2. Aristotle. At times Plato substitutes the word
eidos for “idea.” Both words are synonymous in his
writings and both are derived from the Greek word
meaning “to see.” But what is seen is a shape or form,
and Plato's pupil, Aristotle, preferred the term eidos,
probably because he could not accept his master's
theory of ideas. Eidos (εἰ̂δος) was translated into Latin
either as
species or
forma and in English it is usually
called “form.” In order to fill the gap between the
world of ideas and that of things, Aristotle assumed
that the forms were always incorporated in things. That
is, there is no such thing as justice in the abstract; there
are only just people or just acts and we derive our
ideas of justice from the people and acts in which it
is embodied. Thus an idea, though a common property,
might be a form in the sense of the pattern that proc-
esses exemplify; or it might be the shape of finished
works of art.
And, indeed, in reading Aristotle one has the im-
pression that his basic metaphors had a twofold origin,
one in biology and one in the visual arts. A seed or
an egg as it develops always moves to a determined
end, the plant or the chicken, unless it is killed on the
way. This constantly repeated pattern of development,
beginning and ending in the same way, combined
Plato's notion of the idea as the invariable character
of classes of things with the temporal dimension of
growth or of process. The idea or form was “realized”
or actualized in the end-product; but it must have been
somehow present in the origin, the seed or egg, in order
for its realization to be fulfilled. Aristotle named this
kind of presence “potentiality.” The form then was
potentially present in the egg and actually present in
the chicken.
This much was largely explanation by terminology.
But the terminology was made concrete by the example
of artistry. When a sculptor sets out to carve a statue
or a painter to paint a portrait, they have in their minds
an idea of what the finished work of art will look like.
It should be noted in passing that this would not apply
to the so-called romantic artist who does not know how
his work is to terminate until it is finished. We must
assume that the Greek artist was a planner. If Aris-
totle's notion of artistry is correct, the finished statue
exists as an idea in the sculptor's mind before he sets
to work, as a potential form in the marble, and as a
realized form in the finished statue. Just as Nature, so
to speak, guides the egg in its development towards
the chicken, so the sculptor guides the marble towards
the statue.
The form has now taken on the additional character
of being an end or purpose, the “final cause” of a
process. But it may be the purpose of a human being
or a natural purpose—i.e., the end term of a natural
process. It was an easy matter to confuse the two and
think of them as identical, to speak of Nature's pur-
poses or ends when referring to the constancy of physi-
cal law. Or reciprocally to urge men not to modify
their purposes once formed, to be consistent, never to
waver. In fact even by Sir Isaac Newton natural law
was thought of as the decrees of a divine lawgiver,
though Newton was not a believer in final causes.
Aristotle's theory of forms would not have had such
extraordinary influence, if he had not carefully distin-
guished between those processes which are natural and
those which are unnatural. It could not be denied that
sometimes things went awry, that eggs were eaten
before they turned into chickens. A distinction there-
fore was imperative between those ends which were
realized on the whole and those which were only
occasionally realized. The latter were accidental,
brought about by chance; and the former were essen-
tial, brought about by nature. It was clear that things
had a number of properties which were of no scientific
interest. When a physicist is talking of the mass of the
earth, he is not interested in how many continents there
are, who inhabits them, what languages the inhabitants
speak. Mass can be measured without regard to such
things. All science feeds on abstractions and the making
of an abstraction demands the discarding of a number
of differences. If one is discussing humanity as a whole,
one need not bring in skin color, intelligence quotients,
arts and crafts, and kinship tables.
These matters may be of great importance historic-
ally; but they do not distinguish human beings from
the nonhuman, and furthermore they vary from group
to group and in some details from individual to indi-
vidual. They are what Aristotle would have called
accidental traits as contrasted with essential ones. Nat-
ural processes are always the realization of the essential
traits. The realization of accidental traits is no concern
of science.
The identification of the idea or ideal with the form
or essence had certain practical consequences. It meant
that when one was discussing ethics, politics, or art
one had first to discover the essences of the activities
involved and then set up ways of realizing them. In
ethics one had to define the essence of humanity, which
was rational animality, and then investigate what had
to be done to perfect it. The end of human life is
happiness, but all men do not reach that end. Why
not? The end of politics is to make the ethical end
possible. But tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule stand
in the way. What would have been the end of art was
not stated by Aristotle, for his Poetics is only a frag-
ment, and what it has to say is far from clear. But
in his consideration of tragedy he first tells us what
the essence of tragedy is and then suggests the pre-
requisites for realizing it. This would be standard
Aristotelian procedure. It is easy to see that for it to
work required an intellectualistic psychology. It was
assumed by him, as by Plato, that at least some men
could act in accordance with intellectual motives. This
assumption ran through the writings on normative
sciences up to very recent times when, due to Marx
and Freud probably, action was thought of in terms
of stimuli that were not intellectual.
How did one know what the essences were? In
natural processes they could be determined by that
which occurred always or on the whole. But in human
activities, they were largely determined by tradition.
Aristotle thought, for instance, that his definition of
“tragedy” was based on the actual tragedies written
before his time, which he apparently thought of as
eternal patterns. And though his definition does not
fit all of them, it does well enough for an understanding
of Greek tragedy. But even if he had discovered the
essence of the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
and their fellows, that did not imply that later drama-
tists were obligated to imitate their Greek predecessors.
Yet aesthetic theorists and literary critics insisted that
the idea of tragedy as expounded by Aristotle was not
only a generalized description of certain Greek dramas,
but also a rule to be followed by all dramatists for
all time. The idea now became a genetic trait, a form,
an ideal, and a rule.
