Aristotle: The Philosopher

Von Hildebrand, Alice.

Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Volume 8, Number
3, Summer 2005, pp. 112-122 (Article)
Published by Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
DOI: 10.1353/log.2005.0025
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Ali ce von Hi ldebrand
Aristotle: The Philosopher
One of the great contributions Aristotle has made to philoso-
phy is his distinction between means and ends. This insight gives us
a key to many metaphysical problems. There are things the existence
of which can be justied only by their capacity to achieve an end.
This is primarily true of all tools and instruments: they are invent-
ed because they happen to be useful (or even indispensable) for the
realization of a given end. A comb exists in order to groom ones
hair. A pen is an instrument for writing. All machines are means. It
is obvious that the end has a metaphysical superiority over the
means, for the means have only a serving function. Yet, in a para-
doxical fashion, the capacity of the means to serve the end is crucial
for the realization of this end. For the end is dependent upon the ef-
cacy of the means, but this dependence differs radically from the
dependence of the means upon the end. For the end is sought for its own
sake; the means are sought for the sake of their capacity to realize the
end. Therefore, even though it comes inevitably at the end of a
process, the nal cause fully deserves to be called cause; hence its
name nal.
l o g o s 8 : 3 s u m m e r 2 0 0 5
The biological sphereto which Aristotle paid much atten-
tionis dominated by the law of finality. Its metaphysical impor-
tance can hardly be overestimated, and this explains in part the
poverty of Spinozas philosophy, which systematically eliminated
final causes. David Hume followed suit in waging war on efficient
causality, whichto his myopic mindhad no fundamentum in re,
but was the result of a psychological association between two
things that we are used to seeing succeed one another in time.
These two thinkers are responsible for many modern errors that
their arbitrary rejection of two crucial causes has brought in its
trail.
But to go back to Aristotleonly a fool can deny his genius. He
is certainly one of the great philosophical minds of all time. But no
man, even if he deserves to be called a genius, can answer all ques-
tions. Furthermore, no manbecause of the imperfection of the
human mindcan avoid aws, ambiguities, and even in some cases,
downright errors in his philosophical system. Christ alone is the
Truth. Unus est magister vester: Christus. For this reason it is somewhat
bafing that St. Thomas Aquinas calls Aristotle the Philosopher. He is
so convinced of the superiority of Aristotle over all other thinkers
that he does not deem it necessary to refer to him by name. But the
history of philosophy teaches one that great as a thinker can be, his
thought can never give us a master key opening all doors. What he
discovered is a precious insight that we should respect. But he leaves
many questions unanswered; his formulations, moreover, can be
ambiguous, and this in turn can easily lead to misinterpretations
and even downright errors.
To interpret Aristotle is not easy. This sheds light upon the fact
that his main commentators disagree as to how he should be read.
Avicenna, Averroes, and St. Thomas came to different conclusions.
Today, great Thomists often disagree with one another. Let us recall
Jonathan Swifts witty remark in Gullivers Travels (part 3). He tells us
that when Gulliver visited the country of the mathematicians who,
aristotle: the philosopher
..
at his request, had called Aristotle (whom Dante called il Maestro di
color che sanno [the Master of those who know])
1
back to life, the
great master was followed by a large crowd. Gulliver inquired who
these people might be: he was told they were his commentators.
But then, Swifts biting irony added that to Gullivers surprise, he
knew none of them.
Apart from the difculty of truly understanding what an author
meant, the point I am trying to make is that a great discovery can eas-
ily degenerate into a false interpretation of the riches of the cosmos
if it is either very narrowly interpreted or indiscriminately applied.
One case in point is Aristotles erroneous belief that exemplary
causality (so crucial in Platonic metaphysics) can, in fact, be reduced
to nality. Plato viewed the world we live in as a pale imitation of the
true world, the world of unchangeableness, a world of perfection, a
world of beauty. The cosmos, whichin some modest way
reects God, is so rich that no one key can open all doors. To deny
this exemplaristic dimension because of a fascination with nality is
philosophically unwarranted, because clearly the first cannot be
reduced to the second. The copy resembles the original. The means
need not have any similarity with the end.
Apart from nality, Aristotle mentions material causality, formal
causality, and efcient causalityand once again, we are indebted to
him for this insight. But there are other metaphysical laws that are
also crucial, and that he largely overlooked or paid scant attention to,
such as hierarchy (higher and lower, more perfect and less perfect),
the exemplarism just referred to, and one my husband, Dietrich
von Hildebrand, dubbed superabundanceto which I will turn my
attention later. None of them can be reduced to strict nality.
