These are from http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.1.i.html
If you aren't going to read this whole post, then read at least the last
quote, where Aristotle mentions an early statement of Pirsig's principle
that "substance is a sub-species of value"
"Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about Wisdom and the
wise. Now of these characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to
him who has in the highest degree universal knowledge; for he knows in a
sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the
most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are
farthest from the senses. And the most exact of the sciences are those which
deal most with first principles; for those which involve fewer principles
are more exact than those which involve additional principles, e.g.
arithmetic than geometry. But the science which investigates causes is also
instructive, in a higher degree, for the people who instruct us are those
who tell the causes of each thing. And understanding and knowledge pursued
for their own sake are found most in the knowledge of that which is most
knowable (for he who chooses to know for the sake of knowing will choose
most readily that which is most truly knowledge, and such is the knowledge
of that which is most knowable); and the first principles and the causes are
most knowable; for by reason of these, and from these, all other things come
to be known, and not these by means of the things subordinate to them. And
the science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most
authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary
science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme
good in the whole of nature. Judged by all the tests we have mentioned,
then, the name in question falls to the same science; this must be a science
that investigates the first principles and causes; for the good, i.e. the
end, is one of the causes.
"That it is not a science of production is clear even from the history of
the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder that men both now
begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the
obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties
about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of
the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man
who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of
myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders);
therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently
they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian
end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the
necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had
been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do
not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we
say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as
the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake.
"Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say
we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and
causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance,
i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and
the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or
substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause
opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all
generation and change).
"From these facts one might think that the only cause is the so-called
material cause; but as men thus advanced, the very facts opened the way for
them and joined in forcing them to investigate the subject. However true it
may be that all generation and destruction proceed from some one or (for
that matter) from more elements, why does this happen and what is the cause?
For at least the substratum itself does not make itself change; e.g. neither
the wood nor the bronze causes the change of either of them, nor does the
wood manufacture a bed and the bronze a statue, but something else is the
cause of the change. And to seek this is to seek the second cause, as we
should say,-that from which comes the beginning of the movement.
"When these men and the principles of this kind had had their day, as the
latter were found inadequate to generate the nature of things men were again
forced by the truth itself, as we said, to inquire into the next kind of
cause. For it is not likely either that fire or earth or any such element
should be the reason why things manifest goodness and, beauty both in their
being and in their coming to be, or that those thinkers should have supposed
it was; nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter to
spontaneity and chance. When one man said, then, that reason was present-as
in animals, so throughout nature-as the cause of order and of all
arrangement, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of
his predecessors. We know that Anaxagoras certainly adopted these views, but
Hermotimus of Clazomenae is credited with expressing them earlier. Those who
thought thus stated that there is a principle of things which is at the same
time the cause of beauty, and that sort of cause from which things acquire
movement.
. Therefore, if we said that Empedocles in a sense both mentions, and is the
first to mention, the bad and the good as principles, we should perhaps be
right, since the cause of all goods is the good itself.
"These thinkers grasped this cause only; but certain others have mentioned
the source of movement, e.g. those who make friendship and strife, or
reason, or love, a principle.
"The essence, i.e. the substantial reality, no one has expressed distinctly.
It is hinted at chiefly by those who believe in the Forms; for they do not
suppose either that the Forms are the matter of sensible things, and the One
the matter of the Forms, or that they are the source of movement (for they
say these are causes rather of immobility and of being at rest), but they
furnish the Forms as the essence of every other thing, and the One as the
essence of the Forms.
"That for whose sake actions and changes and movements take place, they
assert to be a cause in a way, but not in this way, i.e. not in the way in
which it is its nature to be a cause. For those who speak of reason or
friendship class these causes as goods; they do not speak, however, as if
anything that exists either existed or came into being for the sake of
these, but as if movements started from these. In the same way those who say
the One or the existent is the good, say that it is the cause of substance,
but not that substance either is or comes to be for the sake of this.
Therefore it turns out that in a sense they both say and do not say the good
is a cause; for they do not call it a cause qua good but only incidentally.
Aristotle's 'Rhetoric' is also highly recommended
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:03:14 BST