Force 15

was, ‘wily, youngest and most terrible of [Gaia’s] children, and he hated his lusty sire’ (ibid., 138). Hatred arises again between Ouranos and his monstrous offspring, the Cyclopes and the ones with a hundred arms. These are beings that are remarkable for their power, and ‘of all the children that were born of Earth and Heaven, these were the most terrible and they were hated by their own father from the first’ (ibid., 154–6). The polemic relationship, signalled here by hatred, arises because of Ouranos’ ‘lust’ (himeiron philotetos). His lust, which he fulfils by bringing on Night and laying over Earth, results in ‘shameful things’.13 The impropriety of Ouranos’ shameful lust produces offspring that are signs of that impropriety. What is more, his lust causes Night to reign.14 What is shameful here is both that Ouranos’ lust brings about an act of violence against Gaia and that it causes perpetual night. In short, Ouranos’ actions provide no order, no cosmos, but bring about or continue the undifferentiation and disorder. While Gaia generates Ouranos ‘to cover her on every side’, Ouranos’ sexual acts pervert this: ‘he spreads himself full on her’. In this way, their offspring are the offspring of force and resistance. It is no wonder that many of these offspring are described as possessing awesome strength and power. The Cyclopes and the hundred-armed, who will prove crucial to Zeus’ overcoming of Cronos, are characterized precisely by their monstrous strength and power. Hesiod’s account thus far places the gods and goddesses within a context of force. Ouranos, in fact, usurps the force that properly belongs to Eros and to Aphrodite, in his lustful approaches to Earth. His appropriation of their power results in his also bringing about the power of Night to bring the periphery to the centre. His actions, therefore, result in a pure play of forces. This is the original condition of the cosmos, or, more precisely, the condition out of which the cosmos becomes possible. We will see that Zeus does not remove force from the cosmos, but orders the powers of the gods and goddesses into a cosmos that is ordered on the basis of his sovereignty. Hesiod plays out the logic of this force relentlessly. Ouranos’ punishment for forcing himself on Gaia strikes him at the very source of his opposition to Gaia – his genitals. While Ouranos once again attempts to spread himself on Gaia, Cronos ‘lopped off his own father’s members and cast them away to fall behind him’ (ibid., 180). The plan and the weapon were hatched by Gaia herself. While surely Gaia’s plan is an act of cunning (metis), it is a plan that involves force

16

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as well. The trick that she springs on Ouranos requires the force of Cronos in order to be successful. Gaia, therefore, does not reject force in favour of some other mode of operation, but becomes adept at tracing the operation of force so as to counter it in the most successful way by another force. The act of violence against Ouranos effects a separation between Heaven and Earth, and in so doing lays down an order that was not previously present. Indeed, one can say that the castration of Heaven is the very act that establishes a cosmos; that is, that orders the whole range of powers for the first time. Cronos’ violence has multiple vectors that should be traced. First, it moves against the force of Ouranos’ violence against Gaia. In this context it is a resistive force. However, the force does not end in the resistance, but continues to have effects. This is the second vector. Cronos’ force brings about an order as a result of its operation. The order is born of that violence and bears the marks of that violence. So, while an order is produced as a result of this operation of force, the act of producing the order does not belong to that order itself. It is precisely for this reason that sovereignty is always in question. With the castration of Ouranos, an entire generation of gods and goddesses is allowed to unfold – from the blood of Ouranos’ genitals, from sexual union among the gods and goddesses, and from asexual generation. The very multiplicity of this generation relies on the order that has been established by Cronos. It is as if the stability of his regime brings about a population explosion. Each new deity takes its place in the order established by Cronos’ founding act of violence. Hesiod’s account clearly does not want to reduce the violence of founding to the legitimacy of what has been founded. This tension between sovereignty and force is what allows Aeschylus to call into question Zeus’ attack on the old regime. The Chorus in Prometheus Bound calls the sovereignty of Zeus into question precisely by appealing to the antiquity of the old regime. From this point of view, Zeus can only overturn the old regime through brute force and violence. The Chorus, however, pays no attention to the violence through which Cronos established his regime. Aeschylus’ Chorus and Hesiod are both caught in the same tension – from the point of view of the order they uphold, any other order can only be viewed as violence; but any legitimate order was also produced through a similar act of violence.

The Trouble with Force 17

Aeschylus is clearly more concerned about the relation between force and order than Hesiod. For Prometheus tells the Chorus that he went to the Titans ‘but they, disdaining counsels of craft, in the pride of their strength thought to gain the mastery without a struggle and by force’ (ibid., 209). It is because the Titans refuse ‘counsels of craft’ that Prometheus breaks with the old order and sides with the new. Gaia had told him that success in dominion would come not by strength or violence, but by guile. Aeschylus, therefore, establishes an opposition that is not present in the myth of Hesiod – the opposition between cunning and force. For Aeschylus, the question of violence and the problem of the self-positing of power give way to a sphere other than power, a sphere of cunning and tricks that does not operate along with power. Aeschylus already turns away from mythic power to a context in which sovereignty operates by other means, without Kratos and Bia. This is not Hesiod’s context. The victory of Zeus comes both with cunning and with force. Cronos swallows his children because Earth and Heaven tell him that ‘he is destined to be overcome by his own son, strong though he was, through the contriving of great Zeus’ (ibid., 464). But even though Zeus will act by contriving (boule), he will still overpower (damenai) Cronos. Similarly, after Cronos swallows his children, and the rock put in Zeus’ place, he did not know ‘that [Zeus] was soon to overcome him by force (bia) and might’ (ibid., 489). For Hesiod, the issue is not cunning, planning and trickery versus force, power and strength, but rather the issue is how to plan in the context of force, power and strength. Clearly for Hesiod the cosmos is still, before the ascent of Zeus, one constituted by the play of divine powers and forces. The clash between the Titans and those allied with Zeus shows that power and force is not alleviated by cunning, planning and thought, but is traced and directed by that planning. Indeed, as Vernant himself has pointed out, tragedy is an attempt to play out the force of the gods in the context of a polis.15 One would expect, therefore, that Hesiod would provide an account of the self-positing of force to the point of sovereignty, while Aeschylus would call that self-positing into question. Hesiod’s mythic account of divine power does not attempt to replace divine force with some other, rational, mode of operation. Zeus’ sovereignty is not argued for on the basis of first principles; it comes from the use of force against the old regime. So the decisive

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moment in the battle comes when Zeus releases the monsters from the confinement in which Ouranos had placed them. They are released so that Zeus can use their ‘great might (bia) and unconquerable strength, and face the Titans in bitter strife’ (ibid., 649). The monsters themselves (these are the Cyclopes and the hundred-armed) see that the battle requires more force, and they agree to augment the power of Zeus with their own (ibid., 661ff). When the battle is joined, Zeus no longer ‘holds back his might’ and makes manifest his force (bia). The immediate effect of the polemic of divine forces is that the cosmos is threatened with a return to its originary chaos: The boundless sea rang terrible around, and the earth crashed loudly: wide Heaven was shaken and groaned, and high Olympus reeled from its foundation under the charge of the undying gods, and a heavy quaking reached dim Tartarus. (Ibid., 678ff) The clash affects heaven and earth, and even Tartarus, the place where the manifestation of the gods reaches its end. Earth crashes and Olympus, the home of the gods, is rocked off its foundation, that is, Earth. The war threatens the differentiation brought about by Gaia and Ouranos: The life-giving earth crashed around in burning, and the vast wood crackled loud with fire all about. All the land seethed, and Ocean’s streams and the unfruitful sea. The hot vapour lapped round the earthborn Titans: flame unspeakable rose to the bright upper air: the flashing glare of the thunderstone and lightning blinded their eyes for all that they were strong. Astounding heat seized Chaos: and to see with eyes and to hear the sound with ears it seemed even as if Earth and wide Heaven above came together. (Ibid., 692–705) Clearly here the struggle is not one in which something other than force can win. Indeed, Hesiod tells us that the war was settled ‘by force’ (ibid., 882). The contest of opposing forces is won by the side with the greater force. Zeus knew this well, and enlisted monstrous force on his side. Zeus’ first act as ruler is to institute a new order of the balance of forces. Once again, an order is brought about through force. It is now the right of Zeus to use force to keep the order together. Kratos and

The Trouble with Force 19

Bia ‘have no house apart from Zeus nor any dwelling nor path except that wherein God leads them, but they dwell always with Zeus the loud-thunderer’ (ibid., 384ff). The most striking feature of this story of the origin is the predominance of polemos – opposing forces. The production of the cosmos does not proceed rationally. Indeed, because of the presence of force, the production of this cosmos, rather than any other, seems an accident. It could, and perhaps ought to, have been otherwise. From the point of view of rationality, the particular failure of this account of the origin is that it fails to show why the production of the cosmos is the production of this cosmos and no other. Secondly, the world presented in this account of the origin is not our world. The world whose origin is presented here is one in which force is the condition for existence. The gods and monsters have a place because they have the force necessary to carve a world out of chaos. Without force, a being has no right to existence in this cosmos.16 It is, in fact, unique to us as humans that we do not possess the means to secure our place in this cosmos. The world is so obviously not a home for human beings that their appearance hardly fits into Hesiod’s account at all. Humans appear as an afterthought – but even to call it an afterthought is already to say too much, for there seems precisely to be no thought at all in the appearance of humans. It is thus fitting that the task of providing for all creatures, whose appearance in the story seems so strange, almost as if they were always already there in some way, falls to Epimetheus: that is, to afterthought. Epimetheus apportions out all the characteristics that would ensure to each kind its survival – though how the ‘kinds’ are to be distinguished at this point remains a fundamental mystery.17 There was one kind, however, which was left without any means of survival – humans. There we sat, among the vast powers of nature that are divine in origin: ‘Isolated, silent, naked, [we] could neither record the past nor plan for the future; [we] could not even comfort each other in [our] misery. “Like shapes in dreams, they mixed up everything at random as their lives went on” ’.18 It is at this point that our relation to the gods becomes cemented. Prometheus took a kind heart to us, though why a god would bother with a lot such as us is hard to imagine from the story. Prometheus steals from the gods the technai that allowed them to live in such a hostile, chaotic world: house-building, farming,

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production, counting, calculating, dream-divination, speech and writing, medicine. It is only through this theft that humans could finally gain some measure of control over the chaos into which they were plunged. It is only at this moment that the world becomes available to us and, as a result, becomes a possible home for us. But the world becomes available to us through theft, through stealing what rightly belongs only to the gods and giving it as a gift to humans. So the skills required to live in the world constituted by mythic force are not ours precisely because it is not our world. Not only is it not our world, but we do not even belong here. The theft that allows us to secure our place, then, is the theft of divine force. Reason, speech, the ability to calculate and plan are seen here to be nothing other than various types of force, various forces in their own right, which are stolen and given to us. Only on the basis of our stolen power, then, can we begin to make a claim for our right to exist in this cosmos. To ask whether reason can give an account of the cosmos would be a strange question, for reason has arrived too late on the scene in order to give an account of the generation of the cosmos before its arrival. Reason, properly belonging to the gods, is a force through which they struggle to maintain their place in the cosmos. It is, then, without ground, and is certainly not the ground of the cosmos. Hesiod’s account, more so than even Aeschylus’, is one that remains in the sphere of manifestation. Hesiod makes no appeal to an other that would explain manifestation. The order instituted by Zeus is not the telos of the story, but the ultimate manifestation of divine force. Being constituted by force, the order requires that Kratos and Bia be the constant companions of the sovereign.

A second origin The narration of the origin in myth is, as we have seen, primarily an account of the force through which the cosmos came into being. Yet an account that appeals only to force is an account in which that very force is posited as a given. There can be no further explanation, except that force is the condition of the cosmos. The very givenness of force implies that the way in which things come to be (force) will always be other than the way in which we come to know them (reason). Indeed, the mythic relation to nature and the cosmos is not

The Trouble with Force 21

even one of knowledge, but rather one of awe or even terror.19 It is precisely this relation, a relation in which what is other than reason is experienced as a realm of power or force, that philosophy overturns. The overturning of power, however, requires the replacement of the mythic origin of the cosmos by one in which the cosmos is the product of thought itself. Toward the end of the Phaedo, after proclaiming the dangers of giving up logos and after putting concerns raised by Simias to rest, Socrates sums up an argument launched by Cebes’ argument in this way: As for showing that the soul is something strong and god-like, and existed even before we were born as human beings, nothing prevents all that, you say, from indicating not immortality, but only that the soul is long-lived and existed somewhere for an immense length of time in the past and knew and did all kinds of things … but its very entry into a human body was the beginning of its perishing, like an illness: it lives this life in distress, and finally perishes in what is called death. (95c1–d7)20 This issue is crucial because without proof that the soul is indeed immortal there can only be fear of death and one might never know how one can be better off dead than living. The entire dialogue to this point has been concerned with the position Socrates holds that, for the philosopher, being dead is not something to fear. Socrates takes Cebes’ question as compelling him to discuss in general the ‘reason (aitia) for coming-to-be and destruction’ (ibid., 91a1),21 ostensibly because once we can establish a cause for each we can find out whether or not the soul has such a cause. At this point, with the assent of Cebes, Socrates begins a narration of his investigations into natural philosophy. Socrates is interested in a natural philosophy because it seemed to him to be the way to grasp the causes for each thing: that is, the causes of its coming to be, perishing and its existence. After pursuing various ‘naturalistic’ accounts of causes, Socrates found himself ‘utterly blinded’. He found that he no longer knew the things he thought he knew. At this point, Socrates does not engage in an argument against naturalistic explanations; rather, the argument is carried along by references to ‘blindness’ at lines 96c5 and 99e. We

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run the risk of being blinded by the things, if we do not take care to look at them in their images. That is, without separating off some other sphere, the phenomena can overpower us and blind us. As such, the phenomena have a force, but one that can be overcome by some action on our part. What is it about these naturalistic explanations that proves ‘blinding’? Socrates continues that just as he was to despair of gaining any knowledge whatsoever of the causes of coming-to-be and passing away, he heard someone reading from Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras seemed to be offering a position that was pleasing to Socrates; that is, that the cause of everything is nous. This is pleasing to Socrates evidently because nous is a cause that forms the correlate to Socrates’ nous, which is precisely what is seeking the cause. As long as something other than nous is given as the cause of things, the soul is ‘blinded’, it becomes confused (ibid., 100d3). Thus the ‘blindness’ which is to be avoided is a ‘blindness in the soul’. In cosmology, we always risk losing our souls among the sensible phenomena. Without some sort of other to what simply manifests itself to us, the soul is threatened by the very things to which it turns its gaze. Socrates here sets up a link between the causes, the aitia, of coming-to-be and passing-away, indeed, the causes of the cosmos itself, and nous; that is, a kind of intelligence. But what kind of intelligence is this nous? For Socrates, it is that which can grasp what is ‘best’, the ‘highest good’. When nous functions as a cause, it brings about an order, a cosmos, which is ordered toward the best. Thus when nous is discovered as a cause, it answers the questions ‘why is it like this?’ by showing ‘why it is better that it be this way’. This better way, this best, this highest good, then, makes the order of the cosmos necessary because if it were otherwise it would only be worse. The correlation between nous as a cause and ‘the better’ or ‘best’ allows Socrates to grasp the phenomena because they are now recast as manifestations of an order that is reasonable because it is good. The power of the phenomena to overcome our souls’ gaze is now reduced to the order of the cosmos for the sake of the best. The blinding power, indeed mythic power, of phenomena is no longer seen as cause, but as effect, an effect whose cause the soul can grasp without risking being blinded by the phenomena. Socrates soon becomes dissatisfied with Anaxagoras because ‘as [he] went on reading [he] beheld a man making no use of his nous at

The Trouble with Force 23

all, nor finding in nous any causes for the ordering of things, but imputing them to such things as air and ether and water and many other absurdities’ (ibid., 98b9–c2). The absurdity is to attempt to give a causal explanation without making recourse to that ‘cause’ which is peculiar to nous – that which is best. The absurdity of the position is that one is playing ‘blindman’s buff’ with the cause. In this narrative of his foray into natural science, the issue of blindness and blindfolds surfaces three times: ‘yet I was so utterly blinded’ (etuphlothein) at line 96c5; ‘yet it is this latter that most people call a cause, appearing to me to be feeling it over a blindfold’ at line 99b6; and ‘I was afraid I might be completely blinded in my soul’ at line 99e2. At each point Socrates appeals to blindness, the blindness points in two directions. First, the blindness is always a result of looking too closely at the phenomena themselves; that is, by paying attention to those things the causes of which his nous is in search. When something other than nous itself is found to be the cause, the soul risks blindness. But it is the kind of blindness that comes from staring at the sun; that is, it is a blindness that arises from looking too directly at something that can overpower sensibility. The problem is not that the sun cannot be seen, but that its visibility is too much for the capacity we have to see – it is too visible to be seen without risk. The blindness affects the soul’s ability to see that which is best because it is overcome by that which is. The phenomena are given a power unto themselves – a power that can cause blindness. Yet, the other direction toward which this blindness points is theory. At line 99e, Socrates specifically contrasts the blindness that comes from looking too much at sensible things with looking at them through theory. From this we can conclude that the danger involved in natural science – that is, the episteme of nature – is the danger of a ‘flattening’ of causality. Any search for causes that ends with the very kinds of things for which we are seeking the causes is a search while wearing a blindfold. However, we cannot also look directly at the things, for such direct perception causes blindness. Theory now must be posited behind or alongside the things of which we seek the causes. Or rather, theory is the soul’s ability to seek out the causes of things without being overcome by those things because it looks at them not in their phenomenality, but in their causes. This must be precisely because it is Socrates’ nous that is searching for the causes of things, and his nous will rest only when he finds nous. Therefore, any

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explanation, any positing of causality, will result in also giving an account of why it is best that it be this way. Socrates here sets up the conditions under which any cosmology – that is, any account of the coming-to-be of the ordered whole – must operate if it is to be a cosmology. First, it must search for the causes. Second, the causes cannot be on the same level as that of which they are the causes. Third, the causes must appeal to nous because it is nous that is asking for an account of the things. What appeals to nous, then, is an account of why it is best. How can the cosmos be the best, however, if it did not come to be in order to be the best? That is, how can the cosmos truly be better than any other option unless nous is the principle, the cause of its being ordered in this way? Cosmology is consoling, therefore, because as horrible as the cosmos appears to us, it could only be worse. But that consolation arises only when one posits that the intelligibility of the cosmos presupposes an intelligent cosmos. Cosmology arises at the moment when the power of the phenomena gives way to the force of nous. But the phenomena are always there, always posing a threat to the soul. What would the alternative be? Is there not some necessary or at least inevitable relationship between asking the question ‘why’ that will already delimit what might count as an answer? Socrates presents the clear alternative to an account that appeals to nous. It is an account that uncovers dynamis without any recourse to what is best. It is the appeal to an ‘Atlas stronger and more immortal’ that Socrates finds blinding. If an account of the cosmos reveals nothing but a play of power (dynamis), a play of ‘natural’ forces, such an account fails. However, it fails only because it, like Anaxagoras, makes no use of intelligence at all. It seems, then, that it is power without nous that is blinding of the soul. The power of the phenomena is blinding unless it is overcome by the power of nous. However, Plato’s own account desires to show how nous itself, with its eyes on the good itself, the best itself, is binding (syndeo). What theory gives Socrates therefore, is a way to bind the material (i.e., that which the other natural philosophers were giving as the cause of the universe) and to bind the dynamis that each thing might have. Is, however, this binding itself an expression of dynamis? Has not nous itself now usurped the very power that Socrates found blinding when asserted of things other than nous? In fact, nous as the cause of the coming-to-be and passing-away of the cosmos now appears to be

The Trouble with Force 25

precisely that stronger and more immortal Atlas. But dynamis now as belonging to nous is appealing precisely because I myself, for whom these questions are an issue, have nous. Cosmology is consoling if reason is a force. Let me pause here in order to dwell for a moment of the logic of this sort of cosmology.22 Socrates begins by asking the question ‘Why?’ of generation and corruption. This ‘Why?’ cannot limit itself merely to the things around us, but will ultimately have to concern itself with the entire cosmos. Socrates goes on to tell us that what counts as an answer to this question can only be the ‘best’ or ‘for the sake of the best’. That is, when we answer the question ‘why?’ we have to give an account of why it is best that things come to be and pass away in the ways in which they do. It is precisely because Socrates does not ask just any ‘Why?’ but the question ‘Why is this the best?’ that any answer other than nous will be blinding. For it is only nous that could grasp what is best. In many places, Socrates readily accepts that the soul may have other ways of grasping that which is, but only nous can grasp that which is best, and that which is best explains why the cosmos is and is the way that it is. Why should the cosmos be the best that it can be? Socrates does not answer this question, but we could offer two possibilities. First, the cosmos is the best it can be because Socrates is looking to console his friends in the face of death. While none of Socrates’ arguments dispel a certain kind of death – that is, a certain kind of passing away of the body that has come to be so dear for Socrates’ friends – they do persuade his friends that it is for the best. The cosmos can be consoling only if it is the best it can be. Second, only if the cosmos is the best that it can be can the powers that are seen to be operative within it – that is, the powers that are blinding when offered as an account – be reduced to nous. While the immediate conclusion of this logic is that by thinking the question ‘Why?’ as the question ‘Why is it best?’ Socrates presupposes nous as the only possible answer, I am more interested here in a second consequence. If nous is the cause for things coming to be in the way that they have and continue to do, then Socrates presupposes already a certain kind of duality in cosmology. The very way in which Socrates asks his question presupposes already that the things that appear cannot account for themselves. Nous becomes, for Socrates, that which binds; that is, that which holds sway over things

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in their coming to be. In this way, Socrates never claims, nor does he presuppose, that nous is the cause for things as such. Socrates never claims that nous is creative. The result is that while, for the most part, the cosmos remains as it had been before cosmology, it can now offer consolation. This presupposes, however, a more originary experience of ourselves as not fundamentally belonging to the cosmos. For if nous is binding, there is already something there to be bound. We will have to expose this experience in a moment. When Socrates raises the question ‘Why is it best?’ he is raising the issue of the capacity, both in ourselves and in that which is the cause of all things, to calculate all the possibilities and to see that arrangement of things that would be for the sake of the best. Here nous appears as a force, a power, which has as its strength the ability to bind other things for the sake of the best. Even in a cosmos governed by nous, power and forces are operative and it is precisely these forces and powers which nous must overpower, as Kant noted in the third Critique. Yet for Kant, unlike Plato, the recognition of our power in the face of natural power leaves that very natural power untouched. The reduction of force to reason is, for Kant, merely a reflective judgment and in no way determinative of nature. Thus while Socrates desired to see the causes of all things in a way which is not blinded by the force that is immediately apparent in the cosmos, he can only do so by asserting the strength of a force that can overcome those forces within the cosmos itself. This very relation between a cosmos that seems to have been generated without humans in mind and the tools (like nous) humans have that allow us to live in such a cosmos parallels very nicely with Hesiod’s account of the origin of the cosmos and our relation to that outlaw from the outlawed generation of gods, Prometheus. According to Hans Blumenberg: Man evidently does not belong to the original scheme of nature, but is brought into existence by the demiurgic act of a Titan, a member of an ‘illegal’ generation of gods. Man is so far from belonging in the context of the cosmos, in which he appears as a delayed creature but also, no doubt, as an affront directed against Zeus’s ascent, that only a supplementary and, once again, illegal provision of aid is able to procure for him the most necessary of his needs, fire, and to keep him alive.23

The Trouble with Force 27

It is not only fire which is stolen on our behalf, but also the ability to judge the future on the basis of the past, the ability to calculate, the ability to build and the ability to speak with one another. Hesiod’s account is clearly one in which force and power are the prerequisites for survival in the cosmos. It is a cosmos born of and therefore filled with polemos. Yet Hesiod’s account explicitly denies any sort of ‘natural’ force, natural dynamis to humans that would allow them to survive in the context of the polemic struggle that constitutes the cosmos. Nous, then, as the ability to grasp what is best, would belong to the stolen goods we received from the Titan Prometheus. Plato’s cosmological method, then, is a method that exposes nous for what it is: nous is a theft from the gods of a certain force, a certain power, which allows us to carve out a place in a cosmos for which we are but accidents. Nous as power allows us to theorize about the cosmos such that it becomes our cosmos. For reason has the power to overcome power. But its power lies in a certain blindness itself. Its power lies in denying that it is power, that it is force and, therefore, operates among forces already in play. For if Socrates recognized that nous is a ‘stronger Atlas’, he would have also realized that it appears to be just like ‘sinews and bones’ in the way that it operates as explanation. Plato’s cosmology, therefore, is one that reduces all forces to one: the power whose name is nous. In this way, Plato is able to overcome the tragedy of the cosmos because as tragic as it is, it is the best that it can be. We can see that nous appears as a force in Plato’s account in the form of a two-dimensionality written into his account: there are the things whose coming to be must be given a reason and there is that which supplies that reason; that is, nous. The relation between these two dimensions can only appear as one of power or force – these two dimensions are ‘polemic’. One dimension is ‘bound’ by the other. What happens, then, if we reduce the cosmos simply to one dimension? What happens when the cause of the cosmos is reduced to its mode of appearance?

A third origin In Phaedo, Socrates indicates quite clearly that, unless the origin is nous itself, the origin will never be available to reason and the cosmos

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will threaten the soul with blindness. In other words, the origin always appears as a result of force unless it is brought about by that very principle through which it will come to be known by us. Force, therefore, appears as that which stands outside our rational conceptualization of things. Yet the very activity of nous was seen to be ‘a stronger Atlas’; that is, a force that has effects. Socrates’ concern over the force of things led him to posit reason as a force. The issue with even Socrates’ attempt to overcome force is that it does so only by force.24 Indeed, Socrates’ attempt founders precisely because he still maintains that there is an origin at all. For there seems to be a dilemma: either, on the one hand, one posits the originary givenness of force or, on the other, one posits reason as a cause that brings things about through force. No matter which horn one chooses to gorge oneself on, force becomes the mode of being of existing things. As long as force is ontologically basic in this way, the identity between coming-to-know and coming-to-be is shattered. If force is the mode of being of existing things, then myth is the proper account of the cosmos. Yet myth, particularly Hesiod’s, is an account of a cosmos that neither belongs to us nor is our proper home. Furthermore, myth does not even allow us to make our home in the cosmos, because it allows for only sacrifice in the face of divine force.25 The identification of knowing and being works towards removing force from an account of the cosmos, even though that identification carries within itself a mark of its own mythic force. Aristotle’s proposed solution to the dilemma is to remove the very origin from the cosmos entirely. Aristotle maintains first that matter qua matter is eternal. That is to say, matter as a principle that belongs to any sensible substance is eternal – not this or that particular matter. This allows Aristotle to remove the question of origin from the sphere of matter. Yet simply positing the eternity of matter is not enough to secure an intelligible account of the cosmos, for it does not explain the why of the structures that matter takes on in this cosmos. Why does it come to be organized in this way rather than another? If matter is eternal, the question cannot be answered by pointing to its origin – the move that Socrates lays out in Phaedo. Yet the fact that matter is eternal, and indeed that the cosmos contains all the matter that can be,26 does not in itself allow us to explain the why of the cosmos. Positing the eternity of matter provides no better answer than positing the mythic origin of the cosmos

The Trouble with Force 29

in Night. Without an account that provides a principle that can explain why matter comes to be structured in the way it does, ‘the universe would have been generated from Night’.27 Therefore, although matter qua matter is eternal, its coming to be in certain shapes, certain forms, is not eternal. So Aristotle must answer the question of how it is that things in the cosmos come to be what they are, an answer that goes beyond the mythic ‘All things are from Night’. In order to overturn the account of origin that posits mythic force, Aristotle must remove force from any level of his own account and replace it with a rational principle. Positing the eternity of matter removes force from the origin, yet force can still appear as the principle that organizes matter. Therefore, Aristotle must ensure that matter is organized not by force, but by some other principle. He does this in three ways, each of which will involve a reduction of force to some principle that is available to our rational grasp.28 First, Aristotle must remove from matter itself the principle of its organization. If matter would have within itself its own principle of organization, and if matter is eternal, then Aristotle would be unable to give an account of the cosmos (‘then the universe would have been generated from Night …’). Therefore, Aristotle must place the principle according to which matter comes to be in a certain way outside of matter itself. Aristotle accomplishes this task with his distinction between dynamis and energeia, potency and actuality. In his ousiology, Aristotle raises several candidates for the position of substance: the essence, an individual, the universal, the genus and the underlying subject.29 This latter is, according to Aristotle, ‘thought to be a substance in the highest degree’. Therefore, he first turns his attention to this. The question is whether the subject is the matter or the form or a composite of these. If substance is defined as ‘that which is not said of a subject but of which the others are said’, then matter turns out to be a substance. Matter is defined by Aristotle as ‘that which in itself is not stated as being the whatness of something, nor a quantity, nor any of the other senses of “being” ’.30 Precisely because of this, matter cannot qualify as ‘substance’. Aristotle raises two criteria for substance, viz., that only that which is separable and a ‘this’ can be a substance. Matter as matter31 does not qualify on either criterion, for it is not a ‘this’ and it is not separable; that is, it does not exist in isolation from that of which it is the matter.