The disciples of a great master often have the tendency to codi-
fy his thought in a fashion that does not necessarily do justice to the
initial intuition of the author. Be it said in passing that this phenom-
enon keeps repeating itself in the history of philosophy. Hegels dis-
ciples thought history was a master key to an understanding of
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human thought. This leads to the unfortunate distinction (so fash-
ionable today) between historical truth and nonhistorical truths
a distinction that has created much confusion in theology. Then
came sociology advocated by Auguste Comte, and it became the
cry of the day, claiming to hold the key to both theology and philos-
ophy. Freud was convinced sex was the golden key to human exis-
tence, and psychiatry gives us the ultimate explanation of who we
are. Psychology followed suit and became a welcome substitute for
religion.
2
That these so-called sciences do give us some valid infor-
mation does not justify the naive belief that they alone can shed light
on the whole of human existence.
When presenting his views, Aristotle usually takes a prudent
stance: he offers them as possible interpretations of a philosophical
question. Others are presented authoritatively. Let us turn to his
Ethics. After having convincingly shown that it is impossible to view
all things as mere means for something elsefor this would lead to
a regress ad innitumhe raises a crucial question: What is the high-
est good? Most people, he tells us, claim it is happiness. One can
question whether this is the answer, but what concerns us here is that
Aristotle then draws the daring conclusion that this one absolute end
(for, obviously, no one seeks happiness for the sake of something
else) is the one end for the sake of which everything else is sought.
Since then of all things which may be done there is some one End
which we desire for its own sake, and with a view to which we desire
everything else . . . (emphasis mine).
3
This proves our thesis that a major discovery can lead to erro-
neous conclusions. Even if it were true that happiness is the one
absolute end, the chief good,this does not justify the assumption that
everything else is a mere means for reaching it. A philosopher has to
be on the alert every step of the way, for error always lurks in the
background. That happiness is undoubtedly an end and cannot by its
very nature be a means does not justify the claim that, therefore,
everything man does is a means for the attainment of this end. This
aristotle: the philosopher
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is a position that we shall challenge. For everyone has a right to
refuse to be victimized by another mans genius. This is why
midgets like myself can respectfully disagree with the views of
some giants of thought.
The Aristotelian overemphasis on nality can lead to regrettable
consequences, the seriousness of which becomes particularly omi-
nous if we turn to Christian philosophy. We shall limit ourselves to
a couple of examples that, hopefully, will shed some light on our
problem. Let us focus once again on nality. As stated previously,
some things exist exclusively because they serve an end outside of
themselves. If all human beings were bald, combs would be mean-
ingless. But there are other cases in which something that has its own
meaning and justication can at the same time bring about an end, even
though it cannot possibly be viewed as a mere means for that end.
A few examples are called for: St. Augustine, whose life was
blessed with several great friendships, tells us emphatically that he
loved his friends for their own sake, and therefore, not as a means
for his happiness, even though there is no doubt that a noble friend-
ship is one of the great sources of happiness on this earth. Friendship
has its value in itself, but because of its inner fecundity, it brings hap-
piness in its trail.
All of us know cases in which a young man who faces the strug-
gles typical of his age meets a young woman who strikes him as a lily
of purity. He falls in love with her, and this very love helps him to
overcome his difculties. The young woman is loved for her own
sake, but her very being is instrumental in helping him to stay on
the path of virtue. This is a type of metaphysical relationship that
Dietrich von Hildebrand calls superabundance. It resembles nality
and yet differs from it because the fruit does not cancel the full
independent validity and value of the so-called means. To call them
means is, in fact, inadequate and misleading. Their inner nobility
justies their own existence, but because every love, every friendship
is essentially fruitful, it brings in its trail an effect essentially relat-
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ed to itbut nevertheless, an effect that does not instrumentalize
the dignity of the value producing it. It ows over from its inner
plenitude.
In the March 2002 issue of The Latin Mass Magazine, John Galvin
published a severe criticism of Humanae Vitae on the grounds
among other thingsthat Pope Paul VI introduced a novel and
untried philosophy that established a distinction between the mean-
ing of marriage and its purpose. To Galvin, this distinction has dis-
astrous consequences anddown the roadis largely responsible
for the moral sexual chaos plaguing our society. According to his
views, marriage has one purpose and one purpose only: procreation.