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Yet matter is not irrelevant to the discussion of substance, for it is a necessary part of the explanation of those substances that come to be.32 It was precisely in coming to be, however, that Aristotle needed to posit a principle outside matter itself. As a result, matter is relevant to substance, but only because ‘all things which are generated, whether by nature or by art, have matter; for there is a potentiality for each of them to be, and also not to be, and this potentiality is the matter of each’.33 Matter now becomes subsumed under energeia becomes it is the potential to be something. In seeking the cause of generation, we are seeking the cause ‘through which matter is a thing’ (ibid., 1041b7). That is, we seek the cause and the reason why this matter becomes this thing. Aristotle removes the active principle required for coming to be from matter and gives it over to form, for the form is the actuality of the thing. Matter exists only potentially because it ‘might come to possess a form’, and when it does so then it exists actually. In this way, form now becomes the principle according to which matter comes to be the things it does – it is the principle of organization of the matter that is itself only potentially the things it becomes. Form, however, is the principle of intelligibility of the thing; that is, it is what is known when the thing is known.34 Thus, the principle of being and the principle of knowing are united in the form. Force is therefore removed because things come to be not by art, but by nature.35 Nature now can become the contrary to force. The second step that Aristotle takes is to place a principle of intelligibility in the cosmos as a whole as the cause of its being the cosmos that it is. This principle is obviously not responsible for the absolute origin of the cosmos: ‘Neither the matter nor the form is generated, and I mean the ultimate matter and form’ (ibid., 1069b35). This principle, the first mover, is a substance that is both eternal and immovable.36 This substance will be given the task of being the principle of the cosmos in the sense of being responsible for its order. There must be such a principle because, ‘The process [of change] will go on to infinity if not only the bronze becomes round, but also the roundness or the bronze is generated; there must be a stop’ (ibid., 1070a4). We have a need for a ‘stop’; that is, for a principle that is cause not in the sense of bringing things into being absolutely, but of bringing them into an order. Aristotle can get at this principle by relying on

The Trouble with Force 31

his distinction between actuality and potentiality, for if there are things that are actual, then there must be some principle according to which they are moved from potency to actuality. If this principle is the cause of the actuality of matter, then this principle itself must be actual – for nothing is brought from potency to actuality except by something that is actual. However, the actuality of this principle cannot be mixed with potency of any kind. First, it cannot have the potency to move things without actually doing so, because then there would not be motion. Second, it cannot be itself potential, for then motion will not be eternal. Therefore, it must be substantially actual; that is, its substance must itself be actuality. Third, since its substance is actuality, then it cannot be material, for that would give to it some aspect of potency. Finally, this principle cannot move things as an efficient cause, for then it would bring about the effects absolutely. It must, Aristotle argues, function as a final cause; that is, as something desired. As such, it itself is immovable, while causing motion in other things. And if motion indicates an ability to be otherwise, then this actuality must not be able to be otherwise than it is. ‘Such, then, is the principle upon which depends the heaven and nature’ (ibid., 1072b14). Aristotle has removed completely any notion of force, violence, polemos from his account of the origin, for there is no origin at all. There is only the desire of eternal matter for the eternal final cause. As final cause, this principle does nothing, or rather Aristotle elevates the life of leisure to the highest possible level of activity. The activity that belongs substantially to the principle is that of thinking, because ‘thinking according to itself is of the best according to itself …’(ibid., 1072b19). This principle, which Aristotle calls Nous, must be thinking of something, if its activity is thinking alone. Yet this Nous must obviously have as the object of its activity (thinking) that which is best and highest. Therefore, it must have itself alone as the object of its activity: ‘the Nous and its intelligible object are the same’ (ibid., 1072b22). Indeed, it has its own activity as the object of its activity. It is thought thinking thought. If this Nous were to have any other object of thought, then the activity of thinking would fatigue it. Nous lives the life of self-contemplation, a life that is pure activity without labour, without productivity, and therefore without fatigue. The pure activity of Nous, however, does not bring the cosmos into existence in an absolute fashion. Rather, as final cause, it engages in its own

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self-reflexive activity while other things are moved because of their desire for this final cause. The third step in Aristotle’s removal of force from the cosmos comes in the form of a reduction of force within the cosmos to another kind of motion. While the first step removed any origin from the cosmos, therefore removing the moment of beginning as a moment of force, and while the second step insured that the relation between the principle of order and the cosmos is not one of efficient causation (the realm in which force finds its sphere of operation), this third step must ensure that force is not ontologically basic to the fundamental constituents of the cosmos. If force is no longer operative at the origin of the cosmos, if force is no longer operative in the ordering of the cosmos, then the last step must be to ensure that it is not operative in the account of the way in which things move and act within the cosmos. In Book 1, chapter 2 of De Caelo, Aristotle wants to prove the existence of the so-called ‘fifth body’. His proof begins from the notion, already developed in Physics, that each natural body has the capacity to move itself according to place, for nature is defined as ‘the principle of motion in them’ (ibid., 268b14). From this point, the argument is simple, if Aristotle can prove that some body moves in a circle, then he has gone half the way towards proving the existence of a body that moves that way naturally; that is, the heavens. Now since it is known empirically that the heavens do move in a circle, he only has to show that it does so according to nature and not by being forced. Here Aristotle introduces a distinction between two kinds of local motion: motion according to nature (kata physein) and motion by force (bia). From the discussion of potency and actuality above, we can easily see that these two motions are contraries (ibid., 269a5). The fact that force is the contrary of natural motion allows Aristotle to reduce any motion that is by force to some natural motion of some natural body: ‘Motion that is unnatural (para physein) to one body is natural to another’ (ibid., 269a33).37 Aristotle has already determined that there are only three basic movements – toward the centre, away from the centre, and around the centre. He needs now only to conclude that since motion in a circle is not natural to any other element, the body that moves in a circle cannot do so by force. There is, however, no natural body whose natural motion is circular, and

The Trouble with Force 33

thus no body can force the heavens to move in a circle, for if the heavens moved in a circle by force, such motion would have to be natural to another body that could force the heavens to move according to this motion. What is interesting here is not the conclusion, but the mode of argumentation and its presuppositions, for the conclusion follows only if force is defined as contrary to natural motion. This means that force is not ontologically basic, but is ontologically parasitic on natural motion: ‘The unnatural is subsequent to the natural, being an aberration from the natural in the field of becoming’ (ibid., 286a18). This is the elemental analogy to the reduction of dynamis to energeia, for here what stands contrary to the natural motion of one body is thought only in terms of the natural motion of another body. The natural motion of a body is, in turn, defined in terms of its natural place. Fire’s natural place, for example, is at the periphery (or up) and it moves there or rests there naturally. This is because it belongs to the essence of fire to be light. In this way, all motion is reduced to the essential characteristics of an elemental body.38 At stake here is more than just the analysis of the motions of elemental and heavenly bodies. What is at stake is the very unity and unicity of our cosmos. If force is basic, Aristotle seems to worry, then we have no way to argue that our cosmos is the only cosmos. If our cosmos is not the only one, then surely it might also not be the best one: ‘Any [enforced motion] would involve effort, all the more in proportion as it is long-lasting, and could not participate in the best arrangement of all’ (ibid., 284a14). We therefore have no need for an Atlas! Yet how does Aristotle reduce force out of our cosmos? Only by grounding force ontologically in that which answers best to our rational capacities – that is, substantial form or essence. Here again we find our home in the cosmos only by forcing force to succumb to the power of reason.

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2 Tracing the Logic of Force: Roger Bacon’s De Multiplicatione specierum

For both Plato and Aristotle, cosmology is the attempt to set the conditions under which it is possible to give an account of the cosmos such that, as Aristotle puts it, the cosmos does not come to be ‘from Night’.1 Socrates’ discourse about natural philosophy in the Phaedo outlines the conditions clearly: cosmology must not stop with the simple givenness of things as in vision, but must provide a view of things that is mediated by theory. For Socrates, the phenomena themselves pose the risk of blindness to the soul. But an account of the phenomena that looks not directly at them in their manifestation, but rather looks at them through theory presents the possibility of a cosmology. Aristotle, too, is concerned that cosmology not simply present the phenomena in their manifestation, for then all things would be ‘from Night’. For him, too, a certain move back behind manifestation to some other region is the only possible path for cosmology. In this way, cosmology emerges as a response to the origin of the cosmos in the play of divine forces that are characteristic of a theogony. Plato and Aristotle, therefore, can be seen as attempting to overcome an account of the cosmos that is rooted in force rather than in reason.2 Or, more precisely, their respective cosmologies can be seen as attempts to reduce the mere givenness of phenomena, which would be an operation of force, to something that is not a phenomenon, that does not manifest itself, but still accounts for that which is manifest. The appeal of a cosmology that reduces force to some region in which force is not that basic mode of operation lies in the correlation 35

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of that region with reason. Again, Plato here offers the model. Cosmology turns force into a mere manifestation of something that is grasped by thought. On the one hand, both Plato and Aristotle overcome force by appeal to being that is uniquely related to thought. But, on the other hand, is this overcoming itself not a gesture of force? The move to something other than manifestation appears as force precisely because of the dualization this move implies – the relation of the two spheres (the sphere of manifestation and the sphere of ‘being’) can only be force once one questions the dualization itself. Plato and Aristotle seem unable to provide a logic that would be able to trace force without positing another sphere in which force does not operate, but which accounts for its manifestation. The achievement of this dualization is clear – phenomena become available to thinking because they are reduced to some real being that is uniquely related to reason. The cost of this achievement, however, is great. On the one hand, phenomena are relegated to the level of a ‘crude facticity’. On the other hand, the relation between the phenomenal sphere and the sphere designated as reality becomes questionable – as if that very relation is itself a manifestation of force. In short, the operation of force that Plato and Aristotle attempted to eliminate by rejecting theogony in favour of cosmology returns in the very method of cosmology. The force that returns in this way duplicates the force of myth precisely because the method of cosmology has left itself unable to trace its operation. Contrary to the Platonic/Aristotelian positing of a metaphysical realm that matches the demands of reason, Roger Bacon proposes a method that attempts to trace force in its operation without thereby reducing force to some other realm.3 ‘Nature is potent and wondrous, but art using nature for an instrument is more potent than the force of nature … Whatever, however, is outside the operation of nature or art either is not human, or is fabricated and occupied with frauds’ (MPAN 524).4 The entire intent of the Libellus, in fact, is the explanation of all purported acts of magic and spiritualism as nothing more than the operation of nature as the instrument of art. This requires, however, a proper understanding of nature, ‘for there are those who by means of quick motions, the appearance of limbs, subtlety of instruments, darkness, or conspiracy propose to many mortals wonders that do not have the truth of existence: this world is complete’ (ibid.).5

Tracing the Logic of Force 37

Bacon’s concern with magic and spiritualism is not that they are impotent. In fact, his concern is that they are very potent uses of nature, but uses of nature for the deception of the unlearned. The fraud that is perpetrated is that the power that truly belongs to nature is taken by an unknowing audience to belong to the magician. In short, the magician purports to take control over mythic forces present in the cosmos. According to Bacon, however, there are no such mythic powers, for ‘the world is complete, as is manifest’. Whatever exists, animate or inanimate – including spirits of all kinds – belongs to the plan of nature that is ruled over by God.6 In order to track down these frauds and fictions and show them for what they are, Bacon will have to show how magic does not constitute a field of operation outside the operation of the forces of nature, but merely manipulates these forces. This task requires a rigorous investigation in the way in which natural forces operate in this cosmos. The magician can operate, Bacon tells us, because ‘every agent – not just substance, but active accidents of the third species of quality – makes a force and species from itself into extrinsic matter, and agents make forces from things, some sensible, some insensible’ (MPAN 528).7 The magician can use such forces to produce effects that are entirely natural, when properly understood, but leave the unlearned spellbound. The magician operates on the level of what appears and casts spells and enchantments for the sole purpose of making what appears seem to originate from and be controlled by some magical power. If Bacon is to show the emptiness and danger of magic, he cannot do so by leaving the realm of appearance, of manifestation, over to the magician. Rather, he requires a method that will allow him to trace the forces of agents that operate naturally so that he can show that magic does not have any special power. Indeed, once force has been traced, magic will be shown to be nothing other than the normal, ordinary operation of natural agents acting naturally. So Bacon needs a method of tracing the logic of force that does not oppose the sphere of ‘being’ to that of manifestation. He needs, in short, a method of tracing the logic of manifestation as such.

Bacon’s logic of force In his On the Multiplication of Species, Bacon initially seems to go even further than simply tracing the logic of force. For him, ‘essence,

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substance, nature, might, potency, force and power signify the same thing, but differ only by comparison to something else’.8 In this way, Bacon thinks of the main concepts of Aristotelian metaphysics – essence, nature, substance – not only in relation to force, but as the same as force. So ‘essence’ is the name of force when considered in relation to itself, ‘substance’ when considered in relation to accidents or operations drawn out, ‘nature’ when considered in terms of the aptitude for operating (DMS 3). The general task of the treatise is to trace the way in which operatio is possible. ‘Essence’ stands outside this consideration because it names the same thing as force, but not considered in its operation. Essence as essence does nothing – operation belongs only to force.9 In grasping how agents can ‘influence’ patients (that which undergoes), we consider only an agent as doing, as acting, and therefore with the ways in which an agent can be active. Essence is not important to this task because it names not an agent but a thing considered only in relation to itself. At issue in the treatise, therefore, is the way in which one thing relates to another as agent to patient. Furthermore, it is difficult even to use the word ‘thing’ at this point because it is not yet clear whether the force of an agent is a thing. Included in this notion of ‘influence’ are generation, the causation of an accident, certain kinds of augmentation, perception, and sometimes annihilation. All such influences are treated by Bacon as results of the operation of force. The names for this operation are multiple: similitude, image, species, idol, simulacrum, phantasm, form, intention, passion, impression, and ‘the shadow of the philosophers’ (DMS 3). What these names share, however, is that they name the force (virtus) that substances and sensibles manifest and elicit in another. The list of synonymous terms includes two sorts of names. On the one hand, there are names that belong squarely within the realm of Aristotelian metaphysics, such as form and passion. On the other hand, there are terms that belong squarely within the sphere of manifestation, such as similitude, simulacrum, image, phantasm and impression. The term that Bacon uses throughout the treatise, and is announced in its title, is ‘species’ – a term that functions both within Aristotelian metaphysics and in the sphere of manifestation. The metaphysical use of species is set aside by Bacon almost immediately: ‘Species, however, is not taken here for some sort of universal according to Porphyry, but this word is transmuted to designate the effect of any

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agent working naturally’ (ibid.). The logical and ontological function of species in Aristotelian (and perhaps more crucially in neo-Platonic) metaphysics is not immediately relevant to the investigation of the influence of an agent on a patient. In fact, Bacon’s treatise is not really concerned with species as such, but more so with their multiplication: that is, with the way in which the force of one thing comes to show itself in something else. The primary example of such operation is light.10 When we speak of the species of light, ‘we say that the light of the sun in the air is a species of the sun that is in its body, and the light by chance falling through a window or a hole is sufficiently visible to us, and is a species of the light of a star’ (DMS 3–4). The example shows clearly that species operate in the sphere of phenomenality. Light functions as an example not because of visibility, for visibility does not exhaust the sphere of phenomenality. Visibility belongs only to light, while phenomenality extends beyond the visible.11 Rather, the very identification of essence and force, along with the transmutation of the term species, indicates that the sphere under discussion is not one of essence, of things considered ‘according to themselves’, but of things in relation to an other, specifically in the relation of agent and patient: that is, species are the result of the coming out, the manifesting of force. This does not belong uniquely to the visible, or even the sensible, for force manifests itself in its operation whether that manifestation is perceived or not. The agent comes to be manifest in the patient by means of the multiplication of species. In this way, the species is the means by which an agent comes to show itself in a patient, whether that patient has senses or not. Sensation, accordingly, is but one way in which a thing is manifest. Bacon’s treatise will exhibit the rules and laws according to which manifestation operates; it is the logic of phenomenality. That the list of synonyms for this force of operation attempts to carve out the sphere of phenomenality becomes clear as Bacon gives some definition to the terms. ‘Species’, the very name of phenomenality, is called ‘similitude and image with respect to the thing generating it to which it is assimilated and which is imitated’. The term ‘species’ refers this force to the senses and the intellect. ‘Idol’ is commonly used when we think of the manifestation of species in a mirror. ‘Phantasm’ and ‘simulacrum’ refer to the operation of species

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in dreams. ‘Intention’ is used to show that species do not have the same kind of being as a thing, they are not ‘true things’.12 It is called the ‘philosophers’ shadow’ because in its operation it is not sensible, except in two cases: light coming through a window and a strongly coloured species. It is called ‘force’ (virtus) in the case of generation and corruption, for ‘every agent … makes its force in a patient’. ‘Impression’ makes clear that this force is similar to that which operates when a signet ring is pressed into wax and leaves its mark.13 Finally, ‘passion’ indicates that the medium through which species multiply, and the senses that receive them, undergo a transmutation in their substance.14 Bacon’s analysis of the list of synonyms serves to exhibit the field that concerns him. He is concerned with the way in which some thing can come to make itself – at least to some extent – in another thing. This operation is that which the Aristotelian tradition called efficient cause.15 Since Bacon accepts the common principle that ‘omnes agens agat sibi simile’, efficient causality will be the way in which a thing, in fact, multiplies itself in patients. Efficient causality, therefore, is another name for force (virtus), or, more precisely, force is the way in which something can effect and affect another thing. While the manifestation at issue is not purely that of sensation, sensation has a special place in the sphere of manifestation, which is indicated by Bacon’s preference for the term ‘species’. This term was shown to be specifically related to the operation of things ‘with respect to the senses and intellect’ (DMS 4). Once he has listed the synonyms, Bacon uses only the terms ‘species’ and ‘virtus’ whether he is discussing how a fire makes something hot, or how a star is seen by us. Why, in a discussion of the ‘influence of an agent’, would Bacon restrict his usage to a term that he himself admits is related to sense and intellect? While Bacon is generally concerned to lay out the logic of what he calls ‘influence’ or ‘operation’, he is also interested in showing that perception itself is one specific case of such influence or operation. In other words, Bacon’s theory of the multiplication of species does not have to be supplemented by a theory of perception and ultimately a theory of knowledge precisely because perception is itself a result of the operation of agents by means of species. What we might today call the objective side – what a species is – is identical to what we might call its subjective side – how it comes to be known

Tracing the Logic of Force 41

by us. At this point in the analysis, Bacon does not oppose manifestation to that which stands behind this very manifestation. Rather force, as such, manifests itself in patients, and one such manifestation is perception. For this reason, the synonym ‘species’ is particularly crucial, for it is that force that allows operation itself to be available to us in perception and ultimately knowledge.16 The logic of force, which governs the sphere of manifestation, also governs the way in which things are manifested to us. Bacon’s preference for the term species, therefore, indicates that there is no distinction between manifestation and what is manifested to us. It is at this point that Bacon’s logic of force begins to overcome the paradigm of assimilation. For the mode of operation of force is not independent from force itself – force is its operation. If for Bacon perception is not set apart from the sphere of phenomenality, this does not also entail that reality is not set apart from phenomenality. That is, Bacon could easily situate perception, with its obvious ability to err, within the sphere of phenomenality while maintaining a sphere of reality outside manifestation that provided the ground for that very manifestation. This dualization, however, is complicated. For Bacon, every agent ‘makes its force in a patient’ (DMS 4), and this force means that every agent ‘intends to assimilate the patient to itself’ (DMS 6). Force, therefore, is not only the condition of phenomenality, but is the very mode of coming into being of all things, and is the very mode of our coming to grasp all things. The ‘intention’ of the agent to assimilate the patient, however, does not exhaust the logic of force as outlined in the treatise. The operation of force is not contained by the intention of the agent. Bacon is not interested in tracing the origin of substantial form, but in tracing the force that makes things become similar to the agent. For Bacon, operation, that is action and agency, are completely analysed with reference to matter and agent, not matter and form.17 This is because for him, ‘form is the instrument of the agent, just as the axe of the builder’.18

The metaphysics of species The sphere of phenomenality seems situated between being and non-being, sharing crucial features of both. With being, it shares the capacity to effect and affect. With non-being, it shares a certain

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non-reality, it is mere ‘seeming’ that constantly needs to be checked against some being. For Bacon, the sphere of phenomenality is removed from this middle region. The force of an agent, its species, is the ‘first effect of the agent’ (DMS 6). If species are in a middle region at all, they are the middle between the complete essence of the agent and the potency of the matter of the patient. However, this middle should be taken literally, for Bacon evacuates any ontological region between being and non-being and replaces it with the distinction between complete and incomplete. In other words, species and forces are governed by or susceptible to degrees. If species have degrees, or, more exactly, are degrees, and if species constitute phenomenality, then phenomenality is not opposed to a reality that manifests itself, but rather names the degrees of that very manifestation. Thus, the species of an agent is identical to the agent in essence and in definition, differing from it only numerically (ibid.). This numerical difference is precisely what allows for species to have lesser degrees than the agent. These species, being of the same essence as that of which they are species, differ only in having incomplete being: ‘these names “human”, “sun”, “ass”, “plant”, and others of this kind, are imposed for things in complete being, and therefore are not said of those that have incomplete being, although they are of the same essence’ (DMS 10). What accounts for the incompleteness of the being of species, however, is not that they belong to the sphere of phenomenality. Rather, the incompleteness of the being of a species results from the relation of these forces to that upon which they act. The degrees that belong to force or species arise from the attempt by the agent to assimilate the patient. But if there are degrees, then the patient must resist in some way. This is the primary principle of the logic of force: resistance, or counter-force, belongs to force. This counter-force appears clearly in one of Bacon’s favourite examples: But in the beginning, while the effect is incomplete, it is named species or force … and this is while the patient remains in its specific nature, assimilated, nevertheless, to the agent through that species or force; as wood, when it is ignited at first, has the species and force of fire while the wood still remains in its specific nature, although it is assimilated to fire through the received species. When the agent overpowers the patient, such that it destroys the specific

Tracing the Logic of Force 43

nature of the patient and corrupts it, such that it induces its complete effect in the matter belonging to it and the patient, as happens in generable and corruptible things, then the effect ceases to be called species and force … and is called by the name of the agent itself. (DMS 12) The very language Bacon uses here of overpowering shows that the patient is not merely passive in this action of assimilation. If the species of fire in the wood is incomplete, this is because the fire has not yet overpowered the wood.19 As a result, the degrees that belong to force come not from the fact that force itself is metaphysically deficient, but because force always meets a counter-force in the patient. The counter-force that the patient opposes also results in a diversity of effects of a force that is always itself uniform. It is on account of the diversity of the receivers that the sun, by one and the same force, dissolves wax and congeals mud (DMS 18). The fact that force names a relation between agent and patient means that force is nothing other than its effects. There is, for Bacon, no way to separate force from what it can do. When Bacon comes to investigate the mode of action of force, this identity of force and effect is clear. Force does not go out from, nor is it emitted by, the agent. The agent does not create force ex nihilo. Finally, the force does not arise through impression;20 rather, force arises through ‘true change and leading out of the active potency of the matter of the patient’ (DMS 46). Force, therefore, names nothing other than the effecting of the active potency of the matter of something else. As a result, it has no being of its own apart from the being of the matter whose active potency is drawn out. In fact, for Bacon the species have the bodily existence of that which is effected by them, primarily the medium, but also the patient.21 While Bacon does not dwell on the issue, it is clear that for him force and resistance must be both ubiquitous and ontologically basic. It is ubiquitous because all agents produce forces in all directions. The operation of force depends not only on the agent, but also on the patient. The fact that a patient is unaffected does not mean that an agent does not act. But Bacon reserves the name force or species only for those cases in which, at least to some degree, a patient is affected. Since every body produces an infinite number of sensible species, the cosmos is replete with such species travelling in straight

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lines and affecting all sorts of bodies. Thus, phenomenality is constituted by these forces. Force is also ontologically basic in that it is identical with essence and substance. The force of heat is nothing other than heat, and heat is nothing other than the ability to make things hot. The force is the effect. Not only does force operate on materiality, its mode of being is the very materiality of the effected and affected thing.22 Before moving on to Bacon’s method of tracing the operation of force, some conclusions about his metaphysics of force should be drawn. According to Lindberg, Bacon lifts ‘Grosseteste’s physics of light (itself an outgrowth of al-Kindî’s universal radiation of force) out of its metaphysical and cosmogonical context and develops it into a comprehensive doctrine of physical causation’.23 Clearly Bacon’s treatise is unconcerned with questions about the origin of the cosmos. But what about Lindberg’s opposition of metaphysics and physics? This opposition rests on the implicit notion that the materiality and corporeality of species is in direct opposition to what he takes metaphysics to be. While Lindberg is not explicit about the meaning of the term ‘metaphysics’, the meaning can be glossed from those instances that he refers to under this term. Lindberg offers four primary examples of philosophers who treat light and other forces ‘metaphysically’: Plotinus, al-Kindî, Ibn Gabriol and Grosseteste. What these authors share is a theory of emanation: that is, a theory that traces the being of all things back to an ontologically originary outflow or outpouring from some one that is not itself a being. These thinkers are metaphysical, it seems, precisely because they are interested in tracing the being of things and not, at least primarily, in tracing their ‘physical interactions’.24 Clearly what Lindberg has in mind is a distinction between an interest in being as such and its physicality or phenomenality. Bacon’s logic of force is not metaphysical, according to Lindberg, because it is interested in the physical interactions of things, interactions that fall squarely within the sphere of phenomenality. However, Bacon himself seems to press the issue even more radically than Lindberg. If the being of a thing is that which the thing is, namely its essence, then Bacon presses the question of the conditions according to which any given thing has the essence it has. How does this matter, for example wood, come to be fire: that is, come to have the being of fire? By means of the force or species of fire coming to

Tracing the Logic of Force 45

operate on it and calling forth its active potency. In addition to this, what more could ‘being’ indicate? Bacon’s logic of force strikes a blow to the very distinction between being and phenomenality. For what makes possible the manifestation of something (i.e., force) is the very force of the thing in complete being. The example of wood and fire indicates the metaphysical issues at stake. Wood, when first ignited, remains in its specific nature, although already a certain assimilation to fire has taken place. In the beginning of the operation of force, the being of the patient maintains a self-identity – it is still wood that is becoming ignited. The being of the wood is wood, although this being has the species or force of fire. Clearly at this stage the wood is still wood, even though it is hot wood: that is, while retaining its being, it begins to take on the characteristics of fire. We could say that the wood has the phenomenality of fire to the extent that it is the image of fire. Yet this phenomenality cannot be opposed to being, for it is not that the wood as wood is more real than its modes of manifestation. Indeed, at this point Bacon does not reduce the manifestation of heat, for example to the being of the wood, but rather indicates that it arises from the force of the agent: that is, from the fire. Where is the reality and where the ‘mere appearance’? Bacon then continues: ‘When, however, the agent overcomes the patient [invalescit super patients], such that it destroys the specific nature of the patient and corrupts it, so as to induce its complete effect in the matter belonging to it and the patient, then it ceases to be called force and species … and is called by the name of the agent’ (DMS 12). Bacon’s point here is not merely a logical or semantic one, but more seriously a metaphysical one. The ‘mere’ phenomenality of force is also what brings about the being of the complete effect. Yet the complete effect is nothing other than the very being of the agent itself, now become the specific nature of the patient. Grosseteste, in his treatise ‘De Potentia et Actu’, relates this completion to act and potency: ‘By potency, therefore, should be understood that by which a thing is able to come out into completeness’.25 For Grosseteste, this is an explicitly metaphysical issue, for without coming out into completeness, it is impossible for the thing to be at all.26 It is clear that Bacon’s theory of force is situated within the discourse of metaphysics, while at the same time calling the very operation of metaphysics into question. It is a para-metaphysics.

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Bacon’s treatise refuses the reduction of the sphere of phenomenality to the sphere of being, and this way he seems to foreclose the possibility of metaphysics. This is not, however, because he rejects the very notion of a science of being as such. For Bacon, if being as such is manifestation, then the tracing of force is the science of metaphysics. Bacon’s discourse is para-metaphysical because he rejects the notion that the concepts of metaphysics have referents outside the factical sphere of phenomenality and yet he insists on the necessity of deploying those concepts. That is, he shows that there is a third term that stands between manifestation and being: the concept. As Adorno argues: ‘Metaphysics from the beginning … directly protests against the idea [Vorstellung] of a being in the sense of crude facticity, in the sense of the scattered individual things, ta onta as they are called by Plato, and sets itself against it.’27 This protestation against beings in the sense of crude facticity is the protestation against phenomenality. Yet metaphysics does not protest directly by means of the sphere of non-phenomenalized being, but mediately by means of concept. To follow Adorno again: Metaphysics is the one form of philosophy whose objects are concepts; and in fact concepts in an emphatic sense: namely almost always such that thereby the priority of the concept over the beings dealt with under them, over the facts dealt with under them, from which the concepts are taken, and thereby a higher level of essentiality, is described.28 For Bacon, the crude facticity of the phenomenal sphere is not subsumed under the concepts used to uncover it. Rather, for him the logic of force is the logic of phenomenality: that is, of crude facticity, itself. Unlike Grosseteste and Plotinus, Bacon’s theory of the propagation of force does not turn toward a higher level of essentiality. For while Bacon clearly agrees with Plotinus that ‘All existences, as long as they retain their character, produce – about themselves, from their essence, in virtue of a power which must be in them – some necessary, outward facing hypostasis’, he refuses Plotinus’ ultimate step that holds the hypostases as ‘representing in image the engendering archetypes’.29 Plotinus’ move toward the archetypes leads him to nous, which is ‘pure being in eternal actuality … and everything, in that entire content, is nous and Authentic-Existence; and the total of

Tracing the Logic of Force 47

all is nous entire and Being entire’.30 This move allows Plotinus to correlate being and concept in the higher-level essentiality of nous. More exactly, in this move Plotinus turns concepts into that very higher level. While Bacon’s retention of an assimilation model of efficient causation stands clearly within this Plotinian metaphysics, his refusal to reduce force to substance, form, or essence calls that very metaphysics into question.

Tracing the logic of force The fundamental principle of the logic of force is that every agent ‘makes its power in a patient’ (DMS 410). This making of power does not happen by way of emission or impression, but, as has been noted, by drawing out the active potency of the patient. However, even though there is no emission, force does proceed as a ray, which is why light is the obvious exemplar of all kinds of force. If force is not an emission, it is not immediately clear why its propagation proceeds along a ray. Bacon’s analysis combines the treatment of light found in Alhacen’s De Aspectibus with Grosseteste’s theory of force found in De Lineis, Angulis, et Figuris.31 While Alhacen is concerned with light and its sensible correlate – that is, Alhacen is exclusively concerned with visibility – Grosseteste’s aim is more expansive, covering ‘universal action’.32 Grossteste shows that a natural agent ‘multiplies its force from itself all the way to the patient, whether it acts on sense or on matter’.33 Bacon follows this more expansive treatment of force. This means that for him all kinds of causation must be analysed following the pattern set out by Alhacen in De Aspectibus. Bacon and Grosseteste take light as exemplary primarily because of its visibility. Yet this exemplarity should not be extended any further. Indeed, in many ways generation is more exemplary for Bacon, even while he treats generation according to the model provided by Alhacen. This extension of the analysis of visibility to all instances of efficient causation makes impossible the reduction of phenomenality to being, for it expands the very sphere of phenomenality to that which was formerly occupied by being. The fact that all force is propagated like a ray stems from the common Aristotelian notion that an agent must be in contact with a patient in order to affect and effect it. This contact among bodies can

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be described geometrically. Indeed, the simplest form of contact is point to point: that is, when one point of the agent contacts one point of the patient. In the example of fire and wood, the fire could contact one part of the wood, drawing out its active potency and thereby assimilating that part to itself. The part now has the capacity to affect and effect other parts. In fact, from this one point, species are again multiplied in every direction along straight lines that are infinite in number. The capacity of this part to affect other parts depends on the extent of its assimilation to the fire whose species it has received. There will be one such direction that will add a second point that now constitutes a line. On all sides and in all directions, force will continue to be effective, but this effectivity will always be traceable in straight lines. Furthermore, since force has only corporeal existence in the patient, and bodies have surfaces, a complex network of lines, angles and surfaces is central to tracing the operation of force. In this way, Euclidean geometry occupies a privileged site in the logic of force, for force is described according to this geometry. It must be kept in mind that the geometry of force does not trace anything other than the effects of an agent on a patient or patients. Some forces affect the medium, for example air or water, in the same way that they affect other patients. In this way, a visible thing affects the medium such that if air had the active potency for being a tree, for example, the tree would produce its complete effect in the medium: the air would become a tree. The fact that trees are not ubiquitous in the air results from the nature of air and not from the species, which is always uniform and univocal. The geometry of force provides a way to trace these effects of force and states primarily that the effects are propagated along straight lines, even when there is reflection or refraction. So far, only the production of the effect has been considered. This production begins from the agent and continues in an infinite number of straight lines on all sides of the agent. The rays of force, however, require patients, since they are nothing but the lines of effects in patients. It is in meeting patients that the geometry of force becomes both more complex and analytically powerful. When the relation of agent and patient is considered, two important factors must be taken into account: the density of the patients and the angle of incidence. The simplest case is when the patient, the medium, is

Tracing the Logic of Force 49

uniform in its rarity and the ray of force is direct: that is, perpendicular to the patient. In this case, the force will travel in a straight line (DMS 98). While the need for geometry in tracing the movement of lines and the angles produced is clear, less clear is the geometric role that rarity and density plays. Bacon defines the rare as ‘a disposition of a body according to which its parts are widely thrown apart’, and the dense as ‘that which has parts thrown close together’ (ibid.). Why should the disposition of a body, particularly that of the patient, play a role in tracing the lines of force? In the case of non-uniform density, the line of force is altered by the density of the patient. Therefore, ‘when the species does not fall perpendicularly on a second body of diverse diaphanity from the first, then its incidence is changed, a straight line does not come to be in the second as in the first; but the incidence of the species in the second body begins to decline from straight incidence to the right or left, and makes an angle’ (ibid.). This change in direction is called refraction. Clearly here the density of the affected body, a more dense medium, has an effect on the propagation of force. The affected body changes the direction of the line of force away from its norm – the straight line. How can the patient act in this way? At this point, Bacon says only that when the species ‘discovers a more dense medium, it ought to change its straight incidence, and decline from it, and make an angle’ (DMS 100). The reason why there ought to be a change can be seen more clearly when an even denser body is considered. In this case there is not refraction, but reflection, for in this case, the body is able ‘to impede the passage of the species’ (ibid.). The species, on meeting a dense body, will return to another part ‘by its own power’. Bacon is quick to state that in this case, the species is ‘not repelled by violence’, but merely ‘takes the occasion from the dense body impeding its passage and goes along another way that is possible for it’ (ibid.). The dense body offers resistance to the passage of force. This resistance is not such that the force is violently repelled, but rather gives the force the impetus to return back in a direction similar, though not the same, from which it came. Bacon must understand this ‘violent repulsion’ to mean an action that would be contrary to the nature of the force under analysis. If we take the meaning of violentia in the sense of contra naturam, then clearly the return of force is not per violentiam.34 If the return of force back from

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a dense body were by violence, then the operation of force on the patient body would also, from its own point of view, be violent and not natural. In this case, the entire operation of force – that is, the entire operation of efficient causation – would be violent and contrary to nature. If that were true, then what sense could the terms ‘by nature’ and ‘by violence’ have? Bacon must insist on the nonviolence of repulsion precisely because his theory of force replaces formal causation with efficient causation. Either all efficient causation would be violent, or all would be natural. Yet both designations would result only if the form of the agent and the form of the patient were pertinent to the analysis of force. In that case, a force would be ‘violent’ that contradicted the form of the patient, as Aristotle argues in Book 1 of De Caelo. Even though the repulsion is not ‘violent’, still there is resistance. This resistance must also be operative in the cases of refraction, albeit to a lesser extent. The resistance, however, is here designated on the material level – it is resistance of a body that has a certain disposition, namely a body whose parts are thrown close together. Bacon avoids the more traditional analysis found, for example, in Aquinas, which would analyse the resistance of the patient in terms of its own form. For Bacon, the resistance of the dense body is the same as the resistance of wood to fire – a resistance that can be overcome by the force of the fire. Thus, the material relation and constitution of bodies is central to the geometrical tracing of force. But it should also be noted that the form of the agent and of the patient play almost no role in tracing force – substantial forms are not relevant to the logic of force, except as one possible outcome. Here, it can be seen that Bacon’s reliance on assimilation breaks down and gives way to the extension of the operation of force beyond assimilation. More specifically, here it can be seen that Bacon removes the notion of assimilation from the sphere of formal causality and gives it over to the operation of force. For Bacon, assimilation means that the patient comes to be called by the same name as the agent. This happens when the patient takes on the complete effect of the agent and thus has the same nature. However, for him ‘nature’ means operation and thus the assimilation is one of the ability to propagate force. In other words, wood does not become fire because in addition to its heat it comes to be informed by the form fire. Rather, it becomes fire once it itself is able to heat other things and produce the complete

Tracing the Logic of Force 51

effect of fire in them. Bacon has no recourse to any other kind of assimilation than that which is being traced here geometrically. Although Bacon does not separate the sphere of manifestation from the sphere of reality, as would be the case if he made recourse to forms, there is another sort of dualization that is already at work. Bacon’s very method of tracing the logic of force stands, it seems, outside that very logic. In other words, the ability to trace the operation of force is not, for Bacon, an instance of the operation of force. In this way, the sphere of phenomenality yields itself up to Bacon’s geometrical method – force has, for him, a logic, and that logic is not itself the operation of force.35 As such, force seems still to be reduced to its appearance within the logic of force. And how is such a reduction possible without force itself already operating – now between the sphere of phenomenality and the very method of tracing that phenomenality? Three facts should be noted here. First, Bacon has already situated his theory within the sphere of phenomenality: that is, he has already laid aside all interest in operations that do not or cannot appear. In his ‘Booklet on the Wondrous Power of the Arts and Nature’, Bacon indicates clearly that wonders can and should be analysed according to the operations of nature and art: that is, according to the logic of force traced in On the Multiplication of Species. By applying the geometric method to the material world, Bacon has been able to remove the frauds and fictions of magicians and astrologers. Whatever force there might be outside the sphere of phenomenality would also be outside the sphere of effectivity. But, the booklet tells us, what lies within the sphere of phenomenality obeys a logic that can be traced. Second, and following from the first, to refuse to trace the logic of force in this way is to open the path toward a mystification of nature, of force, and of violence. Incantations and signs work naturally too; that is, their force is traceable according to the same logic as the force of light or fire. To remain ignorant of this is to open oneself to forces and acts of violence perpetrated at the hands of practitioners of the occult: that is, practitioners of frauds and fictions. Bacon’s move towards a rational tracing of force is, for him, the only way to prevent the mystified from becoming a ground for manifestation. For Bacon, the stakes in this are quite high – in fact, they are eschatological. Therefore, positing a method outside the operation of

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force is the only way to keep the mystified operation of force within the light of day. The social and political implications of this are not hard to see. Within a social and political structure, the irrational has a logic: that is, within a social and political structure, the irrational plays an all too rationalizing role. Tracing that logic, as Bacon does in the Libellus, allows one to see the processes of identification, subjectification and domination for what they are: effects of force. The method of tracing the logic of force allows us also to trace these effects. Finally, opening a logic of force by way of a method posited outside the operation of force prevents this mystification from passing as some claim about the way being as such is. This is the intent of the Libellus on the Wondrous Power of the Arts and Nature. By uncovering the logic of force – that is, the sphere of phenomenality – by means of concepts that are rationally graspable, Bacon refuses to open the way for a mystification of the grounds of phenomenality. Bacon never claims that reason, or even geometry, is that ground of manifestation. Yet he also refuses to allow the operation of force to be mystified because it stands outside the concepts used to grasp it. He refuses ‘to stamp that which exceeds reason with ontological value’.36 In this way, he refuses to let philosophy stamp the operations of society and politics with metaphysical authority. Bacon’s Libellus is remarkable in that it, much like Adorno’s Stars Down to Earth, reflects on the occult in terms of the real social processes it reflects and in which it functions according to a logic. The power of Bacon’s dual refusal, on the one hand to turn his concepts into the grounds of phenomenality and, on the other, to cede phenomenality to mystification, is that it opens the possibility of grasping force in its effect: that is, in its manifestation. In this dual refusal the possibility of redemption opens, but the possibility is still in need of actualization.

3 Creation, Order and Violence in Thomas Aquinas

One of the constant themes of Adorno’s work, running from his early essay ‘The Idea of Natural History’, through his unfinished Aesthetic Theory, is the notion of the experience of power within the natural realm and the relation of rational ‘enlightenment’ to this experience. On the one hand, ‘Enlightenment is mythic fear turned radical’ (DE 16/32);* on the other hand, ‘Myth turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity’ (DE 9/25). What concerns Adorno is precisely the dialectic that enlightenment itself is. As the attempt to free humanity from fear of the force of nature, enlightenment is an attempt to demythologize nature, to strip nature of its power. Yet in this very activity, enlightenment becomes that power itself. If reason is the answer to the force of nature, then reason itself has to be force as well: ‘Myth is already enlightenment; and enlightenment reverts to mythology’ (DE xvi/16). Philosophical thinking, therefore, is seen at its outset as the task of demythologization.1 The force of natural objects, which was a source of fear, must be eliminated. This power, or mana as it is called in DE, is first controlled through magic and religion. When the power of things is removed from them and given over to deities who can then be controlled through sacrifice, the first step towards domination has begun (DE 49ff/67ff). Philosophy in its ancient origins is a continuation of this attempt to dominate nature. Philosophy merely * The reference refers to Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, giving the page number; and Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment – the second number refers to this reference. 53

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brings into concepts what myth and religion had already worked out through sacrifice. If myth is already enlightenment, then certainly ancient philosophy continues on this path. Philosophy continues the practice of sacrifice in the form of rational conceptualization of nature. Adorno’s claim, however, is that this dialectic of enlightenment is not a narrative of progress: ‘… the truth, from which the undiscerning are only kept separated through the full loss of thinking, approaches within reach in the immeasure of its absurdity. Enlightenment in possession of itself and coming to force can break the bounds of enlightenment’ (DE 208/234). This means that the dialectic of enlightenment – that is, the dialectic of demythologizing and mythologizing – is visible in thought from Homer to Heidegger. The dialectic play between conceptual thinking and the power of objects which resists that conceptualizing is the dialectic of enlightenment.2 This ought to mean that this very dialectic itself is found as a trace element in all philosophical systems which deserve the name ‘enlightenment’ – and all philosophical thinking from Homer through modernity is enlightened. In short, if Adorno’s analysis is meaningful, philosophy itself will contain the dialectical play of the force of nature against the domination of conceptual thinking. The consequence of Adorno’s argument is that philosophy itself is an attempt to overcome the force of nature through conceptualization, classification and, ultimately, instrumentalization. This movement is clearly exhibited in the attempt of philosophers like Aristotle to remove any element of natural force which might not succumb to reason. Indeed, for Aristotle, the term ‘nature’ is often akin to reason. That which is ‘natural’ ultimately is that which is explicable through the structure of principles, primarily the principles which are the four causes. Furthermore, we say that we know each thing when we know its causes.3 Finally, Aristotle removes the element of polemos in the cosmos because the universe for him is no longer created but is eternal. The creative force and strife which myth had seen as responsible for the creation of the cosmos is removed in the dual gesture of making the cosmos itself eternal and in making the movements of bodies and things within it ‘natural’. ‘The olympic deities are no longer directly identical with elements, but signify them. In Homer, Zeus stands for the sky and weather, Apollo guides the sun, and Helios and Eros are already shifting to an allegorical function’ (DE 8/24). If this process already begins in Homer, if ‘The gods are distinguished

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from material elements as their quintessential concepts’ (ibid.), then Aristotle’s philosophy of nature and cosmos completes the conceptualization of the power of nature. Aristotle removes the gods completely by turning them into principles. When the gods become principles available to reason, they are stripped of their force, the very force which they used to construct the cosmos. In what follows, I will investigate this dialectic of mana and logos as it makes its appearance in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. To this end, I will first look at Aquinas’ understanding of the distinction between natural and violent causation. Second, I will show how creation must be violent causation on his understanding. Third, I will look at how Aquinas attempts to reassert the priority of nature through the notion of order, especially the order of the universe, and the ways in which order is related to reason – this means the ways in which reason appears as force or violence.

Aquinas on violent causation The notion of violent causation does not appear as a central theme in Aristotle’s work, with the exception of the De Caelo. In that text, violence (bia) is the opposite of nature: if a body has a natural movement, then any movement contrary to its nature is violent or movement by force.4 Aristotle’s use of both violence and nature in this text refer specifically to local motion which regards place. Any movement is natural which is a movement towards the natural place of a body: earth moves downward, fire upward and so on. Yet why does ‘natural’ place pertain to a body? What is it about places such that they can be called ‘natural’? Aristotle never answers this question in De Caelo. Natural place seems to be a methodological posit upon which other arguments will be based, yet it itself is never demonstrated in the text. However, because Aristotle contrasts movement according to nature with movement according to force or violence, we can begin to form a notion of what he means by both of these types of movement.5 If natural movement is that movement which belongs to a thing by virtue of its natural place, then violent movement is that movement which moves a body to a place other than its natural place. Natural place is the place which belongs to a body because of the kind of body it is. Violent motion appears as a motion coming from outside

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the body which is being moved. Violence or force, therefore, is an external principle of motion. Outside of De Caelo, when Aristotle speaks of principles of motion, of coming to be and passing away, he rarely mentions violence. Aquinas, however, takes this type of causation as central to understanding the various ways in which something can come to be. Aquinas barely mentions this type of causation in his own commentary on De Caelo. Yet it appears in a central way in both his commentary on Metaphysics and his Summa Contra Gentiles. The notion of violent causation arises, for Aquinas, in the context of the various ways in which a thing may come to be. When a thing comes to be – and here Aquinas speaks only of sensible substances – the principle by which it comes to be is either per se or per accidens. In cases where the principle is per se, that principle is either in the thing which moves, and then it is called nature, or it is outside the thing that moves, and then it is called art. Per accidens principles are called ‘chance’ or ‘fortune’.6 Coming to be requires at least three things: an agent, matter, and something which is the terminus of the generation. In any generation, something comes to be in act which previously had been in potency. Actuality, however, requires that there be something already in act, which can move the thing from potency to act. This act, therefore, pertains to the agent. The potency pertains to the matter (ibid., n. 1384). It is in this relation between the actuality of the agent and the potency of the matter that violence arises. Matter as potency is what is brought from non-being into being, for it is the matter which is in potency to the form. Far from being completely passive in generation, matter must contribute a kind of active principle. Matter can be either resistant or open to the reception of form (ibid., n. 1388). Indeed, as Aquinas points out, a saw can be made from iron but not from wool (ibid., L. VII, l. 8, n. 1437). While many interpreters of Aristotle read matter as purely passive and contributing nothing but a material substrate which is dominated by form, Aquinas interprets Aristotle as maintaining that matter engages in a kind of activity – the activity of opening in order to receive a form.7 If violent causation is opposed to natural, and if natural causation is that whose principle is within that which is caused, then violent causation must be when the principle is external to that which is caused. Aquinas’ consistent formula for violent causation is ‘that whose

Creation, Order and Violence in Thomas Aquinas 57

principle is outside, no power being conferred to the patient’.8 The ‘outside’, as we have seen, must refer to the matter. In violent causation, the principle of coming to be is outside of the matter in a sense in which it is not in natural causation. Matter must have a certain ‘nature’ itself. Aquinas calls this ‘aptitude’ (aptitudo), and argues that without this aptitude, a thing cannot come to be. In natural generation, this aptitude of the matter is the form itself existing in potency in the matter. Aquinas refers to this form in potency as ‘some active principle’ in the matter (ibid., L. VII, l. 8, n. 1437). This active principle inheres in the matter only in cases of natural generation. In cases of artificial generation, there is only a passive principle. This leads, however, to the conclusion that all cases of artificial generation are cases of violent generation. Aquinas seems to make this equation himself: [Every] moved, whose principle is not in that which is moved, but outside, is a violent motion and not natural. If therefore, in those which are generated by nature there would not be some active principle of generation in the matter, then the generations of them would not be natural, but violent, or there would not be some difference between artificial and natural generation. (Ibid., n. 1442b, emphasis added) These generations are called violent because of the way in which the principle that belongs to the matter is not an active principle in the generation, but is, in a sense, overcome by the principle which belongs to the agent. The form which comes to be in the matter is imposed on the matter from the outside. This now seems to complicate the distinction between natural and violent generation. For it seemed that all that was needed to call a generation ‘natural’ was for the principle of generation to be intrinsic to what is generated – more specifically, intrinsic to the matter that is the subject of the generation. If, on the other hand, the matter always must supply some principle, either active or passive, then all generations will, in some sense, be ‘natural’. Even in the case of artificial generation, the matter still must offer some ‘aptitude’ towards the form that is being imposed. That is to say, the matter can still resist – to a greater or lesser extent – the form being imposed upon it from the outside. Iron is still potentially a saw, even if its

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coming to be a saw presupposes that the form be imposed upon it from outside. The distinction turns, it seems, on the way in which the form comes to be in the matter. In cases of natural generation, the form is in the matter, but still in potency. This is what it means, in such cases, to say that flesh and bones are ‘potentially’ a human. In cases of artificial generation, conversely, the form does not inhere in the matter in this same way. Rather, to say that iron is potentially a saw is to say that it has the aptitude of receiving the form saw, a form which has to be imposed on it from without. We could say that in natural generation the agent educes the form from the matter, while in violent generation the agent imposes the form on the matter. We have gone from an analysis which was focused on the active and irreducible contribution of matter to generation to one in which matter has succumbed to the introduction of form. Aquinas – following the lead of Aristotle – engages in a kind of reduction of matter in coming to be. For on Aquinas’ own account (and as mentioned above), matter qua matter is not intelligible. As matter can resist form, so it also can resist intelligibility. Matter appears as a ‘remainder’ which stands outside our conceptual grasp of beings.9 In violent causation, this remainder, this ‘mana’ stands forth as a principle inasmuch as causation is violent only when the matter resists. Natural causation, on the other hand, would be that kind of coming to be in which the matter gives forth of itself the form which comes to be in that matter – resistance does not take place.10 Yet in both cases, there is a ‘victory of form over matter’ (SCG II, 68, n. 1453c). Not only is form the origin of intelligibility for Aquinas, it is also the origin of acting. This is summed up in his oft-repeated slogan: ‘An agent acts according to what is in act in it.’11 What is in act in a thing is its form. For if, as we have seen, the matter is always in potency to what actually comes to be, then the form must be in act to that same potency in some way. Just as matter was removed from the intelligibility of a thing, so too is it removed from its ability to act. Yet we have been investigating the way in which matter qua matter acts, if only in a passive way. Even if one wants to maintain that in any coming to be the matter will already be informed (e.g., flesh or wood already has the form of flesh or wood), and therefore the action of the matter follows the form of that matter, this cannot be true if we trace matter back to prime matter. If matter means an

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element of unintelligibility in things, then it also means an element of action which stands outside the intelligible action of forms. When we join Aquinas’ position that form is the principle of intelligibility with his position that form is the principle of acting, we begin to see the full force of the distinction between natural and violent causation. The conjunction of the principle of action with the principle of intelligibility results in coming to be which is always subject to our intellectual grasp. Yet the insight of Aquinas into the activity that matter always contributes leaves us with an irreducible element of violence in all coming to be. The contribution of matter, which remains always beyond our grasp, is a necessary element of any coming to be. Form must always overcome matter. What is the origin of this trace of violence, this continuing presence of mana, in the world? Perhaps it is the trace of the act which brings all of nature into existence, the act of creation. The notion of violence is linked, for Aquinas, to the notion of power (potestas or virtus). ‘Power [potestas] seems to be understood as violence. Certainly in those, which do not come to be by nature, they are constituted only by the power [virtus] of the agent’ (In Metaph. L. VII, l. 6, n. 1395). The link between power and violence should be clear. Since violence stems from the fact that the form is not drawn out of the matter in which it exists in potency, but rather the form is imposed on the matter, this imposition requires a certain amount of force.12 Power is required because the energy of the coming to be does not reside with the matter. But we must be clear in our use of terms, not only to avoid equivocation, but to understand the ‘logic’ of violence. In the logic of violentia, Aquinas made recourse to the notion of virtus – power. We have seen that this virtus can be both active and passive, and that this power belongs specifically to matter in a natural coming to be. Violence can thus be read as a coming to be in which the virtus of the matter is overcome by the form: the form wins a victory over the matter. We shall see that this will prove an unstable definition of violence because, according to Aquinas, even in natural generation the form must prove victorious over the matter. In the passage from the commentary on Metaphysics, however, Aquinas links two notions of power: potestas and virtus. Potestas is a word that Aquinas normally reserves for the kind of power that a king or other ruler (including the pope) has over that which he rules.

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There are times, however, when Aquinas reads potestas as relying on a kind of virtus. The plenitude of power (potestas), which rests with a ruler, is a result of the virtus that a ruler has.13 Finally, we have the concept of potentia. It was from within the analysis of potency that we saw the issue of violence arising. Aquinas was quick to equate potency with a kind of virtus, if only a passive kind. Yet it is not only in the realm of becoming that the Latin term potentia is used. For it is this very term which is ascribed to God in its fullness – God is omnipotent. In this context, potentia cannot be read as the correlate to actuality. God is entirely and purely act; there is no admixture of potency in God. Yet God has potentia and this is what makes it possible for God to create. Potentia, therefore, has the dual sense of power, for which there is no correlate, and potency, for which the correlate is actuality. Yet we have seen how even in Metaphysics where potency is read in this second sense, there is an element of virtus which is not strictly the correlate to actuality. This slippage is precisely what occasions the issue of violence. On the basis of this, we are pressed to look at the divine potentia for two reasons. First, we are left with the issue of the origin of the virtus of matter. Perhaps this power has its origin in the divine power – perhaps the power of matter is always the trace of some more originary expression of power. Second, we are left wondering whether the divine potentia does not also carry within itself the violence that we saw in material potentia.

Divine power, divine violence Aquinas’ Disputed Questions on the Power of God stand as his most sustained treatment of divine power. The questions concern all aspects of divine power, from the act of creation through the generation of the persons of the Trinity from the Father to miracles. Aquinas begins the questions with the most fundamental issue: Whether potency can be attributed to God at all.14 He begins by following his analysis of Aristotle, where potency is taken from act. In other words, in Aristotle’s discussion of potency and actuality, the primary term is always actuality – something is said to be in potency to some actuality. Aquinas divides act into two kinds: primary, which is form, and secondary, which is operation. Yet since any operation of any thing depends upon the form which it has, the form is the principle of action in the thing.