In other words, he rejects the unitive dimension of marriage and
concentrates exclusively on its procreative side. To put it in Aris-
totelian terms, the marital union is a pure means for procreation,
which is its end. Unfortunately for Galvin, this is denitely not the
teaching of the Church. For the Church grants the holy sacrament of
matrimony to couples who, because of age or some quirk of nature,
cannot have children, thereby telling us it is the marital union that
is the sacrament and not procreation. Such spouses receive as much
the graces of the sacrament as those who are fertile, and their union
is as indissoluble as the one of those who can hope to have a large prog-
eny. This, of course, is not meant to deny or even weaken the
admirable bond that God Himself has created between the marital
embrace and the potential coming into being of a new person, made
to Gods image and likeness. For love is essentially fruitful, and if a
couple chooses to sever the beautiful bond existing between their
embrace and procreationa link that God Himself has estab-
lishedit would not only constitute a grave sin, but moreover, will
inevitably sow seeds that sooner or later will weaken the loving
bond existing between the spouses. Once God is excluded from the
mysterious union taking place between husband and wife, the spous-
es no longer pro-create butlike animalsthey copulate.
Man cannot create anything: God has enriched the human body
aristotle: the philosopher
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with living seeds that can contribute to the body of another human
being but are incapable of producing a soul, for the soul being imma-
terial is not made of preexisting material. It is not by accident that
couples who choose to practice articial birth control are much
more likely to divorce than those who do not. The reason is that lust
has crept into their relationshipand lust is the enemy of true love.
In fact, the holy sacrament of matrimony has been granted to weak
and sinful human beings to help them through the very grace of the
sacrament to eliminate the evil seed of lust, which started to blos-
som between our rst parents the very moment that they sinned and
discovered that they were naked. This has been powerfully high-
lighted by our Holy Father. Through the sublimity of the sacrament,
the marital embrace can be of spotless purity. We dare assert that
when a husband whose soul is transformed by Christ embraces his
sterile wife (who, like him, is on the way to holiness) as an expres-
sion of his love, it is self-donation to her, just as when she gives her-
self to him, and this union glories God more than in cases in which
the love between the spouses is less ardent, less pure, and yet leads
to a conception.
The ordination of the marital embrace to procreation is a fact that
cannot be denied, but in cases when procreation is excluded, it keeps
its meaning and beauty. Childless couples must deeply regret their
lack of fecundity, but they are called upon to have spiritual children,
for, as stated above, every love worthy of this name is essentially
fruitful. There are many cases that shed light on the words of Psalm
112: qui habitare facit sterilem in domo matrem liorum laetantem
(who makes a barren woman to dwell in a house, the joyful mother
of children). On a higher plane, consecrated virgins do not renounce
maternity, butthrough their total donation to Godthey yearn for
a much wider, more spiritual form of maternity: the virgin opens her
heart to innumerable children whom she spiritually adopts through
her prayers and sacrices. Mother Teresa of Calcutta was truly the
mother of thousands and thousands of little ones. She was maternal
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par excellence. In Catholic teaching, consecrated virginity is the high-
est form of maternity as exemplied in the Holy Virgin.
To go back to Aristotle, it should now be clear that the marital
embrace cannot be interpreted as a mere means for procreation and
be denied any meaning of its own. This is denitely not the case. Not
only is the woman fertile during very few days every month, and the
Church has never prohibited the marital embrace during her infertile
days, but moreover, when she is already pregnant (and therefore can-
not conceive), the marital embrace keeps its meaning as an expres-
sion of spousal love. Why is it the male animal is attracted to the
female only when she is in heat, and that does not apply to human
beings? God, who speaks through His creation, is clearly telling us
that the tenderness of the marital embrace has its own meaning and
beauty even when procreation is unfortunately impossible.
The relationship between the marital embrace and procreation
is certainly not a case of a pure means-end relationship. For in the
latter case, means are metaphysically inferior to the end; whereas in
superabundance, the (erroneously called) means are in no way infe-
rior to the end and might, in some cases, even be superior to it,
as we shall see later. Dietrich von Hildebrands concept of super-
abundance highlights the nature of this type of relationship well. It
is a metaphysical relationship that resembles nal causality and yet
differs from it for the plain reason that the marital embrace is not
a mere means but has its own meaninga loving donation to ones
spouseeven though it is so essentially related to the capacity to
bring about another life, that, as stated above, to decide to frustrate
it is to sow the seeds of disunion between the spouses. On the other
hand, when this superabundance is impeded for reasons that the
couple has no control over, it keeps its own full meaning and should
even lead to spiritual fruitfulness. All of us know sterile couples
who have many spiritual children. For no true love can be sterile.
A husband whose wife has had a hysterectomy knows while embrac-
ing her that she is now infertile: to claimas a strict Aristotelian
aristotle: the philosopher
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might dothat he embraces her for the sake of procreation is to
leave the sphere of the concrete and y into abstraction.