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This means that potency must also take on two kinds. There is the potency corresponding to secondary act, that is to operation, according to which an agent can do something. Then there is the potency corresponding to the primary act, according to which something is able to undergo some act of an agent.15 Only the first kind of potency, that which relates to operation, can pertain to God.16 From this it follows that God is maximally act, because to undergo belongs in no way to God. This maximal action expresses itself in God diffusing the divine similitude in others. But more than this, because God has potency only in the sense of capacity for acting, God is the principle of action itself. In short, all operation must be resolved back to the operation which God is.17 Moreover, God is maximally act because God’s operation is, literally, infinite. For the operation of an agent to be limited – that is, finite – would require either some limit on the part of the agent itself or some limit on the part of the recipient of the action. Since God is maximally act, the limit comes neither on the part of the patient, because there is no passive potency mixed in with the divine activity, nor on the part of the agent because there is no other agent prior to God who acts on the basis of the divine essence. Notice that the argument about the limit to agency coming from the recipient is not an argument about God’s ability to overcome any patient, but rather from the fact that in God there is no passive potency. Aquinas is able to read the potentia of God as a power and not as a lack because to this potency there is no other, no pole at which it finds its expression. There is, properly speaking, no recipient of the potentia dei because this maximal operation would communicate the esse of God and there is no other which can receive this esse which is pure. God’s potentia, which is also called virtus by Aquinas, appears to be excessive and not just unlimited, for there is no recipient of the divine esse in the way in which the esse of humanity is received in a human. This excessive power of God is the principle of action of any given thing: no thing can have virtus except that it receives this power from the excessive source of all power. God’s power must be at work in all expressions of power. This does not mean, however, that when a natural thing acts it does not act through its ‘proper power’, but rather through the power of God.18 God is the cause of the operation of any given thing. The relation of a cause of action in another to the thing whose action is thus caused can be understood in four ways. First, because the power of acting is

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attributed to the cause. In this way God could be said to be acting when any given thing acts because God gives natural things the power through which they can act. God causes and conserves in being the powers of all natural things. And this is the second way to understand the relation between God’s power and other powers. ‘For the conserving of power is said to make action, just as medicines conserving vision are seen to make vision.’19 The third way to understand this relation is that one thing causes the action of another because it moves it to act. Here, we are not concerned with the mere existence of the power of acting, but how it is that some power is applied to action. For example, we could say that a person is the cause of an incision made with a scalpel in that the person applies the point of the blade in order to make a cut by moving the blade.20 What is of interest here is the way in which the agent must mobilize other things in order to cause some action. In this third way of understanding the relationship between cause of action and the action itself, God is ‘the cause of action of any natural thing as moving and as applying power to the agent’.21 Two points follow from this analysis of the causation of action. First, there are always two agents involved. There is the agent causing another to perform some action and there is that other agent that performs the action. In the example of the surgeon, it is the action of the surgeon that causes the action of the scalpel. This means that the action of the second, or ‘inferior’, agent is caused by the first, or ‘superior’, agent. If we trace this kind of movement backwards, we will reach the heavens as cause of motion of inferior bodies, and this ultimately points towards God as the cause of any action of a natural thing, as we have seen. Second, however, is the need for some sort of coordination in the relation between the superior and inferior agents. The surgeon must be able to determine the scalpel in a way that does not simply follow from the form of the scalpel itself. In other words, we have seen that the action of any given thing can follow from its form. In this kind of causation, on the other hand, the action of the inferior agent does not follow from its form, but from its being put to action by another agent. This kind of causation is called instrumental, and is the fourth way of understanding the way in which an action can be caused: Indeed, an instrument is the cause, in a certain way, of the effect of the principle cause, not by form or proper power, but insofar as

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it participates in something of the power of the principle cause through its motion, just as an ax is not the cause of the thing built through form or proper power, but by the power of the builder by which it is moved and in which it somehow participates.22 When the cause of action is viewed in this way as well, God is the cause of the action of all things, ‘as any agent is the instrument of the divine power of acting’.23 This description of instrumental cause closely resembles the description of violent causation found in the Commentary on Metaphysics. The action of the instrument does not come through the nature or form of that which is the instrument. In short, the causation comes from outside and the instrument is made to act unnaturally in the sense that it is made to act not through its form or proper power, but in some other way. God’s action has a certain excessive quality, it exceeds not only all matter which may receive it, it exceeds and is manifest in all power that is at play among all agents in the world. The divine potency makes a world filled with power, and all works (operatio) done by agents are done through power (virtus) that is a manifestation of the divine power through which they were created and as an instrument of which they act. The excess that is the divine power is seen most clearly in the fact that this divine agent does not make (facere), but creates (creare) from nothing. If we return for a moment to the analysis of violent causation, the excess that is creation becomes evident. Aquinas pointed to the ability of the matter to resist being informed. This ability rests on the aptitude of the matter for receiving form. One possible route of analysis would be to say that this action, even the action of being open to receiving form, arises from the form that matter has. For when the artisan takes iron and fashions a saw, the iron already is matter that is informed. In this way, Aquinas’ dictum that action follows form could be preserved. This route is closed, however, because it simply pushes the question of the activity of matter qua matter back first to the level of the elements, the first form that matter has, and ultimately back to prime matter: that is, matter that has no form whatsoever. Aquinas clearly argues that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo requires that God produce prime matter as well: that is, creation is an activity in which absolutely nothing preexists that which is produced.24 Aquinas most often argues for the necessity of creation

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ex nihilo on the basis of what would be required for the causation of being itself.25 If we consider cases of natural generation (or even artificial), we find that no cause brings its effect into being absolutely, but rather only determinately. This is to say that all particular agents bring about particular effects. A man begets a man. If we consider beings qua being, that is as not determined by accidental or substantial forms but only as being, then we find that no particular agent can be the cause because all particular agents require something preexisting. This universal cause, the cause of being qua being, therefore, must also bring prime matter into being.26 In SCG, Aquinas brings arguments to bear on this question which do not appear either in ST or in de Pot.27 After addressing the issue of a particular cause not being able to bring a thing into being absolutely, Aquinas addresses the relation between agent and patient in causality: Matter is compared to acting as receiving the action which is from it: act, indeed, which is of the agent as from which, of the patient as in which. Therefore, matter is required by some agent such that it receives the action of it: the action of the agent itself received in the patient is the act of the patient and the form, or some inchoate form, in itself. God, however, does not act by some action which would necessarily be received in some patient, because God’s action is God’s substance. (SCG II, c. 16, n. 938) As Aquinas often reminds us, ‘Every agent acts similarly to itself’: that is, every agent acts so as to produce its own form in the patient. In this way, the action of the agent is the very form which comes to be in the matter. This applies, however, only to agents whose action is not their substance, but follows from their substance. The divine action is its substance, and therefore does not need preexisting matter. In short, there is no comparison between the divine action and that which is produced as a result of it – they are incommensurable. Aquinas turns to precisely this incommensurability in his next argument. It now becomes clear that the issue of power (virtus) is not an issue for the agent alone, but arises in a relation of proportion between the agent and matter. An agent requires matter when its power is proportionate to matter that is already there such that what is in the power of the agent is in the potency of the matter. For if there were no such proportionate potency in the matter, the active power of the agent

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would be in vain. Since the divine power is infinite, it cannot have any matter which would have a proportionate potency to it – the divine power can never be frustrated. God, therefore, does not need matter that is already there, but rather brings all matter into being.28 God’s power is in itself excessive in that there is no potency to which it is proportionate. Notice, however, that the situation Aquinas describes here is one of violent, not natural, causation. For in his analysis of violent causation, it was precisely the excessive quality of the agent’s power over the matter that was at issue. Aquinas called that causation violent in which the power of the agent did not find a correlate in the potency of the matter. The power of the agent brought a principle from outside and forced it onto the matter. If that was his analysis of violent causation, then we must admit that creation itself is violent. Moreover, it is precisely because creation is violent that created agents can be violent as well. The world is a world of force because it was brought into being by force, a force that is excessive. Now that the existence and operation of power as violence has been exposed, we can trace the logic of this force. Force or power has lines of effect. These lines, for Aquinas, can be of two sorts. First, the power of an agent can move in lines which are directly traceable back to the agent’s form: action follows what is in act: that is, form. In this way, the power of the agent is understood as an effect that is determined by its form. This is the way natural agents act and when they act in this way they act simile sibi, similar to themselves. These lines of power ensure the production of forms in matter. The relation of this kind of power to forms is important because of the role that forms play in Aquinas’ theory of knowledge, as we saw above. The issue of power is not absent from this theory of knowledge. For cognition is a power (potentia as well as virtus) of the soul. It is a power, however, that is proportionate to its object.29 When the power involved is a cognitive power – that is, a power of the soul that reaches out to the world in an attempt to grasp things – the power is never violent because the object is always found to be proportionate to the power.30 The object which is proportionate to our cognitive power is the form of the thing known, but the form without its subsisting matter.31 We will return to a fuller treatment of the role of form in knowledge. For now, however, we need only to draw out a danger that

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violent power threatens to this theory of knowledge. Aquinas has called that power that exceeds that which is subject to the power violent. The violence that appears in some types of causation was an expression of power that arises from the outside and brings something into being that is not already there in the matter. Violent causation is that causation that steps outside the well-functioning causation of forms – that is, outside the system in which forms reproduce themselves. If forms are the way in which things are known, then power which produces forms is one that is opened to the intellective grasp of the soul, for it is this very grasp of forms which is, for Aquinas, cognition of the object. The object may be ‘proportionated’ (see note 30) to the power of the soul because the power producing the form is proportioned to the thing produced. Violence, therefore, is an expression of power that stands outside this system of powers and objects that are proportionate. Violence is always excessive. Violent causation, then, must be contained if it is not to destroy our ability to know, to have a determinate grasp of the world around us. The logic of force disrupts the metaphysics of form, the metaphysics in which power is the work of form. That disruption of metaphysics carries out a subsequent disruption of Aquinas’ epistemology of forms – an epistemology that always had power under control because it always had forms under its grasp. Unless the violence can be contained, the power of the world that is an expression of the divine power to create the world will overcome our ability to cognize that world.

The order of the universe and the overcoming of force The key to Aquinas’ attempt to reinsert force within the grasp of reason has already been exhibited in his notion of ‘instrument’. An instrument is that whose power is put to work by another agent. We saw how God puts all agents to work. What was not addressed, however, was the way in which the very putting to work of power is always done on account of some end. Instrumentality is a double use of power. There is the power of the primary agent that puts the power of the instrument to work in order to achieve some end. In the case of instrumentality, power is not disruptive to the functioning of the agent precisely because the power is contained by the end that the primary agent works to achieve.

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When instrumentality is raised to the level of God’s relation to the operation of agents within the universe, then an end to the entire universe must be posited if the power of agents is not to work against the power of God. The primary agent must determine the operation of the instruments, even if this determination does not come through the proper action and form of those agents. The positing of an end allows the primary agent to order the powers of the instruments towards that end. If the universe is not to be merely the play of forces without any ability to grasp those forces in a determinate way, then the universe itself must have an order. The order of the universe entails a relationship between the first cause of the universe and the final cause of the universe, but it is a relationship that is carried out through or expressed in the entire universe: ‘Because all things of which the end is one should agree in an order toward the end, it is necessary that in the parts of the univere some order be found.’ 32 Aquinas most often illustrates what is meant by an order with two examples: an army and a household.33 The army shows the two main features of the order of power: For the good of the army is in the order itself of the army and in the leader, who presides over the army. But the good is more in the leader than in the order, because the better end is in goodness than in those which are toward an end. The order, however, of the army is on account of the implemented good of the leader, evidently the will of the leader in leading to victory. The converse, however, is not true that the good of the leader is on account of the good of the order. (Ibid., n. 2630) An order must have an end. That end, in turn, requires a principle that can then order things towards that end. That principle will always have the good of the end and the order will be good only to the extent that it is order towards that end from the principle. Aquinas goes on to apply the lessons learned from the army to the universe as a whole. A good that stands outside the universe itself is better than the good of the order itself because the order itself is based on that end that stands outside the order. Using the language from de Pot., we can say that the order is the instrument of the ordering principle (e.g., the leader of the army), which is deployed in order

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to achieve some end. In terms of the universe, the prime mover is the leader but is also the end. Consequently, the prime mover is a better good than the good of the universe as a whole and the order of the whole universe itself is on account of the prime mover. As a result, ‘The whole order of the universe is on account of the prime mover, such that, evidently, what is in the intellect and will of the prime mover is explicated in the ordered universe’ (ibid., n. 2631). The order of the universe is more complicated than the order of the army because the order of the universe is really an order of orders: ‘Everything in the universe is ordered in some way, but everything does not have the same order, e.g., marine animals, flying animals, and plants’ (ibid., n. 2632). Even though there is not one order to be found among each part of the universe, there is an affinity such that one order can itself be ordered to another: plants are on account of animals, and animals are on account of humans.34 The order of the universe is an order of orders because all of these diverse orders are at the same time ordered to one end, the end of the universe itself. When the complexity of the order of the universe is discovered, the metaphor of the army no longer suffices. Or, rather, the metaphor of the army shows only that the good of the order is the good of the end, and therefore the good of the principle that orders towards an end. The army metaphor cannot help us understand the multiplicity of orders that we find in the universe, or, to put this another way, how an order requires both multiplicity and unity.35 Aquinas, again following Aristotle, now deploys another metaphor: In some households or ordered families diverse grades are discovered, just as under the father is the first grade of the sons, another grade is of the servants, the third grade is of the animals who serve in the house, such as dogs and animals of this kind. Indeed grades of these kinds are related in diverse ways to the order of household, which is imposed by the father governing the household. (Ibid., n. 2633)36 These grades are determined according to their relation to the principle of the order; that is, the father. The sons, for example are closer to or have more affinity with the principle and therefore make everything they make according to the order. Servants and animals, however, are further from or have less affinity with the principle and make things contingently and by chance. Still, all of this happens

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according to the order of the household: that is, according to the laws and precepts of the father.37 While in the household the actions of the members are determined by the laws of the father, in the universe these laws are written into the things in the form of their proper natures: ‘Just as what is in the household is inclined by the precepts of the father to something, so also some natural thing is inclined by its proper nature’ (ibid.). This proper nature is, as we have seen, the basis of the ‘proper action’ of any thing. A thing has proper action because it is given, in its proper nature, a proper end towards which it acts without knowing it.38 The order of the universe, like the order of the household, is an order of actions. The powers that agents have become directed towards an end, even though the end is not known by the agents. Yet this ordering of power, this directing of power, happens because there is some intelligent, ordering agent. The order of the universe becomes the expression of the intelligence of the first mover, who must be intelligent in order to direct all the proper powers of all things towards an end. Aquinas often uses the notion of the order of the universe to prove that there can be only one cause: Of all diverse things ordered to one another, the order of them to one another is on account of the order of them to some one thing … And thus either the order of the many to one another is per accidens, or it should be reduced to some one first orderer, which intends an end which orders the others. All parts, however, of this world are discovered ordered to one another … the whole of this world, therefore, does not have an orderer and governor, unless one. (SCG, I, c. 42, n. 341) The relation also works in the opposite direction: if there is one principle (e.g., a creator), then the universe must have an order. This is precisely how Aquinas proves that there is only one world. Since there is one orderer, there must be one order, and consequently one world.39 Once the powers of all things to act are subsumed under the order of the universe, and once the order of the universe is subsumed under an intelligent ordering agent, the danger that violence posed to our rational grasp of the universe is averted. For, as we have already

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glimpsed, the fact that the universe is ordered presupposes not only one ordering agent, but an intelligent ordering agent, for ordering itself is an activity of wisdom.40 This means that the author of the universe and its mover is intellect.41 Order cannot come about through chance, violence or even a sheer act of will without intellect: The distinction of things is not able to be by chance. Indeed, it has a certain order. It is fitting, therefore, that the distinction in things be from some cause. It is not, however, from the intention of some cause acting through the necessity of its nature, because nature is determined to one, and thus the intention of no thing acting through the necessity of its nature can be related to many insofar as they are distinct. It remains, therefore, that the distinction in things arises from the intention of some knowing cause. It is seen, however, that it is a proper attribute [ proprium] of intellect to consider the distinction of things. (SCG, I, c. 50, n. 421) The order of the universe must be the order produced by some intellect. If it is the case that the order of the universe is the order of the powers of things, then the powers of all things, even those that act violently, is now opened up to the gaze of reason through the order of the universe itself. In this way, the universe of power or force is reduced to the universe of the intellect. Aquinas is able to restore the primacy of reason over force. The mana of things is now determined rationally because the force of all things has been usurped by the rational order of nature. What is left unstated, however, is how we are to understand that very reason, wisdom and intellect that is able to force the powers of all things into order. If the violence, force and power of the universe has been overcome through the rational ordering of the universe, then does not reason itself appear to be a force? In this way, the explanation of force becomes itself a force of explanation. Indeed, enlightenment slips into myth when reason becomes force.

Conclusion Yet we should pause before rejecting reason. We have seen that force arises, in Aquinas’ system, precisely because of his attempt to apply reason to the cosmos itself as a whole. In short, force appears only as

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the force of reason. Aquinas’ own attempts to thematize force in its own right fail precisely because that conceptualization must turn force into something other than itself. The reduction of force to the ‘natural’ function of essences is a mimetic duplication of that force. In short, force does not appear in its concept, but in the attempt to give – the activity of providing – rational explanation. This is precisely why force, which was reduced to the rational functioning of nature, reappears in Aquinas in the form of divine violence. The power of nature can only arise as a result of Aquinas’ systematic application of rational conceptualization to nature. Force returns, therefore, not in a concept, but an operation. More directly, force is its operation. This is a conclusion, however, that cannot be drawn in advance, but that appears as the condition of Aquinas’ attempted reduction of force to being, to that which is subsumed under the concept. Force cannot be said, for its concept is not adequate to its operation. The philosophy of force – much like the philosophy of difference (or especially of differance) – is not that philosophy that takes force as its theme. Rather, the philosophy of force is precisely one that is attentive to the remainder that outstrips our concepts. The potential awaits in the object.

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4 Albertus Magnus and Nicole Oresme on Force and Nature

The question concerning the ontological status of universals in medieval thought has effects that extend well beyond logic and ontology, for the question cuts to the very heart of how one conceives of and carries out the task of philosophy. The issue of whether and how universals exist outside the mind is precisely the issue of whether that which is the object of our knowledge (the universal concept) is at the same time that which is responsible for the being of existing singulars.1 If Courtenay and Oberman are correct in their conclusion that appeal to the absolute power of God is central to later medieval nominalism,2 as I believe they are, then it is this concept that allows these nominalists to break the identity between the principle of knowing and the principle of being. An appeal to God’s absolute power is an appeal to an ontological origin – an ontological principle – that is not open to rational, conceptual investigation. The result is that existing singulars must be granted an absolute givenness behind which rational conceptualization cannot go. Notice, however, that it is an appeal to a kind of power or force that allows later medieval thinkers to break the identity of the principle of knowing and the principle of being. If God can do anything that does not involve or bring about a contradiction,3 and if God’s power to do so is not further explained by appeal to God’s intellect, then the mere fact that things exist cannot be explained other than by reference to this power itself. The result of the appeal to this power is that our rational comprehension of things must always presuppose their given existence and cannot explain that givenness. As 73

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such, the appeal to God’s absolute power turns existing things into phenomena – or, more precisely, refuses to turn phenomena into something that grounds them while not, at the same time, being phenomenal itself. The tension between the givenness of power and rational explanation is not new or unique to later medieval nominalism.4 Indeed, the concern over force is one of the central, albeit implicit, themes of Aristotle’s De Caelo, as was discussed in Chapter 1. Aristotle’s account of the motion of simple bodies (i.e., the four elements plus ether) that belongs to them by nature hinges on his ability to relegate motion by force (bia) to a secondary and derivative status. His argument hinges on the ‘fact’ that to each simple body there belongs a place, which belongs to it by nature. Natural motion, consequently, is the motion of an element to its natural place. Enforced motion is the motion away from that place. In what follows, I will investigate two later medieval interpretations of Aristotle’s arguments about natural place, natural motion and motion by force. First, I will look at Albertus Magnus’ commentary on De Caelo. This commentary is, I would argue, much closer to Aristotle’s own position in De Caelo. I will show how Albert looks at natural place and natural motion in terms of substantial form and essence. My intention here is not merely to compare Albert with another interpretation. Rather, I would like to use Albert’s interpretation as an exemplar of those interpretations that reduce natural motion to form. Next I will turn to Nicole [Nicolas] Oresme’s translation of and commentary on De Caelo.5 I will show how Oresme turns away from form and essence as an explanation of natural motion. I will argue that this means that Oresme understands force in its own right, without reducing it to natural motion. I will argue that this presupposes a non-identity between the principle of knowing and the principle of being. The result is that for Oresme force constitutes phenomenality as such and he makes no attempt to reduce the force of phenomenality to another sphere that would be ontologically prior to force.

Albertus Magnus on place and force Helen Lang has argued that Aristotle’s insistence on natural place ‘makes the cosmos determinate’ so that nature appears everywhere as

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a principle of order.6 As such, place appears as something like the form of the elements. It is something like form in that it limits and determines matter. Yet it is also like form in that it provides for elements a principle of intelligibility. Aristotle is quite clear in both Posterior Analytics and De Anima that intelligibility arises from a grasping of form. The very thing at issue in Posterior Analytics is how one can come to know the why of a fact. The fact to be demonstrated will be one in which a property is predicated of that to which it belongs essentially. The why that comes to be known is precisely that essence or form. In De Anima, Aristotle is even more explicit about the relation of knowledge to form. To demand that each element has a natural place, therefore, is to demand that the motions and actions of elemental bodies be intelligible. The elemental bodies themselves already possess form – that is why they are earth, air, fire and water. Place is related to this form in that what it means to be earth, for example is to be down or at the centre of the cosmos.7 Albert, however, goes further than Aristotle in relating place to form. In his commentary on De Caelo I. 3, he argues that the parts of the world, that is the elements, differ according to the substantial form or proper accidents consequent on substantial form. We discover the celestial body by motion that is natural to it according to agreement with its natural form.8 For Albert, the only way to understand that nature is a principle of being moved or at rest in that in which it is per se and not per accidens is that nature is consequent on the substantial form of the thing to which it belongs. If motion were not consequent on the form, then we would only be considering motion per accidens. This argument comes in the context of a larger argument proving that there must be a fifth element and that element moves naturally in a circle; that is, about the centre. Albert constructs the argument around the relation between motion and form. The diversity of motion is caused by a diversity of mobiles according to form such that the motion of a mobile that is one according to form is also one according to form.9 The conclusion of the argument is not difficult to see: if we can discover a motion that is distinct according to form from the motion of earth, water, air and fire, then we must posit a fifth element that is distinct from these according to form. While Aristotle does not deploy the concept of form, his argument works in precisely this way. However, like Aristotle’s argument, Albert’s works

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only if motion by force is reducible to the natural motion of some elemental body. Hence, there is a kind of circularity in that motion by force is really the natural motion of some body, while the natural motion of a body could also produce motion by force in some other body. This circle is stopped only by reference to the substantial forms of the elements. Albert, following Aristotle’s argument, asserts that there are three distinct motions: up (away from the centre), down (toward the centre) and circular (around the centre). These three motions signify three different mobiles that differ according to form.10 Albert does not argue that the motions are the forms of the mobiles, but that the motions and the forms are so intimately related that a motion of a particular form signifies immediately a mobile of a different form. If a motion can signify a substantial form, this means that the motion itself immediately brings to mind the substantial form of that which is thus moved. The relation of signification to which Albert appeals here indicates an intimate relationship between the motion (sign) and the substantial form of the moved (signified). Albert’s argument that these various motions ‘signify’ a variety in form of the thing moved indicates both an intimate relationship but also a non-identity between the motion and the moved body. If motion down signifies heaviness ( gravitas), this must be because heaviness belongs to an elemental body on account of its form and this form is expressed by that motion downwards. The result is that the place that belongs to an element by nature determines its natural motion, which in turn is sufficient for the determination of the element as distinct from others. This close identification of natural place with elemental form leads Albert to posit these general definitions of natural and violent motion: natural motion is motion that arises from the very nature of that which is moved, violent motion is motion that arises from an extrinsic mover.11 For Albert, all accidental motion will be this kind of motion by violence. In this way, anything that is moved by a mover other than its own nature will be moved by violence. Aristotle himself does not equate violent motion either with accidental motion or with motion by an extraneous mover. A result of this equation is that all artificial generation will be violent.12 However, if nature is a principle of being moved or at rest in that to which it belongs per se, then it must be the case that all motion per accidens is by force or

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violence.13 Therefore, Albert must be right in looking at the substantial form of the elements for their principle of motion, and natural place must belong to them because of their forms. Since natural motion is thought in terms of the form of that which is moved by nature, then the movement that takes place between two bodies such that one moves another will be by force. Yet force does not also account for why earth, for example, moves downwards; that is, force is not understood as the general and universal cause of motion. Violence, in its turn, is not determined by the elemental form of that which is moved by violence. Rather, it is determined by the form of the external mover. Any motion that is violent for one element is natural for another.14 Violence does not have a mode of being of its own, but is rather a natural motion of one body applied to another. If violence were a form of motion that was not reduced or reducible to natural motion, then there would be in the cosmos some motion that is not able to be grasped through the substantial form of some body. For Albert, only natural motion is determined by the form of that which is moved by nature. By reducing violent motion to the natural motion of another body, the determination of motion by substantial form is guaranteed. Violence as a primary sort of motion would, as Albert interprets De Caelo, be an indeterminate sort of motion; that is, a motion which is not consequent on – and therefore does not signify – a substantial form. Albert follows Aristotle’s text, I would argue, quite closely in this regard. His analysis of natural motion in terms of substantial form produces the effect that all motion is grasped in terms of form. If form is that component of a thing that is knowable, then the result of Albert’s interpretation is that the natural motion of the elements can be grasped once the form of the element is grasped. In this way, Albert asserts the identity between knowing and being, since form is the principle of both. Motion, therefore, is ontologically derivative on form, while form itself is primary and irreducible. Force, therefore, is nothing other than the natural motion of a body affecting the motion of another body of a different nature. This connection between natural motion, form and rational intelligibility might not be immediately clear. For Aristotle, but even more so for medieval interpreters of his texts, form plays not only a metaphysical role in ‘bringing being’ to a substance, it is also that which is known when we say that we know a thing. We can say that

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knowledge occurs when the soul takes on the form of the thing known.15 When medieval Christian interpreters saw form as not only ‘shape’ but also as playing the crucial role in metaphysics, they were able to join the principle that allows knowledge with the principle that gives being. It is for this reason that skepticism is not an issue for medieval thinkers. When Albertus Magnus, for example argues that natural motion is consequent on form, this extends the principle of knowledge to the principle of motion as well. This identity gives intelligibility to motion. Such intelligibility can be had without recourse to substantial forms, but then a mathematical or geometrical method is required. Albert’s position, however, means that motion cannot be thought in relation to force, but must ultimately be reduced to nature and to form.

Oresme and the primacy of force At first glance, Oresme’s interpretation of natural motion appears to be similar to that of Albert. For natural motion results from the ‘natural inclination [of elements] in keeping with their substantial form’.16 The issue of natural inclination is central to Aristotle’s understanding of heaviness and lightness in De Caelo IV.17 Inclination itself is also not contrary to Albert’s ‘consequent on form’ analysis. This similarity, however, is almost immediately complicated by Oresme. In discussing Aristotle’s principle of ‘one-body, one natural motion’, Nicole constructs a thought experiment in which a length of copper pipe stretches from the centre of the earth (the natural place of earth) all the way to the innermost heavenly sphere. In this pipe is contained all fire, except for a small amount of air. In this pipe, the air would fall all the way to the centre of the earth, and this would be without violence.18 The air could fall naturally to the centre of the earth – that is, to a place other than its natural place – only because Oresme has removed the link between substantial form and place and replaced it with a ‘natural ordinance’ (l’ordinance naturelle) that states ‘heavy bodies so far as possible are located in the middle of light bodies’ (Du Ciel 173). While Oresme is clear that his thought experiment is designed to show that Aristotle was mistaken in his view of natural place as the only principle of natural motion, he is not so clear just how much his position differs from Aristotle’s.

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Oresme’s claim that the falling of air to the centre of the earth would be without violence is in fact an overturning of the very definition of violent motion. Aristotle defined violent motion as that motion that moves a body away from its natural place, or holds a body at rest outside its natural place. We have seen that Albert interprets this to mean that such motion is brought about by an extrinsic mover, while natural motion is brought about by an intrinsic principle. If the natural place of air, for example, is not at the centre of the earth, then the motion to the centre is, by definition, violent. Yet Oresme rejects labeling such motion violent. Oresme does not reject completely the notion that the natural place of earth is down (at the centre) and that of fire is up (at the periphery): ‘And of the four elements the lowest and the heaviest is the whole round earth; next is water round about it, save for that portion of the earth which is exposed; next, above these two is the air which surrounds earth and water; and, finally, above the air is fire which surrounds the air’ (69). Yet even here in his list of the places that belong to the elements by nature, he locates the elements relationally. Earth indeed is heavy and at the centre. Yet it is also located below water. Even fire, which is light and up, is located below the heavens.19 This relational aspect of the natural motions of the elements points to a more fundamental shift in Oresme’s understanding of the motion of the elements. The actual (and perhaps even contingent) relationship between two elements can only be fundamental if their motion is not determined by their form, but by something else that is less static than form. This is not to say that a thing cannot change form. Rather, form is static in that it is either present or absent in a thing. When it is present, according to Albert’s position that thing will always be moved in a way consequent on this form. Yet this picture cannot account for the various contexts, including the ‘pipe experiment’, that Oresme raises. If he is to call such motions natural, he needs a principle of motion that can account for different motions when the body is in different relations. Oresme delivers just such a principle in the form of the relationship between force and resistance. For both Aristotle and Albert, the motion of an elemental body is determined completely by the nature (and ultimately the form) of the element, which includes its natural place. The actual relations of elemental bodies comes into play for them only in regards to violent motion. Violent motion must regard the relation of elements because

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it refers the violent motion of one body to the natural motion of another body. The concept of power or force is first raised by Oresme in his discussion of the motion of fire in a circle. Aristotle had argued in the Meteorologica that fire does indeed move in a circle, and does so perpetually. Yet according to De Caelo, ‘it would be strange, in fact quite absurd, that being unnatural [the motion of the heavens] should yet be the only continuous and eternal motion, seeing that in the rest of nature what is unnatural is the quickest to fall into decay’ (De Caelo 269b7). Oresme argues that the heavens drag the uppermost part of the sphere of fire. This unnatural movement is possible only because of the ‘power [vertus] of some other body thus moved quite naturally’ (Du Ciel 77).20 Oresme thus shifts the issue of natural motion away from substantial form and locates it in relation to power (vertus or puissance).21 This power comes directly from God: for when God created the heavens, he put into them motive qualities and powers [qualitéz et vertus motivez] just as he put weight and resistance against these motive powers in earthly things … The powers [vertus] against the resistances are moderated in such a way, so tempered, and so harmonized that the movements are made without violence … In this manner did God allow the heavens to be moved continually according to the proportions of the motive powers to the resistances and according to the established order. (Ibid., 289) Here Oresme equates the ‘harmony’ of the relations between forces and resistances with natural motion in that the harmony God established makes for motion without violence. If it is the harmony that indicates the motion is not violent, then natural motion and violent motion become thought only in terms of the relations between motive forces and violence. It is this relationship, then, that is central to natural motion and not the substantial forms of the bodies involved. This was already apparent in the pipe experiment.22 We can now see why the relations among the elements are crucial to Oresme’s analysis of natural and violent motion. For all motion must be analysed in terms of the proportion of force and resistance. ‘The speed of movement in the presence of resistance follows the

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proportion of the motive power to the resistance’ (ibid., 421). In fact, Oresme argues that if parts of earth near the centre or parts of fire near the periphery were never spatially near their contrary, they would be eternal. This power, therefore, is not only the power to move, but also the power to endure. Both temporal endurance and natural motion are understood by Oresme to be related to the proportion of power and resistance and not understood primarily in terms of the lightness and heaviness that would be essential qualities of the bodies having the form fire or earth. This relation is seen most clearly when Oresme discusses violent motion. He argues that the mover imparts to the moved a motive quality called force (force). The speed of the violent motion, therefore, depends on the proportion of this force and the body’s own resistance to that force. ‘The cause is, in general, the excess of the motive force over the resistance because the application of this force to the resistance cannot be made suddenly, but must be made one part after the other with each part so affected that nothing can take place suddenly’ (ibid., 415). As stated here, this idea is by no means unique to Oresme.23 The difference between Oresme and Albert, however, is that while for Albertus this proposition has nothing to do with the distinction between natural and violent motion, but rather presupposes it, for Oresme the harmony of the relation comes to play a central role in his understanding of violent motion, or rather his understanding of force in general. That is, by relying on the relationship between bodies, he can think force in relation to both natural and violent motion. What Aristotle had attempted to dispense with, namely motion by force, is now internalized in a mobile body and comes to be a general explanation for motion. These ‘motive qualities’ or forces, as well as the resistances, are given to the things by God. While Oresme exploits them in his analysis of violent motion, he must also have them in mind in the construction of the copper pipe thought experiment. For what was at issue there was the relation that obtained between two elements (air and fire), and this relationship can only become salient if we think in terms of power and resistance rather than in terms of natural place linked to substantial form. Oresme’s ‘natural ordinance’ results precisely from this thinking of motion in terms of force and resistance. That is, non-violent motion is construed by Oresme as motion in concordance with God’s natural ordinance.

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Oresme clearly wants to be able to use the term ‘natural’ for any motion that occurs in accord with the motive powers and resistances given to things by God. Yet Oresme includes under natural motion many kinds of motion that would be characterized as violent by Aristotle and Albertus Magnus. The full force of Oresme’s replacement of natural place by the ‘natural ordinance’ now becomes clear. The natural ordinance governs not the natures of the bodies in question, but rather their relationships, and motion is a result of these relationships and not a result of the natures of the bodies being moved. In this way, force becomes ontologically basic for Oresme – constituting the very mode of being of bodies. Here we see a move away from analysing motion in terms of the kind of body under consideration. Rather than focusing on the qualities belonging to the form of a body, Oresme focuses on the motion itself and its relation to other motions. Force has been removed from a discussion of the form or the nature of a body and comes to be addressed in its own right. It is this feature to which we must now turn our attention.

The force of nature Oresme clearly rejects the link between natural motion, natural place and substantial form. Instead, he conceptualizes natural motion in terms of forces and resistances that have been given to things by God. In fact, Oresme uses the notion of force as a metaphysically basic concept: ‘Thus, just as every body has within itself three dimensions … in the same way every body has duration, extension, and power [puissance]; and this is according to the pattern set by God the creator, who possesses in himself eternity, immensity, and omnipotence’ (ibid., 273).24 Force is, for Oresme, that which is responsible for a thing’s existence, once it is brought into existence by God: ‘[A]nything whatsoever, assuming it had or had not a beginning, requires only the power [puissance] or force [vertus] of its own substance or essence to endure, were it not for the resistance of its contraries which could destroy it’ (ibid., 233). It is because Oresme has redefined natural motion as the harmonious relation of force and resistance and not as consequent on the nature of the body that force can now be basic – kinetically and also ontologically. It is what causes a thing to move in the way it does, but also to be and endure in being. Futhermore, since Oresme, following

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the Mertonian School, develops a mathematical and geometrical method of tracing force, his turning towards force as an ontological notion presents little problem in terms of rational intelligibility. More than any actual position he develops, this complex brings him close to a mechanical world picture. More than this, by freeing force from the natural/violent framework that depends on form and by using a method to trace the operation of forces, Oresme shifts the knowledge of nature away from the ontology of forms. Now motion, force and resistance are no longer mere manifestations of a reality (form) that is ontologically basic and yet not phenomenal. The force that is responsible for existence is directly related to God’s omnipotence. This omnipotence, this power by which God gives force to things, is not further reducible: Just as we cannot state the cause why nature begins this thing at one rather than at another moment of all the infinite time at the disposition of the heavenly movements, likewise we should not seek the cause why God created the world or why he creates a soul when it pleases him, neither earlier nor later in his eternity, beyond the single cause of his immutable divine will, permanent and eternal without succession. (Ibid., 245) The fact that force is the mode of being of things is a direct result of their being created through God’s absolute power. In this way, all things carry within themselves the sign of this power. While for Albert motion signifies form, for Oresme power (i.e., the power in things) signifies power (i.e., God’s absolute power through which they were created). The metaphysically basic notion of force requires Oresme to rethink the entire issue of natural motion in terms of force rather than form. In this way, all natural motion becomes what Aristotle called ‘motion by force’ and what Albertus Magnus called violentia. Or, conversely, all motion that is not voluntary is natural because it falls within God’s natural ordinance. Yet beyond this issue of the motion of elemental bodies, this shift results in Oresme’s refusal to treat elemental motion through concepts that function both metaphysically and epistemologically, for Oresme refuses to analyse motion outside of the actual givenness of things – a givenness brought about only through divine omnipotence.

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What Oresme is left with, consequently, is a label for the way in which bodies are merely given, and that label is force. The task of analysis, the task of rational comprehension, is not to uncover the principle of that givenness, but rather to address the ways in which bodies move on the basis of that phenomenal givenness. This means that Oresme looks to the proportions of forces, to the relation between the force of one body and the resistance of another body, as an explanation of motion. This proportion can be observed (even through thought experiments), measured and grasped. Yet the proportion of force is not responsible for the coming-to-be of the thing. Oresme leaves the being of things untouched – they are given only through God’s power. The rational conceptualization of force does not attempt to overcome force by way of a ‘deeper’ metaphysical analysis. Force is, for him, nothing other than its effects, nothing other than its manifestation. The appeal to force as an ontologically basic notion indicates a break in the identity of the principle of knowing with the principle of being. Oresme’s analysis in terms of force posits a fundamental heterogeneity in things, for it rejects the analysis of motion in terms of a form that will always be identical to itself – no matter in how many individuals it is instantiated. He proposes instead a logic of force that always begins from the actual, the given and calculates the effects that such a given can produce. This logic of force does not give itself over to a kind of irrationality. It simply refuses to posit its own rationality – the rationality or method through which force comes to be known and traced – as the cause or principle of the being of things. The result is that the phenomenality of force cannot be reduced to a reality that is posited on the basis of our rational conceptualization.

5 Knowledge and Power in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly

Joining together the terms ‘power’ and ‘knowledge’ may seem like the epitome of postmodern thought, where all knowledge relates merely to objects that are the constructions of discursive practices. This concatenation of terms, however, was not usual in later medieval thought. If knowledge is always of that which is, and if, for a Christian medieval thinker, that which is is a direct result of God’s creative power, then the theory of knowledge must be joined to reflections on the nature and scope of that creative activity. As has already been seen (in Chapter 1), the question of the origin of the cosmos is central to the concept of force and the attempt to reduce force to something other than phenomenality. Such reflections on the power of God came to occupy a central position in later medieval thought, partly as a result of the various condemnations of the 1270s. Thinkers from Duns Scotus to Gabriel Biel were always on guard to ensure that their philosophical positions did not place any undue limitations on the divine creative power. This focus on divine power led to an understanding of the contingency of the world as an effect of God’s free creation, and such contingency had far-reaching consequences in ontology, cosmology, epistemology, ethics and theology. Pierre d’Ailly (Petrus de Alliaco) is, in this sense, a thinker fully immersed in this intellectual milieu.1 He is, to a large extent, a follower of William of Ockham, though he is certainly willing to break ranks where he finds Ockham to be wrong. Like Ockham, he maintains that only singulars exist outside the soul. In addition, for d’Ailly, what and how we know is intimately connected with God’s power. In what follows, I would like to explore d’Ailly’s positions on 85

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divine power and its implicit and explicit relation to the issue of knowledge. Specifically, I will first investigate his theory of knowledge to show how he attempts to provide a foundation for knowledge, given the radical contingency of the world. Second, I will investigate his theory of divine omnipotence to show how God’s absolute and absolutely free power requires such a theory of knowledge. What I aim to show is that d’Ailly (in many respects following the lead of William of Ockham), follows out the consequences of the absolute power of God in metaphysics, epistemology and morality. In short, if the origin of the cosmos is nothing other than the radically free, and therefore contingent, power of God, then the attempt to reduce phenomenality to another sphere is similarly cut off.

Knowing what we can For d’Ailly, as for Scotus and Ockham before him, the question of knowledge is reducible to the question of what they called ‘evidence’.2 Knowledge is a capacity of the soul and as such it has a proper object (antekeimenon, for Aristotle) towards which it ‘reaches’ and at which it ‘terminates’. For Aristotle, this object is ‘the true’ because we can only know that which is, and that which is will also be true – to be true is one of the meanings of being. Consequently, knowledge must name a capacity of the soul that reaches out to the true or to truth. The particular relation of soul and thing that is called knowledge has to do with the soul’s assent to truth. However, knowledge is not the only capacity by which the soul assents to truth. Faith and opinion, too, assent to truth. Thus, for d’Ailly, as for Ockham, what distinguishes knowledge from other capacities is the cause and manner of the soul’s assent. Opinion, according to d’Ailly, is assent that arises out of fear or rhetorical force. Faith is assent to what is true, yet it is not caused in the same way as knowledge. For d’Ailly, knowledge is assent that arises only on the basis of evidence. Thus, the theory of knowledge turns out to be a theory of evidence. D’Ailly distinguishes between two kinds of evidence: absolute and conditioned.3 In short, d’Ailly distinguishes between the evidence provided by the principle of non-contradiction, which he calls ‘the first principle’, and the evidence that is available to us in other contexts in which we know. Absolute evidence provides absolute certainty because it is ‘true assent, without fear, naturally caused, by which it

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is not possible that the intellect assents and in thus assenting is deceived or errs’ (I Sent., q. 1, art. 1, 36ra). Here, we can clearly see the difference between knowledge and other cognitive capacities of assent. Unlike opinion, evidence is without fear: that is, it is not based on rhetorical force. Unlike faith, evidence is caused naturally: that is, ‘by causes necessitating the intellect to assenting’ (ibid.). Conditioned evidence has both these features as well. It is defined as ‘true assent, without fear, caused naturally, by which it is not possible, given the general influence of God and no miracle being done, that the intellect assents and thus assenting is deceived or errs’ (ibid., 36rb). The main difference between these two kinds of evidence is obvious. There are some truths concerning which our naturally caused assent does not depend on the contingent order that God has created, and therefore such assent does not depend on God’s maintenance of that order. There are many truths of this kind of which we, in this life, have absolute evidence.4 As d’Ailly has stated in the definition, these truths would derive from the principle of non-contradiction: ‘Socrates is, therefore either Socrates is or Socrates is not.’ Such truths could be called laws of thought in that they are true simply because the first principle is true. Besides such laws of thought, certain contingent, self-reflexive truths can also be known with absolute evidence – ‘I know’, ‘I live’ and so on. Outside of these two categories, there is no other possibility for us to have absolute evidence in this life. This means that the greater part of our knowledge is not absolutely evident. Any knowledge that relates to something outside the soul will be conditionally evident. This applies particularly to knowledge that arises through sensation. Such knowledge will be conditionally and not absolutely evident because ‘it stands without contradiction that something appear and that there is assent that it is thus, and nevertheless it is not thus’ (ibid., 31vb). Notice that in this argument, d’Ailly appeals directly to the principle of non-contradiction, for he asks whether it would violate that principle that something appears and yet is not in reality as it appears. Because there is no contradiction in supposing this, I cannot derive from the principle of noncontradiction alone that something is as it appears. Therefore, we have no absolute evidence of such truths. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that d’Ailly insists we have conditioned evidence of such truths: that is, they can be, under certain conditions, evident. This means that given the general influence of God and the customary

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course of nature and presupposing no miracle, we have evidence of such truths. This does not mean that absolute evidence is a ‘stronger’ form of evidence than conditioned. Rather, as the names imply, conditioned evidence presupposes a set of conditions under which evidence is possible for us. Absolute evidence, on the other hand, is possible without conditions, that is to say under all conditions. D’Ailly never implies that the evidence itself is lesser when it is conditioned. The distinction is not between strong and weak evidence, but between evidence as such and evidence that is available only given the conditions that God has created. Since it is the case that we have conditioned evidence of extrinsic, sensible truths, it follows that we cannot rationally doubt such truths. This is part of the definition of evidence, even of conditioned evidence. To doubt such truths would lead to many contradictions and absurdities: we could rationally doubt that there is a substance of a nature other than human that is divine, we could not infer one thing from another, we could not conclude an effect from its cause, we could not demonstrate anything naturally, we would constantly fall into blasphemy (ibid., 37ra–b). Thus, d’Ailly is convinced that conditioned evidence is still evidence. As evidence, it is naturally caused and cannot rationally be doubted. When he comes to argue that only absolute evidence is ‘infallible’, we can now understand that he is arguing that absolute evidence is evidence under all conditions, whereas God could act (or could have acted) in such a way that what, under the present conditions, is evident would not be evident. That is, God could institute (or could have instituted) other conditions. Before examining the ability of God to act in such ways, we need first to address the question of sensory knowledge in more detail.

Sensation and evidence Most medieval followers of Aristotle maintain along with him that sensation is a crucial part of most knowledge.5 While the soul has other cognitive capacities that it adds to sensation in order for the soul to have knowledge, sensation is a necessary starting point for such knowledge.6 As a result, such thinkers must be concerned to provide a secure foundation for sensation, a foundation that would allow sensation to function as a means for grasping truths about the

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external world. D’Ailly, like most later medieval thinkers influenced by Aristotle, is well-aware that sensation can, and often does, go wrong. Yet he is also convinced that sensation must ‘go right’, for otherwise, as we have seen, many absurdities follow. Sensation is not only a matter of the sensory organs, but is also a capacity of the soul that, like other capacities of the soul, has a proper object. Indeed, each sense has its own proper object (obiectum).7 To have a proper object means that sensation (or each sense), as it were, reaches out of the soul and continues reaching out until it meets something that both stops and completes its reaching out. Thus, each sense is defined by its proper object: vision is of colour or light, hearing is of sound, smell of odour, taste is of flavour, touch is of the tangible. Sensation is a passive capacity – that is, a capacity for undergoing – because each sense is activated by its object and is effected and affected by it. This relation of capacity to object is analysed by many later medieval thinkers along causal lines,8 and led many to claim that it is impossible that ‘the soul senses an object by exterior sensation and that the object not be’.9 Given that d’Ailly argues that the senses are fallible, he must also deny the validity of the argument ‘something is sensed, therefore something must be’. To support his fallibilism with regard to knowledge of the external world, d’Ailly offers four propositions. For him, there is no contradiction in maintaining that from natural causes (and given the general influence of God) nothing is sensed and yet one judges that one senses something or that one senses something and yet one judges that one does not sense something (ibid., 42va). The first case is obvious from our experience of dreaming, the second is obvious from the experience of not paying attention to what is sensed. Second, from natural causes (and given the general influence of God) it can happen that one senses a human and yet one judges that one does not sense a human or that a human is not sensed and yet one judges that one senses a human (ibid., 42vb). Such cases frequently happen when the thing sensed stands at a distance from the one sensing. These two propositions deal with conditions under which a false judgment arises from sensation. There are, however, cases under which sensation leads to a veridical judgment. For example, when one senses some object that is the proper object of that sense and it is at the right distance and both the organ of sense and the medium through which it is sensed are well-disposed, it is not

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possible that one would judge that one does not sense that object. Such a false judgment, d’Ailly argues, could not have a natural cause (ibid.). We can say that d’Ailly’s ‘fallibilism’ (or, perhaps better, conditionalism) is twofold: sensory knowledge depends on the condition (the order) of the world God has instituted and it depends on the factual conditions of the object sensed, the medium through which it is sensed, and the sense organs. Notice that at issue here is not sensation itself, but the relation of sensation to a judgment about that sensation. This is because the issue is evidence and that means we are concerned with what can provide evidence for our knowledge of the external world. Knowledge is different from a mere grasping of the world.10 D’Ailly’s position is that, given the right circumstances, sensation gives rise to evident knowledge of the world outside the soul. Recall that evidence is a matter of assenting and in that assenting not being able to err. Therefore, the question of whether sensation can provide evidence is a question of judging about what sensation gives to the intellect. In this case, ‘evidence’ would name the condition in which sensation gives to the intellect its object such that the intellect knows the object, makes a judgment about it (e.g., ‘It is as it appears’), and in this judgment it cannot err. How can sensation provide such a relation to its object? It was suggested above that for most medieval thinkers who were influenced by Aristotle, sensation (and, as a consequence, knowledge) names a causal process. That is, sensation requires something as an agent that causes some effect in something that undergoes some change (i.e., a patient). In fact, for d’Ailly there can be several agents and patients relating to one another in a single act of sensing. In this, he disagrees with Ockham and argues for the necessity of positing ‘species in the medium’.11 D’Ailly defines such species as a ‘form that is a similitude or image of the thing known, apt by its nature to lead the soul to knowledge of the thing itself of which it is an image’ (de Anim., 46). Such a species is caused by the sensible object itself and exists in the medium through which the object is sensed (water, air and so on), in the sense organ, and in the intellect. D’Ailly does not go into details about how such species are generated, relying on what he calls the ‘common opinion’. We can assume that for him, as for Roger Bacon, these images are generated in the medium by the object in the same way that heat is generated in a log

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by fire. In other words, such species are not necessarily peculiar to sensation, but are common to all cases of generation: that is, of efficient causation. In the case of sensation, the medium comes to take on, as much as possible, the quality that is sensed. In this way, air, for example, comes to be informed by the thing sensed and becomes that thing, to the extent to which this is possible. On Roger Bacon’s analysis, the reason why the medium does not actually become the object itself is because of the matter that makes up the medium. This matter is not capable of being fully and completely informed by the form of the object in the way that wood can be fully informed by fire.12 As a result, sensation does not stand as a peculiar problem, for it is only a kind of efficient causation and can be understood according to the principles of such causation. For d’Ailly, the fact that sensation is a kind of efficient causation provides support for the need to posit these species in the medium. According to Aristotle, in efficient causation the mover and the moved must be simultaneous and contiguous. D’Ailly argues that this means that nothing acts at a distance unless it acts in and through some medium. Since the object sensed stands at some distance from the one sensing, the object must first act on a medium (de Anim., 46). Similarly, in generation two contraries cannot be generated at the same time in the same subject. Yet we experience this in sensation when, for example, a ray of sunlight passes through a red window and red appears on the opposite wall. The colour of the wall remains while redness is also present. The only way to account for this, according to d’Ailly, is by means of sensible species and the effect that such a species has on various patients (i.e., the medium, the wall and so on). These sensible species also come to be in the sensory organs and in the imagination (i.e., the ability to construct phantasms of the object sensed). The positing of species in the account of sensation and sensory knowledge seems to lead to the position that all such knowledge is mediated, because it requires the species in the medium and in the sense organs. However, the species themselves ‘are not sensed, nor are they perceived by sense’ (de Anim., 48). Since they are not sensed, the object that causes them is immediately perceived by sense, even though this perception happens by means of the causal activity of the species. In other words, even though the object is sensed and known in itself, it is known through a species. D’Ailly calls knowledge of a thing in itself ‘intuitive knowledge’, and defines it as a ‘simple

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knowledge by which something immediately is known in itself formally’ (de Anim., 70). This is distinguished from abstractive knowledge, which is ‘simple knowledge by which something is known in some representative medium’ (ibid.).13 Naturally – that is, given the customary course of nature – intuitive knowledge of a sensible object cannot be had without the presence and existence of its object. Similarly, such knowledge cannot arise when the object is destroyed (de Anim., 68). Thus, we are once again forced back to the issue of the ‘customary course of nature’ and the power of God to work outside that course. The security of our sensory knowledge seems to rest on the customary course of nature to such an extent that if God can act outside that course, our knowledge of the external, contingent world is thrown into question.

The power of God According to d’Ailly, the belief that God is omnipotent must be properly understood to mean that God can make everything makeable: that is, everything that does not imply a contradiction if made (I Sent., q. 12, art. 1, 191ra). This power of God to make everything makeable is called the ‘absolute power’ of God because it refers to ‘that which God simply and absolutely can [do or make]’ (ibid., 192ra). This is distinct from God’s ‘ordered power’. This distinction, however, is not a distinction between two different powers in God. Rather, the two ‘kinds’ of power indicate two ways of expressing or viewing one and the same power. If ‘absolute power’ is the power to do or make anything absolutely, then the ordered power of God expresses God’s power that is not absolute. We might even call it God’s ‘conditioned’ power because it is the power to act in and through the conditions God has instituted. This ordered power can mean either (1) God can do or make what God has eternally willed to be or to be made, given God’s standing ordination; or (2) God can do or make something that does not contradict the standing truth of the law or divine scripture (ibid., 192rb).14 The two issues that are relevant to d’Ailly’s discussion of knowledge are (1) what can God do, according to God’s absolute power, that might lead to a failure of our knowledge of the external contingent world, and (2) what is the force of saying that our knowledge is naturally secure according to God’s ordered power. Let us first turn to God’s absolute power.