Still more crucial is the application of the principle of super-
abundance in relation to beatitude. Thomas Aquinas was not only a
faithful disciple of Aristotle, but also a saint. When one reads his
works, one is struck that at times he is only a faithful disciple of the
Stagyrite. For example, when he writes that the male is superior to
the female because he is active and she is passivethereby confus-
ing passivity (which is indeed inferior to activity) with receptivity, a
totally different case. Or when he tells us that the soul of the male
child is produced forty days after conception, whereas the female
child receives its soul after eighty days. At other times, this great
saint writes the Adoro Te and the Lauda Sion Salvatorem, which are
impregnated with the perfume of the supernatural.
But no thinker is always at his best, and possibly one of the most
bafing sentences in St. Thomas (quoted by one of his disciples,
Josef Pieper) is if God were not mans beatitude, the latter would
have no reason whatever to love Him. At its face value, this formu-
lation is extremely unfortunate. It is regrettable indeed because it
seems to imply that happiness is the highest good, and that every-
thing else is a means to achieve this absolute endAristotles the-
sis. I am sure that some dedicated Thomists would manage to give
to this sentence a positive interpretationon the ground that St.
Thomas being St. Thomas and honored by the Church can and
should always be positively interpretedbut the overwhelming
majority of people reading it will be tempted to see beatitude (eude-
monism) as the absolute end: that is, mans beneficial good, as
opposed to goodness itself, namely God. Neverabsolutely never
can God be viewed as a means for another end. As we saw, the means is
always metaphysically inferior to the end, and to make this claim
about God edges on blasphemy. For according to the Churchs doc-
trine, the glorication of God is mans primary end; beatitude is our
secondary end, and secondary not only in the order of time, but also in the
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order of importance. How much more adequate is it to view the rela-
tionship between God and beatitude as a relationship of superabun-
dance. Superabundance spiritualizes and elevates nality on a much
higher level. This mercenary view just sketched above explains why
numerous are the Communists who claim that Christians are work-
ing for a reward, whereas they themselves selessly work for the
good of humanity, even though the paradise of the workers will
not be realized in their lifetime.
The Divine teaching as handed to us through the holy Catholic
Church can alone claim inerrancy. No human being cangreat as he
may be. St. Thomas was given a gigantic mission: to save the West
from Averroess interpretation of Aristotle, which was creating intel-
lectual havoc among some Christian thinkers. Aristotle claimed he
had proved the eternity of the worldthereby explicitly denying
Creation. It was St. Thomass great mission to baptize the pagan
thinkernot always an easy taskand thereby build a bridge
between him and Christian revelation. What St. Thomas has accom-
plished deserves our gratitude and admiration. But once again, we
should remember that no human thinkergigantic as he may be
is protected against ambiguities, aws, and even downright errors.
Errors in a thinker as truth-loving as St. Thomas can be called
accidental errors as opposed to the errors proliferating in many
thinkers who love themselves more than truth (to quote Plato).
When the latter states a truth, we can benet from a truth discov-
ered accidentally (for as Plato writes in Phaedrus, in the worst of
authors, we can nd something to the point). Every error should be
corrected becauseeven if their perpetrators are sincerely con-
vinced of the validity of their viewseach one of them creates a
metaphysical disharmony because it is in conict with truth and ulti-
mately with Truth itself.
To go back to St. Thomas: God should be loved for His own sake
because He alone is Holy, He alone is the Lord, He alone is the most
High, but the sublimity of this very love brings in its train what we
aristotle: the philosopher
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call beatitude. We do not love God because loving him will make
us happy. We love Him because He deserves to be loved. All of us
should pray that at the moment of death we should make an act of
perfect contritionone expressing our immense sorrow for having
offended the Holy One, and not because of our fear of hell (a legit-
imate fear) and our loss of beatitude. But our very happiness ows
over from our loving Him for His own sake. To instrumentalize our
love of God because it will give us happiness is to adopt a mercenary
attitude that is radically opposed to the very essence of true love.
Granted today, there is, alas, little respect for great intellectual
traditions; a wise thinker will approach them respectfully, while, at
the same time, enriching and deepening them by making new dis-
tinctions that the original thinker would have gratefully approved of
had he seen them. This is called development of doctrine by the
great Cardinal Newman and should be welcomed by all who under-
stand thatto quote Aristotle once againmuch as we love Plato
(in this case Aristotle), we should love Truth more.
Notes
1. Dante Aligheri, Inferno, Canto 4, 131.
2. Paul Vitz, Psychology as Religion:The Cult of Self-Worship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1977).
3. J. A. Smith, trans., Aristotle, Ethics (New York: Dutton, 1950), b. 1, p. 2, 1094a.
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