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For d’Ailly, as we have seen, God’s omnipotence does not pertain to everything possible that God could make or do. A contradiction arises, for example, when we consider the proposition ‘God makes nothing’. If God would make that proposition, or even make it true, it would immediately be false: that is, a contradiction would follow. Second, God’s omnipotence is ontologically defined by the principle of non-contradiction. That is, if God made something that, when made, leads to a contradiction, such a thing would not be a being at all. Thus, to say that God can only make that which in being made does not produce a contradiction is to say that God can only make that which can be made. God cannot make the principle of noncontradiction false (ibid., 193ra). We can now see why the principle of non-contradiction stands at the heart of absolute evidence. There is nothing God can do or make that either leads to a contradiction or makes the principle false. D’Ailly is well-aware, however, that there is a difference between the first principle and assent to the first principle. It has been shown that it is the assent and the grounds for that assent that give rise to evidence. D’Ailly’s general position is that dissent from the first principle is against the faith, because from the opposite of the first principle follows the opposite of any article of faith (I Sent., q. 1, art. 1, 38va). However, to maintain that someone is able to dissent from the principle does not contradict the faith because to hold that God could cause such dissent supports the article that God is omnipotent. However, that someone dissents from the first principle does not entail that the principle is false. While d’Ailly maintains that dissent from the principle of non-contradiction is possible, caused either naturally or by God’s absolute power, we cannot draw from this the conclusion that the first principle itself is not known evidently. What is required for causing dissent is some appearance or motive causing the will to dissent. For d’Ailly, therefore, assent and dissent are not only a matter of intellect, but also of will. This is why it is significant that for him the will is understood to be a capacity belonging to the intellective soul.15 The only motive that could move the will to dissent from the first principle is the concurrence of false appearances, be they caused naturally or by God’s absolute power (I Sent., q. 1, art. 1, 39va). What cannot be caused, according to d’Ailly, is evident assent to the opposite of the first principle. In this way, God, according to the divine absolute power, cannot make the principle of non-contradiction false

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in the same way that such power cannot bring about a contradiction. God’s absolute power cannot affect absolute evidence in any way. What God can do, according to God’s absolute power, is cause dissent to the principle of non-contradiction. Yet d’Ailly is clear that according to God’s ordered power, such dissent cannot be caused by God. As a result, d’Ailly’s theory of knowledge rests on the distinction and relation between God’s ordered and absolute powers. Certainly d’Ailly is not the first medieval thinker to raise this distinction between God’s absolute and ordered powers. This distinction has been a matter of controversy in modern interpretations of later medieval thought.16 One side of the debate has argued that later medieval reflections on the absolute power of God produce wild flights of philosophical fantasy, lead to our inability to know anything with certainty, and ultimately lead to the dissolution of scholasticism itself.17 In d’Ailly, the issue arises with a great deal of insistence because it seems as if God could cause us to dissent from the true and assent to the false, and thus God’s absolute power leads to the total failure to ground our knowledge of the world. Although d’Ailly has argued that this does not affect the issue of evidence, it does seem to make evidence superfluous. For what good is evidence, even absolute evidence, if God could cause dissent in us in situations in which evidence should be available to us? That is, if evidence is certain assent to some truth, and if God could cause us to dissent from some truth in precisely those cases where, without divine action, we would have true assent, then what work does the notion of evidence do for us? Notice that thus far d’Ailly’s position will make it such that any assent to the principle of non-contradiction and anything following from it will be evident and such truths will be known with certainty. However, if God can cause dissent from the first principle, then even though the principle can be known with absolute evidence, still dissent is possible and thus evidence itself seems to make little difference to our assent and dissent. Furthermore, all other knowledge of the world outside the soul seems uncertain. However, this uncertainty arises only if d’Ailly means that God can, according to God’s absolute power, act in such a way as to violate the order – both natural and supernatural – that God has created. The relation between these two modes of divine power is more clearly seen in the issue of the divine moral law and our obligation to fulfill it. For in this area, the distinction has serious consequences

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for moral theology. Here, what is at issue is not merely how and what we can know, but what God commands of us and how we can know that command. In short, our very salvation is at issue when one considers God’s power in relation to the divine law. Therefore, the issue of the stability of God’s law has ultimate consequences that do not arise in the stability of the world and our ability to know that world. D’Ailly argues that because God is the first efficient cause, God must also be the first law or rule (I Sent, principium, q. 1, 3vb). As the first obligating law, it is impossible that something is required by some law and not required by the divine law (ibid., 4ra). As a result, only that is a law or rule that is consonant with the divine will.18 Sin will be anything that is prohibited by this divine law, or, what is the same, by the divine will. For a law to be obligating, however, two things are required. First, those who are obligated by a law must be rational creatures because only rational creatures have free will. In other words, the divine law (indeed any law) obliges only those creatures that can act in some other way. For this reason, God cannot obligate someone to do something impossible (ibid., 5rb). The divine law, therefore, is not a law or rule naturally, but only as a result of the free – and therefore contingent – action of God (ibid., 6rb). Natural beings (those that are not rational) are not obligated by law because they act naturally. The second thing that is required for a law to be obligatory is that it is known to those to whom it is obligatory. It is in relation to this requirement of obligation that the ordered power of God becomes crucial in d’Ailly’s analysis: Just as anything the divine will can produce by secondary mediating causes it can produce alone, so the divine will (according to absolute power) could obligate a rational creature by itself alone without some created law just as by a mediating law … But nevertheless the divine will, according to ordered power, could not obligate some rational creature unless by some mediating created law, that is through some signs from which the obligatory will of God can become known to that rational creature. (Ibid., 7ra) The created law at issue here is what d’Ailly calls the law of Christ: that is, Christian doctrine itself. So, according to d’Ailly, God could obligate someone to something without the law of Christ having been instituted. However, the law of Christ having been instituted, it

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is now obligatory for all. If we understand God’s absolute power to mean that the law of Christ could be made no longer obligatory, or that some other law is now obligatory, then the operations, acts and sacraments of the Catholic Church, working according to the directions of the law of Christ, would not be done so as to lead to salvation (ibid., 8vb). In other words, if God is not bound, by God’s own free will, to the law and order that has been instituted, then the entirety of the Christian faith, including its doctrines and sacraments, would not be relevant to salvation – indeed, the Church would be superfluous. In the case of the obligation of the divine law, d’Ailly seems to be arguing that the order God has instituted will not be contradicted by another divine act, for otherwise the created law itself would lose its force and the acts and precepts of the Church could easily lead to damnation rather than salvation. The order of laws and nature is a result of an act of the absolute power of God. Yet those orders are now binding and unaffected by what is possible for God according to God’s absolute power. We can now see that the same must be the case in regard to the question of knowledge. The fact that God has created an order (a course of nature) means that God will not cause dissent from the principle of non-contradiction, even though such an act does not lead to a contradiction. For d’Ailly argues that divine omnipotence requires that we maintain that God is able to cause such dissent. That is, according to God’s absolute power, God could cause such dissent. Yet, as we have seen, d’Ailly also argues that to dissent from the first principle is contrary to the faith. Such dissent obviates the works of the Church itself. As a result, d’Ailly cannot mean that we must or even can maintain that God might cause such dissent; he merely argues that the condition God has instituted is contingent, an act of the free will of God. The absolute power of God allows us to grasp what evidence is in itself. The ordered power of God shows us what evidence is given the order that God has chosen to create. Therefore, dissent from the principle of non-contradiction can only arise from natural motives: that is, false appearances. False appearances can certainly occur in the normal course of nature, as we have seen with dreams and objects far away. However, the tools for analysing such appearances are also available to us in the normal course of nature. This understanding of the ordered power of God also gives fuller meaning to the phrase ‘the general influence of God’ or ‘the usual

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course of nature’. D’Ailly argues from the notion that God is the first efficient cause to the notion that God is the first obligating law, as we have seen. This argument can also be run in reverse: only that which is the first law can be the first efficient cause for, if the first law is not also the efficient cause, the law lacks the power to be obligating. Thus, if God as lawgiver is committed to the law that has been created, God as efficient cause will, for similar reasons, be committed to the order of nature that has been created. In this way we are entitled to presume the standing order of nature, even though that order has been contingently, because freely, willed and caused by God. We might say that the order of nature in which we find ourselves is only one possible order. Yet because it has been willed by God, it is always under the general influence of God.

Conclusion For d’Ailly, the contingent act of creation results in a world that is given to us and from which a large part of our knowledge arises. As such, our knowledge is reflective of the world and its contingency. Given the free act of creation, our knowledge must be called ‘fallible’ because it does not extend to that act of creation itself. The distinction between God’s absolute and ordered powers means, for d’Ailly, that our knowledge always depends on the act of creation – that is, on the givenness of some order – but cannot extend beyond that order to its origin in the divine will. If the order of being and of law is contingent, then the connection between being and knowing is also contingent, for knowledge always depends on the given order of creation. There is no necessary and essential connection between the ontological principles and conditions and the principles and conditions of our knowledge. Yet if this essential and necessary identity between being and knowing is called into question by the power of God, then the attempt to reduce the appearance of things to a reality that is ontologically constitutive of appearances is also called into question, or shown to be itself an operation of a kind of force. The absolute power of God, therefore, leaves knowledge in the sphere of phenomenality as such. D’Ailly focuses on the concept of evidence because evidence is the way to deal with knowledge that cannot ever purport to have ontological purchase. D’Ailly’s concept of conditional evidence operates entirely within the sphere of the

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phenomenal. What is non-phenomenal – that is, the realm in which absolute evidence operates – is merely logical or self-reflexive. The concern that he shows for the fallibility of our knowledge and the persistent possibility of perceptual error arises precisely because phenomenality has no other for him. Since things have their origin only in the will and absolute power of God, our rational capacities cannot trace them back to a non-phenomenal origin. D’Ailly’s theory of knowledge attempts to provide the means of securing a grasp of phenomenality. It does so, however, not by positing a ground to God’s creative activity that can be traced through the capacities of reason, but by turning those capacities to phenomena themselves. The world still carries within it the trace of the absolute power of God, even while that power can be traced using the capacities of reason. D’Ailly secures knowledge of phenomenality not by recourse to a higher level essentiality, but by recourse to the normative effects of the absolute power of God. D’Ailly, far from being a skeptic, is attempting to carve out a security for our knowledge, given that that security cannot be grounded in our knowledge of the origin of the world itself. That is, d’Ailly recognizes that unless we reduce God to a necessary cause and thereby know the reason for the world coming into being in the way that it has, all we are left with is fallible, conditional evidence of the world. Our powers of knowing do not extend to our bringing things into existence through that knowledge – such power God alone has. Because of this fact, our knowledge can only hope to chase after a world that has been given to us. What I have been calling ‘fallibilism’ is d’Ailly’s position that in any case in which knowledge is not productive of the thing known, knowledge will always depend on the context in which it is situated. By looking to God’s absolute power, we come to recognize that for our knowledge there is nothing necessary about the condition in which we find ourselves. This does pose a threat to knowledge, if one understands that knowledge must turn phenomena back to their very principles of being. However, since all being arises from the free, contingent act of God, these principles remain outside our grasp. While for God knowing and being are identical – God knows all things absolutely and infallibly – for us, knowing and being are separated. This is what it means to be a creature, this is what it means to find oneself within the phenomenal sphere that one has not created.

6 Hobbes’ Logic of Force: The Phenomenon of Motion and the Capacities of Ratiocination

Introduction Late medieval nominalism can be characterized as maintaining that everything that exists outside the soul is a singular and that universals are nothing more than the soul’s acts of coming to know those singulars. While one finds many attempts to ground this position on purely philosophical grounds, it finds its greatest support (and the reason why it was as widely accepted as it was) in the theological position that asserts that God can do anything as long as it does not involve a contradiction. Some medieval nominalists went so far as to maintain that God is not even bound by the principle of noncontradiction. For medieval thinkers like Ockham, Pierre d’Ailly and Robert Holcot, the absolute power of God is the central tenet that allows them to argue that only individuals exist outside the soul and that whatever is universal belongs not to the world but to the soul’s way of knowing the world, because God can create any singular without a universal first being conceived by the divine mind. The position that God’s absolute power includes the power to do anything that does not involve a contradiction, even if that power refers only to the initial possibilities open to the divine will, has several important consequences. First, it assigns a radical contingency to the cosmos in that the actual, created cosmos is just but one of an infinite number of possible cosmoi. Indeed, for Ockham, as for Pierre d’Ailly, God could have even created an infinite number of universes 99

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at the same time.1 This means that the knowledge we can have of this universe does not allow us to show its necessary origin in an intelligent God. There is a gap between the actual cosmos and its origin in the divine will that cannot be bridged by the capacities of reason.2 The contingency that the absolute power of God ushers is not of such a nature that each thing, each fact, is contingent because it is not necessitated by some prior thing or fact. Rather, the contingency is a result of the fact that creation itself cannot be traced ontologically or logically to any property of God other than God’s will, which is determined as absolutely unconditioned and uncaused, even by the divine nature itself. The result is that while each given thing, each state of affairs can be traced back to and grounded in some prior determining thing or state of affairs, this procedure cannot either run into infinity nor can it be grounded rationally in some concept of God other than that God causes because God is God and God has the absolute power to do or make whatever does not entail a contradiction. Second, and following almost directly from the first, the absolute power of God brings to the fore the issue of signification. If God can do anything that does not entail a contradiction, then God can make it so that I have a concept of an object that does not exist. While for Ockham and d’Ailly this does not mean that God is a deceiver, since I would know that the object does not exist, it does mean that concepts – that is, that through which the soul knows – are not directly linked to actually existing things.3 When concepts are no longer directly linked to the substantial forms of which they are concepts, some other link must be found between intellect and thing. For Ockham, as for many late medieval nominalists, that link is signification. What is more, if universals are constructed by the soul not as concepts that are adequate to the substantial forms of their objects, but as merely ways in which the soul comes to know singular things that are presented (even if not existing) to it, then such concepts do not offer the ontological ground of existing things, but rather signify things as they are given.4 Finally, and drawing out the conclusions of these two consequences, sensation, imagination and ultimately concepts can no longer have an immediate ontological import. This insight that seems to be central to many of the thinkers of Mersenne’s circle is

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already in operation in the middle ages.5 While we can trace the origin of sensation, of imagination, and of concepts in the efficient causation of existing things, because God could create a world in which all of these can relate to objects that do not exist, the ability of these to grasp things in their basic ontological constitution is cut off. It is precisely because of this movement that the ontological argument for God’s existence, roundly criticized from the moment it was offered, is rehabilitated by Scotus and ultimately Descartes and Spinoza. These three consequences of the notion of the absolute power of God all combine to call into question the traditional separation of appearance from reality – that is, of the phenomenality of things from some being that is both the ground of the appearance and available to reason. If our knowledge of individual phenomenal things must stop at those things and their phenomenality, because behind those things, as it were, stands only God’s will, then our knowledge deals with phenomena and can trace nothing more than their modes of appearing: that is, their phenomenality. If our concepts are caused by those individual things, but only such that they are signs, then concepts have a phenomenality of their own and are traced back to the phenomenality of things, not to their ‘real being’ in some nonphenomenal reality.6 We can say that late medieval nominalism leaves us on this side of phenomenality without the ability to reduce phenomenality to some ‘higher level essentiality’. It is not difficult to see that such a context makes the early modern move towards mechanism quite easy.7 To be more precise, if the mode of appearing of things belongs to efficient causation and the operation of efficient causes is not reduced to final or formal causation, then the only possible manner of grasping and tracing the operation of efficient causes is by means of a kind of mechanism. The mechanistic tracing of efficient causation, however, must either maintain that reason has access to concepts that expose to thought the real essences of things, or it is left operating in a world of appearances without any ability to ground those appearances in a reality that is, both their explanation and ontological source. Hobbes and Descartes in many ways exhibit each side of this dilemma, taking as their identical point of departure the idea that concepts of the mind do not represent or refer immediately to extramental reality. Indeed, they both maintain similar doctrines of God’s

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omnipotence, doctrines that come fairly close to their medieval nominalist predecessors.8 Hobbes ascription of absolute power to God is most clearly seen in his discussions with Bishop Bramhall on liberty and necessity.9 While Bishop Bramhall consistently asserts that divine justice, goodness and truth require a free will, for otherwise someone will be punished for an act over which they have no free control, Hobbes consistently counters that divine omnipotence and eternity are in some sense prior to justice, goodness and truth. ‘God, I said, might command a thing openly, and yet hinder the doing of it, without injustice; but if a man should command a thing to be done, and then plot secretly the hindrance of the same, and punish for the not doing it, it were injustice’ (Questions 103). For Hobbes, justice does not precede divine action as a condition of it, but follows upon the divine will as a consequence: ‘… because whatsoever he doth is therefore just because done by him’ (Questions 104). The justice that belongs to God’s action arises from God’s ‘irresistible power’, and in all cases, what is right and just is determined by the greater power: ‘Power irresistible justifieth all actions really and properly, in whomsoever it be found’ (Questions 116). If the absolute power of God to do anything is central to Hobbes’s thought, then all other traditional attributes of God should be reducible to God’s power: Is not goodness, in him that is, good, the power to make himself beloved, and is not mercy goodness? Are not, therefore, these attributes contained in the attribute of his omnipotence. And justice in God, is it anything else, but the power he hath and exerciseth in distributing blessings and afflictions? (Questions 212) As is well-known, Hobbes maintains both that the power to perform an act and the act itself do not differ except that ‘power’ has a reference to the future time in which the act will be carried out, while ‘action’ indicates the present performance of the action.10 This is a reworking of the traditional scholastic distinction between act and potency to the effect that nothing remains in the agent that is other than the phenomenal action of that agent.11 In addition, Hobbes also maintains that all causes are physical causes: that is, causes that are some variety of local motion. The theology of the absolute power of God, therefore, will have dramatic effects on Hobbes’ physics and ‘first philosophy’, because it will always presuppose the phenomenal

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givenness of the world prior to our attempt to capture it. Furthermore, the presupposition of God’s absolute power will necessitate a mechanical physics that must always remain provisional or hypothetical. Even if God’s absolute power cuts off the possibility of giving causal explanations of the natural word that we know actually match the causal mechanism active in the world, this does not throw us into skepticism. Hobbes insists that causal explanation can and must be given for the natural world. If those explanations are only possible ways in which things may work in the world, this does not mean that we do not explain anything at all by means of them. Hobbes insists, then, on both the givenness of the phenomenal world and on the need for reason to provide an explanatory account of that world. While Descartes is celebrated as a rationalist, Hobbes is often referred to as a materialist. This would seem to indicate that while Descartes maintains that reality is ultimately graspable through reason, Hobbes maintains that it is graspable only through the material mechanism of sensation. However, the logic of efficient causation is not, as Hume will ultimately show, available to sensation itself. Thus, Hobbes stands as a curious figure, an empiricist, a mechanist, perhaps also a materialist, but thoroughly rationalist in his method. What he offers us is a logic that is capable of tracing the operation of phenomenal reality but is not itself phenomenal.

Hobbes and phenomena Hobbes offers two well-known definitions of philosophy that on the face of it do not seem to be identical, nor even reconcilable. The famous definition from De Corpore states: Philosophy is knowledge of effects, i.e., of phenomena, from concepts of their causes or generations, and on the other hand, of generations that are possible from the known effects, both of these acquired through correct ratiocination. (De Corp., 1.2) The definition he offers in his critique of Thomas White’s De Mundo states: True philosophy which clearly is the same as the true, proper, and accurate nomenclature of things, consists in the knowledge of

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differences; it seems that one knows the differences of things who will have learned to attribute to singular things their proper appellations; furthermore, correct ratiocination, which is the task of philosophers, is nothing other than the correct combination of true propositions in a syllogism.12 The two definitions of philosophy carry one significant feature in common, namely the emphasis on right or correct ratiocination (recta ratiocinatio). For Hobbes, philosophy is not simply the knowledge of effects or the knowledge of names, but is on top of that the combination and calculation of those names by means of ratiocination. Furthermore, while the definition found in De Corpore does not immediately entail or include syllogistic reasoning, Hobbes does go on to show that names are central to philosophy and that philosophy as such is the calculation of names in syllogistic form. So, on the side of the rational calculation, the definitions remain the same. What is immediately apparent, however, is that De Corpore defines philosophy primarily in terms of knowledge of phenomena. That is, philosophy proceeds in either one of two directions: either it begins with concepts of causes and by means of those causes learns about effects or generations – that is, the phenomena that they produce – or it begins from those phenomena and traces them back to their possible causes. In any case, that about which philosophy is concerned is exclusively phenomena: that is, what appears to sensation. So, in the De Corpore, we have these two sides to philosophy, namely the phenomenal side and what may be called the rational side. Hobbes’ concern with names, then, might show the moment at which these two sides of philosophy meet. Because of the definition of philosophy, Hobbes points us first towards phenomena and then towards ratiocination. His procedure in De Corpore, however, is the reverse of this. The method of correct ratiocination is laid out and then we are led into a discussion of phenomena. However, the method of ratiocination is not itself based on the phenomena to which it is applied. Or, to put this another way, the definition of De Corpore raises an idea of philosophy in which method is applied to phenomena that are given to the method from elsewhere. The definition of the Anti-White does not immediately raise phenomena at all, but rather names, which may or may not ultimately touch phenomena. Therefore, while method is primary to

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philosophy, it is not primary itself, since it relies on phenomena. Our rational capacities can explicate phenomena, but reason is not to perform ontological work, for Hobbes, since this ontological work of reason is one of the main causes of civil war. As Bertman argues, ‘[O]ur own mental structures – the “powers” of the mind – are epistemologically necessary but they are not to be taken as part of the ontology of reality.’13 The primacy of phenomenality arises from the definition of philosophy itself. Philosophy is linked inherently to causation, since it is either the knowledge of causes from known effects or knowledge of effects from known causes. This knowledge, however, is complex in that it entails that we know an effect when we know its causes, how they are, in what subject they inhere, and in what subject they are introduced (De Corp., 6.1). This knowledge relies on knowledge that either is sensation or arises from sensation. The primacy of sensation in philosophy, however, is, as it were, not a methodological primacy. That is, while Hobbes’ definition of philosophy includes phenomenality within it, sensation, the analysis of phenomenality, does not receive significant treatment until Part IV of De Corpore. According to Esfeld, Hobbes’ method begins with universals as its principles, but these principles have no ontological import as they conceive nothing that is a real element in the construction of the world.14 Thus, while the definitions of philosophy given in the Anti-White and De Corpore seem to move in opposite directions, they agree in the way Hobbes actually carries out his philosophy in De Corpore. Yet, as we have seen, the definition of philosophy already contains a duality: it is the knowledge of effects from their known generation and the knowledge of generation from known effects or phenomena. As Hobbes remarks, this leads to a duality of methods in philosophy, ‘one from generation to possible effect, the other from the effects of phenomena to their possible generation’ (De Corp., 25.1). The first, the movement from generation to possible effects, begins with a consensus about the names of things: that is, it begins from proper definitions. This is what Hobbes carries out in the section on Method and the section on what he terms ‘first philosophy’. The other method, namely tracing the possible generation of known effects, begins not with definitions, but with phenomena that come to us by means of sensation (ibid.).

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There seems to be a kind of implicit circularity here. For the definition of philosophy indeed marks two paths that can be traced, one from the effect to its possible generation, one from the generation to its possible effects. Yet both paths include effects and generations. If we attend carefully to the definition, we see what is at stake here. Hobbes has linked the concept of effect directly with the concept of phenomena: philosophy is knowledge of effects sive phenomena from the concepts of their causes. When he repeats the definition, he intensifies the identity: philosophy is knowledge of generation from known effects or phenomena (De Corp., 25.1). So, on both paths philosophy moves between phenomena, what appears, to generation. The distinction between the methods is a directional one: one method moves from phenomenality to possible causes, the other moves from causes to possible phenomenal effects.15 The priority of phenomena, however, is not absolute. The analysis of phenomena begins first by a doubling of sensation in memory. This doubling allows sensation to be used in the analysis of sensation itself without Hobbes having to move either to essences,16 substantial forms, or a transcendental self. Moreover, the analysis of sensation relies on concepts that are not proper to sensation or reducible to it, but to what Hobbes calls ‘first philosophy’, namely the concepts of motion, change, resistance, space and conatus.17 First philosophy, for Hobbes, develops the concepts of space and time, body and accident, cause and effect, potency and act, identity and diversity, quantity and the specific details of space. Without these tools, Hobbes’ notion of sensation cannot be developed. Thus, while phenomenality seems prior to the method of reason that Hobbes develops, phenomenality cannot be analysed without its tools. For Hobbes, nothing is more obvious and natural than phenomenality: ‘In the knowledge of the senses, the whole phenomenon is more known than any part of it’ (De Corp., 6.2). The analysis of phenomenality does not attempt to show that it is necessary or even possible to reduce the sphere of phenomenality to some other, nonphenomenal sphere. On the contrary, the analysis of sensation, which is nothing other than an analysis of phenomenality, begins with the givenness of sensation: ‘The first principles of every science are phantasms of sense and imagination, which we certainly know naturally that they are’ (De Corp., 6.1). The task of finding causes begins with this givenness, but it does not ever attempt to show that

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the causes of phenomenality are non-phenomenal. Nor, in fact, does the analysis of phenomenality even give us true knowledge of the actual causes of appearances. Rather, what the analysis of phenomenality gives is something by means of which appearances could be generated, even if they are not in fact generated in that way (De Corp., 25.1). Given that the analysis of phenomenality is not reduced to its conditions – that is, that phenomenality is not thought in terms of something non-phenomenal that gives its ground – then how, according to this analysis, is phenomenality constituted? The analysis of phenomenality is an analysis of its causes and modes by which its generation proceeds, or can proceed. That is, Hobbes’ analysis of phenomenality shows how appearances could be produced, whether or not they are actually produced in this manner. The analysis can be produced because the appearances as appearing are naturally known by us. The question, then, is not whether there are appearances, but how they are or can be generated. As noted above, the analysis can proceed not because Hobbes posits that there are real things of which these are mere appearances, but because memory allows for a doubling of sensation. ‘But by which sense, you ask, could we contemplate sensation? By sense itself, viz., the memory of other sensibilia, though of the past, remaining for some time. For to sense that I have sensed is to have remembered’ (De Corp., 25.1). In this way, the analysis of phenomenality is possible not by removing oneself from phenomenality – as in Descartes’ removal to thought – but by doubling phenomenality upon itself. The first thing that memory teaches about phenomenality is that sensations are not always the same. That is, since I can remember that I have sensed, I can notice that what I am now sensing is not the same as what I have sensed. In this way, memory gives the notion that sensations are subject to mutation, namely a mutation in the body of the one sensing. All mutation has already been shown by Hobbes to be some motion or endeavour (since endeavour is also a motion) in the internal parts of the mutated thing (De Corp., 25.2). Mutation must be reduced to motion, and ultimately to the endeavour, the smallest beginning of motion, because a body whose parts are always mutually related in the same way does not undergo anything new. ‘Sensation, then, in the sentient is nothing other than

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the motion of some internal parts existing in the sentient, which parts are parts of the moved organ by which we sense’ (De Corp., 25.2). Hobbes traces phenomenality, therefore, in terms of the motion of the sentient’s body, a motion, we know from Hobbes’ earlier treatment of the topic, that must be caused by something else in motion, for motion is the most universal cause of all.18 Sensation is a result of two opposite movements each of which has its own direction. There is the motion of the internal parts of the body, traceable ultimately to some conatus, and the motion of some external body that presses on the organ of sense. This pressing is then propagated all the way to the most internal parts of the body. ‘So sensation is some internal motion in the sentient, generated by some motion of the internal parts of an object, and propagated through the medium all the way to the internal parts of the organ of sense’ (ibid.). The sentient’s body, as we have seen, has a motion of its own that is directed outside. This endeavour of the internal parts of the sentient’s body outward and the endeavour of the object inward constitute contrary endeavours, which is the definition of resistance. It is this resistance between two contrary motions that is sensation, and the phenomenality of objects arises precisely because of the directedness of each of these motions. Resistance, however, is the condition of force for Hobbes: ‘We define force (vis) to be the impetus multiplied, either in itself or in the magnitude of the mover, by which the mover more or less acts in a body that resists’ (De Corp., 15.4). It is because of force that things appear at all. We can say, then, that phenomenality is the operation of force on the sense organs. Since we have already seen that sensation is the beginning of all knowledge, we can now say that for Hobbes, phenomenality is where knowledge begins and phenomenality is the sphere of force because force is what ultimately constitutes phenomenality. The appearing of things, what gives them to be objects, is the force that arises when the endeavour of objects inward meets the endeavour of the sentient’s body outward. Phenomenality, then, is just that resistance, a resistance that leaves its mark on the sentient’s body. Here, there can be no question as to what appears – that is, what it is that, as it were, merely appears: that is, other than the manifestation of itself to sense. For since sense is the beginning of knowledge, then knowledge begins and ends with phenomenality. This coincides with Hobbes’ conception of the scope and end of philosophy: ‘that we are able

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to use previous effects to our advantage, or that similar effects to effects conceived by the soul through bodies for application to bodies be produced to the extent that human power and the matter of things allows, for the industrious use of human life’ (De Corp., 1.6). So, philosophy deals with the force of phenomenality in order to use that force for the production of effects that are useful to human well-being. ‘Effects and phenomena are the capacities or powers of bodies by which we distinguish them from others, i.e., by which we conceive one to be equal or unequal to another, similar or dissimilar to another’ (De Corp., 1.4). Yet what about the other side of philosophy? What about the ‘correct ratiocination’? Furthermore, what about this notion of body that seems to underlie phenomenality? Is it also itself phenomenal, or is it just a materialistic way of still pointing to a ‘higher level essentiality’ that gives things to appear without itself appearing?

The task of reason If Hobbes’ method is not a reduction of appearances to some sphere that does not appear, to some ‘higher level essentiality’, then what task does reason have to perform? We have already seen that the definition of philosophy posits a movement from cause to effect or effect to cause, through correct ratiocination. As we also have seen, the principle of all science is the phantasm that results from force. However, on the basis of the phantasms, it is the work of reason to ask by what causes they are or originate (De Corp., 6.1). So, while phenomenality is nothing more than the force of appearance, this is not the last word to be said. Reason can be put to work in order to discover the causes, or, more specifically, the possible causes of phenomena. But in that case, the work of reason must not be entirely reducible to the force of phenomenality. Phenomenality gives to us knowledge of a whole, ‘as when we see a human, the concept or that whole idea of human is known prior or more than the particular ideas of figured, animated, rational’ (De Corp., 6.2). On the other hand, when we look to the causes of that phenomenon, we come to have knowledge of the causes of the parts rather than the whole, for the cause of the whole is made up of the cause of the parts. These ‘parts’ are not to be understood as the material constituents of a thing into which it could be divided, but are understood to be the parts of its nature. ‘[B]y the parts of a human

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I do not understand the head, humors, brachia, etc., but the figure, quantity, motion, sensation, ratiocination and similar things, which are accidents that, composed at the same time, constitute the whole human, not the mass, but the nature’ (ibid.). These ‘parts of the nature’ of a body, however, do not appear to sense, but are available only to reason, or, more precisely, they are accomplished by the ‘work of reason’. The whole that is grasped by sensation – that is by the force of phenomenality – is not grasped in terms of either its nature or of its causes – which for Hobbes amounts to the same thing. To move from the phenomenal whole to the nature whose parts are grasped by reason, names are required. For this reason, the definition of philosophy in the Anti-White points to the role of nomenclature in philosophy. Names, for Hobbes, are notes that the memory deploys in order to signify and demonstrate those things that we happen to hold in memory. ‘A name is a human vocal sound used by human choice (arbitrio) that it be a note by which a thought similar to a past thought can be excited in the soul, and which disposed in a sentence and offered to others as a sign to them what kind of thought preceded or did not precede in the one offering it’ (De Corp., 2.4). In this way, the choice at the heart of the creation of a sign is a beginning of a construction that leaves pure phenomenality behind, while still being indexed to that phenomenality, for names are not names of things, but of concepts of the one deploying them (De Corp., 2.5). This is precisely why there can be universal names – that is, names of names – and these will become crucial to the development of a science and to unpacking the nature of a body, even though that nature does not appear to sensation. Like medieval nominalists before him, Hobbes needs to develop a fairly robust and sophisticated semiotics precisely because concepts cannot bring the thing itself into the soul and therefore do not give to us the reality of a thing that stands behind its phenomenality. Furthermore, he follows Ockham’s definition of a true proposition: that is, a copulation of names. A sentence of the form ‘Body is mobile’ indicates that the name body and the name mobile are imposed for the same thing. However, this sentence also moves one to think of the cause on account of which the names are both imposed for that one thing. Copulation, then, is the first task of the work of reason because in it we seek in the thing the causes of the names imposed to signify them. When I predicate ‘mobile’ of ‘body’,

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I am driven to ask what it is to be body or to be mobile, and in this way I seek what differentiates this thing such that it is mobile, rather than hot. This is to ask after the cause of the name. The cause of the name, however, is the same as the cause of the concept. Both arise from the force of the thing conceived, a force that affects our bodies. This force is some accident belonging to the body; for example, mobility or heat. At this point, we have the same force that we above designated as constituting phenomenality. In addition to that force, however, we have the decision of applying a name to the concept caused in us by that force for the purpose of sharing that concept with others. However, our example already shows that there can be two kinds of names, for there is a difference between ‘mobile’ and ‘mobility’, or ‘body’ and ‘corporeity’. The former in each of these is a concrete name that is of some thing supposed to exist. The latter of each of these is an abstract name that ‘in a thing supposed to exist denotes the cause of the concrete name, such as to be body, to be mobile, to be moved’ (De Corp., 3.3). Since the work of reason is to discover causes, abstract names are the basis for its operation: extension is the cause of body, for example, because it is by means of extension, or its being extended, that we come to conceive a body at all. This operation requires that names be imposed for the concepts of things and that these names be accepted by both the one imposing it and others. Thus, the central work of reason, for Hobbes, is the correct establishment of definitions. While names are imposed by choice, definitions are in fact prior to the names defined. A definition, then, would be a copulation of terms by means of which we come to know the accident of some body that is the reason for giving the particular name that is given to it. In this case, what a definition does is to expose something more universal than the thing defined, for a definition will predicate an accident of some body. But the accident itself, as accident, must be able to belong to things other than that particular body or even kind of body. Therefore, reason’s work consists in grasping the universal causes: that is, the accidents that are common to all bodies (De Corp., 6.3). These universals, however, are found only in singular things, so they must be drawn out by reason through resolution, since they are not immediately manifest: For example … square is resolved into a plane figure terminated by a certain and equal number of lines and right angles. And in this

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way we have these universals or matter belonging to all: line, plane (in which is contained surface), termination, angle, straight, equality, if someone would discover their causes or generations, she would compose them in the cause of a square. (De Corp., 6.4) These universals have the most universal cause: motion. In this way, resolution gets us to the definition and the nature of the thing, which makes the thing known in its causes in a way that phenomenality cannot. Of the most basic, most universal concepts, there can be no definition on the basis of their causes, however, since their causes are unknown. Indeed, of motion, extension, body and those that pertain to all matter, there is no definition through causes, but only clear explication (De Corp., 6.13). These basic components, which belong to ‘first philosophy’, are discovered by other means. If ‘first philosophy’ is a name normally given to metaphysics, then one would expect Hobbes to develop in his first philosophy a theory of being as such, along with the basic properties, divisions and characteristics of being. Hobbes, however, takes a completely different turn. If the theory of being as such is meant to turn our concepts into the essences of the things conceived under them, then Hobbes has no path to construct such a metaphysics. If phenomenality presents itself to sensation and ultimately to conceptualization, then all that is presented are the wholes whose causes and natures are unknown. But reason has work to perform here: it can suppose the annihilation of the world. From this supposition, what arises is not being as such, but rather those basic features that allow phenomenality to be traced in its forceful appearing. The supposed annihilation of the world performs a kind of separation. While the fiction entails that someone existing after the supposed annihilation of the world remembers what had occurred to sense while the world existed, such a person is in the position to think of such things only as ideas or phantasms, dependent on the power of the soul, but also appearing externally. The supposed annihilation, therefore, ensures that we are concerned only with our phantasms and the rational computation of them. What is left after the fictional annihilation is names of two sorts: those of accidents internal to the soul and species of external things, not as existing but appearing to exist or to stand outside the soul (De Corp., 7.1). That is, the supposed annihilation of the world allows us to ratiocinate with

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phantasms precisely as phantasms and to develop the concepts that make phenomenality possible, without reducing that phenomenality to those very concepts. Thus, as Zarka has pointed out, there are certain affinities with Hobbes’ experiment and the medieval concept of the absolute power of God.19 The first achievement of first philosophy is the notion of space, which arises from simply remembering a thing that existed before the annihilation of the world and considering it merely as outside the soul. Thus, space occupies the role that being or existence normally takes in a metaphysics. This notion of space is precisely that which Hobbes deployed in accounting for the force of phenomena. It is what Hobbes calls ‘imaginary space’, the space that belongs to a thing insofar as it depends on the imagination (De Corp., 7.2). A similar path brings us to Hobbes’ notion of body. Here, the one imagining the annihilation of the world imagines putting something back into the world or something created anew. Since the notion of space has already been seen to be the notion of a thing merely as existing outside, the newly created thing would have to occupy some portion of that space. Thus, it would be something extended in space and not dependent on our imagination. This is the definition of body (De Corp., 8.1). Once the notion of body has been achieved by the work of reason, we can add the notion of accident, which is nothing other than a way of conceiving a body. For example, when we think that a body occupies some space, we recognize that that coextension is not the body itself, but an accident of body (De Corp., 8.2). It is with the notions of space, body and accident that Hobbes will come to describe phenomenality, as we have seen. However, these notions present no deeper ontological insight than the force of phenomenality itself. Rather, all they afford is a way to trace the forces that give rise to phenomenality so as to make them useful and intelligible. In short, without the work of reason, Hobbes’ materialism is nothing short of mysticism.

Reason, phenomenality, politics Hobbes’ philosophy can be seen as the attempt to trace the force that constitutes phenomenality without reducing that force to something that grounds appearances but does not itself appear. What is more, Hobbes’ philosophy can maintain a materialist core without reverting

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to a mysticism that lays claims to matter that phenomenality cannot deliver. His philosophy proposes both the material origin of knowledge and the rational capacity to trace, analyse and redeploy matter for the betterment of human life. We have seen that force lies at the origin of his analysis of phenomenality. Yet for Hobbes, phenomenality is not the end of the effects of force. Force has effects on the emotions too, particularly on the desire for power, the famous origin of his notion of sovereignty. However, if Hobbes refuses to collapse the work of reason into the effects of force, then his method of philosophizing provides us both with descriptive as well as critical tools. Hobbes is surely right about the origins of the civil war in England. Furthermore, he is also certainly right that his concept of the sovereign could prevent civil war. However, the fact that reason still has work to do in the face of the forces that constitute our experience, means that his philosophy at the same time allows us to examine critically that very notion of the sovereign, for if reason were not able to work independently of the forces that are phenomenality, Hobbes’ political vision would surely follow almost deductively. But the work of reason is not restricted to mere phenomenality. Furthermore, since the work of reason does not turn phenomenality into ‘brute facticity’ so as to turn its concepts into essences, it can never leave behind the actual operation of forces and power. In this way, Hobbes’ philosophy redeems itself by opening the possibility of yet other constructions of relations of force that can prevent the state of civil war, while at the same time not requiring reason to turn its own domain over to the determination of that sovereign.

Notes Introduction 1. It is often said that the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ have the opposite meanings to the current, post-Kantian meaning. This is not quite true. From the middle ages through Descartes, the term ‘subjective’ referred to the kind of being a subject (i.e., a substrate) has. Thus, subjective being can be thought as the being a thing has independent of its relation to thinking or to a soul. ‘Objective’, however, does not mean the kind of being a thing has as thought, but rather the kind of being that arises when some capacity of the soul comes to perform its work. So, for example, a stick partially submerged in water appears bent. The stick is not actually bent, but it actually does appear bent. The appearance of the stick as bent emerges when the sensory capacities of the soul reach out to the thing outside the soul. The bent stick has ‘esse objective’, which correlates neither with the postKantian ‘subjective’ nor ‘objective’, but constitutes a region of being that is somewhere between the two. On this question, see Lawrence Dewan, ‘“Obiectum”: Notes on the Invention of a Word’, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire Du Moyen Age 48 (1981): 37–96; Dallas Denery, ‘The Appearance of Reality: Peter Aureol and the Experience of Perceptual Error’, Franciscan Studies 55 (1998): 27–52; and Richard A. Lee, ‘Being Skeptical About Skepticism: Methodological Themes Concerning Ockham’s Alleged Skepticism’, Vivarium 39, no. 1 (2001): 1–19. 2. In an earlier text, I called this universal concept the ‘rational ground’ and investigated its role in later medieval philosophy. See Lee, ‘Being Skeptical About Skepticism: Methodological Themes Concerning Ockham’s Alleged Skepticism’. 3. Perhaps the two best-known examples of this kind of critique are Jacques Derrida, ‘La Différance’, Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie 62 (1968): 73–101; Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs, translated by David B. Allison and Newton Garver (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973) and Giles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton (London: Athlone Press, 1994); Giles Deleuze, Différence et Répétition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972). 4. Theodor Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 3, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 19–60; Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1998), 3–42. 5. This, it seems to me, is the task that is being worked out by Foucault, primarily in texts such as Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la 115

116 Notes

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Prison (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, translated by Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage Books, 1977) and Michel Foucault, La Volenté de Savoir (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1976), The History of Sexuality, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1980). If something like a logic of force is impossible, then so too are his analyses of the ways in which power operates in organized and systematic ways in various institutions and discourses. G.W.F. Hegel, Phänomenologie Des Geistes (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 107. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 79. Hereafter, this text will be referred to as Phenomenology followed by German and English page numbers. Ibid., translation slightly modified. Phenomenology 110/81. Miller translates Äuserung as ‘expression’. This is clearly what is at stake at this moment of the dialectic of force, that it is identified in itself, and yet it is nothing if it is not expressed in other things. However, Hegel’s dialectic turns on the internal self-identity of force as opposed to its externalization. I will show in a moment that this is tantamount to saying that the ultimate untruth of force will turn on the distinction between the concept of force and the operation of force. Theodor Adorno, Metaphysik: Begriff und Probleme, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Theodor W. Adorno: Nachgelassene Schriften Abteilung IV, vol. 14 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), 14. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, edited by Rolf Tiedmann, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 17; Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, translated by E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1992), 5. On the notion of an effectual history, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1975, translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall, 2nd edn (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 300–7; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 5th edn, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, no. 5 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1986). See Walter Benjamin, ‘Über Den Begriff der Geschichte’, in Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974), 693–704. Such a method of doing the ‘history of philosophy’ is often practiced by Martin Heidegger in texts such as Martin Heidegger, ‘On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1’, translated by Thomas Sheehan, in Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 183–230; Martin Heidegger, ‘Vom Wesen und Begriff der PHYSIS. Aristoteles, Physik B, 1’, in Wegmarken, edited by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hermann, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 9 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), 239–301; Martin Heidegger, Early Greek Thinking, translated by David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1975); Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics,

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translated by Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Martin Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik, edited by Petra Jaeger, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 40 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983). 14. This is the reason why Horkheimer and Adorno speak of a ‘dialectic’ of enlightenment – myth turns into enlightenment and enlightenment reverts back to myth. See Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit. 15. Johannes Fritsche, Methode und Beweisziel in Ersten Buch der ‘Physikvorlesung’ Des Aristoteles (Frankfurt: Anton Hain, 1986), 11.

1 The Trouble with Force 1. Theodor Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, vol. 3, Dialektik der Aufklärung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997); Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1998). 2. Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore, edited by Karl Schumann (Paris: J. Vrin, 1999), 14. Chapter 6 deals with Hobbes’s notion of force in relation to reason. 3. Ibid. 4. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, edited by Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968), 107; Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, translated by James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1952), 111. 5. Hesiod, ‘Theogony’ in Homeric Hymns and Homerica, edited and translated by Hugh Evelyn-White (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), lines 115–25. This work will be cited as Theogony, followed by line numbers. The translation has been modified. 6. Aristophanes, Birds, translated by Dudley Fits (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957), 196. 7. Ibid. 8. On the notion of the ‘myth of sovereignty’, see Jean-Pierre Vernant, Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), esp. 102–18. 9. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, translated by Janet Lloyd (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991), 51. 10. Aeschylus, Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, PhD in two volumes. 1. Prometheus Bound. Herbert Weir Smyth (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1926), line 105. All citations to this text will be by line number. 11. Detienne, op. cit., 63. 12. Because of this, I disagree with Jean-Pierre Vernant when he says, ‘A power can only be seen by men through its manifestations: It cannot be identified with any single one of them’, Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, translated by Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1990), 104. Vernant argues that Greek deities are not identical with power, but are those beings that have power. This ‘ontologization’ of power allows him to

118 Notes

13. 14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

make sense of why Greek gods and goddesses can have many, often contradictory, powers and spheres associated with them. I would argue that one need not separate the power from the deity in order to account for this, though clearly even in Hesiod this move is emerging. Rather, for me, the gods and goddesses are nothing but powers, and precisely this allows them to take on varying characteristics in various contexts. It is only when one assumes the stable identity of a being behind the power that the problem of contradiction in manifestation appears. Furthermore, because of the relation of power and resistance (i.e., ‘counter-power’), the multiplicity of manifestations arises from the multiplicity of powers. Hesiod refers to these shameful things at 138, 166 and 172. Detienne, op. cit., 95, n31. Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, translated by Janet Lloyd (New York: Zone Books, 1990), pp. 23–8. Vernant says, ‘At one pole law rests upon the authority of an accomplished fact, upon compulsion; at the other it brings into play sacred powers such as the order of the world or the justice of Zeus. It also poses moral problems regarding man’s responsibility. From this point of view divine Dike herself may appear opaque and incomprehensible, in that for human beings she includes an irrational element of brute force’, 26. This is a point that will occupy modern thinkers like Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. Chapter 6 deals with this in Hobbes’ thought. This mystery is pointed out in Martha Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 100. Ibid., 90. Adorno, op. cit., 15/31: ‘What the primitive experiences in this regard is not a spiritual as opposed to a material substance, but the intricacy of the natural in contrast to the individual. The gasp of surprise which accompanies the experience of the unusual becomes its name. It fixes the transcendence of the unknown in relation to the known, and therefore terror as sacredness’. Plato, Phaedo, translated by David Gallop (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). I refer to line numbers for ease of reference. My reading of the Phaedo has been aided tremendously by Ronna Burger, Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (South Bend: St Augustine’s Press, 1999); and Stanley Rosen, Question of Being: A Reversal of Heidegger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993). Among interpretations of the Phaedo, these stand out for their attention not only to the arguments of the text, but also to the dramatic setting and structure. This forces them to pay very close attention to the text, and this care leads to a much more sophisticated and interesting interpretation. Other than these, not much attention has been paid to this particular section of the dialogue. See also W.F. Hicken, ‘Phaedo 93a11–94b3’, Classical Quarterly (1954): 16–22; Kenneth Dorter, Plato’s Phaedo (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982). Gregory Vlastos, ‘Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo’, Philosophical Review (1969): 5–16, argues that aitia should be rendered as ‘reason’ rather than

Notes 119

22.

23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

‘cause’ to cover the myriad contexts in which Plato uses it. This suffices, however, as long as reason is not read as something belonging to the soul rather than things. Ideas are causes, as Burger argues, in the sense that they are responsible for the ‘determinacy of the pragmata [things], hence of their intelligibility’, (op. cit., 135 n2). While I do not focus on the issue here, I should point out that I agree with Burger that the dialogue as a whole points out both the necessity for and limitations of rationality in philosophy. Here, I focus primarily on the first of these. I will not concern myself with the actual cosmology that Plato introduces in the Timaeus, e.g., but the logic developed here could be brought to bear there as well, especially when one looks at the role and function of the chora in that text. On the subject of the chora see John Sallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). Hans Blumenberg, Genesis of the Copernican World, translated by Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 12. This is even more explicit in the actual cosmology carried out in Timaeus, where ‘soul’ arrives after the chaotic matter of the cosmos to begin its work of ordering. If soul is a kind of rational principle, then that principle operates on a chaotic matter to bring it to order. Adorno, op. cit., 10/26. Aristotle, De Caelo, translated by W.K.C. Guthrie (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 279b8. Metaphysics 1072a20. Aristotle here shows that his thought is attempting to overcome Hesiod’s mythic account. In the following chapters, I will investigate medieval receptions and interpretations of, as well as reactions to, each of these steps. Ibid., 1028b34ff. Ibid., 1029a20. For we must remember that in the case of some particular thing comingto-be (e.g., a horse) there is matter that is already informed by some form. When we talk about matter as matter, however, we do not focus on the fact that it is informed. On this question, see Helen Lang, Aristotle’s Physics and Its Medieval Varieties (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), esp. pp. 23–34, where she talks about why matter is crucial to Aristotle’s definition of nature, even though nature turns out to be form. Ibid., 1032a20. See De Anima, Bk. III, chs 4–6. I will argue in Chapters 3 and 5 that the notion of creation ex nihilo requires that medieval thinkers argue that the cosmos is an artifact of God, the cosmic artisan. This, in turn, requires them to confront the question of force once again at the origin of the cosmos; that is, in the act of creation. That it must be eternal follows directly from the eternity of matter; that is, if matter were eternal but this immovable substance were not, we would have somehow to account both for its coming to be and for its capacity as

120 Notes

the cause of matter becoming informed in the way it does. That it be immovable is a requirement that Aristotle will now go on to defend. 37. There is some controversy surrounding this claim. Simplicius, for example, argues that here Aristotle uses a broader notion of ‘unnatural’ that is not identical to motion by force that is the contrary of natural motion. One issue is that if we read it as force, then Aristotle violates the ‘one motion, one contrary’ principle he has laid down. Whether this is the case, clearly motion by force is one kind of unnatural motion, even if there are other kinds of unnatural motions. 38. Averroes sees the distinction between natural motion and motion by force as a distinction between essential and accidental motion. Albertus Magnus follows him in this interpretation (see Chapter 4), which leads him to conclude that all artificial generation is violent. In Chapter 3, I follow out the consequences of this for Aquinas’ notion of creation. Just as accidents are posterior to that of which they are accidents, so too motion by force would be posterior to motion by nature.

2

Tracing the Logic of Force

1. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 12, chapter 6, 1072a7 as well as the beginning of chapter 7 of the same book. 2. Indeed, Socrates’ entire concern with what one might call a ‘materialist’ account of the cosmos is that it does not appeal to nous. He then begins a search for a way to investigate the coming-to-be, passing-away, and existence of all things that would appeal to nous. See Phaedo, 96a5–107b10. 3. I refer here to both the De Multiplicatione Specierum and the Libellus de Mirabili postestate artis et naturae. The former text is found in Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature, 1983, edited and translated by David Lindberg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) and the latter is found in Roger Bacon, ‘De Nullitate Magia’, in Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opera Quaedam Hactenus Inedita, edited by J.S. Brewer, Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, vol. 15 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, 1859), 523. References to the De Multiplicatione Specierum will be cited as DMS followed by page number. References to the Libellus will be cited as MPAN followed by page number. 4. MPAN 524: Nam licet naturae potens sit et mirabilis, tamen ars utens natura pro instrumento potentior est virtute naturali sicut videmus in multis. 5. Nam sunt qui motu veloci, membrorum apparentia, aut vocum diversitate, aut instrumentorum subtilitate, aut tenebris, aut consensus, multa mortalibus proponent Miranda, quae non habent existentiae veritatem: hic mundus plenus est, sicut manifestum est. 6. MPAN 524–5: Cum nec in rebus inutilibus favorabiles existent spiritus maligni, nisi in quantum propter hominum peccata a Deo permittuntur, qui humanum genus regit et gubernat. See also Bacon’s claim that ‘tam res animates quam inanimatas videbit adinvicem concurrere, propter conformitatem naturae, non propter virtutem characterum vel carminis’.

Notes 121

7. [q]uod agens omne facit virtutem et speciem a se in materiam extrinsecam; non solum substantiae, sed accidentia active de tertia specie qualitatis; et fiunt virtutes a rebus, aliquae sensibiles, aliquae insensibiles. 8. Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature, 2. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. This text will be referred to by page number alone. 9. Indeed, throughout the treatise, Bacon hardly uses the terms ‘essence’ at all, except to indicate that force and the agent agree in essence. He does speak of substance, however, because substance clearly is related to operation. Bacon’s treatise is not concerned with finding some other metaphysical ground for force outside its operation. 10. This is one way that Bacon stands apart from earlier perspectivists. Unlike Alhacen, for example, Bacon’s ‘species’ are not operative only in sensation, but in all operations in which an agent affects and effects a patient. Light has to be understood, therefore, as an example, and not as exhaustive of what species are. 11. More specifically, colour is the proper object of vision, but colour requires light for visibility. Light is not seen, but is a condition for the visibility of colour. 12. The term ‘esse intentionale’ was commonly used to designate a kind of being that is different than the being that a substance has. A clear example of such a use is found in Peter Aureoli, Scriptum Super Primum Sententiarum, edited by Eligius Buytaert, O.F.M. (St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1956), 696–9. For an analysis of this notion, see Dallas Denery, ‘The Appearance of Reality: Peter Aureol and the Experience of Perceptual Error’, Franciscan Studies 55 (1998): 27–52; Robert Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 69–76; and Richard A. Lee, ‘Being Skeptical About Skepticism: Methodological Themes Concerning Ockham’s Alleged Skepticism’, Vivarium 39, no. 1 (2001): 1–19. 13. Bacon indicates already that this name is misleading if understood to describe all cases of the operation of force. Force, for him, is not an impression, except in this one case. Bacon clearly does not maintain that force works by being impressed on the patient. 14. The foregoing is a synopsis of pp. 4–6. 15. This is the main difference between Bacon and Ibn Gabriol, who also holds that a thing makes its force in another. For Ibn Gabriol, this metaphysical claim will ultimately have something to do with formal causation and not efficient causation. 16. Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge (Leiden: Brill, 1995) maintains that Bacon has no notion of intelligible species. Bacon clearly indicates that the term ‘species’ is related to both sense and intellect. While Bacon does not include in the treatise a theory of intelligible species, it certainly would not contradict the content of the treatise. It seems clear to me that Bacon’s theory as presented in this treatise would be completed by a theory of intelligible species. Indeed, without such a

122 Notes

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

3

theory, Bacon would have an almost unbridgeable gap between sensory cognition and knowledge. Roger Bacon, Communia Naturalia, edited by Robert Steele, Opera Hactenus Inedita Rogeri Baconi, Fasc. II (Oxford: Clarendon, 1909), 14: Duo igitur requiruntur ad produccionem naturalem, scilicet, efficiens et material in quam operator. Ibid., ‘Nam forma est instrumentum agentis, sicut secures ipsius artifices … ’. Aquinas will intensify this violent language. For him, the form will ‘win a victory’ over the matter. This is treated in chapter 3 of Part I of the treatise. This is not to say that there is a strict difference between the medium and the patient. Bacon’s theory must maintain that the medium is a patient just like wood, for example, but having different matter and therefore receiving species differently. Bacon does not offer an analysis of non-material species; that is, of spiritual species, which would include, to some extent, intelligible species. He does posit their existence in the ‘Prologue’. There, he notes that spiritual species can also influence bodies. Their existence is also alluded to in his ‘De Mirabili artis et naturae’. Roger Bacon, Roger Bacon’s Philosophy of Nature, liv. Ibid., xlviii. Robertus Grosseteste, Die Philosophischen Werke Des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, edited by Ludwig Baur, Beiträge Zur Geschichte der Philosophie Des Mittelalters: Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1912), 126–7. Ibid. Metaphysik, 13. Ibid., 14. Plotinus, Enneads, V.1.6. Ibid., V.1.4. Robertus Grosseteste, Die Philosophischen Werke Des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, 58–65. De Lineis, p. 60. Ibid. This notion will be investigated in more detail in the next chapter. As was shown in the introduction this is an argument similar to the one that Hegel makes in the ‘Force and the Understanding’ chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Theodor Adorno, ‘Die Idee der Naturgeschichte’, Gesammelte Schriften, I, p. 351.

Creation, Order and Violence in Thomas Aquinas

1. Theodor W. Adorno, Eingriffe: Neun Kritische Modelle, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10.2 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 462: ‘Xenophon, to whose school the contemporary concept of

Notes 123

2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Being turned against the concept dates back, wanted to demythologize the power of nature’. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, translated by E.B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1992), 5, 21; Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialektik, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997), 17, 32. Posterior Analytics, 71b10. The issue is first raised in De Caelo, Bk 1, ch. 2, 269a 2–10. It is then used in subsequent chapters of Bk 1 to prove the existence of a fifth body, that circular movement must be natural to some body, and that circular movement is eternal. Reference to Physics provides little help in this task. For although Aristotle refers frequently to that text in De Caelo, its definition of nature as a ‘principle and a cause of being moved or of rest in the thing to which it belongs primarily and in virtue of that thing, but not accidentally’ (Physics B.1, 192b21f.) does not refer to place as the principle itself or even the ground of that principle. One could argue that Physics deals with substances which move, while the subject matter of De Caelo is the four elemental bodies plus the fifth body, which can only be characterized as ‘substances’ in the broadest possible sense. In De Caelo, therefore, the principle of motion is named as place, while in Physics it turns out to be form. Therefore, we cannot look to Physics for information on how to read physis in De Caelo, except in a general sense which I will refer to below. In Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Liber VII, lectio VI, n. 1383. This text will be referred to as In Metaph. followed by book number and lecture number. It may be objected that one cannot discern Aquinas’ own philosophy from a literal exposition of an Aristotelian text. My point here, however, is only one of terminology. The commentary on Metaphysics provides an analysis of the concept of violence which can then be used to understand the concept as it functions in Aquinas’ other work. Martin Heidegger is but one of an entire tradition that reads Aristotle in this way; Martin Heidegger, ‘On the Essence and Concept of Physis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1’, in Pathmarks, edited by William McWeill (Cambridge University Press, 1998). However, Heidegger comes closer to the interpretation I am investigating here in his investigation of actuality and potency in Aristoteles Metaphysik Theta 1–3, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 33 (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1981); Aristotle’s Metaphysics Theta 1–3: On the Essence and Acuality of Force, translated by Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). For an argument in favour of Aquinas’ interpretation, see Christopher Long, ‘The Legacy of Ousia: Towards a Dynamic Conception of Ontological Identity’, diss. (New York: New School for Social Research, 1998), 134–44. This formula appears in In Metaph., L. VII, l. 8, n. 1442g; as well as numerous times in Summa Contra Gentiles (see, e.g., Liber 1, cap. 19, n. 152) hereinafter cited as SCG followed by book, chapter, and paragraph numbers; Summa Theologiae II–II, q. 175, a. 1c, hereinafter cited as ST followed by part, question, and article number.

124 Notes

9. The phrase is Adorno’s (ND 5/17). 10. There can be resistance in cases of natural generation as well, but then the thing that comes to be is called a ‘monster’ rather than a ‘human’, for example. 11. The places where Aquinas raises this slogan are too numerous to cite. The phrase appears some 32 times in SCG, as well as numerous times throughout ST. 12. In a telling passage, Aquinas says that anything that does not come to be through nature comes to be through labour. 13. See, for example, the relation of Christ’s potestas to the power which it gives in sacraments, ST III, 64, 3c and 4c. 14. Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia Dei, q. 1, art. 1. Hereinafter this text will be cited as de Pot. followed by question number and article number. 15. De Pot., 1, 1c: unde et similiter duplex est potentia; una activa cui respondet actus primus, qui operatio; et huic primo nomen potentiae videtur fuisse attributum: alia est potentia passiva, cui respondet actus primus, qui est forma, ad quam similiter videtur secundario nomen potentiae devolutum. Sicut autem nihil potitur nisi ratione potentiae passivae, ita nihil agit nisi ratione actus primi, qui est forma. 16. See also ST I, 25, 1c and SCG L. 1, c. 7. 17. Ibid., Deo autem convenit esse actum purum et primum; unde ipsi convenit maxime agere, et suam similitudinem in alias diffundere, et ideo ei maxime convenit potentia activa; nam potentia activa dicitur secundum quod est principium actionis. 18. De Pot., 3, 7c: … concedendum est Deum operari in natura et voluntate operantibus. Sed quidam hoc non intelligentes, in errorem inciderunt: attribuentes deo hoc modo omnem naturae operationem quod res penitus naturalis nihil ageret per virtutem propriam. 19. Ibid., Nam etiam alio modo conservans virtutem dicitur facere actionem, sicut dicitur medicinae conservantes visum, faciunt videre. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., … Deus sit causa actionis cujuslibet rei naturalis ut movens et applicans virtutem ad agendum. 22. Ibid., Instrumentum enim est cause quodammodo effectus principalis causae, non per formam vel virtutem propriam, sed in quantam participat aliquid de virtute principalis causae per motum ejus, sicut dolabra non est causa rei artificiatae per formam vel virtutem propriam, sed per virtutem artificis a quo movetur et eam quoquomodo participat. 23. Ibid., … prout quodlibet agens est instrumentum divinae virtutis operantis. 24. See ST I, 44, 2c; SCG II, c. 16, de Pot., q. 3, a. 1. 25. I leave aside the question of the eternity of the world. When Aquinas addresses this question explicitly, he argues that both the position that the world is eternal and the position that it is created in time are rational. He does argue for creation, and the arguments he puts forward are similar to those we are about to investigate. One could argue, however, that the entire issue of violent causation arises from the notion that God creates from nothing. Aristotle does not have the problems that Aquinas does

Notes 125

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38.

39.

with violence precisely because the matter of the world and the ‘self-thinking thought’ are eternal and their interaction does not come through efficient causation at all. ST I, 84, 2c. SCG II, c. 16, nn. 938–44. Ibid., n. 939. See, for example, ST I, 84, 7c: … potentia cognoscitiva proportionatur cognoscibili. See also ST I, 85, 1c: objectum cognoscibile proportionatur virtuti cognoscitivae. This makes it difficult to translate the sentences in the previous note. Aquinas uses a verb in the passive voice, proportionatur, which is derived from the noun proportio. Taking the verb literally, we would have to say that the object ‘is proportionated’ to the power. What is at issue is the fact that the object of the power and the power are not in and of themselves proportionate, otherwise human, angelic and divine intellects would all be equally powerful. Rather, Aquinas is arguing that in the operation of the power, the object is grasped in a way that is in proportion to the power grasping it, the object ‘is proportionated’ to the power. In this way, one and the same object can be proportionated to a human intellect and the divine intellect, even though these two powers are not in proportion to one another. ST I, 76, 1c; ST I, 85, 1c. In Metaph., L. XII, l. 12, n. 2629: Et, quia omnia, quorum unum est finis, oportet quod in ordine ad finem conveniant, necesse est, quod in partibus universi ordo aliquis inveniatur. For a discussion of the issue of order in general, and the use of these metaphors in particular, see Oliva Blanchette, The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas: A Teleological Cosmology (University Park: Penn State Press, 1992). It seems that, on its face, the order of plants to animals and the order of animals to humans has to do with consumption. Animals eat plants and humans eat animals. Aquinas does not himself seem to realize the violence implicit in these orders of orders; that is, the violence that humans engage in with regard to animals. One might simply follow this metaphor (and even the metaphor of the army) to show that order itself is already violent. This point is stressed repeatedly by Blanchette, op. cit. Notice that the women of the household, as women, are absent from this order. One would expect that they too would be ordered, especially in terms of their reproductive function. This, too, would be a site in which the very violence of this metaphor could be investigated. Ibid., n. 2634. Ibid., Et ipsa natura uniuscuiusque est quaedam inclinatio indita ei a primo movente, ordinans ipsam in debitum finem. Et ex hoc patet, quod res naturales agunt propter finem, licet finem non cognoscant, quia a primo intelligente assequuntur inclinationem in finem. ST I, 47, 3c.

126 Notes

40. SCG, I, c. 1, n. 2: sapientis est ordinare. 41. Ibid., n. 4.

4 Albertus Magnus and Nicole Oresme on Force and Nature 1. This is not quite the same issue as the issue that separates empiricism from rationalism. Even the most radical empiricist holds that all knowledge begins with sense perception because the mode of being of things is to be perceptible. There are no other entities other than perceptible ones. 2. William Courtenay, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,’ in The Pursuit of Holiness in the Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, edited by Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkhaus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 26–59; William Courtenay, ‘The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,’ in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in the Middle Ages, edited by T. Rudavsky (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1985), 243–70; William Courtenay, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power (Bergamo: P. Lubrina, 1990); Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (London: P. Luttworth, 1967). 3. Pierre d’Ailly, in his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, holds that God is not even bound by the principle of non-contradiction. On this issue, see Leonard A. Kennedy, Peter of Ailly and the Harvest of Fourteenth Century Philosophy (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). 4. As shown in the last chapter, as well as the introduction, this tension forms the main topic of Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, translated by John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1998); Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997). 5. Oresme also has an earlier, Latin, commentary on De Caelo, Claudia Kren, ‘Questiones Super de Caelo of Nicole Oresme’ (PhD diss., History of Science, University of Wisconsin, 1965). On the issue of natural motion and violent motion, the two texts do not differ in significant detail. This text will be referred to as Quest. De Caelo, followed by page number. 6. Helen Lang, The Order of Nature in Aristotle’s Physics: Place and the Elements (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 7. Ibid., esp. 219–62. 8. De Caelo, I.1.3, 7: Nunc autem de partibus mundi simplicibus, quae differunt formis substantialibus ab invicem et differunt accidentibus propriis, quae consequuntur substantiales formas earum ad hoc quod nos inveniamus corpus caeleste per motum, qui est ei naturalis secundum convenientiam suae formae naturalis.

Notes 127

9. Ibid., 8: His autem habitis cum causa motus diversi sit causa mobilis, quod movetur, diversi, ita quod unius secundum formam mobilis motus est unus secundum formam … 10. Ibid.: Ergo manifestum est, quod erunt tres motus locales simplices, ad medium videlicet et a medio et circa medium, et significant isti tres motus tria mobilia in forma differentia … 11. De Caelo, I.1.4, 12: Tunc enim dicimus motum naturalem, ad quem movet aliqua natura eius quod movetur, et motum accidentalem, ad quem movet non natura aliqua eius quod movetur, sed ad quem movet extraneus motor, cuius motus non natura est in eo quod movetur; talis autem est violentus. 12. The previous chapter showed the conclusions that Thomas Aquinas draws from this position. 13. Albert equates violence with force (vis) at De Caelo, 3.1.7, 217, and says that some call this ‘power’ (virtus) or ‘potency’ ( potentia). 14. De Caelo, I.1.4, 12, Tunc dico, quod verum quidem est, quod possible est quaedam copora simplicia moveri accidentali motu; sed ille motus, qui est uni simplicium accidentalis, erit alteri corpori simplici naturalis, et non potest esse, quod illud corpus simplex cui est naturalis, habeat cum ipso etiam alium motum naturalem, quia iam ostendimus, quod unius simplicis non est nisi unicus simplex motus naturalis. 15. This position is found in Aristotle’s de Anima, Bk 3, ch. 8: ‘ … it is not the stone which is in the soul but the form of the stone … so the intellect is a form of forms … ’ Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, translated by Hippocrates Apostle (Grinell, IA: Peripatetic Press, 1981). 16. Nicolas [Nicole] Oresme, Le Livre Du Ciel et Du Monde, edited by Albert D. Menut and Alexander J. Denomy, translated by Albert D. Menut (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 59. This text will be cited by page number only. 17. On this, see Lang, op. cit. 18. Oresme, 71, Oresme refers to this thought experiment several times in order to refute various arguments of Aristotle. It is not difficult to see that the construction of such a thought experiment is intimately connected with the similar ones constructed on the basis of God’s absolute power. Indeed, the issue of this power allowed later medieval thinkers (here Ockham and Pierre d’Ailly are particularly good examples) to construct thought experiments that allowed them to break through the contingent arrangement of the natural order so as to make manifest certain principles that are otherwise not obvious. I will turn explicitly to the absolute power of God in the next chapter. 19. See Oresme, 77, where he argues that the sphere of fire is moved circularly because it is dragged along by the movement and influence of the heavens. 20. Oresme uses violentement to translate motion by force. The terms vertus and puissance are used to translate Aristotle’s dynamis. We will see that the notion of power (vertus/puissance) is central to Oresme’s treatment of natural motion.

128 Notes

21. Oresme often speaks of a ‘motive force’, which is, for him, the same as impetus. In this way, his position on natural motion relates such motion to impetus rather than to substantial form. 22. In a way, Nicole seems to rethink many cases of violent motion in terms of what scholastics normally called vis motiva or motive power. That is, he is coming to have a uniform theory of motion, and therefore of force. For him, as for many scholastics, the circular movement of the sphere of fire presents a special problem. The natural motion of fire is up, not circular, and yet the sphere moves eternally (or perpetually) in a circle. According to Aristotle, no violent motion is perpetual. So, the circular motion of the sphere of fire seems neither violent nor natural – thus it was called ‘outside of nature’ ( praeter naturam). Albert of Saxony, in his Quaestiones subtilissime in libros de caelo et mundo, Q. 1, art. 1, is an example. Oresme himself speaks in a similar way in Quest. De Caelo 60. However, this third kind of motion would make impossible the argument that the heavenly body moves in a circle – an argument that hinges on the dilemma that all motion must be either natural or violent. On this issue, see also Oresme, Questiones Super Librum de Spera, Diss, edited by G. Droppers (1966), 184–6. and Quest. De Caelo, 445–61. Oresme consistently offers a solution to this problem that allows him to treat such motion as natural on the basis of its harmony. For the Oresme of the French commentary, all motion ‘outside of nature’ seems to come to be equated with natural motion because of God’s eternal, natural ordinance. 23. See Edward Grant, Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 86–98; Anneliese Maier, On the Threshold of Exact Science: Selected Writings of Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy, edited and translated by Steven Sargent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 41–60. 24. Thomas Aquinas, too, speaks of virtus essendi in relation to the ability of a thing to endure in its being, a concept he extends from discussions of cosmology to metaphysical discussions.

5 Knowledge and Power in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly 1. There has not been much attention paid to d’Ailly among contemporary scholars. While this is less true of his political philosophy and his historical role in the Great Schism, it is certainly true of his other philosophical contributions. For a fairly recent bibliography, see Olaf Pluta, Die Philosophische Psychologie Des Peter von Ailly (Amsterdam: Verlag B.R. Grüner, 1987), 149–60. Pluta’s study is an excellent introduction to the thought of d’Ailly. 2. It is not my intention to provide a detailed and exhaustive account of d’Ailly’s theory of knowledge, but only to show the ways in which God’s power is central to that theory. For a more detailed account of d’Ailly’s theory of knowledge, see Pluta, op. cit. For the role and function of

Notes 129

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

evidence in late medieval thought, see P. Vier, Evidence and Its Function According to John Duns Scotus (St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1951); T.K. Scott, ‘Ockham on Evidence, Necessity and Intuition’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971): 15–41; and John F. Boler, ‘Ockham on Evident Cognition’, Franciscan Studies 36 (1976): 85–98. Quaestiones super primum, tertium, et quartum Sententiarum, question 1, article 1, folio 36 recto, column A. This work will be cited as I Sent., followed by question, article, folio and column (I Sent., q. 1, art. 1, 36ra). Throughout, I have used the early sixteenth-century edition of J. Petit, Paris. I have found no significant differences from the Straßbourg edition of 1490. Until a critical edition of the text is available, one must, of course, exercise a good deal of caution with regard to any particular printed edition or manuscript witness. For a listing of the works of d’Ailly, see Marguerite Chappuis, Ludger Kaczmarek and Olaf Pluta, ‘Die Philosophischen Schriften Des Peter von Ailly. Authentizität und Chronologie’, Freiburger Zeitschrift Für Philosophie und Theologie 33 (1986): 593–615. D’Ailly lists them at ibid., 31va. This would not be true of, for example, logical truths or truths relating to the soul’s acts; that is, self-reflexive truths. In the case of such truths, it is obvious that no sensation is required. For medieval thinkers influenced by Aristotle, sensation itself is both bodily – it requires sense organs, nerves and so on – and cognitive. See Katherine Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics 1250–1345 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988); and Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge (Leiden: Brill, 1995). On the notion of ‘object’ in this context, see Lawrence Dewan, ‘ “Obiectum” ’: Notes on the Invention of a Word’, Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire Du Moyen Age 48 (1981): 37–96. A clear and influential example of such an analysis, as seen in Chapter 2, is Roger Bacon, Tractatus de Multiplicatione Specierum, vol. II of Opus Majus, edited by John Henry Bridges (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964). This argument is raised by d’Ailly (41ra) in an objection to his own argument about the fallibility of the senses. All animals have souls that are capable of sensation, even as a kind of rudimentary cognitive capacity. The human rational soul, however, is capable of more complex cognitive capacities in relation to sensation. For more on this issue, see d’Ailly’s discussion of whether animals have complex sensual knowledge, Pierre d’Ailly, ‘Tractatus De Anima’, in Die Philosophische Psychologie Des Peter von Ailly, edited by Olaf Pluta, Bochumer Studien Zur Philosophie, 6 (Amsterdam: Verlag B.R. Grüner, 1987), 66. This work will be cited as de Anim., followed by page number. Again it should be clear that Roger Bacon, op. cit., is an earlier Latin example of this theory. Both Tachau, op. cit., and Spruit, op. cit., provide the historical background of the notion of sensible and intelligible species.

130 Notes

12. Bacon, op. cit., 414 and 415. 13. These terms are not new to d’Ailly. His interpretation of these two kinds of knowledge, however, is closer to Duns Scotus than to Ockham. This is not surprising, since Ockham rejects species (in the medium, in the sense organs, in the imagination, and in the intellect), and therefore must also reject Scotus’ definition of abstractive knowledge as being knowledge through some representing species. Since d’Ailly maintains species, he can use the soul’s relation to those species in order to define these two types of knowledge. Intuitive knowledge, then, will be knowledge through the species, but the species itself is not known. Abstractive knowledge, on the other hand, will be knowledge of the thing by means of knowing its species. 14. D’Ailly shows that something is possible according to the first way of understanding God’s ordered power but not according to the second (for example, Socrates is saved if he is reprobate). Also, something can be possible according to the first way but not according to the second way, but never the converse. These differences between these two ways of understanding God’s ordered power are not relevant to the present discussion. 15. This is obvious from d’Ailly’s chart of the powers of the soul (de Anim., 3) and in his introduction to the discussion of the volitional powers of the intellective soul (de Anim., 39). 16. The following works suffice to indicate the nature and extent of the scholarly debate. William Courtenay, ‘Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion’, in The Pursuit of Holiness in the Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, edited by Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkhaus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 26–59; William Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought: Studies in Philosophy, Theology and Economic Practice (London: Varorium Reprints, 1984); William Courtenay, Capacity and Volition: A History of the Distinction of Absolute and Ordained Power (Bergamo: P. Lubrina, 1990); Jan P. Beckmann, ‘Allmacht, Freiheit und Vernunft. Zur Frage Nach “Rationalen Konstanten” Im Denken Des Späten Mittelalters’, in Philosophie Im Mittelalter: Entwicklungslinien und Paradigmen, edited by J.P. Beckmann et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1987), 275–93; Jan Beckmann, ‘Weltkontingenz und Menschliche Vernunft bei Wilhelm Ockham’, in L’homme et Son Univers Au Moyen Age, edited by Christian Wenin (Louvain: Editions de L’Institut Supérieur de philosophie, 1986); Francis Oakley, ‘Pierre d’Ailly and the Absolute Power of God: Another Note on the Theology of Nominalism’, Harvard Theological Review (1963): 59–73; Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant and Order. An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Eugenio Randi, ‘A Scotist Way of Distinguishing Between God’s Absolute and Ordained Power’, in From Ockham to Wyclif, edited by Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 43–50; M.A. Pernoud, ‘Innovation in William of Ockham’s References to the Potentia Dei,’ Antonianum 45 (1970): 65–97; M.A. Pernoud, ‘The Theory of the Potentia Dei According to Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham’, Antonianum 47 (1972): 69–95; Etienne Gilson, ‘The Road to Scepticism’,

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in The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 61–91. and Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 2nd edn (Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1988), or Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, translated by Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983). It will be obvious in what follows that my discussion of the distinction has been particularly influenced by Courtenay and Oberman. 17. I have in mind here thinkers as diverse in their approaches as Gilson, ibid., and Blumenberg, ibid. 18. Furthermore, d’Ailly argues that any just human law is a just divine law, or there can be no law that is just that is not consonant with divine law.

6

Hobbes’ Logic of Force

1. William of Ockham, Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum Ordinatio, edited by Girard Etzkorn and Francis E. Kelley, Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica, vol. OT IV (St Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute, 1979), 655. 2. See Chapter 5. 3. On this issue, see Richard A. Lee, ‘Being Skeptical About Skepticism: Methodological Themes Concerning Ockham’s Alleged Skepticism’, Vivarium 39, no. 1 (2001): 1–19; and Richard A. Lee, Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology, New Middle Ages, edited by Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 4. This is argued in greater detail in my Science, the Singular, and the Question of Theology, op. cit. 5. Richard Tuck, ‘Hobbes and Descartes’, in Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, edited by G.A.J. Rogers and Alan Ryan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 11–41. Tuck argues that the central position of modern philosophy, particularly that of the circle around Mersenne, is that ‘we have immediate and veridical knowledge of our sense-impressions and only our senseimpression – there can be no comparable knowledge of the external world’, 30. 6. Michael Esfeld, Mechanismus und Subjektivität in der Philosophie von Thomas Hobbes (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1995), 75, makes a similar point in regard to Hobbes’s voluntarism. He goes further to link Hobbes’s voluntarism with his ability to provide a complete mechanistic theory of the cosmos. 7. On the relation of Hobbes’s nominalism to his mechanism, see Jean Bernhardt, ‘Nominalisme et Mécanisme dans la Pensée de Hobbes’, Archives de Philosophie 48 (1985): 235–49; as well as Yves-Charles Zarka, ‘Empirisme, Nominalisme et Matérialisme Chez Hobbes’, Archives de Philosophie 48 (1985): 177–233. 8. To my knowledge, Yves-Charles Zarka is alone in his insistence that Hobbes is a follower of late medieval nominalism in his theology of God’s power. See Yves-Charles Zarka, ‘First Philosophy and the Foundations of

132 Notes

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

Knowledge’, in Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, edited by Tom Sorell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 62–85; and Yves-Charles Zarka, Décision Métaphysique de Hobbes: Conditions de la Politique (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 44–54. Thomas Hobbes, Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, edited by William Molesworth, English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, vol. 5 (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1966). Hereinafter, this text will be referred to as Questions followed by page number. See, for example, Questions 389, as well as Thomas Hobbes, De Corpore: Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima, edited by Karl Schuhmann (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1999), 100. Hereinafter, this text will be referred to as De Corp. followed by chapter and article number. On this point, see Zarka, ‘First Philosophy and the Foundations of Knowledge’, 71. Thomas Hobbes, Critique Du De Mundo de Thomas White, edited by Jean Jacquot and Harold Whitmore Jones (Paris: Vrin-CNRS, 1973), 201–2. Hereinafter, this work will be cited as Anti-White followed by chapter and article. Martin A. Bertman, ‘Conatus in Hobbes’ De Corpore’, Hobbes Studies 14 (2001): 28. A similar point is made in Tuck, ‘Hobbes and Descartes:’ There is a way in which Hobbes’ description of method is contrary to this movement in that it is a philosophy of something other than phenomena. However, it is not clear that on a strict reading of the definition of philosophy the discussion of method qualifies since it does not trace method as a phenomenon to its possible cause or causes. What is more, perhaps one should take quite seriously Hobbes’ concept of first philosophy in that before it (where the discussion of method takes place) there is no philosophy properly speaking. Esfeld, Mechanismus und Subjektivität in der Philosophie von Thomas Hobbes, 21. As Hobbes himself indicates, this duality of method corresponds to the two kinds of demonstrative syllogism that Aristotle discusses in Posterior Analytics, namely that between cognition tou dioti and cognition tou hoti. This distinction makes its way into early modern discourse primarily through the influence of Zabarella’s Commentary on Posterior Analytics and his De Methodo; Jacob Zabarella, De Methodis, in Jacobi Zabarellae Patavini Opera Logica (1608), 133–334. It should be noted, however, that the methods of resolution or analysis and composition, which also come from Zabarella, are traced by him not to Aristotle, but to Galen. For Zabarella, one important issue concerning method is the kind of discovery that must take place prior to the organization of that knowledge in a rational demonstration. On this issue, J.H. Randall, School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1961) is still quite helpful. See also J.W.N. Watkins, Hobbes’s System of Ideas (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1965), 52–5. Indeed for Hobbes, ‘essence’ is nothing other than an accident or property of a body by which it comes to be called. Hobbes’ ‘firstly philosophy’

Notes 133

consistently refuses to posit something other than materially extended bodies, and thus it works always to show how the basic concepts of traditional metaphysics belong to those bodies. 17. This is evident in the definition of sensation itself: ‘Sensation is a phantasm made through reaction by the conatus directed outward of the organ of the sensor, which is generated by the conatus toward the inside by the object, and that remaining for some time’ (De Corp., 25.2). 18. De Corp., 6.5. 19. Zarka, Décision Métaphysique de Hobbes: Conditions de la Politique, 46ff, as well as Zarka, ‘First Philosophy and the Foundations of Knowledge’, 77ff.

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Index Adorno, Theodor, 2, 6–7, 46, 53–4, 116n, 118n, l22–3n, 126n; and redemption, 52 Aeschylus, 16–17, 20 aitia, 21–2 aptitudo, 57 Aquinas, Thomas, 50, 53–4, 57–9, 64–72, 122–5n, 128n; and causation, 55–6, 60–4; and instrument, 66 arbitrio, 110 Aristotle, 1–2, 28–35, 50–1, 68, 88, 90, 74–5 79–80, 82, 120n, 123n, 129n; and actuality, 60; and force and ray, 47; and motion, 31–3, 55–6; and nature, 54–5; and substance, 29–30 Averroes, 120n

d’Ailly, Pierre, 85–90, 93–9, 128–31n Descartes, Rene, 101, 103–4, 107, 115n dynamis, 24–5, 29, 33 endeavour, 108 energia, 29–30, 33 Eros, 10, 12, 54 Esfeld, Michael, 105 essence, 38, 44, 74; esse, 61; as perception, 3 eternal, eternity, 31, 119–20n, of matter, 28–9 Euclid, 48

Bacon, Roger, 35–7, 47–52, 90, 121–2n; and metaphysics, 41–6; species and phenomenality, 40 Bertman, Martin A., 105, 132n bia, 20, 32, 74 Blumenberg, Hans, 26 Bramhall, 102 cause, causality, 9, 22–4, 60–2, 64, 91, 98, 104; and Bacon 38–40; as generation, 57; and Hobbes, 109, 112; natural and violent, 54–6, 65 conatus, 106, 108, 133n cosmos, 9–10, 20, 29–30, 54, 75, 99; and Aristotle, 55; origin of, 10–11, 19–20, 85, 119n; unity of, 33 Courtenay, William, 73 creare, 63

facere, 63 force, 2–5, 13–16, 19–21, 28, 32–5, 44, 48–59, 84, 114; and Aquinas, 71, 78; and Bacon, 38–42; effects of, 52, 65; excess of, 81; in Greek mythology, 7; Kraft, 4; and natural motion, 33, 74; and nature, 10, 51, 54–5; nous, 26; and order, 32, 92–6; and origin, 32, 59, 82; as ray in Aristotle, 47; and resistance, 14, 17, 42, 49–50, 81, 83, 106–8; and violence, 54–6, 59, 65; virtus, 38, 40; see also power form 1, 78, 82; and generation in Aquinas and Aristotle, 53–8, 63; and matter, 30; and motion, 74–6 Foucault, Michel, 116n Gabriol, Ibn, 44, 120n Grosseteste, Robertus, 44–6 Hegel, G.W.F., 1, 2–5, 116n Heidegger, Martin, 115–16n, 123n Hesiod, 2, 10–20, 28

147

148

Index

Hobbes, Thomas, 2, 9, 99, 101–14, 131–3n; see also naming, nominalism Holcot, Robert, 99 Horkheimer, Max, 2, 7, 116n, 126n impetus, 108 Kant, Immanuel, 2, 5, 10, 26, 115n Lang, Helen, 74 Magnus, Albertus, 73, 75–7; 79–83, 120n, 126n mana, 53–5, 58–9, 70 matter, 29, 43, 114; and form, 30; and generation in Aristotle and Aquinas, 53–60, as potentiality, 30, 56, 65; as prime, 58, 63; virtus of, 59 Mersenne, Marin, 100 motion, 73–7, 80–3, 106–8, 112, 128n; see also violence naming, nominalism, 50, 74, 99–100; and Hobbes, 102–5, 110–12, 131n nous, 22–6, 46; see also force Oberman, Heiko, 73 obiectum, 89, 115n Ockham, William of, 85–6, 90, 99, 100, 110, 115n, 130n operatio, 63 order, 13, 17; in Aristotle and Aquinas, 54–5; first and final cause in, 67, 69, 70, 92, 96–7; see also principles Oresme, Nicole, 73–5, 77–9, 82–4, 113, 126n, 127–8n perception, 3, 91; and Bacon, 38–41 phenomenality, phenomena, 4, 7, 23, 38–42, 74; and Bacon, 52, 83–5, 97–8; and Hobbes, 104, 106–9, 112, 113–14 Plato, 1–2, 26–7, 35–6, 118–19n Plotinus, 41–6

polemos, 14, 18–19, 27, 31, 54 polis, 13, 17 potencia, 59–61, 65; potentia dei, 61 potestas, 59–60 power, 62–5; divine, 10, 13–14, 63–5, 73–4, 92–6, 98, 99; and force, 26, 27, 80–1; and knowledge, 85–6, 92, 94–5, 104–5, 109, 114; mana, 53–5, 58; mythic, 22; and order, 92, 96–7; potentia and potestas, 60; virtus, 59; see also virtus principles, 14–17, 29–31, 59, 69, 73, 93, 95, 99; and Aquinas, 56–7, 66–8; and Aristotle, 54 Prometheus, 17–19, 26–7 ratiocinatio, raticocination, 104, 106–9 Scotus, John Duns, 86, 101, 130n sensation, 87–91, 107–8, 133n Socrates, 19–26, 28, 35 Spinoza, Baruch, 101, 109 syndeo, 24 technai, 19 teleology, telos, 10, 20 Tuck, Richard, 131n universals, 3, 73, 112 Vernant, Jean-Pierre, 17, 117n violence, 50–l, 54–7, 59, 65–6, 69–70, 80–3; and creation, 59, 65; divine, 71; as excess, 66–8, 80; in Greek mythology, 15–16; logic of, 59; and motion 77–9; violentia, 49 virtus, 38–40, 59–61, 63–4; see also force; power vis, 108 White, Thomas, 103 Zabarella, Jacob, 132n Zarka, Yves-Charles, 113, 131n